Emerging from the morning sickness abyss

One ginger step in front of another, I am finally shaking off the green cobwebs of morning sickness and reentering L I F E. Of course it's not quite over yet, but it's finally relegated to the late evening. {hurray!} Little Peanut seems to be doing well; we should be discovering whether boy or girl next month.

It's a good thing we are expecting Little Peanut, because it is so hard to resist the urge to snatch all the cute little wee ones that surround me in public places. Just one little sniff of the baby cranium? Please?

One of our church friends recently had a precious little girl, so I mustered up all my energy to entertain my creative side to make a little gift, that creative side that had all but shriveled up during my incarceration that was Morning Sickness. :)

Here it is, the sweet little diaper cake:


Detail shots:






This project was a joint venture with both my daughters, as they helped me roll up the diapers, helped with the photos, and "supervised". Amanda especially feels proud of her contribution. She said to no one in particular, "You can't even buy this in the store." Yep, I think she's caught the bug.

We'll be delivering the diaper cake some time this week - I hope they like it!

Note to self (and a freebie for you)

Grow - in faith, in gratitude, in joy. Grow abundantly.

If you'd like to make one of these, here's the template I created, available for 24 hours only:

- password: notetoself

(click image to download) ETA: no longer available - be on the look out for more freebies soon -

Read more about the album here.

I'm off to feed the voraciously hungry family - as Abigail would say, "I hongee!"

Stop #3 - ScrapMatters' Black Friday Freebie Blog Train

Welcome to my part of the world, in the beautiful Pacific Northwest! My family and I are actually out of town, visiting the grandparents to celebrate Thanksgiving together. Our hotel room view is just spectacular.

No amount of words truly embody the gratitude I feel as I contemplate all I've been blessed with. The material possessions are the least of the blessings... all the wonderful people that surround me in love, all the great experiences that I have under my belt... all I have in my life is exactly what I need. Thank you, Lord, for your blessings.

When we return home from this trip, my daughters and I will begin the exciting preparation of our home for Christmas. We love unraveling our {fake and pre-lit} tree and adorning it and the rest of the home. The girls have their own {lavender} tree they hang their handmade ornaments on. The advent calendar will be ready to unveil its goodies, and all throughout the house, you will be enveloped in Christmas music. I am unabashedly thankful for the true story of Christmas and will recount it nightly with my girls at bedtime. A frenzy of baking will scent the air of all things delectable!

I love this time of year.

To thank you for stopping by, I want to gift you this CD holder, made of our fabulous ScrapMatters collaboration kit, Comfort and Joy:



(Click image to download) edited: no longer available - thanks!

I actually got to design a paper and an element for the jam-packed Comfort and Joy kit - needless to say, I'm thrilled to be in such good company. You know how great the designers are at ScrapMatters.

And here is a layout with paper I designed - the precious little girl pictured is the daughter of one of my good friends, Brenda:



My blog is stop #3 - you should have visited the following stops already:

ScrapMatters Team Blog
Andrea's blog
Britt's blog

Your next stop is at Australia, home to my friend, Sharon. Tell her I sent ya!

Have a great time picking up all the goodies on this blog train - they're quite spectacular, really!

I love this hobby!

One of my favorite digi designers, Erica Zane, and I have teamed up to create this calendar that conveniently fits into a CD jewel case:


(click on image to go to the ScrapMatters store)

Here's a closer look:

Click on the image to see the calendar in its entirety:


One of my layouts was featured - it's funny how I can work on some layouts for days and they can be ho hum, but this one I whipped together in less than half an hour.



edited: layout was pulled for publication in the December edition of the Artisan Notebook - !!!

This hobby is so much fun and a good outlet for me in the midst of the crescendo of holiday busy-ness!

House creative... and a freebie

Our home is constantly in artistic flux. Ron has someone's ailing computer and its minute parts splayed out on his tech bench, Amanda is making yet another "I really love you" note to her parents or friends, Abigail is scribbling on herself or the table, and well, there's me wrestling with pixels and paper.

I love it all.

I will have to do a "day in the life" to capture all of this some time. Until then, I just have some photos of some recent projects of mine:

another party hat-


Amanda's First Year badge album-




and a card made with a photo from this photo shoot-


Here's the card template freebie, if you're interested:

(Click image to download) ETA: no longer available - thanks!

Have a great weekend!

Stop #2 of the Freebie Blog Train

Happy World Card Making Day! You've reached the beautiful Pacific Northwest at this stop. To thank you for coming, here is my gift to you:


(click image for download)

I rummaged my craft closet for a few supplies: jewels, white butterfly rub-ons, glue dots, and my trusty Xacto knife to cut out the pretty blossoms. The digital papers and blossoms are courtesy of Scrap'it Designs, her About a Girl kit.

Here are some close ups:




(back of the card)

You should have reached my blog from the ScrapMatters blog. Your next stop is at my friend Kari's blog. Tell her I sent ya!

October 4th is World Card Making Day

Yes, you read that correctly: World Card Making Day! Any chance I get to celebrate life, I'm ready with my party hat and appetite. :) And how about some freebies to go with your hors d'oeuvres?



It will start on Saturday, October 4th, at 7am Pacific Time at the ScrapMatters blog.

(For those of you that aren't craft/scrapbooking enthusiasts, I really appreciate you chugging through all the crazy art lingo I throw at you - you must really love this family to do so!)

12 weeks until Christmas? Already?

Regardless of how much I vow not to let it happen, Christmas (and its crazy commercialized frenzy) sneaks up on me. So let it be known: 12 weeks left! When I have a chance to collect my thoughts, I can be purposeful about keeping the celebration focused on the true gifts.

Simple Mom is a blog I follow regularly, and she leads the way in organizing the 12 weeks so that mayhem doesn't grip the hearts, minds, and pocketbook of your family.

This year, one of my goals is to hand make gifts. I enjoy the thought of sending my loving touch through them, and want to teach my girls the value of true gift giving. Otherwise, do you know what happens to me? I wait until the last minute until I haphazardly spend beyond my budget just to appease my gift list, and spend extra on overnight air to deliver the packages. NO MORE.

One of the handmade gifts I'm undertaking is a project my hybrid team and I are heading at ScrapMatters, called It's in the Cards:


(Click on the image to see the thread at ScrapMatters)

Hope you can join me! It's a weekly venture, so the workload is spread out. It should be tons of fun. :)

It's a happy day... freebies for you

{lots of photos here!}

::life::
Ahh, to be happily occupied with life. I must say it's been a great summer. Amanda passed two levels of swimming - a huge accomplishment for a child that used to be terrified of the water. That's my sweet Panda; slow-to-warm is her modus operandi. Abigail is so chatty these days. Her little words might not be so clear, but they are like beautiful music to my ears. When you ask her, "How are you doing?" she replies, "Guck." Her way of saying "good". So extremely precious. Abby will drag books to me all day long, so between both my girls' insatiable appetite for books, I'm one mom with hardly a voice left by day's end.

::layouts::
I'm long overdue in sharing these-

This is actually me, jumping in the air.

A hybrid accordian album-



A thank you card set for my sister's belated birthday gift (well, at least it was in time to send out for your post graduation notes, right?)



::happy birthday to me::
Since it's my birthday and the last day of the ScrapMatters Grand Re-opening celebration, I created some freebies to give to you:

Edited: Freebie is no longer available - thanks for looking!

I have a challenge and rolodex giveaway posted on the ScrapMatters team blog, so go check it out!

credits here and here

Saying goodbye to friends, and a tutorial

This month, we said goodbye to a family from our church that really touched our lives. We shall miss them, but know that they are only an email - or a few plane rides - away. I had the privilege of making a little address book for them as a going away gift.

Here's a little tutorial on how to create one of these address books in Photoshop. I happen to be a CS3 user.

1) I opened a new 12"x12" document, and divided it into nine 4" squares using the blue guide lines:



2) Then I opened a new 4"x4" document. This is where I created each of the 18 layouts, flattened them, then moved them onto the 12"x12" document. I had two 12"x12" documents when all was said and done:



3) Be sure to save a .jpeg form of these layouts at this point. I took them to Costco to be printed. Once I brought the two 12″x12″ pages home from Costco, I cut them down to 18 indvidual pages and set them aside. I took the cardboard insert included in my prints envelope and cut them down to 18 4″x4″ squares, and painted the edges with white acrylic paint to give them a finished look.

4) I then adhered the photos to cardboard pieces with double-sided tape to make each page hefty enough to be handled without creasing. If you are concerned about acidity, you can use the Make It Acid Free Spray on the cardboard to do just that.

5) Using my trusty Bind-it-all, I added the coil and bound all the pages together. Voila!

The finished result:












If you get a chance to follow this tutorial to make yourself a similar project, I'd love to see it!