Elephants and Accidents

So I made another little Baby Blanket / Stuffed Elephant gift set for a friend of mine last week. Her boss is due with a little girl very soon. Apparently her nursery colors are pink and brown, so how fitting is this?



Love this little guy!



I like the contrasting zig-zag decorative stitch on the blanket.



I just love Minky fabric! It's one of my favorite fabrics to buy, but unfortunately it's a little spendy, so I can't hoard as much of it as I'd like to. You may remember I made a couple of these for our Crafty Ladies sale this fall, but I'd never used this particular color combo before. I love it and I think I should have one of my own, at least the blanket in adult size. Being the only girl in the house, I just don't get to have my pink fix fulfilled!

Well, I have orders for 3 more boy sets (revised: as of last night, 4 more boy sets - woo hoo!), so I guess I'd better get off of this computer and get busy sewing!! Maybe one of these days I'll even get some into my sad little Etsy shop, lol.

*** Oh P.S., I forgot about this little tidbit. While I was down in my craft room sewing this set on Thursday night, Chico came down and said there had been a little accident upstairs. What? He said the Christmas tree fell over! Yes, it's the middle of January and we still have all of our Christmas decorations up! I don't think we've ever had our stuff up this late into the new year. So while downloading some photos off the camera, I found these pictures. Chico must have known I'd want to see the aftermath, lol.









Amazingly no ornaments were hurt in the accident. Maybe this was the universe's way of saying Christmas is over. Or maybe it was foul play? I WAS downstairs at the time, perhaps this was staged by Chico to get me to finally put away all of the Christmas decor? Notice the the tree missed the TV on the wall? Very suspicious...lol.

Latest Close to My Heart Swap

It's that time again, the newest Close to My Heart Idea Book went live on January 1st. I love the Spring edition of the catalog, I'm ready for the winter to be over and all the newness of spring to begin!

So for the last two years I've been participating in a New Idea Book Swap hosted by Julie Reynolds. This is my 7th time doing this swap with 40 other Close to My Heart consultants. Each time we're each assigned one of the new paper packs, a new accessory and a particular size of card or layout. The end goal is to be able to create 5 different display boards of artwork, using 40 different people's projects, to show off the newest paper packs. It's fun to see what all of the other participants come up with! It's kind of like Christmas when you get your box of swaps back in the mail, lol.

So this time around I got all of my first choice options. I was assigned a small 4x4 card using the new Veranda Creative Basics paper pack and my accessory was the new Spring Blossom Just Blooms paper flowers.

Here is one of the cards close up.



I stamped a quote from the "Aspiration" stamp set and then embossed it using Clear Embossing Powder.



I had 5 different flower/button combos. I also used Basic Craft Buttons and Colonial White Waxy Flax (Z1081) to help embellish the flowers.



I always like to take a shot of all 42 of them together before I mail them off, gives me a sense of accomplishment. :)



I've received all of my swap items back, so once I create my display boards I'll post a photo of all of the other artwork.

If anyone reading this would like a copy of the SPRING 2010 IDEA BOOK please send me a note at kandi@myctmh.com. I'd love to get a copy to you. I've also added links to each of the products I used this time around, just click on the item name and it will take you to my website. You can also view a Virtual copy of the Idea Book here. Let me know if you have any questions, would like to attend one of my workshops or would like to host a gathering of your own and earn free product. Thanks for looking!

A different kind of givaway

Please go here to see what the Pioneer Woman is doing to help the people of Haiti. Just leaving a comment on her post will add to the effort. I was comment number 23,302! Thank you.

Happy Birthday to my lovely Mother!

Happy Birthday Mom! I hope you have a wonderful day today! I love you very much!!

An easy to make kids gift.

I thought I'd share a pretty easy idea for a kid's gift. I've done these for birthdays and Christmas presents. They're personal and I think most kids would love them. What is it? It's a personalized journal. I like to buy the blank "sketch" journals for drawing pictures, but you can also buy the journals with lined paper if you have a child that likes to write.

Here's the "before" journal. I get mine in the office supply/art section of my local Fred Meyer (it's like a Target or Walmart).



You'll need to take the spiral out, which is very easy. Just straighten out one end and spin it right out.

The next step is to find a decorative piece of 12x12 paper or cardstock. You'll have to trim it to the size of the cover. Then I glue it on. I like to use a glue runner (like Tombow or a store brand), but you could use a glue stick as well. Make sure to glue right up to the edge of all sides so the paper can't lift up. Place your paper carefully because it's hard to remove once it comes in contact with the adhesive.





Then flip the cover over and you'll be able to see the original holes. Use a hole punch to punch through the new piece of paper that you adhered. You'll need a hole punch that's a little smaller than your standard office hole punch, like 1/8" or 3/16". You can add as many layers of paper to the front as you like, just make sure to punch holes through each layer so you can get the spiral back in.






Once you've added all the base paper you're going to add, just twist the spiral back in and bend the end back into it's original position - easy peasy.




Next you add the name of the child to the cover. There are many different ways to do this. You can cut out letters by hand, use an electronic cutter (like a Cricut) or use stamps. This time around I used a Close to My Heart stamp set called "Posterboard Alphabet". They're basically cute bubble letters that I stamped onto a patterned paper and cut out. I forgot to take a close up of the stamping process, but here's a picture of the stamp set. Each of the letters is about 2" tall.




















Here's a picture of the completed journal.




















This was a Christmas gift this year. I made one for my friend's 3 kids: Abigail, Anna & Conner. Here are the other two.






















Then I paired each of them up with a box of smelly markers. Do you remember those? I used to love them. Brown's my favorite - cinnamon, yum!





I kept these pretty simple, but you can go crazy and add other embellishments to the cover and even decorate the spiral. I can't find photos of the ones I made for Abigail and Anna for their birthday last year, but I found one that I made for another friend's daughter Mackenzie.





On this one I used the Cricut to cut out her name and added a bunch of fun flowers, buttons and oodles of ribbon. Aren't these fun? Now it's your turn.

Snow Surprise

Last week we were surprised with a bit of snow here. I was at work and my boss came back after lunch and exclaimed "it's snowing!" and I thought "yeah right". I looked out the window and couldn't really see anything, but as the rest of the afternoon progressed we could see snow flakes and soon the parking lot was covered.

I left work around 4pm to go pick up the boys from Granny's house. I think everyone else had the same idea to leave work early because of the unusual weather and it took me 45 minutes to travel the 3 miles to Granny's house! We ended up staying for dinner, so didn't leave to go home until 6:30. Our trip home took us an hour instead of the usual 25 minutes, I think mostly because there was some sort of accident on the main highway. I ended up snaking my way around the back country roads and had no problems. I'm thankful that our trip wasn't like a bunch of other commuters in the Portland area that took 3 hours to get home because of the backed up freeways - yikes!

By the time we got home we had 4 inches of snow.



The boys were begging to go outside to play. It was already dark and there was surprisingly no one else out in the neighborhood. I let them play for a little bit, but it was late and I had a project to work on, so unfortunately they didn't get a lot of time out there.

Here's Mateo getting ready to start a snowman.





Then Jaxon joined in the fun.













The dogs were wondering about all this white stuff too.





Here's the finished snowman. His facial features were a bit sad because we had a hard time finding rocks buried under the snow. Oh well, I think he turned out pretty cute.





Unfortunately the snow turned into rain the next day so the snowman didn't make it very long. It was fun while it lasted. I hope it snows again and stays for a little longer next time!

Christmas Day 2009

I guess I'd better get the rest of the Christmas photos on here since it's now officially the new year. This year we spent a quiet day at home on Christmas day.

Chico had been out of town for about a week, got home on the evening of the 23rd and was leaving early in the morning again on the 27th, so it was nice to have some family time together for a couple of days. Granny Rose came over first thing in the morning to watch the boys open their presents. They're always so good about waiting until all of us grown-ups are ready to go.

I always make the boys stand in front of the Christmas tree before any presents are unwrapped. They're good about giving me nice smiles too. Thank you boys!

Here's the tree with all the gifts under it. (I just realized that I never turned on the tree lights that whole day. What was I thinking?).




















Here are my lovely boys Christmas morning.





Mateo's favorite gift this year - his new Nintendo DSi.



And Jaxon got Legos.



And more legos - good grief!




















Mateo got legos too, but I didn't get a photo of him with his. We also got the boys a new Nerf tag set. Do you think Jaxon was excited?



Here's Chico opening the Blue Ray that Granny got for us. That was perfect timing because our DVD player had just died.



Chico also got a new hat and hot rod shirt. He's thrilled, can't you see it in his face? lol





Here's Granny with some gifts too.





Well, I wasn't in any photos, but I was there too. Chico got me a great little "Flip" video camera, so now I can post little clips of the family on here too.

Well, the rest of the afternoon was spent playing the Wii, the DS and watching bits of the 24 hours of A Christmas Story on tv (an annual tradition).

Here's Jax down in the basement playing his new Star Wars Wii game.



In the evening we went over and spent a little time with our friends, the Dillavous. We had a nice time chatting, eating cookies and watching the kids play with their new kittens and open gifts. It was a great day!