Who's turning 30???

Hahaha... my husband finally turned thirty in August, he's 9 months younger than me. I know, I know, "gasp! younger man?!" What can I say? heh heh heh just kidding. He hates large groups and noise (already acts older than he really is) so we just had a handful of friends over for Korean BBQ. But I wanted to make it a little special.

Sooo... I made this pennant banner to liven things up.

Here's detail of one of the pennants. The letters are also from Archiver's die cut letters, also from the "Chunky" font but I used the capital letters with the shadows. Also if you notice, I use a lot of sheer navy blue ribbon - um... I have a lot, I mean A LOT of it leftover from my wedding (from 2 years ago!!) so whenever I can I try and use it and I mean WHENEVER.

So now you may now wonder where I got the color scheme? Well I got the idea from Amy Rysavy. She had posted a gift she made for her husband using the Father Knows Best paper and set and I filed it away for later. When I was thinking of a theme for the party, this came to mind. I thought the color scheme was nice, boyish but not typically so. Therefore I take ZERO credit for the idea, I only changed the main image and the sentiment. Then I made the pennants to match.

Oh and I used SU! Soft Sky instead of Aqua Mist just cuz I had bought a bunch of it along with the ribbon. But I used it with PTI Summer Sun.

I filled nugget tins with matching Jelly Belly's. Don't they match the color scheme exactly?? I got Berry Blue, Pink Grapefruit, and Peach flavors

The flower from Flower Garden and the sentiment from SU! Simply Said are embossed with White EP.

Also to make it even more special, I ordered a cake from Cake Girls, in Chicago. If you can't tell, my husband likes golf. He has moments when he is obsessed but I have moments when I'm obsessed with crafting so we always consider ourselves even :).

His reaction was so funny cuz he kept asking "what are you supposed to do with it? Do we eat it? Do we eat it? What is that? What is that?" And I had to keep responding with, "yes, yes, we can eat it, it's a cake!" It took some convincing for him to cut the cake but don't worry, we cut that sucker and ate it! It was really good!


So even though we don't have any kids, that doesn't mean you can't have themed parties for adults, right? And without the cheesy kinds you get at a party favor store. After I had spent so much time on my friends' 1st birthday party & baby shower, I felt I had to step it up for that special person in my life - just didn't seem fair to not spend my time on him :). Overall it went well, my friends sorta made fun of me for it but I don't care! :P

Thanks for looking and be sure to send any questions my way!

CHA Day 2

Oh Man! Sorry everyone for leaving you hanging for so long! :) Here are some more pictures from CHA - that are SUPER DUPER late.

These are from the McGill Punch Booth. They had LOTS of ideas but I really liked this one of a placecard. I would probably never have a party nice enough to make these for but aren't they SUPER cute?

This was from the EK Success Booth, near all the Jolee's Boutique stickers. I really liked the layout, so I took a picture. You may be seeing a similar page by me soon! :)

This one and the next one are from the Doodlebug booth. Such cute cards!

These 2 are from the Just Rite Stamper Booth. And I swear, I think the Kraft paper is from Papertrey. Who knows, maybe the designer is a PTI designer too.

Ok, now that that's all done... on to crafting!

CHA!

Hi People! I am still sorta in a daze. I had an AWESOME opportunity to attend CHA (a.k.a., Craft & Hobby Association Convention & Trade Show). My PTI forum friend Lynn generously offered passes to anyone who was able to go. I jumped at the chance to go but had NO idea what I what to expect. I had always heard about this convention, especially since I live close to Rosemont, where's it's been held for several years.

This is a picture of Me, Lynn & Debbie at the Mrs. Grossman booth, posing with the Ace of Cakes cake.

I'm totally behind in the posting seeing that everyone else has already posted...but here it goes! And just to warn you, this is a very long post but it has lots of pictures!

My first day I got there and met up with Lynn and her friend Debbie (side note: there are a lot of crafters out there named Debbie!). They were SUPER nice to have let me tag along with them. I had so much fun hanging out with them and seeing all the things that had to be seen. Thanks Lynn & Debbie!!!!!!!!

One of our stops included the Marvy booth and guess who's there demo-ing their new fabric markers? None other than Lisa Johnson of Poppy Paperie & PTI Stamp Designer extraordinaire! I kinda geeked out but she was so nice to me - even took a picture of me in action! Check out her site. We used her stamp set, Flower Garden from PTI, to create designs and color them onto canvas bags. Incidentally, I was due to get an order from PTI that day and Flower Garden was in the box when I got home!

Here we are at the Provo Craft Booth - it was HUGE! They were doing a raffle when we happened to walk by and guess who made an appearance! The Cricut and purple thing (?)!! I had to have a picture... too bad my eyes were closed!

The one cool thing was that not only did all the companies have out all their wares, they also had tons of completed projects on display. Here is a wall of scrapbook pages (sorry, don't know where from). I was again, overwhelmed and didn't know what to take pictures of or who or even what to stop & see. Kinda just followed Lynn & Debbie around. :)

We stopped at the Ranger booth, another HUGE one and they had like a ton of well-known crafters doing demos. This is Claudine Hellmuth doing a demo on sticky backed canvas. I didn't even KNOW she was famous until I saw the sign over her head. This is what I'm talking about... how clueless I was :).

Here of course is Tim Holtz, the rockstar of the crafting world. It was so funny because when he came up to start his demo, ladies came out of nowhere and surrounded the table. If you look really closely at the blond lady behind Tim, that's Ali Edwards!!

After spending close to 8 hours on the floor, we still hadn't seen everything! But there was still dinner! "What!" you say, there's more?!? Oh yes, there's more! Kimberly Crawford, also from the PTI forum, organized a dinner. At first it was going to only be Lynn, Debbie, Kim & myself. Then we kept hearing that Nichole Heady and some others were coming. Little did we know that 4 would soon become 12! But what a 12 it was!

Here we are post dinner... there was Jennifer Buck, Lisa Johnson, Dawn McVey, Nichole Heady, Heather Nichols, Michelle Wooderson, Kimberly, me and two of Heather's friends. Lynn & Debbie missed the group pic!! I wish there was more time to sit and talk to each of these ladies. The surprising thing was not only were they NICE, they were so REAL :). That's a compliment, I swear! I felt like I knew these ladies but only through the blogging world, it was beyond AWESOME to not only meet them but HANG out with them.

Here's a picture from Dawn McVey's camera, thanks for sending it my way - I may need to frame it :P, dorky, I know! You can tell by my smile just how dorky I am :).

I have just a few more pictures to post from the Day 2 so stay tuned... and I will start posting some crafty things too, I promise.
Thanks for reading!

Things to come...

Hi All,


I've been busy helping a friend for her son's first birthday party so I haven't had time to post. But the party is tommorow so I'll be sure to post a bunch of pictures afterwards. They go along with this placecard's theme. I helped make placecards, photo cubes for the centerpiece and table numbers. I also made a label to put on bubbles for the kiddie goody bags and the bands to go around all the goody bags. Things at work have been busy too, but in a good way. :)

Hope all is well with you fellow bloggers!

Hang in There!

Heya! I made this card tonight using a new set I got that was not (gasp!!) Papertrey! I know! But this monkey was so cute, I couldn't resist. I have friend who's suffering through her pregnancy with lots of N&V and I felt inspired to send this to encourage her :).

For the top leaves, I used the 2nd stamped image to get a lighter stamp for dimension. For the bottom leaves, I used masking with a post-it note for dimension. I colored in the images with SU! markers. For a little ZING! I used my Sakura glitter pen for the bananas.

Fine Print:
Stamps: Changito by Stampendous
Paper: PTI Stamper's Select White, Lemon Tart; SU! Kraft
Ink: Pallette Noir Black, Burnt Umber; Versamark, SU! Green Garden, Old Olive
Accessories: Pop up dots, Sakura glitter pen, SU! Markers

Thanks for Looking!

Tee Hee!!

I'm so excited AGAIN!!! I got another honorable mention at Nichole's blog!! Click here to see!! It's almost as nice as winning something!!

It's All Gone!

I've been meaning to post about my haircut for a bit, just didn't have the pictures. I've had long hair for a few years now... the last time I had really short hair was in 2003. Actually since I've known my husband, I've had long hair. He was a little sad to see it all go, but he likes it (like he had a choice :) ). Well, it had gotten to the point where I needed a haircut, but then I thought, "Hey, if I grow it out a little longer, I can donate it!" So I waited a little longer, then a little longer, until it was reeeaaally long. To the point where I couldn't WAIT to get it cut. I don't have any good before pictures...

But, here's a before, not the best picture but you can see how long it was:



Then I got it CUT! Here are my self portraits:

This is from the same day

This is today, I know it looks like I'm gonna attack you, but really, I'm not.

I've decided to donate to Pantene Beautiful Lengths. It was hilarious when my hair dresser cut the ponytail, then plopped it onto the counter. How much you ask, was cut off? 12 inches!!!! Can you believe it? I feel very light and am totally loving the new 'do, it's really easy to maintain and I think I look younger - which is PLUS now that I am of the 30+ set. :)
Just wanted to share! :)

Jumpin' to Say Hi!

A good friend moved to Atlanta a while back and I wanted to send her a quick hello. I wanted to use the "hoppy hello" from PTI's Pond Life... and once I got going a little scene developed.

I wanted to draw attention to the little froggy, so I used liquid crystal to highlight him and the water drops.

Fine Print:
Stamps: PTI Pond Life, Pond Life Sentiments
Paper: PTI Aqua Mist, Spring Moss, Stamper's Select White CS
Ink: PTI Aquat Mist, Spring Moss; Pallette Burnt Umber; SU! Creamy Caramel
Accessories: Fiskars Large & Med. Oval punch; SU! Ticket Punch; Making Memories Slot Punch; PTI Aqua Mist Swiss Dot Satin Ribbon; Liquid Crystal; Rain Dots

Thanks for Looking!

Blogs I Read

I'm slowly asking people if I can add them to my 'blog roll'. I'm not sure about the ettiquette, but I figure, it might be nicer to ask first. :)

***EDITED to Add***
My Blog Roll is up and running, if you see yourself and don't want to be on my site, please let me know and I will remove you. THANKS!

Earthquake?!?

Ok, I live in the NW suburbs of Chicago – earthquakes are not a part of life around here. Yet at 4:36am this morning, I was shaken awake in my bed and heard the walls creaking. At first I panicked because I thought someONE was shaking my bed… but then I realized in a sleep daze, “Oh, an earthquake, interesting.” One might ask how I would have known it was an earthquake being a hard-core Midwesterner?
Well, back in October 2006 while we were on our honeymoon on Maui, there was a 6.7 magnitude quake the morning of the 15th. Well actually it was off the shore of the Big Island, you can read about it here. Of course we were a bit unsettled but there were a bunch of Californians there reassuring us that it was no big deal. It totally felt like a train was running under the building. Luckily there wasn’t that much damage where we were, other than the electricity being out for a few hours.
So back to this morning… the bed was shaking pretty heavily for about 10-15 seconds, then there was sort of a constant light shaking for another 30 seconds or so. It obviously felt like a lot longer at 4:30 in the morning. This is significant because I am a pretty heavy sleeper so it was enough to wake me up. I was contemplating getting up and seeing if everything was ok but, people, it was 4:30 AM. Apparently the quake’s epicenter was in West Salem, IL, near the southern tip of Illinois. I didn’t even know there were fault line in the Midwest! According to the news, it was a 5.2 on the richter scale. And here at work, around 10:15am, a bunch of us felt a tremor, which is being reported as a 4.5 or something, with two other aftershocks measured at 2.6 and 2.5. Just wanted to record this “momentous” event, since things like this don’t happen much around here.
The best quote from today is from my brother who lives nearby, “Man, someone’s shaking the house...I think I’m getting robbed. So I went back to sleep.”

Newbie

I've been inspired by all the creative people that I've been reading the past few months. I'm addicted to Papertrey Ink and Splitcoast Stampers and all these women have 'blogs'. So I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and give it a go. I take a bazillion pitures of the my 'creations,' might as well post them, no?

Hopefully I can get some readers but maybe this is more for me to keep track of everything I work on.