Pictures!

Yes, you asked for some, and here they are. Last weekend we went on a little adventure to a Rally Car Race (I think that's what it is called) and even though these aren't pictures of that (sorry!) I did take the camera along and snapped a ton of pictures of other things as well. (I'll get some pictures of the race stuff later-we missed the actual race but got to see a lot of the vehicles upclose at the checkin point). Anyway, here ar some pictures of things near where we live. First up, Our house! Yes, it's orangey-peach and NO, it's not that pretty-yet! I still have to add all the "homey" touches to the outside such as plants in the windows and a little patio set outside the front window. That front window has it's shade down but it opens up to the living room. The door is big, green and heavy-very secure. We just have the carport-no garage-but there is a plastic shed. See it on the left? We actually moved it to the backyard so you don't see it when you drive up. The two upstairs windows that you see are our bedroom on the right and the master bath on the left. Not much to look at, but it's home. Next up is a cute Italian home with blue shutters and doors:

A lot of the homes here have colored shutters or doors and well manicured gardens with fountains and/or statues. And most all of them have major gates and fences around their property. Here is a picture of a scary little road under a little bridge that we have to go under to get to Area 1 of the base (where the school and Parent co-op are) when you are coming from Area F (where the flightline and BX/Commissary are).

Two cars barely fit under that bridge at a time and on teh other side are two turns that are both blind, as well as a 3 road intersection on this side... so it can get a little hairy driving under there! Here's a picture of a yummy little take-out pizzeria in a tiny town just outside of Area 1:

It was closed for Ciesta when we drove by. It's owned by a Sicilian family that speak no English, but they make a YUMMY pizza! Remember the scary bridge/road I just showed you? Well, this is the road you end up on after going under the bridge, and this house sticks out into the road:

This is a TINY two-lane road and everytime we pass this house I think of a little old lady sitting in her little alcove there (see the little square window with flowers in it? That alcove) sipping her tea, and a car coming CRASHING through the wall and hitting her! Yes, I think that may happen. The roads are NARROW! LOL! Well, that's all the pictures for this post. I will get more up later. I need to get my To-Do list done for today and Angel just nodded off for her nap so now's the time for me to complete most of my list. I hpe you all have a Fabulous Friday and hopefully I'll get a chance to post again later, or tomorrow.

Until then, be blessed!

P.S. I forgot to mention, I updated my blog list over on the right sidebar. Those are the blogs I try to check daily and there is some AWESOME inspiration to be had from them. If you have the time, grab a drink and hop over to a few of them. A few of them are having some delicious blog candy giveaways and others have GREAT tutorials on Copic marker coloring. If you want specifis, just leave a comment and ask and I'll let you know which is which.

When You're Strange...

Faces Come Out In the rain, when you're strange. No one remembers your name... Ok, I'll stop. Those are the lyrics to one of my favorite songs by the Doors. So what does this have to do with my post? Club Anya is having another challenge. It's the Rockin' Rebel challenge! The challenge is to make your favorite Rockstar out of an Ian or Anya image. I LOVE the Doors, so I made Jim Morrison! Here he is: I really love the way this turned out. I added some hair to Dress Me Ian, cut off his arms and his body below the waist, drew two arms then cut them out and glued them onto "Jim", filled in his lips just enough to get Jim's look, and drew in the necklace. I colored his hair with my Kohinoor colored pencils and his body with my grey copic marker. Since the original picture of Jim was black and white, I decided this card needed to be in black and white (and grey). The "doors" word was done with some punches and fancy cutting on my part. ;) I had a ton of fun with this challenge, but I didn't want to stop with The Lizard King, so I also made a Cher card! Here it is:

I used Dress Up Anya, masked off her underwear and stamped her. Then drew in the outfit and added the blingy belt. The line across her legs is actually the cord from her mic that I drew in her hand. I actually really like the song "If I Could Turn Back Time" and her outfit from the video was quite the phenomenom at the time so that's the one I chose to dress her in. Also, my favorite line from that song is perfect for a card! The outside says "If I could reach the stars..." and the inside says:

"...I'd give them all to you!!!" I used the yummy DP from SEI's Chocolat paper pack and some other papers that were scraps. The bling is actually selfstick rhinestones for a cell phone and I used my Stampin' Up! punches for the stars. What do you all think? Do you think I have a chance of winning the "Rockin' Rebel" contest? I actually have a few more cards in mind and Andrew made a special request for one rockstar, so you may be seeing more to come! If you want to see all the fabulous entries for the contest click HERE and you'll go to the Gallery for all the entries. Some of the first entries are actually from the Design Team (thank goodness) and they are all awesome. I'm particularly fond of the David Bowie one that Traci (the Wicked Pixie) did! Ok, signing off for now. Next post should be tomorrow. I have a lot to tell you about from this past weekend!

Until next post, be blessed.

No Tour Today...

But I do have a couple pictures for you! I made a couple videos of a "tour of the house" but I can not get them to load onto the internet. I tried, I really, really did. Hopefully I can figure it out tomorrow. Any tips would be greatly appreciated! In the meantime, here are a couple pictures. This first one is of abeautiul tree blooming behind our house.
The pink blooms are so beautiful in real life. Now, just for the fun of it, here's a picture of Angel when she woke up from her nap yesterday:

LOL! Don't you just love the hair and expression on her face?!? She cracked me up when she woke up because she was in a fantastic mood even though she looked like she had been through a hurricane! Well I hope you enjoyed this brief post today, until next post, be blessed!

I owe you a post

But it is not going to happen tonight. It's already 10pm here and I'm super tired. Good news is that I've had a productive day, bad news, no blog post. Today I rediscovered my love for writing, reminisced about decades past, and got the last of my boxes emptied. I also remembered that my camera can take videos of things, not just pictures... so look for a tour of the house soon! I know I promised some pics of Italy (I didn't forget Mel) but I plan on doing better with a guided tour of our interesting Italian home very soon. I just need to film it and figure out how to post it. Want some cool news? Angel is WALKING!!! YUP! Took almost 10 steps all on her own! She still isn't brave enough to just get up and walk somewhere, but she'll do it if we stand her up and ask her to come to us. I had a cool video of that, but David accidently erased it when he was trying to watch it on the camera. I'll do another video and post it for you all to see. I hope your Thursday is a great one, see you tomorrow.
Until next post, be blessed!

Hatter the Leprechaun

Hi Everyone! So this is gonna be a quick post. Angel Baby's sleepy and wants to cuddle so she's pulling my hair and trying to give me kisses! Yesterday was St. Patty's day, and even though I forgot until I read a St. Patty's day blog post, I did manage to get some stamping time and get the kids some little treat tins made. I used The Greeting Farm's Hatter stamp from the Wonderland stamp set and colored his outfit green to make him into a Leprechaun! Here's a pic of the three tins I made: They are all pretty much the same only I used different colors of twine and a few different buttons on them. I used scrap green paper to cover just the tops of the tins, added a little DP from Making Memories (I think) and the buttons are a mixture of SU!, Wal-mart, and stolen buttons from my mom, heeheehee! Of course I colored Hatter with my Copics. Here's an upclose of Ashton's tin:

I put some Ritter Sport mini chocolates in there with some green M&M's and the kids LOVED them! It only took me about an hour to make all three tins which is relatively quick for me. What did you all do for St. Patrick's day? Any "green" traditions? I forgot to wear green, so Andrew pinched me! So I just used one of my Copic markers and swiped a green mark on the back of my hand, lol! Well, I hope you all have a Wonderful Wednesday and leave me a comment to let me know you stopped by!

OH! P.S. As I've been cleaning and organizing the house, I'm finding a ton of books that I've read but don't really care to read again. (I love to read, that's my second favorite hobby next to cardmaking I think). So, is anyone interested in a little Book Blog Candy? Or maybe a Book Swap? Hm, maybe I'll just list a few here, and I'll send them to whoever wants them first? Let me know what you think. If no one is interested at all, I'll probably end up keeping them, lol!

Until next post, be blessed!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hey there readers! Sorry I didn't get a chance to post yesterday, things have been busy around here. It's a good thing I had Friday's post predone, because on Friday we got our household goods! Here's a picture of the trucks dropping off our stuff as seen from inside our front door: It was fun finding all our old treasures. Here's a picture of Ashton wearing his Daddy's riding gear:

And here is David, Andrew and Angel rediscovering some old treasures:

I think that box was full of movies and video games. The house slowly filled up with our boxes and furniture as you can see in the photo below:

We just enjoyed seeing all our stuff finally get to us. Angel decided to lounge on top of one of David's speakers that was on the couch:

Unfortunately, after the movers left and we started unpacking all our boxes, we discoverd many many things that were missing. We think maybe the movers didn't open up one of our crates (there were two trucks as you saw in the first photo, but they only opened a few crates from each truck), and a bunch of our stuff is still in a crate somewhere. Some of the missing items include most of my kitchen supplies including baking dishes, utensils, my favorite coffee mugs and wine glasses that were a gift from Julie; also most of our linens including our comforter that matches our bedroom curtains (but we got the curtains!); A lot of David's guitar stuff including an expensive pedal, tube screamer and guitar cords; and I know there is more. I need to go through the inventory list and file a claim. Maybe they'll magically find our missing stuff and bring it by sometime. Yeah, right! Well, needless to say, I haven't had ANY stamping time. I've been organizing, unpacking, and moving furniture. Our house is slowly coming together. I still need to pick up some special nails to hang our pictures because our walls are concrete (or plaster, or something hard to nail into) and we're still waiting on the rest of our entertainment center to be delivered. We ordered that a few weeks ago from the BX. I will get more pics of Italy posted soon (I promise Mel!) but until next post, be blessed!

Hatter and Rockstar

It's Friday! Woohoo! I am actually posting this early since the boys don't have school on Friday-Teacher work day. This way I can schedule this post to show up on Friday, but I can take the whole day to keep them occupied. I think we'll take David to work in the morning, come home and relax for a couple hours, meet David for lunch at Markos (DELISH gyros, OMG!) and then hang out at the skate/bike park until David gets off work. I think the kids will like that, and if the weather stays nice we'll all enjoy ourselves. Well, speaking of the boys, Ashton has been having a few typical "issues" with his responsibilities. He just refuses to do what needs to be done! Forget teeth brushing, hair combing, following directions and behaving! If it's something that a typical 5 year old needs to be responsible with, he will NOT do it. And I thought it was just at home... NOPE! Apparently he is having problems at school with getting his work done in a timely manner, getting up and sauntering over to his friends for a little chit chat, and just plain obeying the rules. I think it has a lot to do with adjsting to a new place and growing into his own independance. Well, I wanted to let him know that I was thinking of him and that I know he can do his best at home and at school, so I made him a little ticket: Ashton absolutely loves collecting things; especially little piecesof paper like tickets. I knew he would like this, so I stamped out my new Mad Hatter stamp from TGF and colored him with my watercolor pencils and OMS. I glued it onto some paper (Rockstar pack from DCWV) and cut the corner to look like a ticket. He liked it and will be keeping it in his backpack for a little reminder at school whenever he needs to start following the rules.

On another note, TGF is having another Case of the Curious Card Challenge! I participated in the first one (remember my Sumo card?) and had so much fun so I had to participate in this one too! The card we had to CASE is from GabbyYou can see her card HERE. I pretty much just made a female version of her card, afterall it is a CASE challenge! (Copy And Share with Everyone). And if that wasn't cool enough, Kristina Werner's Color challenge for this week is Black, Gray and White; so my card qualifies for that one too! Score!!! I've been wanting to participate in Kristina's color challenge for awhile now but I never seem to get it done on time. My handmade flower card (a couple days ago) qualified for her last challenge, but I didn't get it uploaded in time. Oh well. Here's another pic of the card. The first pic is better, but this second pic shows the glitter on her headband and dress.
I think it turned out pretty good, and hopefully Gabby thinks so too so I can win a stamp set! LOL! And double score if Kristina picks me as one of her top cards for her Color Roundup!!! I'll keep you all posted.
Well, my projects and pictures are winding down, so I think I'm going to take the weekend off from blogging. David is taking a friend of ours to the airport in Venice on Saturday, but since the five of us and our friend won't all fit in the truck, I'm going to miss out on a trip to Venice, POO! Maybe we'll still have an exciting weekend. Come back on Monday and I'll let you know what we did (hopefully there will be something worth blogging about, lol.).
Until next week, be blessed!

Rockstar Anya!

Hello! How are you all today? Here in Italy we've had some gray days, some sunny days, and some rainy days. Yesterday was nice, sunny, and not too chilly. Let's hope today is the same! Well, while blog surfing the other day, I came across THIS adorable card by Elena. She has some great cards, I love her coloring, and she is so talented! You should go check out her blog The Red Haired Girl; great stuff! Anyway, when I saw the adorable Deer card, I wanted to CASE it and use the layout for some Rockstar Anya cards. Here's my Red Rockstar: I also just got my Stampin' Up! order in last Friday and it had the Rock Star stamp in it. I got the stamp set just because I knew it would work with my Rockstar Anya's. Here's a green Rockstar:

I used the Rockstar Paper from DCWV on both of these cards. I thought this green card needed a little something else to it, so I poked holes through the guitar pickups and threaded some twine in them. I know that in real life guitar strings don't go through the pickups, and that any guitar with just three strings is missing a few, but for the purpose of the card it worked (I think I know a little too much about guitars, because of DH). Also, if you look closely, you'll notice that both my Rockstars are not playing guitars, they're playing basses! LOL! (It's a secret wish of mine to be able to play the bass to my husband's guitar melodies... ah, someday). Here's a closeup of Green Rockstar and the twine:

I had a total blast making these cards, and they really came together quite easily with the inspiration from Elena, the Rockstar paper, and Rockstar Anya of course. I think Rockstar Anya is my new favorite Anya! I have another card to show you using her tomorrow.

Until then, be blessed!

Random Kid Pics

It's Wednesday! Woohoo! Almost done with another week! Can you tell I'm excited? By the end of this week we're hoping to have a motorcycle for David (no more sharing one vehicle!:D), we will be one week closer to getting our household goods (Yea, comfy mattress!), it's payday at the end of the week, and we should have our tax return too! So, lets get this week over with already, yeah? LOL! As promised, here are a bunch of random pictures of the kids. I promise to get pictures of the house posted, but right now the house is still ugly with all the borrowed furniture the AF gave us, and there is nothing on the walls... in other words, not photograph worthy. Here's a pic of the three monstros, uh, I mean kids, eating afterschool snack. See how Angel's sitting in a chair like a big girl? She thought that was the coolest thing!
Here's Angel in her new highchair:

She loves it, thank goodness. Here are Ashton and Angel eating Girl Scout cookies. Angel is trying to steal Ashton's cookies:

Here she is trying again; Ashton made sure she didn't get any:

Here's Ashton hanging out across the street with some neighbor kids: (yes, they are all girls!)

The ice cream truck comes by our neighborhood now. They sell Gelato. Angel LOVES the chocolate gelato!

Oh Yeah, that's yummy stuff!

Andrew, Ashton and Angel: (yes, there is a stuffed animal on Ashton's head)

Here is Andrew in his room. He wouldn't take his eyes off the video game, but at least he smiled:

And last but not least, Ashton and Angel playing together at the foot of the stairs:

That's it for today folks! Stop by tomorrow to see my Rockstars!

Until next post, be blessed!

A couple flower cards

Happy Tuesday! Today's post is going to be short since the boys will be home from school any minute. Today I have two flower cards to show you, tomorrow I have some random pics of the kiddos, and Thursday I have some RockStar's waiting to make their appearance! Here's the first flower card: I made this flower a little bit ago and wanted to use it on a card. Well, it's a bit too big to use as an embellishment, so I made it the center of attention instead. Next up, I participated in Club Anya's 2nd sketch challenge:

I thought Princess Anya would look gorgeous as a Flower Queen, so that's what I did with her. I used the roses from GKD's A Year of Flowers stamp set, colored them with my copics, and postioned them so that Flower Queen Anya was standing among them. The flower bling on her wand and crown are buttons from Wal-mart. I better get out the door to meet the boys' bus. Come back tomorrow for some silly pics of the kids!

Until next post, be blessed!

My Big Project!

Hey there! How are you all on this fine Monday? Have you adjusted to the Daylight Savings Time change yet? I was wondering how all that worked here in Italy and I found out that we don't change our clocks until the last Sunday of March. I guess that makes sense since we are on a different part of the planet... Anyway, remember the big project I was working on but I had to wait on a couple orders to come in to finish it? Well, BOTH orders came in on Friday, and I finished my project! First off, let me show you the card that inspired my card: My Mom sent this Valentine's Day card to Angel and I thought, "Hey, I can make something like that!" Here is the front on my card:

I used Imaginesce papers and cut out the tree, carriage, castle, and "Royalty" word then stuck them back over the images with pop dots to make them dimensional. At first I was going to put another panel over the patterened paper with a stamped image on it, but I loved the paper just as it was and didn't want to hide any of it. I stamped "once upon a time..." from my new Stampin' Up! stamp set along the bottom of the card front in Ballet Blue ink so it wouldn't stand out too much. The outside of the card came out very pretty, but I didn't want it to be too impressive because the inside is supposed to be the main focus of the card! Here it is:

What do you think? I love how it turned out, and I have plans for a lot more pop-out scene cards! TGF is coming out with some designer papers that coordinate with their stamps, and they are perfect for pop-out scenes like this! I used a lot more Imaginesce papers inside the card, along with some blue patterned paper I had in my scrap bin for the sky. I think it's Daisy Dee's paper but I'm not sure. The Castle, Carriage, Tree and Frog are all Imaginesce stamps that I stamped on white cardstock, colored and cut out to put into the scene. Oh, wait, the frog was actually stamped onto some green polka dot paper (K&Co paper) and colored with a green copic marker, then layered onto white cardstock for weight. Here's a closer pic of the inside, left:

The Unicorn is a digital image from TGF that I printed out and colored then cut it out and stuck it on the card with dimensionals. I wanted the Unicorn to look like it was closer than the castle. Here is a close pic of the inside, right:

It's hard to see in the pics, but I also stamped "Fairy Tales do come true" from the Stampin' Up! stamp set in the center of the inside of the card, in green ink. I wanted it to be a subtle sentiment, since this card is really just for decoration for my Angel Baby's room. Princess Anya is the other stamp I was waiting on to finish this card. Here is a close-up of her (since she is the star of the card!):

I paper pieced her dress with the Imaginesce papers, but the rest is colored with my copics. I stamped her twice and colored the crown and star on the wand and glued just those two items to the main image so they would have more depth to them. I really love this image and I already have another one waiting to be added to a card. I forsee using Princess Anya A LOT in the future! And just for the fun of it, here's a picture of my little princess after a yummy dinner:

See the noodle on her forehead? The silly girl!
Well, I hope you enjoyed my post today. Until next post, be blessed!

A couple pics and a trip to the ER

Hello again! I've got quite the chatter bug lately with all these posts, don't I? Some of you know that I applied to be on the design team for The Greeting Farm. I didn't make it, this time, but I'm going to try again in a couple months. I love that company and their images, and I have so much fun using their products. You may have already seen some of these, but here are the projects I submitted in my application for the Design Team.
Heaven Sent Unicorn frame: Birthday Wishes Dorothy Anya:

For You Anya and Ian:

Brotherly Love:

Note: the rest of this post is not stamping related, so if you don't want to read it, just skip down and leave me a comment, k? ;)

Well, living in a different country has its ups and downs. I love experiencing the different culture and seeing all the historical aspects to the country, but there are some things about living here that I just wish were more "American". Sunday night, the whole family decided we needed to go shopping on base at the Base Exchange. Our shopping trip was cut short because we had to take our Angel baby to the ER. While we were shopping at the BX, Angel was standing in the basket of the cart and flipped right out of it! She reached for something on a shelf, and did a complete flip out of the cart, onto the floor, and landed flat on her back. (let me get sidetracked here and say that I was RIGHT there. I was standing with my hands on the cart handle and Angel is just barely tall enough to have the top of her belly touch the top of the cart basket. Needless to say, she will never stand in the cart again. OK, back to the story.) She didn't land on her head, but her head did bump a little when she landed. Because the fall was more than Angel's height, the nurse advice line advised us to take her to the ER for a checkup just in case. She acted a little out of it for about 10 minutes, but she was crying and in shock. Then, 15 minutes afterward, she was fine, playing and laughing with the boys. She didn't pass out, or throw up, or get dizzy or have problems focusing her eyes, so I knew she didn't have a concussion. But we took her anyway. It was a scary place! The hospital in Pordenone that we use for emergencies and anything our base clinic can not do is so freaking old! I went into the ER area (straight out of a horror movie! There were disoriented people milling about, burnt out light bulbs, tons of people in huge wheelchairs just sitting around, and no one spoke English!) and they sent me to the pediatrics floor because that is where they see kids for emergencies (unless the kid is bleeding to death or has a gash across their face or has a limb hanging off, then they see them right away at the ER). So, I found my way to the correct building (after almost walking into an Intensive Care Unit-oops!), went in, took a tiny, rickety, old elevator to the 5th floor (the floor shook indepentantly from the walls, I was afraid we weren't going to make it all the way up!), and found the Pediatric area. There was no sign in desk, so I wandered up and down the hall about three times trying to figure out where to check in. I finally had to snag a nurse running through the hall and tell her what happened. She didn't speak very good English and told me to wait right where I was. She said "Wait." I said in the waiting room? She said "QUA!" as she pointed to the spot on the floor where I was standing. I figured that meant to wait right where I was. So, I waited in the middle of the dimly lit, old, funky colored hallway until they led me into a room to fill out paperwork. I did that, they tried to put it into the computer (about SIX times) then gave up and wrote out a manual admittance paper. During that time an interpretor was sent to help me out. That was a bit of a relief, but she was in a bit of a "mood" and really just stood around the whole time. THEN, we finally went into a exam room (pepto pink painted walls, with chipping chunks of paint). Of course, then it was time for a shift change for the ONE doctor that was working there. Well I finally saw a doctor (who happened to be fluent in English, even though they had sent me an interpretor to help out-figures) and after a quick 5 minute look-over, they told me Angel was fine (DUH!). Just told me to watch her for the next 24 hours to make sure she doesn't show any signs of a concussion. Well, that was quite the experience. At least we've been through it and know what to expect for next time because with my 3kids, I know there will be a next time.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog post for today. I hope to hear from you all, and any scary/wierd ER experiences you've all had.

Until next post, be blessed!

House of Mental Love Bears

What the heck does that title mean? LOL! Well, House of Mental is a company that makes some awesome digital images (among other things) and The Greeting Farm sells these exclusive digital images. One of the images is of a Love Bear. I love this Love Bear! I call him "Dr. Love Bear" because of his hat and needle. I decided to make a couple little projects with him. First, I had this Planner that I won from a blog candy: It's cute but not "me" so I decided to do what I love to do and alter it with some ink and paper. This is what came about:

I have to say, I love it! I think this is one of my favorite projects. I used papers from Basic Grey's Archaic collection because I thought it looked kinda like squirmy germs under a microscope. I backed the DP with chocolate chip card stock from Stampin' Up! The title of the appointment book and the year are handwritten by me on more mustard paper and backed with more CC card stock. The main image was colored with, yes, my copics and backed with some basic grey paper. I didn't have the correct punch for the binding holes, so I just used the old cover to mark the spots on the CC card stock and used a little hole punch to make the holes. They aren't perfect, but they work perfectly! Here's a close up of my Dr. Love Bear:

Isn't he cute? Well, I couldn't resist him, so I made a card out of him as well. This time I decided that I would use "traditional" bear colors on him. I used the basic grey papers again, and kept everything pretty simple and "straight". I say "straight" because DH and I had an intensive conversation about how he thinks some cards look unproffesional because they aren't lined up correctly. I think they look "handmade" he thinks they look "kindergartener-ish". So, on this card, I made sure the mats on the card are all exactly lined up, with 1/8" or 1/16" around each side of the panels. The ribbon is pretty darn perfectly lined up too, but since it is felt, it was difficult to keep it lined up. The brads were carefully measured and the holes for them were pre-poked using a piercing template.

All in all, I took extra time and made sure things were lined up just right. Yes, the card met with my DH's approval! LOL! If you're a "Lilavois" or if you know the "Lilavois", then you know how they can be with their criticisms! LOL! It was all in good fun. Here's a closeup of my coloring on Dr. Love Bear:

NO, I did NOT use my copics! LOL! I used my Koh-n-oor pencils and OMS (odorless mineral spirits) with my blending stumps. I felt like playing with my unloved pencils and I had a lot of fun with them. I am quite inexperienced with them. They are just like watercolor pencils, only different, and woodless. It's hard to explain, but they are great. I watched a tutorial on using OMS with blending stumps, so I'm going to give it another go. What do you all think of the different coloring medium?

Until next post, be blessed!