Something to think about, REALLY think about.

I love blogs. I blog hop way (WAY) too much. But sometimes it is worth it. Tonight I read something on Ali Edwards' blog (http://www.aliedwards.typepad.com/) that really got me thinking. She always has a quote on her sidebar and this is the one that was there tonight:

Leo Buscaglia : The majority of us lead quiet, unheralded lives as we pass through this world. There will most likely be no ticker-tape parades for us, no monuments created in our honor. But that does not lessen our possible impact, for there are scores of people waiting for someone just like us to come along; people who will appreciate our compassion, our unique talents. Someone who will live a happier life merely because we took the time to share what we had to give. Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have a potential to turn a life around. It's overwhelming to consider the continuous opportunities there are to make our love felt.

Now, if you read that; not just read, but REALLY READ it; then you know what I'm talking about. It is SO true. Just today in church, Pastor Ron was talking about bringing Jesus into our daily lives. As he put it, "Into our boat". In other words, where we work and spend the majority of our days. You may not see the relevance but in my mind they totally relate, but I'm a little bit different sometimes ;p

I'm not going to get all Evangelical on you, but this quote just confirmed some things to me tonight, and I thought I'd share. I'll let you get what you get out of it...

Also, many of you who read this blog are special people to me, and knowing that you read this, or that you even think of me, well, that means a lot to me and I THANK YOU.

Have a nice night all, and Have a Happy Week. Spring Break's now over and it's back to the day to day grind tomorrow!

Just a quick post...

Because I really should be doing other things right now. I wanted to post the pics of the little Easter boxes I made for the ladies in our sign dancing group. I thought that I'd show them a little Easter happiness with some chocolate! I made them all a little different, but they all had yummy York peppermint patties and chocolate nuggets inside. If you have questions about any of the materials used to make these, just ask! I got the directions for the holders with ribbon handles from a tutorial that Cambria Turnbow did for SplitcoastStampers. Just check out Splitcoaststampers.com and you'll find it! The green basket was made by following Dawn's tutorial on her blog: Dawn's Stamping Thoughts.

I'm still alive!

Well, Hello there! Yes, I am still alive. It's been a really busy couple of weeks around here. Both the boys were on Spring Break this last week and I just couldn't get much crafting done. One of the days that I tried, the boy wanted to "do stampin stuff" too. So I let him. Whoa! Was that a mojo killer or what?!? He had a great time using my punches and experimenting with his own stamps, but I really didn't get much done. I finished up a couple little Easter things I made for my sign dancing lady friends at church, but nothing else was accomplished. I'll post pictures of those later (they are in the other computer right now). So, here are a few pictures of some little 3x3 cards I made a while ago. I used a lot of the same things on each of them, just changed it up. The designer paper is Two Scoops by Basic Grey and the stamp set in most of them in Priceless by Stampin' Up! I used Wild Wasabi and Purely Pomegranite ink on most of them too. BUT on one of them I used the head of a girafee from Wild About You. The brads are Making Memories and I don't know where all the ribbon in from (a mix of walmart brand and making memories I believe).
Well, I need to get some coffee in me because we have a yard sale starting up in about an hour. Hopefully I sell off the stamp sets I purged (something I did this week that was actually productive! ~insert gasp here~) so that I can buy some that have been on my wishlist for a while now. Speaking of Wish Lists, I used to have one on my sidebar, but I decided to change up my layout again. I saw another blog that had used Pyzam for her layout background and I tried it out. I kinda like it, but don't know if it "fits" yet. What do you all think? I had to sacrifice all my sidebar widgets, but I'll just add those back later.

Something a little different.

I was blurfing this am, and ran across this. It looked like fun so I thought I'd give it a try and share it here on my blog. If you're reading this, you should give it a try too!

SCATTERGORIES...it's harder than it looks!
*Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of thefollowing...
*They have to be real places, names, things... nothing made up!
*Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had if they have same 1st initial.
*You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

WHAT IS YOUR NAME? Angelina (Angie)
FOUR LETTER WORD: Able
VEHICLE - Accord
TV SHOW - Access Hollywood
CITY - Aiea
BOY NAME- Andrew
GIRL NAME - Abigail
OCCUPATION - Accountant
SOMETHING YOU WEAR - Abercrombie and Fitch
FOOD - Angel food cake
SOMETHING FOUND IN A BATHROOM - Apricot facial scrub (seriously, I use it)
REASON FOR BEING LATE - Asking for directions
SOMETHING YOU SHOUT - AAAGGGHHHH!!!!!

That was harder than I thought! LOL! Ok, enough procrastination. I gotta go finish some projects and exercise.

Showers of Blessings...changed!

I didn't really like how the umbrella card turned out. After looking at it in my post, then looking at it IRL again, I realized something... I spelled BLESSINGS wrong! LOL! I guess I was tired when I wrote that. So, I needed to change up the card. And I did! Here it is redone:

I added the button with DP behind it and ribbon through the holes and also stamped the flower (from retired SU! set "little layers" I think) all over the white panel of paper. I think it looks much better now and I can just write a sentiment on the inside when I'm ready to use this card. Is it better?

Showers of Blessings

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! I made this card a little while ago and you may have seen it before, but it's here for you all this St. Patty's Day. CHEERS!

And also, here is a cardthat I did for Lauren Meader's challenge. I love this little umbrella. I just wish I had a stamp with an appropriate sentiment cuz I hate my handwriting! There are no stamps on this card *gasp!* but I used SU! Whisper White cardstock, Playshop (i've been calling them papershop-oops) white linen and silver cardstock, and SU! groovy guava DP. Also used a Zig silver marker and walmart ribbon. Sorry the pic is so bad, it's not sunny enough yet to take a decent picture.

I hope you all have a great Monday!

A little creativity and a good walk.

Happy Saturday in blogland! Today was a pretty good day. We all got up bright and early and went for a walk. The walk was to benefit the American Diabetes Association. My Mom, Me, and my 3 kids all donned our red Grace Pacific ADA shirts and walked 3 miles! Technically the 2 little kids rode in the strollers, but hey, it counts! I'll probably post pics later if the people who took some email them my way. In our mad dash out the door this am we left our camera on the table. Oops. We had a really good time. There were TONS of people there (about 3000) and afterwards we had our snacks and won some prizes! The boys each won big easter baskets full of fun stuff (NO CANDY, YEA!!!) and they've been playing with it all day. They were both in contests for being the loudest, and they won! LOL! That's my boys! We also got some water bottles, stuffed animals, and sugar free chocolates (I claimed those right away)! So, today's been good so far.

I got a wonderful St. Patrick's Day card from Julie the other day! It's so great! I love how she used the shamrock stamp for a paneled background. I would have never thought of that. I the flowers bring brightness to the card and look so cheery. THANK YOU SO MUCH JULES!

I have been wanting to participate in Beate's weekend sketch challenges for months, and I finally did one! I saw her sketch and I knew I had to use my Relaxin' Riley stamp for it! I totally see myself in this Riley stamp. A chocolate cupcake and coffee, That's my cuppa tea! (or cuppa joe in this case ;p) I used some fabulous white linen papershop cardstock for the base of this card (I love it, has texture and is so thick!) and image is stamped with Stazon Jet Black on SU! Whisper White cardstock and colored with watercolor pencils and a blender pen. I can't wait to get my whole collection of Copic markers so I can color Riley with those! But right now I don't have good colors for him. I don't think a blue, green, or pink moose would work... ANYWAYS, I also used a sentiment stamp from The Angel Company, Fiskars country colors cardstock, a clear button given to me in a RAK, and I tied some brown Madeko ribbon through the holes. Next up is this little composition notebook that I altered. I made it to send out on a RAK; hope the recipient doesn't see it first, but I don't think she has my blog address so I think I'm good. The paper is Basic Gray, Two Scoops and SU! Whisper white. This time I stamped the image 3 times (twice on ww, once on papershop silver cardstock) with Brilliance ink and used my Copic Markers to color the flowers. I cut the bucket and flowers out and glued them atop the 3rd stamped image. The second picture shows a close-up of the image. Isn't that paper cool? So sparkly and thick. I love Papershop papers. I am going to HAVE to get more of their stuff when I need it.I hope you all had a very Satisfying Saturday and have a Splendid Sunday as well!

RAK's, challenges, and widgets!

Hi all! I've been wanting to put a subscribing widget onto my blog for a little while now and I finally did it! In my left panel you'll see a feedblitz subscriber thingy. Just type in your address, click the button, then confirm from your email account and you'll get email updates whenever I post to my blog! That way you won't have to worry about missing anything, or checking my blog several times just to see I haven't posted! I hope you ALL take advantage of it! Also, I decided to change up the look of my blog a little for Spring. What do you all think?

Well, I've been a bad RAKer lately. I haven't posted some GREAT RAKs I've received, so here they are:

This first one is from my fabulous friend Julie. She knows I like Tink, so she made me this card! I can't believe I didn't post this sooner. I guess I've just been enjoying it sitting on my little phone table too much! THANKS JULES!!!

This one is from Miss Lillian Young Friday (I love her name!). It was sent to me with 2 adorable Studio G clear stamp sets for Jen's February RAK. THANKS LILLIAN! You can check out her blog here: http://www.creativefxbylil.blogspot.com/

This next one is a Thank You from Debbie Riches down in Texas. It was her birthday last month and I sent her a birthday RAK so this is what I got in return. How cool is this card?! The front looks like the Texas flag, and inside there are Texas punch-outs with the flag colors behind them. It is so neat! THANKS DEBBIE!And this lovely RAK collection is from Miss Dottie K. She RAKed me for Jen's March RAK. The tallest card isn't a card at all, it's a notebook! Perfect for my little phone table in my room. And of course the chocolate nuggets are gone already! I ate them right after shooting this pic. And as I was munching, I noticed that I forgot to add the little baggy of clear buttons she also sent me! DUH! So I took another pic of the inside of the notebook and the buttons. I love the detail on the top of the pad of paper. I'm gonna have fun making cute little spring baskets with this ribbon and those buttons. THANKS DOTTIE!

So, now that I've posted a bunch of pics of other people's work, I'll post a few of mine. I am participating in a couple challenges for Gina K.'s release party. One challenge was to use the colors taken with teal, pumpkin pie, and soft sky (or cool caribbean) in card. I only have pumpkin pie! So I improvised with some colors that I had that were as close to those SU! colors as I could get. Here it is:

What do you think? When I saw the colors together I immediately thought of this stamp set to use with it. The worms and sentiment are stamped in Pumpkin Pie. I also wanted to add the brown color just to make the other colors pop a little more. I think it turned out much better than my original plan!

I also wanted to do Beate's inspiration challenge. These two little 3x3 cards were indeed inspired by her inspiration piece. You can see it on her blog here: http://beate.blogs.splitcoaststampers.com/2008/03/11/be-inspired-challenge-4/

Can someone please teach me how to link onto words so I don't have to keep putting those long, ugly addresses for links? THANKS, I'd appreciate it! And finally, I was playing around with a little gift thingy I was making (more on that at another time) and ventured off into making these cute cards. I always need "go to" cards for different occassions that pop up and I think these will work. I made 4 of them (2 of each design) because this designer paper was just screaming at me. It was saying "USE ME! I'M BEAUTIFUL! USE ME!" So I did. And now I have NONE left! Hahaha! But I love the cards so that's ok.

Whew! What a long post! That's all for now folks. Hope you all have wonderful Wednesdays.

Let's try this again!

I'm going to try to upload a couple pics that aren't in my SCS gallery. Maybe it will work. *waiting, waiting, waiting* *still waiting...will it work???* I'm thinking it isn't going to work, so I'll upload them to my SCS gallery again. NOPE! Didn't work. These few cards are with monkeys on them too! They are some of my favorites. And the other one has a cute little birthday Chick. I learned how to make the matchbox card from Dawn's Stampin Thoughts Blog. If you haven't blurfed to her blog yet, you gotta check it out! She posts tutorials on how to make the neatest cards. I love it!
In other news...
I found out that another of my friends is getting stationed in Germany! That's 2 VIL's getting stationed just a train ride away from where we'll be stationed! (Very Important Lady-in case you were wondering, I just made it up!) In case you don't know, my DH is in the Air Force and is serving his 1 year crappy torture tour, OH! I mean hardship tour!, In Korea right now. In December we will be PCSing to Italy! I'm excited, can you tell? Italy is "our" place. The place DH and I have been dreaming and hoping for ever since we signed our lives away, I MEAN joined!, the Air Force. And now 2 of my bestest peeps will be on the European side of the world with me! So cool! Ok, gotta go upload those cards now. My Mom just called and gave me a time limit to be on my computer! She is forcing me to go outside and walk today! I'm glad though, some days I really need the kick in the pants to get to my exercises.

It's been awhile, huh?

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. Don't know where the time goes some days. I've done some crafty things, but I can't post them all yet. I need to wait until they reach their destinations so the recipients won't see them here before they get them in the mail! Well, blogger is having "issues" and not allowing me to upload pictures. So, I'll just upload them to my SCS gallery and you can go there to check them out. A link to my gallery is in the left panel. I believe it says "My SCS Gallery" or something like that. On another subject... My Big Boy wanted to try wrestling. We signed him up, jumped through hoops to make sure he was on the team, finally got a call from the coach, took him to practice... And he LOVED it! His exact words were "I get to fall down!" LOL! Well, that Love lasted all of 2 practices, then he started doubting the sport. He didn't like getting dropped onto the mat, or exercising, or learning to do flips on his head (hard to explain but they are on their foreheads and toes with bodies in the air and they have to flip over in various directions... nevermind). SOOOO, he found out that the sport wasn't for him. I think if he wants to try it in the future, and he starts out with other kids at the same level as him (almost all the other kids had been wrestling for a couple years) then he will like it a lot more. It's fine with me though. Wrestling isn't the first sport I'd like to see my boys in. Besides, baseball season is starting now and he wants to do that. The Boy (the younger one) wants to be a ninja, so we signed him up for Tae Kwon Do. He went to his first practice on Saturday and had a good time. He was so serious for some of it!!! When he had to punch and kick, he punched and kicked HARD! And when he had to bow, his back was as straight as a board! LOL! It was hilarious to watch. I'm looking forward to more of that for him, Lord knows he needs the "all about him" time. Angel baby is the only one not in anything. I guess she's happy just being our mascot for all out practices! She goes with me and my mom to our sign dancing classes on Wednesday nights and all the ladies love her. Sometimes she is a big distraction to certain women and they ignore the practice to talk with and hold her! It kinda bothers me because then practice lasts a lot longer than it should, and I don't like coming home an hour (or TWO!) late from practice every Wednesday. Grandpa has already put the boys to bed and it's wierd not even saying goodnight to them.
Well, I'm gonna go try to upload my photos into my gallery. Hop on over there and check em out for me!
Have a Marvelous Monday everyone.