Are you sitting down?

'Cause I don't want you to *fall* down when I tell you "I found time to stamp!" :-) It's Teacher Appreciation Week so for A's two teachers, I made a "movie night" gift set. It includes an altered Frappuchino bottle, a cover for a bag of microwave popcorn and a holder for a gift card to a local video rental place. All items used Stampin' Up's retired Roses in Winter set (along with All Year Cheer 1 and Too Terrific Tags) and the colors Old Olive, Pretty in Pink and Purely Pomegranate. It was all packaged in a white lunch sack with a rose and two leaves stamped on it. The bag was tied shut with some ribbon that looks a lot like Purely Pomegranate.

Roses in Winter is one of my favorite sets and one that's not leaving my stamp space any time soon! I'm a late-comer to the 2008 In Colors, and I really enjoyed working with the Pomegranate.

A Singing in bed

I sit with A for a while at bed time. The goal is to help him calm down and go to sleep, but sometimes it doesn't work! We've managed to get to church for a few weeks in a row now, and it has made quite the impression on him. He's fascinated with the conductor and likes to play "conductor and choir" at home. He climbs up into his bed with a straw, a pen or some other kind of "conductor thingie" and has us sing "Thine is the Glory". He's heard it enough that he's got a good grasp of the words. Occasionally, he'll pick up his little bible and start singing once I leave the room. One night, he started in while I was still there. This video was taken in the dark, so there's no picture, but you can clearly pick out the songs he's singing!

Okay - so the "New" Year is 1/4 gone...

hmmm... I really should write more often! We've been keeping busy between work and home. The weather is getting nicer - the azaleas are already blooming - so we're spending more time outside. I took this picture of A after the Easter Egg hunt in our town. The hunt left a little to be desired with kids and parents pushing their way for these nasty marshmallow eggs. A wanted me to carry him. He ended up with two eggs.

I've had less time for creative endeavors than I'd like, but I did manage to get this page done over lunch today. It's for the Oscraps Designer Spotlight Challenge. I've been hanging out there more than many of the other digiscrap communities, even if I don't participate much in the conversation. I still learn a lot! I've been collecting a lot of digiscrap tools to work with. Now I just need to organize them. Right now, they're all on CD's at my office in chronological order from when I downloaded them. I have to open up a bunch of files before I find what I want to use. I've copied the CD's onto our home computer since M&D gave me Photoshop Elements 6 for Christmas. But they're not organized there either. I need to work on organizing them so I can try to get the creative juices flowing again!

Credits: Sally's Template for the Oscraps Designer Spotlight Challenge
Papers by Sue Cummings and Jenni Cantrell at Oscraps (both from the O's 2nd Birthday Bash)
Stars by Mikkel Paige from her Doodle Me Big set at Oscraps

Happy New Year!

Now that I've finished the Christmas gifts - 2007 brag books for the Grandparents (I should order one for us too!), I can get back to creating for me again! I decided to start with a template so I could get my feet under me again. Credits forthcoming!

This picture was taken on the back steps of my parents house on Thanksgiving 2007. We were watching A playing with the other "kids" who attended dinner at my parent's house. Some of the neighborhood kids stopped by too, including the son of A's former babysitter. It was a great day - great food, great company, great weather (as you can see from our short sleeves!). The only thing that could have made it better was if we could have spent it with P's family too. Guess we can't have it all.

Here's hoping you have a great 2008!

It's now available!

The kit I mentioned a few posts ago is now available for download at Make It Scrappy! You can get it here. Look for the picture.

Monday Funny

A drive-by post this morning...Wanted to tell you a funny thing A said this weekend. Let me set the stage...

He received from Grammie and Grandad, a book with some Christmas stories and some carols in it. It's one of his favorites, and we read it many many many times during the weeks. Inside the covers is a picture of a little tree and some presents next to it. He's started identifying who will receive those presents. Most of them are for him, as you might imagine. But, he has identified one for Mommy, one for Daddy and one for Krinkle. We talked a little about buying presents for each other. Here's how our conversation went:

Me: So are you going to buy Mommy lots of Christmas presents?
A: No - not presents. Groceries. I buy you groceries.

Great. I guess I'll keep an eye out for bread, eggs and milk under the tree. Merry Christmas to me!

On another note, he's gotten over his tummy bug. It was pretty quick. We spend most of Thursday on the sofa watching different videos. Friday I kept him home 'cause the bug presented itself again in a form where if day care had seen it, they would have called me to come get him. So, we met Daddy for lunch and played. Oh, and he actually said he *wanted* to go to school Friday. I almost fell over. It's the first time we've heard that!

The timing of it all means I missed my quick trip to California to see my brother graduate with his MBA. I wish I could have gone, but duty called. It's the first time we've dealt with a tummy bug affecting A and I needed to be there for him (uh, and me too - my poor baby!).

But he's back at "school" this morning and while getting him into the car was a little challenge, there were no tears once we got to school.

Well, I've done it...

My first foray into digiscrap designing! One of the digiscrap communities I visit, Make It Scrappy, is hosting a challenge. Members submitted color swatches and we voted on them. The winning swatch was to be used to create a digiscrap supplies in a Thanksgiving Theme. I created 11 different papers, some ribbons, some tags and a word art for my contribution. Come the 18th, if my collection is deemed "worthy" (as in pieces of it aren't pirated - they're not!), it will be released to the public at Make It Scrappy!

It was fun to create my submission. First, I tried to create my own papers based on the color swatch using default settings in Photoshop Elements 5. Not bad, but not what I was looking for (but I included them anyway). Then I read some tutorials, and ended up creating my own textured overlay which was sampled from a picture I took of some Cyprus trees on my walk into work. I also found some commercial use (for items given away only) ribbons from The Ephemeral Victorian and recolored them to match the color swatch. Then, I found a tutorial on Misty Cato's blog on how to create simple tags. Finally, I found a Thanksgiving themed quote and played with the fonts and sizing to create some word art.

I really enjoyed this creative process and look forward to doing more. Here's what the pieces of the final product look like:


So, what do you think? Next up is to actually use this stuff for some pages of my own!