Made by *B*

Are you wearing green? Here is my little leprechaun enjoying her ginormous bow and green beads in honor of her Irish Roots, LOL.

This little card is a simple peek-a-boo card made with a strip of 4×12″ Banana paper scored at 4″ and 8″.

I used my circle punches and scallop punches to create “donut” windows that can be seen as the card opens. I like that the Lots of Thoughts sayings fit inside the circle punches. This was a pretty quick card to put together once I sorted out which punches to use!

Have a great day!

Phoebelicious is what we often call our little Phoebe-or Pheebs or if you are my mom Phoebelina (remember to say it witha thick accent when you try that one!).

She is getting SOOOOO big I can hardly believe it-she has been with us 6 1/2 months; less time than she spent with her foster family! We are thrilled to have her and she has fit into our family so perfectly. She is talking a bit more and can say Mama, Dada, An-ne (Camden), Dog, Baby, and can do a few signs as well. The funniest is when she wants UP she shakes her fist at us as if she is going to punch our lights out if we don’t pick her up. Lately she will say “uuuup” but not too often (why bother when she can just shake her little hand and we do her bidding!) Since I have not posted pics of her in a while I thought I would share some with you (and please pardon the shiny cheeks-she is lotioned up and ready for bed).

The other two pics are pretty typical Phoebe faces. But lately she has been practicing some odder faces and thinks it is very funny when we laugh at her. I think this one shows her true colors as the cute little dictator that likes to run the show!

Thanks for indulging me!

Originally I was going to make a tri-fold 4 x 12 card, but once I started playing with it I opted to change it-but my red was 12×12, so I made these cards out of 4×12 strips, but folded the dimensions are 4x 5 1/2″, so they fit really well in a standard sized envelope. I used a much bigger pic than I usually do-mainly because I was running late with the pictures and I had to have them printed at a store rather than at home since my printer is so fickle.

4×12 piece scored at 2 1/2, and 5  1/2″. You can see that there is a vertical strip of Dashing paper on the left hand side, and another horizontal strip when the card is opened, then the stamped message is inside. Picture was 3 1/2 x 5 1/4, which I trimmed down to 3 1/4 x 5 and matted on a piece of Certainly Celery. Certainly Celery ribbon goes around the picture, and I used the NEW SU! star punch in Celery and Red to add a flat embellishment that would not cause any delays at the post office!

QTFM: I found out (quite accidentally) that if you have a Carl Cutter you can use it to make perfect score lines! Remove the cutting mat and measure as you normally would for a cut, when you slide the blade down it leaves a perfect score line. I scored all my 12×12 cardstock for the cards this way and then cut the 4″ strips. SO EASY!!!!

PHOEBE!!!

This is her newest silly expression. I am trying to get her to do it when I say “Hohoho” for Santa, but usually it is when she is just being goofy.

Here she is in all of her 1 year old glory!

 AND (drumroll please) TAKING HER 1st STEPS!!! She took a few the night before her 1st B-day but really started to roll on Friday. Does she look proud of herself or what?

After all that walking a little cake is in order, don’t ya think?

Her birthday throne-really this girl wants for nothing, but when I saw this chair I knew it was *perfect*. She was delighted to climb in and out of it.

Her 1st b-day party is Saturday-this is when we wil do her Tol celebration-a Korean tradition. I will post pics later on. Thanks for looking!

Camden REALLy wanted monogrammed stockings this year-I have no idea why other than the fact that he is really into his initials right now. Rather than plunk down $60 on new stockings I saw cute monogram pins at Target that were $3 each. I had 4 of them in my cart until I realized how dumb I was being since I could MAKE them!

 Jenn’s blog had an origami box with a sparkly red a on the tag-I LOVED it!

http://jbalcer.blogs.splitcoaststampers.com/2007/11/18/todays-tutorial-an-origami-box/

so I decided to use her a as inspiration and bust out chipboard letters I have pulled out before but never used.

Step by step:

I smooshed the chipboard letter into my craft ink-I decided to use Rose Red (since I cannot find my Real Red craft pad-grrrr) to give a good background color base.

Sprinkle the wet craft ink with Heat and Stick Powder (I rarely use it-but for this project it seemed to be the perfect thing!!!)

No pic-heat with your heat gun and when it looks “wet” sprinkle it with red glitter. You can use any color but I wanted mine all red. Then reheat it again just a touch to get the glitter set.

Embellish with ribbons, etc. I used rhinestones, ribbons, and cord to dress them up. Add pin backs and VOILA you have monogram stocking pins!!!

Phoebe is turning 1 next week so we are throwing her a “Winter 1derland” party. I figured we would incorporate her b-day theme into our decorations and pink-ify it. I already hung sparkly snowflakes in the dining room from the light fixtures with pink organdy ribbons to attach them, and bought a 2′ silver tree for the table (which is what the invite is propped up in for the pic). 

Here is her b-day invite! Some had the wording on vellum, but I found I ran out (how did that happen?) so some were just  printed and stamped directly on the shimmer white cardstock.Cardstock:   Pink passion and Shimmer White   Set: Snowflake Spot    Ink: Pretty in pink, Pink Passion, Pixie Pink, and Purely Pomegranate

..small packages.

These tiny little boxes are made from 1 piece of 6×6 paper. I used the Soft Sky designer paper. I scored at 2″ and 4″ both horizontally and vertically (so the score lines look like a Tiv Tac Toe board) and with a few small snips tucked the sides up.

I adhered some of the GORGEOUS blizzard paper over the Soft Sky strip for the handle and added 5/8″ Chocolate grosgrain ribbon.

Quick and easy way to make a little something for a friend! The covered Peppermint Patties fit right inside! But money, a few wrapped cookies, or even a gift card would fit in as well.

 Have you bought the SU wrapping  paper? I bought the Blizzard and the Celebrations. When I wrap for Christmas, we each get our own wrapping paper. Last year Camden’s was laight blue with red and white snowmen, mine was blue with polka dots, and my hubby’s was red with hohoho all over it. Santa of course wraps his with his own picture. (Such a narcissist!)

This year we will be able to add another stocking to our mantle, and some PINK to our tree! I bought 2 packs of the Stampin’ Up! wrapping paper so we each have our own again this year. I am sure it will look fantastic!! I am debating buying all new stockings for us-I just haven’t been able to find a nice pink one I like so I may go for all red for everyone, or just traditional red with monograms.

Here is a pic of Cam and I with the holiday stash in 2006 (note my bleary eyed expression and the coordination, LOL).  Last year we all had Polar Bear pajamas. This year We are going traditional red/white. Phoebe has some 50% Naughty 50% Nice ones (although she is pretty much all nice.) I was excited to find Camden some pirate skull head pants with Santa hats-he will be excited about those! And then we just need somefor Dave and I-but since we are doing the color theme I am pretty sure they will be easy to come by.  

Here are pics of Phoebe today in the sweetest little dress-I just love the pattern!! And note the big bow in her wee bit of hair, LOL!! She is absolutely my VELCRO baby right now and seems stuck to me like glue all day-luckily she takes good naps so today after hanging out with my girlie, I sat down and used her dress as inspiration. She can wave now (you can see that in the pic^)  and if folks are lucky they will see an “ummm-mah” kiss being blown from her hands; she is also a little stinker about climbing up the stairs from our family room. She loves being caught and thinks it is quite fun as you can see by her expression the 1st pic! 

I bought the cards at Target on clearance b/c they were so cheap-I think 10 for $2.25. They had the glittery  ”thank you” already on there and the rest was blank. I use Phoebe’s dress as inspiration because I am SOOOO behind on her thank you cards! I made *20* of them today using her dress colors as my guide. The 1st one I made used bigger flowers and more Pink Passion and some Only Orange-but it overpowered the “thank you” in the corner so I toned it down for the rest of the batch.

The paper was not high quality-I had a hard time getting my images to have total coverage-but I do like how the pattern came out.

Sets:

Baroque Motifs & Fabulous Flowers

Ink:

Cool Caribbean, Apricot Appeal, Pretty in Pink, Passion Pink, Gable Green

I used old organdy ribbon I had already and then added in a touch of pink polka dotted ribbon like the one in Phoebe’s hair. It was a sweet gift from someone on SCS-it is called Dots & Dashes and I *think* it is from Micheal’s-adding that little splash of festive ribbon really brightened up the corner and helped tie in the bright pink!

Halloween was as fun as ever. Phoebe was Sophie our dalamatian, just as Camden was his 1st Halloween with us!  Phoebe was of course clueless about Halloween-but did enjoy her 1st lollipop and hershey bar. We visited just a few houses with Phoebe and then Dave took the boys around the mile. Camden got so much candy he was overjoyed! 

Camden was a clone trooper-he loved his costume and was happy to wear it around here. But upon return from the actual trick or treating this year Dave declared TOTing a “no accessory” time. No lightsabers, masks, headpieces, or other miscellaneous things he will end up carrying around the block.  I had it pretty easy. I took pics at the 1st few houses and then myself and three other neighbors sat outside my house and passed out candy together while our little guys (10 months, 1 year, and 2 2 year olds) played in the front yard. I love our neighborhood!

 You can see Phoebe holding onto the bucket very tightly as Ms. Marge up the street gave her her 1st piece of Halloween candy.   My girl loves chocolate like her mommy! 

I hope you and yours had a happy and FUN Halloween!

These little pumpkin “candy catchers” were one of the make and takes at my workshops.  I had seen the wonderful larger ones that many folks had for garlands or table decorations, and decided to shrink them down a bit. They are easy to do and were a big hit!

I started with 1×4″ strips in Groovy Guava, Pumpkin Pie, and the Apple Cider designer paper available in the Holiday mini catalog. You can make them any size-just all the strips need to be the same. I used 8 strips to make them and they fit a few Hershey Kisses or mini Reeses cups inside-one of my customers was even able to pop in some mini Play-doh containers for her daughter’s preschool class.

And here are my favorite pumpkins-Camden and Phoebe. We went to a farm this weekend and milked a cow, rode a tractor, cheered at pig races, and pet llamas, goats, pigs, sheep, and baby ducks and geese. A good time was had by all. The pumpkins were pretty small (we will need to get nice big ones for carving) but Phoebe had a good time just trying tp pick them all up. Camden tried to give her advice on what to look for, but she really was just interested in crawling around.

New baby trick:

dancing to the theme song to America’s Next Top Model (quite funny).  She was with me when I was watching a re-run and started shaking her head back and forth when they were singing the “Na-Na-Na-Na-Nana…” theme song. Now I sing the “nanana” part and she dances and shakes-too cute!