Crafternoon Delight!

Had a great group of stampers last Sunday for my "Crafternoon" - my new term for Stamp Camps!    Lauren and I started sharing Crafternoons together over the holidays and I have really enjoyed her new level of craft ability that makes us really able to work together.

So, here are some projects that we did.....

I call these cards "tuck" cards based on the function of having a piece tuck under another piece to hold the card closed.  For this card, I played on the fun nature of the DSP - one of our free Sale a Bration offers this month - and made the message piece in the shape of a present, then put a bow at the top!  I LOVE using the new Pom Pom ribbon around pop up elements as shown here.  I actually didn't notice that they were coming undone a bit until I posted this picture.  Must have been handled a bit much at the Crafternoon!

Once open, you can see better how it works.  This cupcake stamp is one of my birthday must haves, and it's been in the catalogs for awhile now, so with the new catalog coming out soon, I wouldn't be surprised if it retires - better order now!  And you can't go wrong with the new Cupcake Punch! 

This card uses a great subtle accent - putting a layer of texture embossed same color paper on top of your base prior to your images.  This paper is one of the DSP's from the Occasions mini catalog which is about to expire at the end of April!

But I've saved my favorite for last!!!  I love this DSP - it has the most beautiful floral prints and bright yellows!  But this is one of the more subtle versions which compliments the colors so perfectly for a spring strawberry.  And the sentiment is great from the Eat Chocolate set - again from the soon to expire Occasions Mini catalog you can access on the side bar.


But the best part.....





















Is what is says when you open it......

I thought this was just too cute a way to say in words that friends so perfectly compliment each other.

It's also one of my favorites - and always a hit at Crafternoon's - an easel card.  See how the little chocolate strawberry props up the open card?  Love it!


Hope this gives you some spring inspiration!  Happy Stamping!

In Loving Memory of Grandma

On January 28 my paternal grandmother, Louise Picker, passed away.  My sister wrote the best description of her saying, "Louise was such a sweet, comfortable soul. The perfect Grandma and ever the proper lady. An impeccable seamstress, legendary baker, devoted church member, she had the highest work ethic I've ever known. She raked leaves, cleaned up acorns, excercised and painted her own basement until she was 97...she always had something positive to say and if she didn't she kept quiet. She was honorable and silently taught others to be that way by her example. She always wore nylons and pumps-never sneakers-and that alone is admirable! She loved her family, lived to cheer at many graduations, birthday parties and danced at all of our weddings. She perfected the recipe for good, clean living: ivory soap and metamucil. She rolled up that beautiful, full white hair of hers and slept on those prickly curlers nearly every single night of her life and still managed to smile in the morning. She used quintessential Midwestern words like "pocketbook", "davenport", "crimeny" and "pop". She walked all over Europe with us, learned to say "Stop that man!! He stole my purse!!" in German in advance of her first trip just in case she found herself face to face with a thief at what she imagined to be the very edge of civilization. Instead, she found the graves of her Oster ancestors in the "Old Country" and cried for their hardships, remembering the stories of her childhood. She vowed to never again use the ladies room in France after experiencing a country rest stop that consisted of a hole in the floor and no doors...and she staunchly lived up to that promise! She made the best bubble-making fluid of all time and had an impressive repertoire of crafty, handmade gifts-my favorite being the felt Santa Claus toilet seat cover...you lifted the lid and santa was underneath hiding his eyes as if embarrassed at the possibility of seeing your bum. It makes me laugh every time & will never get old! She lived to see 7 Great-Grandchildren and smiled at them with a full set of her own teeth at 97! She would rub my arm in church to keep me quiet, let me play with her bangle bracelets and always carried Chiclets in her purse to entice us to behave. She was a safe harbor, a familiar, comforting refuge for a family that moved so frequently. She called me "sweetie-pie" and made little monogrammed, lacy pillows that I still sleep with every night despite the fact that I'm 38. How very lucky we are to have had her in our lives for so long! I hope she's dancing with Hermie in Heaven at last, but I'll miss her terribly."  To which I would add memories that I, being the eldest grandchild, may exclusively hold.  She not only used ivory soap herself, but shampooed her yard with it - and there wasn't a bug nor a weed that would DARE to live on her turf!  She also used her yard as her tread mill - raking leaves or acorns endlessly, and bending at the waist to pick up sticks and remain limber.   Being allergic to chemical fragrances, she used Crisco on her face as cold cream and had the MOST beautiful skin - as if she'd been airbrushed like a movie star photo.  She loved flowers and had a gorgeous bouquet of tulips each year that the Easter Bunny hid many an egg in for her grandchildren.  As I got older, and began to show an avid interest in family history, she started my collection of family photos by taking her photos to Walgreen's in Streator and having them copied.  She was always on the lookout for the right gift to give us for Christmas, so she really enjoyed doing that instead of what she considered her "back up" gift - a crisp $50 bill in pre-wrapped boxes that you could open without unwrapping.  We would immediately hand them back to her and tease that she would need them next year!  Of course, that gift was usually alongside some craft made by her - I have quite the collection of Christmas ornaments, quilted table centerpieces and decorations.  She always had a project - and always had some pre-made on hand for whatever occasion might require a quick gift.

I'm looking forward to going to her house, for what might be the last time, and smelling the lingering familiar smells of grandma......a hint of the millions of cookies she baked over the years, with a touch of damp basement and fresh paint,  a light touch of Elmer's glue from all the crafts and sewing, topped off with ivory soap.  Amazing how strong memory smells can be!

This is a video dedication that Dave and I put together for her service on Feb. 3.

The funeral service will be at the Lutheran Church where she was a founding member, and served as secretary for many years.  I hope the "Monster Storm" that is crossing MO will pass in time for family members from each coast to attend.

Our yard looks like this before nightfall, but we are still expecting some snowfall.  This is all accumulated sleet - 3 inches!  It's like having your grass covered in snow cone!

 And here are the crystal trees and bushes up close that decorate the yard.....

They are going to sparkle beautifully on Thursday when the sun finally comes out! 

So what does a person do when trapped inside with weather like this?

Well, at our house you play playstation a LOT, or barbies, and you hope that your mom is upstairs making cookies like Oatmeal Cinnamon Chips, and Andouille Crawfish Corn Chowder with Corn Bread for dinner!

Nothing like soup to warm you inside and out.

 Maybe tomorrow I'll try to do some more stamping, but the basement has been COLD!!!!!

Happy New Year?

Sorry I've been so neglectful again about posting.  I've been trying to get back on the routine but life keeps throwing me curve balls!  There have been some highs and some lows so far this new year, and if that is any indication of what is in store we have a very busy year ahead!  First off, some cards:


These were the Christmas photo cards that I sent out this year.  I actually got them out!!!!  There were a few that remain unfinished when I got sick, and then since so much time has elapsed I decided it was too late, so those friends and family will receive a photo valentine this year!

It felt so good to actually STAMP and mail good old snail mail cards this year again!  Practicing what I preach!

Next, some Christmas ornaments that I made for my studio tree.  Each year I plan to add some ornaments with new patterns.  It is amazing what you can create with paper - and I still have so many ideas for decorations, but baby steps to get this done!
                                                                          This one is a wreath I made using the Daisy die for the Big Shot machine. 

And this is the thank you card that is going out tomorrow with notes from the kids.  Still something I try to encourage - giving thanks!  Just common courtesy.  It actually opens by pulling the lid off and there is a slid in card inside.

This card is my favorite.  I used the stamp set "Banner Builder" from Papertrey Ink along with their set of coordinating dies.  Yes, Stampin UP! is my favorite stamp manufacturer, but when you come across a set that is very clearly a versatile addition to your collection, you add it no matter who made it!  I used the Stampin UP! Kiwi Kiss and Baja Breeze and layered them on the new Sahara Sand card stock.  This is the card I gave to my sister to welcome her new addition.  She thinks he looks like me - what do you think?

Too funny.    How come SHE ends up with the red head?  No fair.

 He is a real doll - very good baby.  I went out to visit my sister right after the holidays, thankfully leaving my bronchitis behind.  We had a great time doing NOTHING!  I helped my sister with the kids, held the baby a lot, played play doh with Tyler, got to see her new lovely house, and just chilled. I really enjoyed spoiling Tyler in every way possible (I brought a tin of cookies with me and gave them out at will) and made sure to tell him "that's how we do things in St. Louis" so he would be encouraging my sister to visit!  ;-)  Sibling manipulation continues to thrive!

Little did I know that on my last night there my dad would wake up back at home to find my grandmother on the floor of her bedroom in the middle of the night with a broken hip. So life handed us another adventure to deal with in the second week of the year.  This was the last time I saw my grandma before my trip.  We had a belated Christmas celebration due to weather and illness.  She received the dreaded Santa Hat where you have to wear it until all gifts are opened on Christmas Day!  But with a good sense of humor at 97 she was more than willing!   Unfortunately of this writing, she has suffered multiple complications from the surgery - mostly due to her dementia preventing her from cooperating with the hospital staff to get her into rehabilitative therapy and some post surgery infections that have caused her to diminsh rapidly.  She is now in a nursing home under hospice care.  Please pray for her to pass gently and soon.  Her most fervent prayer was always that she not be in the situation she is in right now.

Not that it's easy to find a bright side to our current situation, but if you had to it would be that my grandmother's illness brought us all together for a visit.  My sister came with her boys so that she could see Grandma, but more importantly to bring some cheer to my dad who is dealing with his mother's decline.  So my kids got to see the baby - which they were very upset with me for not taking them to CA to do!  They both want to hold him and feed him and they are both being great playmates with Tyler.  We've had a wonderful time being together - and I mean REALLY together.  We had snow all day yesterday and so my parents and Amy and her kids all had a slumber party at my house!  They live on a big hill so if they had stayed at their house they would not have been able to visit us and more importantly would not have been able to get to the hospital as needed.  Plus, our school district is notoriously the last one to call off school due to weather, so we never know until about 5:30 am if they have it or not.

 

We spent our day of snow together playing and feeding the baby and then in the afternoon when it stopped, we took Tyler out for his first ever snow play!  It was so fun!  There is something about playing in the snow with a first timer that makes you impervious to the cold!

It wasn't good packing snow, but I gave the kids a spray water bottle and they were able to manage a small snowman for Tyler.  Then later we took him sledding.  He is very independent and wanted to go all by himself after one trip with Jason.  Wiped out several times, but got right back up again and got on again!  Then we introduced him to Hot Chocolate (which he had with ice).  Liked the chocolate, not so much the hot part.

I hope you find your new year off to a great start with more ups than downs and that you find time each day to express yourself in some way! 

Merry Christmas to all!

Digital version of the annual Christmas letter:

Well, here it is - the day after Christmas already! I still have my cards waiting to be assembled downstairs, but at least they are cut! We've been plagued by illnesses throughout December - including the stomach flu that Dave had yesterday and the upper respiratory that Lauren had over 2 weeks ago, passed onto Jason and now I've finally succumbed. I think once I was able to relax and enjoy, it struck since my defenses were down. So between that and the weather, we've had a very lonely Christmas - unable to have my parents over on Christmas eve due to snow and ice, and due to our illnesses on Christmas day. But in some ways that was nice. Very relaxing - I didn't even get up until almost noon today! Don't you love antihistamines sometimes - when you have the time to enjoy their sleepy affects! The kids have had plenty of toys to play with - Jason got the PS3 move that he has been begging for, but more importantly he got some "get out of jail free" cards to be able to play it over break. Lauren got some wonderful fashion crafts and some legos. And they both got an iHome dock for the iPod's. They really like those - and they have a far better speaker system than I thought they would have!  So here are some scenes from our celebration this year.....

Took some photos before church since we were bound to get wet while trying to get there!  Didn't set up the tripod though, so Dave had to be camera man.

Here is our view of the house as we drove (very carefully) to Christmas eve service.  It was coming down all day and we got a total of about 3 inches - with maybe 2 more by Christmas morning.

This is the choir that Lauren auditioned for and has been in all Fall.  They sang the National Anthem at the Rams game, and more recently sang the the vocal part for the Joffrey Ballet's performance of the Nutcracker at the Fox Theatre during the dance of the Snow Queen.  This is a song from their winter concert....

Lauren has been very musically active this year - as has Jason with marching band! - here is a sample of her guitar playing....something we put together.  She taught the song to herself by ear!

A family photo for the holidays.  Dave had the stomach flu 5 hours later.  Yuck.

Jason turns 15 in a month.  It still amazes me that I'm the mother of a teenager.  Don't feel much older than that myself!  But the signs are unmistakable - he can no longer stand in front of me in pictures!  He can pick me up and carry me across the room which he finds hilarious! 


Other activities this fall included:

Jason got his braces off!  Now if only he would wear his retainer!

  A redo of Lauren's room to make it more "Tween".













Lauren's first band concert.  Obviously she plays flute.  She said that while she was in the orchestra pit at the Fox for the Nutcracker Ballet she enjoyed watching the flutes.  There are some great flute parts in that show!

All in all, this has been a transition year for us.  Jason moved into high school, Lauren into middle school...a whole new phase of life.  I will conclude my term as Council President for our church in January and with that leave a large chunk of time that I used to dedicate to volunteering available for new activities.  I'm hoping to find some part time work after the new year begins!  It's wonderful to be a volunteer - and I have tremendous new found respect for the amount of productivity that volunteers contribute to our society.   Working full time will be another transition, but we need to prepare ourselves not only for the expense of the college years, but also the years beyond once the kids are gone to school.  I need to be productive, but it's time to get something back for what I contribute - more than just the intrinsic satisfaction!

In January I'll be going out to CA to visit my sister and her new baby Jackson, and my nephew Tyler.  I am looking forward to holding a baby again!  He has bright red hair!  Too cute!  We are so fortunate to be able to talk to them via Skype so that Tyler knows us even though we are far away!

Hope this finds you all enjoying your blessings this holiday season!  Merry Christmas!

Catching up with Life!

I'll bet you thought I'd once again disappeared!  Well, not exactly.  But I do find that I hang out in completely different places this year than I ever have in the past!  You'll find me at High School football games, the Dome for Ram's Games and BOA events, church of course, and volleyball courts.  Occasionally I get to go to my stamping room for some fun - usually on Thursday nights when I watch a whole weeks of television in one sitting while I stamp!

Here are some projects I worked on for a stamp camp that I ultimately had to cancel due to Lauren being sick.  I'm rescheduling and remaking it for more Christmas and Thanksgiving so let me know if you're interested in attending.

 A spooky halloween card partially cased from one seen at Dawn's blog using the background technique, but modifying the card a bit to make it my own! 

 I really love using the spiderweb embossing folder for the Big Shot and can't wait to make a Spiderman card for my nephew's birthday with that as the background.  This one was CASE'd from Amy's stamp camp, but again, I added a few embellishments for my own personal style.  I think she said that she got the idea from another blog as well and had changed it some for her event, so you can see how great ideas can get passed along and the design of a card can evolve.

This card was the only fun kid-colored card I made this year.  My Halloween preferences have been maturing with my children, so I like the more elegant styles now.  I think the saddest thing was that I didn't have to make any treat holders for Halloween parties at school.  Elementary is behind us, so we don't have parties now we have "mixers".   Most of the papers that Stampin UP! had out this year were more elegant than fun with the exception of this multi colored stripe.  I used the Tag dies from the Big Shot to make the green scalloped piece and folded it over onto the back.

Projects, Music, Food and Fun!  That's what this fall has been to us!  We knew that transitioning to High School for Jason, and leaving elementary behind and moving onto Middle School for Lauren, was going to busy.....but I don't think we anticipated the chaos that would come from our kids "growing up"!  Ever since Jason started Band Camp in July we've been going at full throttle.  I have barely had time to breathe let alone stamp or get anything done around the house!  But finally, I think we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel...problem is, I think they're Christmas lights which means a whole new kind of busy for the next month!

 So, to catch up those of you who might be interested beyond the few things I post on Facebook, here is a more detailed look at what we've been doing this fall.  First of all, Dave decided to fix some boards that had rotted through on our deck, and then stain and seal it since it had been a couple of years.  Although showing a before and after picture together makes it look easy, this was a HUGE project!  And this photo doesn't show it after it was stained.  He was able to take some of the old boards and cut them down to fill in shorter places, so it looks like we didn't replace much, but we did!

Meanwhile, I decided to make some minor adjustments to Lauren's room.  She wanted a complete redo to make it a tween room, but I had just redecorated her room a year ago so I told her we could tone down the pink and phase it out, but not get all new stuff right now.  I painted her room a "Weeping Willow" green, which is a very neutral color.  We actually turned her Pottery Barn bed spread  upside down because it is all bright pink.  I pulled some pillows from the guest room that I was going to redo, and voila.....

 The mirror peace signs help to add the teenage spin, as does the poster of JB.  I so look forward to seeing him in concert next week (sarcasm).   All that is left to do is the trim to hide the lights along the ceiling.  Who knows when that will happen!  I love it when a room is redone not only for how it looks, but also because underneath all of the pretty things it is also CLEAN!  Moving furniture allows me to vacumn where I can't usually, and just knowing that it's really clean under there makes me happy!

So those were the two home improvement projects that we squeezed into the fall.  Now for the activities!

Of course, band - in it's many forms (camp, rehearsals, football games, competitions, etc...) was a very large part of the fall until last week, but we did manage to do a few other things!  My dad actually had a picnic performance with the St. Louis Jazz Club that we attended.  Lauren and my mom got into the New Orleans spirit with a promenade mardi gras style.  It was such a beautiful day and even my 97 year old grandmother was there - she really enjoyed watching her son play the piano.  Of course, in this photo he's right behind that music stand and you can't see him!

Since I'm having trouble loading my videos, I'll finish this update tomorrow!