I guess they heard about the birdhouse.....

Because omgosh, one day earlier in the month, I came home from co op with the girls. I was sitting talking to my DH and all of a sudden the entire window was covered in bird shadows! I was like, what the heck was that?! He said they had been doing that all day. I went outside.
Every tree up and down the road was filled with birds! Starlings to be more precise. Big black birds and they all started chirping something fierce. Truth be told, it was more than a little eerie and as I was standing there I wondered if a day like this was where Hitchcock got his inspiration for The Birds.

(Oh and how cool is the paper?! It is a custom made laser sheet from the Scrap Queen....Sarah just started doing these, they aren't even on her site yet, but I got a preview sheet to play with and it was PERFECT for this!)

Playing Today!

I have a pretty quiet week! YaY! So, I spent the morning finishing some layouts I started awhile back and working on a challenge over at If the Shoe fits blog.

This was a colour challenge, the colours were red, black and white. How perfect for these pics I took of my friend's dd at the Fire Station while we were on a field trip. It was about 1.5 hours and when you are a little, that is just too long! So, she was ready to escape. How awesome that I found the little sign at a thrift store?! It went perfectly as well (even if it does have some gold in it)


And oh, the joys of being a scrapper! When I brought home a box of blue raspberry icees, I did not plan on having such a great photo op, but what a pic it made! I had to scrap this and the papers from the Glitz sparrow collection (found at Simply Scrapping) where PERFECT! I blinged it up even more with bazzill bling flowers, glitz champagne stickles and glitz mermaid stickles.



This was a sketch at Simply Scrapping. I don't remember which one, but it was perfect for Trin getting ready for ballet. She is so proud of the dance they are doing and how quickly she learned it. And, while I love my dd, her coordination has been remarked to be the equivalent of a drunken hippopatamus. So, that she is can move so beautifully on the dance floor is a bit of a miracle indeed.
Papers and die cut tag are SEI and flowers are bazill and prima from Simply Scrapping store, thrift store zipper, doodlebug sticker letters, grunge flourish with distress ink and dabber.


Bring on the rain.....I was so ready for spring this year (like every year) that when we had almost flooding conditions, it did not bother me in the least! At least it wasn't snow! This is from this month's kit at the Scrap Queen.

Some projects of late

Just a quick post with some things I found time to work on this month (March was insanely busy! Scrapping tended to go by the wayside!)

This is an ATC with a Seussian theme I did for a swap at ScrapNMoms

Supplies:
Alcohol Inks
Bee stamp from unknown
SEI paper scrap (from Simply Scrapping)
Bee cut from newspaper
Prima flower (also Simply Scrapping)
Liquid Pearl in gold
Copper glimmer mist
CTMH font



Layout for a challenge at Simply Scrapping

Cardstock is Bazzil Bling and Core'indinations. Random Ribbon
Rub Ons, Stickers, Pattered Paper, Brad is all from the Basic Grey Marakesh line (I LOVE this!) from Simply Scrapping
Thickers and Glitz Mermaid stickles can be found there as well

Iron Chef Night

For those that say homeschooled kids don't get enough socialization, I have to laugh! We make soo many opportunities for them to get together and homeschooling in this area is a COMMUNITY. Last night, our co op sponsored an Iron Chef night event. 4 families competed against each other. They had 1 hour to create a dessert and an appetizer using the secret ingredient (we sent it out to them a week in advance, it was cheese).

It was SUCH a fun night! The food was spectacular and we truly enjoyed ourselves. Livy and I were judges. It was so cute how seriously she took her 'job'! And great seeing how the families all worked together.





The grand prize was a $25 grocery store gift card, my girls would have been more interested in second which was an Auntie Anne's pretzle making kit. All families also received a recipe album for participating (made by me of course!)








I also made these cute name tags for the emcees and judges

Happy Birthday Judy!

It is Judy's birthday today! She is the awesome owner of Simply Scrapping and if you haven't visited the site yet, it is wonderful! Super friendly and my fellow DT members and friends are uber talented!

I created a card for her special day!

This is for you Judy! Have a very special day!


Papers are my scraps from SEI and some mulberry. CTMH rub on, sparkles, white daisy embossing powder and stamp. Cardstock is run through my cuttlebug folder.



My inspiration was a challenge for using 2 types of embossing on your card from the If the Shoe Fits blog.

Blog Candy

My friend Kristy is an awesome designer and her blog has awesome work on it! And right now, she has some awesome blog candy going on!

Check it out at:
http://kitten91303.blogspot.com/2009/03/my-blod-candy.html

Here's a pic of the candy:

It's for the birds! Well, no, maybe not.....

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE our county parks system. They do THE BEST job offering nature and arts classes. Saturday I took a gourd birdhouse class. I have been wanting to play with these for awhile, but just didn't know if I had to do anything special to them and so forth.

Now, I know! They are sooo easy to work with!

Most people there carved and stained them or they painted them. I had something else in mind. Once I got the specifics on what to do, I did my carving (doodles of course) and brought it home to turn it into a piece of altered art!

Here's what I did.....

1.Covered it with alcohol inks (stream, eggplant and wild plum)
2. Dripped gold mixative from the stem.
3. Leafed the stem and flourishes with a Krylon gold leafing pen.
4. Added my bazzill bling and prima flowers and a cute copper brad
5. Sprayed it with Copper Glimmer Mist because I really wanted it to shine and I love the effect it gave...it dripped and gave an even more mottled effect, but it was a sparkly one!
6. Added magenta stickles around the hole and flourishes and made a necklace around the top of the gourd with copper and cinnamon stickles.

I LOVE how this turned out!

So much for the birdies, this house is MINE!

Another Challenge....

Beth posted this challenge at Simply Scrapping....it is to make a page with as much bling as possible. Well, I had some pics we took of our Mardi Gras day activities and what screams Bling Me more than Mardi Gras?

Bling used: Stickles in gold and green, glitz stickles in champagne, gold leafing pen and an entire tube of gold glitter mixed with liquid glass.

It truly is obnoxious.

But, fun! I can't journal yet cause it is most likely gonna take awhile to dry!

Sketch Challenge

This week's sketch challenge at If the Shoe Fits...Scrap It (see a theme here? I'm on a challenge mission this week! lol) is so cute!

Here is my take:


And here is page 2:


Papers are CTMH's adore collection....how gorgeous are they!? You can see more of them if you click on the catalogue to the right.

Orange and Green challenge

This is the last of last week's challenges at If the Shoe Fits...Scrap It! It was a challenge to use lime green and orange. I am sooo about bright colours right now since it has been so rainy and gloomy (the sun is shining right now though, so YAY!)

Here's my contribution.....the girls first chance to play at a park since winter (well, without snowshoes involved)

Some quick tags

Had some scraps to use up from last month's scrap queen kit and Judy posted some great tag sketches over at Simply Scrapping, so that got me playing....threw in some CTMH rub ons and Voila!


I'm off to attend to a bunch of other half finished projects....today is the PERFECT day for it! It is rainy! UBER rainy that is, as in start building the ark rainy. We are under a flood watch and when you look out our family room window you can see why!

Here's a view from the road....yes, that is our house not far from the creek (which is normally about 3 inches deep!)


However, on the upside....it isn't SNOW!

Last But Not Least

Kristy posted this awesome sketch challenge on If the Shoe Fits...Scrap It and here is my take. We visited the Johnny Appleseed memorial in Ashland the other week....seriously, I grew up playing in this park and had no idea it was there!

We have been studying tall tales with the girls along with Ohio history, so it was a perfect quicky field trip...then it was nice enough the girls played on the playground and chased the black squirrles.

Anyway, my take on the sketch



Products are from Simply Scrapping....thickers, glitz champagne stickles, BG Perhaps paper (and kraft paper from thescrapqueen and my own red cardstock scrap to make the apple)

More Motivation!

My friend Tracey (remember that awesome soot stamped card?!) and some other ladies from ScrapNMoms (well, that's how I know them anyways) started a new blog this last week and kicked it off with awesome challenges!

I did some playing....actually that was what the file folder album was about and the altered notebook truth be told. So, since I was in a double dipping sort of mood (I think the PC word is multitasking, yeah?) I did Lesley's 3 from one challenge to get myself moving on a mini scrapbook that I am showing for a class I may be teaching at the parks in the fall

Here's my 10 from 1 stamped mini album


Close up of a couple of the pages:


Then, I am sooo ready for fall, so used the nest stamp to do a card that was nice and bright!


And last, but not least, I do a lot of nature stuff and we are outdoors at the parks often also, so I can always use a journaling box and how awesome is the key lime glimmer mist?! LOVE it! Just got it and it is SUCH a phenomenal colour!

Been Scrapping!

I know, I haven't updated in awhile! February was CRAZILY INSANE! The girls got sick, gave it to me, then just when I was getting better, they got it again! Then, we have birthdays....my sister, Trin and my brother are all within 3 weeks of each other.

So, sick and busy! What a combination!

So, slowly I am catching up!

TO get me motivated, I got a great package of stuff to play with from the fabulous owner of Simply Scrapping....it's fun being on a design team!

I used papers and stickers from 3BugsinaRug to make this cute altered file folder album




Then, I used the scraps to make this cute altered mini composition book!