A bit sketchy

Morning everyone!

OK, so my blog title has a double meaning today.  A Bit Sketchy not only refers to the projects and challenge I have for you but also the way I am feeling.  Definitely happy but it is still to be determined if I will be able to keep my eyes open today.  LOL  I am not the only one in this house feeling that way. :)  K had a lock in at church on Friday night and was up for a full 24 hours, came home and crashed and then slept for 13 hours Saturday night.  She is still feeling kind of tired today, not her usual.  She is my early riser.  I should have followed her lead and got some extra sleep last night but I didn't.  I had an exhausting but wonderful weekend.  Spent time with some girl friends scrapbooking (sort of) all weekend.  I have discovered that Fruit Ninja on the iPad can be quite addictive. :)

Anyway,  this weekend was the 4th birthday for Emma's Paperie.  I posted a challenge on my blog Saturday based on this sketch.

 I am giving away some yummy stuff from Tim Holtz, Maya Road and Die Cuts with a View.  All you need to do is create a card based on this sketch and post it on Saturday's Birthday Post here.  You have until tomorrow afternoon.


Here are the cards I created based on the sketch for the Birthday Celebration.

Have a great week!

Happy Birthday Emma's!!!!!

One of the absolute best things that has ever happened to me in my design career was the day Cindy asked me to design for Emma's Paperie a little over 4 years ago.  I truly have enjoyed every single minute of it! Make sure to read all the way to the end of the post for a chance to win a Birthday RAK from me.  

I thought I would share a few of my favorite birthday projects that I have created over the past year or so.  

I have a set of cards for the whole family that I created for the birthday celebration over at Emma's.  Cindy will be posting them on the Emma's Paperie Blog later today.    When I create several cards at once, sometimes I find it is easier to come up with a sketch and create the cards based on that.  That is exactly what I did for the project I created for Emma's.  Below is the sketch I used for my cards.  

Now is your chance to win!  Create a birthday card based on the sketch above for a chance to win some goodies.  Post your project on Facebook with "Birthday Bash Sketch Challenge" in the title to win a $50 gift card to Emma's.(details are on the Emma's Paperie Blog this morning after 9:30)  Post a link to your project in the comment section here by Wednesday, February 29th and I will pick one winner to win these goodies.  

Make sure to head over to the Emma's Paperie blog  for  lots of other birthday fun! Have a great weekend!

Announcements

Morning everyone!

I wanted to share a couple of quick things with you this morning.

A little over two years ago, while I was in California for CHA I met Michele and Midori from Creative Charms. Soon after I started designing for them.  I have thoroughly enjoyed designing for them for the last two years.  Recently Michele has decided to take the company in a different direction.  I know this is going to be a great thing for the company and I with them all the luck.  I will miss designing for them. Because of these changes, they are liquidating all of their product.  There are going to be some amazing deals over the next couple of weeks so make sure to keep checking their site.  Here are the first items they have put on sale.

Just click on the ad to take you to the sale items. 

I have some exciting news to share with you as well.  A little over 4 years ago I got an email from my sweet friend Cindy telling me she was going to be opening an online store and asking me if I would be interested designing for her.  I can't believe it has been four years already!

Hope you can join us.  I will have a post here with a give away and there will be lots fun stuff going on at the Emma's Paperie blog as well!

catching up

Hi everyone!

Hope everyone is having a good Monday.  I am looking forward to a bit of routine this week. I like routine (boring I know) but it's the honest truth.  Spent Saturday laying on the couch.  I felt absolutely terrible.  I have a dear, sweet friend who deals with migraines and my heart goes out to her.  I couldn't handle one day of an  intense headache, I would be hopeless if I got them all the time. I am still coughing a bit but feeling so much better.  Yesterday we spent in Noblesville (north of Indy) for a gymnastics meet.  I am so proud of L.  She has been battling with her bar routine for several months.  It has never been her best apparatus but after we moved and she had problems with finding a gym she liked, it all seemed to fall apart.  Skills that she used to have, she lost.  So this season she has gone to the meets, but has not competed on the bars.  So, yesterday was the big day. She finally did her bar routine at a meet.  Yay!!! It was not her best score by far, but she did it.  We went out to lunch to celebrate at their favorite restaurant.  :)

Would have loved to meet up with friends while we were in the Indy area, but up until I got up yesterday morning at 5 (yes, it was a VERY early start), I wasn't sure if I was even going after the way I felt Saturday.  We did take advantage of being in our old stomping ground and drove past our old house.  Keep in mind this was two moves ago that we left the Indy area, so we wanted to see if anything had changed.  It was fun to drive past certain places and reminisce.  Definitely worth the extra 10 minutes of driving time each way.

I haven't kept up with my Project 356 real well, but I am taking a lot more pictures than I did last year at this time.  Thought I would share a few of them with you today.   (I know, I know, I am wayyyy late on posting some of these pictures!)

Christmas this year I helped the girls make drink coasters for grandparents, uncles and aunts.  My sweet girls decided that now that they knew how to make them, they would make these for us for Valentine's Day.  Aren't they sweet?

Speaking of sweet, look what my sweet hubby got me for Valentine's Day.  What did I get him you ask??? NOTHING!  He has told me every single year for ages that we should NOT get gifts for each other just a card. Can you believe him???  (Not too upset, a girl likes to be surprised once in a while!) :)

For Valentine's Day I got the girls an Extreme Home Makeovers video.  They fell in love with the show last year and watch it whenever they have time for TV.  They were very sad to hear that it was ending so I found a DVD of the first season on Amazon and got it for them.  We have been recording the reruns so they can watch them too.  Love that they love this show.  They are such sentimental girls.  Their main reason for being so sad that it was ending...not that they wouldn't get to watch it anymore, but because Ty and the group wouldn't be helping anymore people get a new home.  :)  :)  :)  Anyway, the other thing I found for them was these goofy mustache suckers from Justice.  Now tell me, how could I pass them up???  LOL

We got snow two weeks ago and I got a chance to get a few pictures of the girls outside playing in the snow. (I told you I was late on these photos!)  K having a snowball fight with her dad. :)

My sweet L.  Someone asked me yesterday at the meet if she ever stopped smiling.  Yes, she does but we are fortunate to have a two pretty happy girls.

Meet Angel, she was one of the snow women that got built during our time in the snow.

Sadly, the weather in Indiana has been quite warm this winter and Angel did not survive for more than a day or two.  *sniff*  LOL  This image cracked me up.  I just had to take a picture.  Poor Angel has completely lost her head over the warm weather! ha!

Finally, if you are my mother, do not go beyond this point......








LOL, my sweet parents are NOT computer literate at all!  There is little chance of her actually seeing this post so I think it is safe to post this here.  I created this printer's tray for my assignment last week at Emma's Paperie.  Yup, more yummy Simple Stories product on here.  I plan on giving it to my mom for her birthday.  I just adore that picture of her and K in the upper right corner.  *sigh*  Makes my heart happy.  :)

Thanks so much for stopping by today.  You have been very patient to make it all the way through that whole post! LOL  Have a wonderful week!!!

Simply Love

Morning everyone!

I get to have a couple of extra hours with my cuties again this morning, this morning not for snow or ice but for fog.  I am not complaining. :)

These photos from the photo booth have been sitting on my desk beside my computer for a while now.  K and her friends had a scavenger hunt at the mall for her birthday.  One of the things on the list to do was to get their pictures taken in the photo booth.  Love these goofy photos.

I have been having so much fun playing with all of the Simple Stories products I recently picked up.  Every time I sit down to work on a layout I find myself grabbing those papers.  This time I used pages from the two 6x6 packs I picked up Year.o.graphy and Happy Day).  As a card maker I love that the patterns are smaller.  I took advantage of those smaller patterns on this layout too.  I was able to punch hearts out of the pattern paper and the sentiments fit perfectly.  I also used the 6x6 paper behind the photos too.

I am off to get these girls some breakfast.  Have a wonderful day and thanks so much for stopping by!

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!!!  

I am a very lucky girl to have this amazing guy as my Valentine. 

And of course I have these two fabulous girls for Valentines. :)

We actually had a pleasant Valentine's Day surprise this morning.  There was enough snow on the ground to delay school for two hours.  It was nice we got to spend so time together before having to rush off to school.  

We had a cool color inspiration over at the Emma's Paperie blog.  I decided to change the silver in the photo to gray and made a layout about my Valentine.  

Hope your day is full of love and happiness.  Thanks so much for stopping by!

Pretty Little Things

Happy Monday everyone!

Anyone else dragging just a bit this morning after the big game last night?  Boy it was hard to get the girls up and going this morning.  On top of that poor K has a cold and so she was even harder to get moving.  Speaking of K, thank you to all my sweet friends who left her a comment on the layout she posted this weekend.  You made her VERY happy.  I truly love you all, you are the best!!!!

It is funny, I go back and forth style wise.  I love creating fairly clean layouts and cards and then I create items like this one that I did  for a recent issue of  Crafts N' Things magazine.  Oh how I love pretty little trinkets and embellishments.  This altered jewelry frame just makes me happy every time I use it.

I started with this frame from Hobby Lobby.

I painted the entire frame with Linen colored acrylic paint by Plaid and then covered it with two different pattern papers.  I then cut a piece of screen that I found at my local hardware store and used small U shaped nails to attach it to the back of the frame.  I then added some of my favorite goodies and attache a shear brown ribbon for hanging.  You can find a complete supply list in the February issue of Crafts N' Things.  

Thanks for stopping by today and have a great week!

Post by Katie

Hi everyone this is Katie. I made a layout for Challenge Me Happy yesterday.  My mom was working on her layout for the challenge and I thought it sounded fun.  It was a recipe challenge.  We had to use one picture. Two cardstocks, I used white and teal.  Then we had to use three journaling blocks.  Mine were the three tags behind the title.  Then you had to use four words in the title and five different pattern papers.  Finally we had to use 6 butterflies.  This is my layout.  

I hope you enjoy my layout! 

Katie

Recipes

OK so anyone who knows me, knows that I DO NOT claim to be Martha Stewart.  I don't mind cooking but honestly there are other things I would rather do.  But I DO have some fabulous recipes to share with you today and the first one has nothing to do with being in the kitchen.

There is great challenge up at Challenge Me Happy today.  This one is a Recipe Challenge.  Of all the challenges Annelie gives us, these are my favorite.  So here is your challenge, if you choose to accept it.

Use the following ingredients on your project:
1 photo
2 different cardstocks
3 journaling spots/tags/etc
4 words in the title
5 patterned papers
6 butterflies
Mists/ paint and border punches are freebies!

The winner this week gets a kit from a brand new NZ online store called Heartistry and I have to tell you, they have the COOLEST stuff in her store!  The prize pack sounds amazing, you will have to check it out.

So here is my layout for the challenge.

Have you ever found a product that you just love and you HAVE to buy everything they make?  I have fallen in love with Simple Stories, OK, so maybe that happened a while ago, but I was at my LSS recently scrapbooking with K and ended up buying a ton of their papers and embellishments because I love every piece of paper they make.  Their journaling cards were perfect for this challenge so that is where I started.  I just adore that yellow plaid too.  It is definitely my recent go-to paper.  

So...in staying with the theme I thought I would post a favorite recipe I found lately.  It has become hard to find recipes that my whole family enjoys (the main reason I do not enjoy cooking).  I found this recipe at Recipe.com recently and knew it would be a hit.  

Spaghetti Pepperoni Pie

Prep Time: 10 mins

Total Time: 58 mins

Servings: Makes 6 servings.

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound  spaghetti, broken up into thirds
• 1/3 cup  dry seasoned bread crumbs
• 2 cups  bottled chunky pasta sauce
• 1 cup  shredded mozzarella cheese
• 4 ounces  sliced pepperoni, chopped
• 4 large  eggs, lightly beaten
• 3 tablespoons  grated Parmesan

Directions

In large saucepan of lightly salted boiling water, cook spaghetti 1 minute less than directed on package. Drain.

Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Coat 10-inch nonstick skillet with nonstick cooking spray. If skillet handle is not ovenproof, wrap with aluminum foil. Coat with crumbs.

In bowl, combine spaghetti, pasta sauce, mozzarella and pepperoni. Stir in beaten eggs. Spoon mixture into prepared skillet.

Bake in 350 degree F oven 30 minutes. Sprinkle with Parmesan. Bake until cheese is golden brown, 10 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes. Cut into 6 wedges. Makes 6 servings.

Have a fabulous week and thank you so much for stopping by!!!