Black & White Bling!

Right now we are on our way to B.C. to visit my mom. A twelve hour drive with two toddlers should be lots of fun! Thank goodness we have a DVD player in our van! (How did our parents manage to take us on road trips without all this technology?) We'll have lots of fun when we get there, though! In the meantime, here's a quick and easy card:
I was inspired by a recent Papercrafts issue, where they used black & white designer paper as the main image for a card. I found this paper at my local scrapbook store (not sure what kind it is, sorry!). This is such a simple card! I just put some turquoise circle rhinestone brads through the flower centers and adhered it to my Tempting Turquoise card base. Then I added the sentiment to finish it up.

I can't wait to see the new Stampin' Up! designer paper - hopefully some black & white!

Blessings to you,

Tamara's Sketch Challenge #54

This is a card I made for Tamara's Sketch #54. I really didn't deviate at all from her sketch - right down to the butterfly image! I'm so not creative! Actually, I searched through my stamps, and I didn't want to use a flower, so all that left me was butterflies. I really need to order some new stamps! (Luckily, the new catalogue will be here in a couple of weeks!!!)

Anyway, I CASEd Alex and used one of my scallop circle note cards. I decided to go for quick and simple for this card because I plan to make a bunch of them to use up my note cards!

I added a circle of designer paper that I found in my stash (so I'm afraid I don't know who makes it). Then I added some rectangles of Basic Gray and Whisper White that I faux-stitched with my paper piercer and Pale Plum Stampin' Write marker. The butterfly is stamped in Basic Gray on the white, then I stamped it again on a scrap in Pale Plum, cut it out and adhered it on top of the gray one. Finally, I tied some linen thread around it and tied a Pale Plum button through the thread.

Thanks for reading!

Blessings to you,

Denise's Pick Three Challenge

My MIL and SIL had an Scrap Night at their church yesterday, so I was able to get some stamping done! YAY! It's been almost a month since I did stamping just for fun!

This is a card I made for Denise's (Stamping Vacation) Pick Three Challenge. I really liked her idea - she gave us six requirements, and we could choose three of them to use on our card. I chose orange paper, cuttlebug element and a bow.

The base is Close to Cocoa, with some Pumpkin Pie and Ginger Blossoms designer paper (I can't believe ALL the designer paper was retired! I'm going to miss this one!). The flower on the main image is CB'd, then inked with Pumpkin Pie and Close to Cocoa. I finished it off with some More Mustard ribbon. I used Splitcoast's SC 186 for this one.

Thanks for stopping by!

Blessings to you,

Jamaica Photos

As promised, here are a few photos of our trip. It was a great holiday with my husband's parents, his brother and sister and their spouses and kids! There were fifteen of us altogether, including seven kids (six of them under five!). It was quite an adventure, but lots of fun!

I actually didn't take a lot of pictures in Jamaica because my FIL and BIL are both camera nuts, and they took TONS of pictures that they will be making into a DVD for me. So until I get their good pictures, here are a few of my own favourites!

We went on a glass bottom boat ride to the reef off the shore, and there we were able to go snorkeling (I sat in the boat with Noah because he's too little, but DH enjoyed the swim!). Here he is with Adam, who wanted to snorkel with Daddy! Look at the colour of that water! GORGEOUS!
Adam learned how to swim with water wings while we were there! Both the boys just loved the ocean, and they played and ran in and out of the water. It was a great white-sand beach with not much surf. The water was really shallow for quite a ways out, so it was perfect for all of our kids.This is my FIL, DH and our two DSs(?) at the beach outside our hotel. DH has a bit of a "farmer tan"!This is the hotel we stayed in. My parents-in-law had the ground unit by the pool, and we were in the one behind there. The beach is just beyond the pool, so we could get up each morning and go play in the sand! It was a beautiful hotel, owned by my FIL's cousin. It was really neat to get to meet some of our extended family there.We went for a boat tour of the Black River, where there are a lot of crocodiles (who knew?)! The guide would stop and feed them chicken from the boat. Here's one of our reptilian friends!We also went to YS Falls. You are allowed to walk in the falls, but we didn't go in as the boys are pretty little and the rocks are slippery. It's a beautiful waterfall.This is DH and the boys at the Tree House Restaurant (one of our favourites!). I love that we could just sit and eat right on the beach and enjoy the views. I know this is a lot of photos! Thanks for your patience! Guess who took most of our pictures? As I went through all the photos, I noticed that I'm hardly in any of them! Oh well! Thanks for reading! I'm going to spend the afternoon blurfing and catching up on what other people are doing, and I hope to get some stamping done this weekend.

Blessings to you,

Back From Jamaica!

Hello All! I've been on holidays for the past 2 weeks, playing at the beach in Negril, Jamaica with my extended family! It's been an amazing holiday, and now I'll be spending the next two weeks catching up on everything!

I did set my blog to post a few items while I was gone because I don't like it to look like I'm away from home (you can't be too safe in cyber-space!). But now that I'm back I can tell you all about it - which I will this week! For now, I have about ten loads of laundry to do, plus unpack, get groceries, read the 200+ emails I missed (I probably subscribe to too many blogs!) and catch up on all my blog friends!

I will post some pictures after I go through the disc and see what I have. And I will try to be a better blog friend from now on (I know I have missed out on visiting all your blogs, so I'll be there this week).

Thanks for reading, and I'll "see" you soon!

Blessings to you,

Soccer Thank You

I had to come up with a thank you card for DS' soccer coach since the season is ending, and I recently bought the Just Soccer set to use for scrapbooking his soccer photos. Well, it turns out it works perfectly for a soccer thank you card as well (who'd have thought?! LOL!).

I just stamped the soccer ball image several times in Basic Black on Whisper White and punched them out with my 1 3/8" square punch. They are layered onto Yoyo Yellow and Basic Black cardstock (the team's colours). Then I stamped the "thank you" from Much Appreciated (how can they retire this set?) and layered it on with dimensionals.

Quick and easy (and stunningly soccer-y, if I do say so myself!).

This was Adam's first year in soccer, and it is so much fun to watch four-year-olds "play" soccer! What a fun age! Their team is called Mello Yellows! Here he is in his uniform.

I must say that it hit me this week that I am now a minivan-driving soccer mom. When did this happen!? AAAH! I suppose worse things could happen! LOL!

Thanks for stopping by today.

Blessings to you,

Birthday Boy!

This is a quick birthday card I made for my nephew, Davis, who turned five at the end of June. I say quick because with that amazing Cuttlebug, you can sure whip up a cute card in a hurry!

I used the birthday template on some Bordering Blue cardstock, then layered it onto Brilliant Blue and Brocade Blue as the card base. The image is from Birthday Whimsy, stamped in Brocade Blue on Whisper White. I stamped it again in Brilliant Blue and cut out the cake part to layer on with dimensionals.

Why all the blue? It matched the wrapping paper from his gift perfectly!

Thanks for reading!

Blessings to you,

Bella Fun!

Yay! I finally got a chance to use one of the Bella images that BlueMoon sent to me! I thought this image needed some fun colours, so I started with some Bali Breeze designer paper. I coloured in the image with my Stampin' Write markers, then stamped around it with the dots from Life's a Breeze. I accented it with some grosgrain ribbon and Pewter Hodgepodge Hardware. The sentiment is stamped from Everyday Flexible Phrases and punched with my small oval punch. Here's the quick recipe:

Paper: Bali Breeze, Purely Pomegranate, Tempting Turquoise
Stamps: shopabellas, Everyday Flexible Phrases
Ink: Tempting Turquoise, Purely Pomegranate, Pumpkin Pie, Always Artichoke, Close to Cocoa, Barely Banana
Embellishments: Pewter Hodgepodge Hardware, Tempting Turquoise grosgrain ribbon, dimensionals

Thanks for stopping in today, and thanks again, BlueMoon! I love these images!

Blessings to you,

Canada Day Fireworks!

I'll allow myself one more non-stamping post, then I'll get back to the good stuff! Thanks for indulging me!

We decided that Adam is old enough to go to the Canada Day fireworks, so DH woke him up at 10:30 to take him down to the fair grounds to watch them. He was VERY tired today! Grouchy four-year-olds are not fun. But it was worth it! Here's my tired boy with Daddy:
Blessings to you,

Happy Canada Day!

This morning, we walked down to the local high school, where the city has set up a big exhibition ground for Canada Day! We had a toonie pancake breakfast (a toonie is a $2 coin, for those of you who aren't Canadian!) and walked around and looked at the displays. They have inflatable jumping things for the kids, vendors, a big stage set up for concerts, face painting, and lots more! There will be some concerts tonight, but I think we'll skip those (the boys are too young to appreciate it!). Later tonight, DH is going to take Adam back to the exhibition area to watch the fireworks. Should be lots of fun!

Happy Canada Day, my fellow Canadians! I'm curious to hear how other Canadians are celebrating. Please post a comment and let me know!

Here are my boys proudly displaying the Canada flags they received at the park (okay, Noah is really just holding on while he enjoys his pancakes! Adam is a little more patriotic!):
Blessings to you,