Gettin better, wouldn't ya think?!

Yay! I'm posting again and it has only been a little over a week! I am really improving on this huh?! Well I have lots to show ya today! I finally finished (well partially finished) my altered book from the class I took at SIS with Martha! Yes, we got the printer unjammed! You should have seen it! Because I didn't have the strength to pull the huge chunk of paper out it had to wait till Jed could do it, but by the time he got around to it the printer had been kickin out so much ink that the paper was almost completely tie-dyed! Have you ever seen a printer do that? It was weird but we are really glad it didn't ruin anything, but a little upset because we had to replace all the ink cartridges! Anyway, I give you my altered book! .....

These two pics below of the book are of the pages that I still need to do. I am going to slowly work more on this book as time goes on. It will be kinda like an art journal for me.

So before I mentioned that I was doing a lot of LOs with my Label Tulip September kits. Well these are what I did.

This first one is about my little brother. I have never really told him how I feel about his joining the army. He doesn't really sit and listen to any mushy or sappy stuff that you have to say so it can be hard to tell him how you feel at times. I did this LO quite a bit different from my normal LOs only because I wanted it to have a bit more of a masculine feel to it. Wonder what he will think of it when he gets home.

This one is a LO of me. I think it is very healthy to do LOs about yourself. At least for me it is. It helps me to think about who I am as of now and that moment. Being busy in so many different directions it is good for me to make time for a little internal reflection. And happiness is something that should be celebrated and documented with me. (BTW don't you just adore those little birdy characters?!! What are they exactly though? Birds? Owl? something else? hehe cute cute)

This LO is for my love. He is so wonderful and such a blessing in my life. And I wanted to let him know that. So I chose to give a reason as to why I love him so much for every year that he is old. That makes 32. (My favorite reason is # 14. It doesn't matter how many times I tell him the difference betweent the two, he still gets them mixed up hehe.)

With this LO I wanted to document this adorable relationship that was forming between my daughter and the very first stuffed animal she became attached to. It is so cute to see her carry that thing around, with it being so much bigger than she is! Now I don't know if you remember the old dolls from the '80s I think it was, called Kid Sister/My Buddy? I remember the commercials for those dolls and that super duper catchy little jingle for them. Well I just stuffed Sock Monkey in for the doll name and got my title. And gosh it makes me laugh everytime I sing it!

and a few close ups....

This LO took so much planning that I almost completely lost interest in it. I had such a visual in my head with this and it just didn't turn out like I imagined it would and I couldn't figure out what the heck else to do to make it look right. So I gave up and just adhered everything in the place I currently had it and called it done. It is another one of my LOs that is supposed to be read through the whole way. Let me explain. It is supposed to be read like this: this moment is..... cleaning time reading time resting time scrapping time eating time catching up on sleep time organizing time but most of all Quiet Time..... for me. And anyway I just had to scrap that adorable pic of her sleeping. Not like I don't have a million of her sleeping huh? hehe.

and some close ups.....

This LO I did a long time ago with my Label Tulip August kit. I kept meaning to get it up on here but I needed to take a new pic of it and just hadn't done it yet. This picture of Creedence was taken when she was just two days old. It was only the second time I had been able to hold her. I didn't get to hold her right when she was born because she got taken to the NICU for breathing troubles (I was in labor for 44 hours and pushed for 2 hours and 45 mins so she was short on oxygen when she finally got out). This was a very special moment because she was completely out of it the first time I held her and then this time she was wide awake and we could see those gorgeous deep blue eyes that she still has. Those days in the hospital were a blur but this moment I will remember always.

This is a LO I did for Studio Calico's Etsy/Flicker challenge. This is the only LO I have done so far with my first Studio Calico kit but I inted on doing some more real soon! I chose to do my page inspired by Etsy's home page. They always have an entire selection of awesome things based on one particular color and I am just always going gaga over it!!! I love that site so much! Anyway you can plainly tell what my fav color is hehe.

Well that is it for LOs this time!! Lots and Lots to look at huh? hehe I always seem to have a massive photo spree everytime I do a post. Well almost always anyway hehe. I am going to leave you this time with a hint towards something so absolutely amazing and exciting my hands were shaking afterward! Go here. And guess.

Take care! ~Amy~

So I don't have a title for this post. Just like with my LOs it is hard to come up with any. And you are probably wondering why I am posting so soon after my last post..... I know I am really bad with posts but this is a good start to getting better! So the other day I finally decided to go on to ScrapInStyle and become a sister. It is such a huge and busy site with almost 14,000 sisters on it!!! I always felt way too intimidated to go onto there! Well I bucked up and finally did it. Added my LOs on to it, filled out my profile, and did my newbie post on the message board. I started checking around on there daily, getting used to how the site worked. Kept reading things about the Catwalk but when I went and looked at it in the message boards it looked like it was some competition that had started a while ago. So I didn't bother anything with it. Then I signed on on Tuesday and saw I had a message from Amber Ulmer, one of the Fashionistas. It said simply, 'Congrats on the Catwalk!'. I did a double take when I read this! I thought wait a minute, no!!! I dashed over to the Catwalk and there I was! Amber had picked my Live card for this weeks Catwalk! I am still in shock! You can check it out here! Be sure to take a look at all the other girls who made the Catwalk as well. There is some real killer talent on there!

So, if you didn't already notice, I have a new banner! And I made it! hehe I am so excited about it. It is simple but I just love it. The real thing is sitting in front of me right now and I just love to look at it. I know the only reason is because of the totally awesome paper! That is Basic Grey's Urban Prarie! I saw it at Michael's the other day and scrapped with it the very night I brought it home because I was so excited! Ha and I loved it so much I decided to go back and get all the rest that they had! So I bought two more packs of it. I am intending on doing this big butterfly thing in Creedence's room. It is the perfect color scheme for what I am wanting in there. I want to go online and buy some of the coordinating stuff but I am going to wait just a wee bit. (I want to see what Label Tulip comes out with on sneaks for this next month, hehe)

Also I just finished this morning with taking my first online scrappin class! It was the Altered book class with Martha Bonneau! It was awesome! (here are a couple examples of what the books she made look like: here, and here.) It gave me some great inspirtation that I really needed! I am working hard on it but I am kinda at a stand still because my printer is jammed so I can't print any of the awesome vintage printables she gave us! I really want to include those in my book because they are so awesome, so I have to wait till we can get it unjammed. Once I have it finished I will take pics and show ya! I have also been hard at work with my September Label Tulip kits. I think I might have mentioned this before but I have 5 LOs now that I need to photograph but I really want to work on my lighting so that they come out better. Once I have done that I will put them up too. Well that is all I have for now and Creedence is in kinda a terror mode so till next time, Take care!! ~Amy~

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Hi. This post believe it or not has been in the making for almost 3 weeks. This has been the busiest month we have had all year. Weeks went by in a blink for me and I am still not sure why. Anyway, I am here now and I have some things I did a little while back to show you. These first projects were done with my very first Label Tulip kit. This is the August kit below, which they actually still have some available for purchase! I absolutely love the papers in this kit! I bought a second set of the papers at the time of purchase, but when it came time to order my September kit I went ahead and bought another set because that is how much I love them! hehe I'm silly I know. If you are not already a subscriber to them, I highly recommend it! The wild color combos yet awesome style of them makes them perfect for doing all sorts of things! (As you will see comin up in the pics)....

This is a little card I did. It's my owl card. I really like this one. It makes me smile. Oh and those are supposed to be feathers in the talk bubble.

This is the inside of the card. I did flocking for the first time on this card. I don't know if you can see it on the astrick or not.

This is another card I did. Again this one makes me smile. I used every piece of paper for this one. And I really think they do look awesome together. I wasn't sure how to use this bingo card, so why not throw it on to make an inspirational card, huh? Good idea to me.

This is one of the packages that all the papers come in. They are these great pocket/folders, and so I thought why not reuse one? Now it is made to hold all the pics of Creedence before she was one, that way I can just grab them and know which layouts I still want to do. This one again has every paper from the kit. And if you look carefully I used the exclusive stamp to create a pattern on the paper for a background.

This is the back view. I used two of the chipboard embellishments backed with clear buttons to make a tie for the ribbon to go around. That way I can just use the ribbon to close it up!

This is a mobile I made with all the papers. The holder/circle thing is kinda cheesy but that was all I had to be able to use. But I really love this project. I intend on doing lots more of these in different animals and what not. Sorry for the bad pics of it. I will redo it sometime soon. Each owl has a different front and back from the rest of the owls. (And still not all the papers were used!! Man there are lots of papers in these kits!) I used the rest of the chipboard embellishments for the bellies kinda + two of the apothecary stickers. The ones with the large bellies didn't get background bellies because there was no point, you wouldn't be able to see the pattern on the background belly. I also cut out wings and eyes?kinda. On top of the paper eyes are buttons for the real eyes. And teeny triangles for the beaks. Again all of the owls are different from the rest! So much fun to mix and match! Once everything is glued to the front pieces then I stitch them together, but before I do the last quarter of the stitching I stuffed em with foam! That way they are poofy! Oh and make sure that you run the string through before stitching them up as well or else you'll need like a crochet hook or something to get them through. Then in the middle of the two sets of owls I have 4 teeny circles just big enough to have the letters O W L S on each. Yay for cute mobiles!! I'm thinking my next one will be butterflies because I have some awesome butterfly chipboard that I am going to use as templates!

This is a LO I did with my own personal stuff. A huge mix of brands on here plus some vintage stuff. I really love the colors on this one. Really love it. It took me like three hours to come up with the sketch and set up but once I got it, the whole thing came together perfectly and smoothly. Which makes me like it even more.

This I did with my Septemeber kit from Red Velvet Kit Club. All the papers and the ribbon are from the kit. Everything else is a mix of things that I had laying around. I did this with a protective sheet that I stitched into 12 sections. At the top of each section I cut a slit into the top layer for a picture to fit into the pocket. It is backed with a patterned paper just with brads. The embellishments on the clear sheet are both on the front and back. I made this so that I could stick a picture of Creedence in each pocket for each month she gets older. As a SAHM one day blurs into the next and I don't really see when she changes. This allows me to see her grow! I tried to make it look like each pic would be in a forest! There are a whole bunch of close ups. I really like this project and want to do another but I need to figure out what it will be for first!

These are just some random pics I took of Creedence on a recent road trip. She is in her new car seat and with her new sock monkey in this first photo. The next two are of her just being a wild toddler.



Well that is it from me. Nothing new going on here. Doing lots and lots of scrapping with my new September Label Tulip kit. Everything is sold out now, it went so fast! But if you are a subscriber you get to preorder so I made sure I got everything! I have done 4 LOs so far and still have massive amounts of stuff!! I can tell I am going to be working with this kit for a while! Hope to have some pics for you soon enough. Take care! ~Amy~

What have I been up to....

Many a thing I have been up to, I can tell you that! It's incredible how much time goes by (between my blogs that is). I have been keeping very busy but not necessarily with paper. I have lots of pics of my life from the past few weeks so let's just jump into those!

These first pics are of a "mini vacation" that we took when Jed had a few days off. We decided to go to the Sierras because Jed hadn't been in such a long time and I had never been. It was a crazy trip the first 24 hours because camping and hiking with Cree was no easy task let me tell you. But we had a great time never the less! And it was gorgeous to boot! Forgive the fact that we look so dirty and worn, camping really took it out on us. The last few pics of Creedence (when she is wearing Jed's hat) were taken in Tahoe the last night of the trip. The lighting was so great and she was being so cute I just had to get some shots.

In my last post I think I mentioned that I was going to try and start some new crafts, right? Well... I did. I started knitting! I also want to start sewing but that is going to have to wait a little bit more. I am so loving knitting though! All my friends think I am silly for doing this. But I say if I am happy then I am going to keep doing it. What else am I supposed to do as a SAHM? None of them are so maybe that is why they don't see that this is the funnest thing in the world! Funnest is a word right? It just doesn't look like it would be. Anyway. I have started so many swatches and then ripped them out I lost count. But that helped me to fully understand what it is that I am doing and helped perfect my technique while saving yarn! I have below a very simple baby blanket that I started out of cotton-which I love knitting with so much! It doesn't look that big but I am far from done. I have great plans for it with fabrics and crocheted trim (yes, I am going to learn how to do that too!) and ribbon. It will be wonderful when I am done. I have actually gotten a lot further than the pic because it has been a little while since I took that photo.

Now this loverly picture is my dream skirt! It is absolutely gorgeous! It is from a wonderful book called Knitting Lingerie Style. It is the book that got me wanting to knit! I will have to learn how to knit on the round for this one and also get like 60 bucks worth of yarn, but thats ok because I will love it when it comes out! I really want to get that yarn but I can't find it anywhere! I am going to have to start asking around. If you know where to get Diakeito Diarufuran then please please let me know!! I will keep you updated on the blanket and possible skirt.

As of late, Creedence has been having a lot of trouble falling asleep at night and staying asleep. When I say trouble, I mean that she is waking....realizing she is in her crib...and proceeds to start screaming bloody murder til we come in. She also screams murder when we put her in her crib to go to bed at night. After nights and nights of this and of letting her cry it out for as long as I could let myself we decided to try something different. Well she showed us what it would take. I put on Harry Potter (her new fav movie) because I wanted some background noise and I thought it might occupy her while I tried to get a couple things done, and boom. She was out like a light. So now, every night, we turn on harry or pooh (her other fav) and she falls asleep on her boppy. This is her (below). Super cute asleep balancing on her boppy. We don't know how a baby who moves so much in her sleep can lay teetering and be comfy enough to zonk out. Either way, I had to get some pics of it. so sweet.

That's all that I have for right now! In my next post I will tell you about some of the other fun crafts I want to try and the great books that inspired me to do them! Also, Creedence is turning one soon! I am preping for her birthday party so I will have stuff to share about that too! Take care! ~Amy~