Trying

I am having a day where I feel like I am trying, but not accomplishing. I did accomplish getting my new release of Luau Hanna posted, though. I love this set, probably due to the fact that I love Hawaii so much. There are (I am told) an amazing lack of craft stores on the Hawaiian Islands. I have been to 2 of the islands, and did no specific looking for crafts, but when I return to Hawaii, I'll do a thourough search of all the islands and give a full report if I should return to the mainland.

I am trying to clean the house, trying to feed the kids (they eat non stop), trying to find library books, trying to do laundry and pack... Scott and Noah leave for Memphis tomorrow morning, I'll be on a flight to Dallas for the weekend and Seth will be with friends. Meanwhile, the boys just wrestle and fight like they no of no others who they could go play with. Arrrggghhh!

Oy Vey!

Blogger is having issues today and I am going in search of the Excedrin.......Here's Teacher Hanna. To make her more realistic, I should have put a bottle of booze under her chair. (Oh don't get all righteous on me here, you know a happy teacher is a teacher with a hidden bottle of booze.)

I am so tired.....

We had a busy weekend and then spent the ENTIRE day at the zoo yesterday. I drove home exhausted in rush hour traffic only to have to run some errands last night. Today we are off to a local water park for the day, I have been promising the kids all summer that we would do this, and plans for today's activities were made in advance, so I feel I should stck to the schedule, no matter how badly I want to crawl back into bed and pull the sheets up over my head.

The card a bove was made from the new Hanna Stamps Pirate set, and the item below is a composition book I re covered. I used the new Teacher set for the book. Both sets will be released on Thursday around midnight at the SCS Release Party. In real life the pirate does not look quite so sun burned. I used the coins and the sword and the parrot from the accent stamps to round out my card. I love the sentiment that comes with this set. Perfect, eh?

Here is a shot of Seth from the zoo. I asked him to stand still for a photo and he struck a pose. Two nights ago we had been at Target and he had his eyes on some sparkly silver shoes. I guess I shoud not deny his true calling as a drag queen and just let him have his way. As long as he grows up to have disposable income to spend on his old Mama, all will be okay in my word! (lol)

And now it looks like the composition book may not have loaded properly into blogger. I am too tired to try to fix this problem!

Yes, We Are Home

Auntie (of the comments) wants to know why I haven't updated the blog, since I am home and must have time on my hands. Let's see, I had a good night's sleep in my king size bed, ran erands, worked on laundry, and got the dog back from the "dog camp".

While we were away Noah learned to kayak. He really wanted to do this, and claims he enjoyed it a lot, but every time we looked at him, it sure looked like he was working hard. He was very happy, though.
We grilled out, went to Mackinac Island, went to an indoor waterpark, swam at the pool, and played at the beach. Seth drank hot chocolate day and night. No kidding. The place we stayed had free tea, coffee and hot chocolate. seth ran back and forth to get hot chocolate as often as he could. The weather was beautiful and never above 80 degrees. I tell you, Northern Michigan is heaven in the summertime.

Best of all, the boys slept soundly everyday. They hate photos like this, so I just had to post it. In between them is Mumbles, from the movie Happy Feet. He goes almost everywhere with Seth, but especially to bed. Mumbles can't go to school, but Seth would take him if he could.

Vacation Day is Almost Here!

WooooHooo we are leaving for a few days near thew ater and I'll be back to check in at the end of the week. Then I leave in a few more days for a trip to Dallas. I am happy to be on the road. I am never quite so happy as I am when I am somewhere new and fun. If some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, then I was born with a backpack over my shoulder.

The card is from Hanna Stamps' sketch challenge. I used the provided sketch and the bonus was to make it a Christmas in July card. I used Riley Moose in the chimney and added all sorts of extra touches, snowflake brads, star brads, ribbon, glue and glitter, a white gel pen and some marvy Uchida punches. The paper was scraps I had around, so I don't know who made them. sorry.

We are trying to convince the boys to clean their rooms. It is amazing how much laundry they find that needs to be washed when they do a good cleaning. Or even a half hearted cleaning, we aren't picky. We just need to pack up and hit the road tomorrow.

Poor Scott

If it wasn't bad enough that Scott drove his car into our garage about two weeks ago, with his bicycle attached to the top of the car, it only gets worse for him. The car was fine, and the bike survived, but the top of Scott's car on the sides where the bike rack attaches is really dinged in quite a few places.

The boys heard about geocaching recently are are in love with hunting for things in the woods. Scott searched a bit for a GPS system and finally decided to borrow one from a friend who no longer uses his. Scott and seth set out last night to geocache at a local park. Enticed by Seth to play at the park, Scott sat down on some type of park equipment and completely broke the GPS in his back pocket when he sat on it!

Trying to make the most of a sucky situation, he played with Seth at the park for a while. He spun and spun Seth on something and then put him in the car to go home. (Yes, moms, we all know what comes next.) Seth threw up his spaghetti dinner in the back seat of the car. Scott pulled over and made Seth get out and finish at the side of the road. At a graveyard.

Seth came home all excited to tell me about the broken GPS and barfing at the graveyard. Seriously, as tired as I am of playing with my kids right now, Scott needs a vacation worse. I feel so sorry for him. Well, not sorry enough to clean his car for him, I do have limits.

Over at Splitcoast there was recently a challenge to make something in miniature. I stamped the bird from Natural Beauty, colored it with copics, cut it to 1 inch square, and mounted it onto a piece of Acrylic by Tim Holtz, called Fragments. I then added it to a cord to make a necklace. If I could buy small fragments only, I'd make a ton of these. The problem is that the fragments come in various sizes in the box and I really don't know what I'll do with the hugs (3x3) pieces or the tiny pieces. The idea to make these came from Rebecca Oehler, who is a goddess of decorative items.

Crab Bake

I made this as an invitation to a good old fashioned Crab bake. Hanna is holding stamps from the Stampin' Up set, Crab and Co. I used the pot from "Basket Full of Fun" and put them on a charcoal fire. Hanna is from the set "Fun in the Sun". The background was kept plain, as the card itself is already very busy.

(* Editoial note to friends....of course I am not having a Crab bake. Are you kidding? I live in Indiana, where the heck wuld I get fresh crab? And if I got it, do you think I would share? I would be rollin' in the crab cakes, baby! I just had to come up with some sort of story for when I posted it at Splitcoast. It sounds better than saying "My mind is whack, I don't know where I get these ideas, but I made it, so you'd better like it.")

I also made some tumbled tiles today. The one on the lower left stays home but the others are for the Teacher's Lounge at Seth's school. Scott and I painted it a couple years ago and tried to add a couple of homey decorative touches. The lounge was expanded this summer, so I thought I would add a few different tiles to the enlarged space.

My main goal is to keep the kids seperated from each other. They enjoy running through the house and pounding on each other, but if one if otherwise engaged, the screaming and pounding is less. Yes, I am anxious for school to start.

It Was A Lovely Luncheon

Meet my friend Maria. Yesterday was her birthday. I got a phone call last week "We are having lunch for Maria's birthday on Tuesday.Meet at Plums at Noon." Plums is somewhere in a little nearby village and I have never eaten there. We gathered today and celebrated and made plans to get together again. Maria had some orange cake for dessert and blew out her birthday candle and her wish was "That we all get together here next year and celebrate again." Perfect.
This is Joann and Maria and Laura. Joann had a baby and six days later had a major heart attack that went untreated for hours at the hospital. The doctors on call did not treat her for the heart attack, even though all tests showed she was having one. After all, she is a tiny, healthy woman in her early 30's. For a while after this she was on the heart transplant list, but has since become healthy enough to be taken off. She has to live a quiet stress free life, and has some good friends who help her accomplish this. Her son is now 4 and she is our miracle.
Odette came a little late and, as usual, was moving 100 miles a minute so I could not get her to slow down for a good photo. She and Maria are dentists.

It was so nice to be out and about and sit for hours at lunch and catch up. My mom took the kids to the Children's Museum. They want to go to the Zoo, but it is 90 degrees out and not likely to happen until it is much cooler. Like October.

Tomorrow the kids will be all mine, all day, again. I need to go and craft now, while the kids are not sitting next to and talking to me.

It's A Good Day

I was just about to post about what a great day it was, I woke up and turned on the TV and saw Anderson Cooper, right there on Regis and Kelly, filling in for Regis. I do love me some Anderson! I recently read one of his books, "Dispatches from the Edge", and I highly recommend it. I also recently read "Still Me" by Christopher Reeve and it was a yarnfest about a self centered man and his priveledged upbringing. Those of you who know of Anderson know he had a priveledged upbringing as well, but he writes about it and understands it so much better than the late Mr. Reeve.

We were invited to my friend Steph's house last night. It was a lot of fun, and a big surprise as we rarely get invited out. And when we get invited out, Noah manages to complain or somehow manage to ruin the evening for us, so we rarely get out. Steph has a child Noah's age and they get along well, and that is the only way we got to have any fun last night. The kids all occcupied each other without whining for parental attention.

I made a Steph a little basket of goodies, since we were going to grill S'Mores on their fire pit. I used the Riley Moose Campfire stamp (from Hanna Stamps of course) for the image and added some decoration to a bucket I found on a clearance table. I also added Hanna's "Hey Girlfriend" stamp from the sentiment set. I really do love this moose! The camfire moose must be my favorite as I use it more than any other of the moose stamps, though I adore them all.

You can see from the top photo that she clearly enjoyed her little gift!

The news today is that the world's oldest blogger has died. Since he/she was apparently old I will have to say that the presence of children in his/her home had nothing to do with the death. My kids? Well, if one could truly be pecked to death by ducks, that's what the little rascals are doing to me on a daily basis this summer, sucking the life right out of me. I guess I can stop hoping that their grandparents will want them for a weekend or an overnighter. Looks like it's not gonna happen. No surprise there, that's for sure.

I Don't Know What I Was Thinking

Every Friday Hanna Stamps hosts a challnge and Design Team members are encouraged to play along. We announce the challenge and encourage others to post cards. This is my week to host the challenge and I told everyone what my challenge would be weeks ago. My challenge is to use acetate (see through plastic) on your card. I made a card from acetate and added the Riley Moose Pirate image. The martini glasses in the background are from the Anthony collection. This was a challenge for me as I generally never touch this stuff, despite having a box full of it.

The kids are out of the house and I was looking forward to having a quiet and lazy morning. I awoke to a phone call from Scott asking me to come and get him as he had a flat tire. It took me a minute to realize he was on his bicycle. I started to leave the house in my pajamas, then thought that it really was not an emergency so I came back in and put on clothes.

The good news is that I am up and ready and able to face the day!

Boards and Beams

Papertrey Ink has a new set called Boards and Beams and I found it irresistable. It has two different houses in the set and added items like fences, a tree, some quotes...all you need for a sweet card. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone moving. The sayings in the set are geared more for people on the move rather than moving baked goods from my house to a neighbor's house.

The quote I used says " A home is made of boards and beams, a house is made of love and dreams." I didn't get a clear image from the tree stamp and I had nvested too much already to the card to discard it. So, I added the quote to help cover up my mistake.

Noah is spending the night at camp so I arranged for Seth to have a sleepover with a friend. This means Scott and I can have a date night. Too bad there are not any really good "must see" movies out right now. At least not in my opinion. I hope we go out for a nice dinner. Being boring people we'll probably just come home and watch some more of the LOST series we are renting. We are starting Season 2's DVD's now.

No News Wednesday

I hate to go too long without posting, but after Monday's Craft Bonanza, I am left with little else to show you. I thought I'd post a Fourth Of July picture for your amusement. We went to our local little town for their festival and fireworks display. The kids collected all kinds of free stuff and wanted a photo with this dog. he was there advertising an overnight kennel. I felt bad for whoever was in the costume. I know they had to be hot in the heat, and to have kids grabbing anf hugging on you all day? No thanks.

I did learn that this kennel has coyote rollers. I had never heard of them before. They are a bar that rolls and attaches on top of your fence. That way, whenever something tries to jump in or out, the bars roll and the jumper is thwarted. Since our dog jumps our four foot fence at will, I may need to check these out. I found the internet site, but pricing is not listed. Do they know who they are messing with? Heck, I could probably make my own with reinforced paper towel tubes and dowel rods. The nerve of them to make me ask for pricing info and collect my personal data!

One child is at day camp and another is at a friends house so I am doing laundry while waiting for a stamp order to arrive in the mail. Maybe I'll have something to show off tomorrow.

Monday Round Up

Scott took my bored kids to Conner Prairie yesterday, a local living history museum. It is just a few miles from our house so we have a membership. While they were gone I got in some crafting time. I made a little goody bag for a friend (above) using a coffee type bag that I got at a local paper products store. I stamped it with the Hanna Stamps' Pirate. I just love the pirate! I did not know what kind of stamp my friend would like, so I was able to use what I like.

And this is the gift bag I made for my neighbor who has a birthday today. It has matching cards inside and a little tic tac holder I decorated.

I babysat three neighbor kids today and we made tiles with photos on them. None of these four kids is mine, they are all neighbor kids. I used tumbled tiles from Lowe's and photocopied photos and used mod podge to apply the pictures to the tiles. I had little tile holders in my utility room, so I sent them home with something the tiles could sit on, too.

We also made soap today. The kids added little toy frogs and reptiles and whatever I had in my stash of plastic toys. We dyed the soap blue and red for the finished products. The mom loved the tiles, but the kids loved the soaps.

This is Seth and his beloved Mumbles in their matching t shirts that we made last week with iron ons. They also have matching yellow shirts with moose on them. From now on we will have to stick to the plain white t shirts. I did not like the added step of having to dye a onesie yellow so Seth and Mumbles would have matching colors.

Noah was at camp most of the day so he missed most of the fun. Really, it was fine because he would rather play than craft any day.

I Just Can't Stop Doodling

I made this for another Hanna Stamps Challenge. This challenge is to use the Bridal set for a non Bridal purpose. I used a stamp from Verses for the sentiment and made my cake into a birthday cake.

I have a neighbor whose birthday is Monday, so I think I'll give the card to her. Along with a gift of...what else?! A pack of cards! Oh, yes, you know it's true!

Challenge of the Week

The challenge on the Hanna Stamps forum this week is to make a card in the spirit of Yankee Doodle Dandy, and add swirls, doodles, flourishes, etc.... I doodled and swirled to my hearts content, but did not make any part of this card red, white, or blue, like most of the other challenge participants did. I am either unique or daft, I can't decide which. I used lots of ink colors, Close to Cocoa, Wild Wasabi, and Black. The paper is Bazzill and a DCWV paper pack.

It is a lazy Fourth here. I slept too long and woke up with a headache. I took excedrin but it hasn't quite kicked in. Hope you fellow Americans have a good holiday weekend and thet the rest of you don't work too hard.

Looking For Work

I made this fake flyer to show how great the upcoming Hanna Stamps set, Lazy Days, is. The set features a lady lounging in a hammock. But it also has accessory stamps in the set, and I used the lawnmower to highlight my sons' need for summer income. (Don't worry, the info posted on this page is made up.) I love that the lawnmower is an earth friendly push mower. I can't recall who made the paper, as it has been in my stash a very long time.

Splitcoast is having a Hanna Stamps release Party tonight, starting at 9 PM if you want to stop by and chat. The new sets will probably be shown off and released around 11:30 PM.

For those of you who are local, I took the kids to a place called the Bounce Zone today. We needed to do something to burn energy on this rainy day. They jumped indoors on bouncy things and in bounce houses. The cost os $6.50 for 1.5 hours. They loved it! While they jumped and knocked themselves out I sat and read quietly at a table. Sweet.

New Release and Movie Reviews

This card is made entirely with a new set coming out from Hanna Stamps tomorrow, called "Bridal." It's a fairly simple card, I used nestabilities and copics. Pretty simple but very pretty. Hanna Stamps will be hosting a Release Party on the Splitcoast Forum tomorrow night if you want to see all the new releases as soon as possible.

To fight boredom, which seems never ending on the behalf of Noah, we have seen some movies recently so I thought I would tell you about them.

First up was "Get Smart". It has Anne Hathaway, Steve Carrell and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. An all star cast for a summer movie, in my opinion. Yet I thought the movie stunk. It was bit long and not very funny. It had a bit too much bad language that I would have rather my oldest son not hear. He tends to notice bad behavior and work it into his everyday life. It also had a lot more violence than I expected. With the language and violence, you could at least hope it is well rounded by a bit of nudity. I mean, C'mon, is their a finer specimen of man than The Rock?! (NO!) And not once did he even do so much as to take his shrt off. I wanted my money back.

We also saw "Wall E". I suppose it is a great satirical look at human life and the obesity and wastefulness and over use of electronics that we possess today. But I nearly fell asleep and my oldest son did sleep through a lot of it. The kids said they liked both movies, while I was not impressed by either of them.

Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend

Baseball diamonds, of course! I made the saying for this card on my computer and punched it out with the handy dandy circle punches and scallop punch from Stampin Up. The card is made with Hanna Stamps' new set, Baseball. You know you love it.

Scott plays church softball all summer. I used to go cheer him on, but now I just send the kids. If I can get one of them out of the house that means no sibling fights for about three blissful hours. You know I love that!

Noah is in my crafting stuff at this moment and we are waiting for Seth to get ready so we can go see the movie "Get Smart." It should be full of stupid humor for my grade school age kids. Let me tell you, Noah in my craft stuff makes me hugely annoyed. He puts nothing away and is not nearly as careful as his little brother. I gotta go hover over him and make sure he doesn't destroy my favorite toys.