RAK from Bonnie R.

What a beautiful RAK from Bonnie R! My picture didn't show the rhinestones very well. They are really cute on the flower! You can view more of her beautiful work here.

Thank you so much, Bonnie, for such a warm welcome!

RAK from Debbie S.

Another warm welcome from Debbie S. You can view more of her beautiful work here.

Thanks so much, Debbie, for such a beautiful card! I really love this card! It's so cute!

RAK from Nancy P.

I received this beautiful RAK. I hope you all enjoy this as much as I have. You can view more of her beautiful work here.

Thanks so much, Nancy, for such a warm welcome!

Cool Cat Card

Here's a quick one for today. I really wish I had more to post. Yesterday and today have been really crazy. I'm quite sure that Hayden is teething so he's been pretty cranky. In all honesty, I'm amazed he hasn't cut a single tooth yet! Plus, I've been working hard on trying to ween. I'm sure that falls in the 'more than you want to know' category. I am really late with my scans...see the 'I've been tagged' post for more info... I can't have them until Hayden is no longer nursing. I think we are almost there! So now the nerves start to kick in. I'm quite certain I will be getting my scans in the next few weeks so in some ways December will be a really hard month for us.

Ooohh...sorry...how about a card! Something light and free of stress and worry! Thanks for looking and have a great night! :)

Terri's Card

Today I would like to share with you another card swap card. This one was submitted by Terri B. She is a new card maker but you would never know that to look at her cards. They are always really cute! Like this one! I hope you like it as much as I do!

Take care and thanks for looking!

Christmas Tin With Cards

I'm getting a few things ready for a craft fair. Here's one of the things I'm working on. I was going to add a few more mini-cards and tags for this decorated tin. I hope you like it. I still need to work on my photography! ;)

Thanks for looking.

Card Swap Card by Jen M.

I thought we would start out today with another card swap card. This one is from Jen M. One of the things I love about card swap is how a persons personality really comes out in their cards. Jen's cards always have such a beautiful, feminine feel to them. I hope you like this one as much as I have!

Thanks for looking!

Nesting Snowman

Still loving my Nestibilities! This card started out all stamped with my Cold Play set. This is definitely still one of my favorite stamp sets! I have used and seen it used in so many different ways. Once I had the card almost completed I saw my stack of Nestibilities sitting all alone on my desk. Then I had to use them!

This is pretty similar to my tree card but I still love it.

Winter Wishes Card

Love the ginormous snowflake! Today is my first time to use it. I'm not sure what else I am going to use it for but it's really great! Here's card number 1.

...in all honesty, the way today is going, I may not have that many more! I am working on a little card that will house a picture and a gift card. It may be posted tomorrow. Larry was supposed to be taking the boys to a football game this afternoon but he lost the tickets. No break today! The boys and I are having a movie night now!

Hope you like this!

An Old Christmas Card

I am declaring this a card making day! ...at least at my house. ;) Evan will be thrilled. He really likes making things. Of course, I will have to declare tomorrow 'cleaning' day as this place will be a pit by the time we are finished!

Ok, if I'm really honest with myself, this will come between naps, feeding, and play time with the boys. Larry's busy working on the sump pump. We are having battery issues with our back-up. Time to stamp! While I get busy with something...not sure what yet!, I thought I would post an old Christmas card. I made this one right after I signed on to be a demonstrator. This was my first experience with heat & stick powder and glitter. I really love heat & stick powder!

Thanks for looking!




















To be continued......

Virtual Card Swap!

All right all of you virtual card swappers out there! Here it is, our first 'swap'! I've been racking my brain for just the right 'challenge'. I thought I would say anything with punches....see my nestibility card further down ;)!!! ....ok...that would be cheating as I would enter it! Finished! ;)

Since this is our first swap, I am leaving it open. I want to see whatever you have! Your best of the best! You can pick any theme! You can pick any colors! You can pick any layout! Surprise me! As we also have our regular card swap and Christmas coming up, I am going to say a deadline after the holidays. How about January 5th at midnight. It must be posted to your blog or emailed to me so that I can post it here.

How fun! I am looking forward to seeing what you all come up with! See you all soon!

Have a great weekend!

The Buck's Gluing Again!

...Remember that episode of Seinfeld when George started talking about himself in the third person because of one of the basketball guys he and Jerry had met?...I really miss that show...and you can start calling me George now! as I have now done that same thing twice in this blog! Sleep deprivation is really getting to me!....

Finally, I've started with my Christmas decorations. I had my game plan all worked out. I saw these really cute trees at Frontgate. They had a mixture of really large round lights and smaller round lights. It looked like ornaments. While I couldn't stomache the $30 for 10 lights that they were offering, Target did have something similar for considerably less so I improvised. I wanted a wreath with ornaments so they would look ok together (the tree sits right next to the front door) but I was to afraid to put glass on a wreath on my front door. Thus the poinsettia wreath I made a few days ago. But then Meg let me know that our local hardware store has plastic ornaments. So now I've made yet another wreath! While I am thrilled that Meg had this information, I am not so thrilled that my first chance to head over there is today, black Friday! I haven't been shopping the day after Thanksgiving in about 10 years! I really hate to stand in line! Anyway, wreaths done and so is the day! I'm not sure how much I will get done from this point.

So, I will now post a card from Amy as I have nothing to show for myself today! Amy made this one a while back. This is one of my favorite 'Amy' cards. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I have!

Take care!

Quick break....

I'm waiting for the water to boil for the potatoes....does your family do potatoes or dressing/stuffing? My husbands always did potatoes...mine did dressing...we now do both!...feel free to post! ;)

Anyway, I thought I would post this little thing during my small break....it was inspired by something I saw in a magazine....

Hope you are having a great day!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Before heading off to the kitchen for what will be a day of cooking, I wanted to again say how truly blessed I feel this year. I have such a wonderful family and we are all healthy! I also have the greatest friends! Thanks so much to each of you for always being there!

Hope you all have a wonderful day!

It's Here!

Today's the day! My Nestibilities have arrived!

I ordered these Thursday night last week. Of course, I am the most impatient person on the planet so I express mailed them. And now they've arrived! I will now share with you just how much of an obsessed stamper I really am. Ok....at 2 am on Friday morning...that is basically a few hours after ordering them!...I thought up this really cute card in my sleep!

OBSESSED! ;)

Ok....careful with your judgments....Meg, I'm talking to you!....we've all been there!

Haven't we?

Anyway, here's my homage to Nestibilities. They ROCK! I love them! I'm just bummed they were out of the scalloped square!

Hope you like this one! What can I say! These things are great!

Take care and Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm So Thankful!

Here it is, another Thanksgiving! I would like to take this opportunity to thank each of you for your continued support and friendship. I am truly so blessed to have such a great group of friends!

I hope that you all have a happy and blessed Thanksgiving!

Take care!

The Buck Glues Here!

There once was a really great place that made the best wreaths in town. Then one day they closed their doors. *heavy sigh :(

I have the most amazing fall and summer wreath that they created. I have since had a spring and winter wreath made at different places. I really am not pleased with either of them.

So this year I created this.......

I don't know. I think it's pretty good for a first time wreath maker! Totally not stamping related. Totally craft related. Thought I would post it anyway. Although, I really must admit....and not just saying this....it's much cuter in person. The silver eucalyptus is really sparkly.

Not to rush Thanksgiving but I am really excited to decorate for Christmas!

Hope you like it!

Bobbi's Card

I just picked up my oldest son from school so we are now officially on Thanksgiving break! Woohooo! I am so looking forward to some lazy days ahead! Well, relatively speaking. I'm hoping for some fun gametime with the boys and some fun stamping time with myself! I'm already trying to come up with my game plan for this evening!

Until then, I wanted to share with you another card swap favorite of mine.

This card was submitted by Bobbi. I think it's absolutely beautiful. She pays such close attention to detail with all of her cards. Can you believe she's only been stamping for a year!? I hope you all enjoy this little inspiration as much as I have.

Take care!

Retiring contest

As many of you know, Stampin' Up! is now releasing two new catalogs a year. While I am excited about how 'Christmas' will come twice a year for me now, I am also a little sad as I will be saying goodbye to many of my favorites more often.

So let's make this bittersweet moment a little sweeter with a contest! Please post a comment to this post with your top 10 list of retiring stamps. The person with the most correct answers will win! What will you win? A retired stamp from my collection. Deadline to participate will be midnight November 30th.

If you do not have a catalog you can view it online at http://catalogs.shoplocal.com/stampinup/index.aspx?pagename=shopmain&fsid=17a8a062-eb16-4aa7-88ef-ea29b5dec494&storeid=1038724&circularid=10999

Please be sure and include your name and email address in your posting so I know who to notify.

Good luck and I look forward to all of your guesses!

WSC28

So I go to the door yesterday and find a package from Stampin' Up! I was a little surprised as I had not ordered anything. To my surprise there's a new stamp set compliments of SU! How exciting! What to do with it first!

First, I will share with you just how cute I think this stamp set is! If it's any indication of what's to come in the new catalog, we are all going to be in heaven! Yes, I am so excited about the new catalog!

Second, use it for Beate's weekend sketch challenge! This is becoming a habit of mine! I am really loving entering these challenges. I'm not sure I have stamped this much at once ever! Oh yeah, here's my entry....

I'm not sure if you can read the stamp. It says Too much of a good thing is a good thing! I love this! What a fun stamp set!

Hope you like this! Thanks for looking!

It's Carnival Night!

Tonights the night we've been building to for the last couple of months. At last it is finally here! Our schools fall carnival! I, along with many others, have been working hard to get everything ready and it's finally here! This has been one of the craziest weeks. So I have not been able to post much of anything. I am really looking forward to posting tomorrow. Saturday will be a lazy day around here! I am planning on sleeping in! Ok....scratch that one off of the list! But I am planning on pretty much doing nothing but playing with the boys and stamping! I just got a new set from Stampin' Up! It's a little something that I am guessing will be in the next catalog. It looks so fun! I can't wait to use it and share it with all of you!

Meanwhile, here's a little something from Meg. Readers of this blog will remember her as my OOC friend. (That's 'out of control'. ) I'm not sure that this picture does this card justice. It is really one of my favorites from Meg. I wanted everyone to be able to see her shrinky frog inside as well as the beautiful cover.

Thanks for looking and I will post you tomorrow!

Have a great night!

My New Stampin' Buddy

I was off to finish the bid sheets for Fridays silent auction but due to some technical difficulty it will have to wait until tomorrow. So I will post a couple of other things instead. First, as she sits on my desk, my new stampin' buddy....

How funny is that! I had a weak moment with Carter while buying crickets for the frogs today at the pet store. Every time we go he is always asking for a cat or hamster...pretty much any animal there! Today it was this fish. I've actually been looking at them for a little while. So here we are....Truman aka Guppy aka Bella...I think it's a girl. For anyone who doesn't know, Truman is the name that Carter picked out. We have a dog named Truman. Carter also has three frogs...they are all named Truman. Notice a pattern here! ;) Evan, my oldest son, just sort of rolls his eyes so I told them they could each give it a name. Hey, it's a fish! It's not like the thing is going to come when you call it! What can I say, we all have a little bit of an issue in this house. After all, I am also naming the fish! I think it's genetic.

Ok, back to stamping. Here's a little something I did a little while ago. I hope you like it. Pretty basic but this is currently my favorite paper as I'm sure you can tell given I use it all the time!

Thanks so much for looking! I will talk to you all soon!

Another Card Swap Card...

Here's another card swap card. This one was submitted by Jen S. We had a challenge this month to use buttons on our cards with a Christmas theme. Jen always makes such cute cards! This is one of my favorites!

Hope you like it!

My Card Swap Group

I have the most amazing card swap group ever! Ok....so I am a little biased!

A little over a year ago my husband was starting to get a bit frustrated with the fact that my stamps were gathering dust. Who can blame him. I had become a 'collector'. I signed up to be a demonstrator in 2005. In fact I had only just been introduced to stamping a month prior and I was my best customer. Well, I was my only customer! This stamping thing really was so new to me. I think because of that I really wasn't sure what to do with all of my stuff!

So to satisfy my husband, a card swap was born! Thank you, Larry! I have had so much fun over the last year stamping with my friends! In fact, I so look forward to our monthly get-togethers. They are a highlight in my month.

Well, what better place to share all of our cards than here! ...and what better day to start than today! This card was submitted by Lisa. You can always count on Lisa to come up with the most beautiful cards. This was one of my favorites. In fact I have probably copied it about a bazillion times! I'm sure you will all love it just as much as I do.

Thanks so much to Lisa for this card and for letting me share it with all of you!
Take care!

To Be Continued...

I'm feeling a little ADD today. It seems as if every time I get started with something I have to stop to do something else.

I started to cut out all of the card stock for next weeks technique. (Woohoo! My card is designed! That takes a little of the pressure off!) Of course before I really got going it was time to put Hayden down for a nap.

I ran to Michaels with Bobbi for silent auction stuff and found lots of really cute things! Oh, and we found all of the stuff she needed for the auction as well.

Come home. Make lunch. Oh....nap time again.

I started a card with these really cute pink feathers I found while shopping...I'm going to use the Best of Cluck stamp set for that one. While I was working on that I realized that I really needed something that would create a scallop rectangle....can we all say nestabilities! Of course I don't own these yet. Then I had to do some research about those. Looks like I might need the cuttlebug after all. Thanks, Bobbi, for your Michaels coupon!

Hayden wakes up. Played a game with Evan & Carter. Tried to keep up with an eight month old. Can you believe it's been eight months!

Noticed my little blue Bind-it-All. Thought about what I could do with that. Voila! A paperbag card...of sorts! I think this will be really great for the grandparents. It will include pictures and ....ok....back to the ADD....I'm not sure what else. But how fun! Now to take the pictures for this little thing. I have got to call for haircuts this week!

Did I tell you I love my Bind-it-All! It's such a great little tool!

Thanks for looking....and listening to the ramblings of a crazy lady! ;) Hope you all have a wonderful night!

WSC27

I must say...I am so glad I googled whatever it was that brought me to my first card blog! How great it was to come across so many different blogs and how wonderful to have started my own! I think I have spent more time stamping over the last couple of weeks than I have in .... ok.... I'm not sure how long!

Here's my entry for the WSC27. Thanks, Beate, for doing this and encouraging all of us to stamp! I used bugs and kisses for this card....a set I have never used before! I'm just glad that it was at least mounted as that is one of my least favorite things to do!

Sorry it's been so long since my last post. I am hoping to have some more stuff really soon. It's time for the fall carnival at school and I am swamped! Hopefully by next weekend I will be able to breathe again!

Hope you like this!

WSC26

Thanks, Beate, for another great challenge. Here's my contribution. Hope y'all like it!

Have a great weekend and Happy Stampin!

Love My New Tool!

Well, I've been drooling over the Zutter Bind-it-All at Eclectic Papier for the last couple of months. I finally got one! I absolutely love it and here is my first project.

Unfortunately, I need a bit more practice. I am not going to finish this one. I will get started on another one and then post the finished project once it's completed. Somehow my dp got a little messed up on this one. For some reason it bubbled once I punched the holes. Hopefully this is an easy fix and it won't keep happening for me.

What a great investment!

One More Halloween Post

My sister asked to see a picture of this and I thought I would go ahead and post it here. Here are my pumpkins for Halloween.

It would have been great to leave them here that night but it was so windy they would not stay lit. I had to move them up to the porch. Unfortunately, I did not get a picture of everything. I would have had to do that after dark as I had the front office decorated and you could only see it at night with the inside lights on. I was going for a haunted hotel theme. Great fun. I really love decorating...for anything!

Hope you all had a happy and safe Halloween!

My Virtual Card Swap

With my sister in California and lots of stamping friends and relatives in between, a new club emerges! The virtual card swap group. For all of you out there that asked for it, here it is!

I have created a new link list to the right with my 'virtual card swap' group. Please create your blog and then email me your information. Once we have our first assignment it will be posted here. If you are local, we will still be swapping 'real' cards every month.

I am so excited to share this opportunity with you! I will keep you posted as to our first swap. If you have stumbled across this blog and would like to participate, please feel free to email me and I will be happy to add you to the list.

Happy Stampin!
Jennifer

One last time....

Ok....from here I am moving on! ;) What can I say....I keep redo'ing the same thing! I'm having a hard time letting it go! Here's yet another version...basically of the same card! Hope you like it. From here I may try to do something altered. Diane had a great challenge with that and I have yet to have anything speak to me! It's a bit frustrating!

Hope you are all having a great night!

Sidekick Sayings Christmas Card

One quick post for tonight and then lights out! It's been a really long day and I hear Hayden waking up upstairs! Hope you like this one.

Have a great night! :)