Treasured Scrapbooking March Card Kit Reveal

Life has been so, so crazy the past few weeks that my blog has just taken a back burner to everything else going in my world. Here are my cards created with the March Card Kit at Treasured Scrapbooking. This is also my last kit as part of the team. I had to make a tough decision to resign from the team. The countdown is on for the arrival of our twins and I have much to do to prepare. I also resigned from the Cardalicious team. I would show you my last card but it was picked up for publication. I do have another card to share from a previous week that I haven't posted yet but I will do that another day.

I've been doing a lot of cleaning, organizing and purging around my house. Yep, I'm officially nesting! I've hit up a few garage sales and had some luck finding a few outfits. I have also bought a few little outfits for the girls. Target clearance is seriously awesome! We bought the bedding and curtains for the girls' room and it's all painted. We're working on putting in new outlets. I've been trying to clean my house using flylady.net and it's been wonderful! It is very, very likely that the twins will arrive in 3-4 weeks. Our birth mom had another ultrasound yesterday and things are looking good. She's only 30 weeks but measuring at 37 weeks. She did have a few contractions a couple weeks ago and stopped those with medication. The babies are still really small 3 lbs. 1 oz. and 3 lbs 2 oz. Please pray that they still in her tummy for a while longer. We're ferverntly praying that they are strong and healthy even though I'm sure they will be in the hospital for a while.

I've been really sick the past few days with some sort of cold/flu virus. I just ache from my head to my toes and spent most of the day in bed yesterday. I'm feeling a little better today but am hoping to be back to my old self soon.

Enjoy your day! :)

Etsy Special!

I have much to update you on regarding the Adoption Celebration and new projects but until my next post...I'm running a special in my etsy shop. (Thank you for the sales, by the way)! From now until all the cards are gone (there are 26 left), you can choose ANY 7 cards for just $20 (including first class shipping)!!!! That's less than $3.00 per card! To purchase your cards, just visit my etsy shop http://jillcornell.etsy.com and e-mail the names of the cards you want - cornellgj@yahoo.com. I'll send you a paypal invoice to pay for them. It's first come, first serve! And, remember all proceeds from card sales go to adoption costs!

Happy Shopping! :)

My Etsy Shop

I spent some time last night and this morning loading 40 of my hand crafted cards into my etsy shop. Please stop by and check it out! All of the proceeds from my cards will go towards our adoption costs. The link and a preview are on the side of my blog.

Have a great day! :)

Life is busy

I took a brief hiatus from my blog to mourn the loss of my Grandma Kathryn. I had a very, very close relationship with her and will miss her very much. Her visitation and funeral were last week so I spent a lot of time with my family. I lived just 5 minutes from my grandma and grandpa growing up so much time was spent with them on their farm. I think we saw them at least once a week and talked on the phone at least every other day while I still lived at home. Grandma and Grandpa made a point of coming to all of our school activities. For a long time, my sisters and I were the only grandchildren. I was 15 when my oldest cousin was born. He and his brothers live in Marshalltown so we were still the closest proximity to grandma and grandpa. I know what I experienced with my grandparents was very rare. It will be very important to me to have my own children spend a lot of time with their grandparents. Grandma spent the last two weeks of her life in hospice care at a nursing home. She was very, very sick with cancer and I'm so thankful she is no longer sufferring. I have many treasured memories of my last few visits with her and I was able to share with her that she was going to be a great-grandma. Our twin girls would have been her first great-grandchildren. I know I will have many difficult moments to come but now I'm busy preparing for our upcoming fundraiser this Sunday and getting ready for two baby girls to join our lives!

I'll have more projects to come soon! :)

Treasured Scrapbooking February Card Kit Reveal

It's a fun, bright card kit this month at Treasured Scrapbooking! I have so much fun creating cards from Leslie's kits and always have so much product left over from the 4 cards I make. This kit could also be used for layouts and other projects but always includes instructions for the 4 cards I create.

All for now...more to come soon! :)

Praise God! :)

This photo was taken about 10 minutes after we found out we were chosen by a birth mom to be the adoptive parents of TWIN GIRLS! To read more about our exciting news, please visit our adoption blog here: Beauty From Ashes.

Our dear friends are hosting a spaghetti dinner and silent auction fundraiser for us on Sunday, March 1st at our church. We feel incredibly blessed to have our family and friends support our adoption process as we must give our adoption agency $15,000 at the time of placement. We applied for grants and are receiving a $2,500 grant from a ministry called LifeSong for Orphans. We must fundraise at least $2,500 to match the amount given by them. More information about the fundraiser and our adoption costs are on the other blog.

Thanks for sharing in our excitement! :)

Baby gift ideas

Today I want to share a baby gift idea using Rusty Pickle's Lucky line and chipboard. I've been trying to make baby gifts for my friends for several reasons. I love to do it and it means a lot to them that I spent time on it. (I usually try to do something with the baby's name.) Also, when you're on a tight budget it just makes sense to create with what you already have and then buy a little something extra to go along with the gift.

In a few days I'm going to share a new blog that will focus solely on our adoption process and create adoption awareness. A few of our dear friends are planning an event for us and I'll share information on that too. We're so blessed to have their support as we have spent the last five years on this journey.

More soon! :)

Cardalicious 12

This week's Cardalicious challenge calls for orange letter stickers and three patterned papers. My card uses patterned papers from Basic Grey and Crate Paper while the letter stickers are chipboard stickers from Basic Grey. I had a lot of fun just playing with some supplies.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about difficult things and about my priorities. It's been really good for me to look at my life and the things in it and how I spend my time. I can see the next few months are going to be life changing and while it's scary and new, I just want to be productive and compassionate. I know I'm being vague but I don't want to share much else right now.

I have been so sick the past few days and am finally starting to feel a little better today. Thank goodness for Tylenol Cold PM! :)

Enjoy your day! :)

Think warm...

I'm trying to picture a white, sandy beach and the sun hot on my face but all the snow outside my window is not helping things. :) Here's a new Rusty Pickle card using the Island Summer line. I love the bright colors and fun images on these patterned papers.

I've got a bit of a cold now but I am so happy it didn't get too bad. This week just hasn't been the best. My family received some bad news about my grandma and I've been having a really hard time dealing with it. She's very, very sick and it's so difficult to see her condition deteriorate. I love my grandma dearly and feel so blessed that I was able to grow up with her right there all the time. My grandma and grandpa have ALWAYS been there for me and my sisters. They came to all of our activities; whether it was a softball game or a Christmas concert, they were there. We probably went out to their house at least once a week when we were kids. I have so many fond memories of spending time with them. My grandma is a great cook and I learned a lot about cooking and baking from her. There are 7 girls in my family (grandma, my mom and two aunts, and me and my sisters) and we've done a lot of "girl" things together. I only get home about once a month now but I make a point to see my grandparents each time.

I better get busy today! Enjoy your weekend! :)

A few more Christmas projects...

Okay, I'm more than ready to be done creating Christmas projects for a while so I wanted to share a few that I created last month and hadn't blogged about yet. The little mitten ornament and heart wall hanging were made with Rusty Pickle's Snowflakes & Mittens line while the gift bag uses Pink Paislee that I got in a kit from A Kiss on the Chic. Speaking of kits, I'm not a regular subscriber to any kits at the moment as I found that it's better for me to shop around and buy only the ones I really want. I did have a sub to Scarlet Lime for quite a while but had to let that one go. I probably won't buy anything until the new CHA stuff starts hitting the shelves.

I'm feeling a little bit better today. I ended up staying home from work yesterday because as I was getting dressed I got sick all of a sudden. I was okay the rest of the day but just felt really out of it. It was weird how it came on so suddenly.

Well, all for today! :)

More from Upsy Daisy Designs

I decided to share two cards today that showcase the other new Upsy Daisy Designs lines called Man About Town and Unwritten. The colors in Man About Town are gorgeous and Unwritten is very elegant.

I'm feeling pretty bad today as I've had a sore throat come on as of yesterday. I'm hoping I make it through the day okay. It's pretty difficult to be on the radio with a sore throat so I've been drinking plenty of tea and hoping this won't last too long.

Well, that's all I've got to share today. Have a good one! :)

Cardalicious 11

It's time for another challenge at Cardalicious! Here's my take on the challenge to create a card with a journaling tag/label and using the colors orange and green. I love the bright, fun colors in Rusty Pickle's Candyland line and it looks great with the black and white striped ribbon from SEI.

I've had a really busy week since I last blogged. My birthday was last Thursday - thanks so much for all the birthday wishes. We did some painting on Saturday and then I had a few girlfriends over to scrap that night. I went home to see my grandparents on Sunday and then to the eye dr. on Monday. I came home Monday afternoon with a horrible headache so I spent much of the night on the couch last night. When I get headaches they are pretty debilitating. I must have been feeling pretty awful because I overslept this morning and need to get headed into work.

I have plenty of new projects to share with you - just need to stay on top of blogging! :)

Have a great day!

New from Upsy Daisy Designs

I LOVE this time of year as all the sneak peeks of new lines for winter CHA are making their way online. I'm on a bit of a spending freeze on my scrapping supplies so I'll have to choose wisely on what new collections I would like to have. I've been scrapping for over 5 years now and I think I've got my buying down to a science now so I don't buy things I'll won't use. I will admit I'm somewhat of a paper hoarder as I'll buy the most gorgeous papers and refuse to cut into them because I'm saving them for "something special". HA!

My card for today uses Upsy Daisy Designs' new line called Circle of Friends. I used my Cricut for the brackets and label and a Jenni Bowlin butterfly as a template. I really love the colors in this line! Be sure to swing by Upsy Daisy's blog for CHA giveaways all week and stop by their booth if you make it to CHA!

Glen and I are super excited for Lost to start tonight. Other than American Idol that's THE show we watch together.

Have a great day! :)

Cardalicious 10

Happy Monday to you all! Here's my take on this week's challenge at Cardalicious to use a circle, a flower and something sparkly! I used Rusty Pickle's Princess Bride collection to make this sympathy card, my Storybook Cricut cartridge to create the circle and flower and some Kaiser Craft pearls for my something sparkly.

This weekend just flew by. My sisters were here to help me paint a room in our house and then we went to see Twilight (it was my 3rd time - it just gets better every time!). I've got a lot to do today too so all for now.

:)

Treasured Scrapbooking January Card Kit Reveal!

Today is reveal day of the January card kit at Treasured Scrapbooking! Here are the 4 cards I created using the kit which is full of fun products from American Crafts, KI Memories, Jenni Bowlin, Petaloo and more. Leslie's kits are so jam packed that I had plenty of product leftover. The kits also include instructions for making these cards.

In other news, it is bitterly cold in Iowa - as in -16 and that's without the wind chill! I need to get into work but I don't even want to leave my house! :)

I'm so excited American Idol has started back up again. Glen and I were both laughing so hard last night.

Have a fabulous day - I'm trying to envision the hot sun on a white sand beach! :)

Cardalicious 9 & News

Here's my card for this week's Cardalicious challenge to make a "for you" card using letter stickers and the color green. I discovered that I deviated a bit from the challenge when I was sending my card to Janelle - mine is more of a "for baby" card. I used the new bebe line from Upsy Daisy Designs to create my card.

Our meeting with the birth mom went extremely well on Saturday. It was very, very emotional and I was so drained afterwards. We felt a lot of peace before, during and after the meeting. We were able to connect a lot with the birth mom and share how our faith is the foundation of our marriage and how it got us through our infertility. We're trusting that God is going to work this out for the best but it's so difficult not to be overly excited. Our hearts desire to be parents so badly. We learned from the adoption agency tonight that the birth mom really liked us as well and would like to meet with us again! This meeting will take place in the next few weeks. We also found out it's twin girls due in May! We would appreciate your continued prayers as we try to wait patiently! :)

All for now - I've been really busy creating and working ahead on cards and projects so I can focus on some time-consuming events coming up.

Have a fabulous night! :)

Proud owner!

My new Cricut Expression came this morning and I didn't waste anytime getting it set up and playing around with it. Besides the two cartridges it already came with, I got a Cricut bundle that included the Storybook and Christmas cartridges. LOVE them! I'm excited to start using it on my projects. Speaking of which, I'll be hitting my scrap room pretty hard this weekend as I've got projects to work on for Upsy Daisy Designs (new CHA stuff), a card for Cardalicious and I've also got the January card kit from Treasured Scrapbooking in my hands! I'll also be sharing some new Rusty Pickle projects with you soon.

Well, all for today! I'll be back soon to share my word for 2009 with you. Last year's word was discipline and I feel like I did pretty well in many areas of my life and others not so much.

Have a fabulous day! :)

I'm ba-ack!

Wow! It's been forever since I've blogged and I've been busy catching up on life the past few days.

First, I want to share this advent calendar I made using Rusty Pickle products and a tree I bought last year at Starbucks. I gave it to my mother-in-law for her birthday and she loved it. I also have a fun little toot to share. In August, I'll be guest designing for Keep in Touch kits. Kelly's kit are fabulous and jam packed - be sure to check her out! :)

Next is Christmas. I had a fairly good Christmas until I woke up at 5:30 in the morning at my mom and dad's house sooooo sick on Christmas Day. We're pretty sure I had food poisoning. I was violently ill...it was awful! I slept most of the day and finally got my full appetite back about 5 days later.

After Christmas we came home for a couple days before we turned around and drove to Lake of the Ozarks for my church's annual conference called Faithwalkers. It was a really encouraging time!

After 4 nights there we drove further south to my in-laws in northern Arkansas and spent 4 nights with them. It was a good time! They just sold their house so we were busy packing them up and moving them into their rental until they move to Iowa in the spring. While we were there, I hopped online and bought myself a Cricut Expression using my Christmas money. I am soooo excited for it to arrive and it should be here Thursday!

We got home from our travels on Sunday afternoon. I've spent the past few days catching up and trying to get my life back in order.

We do have some exciting news that we would appreciate your prayers about. We're meeting with a birth mom and possibly the birth father this Saturday. Glen and I feel really good about this situation and it seems to be a good fit for us. The best part is - the b-mom is pregnant with TWINS due in May!!!! We're trying not to get overly excited about it because this journey is such an up and down roller coaster. PLEASE keep us in your prayers this Saturday and I'll keep you posted how it goes.

Well, all for now. I'll hopefully have some projects to share soon. I want to spend some time creating this weekend.

Betty Crocker and Noel

First up today is my card from last week's Cardalicious challenge. We had to make a Christmas card using an icon from Christmas (tree, wreath, angel, etc.). I used Rusty Pickle's Snowflakes & Mittens line on this card along with some yummy Martha Stewart glitter.

I've been a busy Christmas elf around my house this past week. I baked up a storm - ginger snaps, spritz cookies, cherry mash candy, fudge, peanut butter balls, peanut brittle, cinnamon-sugared pecans, butter crunch, M & M pretzels, anise candy, and peanut clusters. Whew! I think that's it and I also think I gained 10 pounds just looking at that list. Keep in mind, a lot of what I baked was double batches. I'm usually pretty self-disciplined but my hubby is not. I have to hide some of it from him or he'll sit and eat it all! :) I always take plates of goodies to work, to our neighbors and I'm the designated candy maker in my family so it all comes with us to our Christmas get togethers.

We're all ready for Christmas at our house. The cards and letters have been sent, everything's baked, presents are wrapped...we're good to go! I'm probably going to be pretty MIA the next couple weeks. I'll try to blog another time, but after Christmas at my parent's house, we're leaving for Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri for 4 nights. Our church has a regional conference there every year and we're really excited about going. The conference ends on New Year's Eve but then we're going to Glen's mom and dad's to spend 3-4 nights with them. They live in northern Arkansas so it's just another 4 hours down to them. I'm looking forward to the visit but I know I'll be ready to come home after a week away.

In case I don't get to blog again, have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! :)

Treasured Scrapbooking December Card Kit Reveal!

These are the 4 cards I created with the December card kit from Treasured Scrapbooking. The kit has beautiful patterned papers from My Mind's Eye and is packed with gorgeous embellishments! The card kit includes instructions to make all of the cards pictured here. For more ideas from the rest of the finalists, check out their blogs - Eva, Ashley, Renee.

I'll be back soon to share my card this week for Cardalicious and to share what I've been up to lately.