Project Organization

I got a lot of organizing and cleaning done in my stamp room!!! It's finally starting to take shape.

I've been purging a bunch of retired items and non-CTMH stuff. You know..... you see a slab on sale and think it's THE most awesome deal of the century, but you only use a few sheets and then you get frustrated because it doesn't match ...or you don't like the rest of the patterns..... Well, my room was overflowing and bursting at the seams and I've finally decided to just purge it all!!!!!

I've been working on it for weeks, but it's finally starting to show. I took one of my empty buckets/spots in my shelving unit and turned it into the "Stamp Camp" cube. I put all the fun little goodies I've purchased for camp in the bucket and I started working on some goodies...

Which leads me to this picture.... These are little 1" squares of all 60 CTMH colors. It's a project for me and a goodie for the girls going to stamp camp in May...and that's all I'm saying for now....

I also made a cubby/basket for current album projects. I have three main albums that I'm trying to work on and finish right now.

Josh's Scout album - hopefully he'll be finishing up that Eagle soon, so I want his album ready for the ceremony

Josh's Europe album - want to finish it before he forgets what went with what.

Church YW album - I have a bunch of pictures from YW and a bunch of girly layouts I've done for samples....so I'm going to put the YW pictures on the layouts. Pretty smart eh?

So.. in the bucket I have a large ziptop (CTMH) bag with all the papers/stickers etc. that I pulled for the album and I have another ziptop bag with all the photos and keepsakes. As I've been cleaning and purging I keep running across items that will go with the albums and I just put it in....makes me sooooo stinkin happy! The organization makes it easier to feel creative. I know I can pull out the bags and immediately start scrapping whenever I have time... Love it!!

Happy Thoughts...

My shoe life has become quite dreary. Every day I wear my black tennis shoes to work and white tennis shoes at home. No sandals. No heels. Just black and white. I'm not sure why I still paint my toes.

Then I had to add the lovely black boot to the apparel. Now it's black shoes, black socks to work. White shoes and one white sock and one black sock at home. (Gotta wear a black sock with the boot, you know...)

I thought I was being practical and smart.

Today, I opened the drawer to get my black socks and I saw a lovely blue sock. Hey I'm wearing blue today. Why not wear a blue sock???? And so I did....

Little did I realize how happy that would make me. I love looking down and seeing that little bit of blue peeking out of my boot. It almost makes wearing the boot more fun. I think I may have to coordinate more socks for the next couple of weeks.

And... I'm thinking it's going to be my mission to find some cute shoes that my orthotics will fit for the summer. I didn't realize how depressing it was to wear black tennis shoes and white tennis shoes every day.... (Ok, so I have some black shoes that I wear to church, but hello..they are black and you can't see the painted toes!)

It's definately spring....ssssssssss

Look who came for a visit to the office yesterday......

Apparently he thought he had a meeting with the chancellor. Thankfully somebody coming to the office saw him before they got to the doors and called us from their cell phone.

We had fun checking him out through the glass, but he did not seem very happy about us talking about him!! I tried to take a picture of our campus police, aka snake catchers, but a couple of new people had just come up to the doors thinking they were leaving....ha... we are all being held captive by our little friend.....

I was quite fascinated with him....as long as I was on this side of the glass!! Guess I better keep my eyes open. I keep telling them that I don't recall them divulging the snake information in my interviews or welcome packet!!

Nursery Bash Fun

I've been in a "coloring" mood lately so I've been playing with the Nursery Bash set. I absolutely love this cute little set. Even though it's geared towards little kid birthdays, I'm just sure there are many people on my list that would adore these cute little guys.

I used the Close To My Heart colored pencils. I blended the images with odorless turpenoid.

I used my whole punch to create the polka dots.

I've been kind of frustrated with the post office and the crazy way they calculate postage. It irritates me to no end when I have to pay the extra fee for items that supposedly can't go through the machine...only they put them through the machine anyway and the brads tear up the envelope. Seems to me that they shouldn't even be going through the machine if you charged me extra.... but I digress.... anyway... I've been playing around with adding interest to my cards that need to be mailed, without adding bows and hardware.

Whew... I survived...sort of....

Last week was one of those weeks where we had something every single night of the week. One night we ate pizza for dinner, in the car, and other wonderfully quick and nutritious meals and we made it all the way to Saturday.

I was on the home stretch. I was almost set-up for my workshop. I even did it by myself because Josh was on his annual paint ball trip. I set-up the kitchen and the displays and the workshop table. I pulled out the chairs and all I had left was two tables.

Last month I put them away by myself so I knew I could do it. I had my ipod playing and I was happily moving along. I got to the shed and I had to move a couple of items out of the way. I got them moved, pulled out the big heavy table (I hate when that one is the closest one!) and stepped backwards....right off the ledge of the shed and rolled my ankle. Ooops!!

I stood there for a few minutes and just breathed through the pain as I assessed the situation and tried to figure out what I was going to do. I had my cell phone. I could call a couple of friends if I needed to. After a few minutes I tentatively tried my foot. Hmmm... I can put my weight on it...good... I dragged the table into the workshop, set it up, took ibuprofen, put ice on my foot and was thankful I still had 20 minutes before people would start to arrive.

I made it through my entire workshop. I didn't stand much and I asked for some help on a few things and it really didn't feel all that bad. Josh got home in time to bring the car over and load it all up for me. I took more ibuprofen and iced my foot and was grateful that I came out of it so well... until the next morning....

By the time I finished my shower, I knew I wasn't going to church. I dropped Josh off and headed to urgent care. Oh how I wish I had taken him with me. I spent the next five hours crutching down halls for xrays, to the doctor, to the ER.... Yep, you can go to urgent care for stuff like that, but if you really hurt yourself, you have to go see ortho in the ER too..and then because it's a weekend... you get to go back and spend a couple more hours there the next day.

Perhaps I'll take a picture of my beautiful black moon boot. I hear it's all the rage. We took a picture of the black and blue ankle for hubby. He likes all that medical stuff...

Soooo.... I imagine I should be able to get back to stamping soon. We shot a video tutorial last night and hopefully we'll post it tonight...so stay tuned for more stamping fun....

Coluzzle Tutorial

Ok, so yesterday was Wednesday and that means no time for stamping! I'm taking an online class and assignments and quizzes are due on Wednesday night. So of course, I procrastinate and wait until um... Wednesday night to get it done. I'm really not sure why I wait until the last minute. I absolutely love the class and I love the homework. It's managerial accounting and I'm just a big ole numbers geek. It makes me happy when things balance.....

But I'm thinking that you don't REALLY want to hear about my accounting class... You probably want to see my latest video.

Here's the second video Josh and I made - It's coluzzle time! Be forewarned, this is just a little snippet of the things you can do with a coluzzle. I'm sure I will have more videos with tutorials for actual projects, but this is a little help to get you started with the coluzzle.

Thank you for all the great emails about the videos! Please feel free to leave comments here too. I really will take requests for future tutorials.

I'm thinking my next one might be a blast from the past... a cute little Easter/goodie basket using... the March Word Puzzle of course.

My First Video Tutorial!!

Woo Hoo!! It's finally here. This has probably been at least two years in the making. Every time we get a new camera or new techie toy in my house, I say "do you think we can use it to make a tutorial for my blog?"

At Christmas, Joshua combined all his gift cards and bought a little digital recorder and he kept saying "are you ready to make a tutorial?"

Somehow I kept making up excuses. I think I was suddenly camera shy... well... I finally got over myself and we recorded two last night!!!!

Of course we know we have lots to improve.. lighting and sound... Anyone who knows me in real life will be shocked to find out that I didn't speak loud enough. I think I was very aware of the microphone by my mouth and I was afraid to talk to loud..

So the music at the beginning and the end is significantly louder than I am... I'll do better next time.

In the meantime... leave me a comment and let me know what tutorials you'd like me to do next!

March Word Puzzle - Day 3

Fun, Fun, Fun!!! I am having so much fun with this March Word Puzzle that I'm thinking about tagging a few fellow CTMH bloggers. If I don't tag you and you want to join in, just leave me a comment with a link to your blog. I'd love to check out what you make.

Ok, so on to today's creations.

I used Clover Meadow ink, cardstock, texture paper and yes... sassy strands.
The white accents were made using my White Daisy marker. I forgot how much I love that marker!

Ooops, I think this is a case of which came first! The tag actually inspired the card. This is my "lucky" give away for my crop this month. I won a set of our new texture tools at the Las Vegas Regionals, so I'm passing them on to one lucky workshop attendee this month. Of course I probably won't make them go on stage and pretend they have absolutely no idea how to use them....which is how I won (hmmm earned) them.

And in keeping with the "Green" theme of this post... I re-used one of my lovely lean cuisine containers as the basket bottom.

March Word Puzzle - Day Two

Here's another fun creation using the March Word Puzzle....well one stamp.... This card was inspired by a design we did at my uplines house yesterday. I came home and just had to make a few more cards. The "Easter" stamp is from the March Word Puzzle. I used the rustic alphabet to spell happy and the paper is from the Sweet Pea paper pack. Colors are Key Lime and Amethyst.

Below is my version of a foam core stamp holder that I saw on Splitcoast Stampers. I couldn't quite figure out the need for a couple of the pieces that the original poster included in her design so I switched it up and changed it. It's probably one of those things that if you saw it in person, you would understand. I added a shelf so that I don't have to stack all twelve on top of each other.

Now that I have a spot to put them all, I'll have to finish switching over from the old style pads, to the new style....

Happy March - Peep Style

Think Spring.... Since it's already beginning to feel like spring in my neck of the woods, I thought I'd celebrate by playing with the March Word Puzzle. I've created several projects and I even took pictures already... so stay tuned... I'll keep posting cute samples all week long.

First Up... Having Fun with my Peeps....

I had so much fun making these cute treats last night. Today was our last game for church volleyball and I wanted to bring a little goodie to thank the girls that come. 9am on Saturday morning is pretty hard when Saturday is the only day you get to sleep in. (Most of the girls on the team go to seminary so their school day starts at 6am).

I think I drove my poor son crazy as I went through the possible sayings, before I finally settled on "Volleyball is S'more fun with your peeps." The bags contain graham crackers, a bunny peep and chocolate. Some had chocolate kisses in the front and some had the miniature candy bars behind the graham crackers. In our house we like to put the peep in the microwave to create our s'more.... the bunny grows and grows..... But, if you don't want to watch your bunny expand in the microwave, you can always pull out your heat tool and roast him....

Supplies - All papers, inks and stamps are Close To My Heart.
Amethyst and Sunkiss Paper
Key Lime, Amethyst and Baby Pink ink
The font is CTMH Uptown from the first font cd

Go ahead..... go make some with your peeps....