Composition book

I have always had a love of paper and pens and pencils, it didn't just start with stamping and my love of patterned paper and Copics. When I was a little girl, my Grandmother and I shared a love of written words. Not only books, but things that we would write down from our own imaginations or sentences or quotes that we would hear and write down so as to better remember them. She was known for the off the wall gifts that she would give us each year for Christmas and birthdays. She was a little forgetful so my sister received about five nail dryers on consecutive birthdays and Christmases. I have always been a coupon clipper, and one year she presented me with a box of coupons that she had carefully clipped through the year. I don't think she realized that they expired! She was forever clipping things for magazines and the paper for me to read; things that struck her fancy that she thought I would appreciate. I have a box full of comics and other things that she clipped for me that I can't let go of. Some of these she had given to me and some my Mom found after my grandmother passed away. Most of them have the date of the paper they came from written by her on them. But no matter what gift she gave me, I always got something to write on--a pack of stationary, a journal, a notebook or just some pretty paper she found. It is very rare that you will ever see me without a notepad of some sort near by, there is always one in my purse or my car. I made this book for myself. I kept the embellishments to a minimum because I know it will get shoved into my iPad case, my computer bag, or a purse so I didn't want anything to rip off. The image is from Hampton Arts and was colored with Copics, the papers are from My Minds Eye and the Paper Studio, ric-rak is from Hobby Lobby and the "dream" and "hope" tickets are Tim Holtz.

I love gadgets too and do a lot of stuff on my iPad. Kip and I use an online calendar to keep up with shopping lists and our schedules, most of of recipes are now found online and I am always reading some blog or another! But I still always have paper and pen nearby too. When I catch myself reaching for my paper to write down a thought or quote I think of my grandmother. And it makes my heart smile.

Sweet Little Girl

Happy Monday!! As soon as I saw this stamp at my LSS, I had to have it. I collect and love tea pots and this little girls just has the sweetest expression on her face. The image is from Penny Black and was colored with Copic Markers. I know I posted last week that I had way too much ribbon and didn't need to buy any more for a very long time. I am happy  embarrassed to report that my resolve lasted until my very next trip to Hobby Lobby. I found that ruffly, black gingham ribbon and knew it would be perfect on this card. I paired it with some red gingham paper from The Paper Studio and added some black buttons from my stash.

I had fun this weekend; a Copic class on Saturday and a day of cooking yesterday. My SIL came over a week or so ago to learn how to make chicken and dumplings and she mentioned that she would love to learn how to make bread too. Specifically she wanted to make sourdough bread. I haven't been able to think of anything else since then. I am a bread fiend anyway, but bread fresh out of my oven is amazing. I had to do a practice run before I made bread with her. You know just to make sure it was okay! Actually it was the first time that I have tried to make my own starter, so I really did want to make sure it was good.

Have a great day!!

Winter Fun

Living in Tennessee, we don't see a lot of snow and when it does snow, even a tiny bit schools are likely to be canceled. That was the case here on Friday, it snowed a little on Thursday night so there was no school on Friday. Since I was off work on that day anyway, I told Judy she could drop Samantha off and let her spend the day hanging out with me. We had a ball too, with most of the day spent in the craft room. We went through a bunch of her old craft stuff so that we could better organize what we do use. There was a lot of stuff that is in perfectly good condition but she has simply out grown them. 

Samantha also enjoys playing along with challenge and seeing things she makes posted on my blog. We decided to play along with the challenge on the Riley and Company blog this week which is to make a Winter Fun card. We used the same image, I picked out some papers to use and Samantha picked out the embellishments. My card is at the top of the post and hers is below:

I have a couple of other projects that we made to show you later in the week, thanks for visiting today!

Almost the Weekend!

Well it is for me! I am off on Friday so today is my last day of work of the week. I am ready for it too, I could use some extended time in my craft room. I have a huge stack of images that have been colored and I hope to get a large number of them made into cards this weekend. The card I have to show you today uses a Sweet Pea image from Rachel Anderson called Sunrise. She is quickly becoming one of my favorite artists from Sweet Pea too. Everything is colored with Copics, paper is from Hobby Lobby. The ribbon I got at Target a while back. For a while, Target was carrying this ribbon in their stationary section with some wedding stuff. I like this ribbon too, it is very silky and came in about four or five colors. I went in one day and they had marked it on clearance really cheap so I was able to grab a several rolls. I love this gray one most of all I think. Ribbon is one of those things that I buy all the time and just seem to collect more than I use them! My goal this year is to use up quite a bit of my ribbon before purchasing any more. A couple of weeks ago Jenna and Samantha were here and Jenna wanted to look through my ribbon for some hair ribbons for herself and I let her. Even after we cut off enough for several hair ribbons, it still didn't make a dent in my ribbon stash. "Must not buy new ribbon" is my catch phrase I am repeating when I am in a craft store right now!

Have a great day!

A Couple of Necklaces

I have never been much of a jewelry type girl. That's why for Christmas my husband buys me things like an air compressor, food processors and a Dremel (this year's awesome gift!). All of those things made me so much happier on Christmas morning than a box of jewelry would have. I had no idea that I was getting the Dremel for Christmas this year so I kind of squealed when I saw it. Samantha ran over to look at what was making me so happy and saw what it was and just said "ookkkaayyy". Then I told her we could use it in the craft room and she was as happy as I was. 

Anyway, so I am not much of a jewelry girl, but I do enjoy wearing something different and unique when I have to opportunity to dress up. A couple of years ago my friend Julie called and asked if I wanted to take a beginning jewelry making class with her and a couple of her friends. I had never really had the desire to make jewelry, but I knew I would have fun with them so I said yes. I ended up having a blast and have made several pieces since then, both for me and as gifts.

I am in a purple mood right now and have a couple of new shirts/outfits that have purple in them. I had found this cameo pendant a while ago and really loved it. Cameos remind me of my Grandmother. She had a couple that I remember when I was little. When I see them it always brings a happy smile of remembrance for me. I made this necklace to go with a new purple shirt that I had just bought. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. 

Samantha has also decided to try and make some jewelry. She used to enjoy stringing the big plastic pony beads on elastic to make bracelets and necklaces but now she wants to make "real" jewelry. We went to Hobby Lobby the other day and they had their charms on sale so I told her she could pick out a couple. The first set she picked up was this "best friends" set.  She also picked out a pack of glass beads that had colors that they both liked. And here is her final result:

Thanks for visiting me today!

Grandparents Anniversary Card

Last week, my grandparents celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary. I think that is pretty amazing. don't you?  As soon as I thought about making a card to commemorate their special day, I thought of this image, Young Love from Mo Manning and I knew this image would be perfect for them. I love the look of contentment on their faces, they seem to be content with life and with each other. I colored the image with Copics and used some paper that has been in my stash for quite a while. I kept the layout and the embellishments pretty simple, because I know that is what my grandmother especially enjoys, it seems to bother her is I put to much stuff on cards that I send to her. I wish I had been there to give this to them in person, but it just didn't work out. I hope they both liked their card!

I am also entering this in the Mo's Challenge Blog's Anything Goes with a Mo Image challenge.

Recipe Binder

Yesterday I told you about my some of my Christmas traditions. Another one is that I always take the girls shopping when it is time for them to give a gift to their mom. She has done an excellent job raising them to understand the joy of giving to others. She has always included them in the giving and having them select well thought out gifts. Both girls do get a lot of joy giving gifts to their friends and loved ones. Since she can't take them shopping and still be surprised, I take them shopping for Mother's Day, her birthday and Christmas gifts. I have so much fun doing this too. They usually have something in mind before we go out and this year was no exception. Samantha wanted to get her mom a cookbook because she is eating healthier and a more vegetarian diet so she was set on getting her a vegetarian cookbook. Jenna wanted to get her a charm for her bracelet, but she also pointed out that Judy could use a binder to organize all of the recipes that she has been given or printed off the internet. She knew she wanted a binder with dividers and sleeves to protect the recipes. This is the binder that I ended up making to hold all the loose recipes. I used paper from  Jillybean Soup, some buttons from my stash, a Sizzix alphabet and some Nestabilities. I wish I had thought to take the cover out of the binder before taking a photo, but I was in a hurry! I decided that the letters didn't stand out enough, so I took a white gel pen and traced around the letters. It made a huge difference, but I forgot to take another picture. 

 I also will take the girls for most of the day a week or so before Christmas so Judy can finish wrapping and do some last minute stuff. Sometimes that is the day that we do our shopping but we had already done that so we made and decorated cookies. We made sugar cookies, shortbread cookies and gingerbread men. 

 They take cookie decorating very seriously!

Almost every container of sprinkles that I have made it out for decorating.

Here are some of our final designs. The girls did almost all of the decorating, I did the "gingerdead man" ones for my zombie loving hubby. 

Frying Pan Cover

This was a very different project for me! First a quick backstory on our Christmas traditions: I met Jenna, Samantha and their mom, Judy when Jenna was three and Samantha was about eighteen months old. Judy's job situation changed and the new job required some travel so I became the girls' nanny. The first Christmas, she asked if I wanted to spend Christmas with them and I took her up on it. It was probably the best Christmas ever, other than the ones when I was a little kid. So spending the night with them became my new tradition. Kip and I got married the week before Christmas and it was late Christmas Eve when we returned from our honeymoon so we stayed in our home our first Christmas but after that, spending Christmas with the girls became our tradition. After being married a while, I gave up being the nanny, and so the new nanny is Ms. Faye. The newest tradition is that we all now spend Christmas with Judy and the girls! Ms. Faye wanted to give Judy a new frying pan (which is something she wanted) but because of the shape of them they aren't the easiest things to wrap. Even in a large gift bag, its awkward. She was watching something on TV one day and seen someone dress up the packaging on the pan to look like a Santa face. Ms. Faye is a quilter and does beautiful things but she doesn't work with paper, so she asked if I could pull something together for her. 

Since I didn't see the program she had seen, I just went on her description and this is what I came up with. The packaging had a large circle on the back with all the information about the pan. I traced that circle onto white paper to get my face. After that, I punched out a pink circle and two black ones. The Santa hat is covering the handle and after I glued down the eyes and mouth, I put down some tacky glue and then crumpled up some tissue paper for the beard and hair. I added some pink chalk around the cheek area too. I think it turned out pretty cute and Ms. Faye was happy with the wrapping. 

It's been interesting making these new traditions. I will be forever grateful for Judy for sharing her Christmas mornings with me,  and now my husband. As a single adult with no children, Christmas had lost a lot of it's magic. They gave me that back, and even as the girls are getting older, the magic is still there. The girls are old enough now that they can plan Christmas morning surprises and that brings another level of joy for all of us. I have learned that family can be the people that you choose to love, not just the people you are biologically linked to. 

Samantha's Christmas Card

This is the Christmas card that I made for Samantha. She loves the color yellow and Riley. Of course I had no problem finding a cute Riley image for her card, but finding yellow in Christmas paper was a little harder. I found the yellow bell paper in the same pack of paper from Cosmo Cricket that my pink card came from. Samantha keeps up with the Riley releases, so I knew she would recognize this Elf Riley as one of the new ones from the last release. She hasn't even had a chance to play with these yet either. She was very happy with her card and loved seeing yellow on her Christmas card.

I hope everyone had a safe and Happy New Year. We normally stay in, in part because I have a hard time staying awake past 10:30! This year another couple had invited us over for dinner and a game night. It was still pretty low key, but we had a good time. And I managed to stay awake to ring in the New Year!! I am off work today so I am doing my yearly tradition of cleaning out closets and drawers and trying to get rid of stuff and organizing what I am keeping. I am making pretty good progress and have gotten rid of stuff that I didn't use at all last year. Next area? The craft desk, and that will take a while!