Kitchen Pictures

I redid my kitchen several months ago and had an idea to make some things to hang on the walls. Everything has been done except the things I wanted to make so I decided to take a little while this weekend to get most of them done. I am working on a couple of needlework things and when they are finished everything will be complete. I went with a red, yellow and white color theme in there and wanted it to be kind of retro too. Specifically the colors are red and white polka dots with yellow and white gingham. Kip was so afraid when I told him my color choices. I think he thought I was going to paint the walls with those colors. His fear was that it was going to look like a fast food restaurant. 

My mom made my curtains and we were able to find the perfect material and then I was able to find paper to match too. Everything turned out the way I wanted it to!

This is an image from Amber Ink. All the images were colored with Copics and use paper from The Paper Studio. I purchased some plain black frames to hang them in. 

This apron was in the Help for Katie set.

And this one is a Karen Lockhart apron.

I hung them above the piece that Kip made for me to hold my aprons. The apron in the middle is mine, the one of the right is Samantha's and the one of the left was made by my great-grandmother. 

I thought I would include this picture too, since it shows a little more of the kitchen. It also shows the curtains that my mom made for me. The bird plates came from Pier 1. I wanted to use that clock that I have had for a very long time but it was green. The casing that holds the clock is made out of plastic and I wanted it to match the kitchen. I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a can of spray paint meant to paint model cars, popped the actual clock out and then spray painted it. 

Happy Anniversary Kip

Yesterday was our 5th wedding anniversary. I haven't had a lot to post this week because I have been hard at work on my gift to my hubby and since he does sometimes take a peek at my blog, I didn't want to spoil any surprises. This is my anniversary card to him, I wanted to give him a little something special, and since he knows that the Sweet Pea images take a little more effort from me to color, I decided I wanted to use one of those images. I wanted to use one of his favorite colors, blue, as the main color for my image. I realized I don't color just blue a lot either! I am very happy with the way that this turned out and even with the bow, I managed to make a card that wasn't too girly for him. 

One thing we do is for our gift, we play along with the "traditional" gift each year, don't spend a lot of money and then try and do something fun. The first couple of years he planned and then last year we decided to alternate years. I planned a trip to see Star Wars in Concert which was amazing. This year we went and saw The Nutcracker, which neither of us had seen before.

The traditional gift for year five of marriage is wood. I made Kip this wood shadow box. Our last name is spelled out in the top of the house. 

Here are a few close-ups. For this panel, I took a mini canvas, painted it and then stamped the flower onto the painted area, edged it with a brown and then wrote in the year of our wedding at the bottom.

This is a verse from Ecclesiastes 4. I chose this passage because it emphasizes that being alone is not always better. The cord was chosen because of the end of the passage says "a three fold cord is not easily broken". I loved that this cord had three distinct colors and even better, it matched the color combo and paper that I had already picked out. 

The center sections of photos are just pictures that I love of Kip and represented different things that I love about him. Clockwise: the first picture was in Chicago the year we went there in February on vacation, this is us at the end of the Star Wars concert, a picture of Kip with my cat sleeping on him and finally a picture of Kip with my Aunt Ella.

This is a copy of our wedding vows.

And this is my favorite picture from our wedding.

We had a great time. I will show you my gift from him in the next day or so, it was very impressive! Thanks for stopping by!

Kip's Zombie Birthday

Here is the card I made for Kip for his birthday yesterday. He loves Zombie stuff and I was so happy to find Zombie images from Simply Betty Stamps. I tend to do themes for my gift giving opportunities so this birthday was definitely for the living dead! I pulled my Halloween stuff back out to find the fence and the tombstone, both are for Martha Stewart. My image is from Simply Betty Stamps and was colored with Copic markers. The sentiment was computer generated and I used DCWV papers and some brads from Jo-Ann's.

I always try and find Kip a puzzle along the lines of a Rubik's cube and one of the first places I look is ThinkGeek. While I was there I found this great zombie wrapping paper and a cool zombie mug to go with it. I also found this puzzle. I think that will keep him busy for a few days anyway! I already knew there was a new zombie game being released the week of his birthday that he would be getting so it was a total zombie birthday.

I even thought about making him a zombie themed cake, but I found a recipe for a Peanut Butter Chocolate cake and since he loves all things peanut butter and chocolate, I went with that.  The cake itself is peanut butter, then there is a peanut butter filling between the layers and then it was iced with a chocolate fudge icing. I make some extra of the filling and used that to decorate the cake. Wow, that cake was delicious, even if I do say so myself!

We went for dinner with family and friends at a local Thai restaurant and then went to the midnight release of Harry Potter. And that was Kip's birthday!

Happy Birthday Digi

Hello! Here is a birthday card I made with a free Digi Stamp that I got from Shirley's 2 Girls on SNR. Isn't she just adorable? I love the way she is popping out of that cake. After printing the image I colored it with Copic markers and added some glitter glue on the top and some black glitter on the inside portion where she is popping out from. There are some black pearls on the bottom cake layer. When I saw the image and was playing with ideas in my head, I was planning to used pinks and oranges for this image but when I sat down and started looking through my paper, I found that cool black and white paper with the numbers on it and thought that it would make a great card for someone that might be a little older, you know past twenty one that might not want to share their age with everyone. As the final touches, I added the black and white gingham ribbon and some sparkle with a Sakura glitter pen. Supplies: paper and card stock from DCWV, ribbon from my ginormous ribbon stash, pearls from Doodlebug, Sakura glitter pen, black glitter from Martha Stewart, glitter glue and Copic markers.

Speaking of birthdays, we celebrated Kip's tonight with his family and some friends. Our friend Mike took this picture for us. We had a great time and you can see some of his gifts there. Can you see how short my hair is? It's not tucked behind my shoulder. I decided to trim my hair last night and a little trim turned into about 5 1/2 inches or so. Oops. Now, it is right at the top of my shoulders. It feels pretty good. My hair is naturally curly and when Kip got home last night, it was brushed out straight and pulled back so he didn't notice. He left early for church and I was still in the shower, so he didn't see it until I showed up. He likes it though and so do I and I was ready for a change so all is good!

Serious Bragging on my Hubby

Okay, so yesterday was our third anniversary. I got a phone call from Kip while I was at work asking where my Scor-Pal was. I thought he had probably ran out of blank cards so he was going to make his own and then I didn't think anything else about it. He has been making me cards for a while now and I love them. When we sat down to exchange gifts though, I was blown away. I couldn't believe what was in my bag. I think I explained before that we don't spend a lot of money on anniversary gifts. What we do, is go by the traditional gifts for that year. Year one was paper, I got a book I had wanted. Year two, cotton, and we both got each other shirts. I also took "cotton" and expanded on that, he got a fresh cotton air freshener and a bag of Cotton Candy. This year was leather and you saw the book that I made for him and here is my gift from him: He needed the Scor-Pal to make those little jewelry boxes. He made those completely on his own, he wasn't following a template or anything. The bracelet and necklace? He made those too! He took leather cord and initial charms and made them. You can't see the clasps, but they are in the shape of a heart. He said he got some help from other people at Jo-Anns that were shopping in the jewelry making aisle. I think he is pretty amazing and I am going to keep him! You can also see the card that he made me. I also got a Blu-Ray copy of Mama Mia that I can watch over and over and over again! What a guy I have, huh?

Happy Anniversary

Three years ago today, Kip and I got married. I can't believe it has been that long, the time has just flown by. The traditional gift for a third anniversary is leather. I covered a 4x4 coaster with a strip of leather that I got at the craft store. The coaster with the additional thickness of the leather almost did not go in my Bind It All. Then I stamped directly onto the cover with CTMH Cocoa ink using a journaling set that I got from Repeat Impressions. I also stamped the sentiment onto several of the pages and wrote lots of mushy, lovey stuff!! Actually, several of the pages mention specific things in our individual pasts that lead us to meeting each other and just imagine what would have happened if we skipped that one portion of our life. Anyone of those steps could have meant that we would have never met. Then the second part is imagining the rest of our lives. I love you Kip, more than I could ever express!