Festive Friday: Let the Heavens Rejoice...

Hello lovely friends!

I know that my posting is sporadic at best these days... I do apologize, but we are down to the wire with our packing and organizing. In less than three weeks, we'll be in our new place! I am excited, but definitely exhausted.

It's Friday, which means it's time for some more projects for our latest challenge - one I have had fun with!

It's a theme challenge this time around, featuring the graphic you see below:

You can see why I've enjoyed this one! *wink*

Here are two versions of one card that I made that suit the challenge; reminiscent of the kinds of holiday cards my grandmother might have sent, I think!

I think the illustration of the poinsettias is so classic, and I love the font of the sentiment. The first one is very simple, just stamped in red ink. It's pretty basic, but I like the look. I think Flourishes stamps work so well in this kind of application because the detail in the illustrations are so fine and beautiful.

Here is the same card, only this time I coloured in the image:

What a difference, hey? Again, the detail in the Flourishes images make it really easy to colour them and have a lot of impact.

We're taking a break from packing tomorrow to hit up a vintage/antique market that I recently learned about. I've been in a pinning frenzy, gathering ideas for our new home, and I am excited to find some new treasures - so wish me luck! It will be a lovely break from cardboard boxes, newspapers and tape guns!

Have a great weekend!

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Scrapbook Sunday - Party!

Hey guys! This is a quick post as I really wanted to get it up before it was just way too late.

I have a layout to share with you today, which I made for Josie's second birthday - last year. So since it was her third birthday last week, I wanted to be sure to share this before it became too out of date! *wink*

I can't believe how much this monkey has changed in one short year! And her hair - I forgot how short it was last year.

We had a vintage styled party for this one, so I used all kinds of October Afternoon goodies to create my layout. Truly, their Cakewalk collection came out about 3 months too late - it would have been perfect for this party!

I did manage to add a few Cakewalk elements to the layout, since they were exactly the right colours and feel. Oh, and you might see the glaring mistake in my date stamp on that label in the bottom corner. Oops. Proof that I can't get on board with my kids growing up so fast...

I had some ulterior motives (you don't really need to know about my dark side, do you?), so we had a sweets-only theme for the food - which I tried to keep in the vintage style by offering lots of slices and squares that were popular for parties in the sixties. Which I know, because I got the recipes out of an ancient cookbook that Shirley's had since she was married! Okay, the seventies, then...

Sometimes a layout title doesn't have to take up a lot of space - I really liked how these alpha stickers worked for my title! But then, I ADORE alpha stickers...

This layout was also inspired by some of Maggie Holmes' work. I just love how she manages to pile so much on her pages without overwhelming them.

Alright, I am off to teach my first card class today... wish me luck! I am sure it will go well, but I hope I deliver to the ladies' expectations!

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Sweet On You!

Happy weekend!

I am a little late with this post, because this was a hectic week... but I wanted to be sure to share the newest 10 Minute Craft Dash challenge with you!

This card didn't turn out quite like what I had pictured, but when you only have 10 minutes, you just gotta go with it!

This week's colours are red, yellow and light blue. Immediately, I thought of cherries.

The ink splatters didn't come out quite how I pictured, but I still think it's kind of fun. And if I'd had time to think about it, I would have chosen a different ink for my cherry stems and sentiment - it's a bit pale.

I finished this one in 8 minutes and 50 seconds. The main chunk of my time came in die cutting and embossing. Everything else came together pretty quick!

Thanks for taking a peek! You can get all the challenge details here.

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Festive Friday - Blessings...

I am late with today's post, but it IS still Friday!

We're in the thick of packing up our house, and it's taking up so. much. time. A month from now, we will be moved in. Surrounded by boxes and work, but in.

So it's time for a new challenge at Festive Friday, and this one has been a favourite so far for me! First, I am super excited, because Claire from Waltzingmouse agreed to be our guest designer for this week! I've mentioned before how much I adore WMS designs, and how I credit Claire with leading me to the world of blogging and full-on stamp obsession... you can see why I was so thrilled she agreed to play with us!

Second, this time the theme is Vintage... my favourite way to play!

I sat down to make this card at the eleventh hour. Which worked out, because my new stamps got here yesterday! But, since we've been so busy elsewhere, I didn't have a chance to sketch out a plan for this one, which I would normally do. I think maybe it's been good for me to have been forced out of my comfort zone of a creating routine!

Here is the graphic we have for this time around:

Photo Source

Without even meaning to, I kind of followed the colours of the photo when I was making my card.

It's hard to tell, but those snowflakes have some chunky glitter all over them!

You can find out all the details over on the challenge blog! Thanks so much for taking a peek, friends!

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Flourishes Beautiful World Tour - Hello My Dear...

Hello Flourishes fans! It's the first Monday of June, which means it's time for another trip around the world with the Beautiful World Team. You should have arrived here from Dina's blog, but in case you stumbled here by chance, you might want to go back to the Flourishes blog to start at the beginning.

Don't forget that your travels with us can win you free stamps! All you have to do is leave comments on all the designers' blogs as you visit to be entered in a random draw.

This month it was my turn to host the challenge, so I asked the girls to create something using neutral colours and lots of texture. These are some of my favourite cards to create, but this time, I decided to do this one in cream, which I haven't done before.

I used rustic cream cardstock, lots of cream layers, and some neutral ink to make my card. When I make cards with just one colour, I like to add as many different types of texture as I can fit on there, to keep it interesting.

For my card, I used three different impression plates, some cotton lace, die cut lace, felt and also added some distressing to the edges of my sentiment panel. that's a lot of texture, but it doesn't look busy!

Here's a close up of my layered bloom:

Don't forget to leave a comment before you go, but now you on your way to see beautiful Australia and visit 

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Josie Turns Three...

This week has been hard on me.

I've been spending all of my time preparing for Josie's third birthday party, and in the middle of all of that, I had to take Emma to her Kindergarten Orientation. I am a pretty chill mum. I love my kids to be independent, I enjoy when they want to be on their own, entertaining themselves. I am excited when they reach certain milestones. But school? All day, away from me? No, I am not ready for that. And Josie turning 3? That means she's not a baby anymore. No, I am not ready for that, either.

But, facts are facts, and a birthday is happening. So it was time to do some birthday portraits.

This girl. She is my heart, this one. She's cheeky, she's sneaky, and she's hilarious.

But she's the sweetest, kindest little thing with a huge heart. She makes me proud every single day to be her mother.

We're hosting a strawberry themed party today, so Josie is modeling the pillow case dress I sewed for her (which you might remember from this post)...

And what's a strawberry party with no berries?

We had a lot of fun with these photos... she took direction so well, and at one point we checked out Pinterest for some pose ideas - which she promptly mimicked. Or, she came up with her own:

And it easily became my favourite of the bunch.

And yes, I definitely *do* envy those curls. She has her dad's golden locks, lucky girl (although his hair is much changed since he was this age).

She is the oldest three year old I know... she loves to play make believe like her big sister. She loves to tell stories... she likes to boss everyone around (no worries, this baby of the family can stand on her own two feet!). I heard her explaining to Emma one day what a meteor was - and she wasn't that far off the truth! Smarty-pants.

And this girl will do *anything* for a laugh. It doesn't matter if it ends with a time out, or losing a privilege for the day, it's worth it. And yes, usually we're laughing.

Happy Birthday to my beautiful little Jo-bug. What an incredible little person you are becoming, and how lucky I am to be your mum. I love you, my girl!

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Festive Friday - Merry December...

Remember when you were little, and the time between Monday and Friday seemed to go on for eternity? And remember how when you were little, once your birthday was over it took *forever* until there was another one?

It's a cruel reversal when you get to be a grown up and time travels at lightening speed. Particularly the time between your children's birthdays. It seems like just a blink and a half ago that we were bringing Josie home from the hospital. Tomorrow we will be hosting friends and family for her 3rd Birthday Party. How has that much time passed already?

In the meantime, it's time for some new inspiration for the current challenge over on the Festive Friday blog...

For this week's project, I didn't use a stamp. Not one. If you spend any time here at all, you know how strange that is... but when it comes to Crate Paper goodies, I love to sit and just play... so this time, I sort of forgot my stamps!

As I am posting the photos, I can see that the gold rhinestone I adhered to the green button disappeared between my craft desk and photography... hmm...

You can head over to the challenge blog to see some more from the other ladies!

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