Puppy Update!

This little blue swimming pool was our puppies' first home but after 2 weeks they outgrew it and had to be moved to something with higher sides. This morning when our son walked in, there were 7 pups out of the pool laying on the floor, so we felt they needed a new home sooner rather than later!

My hubby just built this new home for the pups today. They even have their own window!

Nap Time! (actually, it's always naptime unless it's lunchtime)

See the pup with the white spot on his head? That's Elvis, named by my son Ben based on Elvis' white suits : ) Anyway, Elvis is the one puppy that we can easily distinguish from the litter. The rest look very similar to each other!

Here's mama Maggie. Taking care of eleven pups is a big job!

My last Holiday Projects

This Santa tag is so cute! I found this design on Inking Idaho's blog but I did add and change up the top part some. She has sooo many good ideas. I can't wait until she posts some projects out of the new Occasions Mini catalog and Sale-a-bration catalog from Stampin' Up!

I changed the original picture frame I had planned to offer at my Bags, Tags, Treats and Trinkets class early this month to this design. I felt that the other one had too many features to it. Sometimes less is more. This one just has a dry embossed background (Petals-a-plenty) with the top note die cut and snowflakes which are also a die cut for the Big Shot.

Merry Christmas 2010!

Here's our Stamp Club Christmas photo! What a good-lookin' bunch! I'm sad tho that we were missing 3 of our members who couldn't make it that night - Stephanie, Val, and Cadie. But - we might have a new member, Becky, in the pink and black.

Check out that twinkle in Pam's eyes :) She did come bearing gifts and wearing Santa's hat too!

Thank you Stamp Club Members for a WONDERFUL year. You are a lot of fun!

Because of Club I have a great outlet for my addiction - ahhh, I mean - crafty side and have an excuse to escape once in a while to whip up some fun projects.

Merry Christmas and have a super New Year!

Did someone say Dice Game?

It has become an annual tradition to play the dice game at our Christmas Party to win Stampin' Up! items and other crafty things! If you get a double, you pick a gift, once the gifts are gone, you get to steal from someone else. That's when things get a little loud. There's always a couple of items that get fought over.

Anticipation! Pass the dice!

A lot of hootin' and hollerin' here!

Doubles - I want that one!

All this excitement gave Pam a headache - no - a toothache!

Puppies!

We've got puppies! The boys are SO excited. It's really been a good experience for them even tho this was an unplanned pregnancy : ) About a month or so ago, we noticed our dog Maggie was getting pretty chunky and after a while decided that yes, she's prego. And this past Wednesday morning she had her litter of puppies. Eleven of them! We were pretty curious to see what they'd look like, so when they turned out all black we were surprised!


Maggie is a Golden Doodle (cross between a Golden Retriever and a Standard Poodle) and we think she may have mated with a Husky. We thought the pups would have some kind of weird poodley - wirery hair, but we were wrong. These cuties have short, fine black hair. Most of them are black with a bit of white here and there, but a few have some brown to them too.

They look so much alike but so far we have named a few you can tell apart from the rest. Elvis (the only one with a large white spot on his head), Lucy, T-bone, Snowflake, Dot (one small teeny-weeny white dot on her chest) and Striper. We are fortunate to have a heated shop so they are nice and warm out there with mama, in their plastic swimming pool.

Christmas Gifts

Need a gift for the holidays? Maybe a gift certificate from Stampin' Up! is the answer.

Socks and more socks. I made up a bunch of these for gifts with the top note and silver waffle paper bows.

Here's a close up of Santa. He's from the Jolly Ol' St. Nick stamp set. I also added some clear tinsel trim for fun!

Tags and Treats

These little shrinking/melting snowmen have been popping up all over SCS so I don't know who to credit for the idea but they sure are cute! They each have a peppermint patty between two largest circles. They are made from 3 circle punches; 1 3/4", 1 3/8", and 1" for the head. The arms are from the snowflake punch, the hat is made with the small oval and an end of a modern label punch.

I also sponged the edges with Pacific Point ink to give them a little dimension before I packaged them up for gift-giving. That top note is 'da bomb'. This is the die cut that I would pick if (gasp!) I could only have one.

These are made with the 2-tags die cut for the Big Shot and scraps of DSP I had sitting on my craft table. I challenged myself to use what I had sitting out. Each participant in my BTTT class received one of their choice.

This is also made from the 2-tags die cut. They are embellished with Stampin' Up Fabric at the top and images from the Jolly Bingo Set. They also each have a snowflake from the Northern Flurry die cut with a pearl in the center. The strip of Cherry Cobbler was embossed with the Petals-a-Plenty embossing folder. Each of the participants from my Stamp-a-Stack received one of these with their card kits.

Holiday Projects!

Remember the cards I posted a while back with the door fronts? Well, here is a set of them wrapped up for a door prize that was given away recently at my Bags, Tags, Treats and Trinkets class. Stephanie was the lucky winner of this one.

Stephanie and Sharon hard at work on their tag project.

LaReatha working on her candy wrapper that she added a little pizazz to. Check out the next photo.

LaReatha decided to ran this through the polka dot embossing folder with the Big Shot and then embellish it. I like it!!

Here's a sample of the Bingo card we will be making for Stamp Club on Monday. The card itself is one large stamp called 'Bingo Card' and each image is from a set called "Jolly Bingo Bits" and has a total of 24 fun holiday themed items.

It's snowman weather!

Here's what the boys were up to tonight. Ben rolled all the snowballs for this giant snowman. Sam and Dad helped a little too : )

Here's a close up of the bunch. It was dark out but you can still see everything fairly well. After this we went sledding, even Mom. Boy, was that a workout!

Merry Christmas Wreath

I cased this idea off of the SU! demo website. What a fun, different card. It really does look like a door!

I used the Petals-a-Plenty embossing folder and two round punches for the wreath. The little Merry tag is the Jewelry Tag punch. The edges of the door panels are sponged with Crumb Cake ink for a little dimention. The flower is 2 layers made from the Boho Blossoms punch and a rhinestone brad.

Bags, Tags, Treats, and Trinkets!

Here are photos of items we are making for the BTTT class I am hosting on December 5th from 1-3pm. Items include the gift bag and mittens ready for gift giving (technically, I guess they're gloves!) in the top photo and a holiday picture frame, collection of tags, a gift card holder, treat, and a set of tea lights. Just a note - the picture frame looks MUCH better in real life, this photo makes it look like a apple core (ha!).

My intent with these items is to give the class attendees some projects that are ready for gift-giving. When you leave this class you will have 7 gifts to cross off your list!

Club Exchange Projects

It seems like this month is going by in a blur! Everyone is so000 busy, including me, which explains why I haven't posted in a while. I'm finally posting our projects from November Club. We only had a few projects (because everyone's so busy ;-) but these fun holiday projects make up for it.

The real red card with the flocked designer paper (love this stuff!) with the dove was made by Kalie, the Olive Olive fancy favor box was made by Sharon and had goodies inside : ) .The fun snowglobe, stocking and the top note 25 were made by Valerie (she was busy!). Very "Christmas-ey"!

This is a close up of Val's snowflake project. It's made with a bottom so that you can put a full-size candy bar in it. Yum!

I held my annual Holiday Stamp-a-Stack a week ago as well. Here are some of the gals busy at work! Pam's got the perfect pose! and LaReatha's REALLY concentrating! We had fun and everyone went home with a bagful of cards ready to mail out!

Bingo Bits and Jolly Ol' St. Nick

This card was made with the cardinal from Stampin' Up's Jolly Bingo Bits set and Jolly Holiday DSP. There are 24 Christmas seasonal stamps in this set so you can choose whatever image you'd like from mittens and ice skates to holly and penguins. Fun! I also used the greeting image from Welcome Christmas.

This santa is such a nice, traditional image! You could really dress him up with some white fluffy substance or do like I did and just color in his face and hat with markers. Easy-peasy! These two cards will likely be our Club projects on Monday night. I'm still working on the pumpkin basket : )

Holiday Stamp-a-Stack

Here are the Christmas cards I've put together for my Holiday SAS!

It is scheduled for Sunday, November 14th from 1-3pm at my home. Each participant will make 5 of each design plus 4 of the 3x3 Santa cards. The cost is $20. All materials are included and will be cut and ready to assemble! I have purposely chosen designs that go together quickly and easily.

Stamp sets used are Welcome Christmas, Jolly Ol' St. Nick, and Bells and Boughs, all from Stampin' Up!. Embelishments include the new clear tinsel (fun stuff!), Northern Flurries embossing folder (used on the envelope too!), adhesive rhinestones, and the ornament punch.

And the matching envelopes of course! Let me know if you woud like to attend by Friday, November 5th via email or a comment to me here. Feel free to invite a friend!

Happy Boo to You!

I made a bunch of these to put on my Stamp Club gals' order bags. They are made from the 2 Tags die cut and the spider web embossing folder. I used chalk with a q-tip to outline the web lines. The ghost is the owl punch turned up side down. If you put a bunch of them together they kind of look like tombstones........

Happy Halloween everyone!

My Little Pumpkins

The other night we decided to carve pumpkins. Nothing is ever done without some shenanigans.

Here's my littlest pumpkin Sam (with no teeth)!

Here's Ben's puking pumpkin!
Happy Halloween!!

Northern Flurry Christmas

It's not even Halloween yet but I'm working on Christmas designs!! The holidays are creeping up on us and I need to get organized before I end up doing it at the last minute! This card is made with the Northern Flurry embossing folder. I used whisper white and Baja Breeze CS and Crumb Cake taffeta ribbon. The word 'Joy' is cut from the decorative strip Join in the Cheer die cut for the Big Shot.

This layout is very flexible - you could turn it several different ways and put the 'Joy' in different corners or even use 'Peace' that comes on the same die cut. I'm considering this for one of three designs for my Christmas Stamp-a-Stack. Let me know what you think!

October Club

This month for our club project theme, we made Baby Thank You cards for Cadie. Cadie and Dan just had a baby boy last month so we thought a few thank yous would come in handy. Here is the box we put them in. It's made from 2 scallop squares, Filagree DSP and the Fox and Friends Stamp set - all from SU.

I just made a box from Crumb Cake CS and added a handle with a very vanilla brad and a circle of Marina Mist CS.

This cute little package with a bow was created by Jess and Rhea and has 6 cards and matching envelopes also made from the Fox and Friends stamp set. Below are all the cards.

Cute, Cute!

It's ELMO! Sharon made this really fun card. Love the size and the color combination!

Another WOW card from Stephanie! It's very detailed and intricate. She made it from punched circles of Marina Mist CS and DSP. The main carriage circles are cut in half and the handle is a piece cut from the border punch. The polka dot embossing folder adds the finishing touch. Pretty clever idea with the inspiration from SCS!

And the matching envelope with the polka dots too!

These are some cute and sweet cards made by Amy. She punched out a circle on the front, framed it with the scallop punch, and then put the design on the inside with the center popped up on a dimentional.

The inside - who wouldn't love getting this as a thank you?

These are the cards that I made to go in the collection. They also use the Fox and Friends stamp set.

The full collection. I hope Cade likes them!