Happy Easter

Hey, everyone!

There are so many wonderful reasons to celebrate today. The main reason is because my Savior lives! I believe Jesus Christ was crucified, buried in a borrowed tomb and rose three days later! Because He lives I can face tomorrow! What a wonderful message of hope! I was going to share with you the scripture I chose for the Divine Design Bible Verse Challenge 09 this month on Thursday but time got away from me. It is a wonderful verse for today's celebration so I will share it with you now.

In this passage of scripture, Jesus is speaking to Martha regarding her brother Lazarus who died and was buried 4 days before. Jesus resurrected Lazarus' body that very day and it was just an awesome example of the power of God! Of course it makes me think of my uncle John and my grandparents, aunt and uncles and other relatives who have fought the good fight of faith, run the race and made heaven their home. With the passing of each precious family member, heaven is much sweeter! The best part will be seeing Jesus and thanking Him for the supreme sacrifice He made to pay for my sins! These pictures were taken at the Creation Museum during our trip on Spring Break. I love the picture of the empty tomb! Click on the photos to enlarge them so you can read the text if you want.
Our Easter is going to start with me and Paul taking our children to church. We will come home and I will finish preparing dinner. My mom and dad, brother, sister and her children will be coming over to eat dinner here with us. We're going to have an Easter egg hunt and I have a back up plan in case of rain! It will be a joyous time. I made some things for my husband's friends' two children.
I put a cardstock alphabet sticker on each candy bar holder to personalize the candy for the kids.

This card is a 3x6 piece of Tutti Frutti paper that I scored at 3" and added the HAPPY EASTER sentiment from the Trendy Greetings stamp set stamped in Burnt Umber ink. I used the chicken from the Hey Chick stamp set using Sunflower Palette Hybrid Ink. I punched it out and layered it onto the Orange designer paper from Kaleidoscope Brites. I then put that layer onto a scalloped square I punched from a piece of yellow cardstock I had. This is all on some foam tape and added to the front of the card along with some ribbon from my stash. I colored the chicken in with my Orange and Yellow Tombow markers and then I adhered some yellow Fun Flock to the chicken on the shaded areas. He is so fuzzy and my son just loves touching the "chickies"! It's so funny!

I put two Easter egg popcorn balls inside with a belly band around each. I stamped HAPPY EASTER from the Trendy Greetings stamp set on the center of each. I added the candy bars and the card I made. This is all sitting on top of some Easter grass inside this cute little Easter bag I made them. The chick is fuzzy with yellow Fun Flock. We sell the Fun Flock in our catalog in many different colors and it would be great with those lamb, sheep, chicken and bunny stamps we have! Enjoy your holiday and remember why we celebrate! The tomb is empty and Jesus is alive forevermore!

Hugs,

St. Patrick's Day Treat Pouch

Hey, everyone!

I have had a great weekend and I hope you have, too. It was such a beautiful day on Sunday and I was able to be out and about and enjoy most of it! I made some more progress in my new craft space downstairs. Many of you that follow my blog know that I have moved my craft items into the basement and I have been working on organizing everything a little here and there so that I can have everything where I want it. I am excited about the progress, especially since I can see the transformation and I know it won't be long and I will be able to just hang out and create fun stuff in my craft space instead of going in spurts or just making quick and easy projects!

I absolutely love St. Patrick's Day and I have a really fun project to show you! It was so easy to make but I had a little bit of a hard time trying to decide just how to make it all work. This is a candy bar/treat holder:
The stamp is not from The Angel Company. It is a Tilda stamp and it's so much fun to color in and play with! This is the first time since I bought her that I got a chance to ink her up! I stamped her in Noir Hybrid Palette ink on watercolor paper and colored her in with my Bic Mark-It's. I loved how fun it was to do the shading! The stamp is actually called a Magnolia stamp but many people call these stamps Tilda stamps. This one was purchased in the US and I am so excited!! I love it! It is an angel company, though, meaning I could stamp this on a card and sell that card without worrying about breaking any copyright laws.
The pouch is 6"x12" and scored at 6". The paper is Willoughby from The Angel Company. I adhered the bottom and right ends together. I used my Crop-A-Dile to punch holes in the top for the ribbon. The ribbon is from Walmart and it has little clovers on it and I thought it was cute! The white cloud is just cut free hand and then I inked the edges with Reflection Blue Hybrid Palette ink and using my glue pen I traced the edge and added Prisma Glitter to make it shimmer. I also added some glitter below her feet!
As you can see, it will hold a regular size Kit Kat bar and even a card or whatever else you wanted to tuck inside. I just randomly cut some pink, blue and yellow cardstock to come out of the cloud like a rainbow and attached 4 leaf clovers from the Celtic Images stamp set to the ends.
The Prisma Glitter is absolutely my favorite glitter of all. It's ultra-fine and so sparkly!
I stamped the clovers in Viridian Leaf Hybrid Palette ink and then cut them out. I colored them in with my green Stardust Glitter Gel Pen. Then I stamped the vase from a retired stamp set and cut the top off to make my pot. The pot is stamped in Noir Hybrid Palette ink. I cut a piece of scrap paper, just random, then inked it up with Sunflower Hybrid Palette ink and then adhered it to the back of the pot. The gold shimmer comes from my yellow Stardust Glitter Gel Pen. The 4 leaf clovers and pot of gold are up on pop dots for dimension. I hope you have fun creating your own treat pouches using some of your favorite things, too!

Come back tomorrow for my StampTACular Tuesday challenge! Christina and I will have some fun St. Patrick's Day projects to share with you using The Angel Company stamps! If you'd like a chance to win a free stamp set, check out the information above this post to find out more!

Hugs,

Valentine's Day Recap

Hey, everyone!

Well can you believe that today is February 15? That means we are past the half-way point for this month! Wow! What a great month to celebrate...love! There are so many ways to celebrate and you know I remember my mom and dad making every single holiday just extra special with little treats and things. I try to do that now with my children, too.

My daughter has given school Valentine's for 4 years now because she had 2 years of preschool, then Kindergarten and now she's in the first grade! This year I didn't want to do the traditional Valentine's you buy at the store. She loves to stamp and scrapbook and do paper crafting just like her momma so I told her we could make her own special Valentine's this year. LOL What was I thinking? LOL

These cute little boxes are really easy to make. I love the color of the paper. I had originally put peppermint patties in these kinds of boxes but I wanted Kadesia to pick the candy to put inside. We picked up fun-size Butterfinger candy bars and they fit perfectly inside! I was so excited!!!!
I saw a tutorial from one of my favorite stampers, Dawn, and came up with these Valentine's for Kadesia's classmates. She only has 5 boys in her class. The other 15 (including Kadesia) are girls. Those poor boys are outnumbered! LOL
Kadesia is very creative. I couldn't just stamp the Valentine's in black or brown ink and let her color them in, I had to use specific colors that she chose for certain areas on each stamp! I was so happy to have them all stamped! She got to color them in and she helped me assemble them.
We combined a stamp set Happy Heart Day from Stampin' Up! with a stamp set from The Angel Company called Kid Praises (T-2686). I used Sunflower ink (TT-186) on the yellow cardstock and Belle Rose (TT-193) on the pink cardstock.

This is a look from the side. It is such a fun little card and I was excited we went with the chocolate hearts because Kadesia got a lot of non-chocolate treats in her bag!

Here are the Valentine's, all ready to go in a basket.
Here is Miss Kadesia putting treats in all her classmates Valentine sacks.
Kadesia loves, loves, loves to play Bingo, so you should have seen the excitement on her face when the head room mother announced what game they would be playing!
Oh yes, that is right! She just won BINGO! She got BINGO two times!!! That lucky duck!
Here she is with her treats and her Valentine sack sitting at her desk.
Can you believe the loot? My friend and I were talking the other night about how crazy it has gotten! It looks like she's been trick-or-treating! LOL
Just so you know, I hate to have my picture taken. A room mother came over to me after seeing the Mother Paparazzi (ME, LOL) taking photos of Kadesia and asked me if she could take our picture. Ugh...okay, Jany gets all the credit on this one. I normally would have said something like no, thank you or whatever, but she reminded me that it is important to get in FRONT of the camera sometimes, too, instead of hiding behind it. Now I know I am not photogenic, but I am so glad that she did this for me. It really made me feel good because I want Kadesia to always have special memories of times I spend with her. I love her so much!!!

Do you not love this photo? Here is my entire world in one picture! The kids got Paul a little box of chocolates. It says YOU ARE A WINNER on it and has a race car with a checkered flag on it. He loved it because he is a race car driver and fan and thinks it's great that his kids have motor oil in their veins, too! LOL Just look at Kadesia such a daddy's girl! I love that!! They have the best relationship...and of course she will always have him wrapped around her little finger! I also just love Javan's face! It's so cute and unexpected...like hurry up guys, I want to see what Mommy is hiding for me!
Here's my sweet little girl! She got a High School Muscial card that plays music when you open it up. She loved that!! Then she picked out a DVD that she wanted. I remember watching Alvin and the Chipmunks when I was little so I am kind of not wanting to see this movie. I just figure it won't be anything like the cartoons I used to watch on Saturday mornings and I guess I am a little resistant to change when it comes to things like that. LOL

Javan is trying to figure out how to open his card with the "dee-bwa" on it! LOL Paul finally helped him! This is the WILD FOR YOU card I made using the WILD FOR YOU (T-2727) stamp set and the WILD WEST (T-2633) stamp set.
There was a Walmart ad laying on the chair and "Melmo" happened to catch Javan's eye. It was the Many Kisses Elmo and Javan went crazy over it. He got so excited and repeated over and over, "Melmo! Melmo! Melmo!" He was pointing with his chubby little finger at Melmo and how could I resist? I decided to get it for him!
Isn't this so sweet? Javan's leaning in to give "Melmo" a kiss! This particular Elmo is so neat because it has a lot of sweet sayings and it even sounds like it's blowing a kiss when you put his hand up to his mouth. So sweet!

Well, that is all the photos but the gifts don't end there. My mother bought me a beautiful diamond ring. I love it!!!! It's beautiful!! Did I say that already? LOL It really is! Paul put in a new exhaust fan and light in the bathroom as our other one needed to be replaced. We had dimmer switches in different rooms and I would much rather flip the switch than mess with turning the knob, which then would fall off into my hand but only if I was in a hurry and then it would mess up my nails...it never failed! So he switched all that around for me and it only took 2 trips to Lowe's! LOL I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day! I know I enjoyed being with my family. That is what I truly LOVE to do! I also got my friend, Shelly's FunShop order in from the 50% off special. It was really neat to see THAT MANY stamp sets in one box! Cutting back on the clam shell cases saves a lot of room, let me tell you! LOL But I am so glad I could meet up with you, Shelly and I hope your mom has the best birthday ever! I am looking forward to her FunShop next Saturday!!! Well, thank you for hanging out with me for a while today! You'll definitely want to come back for more fun stuff I am eager to share with you.

Hugs,

Too Cute To Spook Treats! UPDATE

Hey, everyone!Here's a look at my class projects! I know that a lot of you were wanting the instructions on how to make them, so I thought I would just update it here!

To make the candy bar wrapper, go HERE.
To make the Frankenstein treat bag, go HERE.
To make the bat, go HERE.

Please be sure to let me know if you make these! I'd love to see photos!!!

Hugs,