Thursday already...

This week is going by quickly! We've been out and about somewhere every day...I need a day hanging out at home to create some more! Perhaps I'll get some time this afternoon between returning from the movie and taking Nattie to her piano lesson :) Or tonight!

This little cutie is a Memory Box stamp. Isn't she gorgeous with her necklace on? The cat charm is one I've had in my stash for a while...I think I may have picked it up at Michael's.

It's hot up here today! We're expected to get up to 85 which is about as warm as it gets here in Conifer. And that is warm enough for me! My fair British complexion can't comfortably handle anything warmer than, oh, 65 degrees! :) At least we're not down in Denver, though - it may reach 100 there!

Hey cupcake!

Isn't this image sweet? It's another one I received in the stamped image swap I participated in. I used my scalloped and regular circle Nestabilities, and the patterned paper is SEI's Chick A Dee. On top of the cupcake I used Stickles (Cotton Candy).

I have had a great day so far! The kiddos and I slept in until 9 :) Then I drove down and met Sue for lunch and we even had time to do a little shopping at Scrapbook Destination - especially since they were having a sale with 25% off everything in the store! Sue and I both picked up some fun goodies including our usual go-to's of paper and flowers :)

Nattie has a friend coming to sleep over tonight, and tomorrow I'm taking all the kiddos to see "Space Chimps". I'm not particularly excited about it, but Nattie has a "thing" for all things monkey right now, so she really wants to see it. And Jamie wants to see it because it's about space, so I'll report back tomorrow.

Have a terrific evening, everyone!

Groovy Tree Swing :)

I really like the colors on this card. The tree swing image is by A Muse, and the sentiment is from Verve Visual's "Feeling Groovy" sentiment set. The flowers are Primas and the patterned paper is by Kaiser Scrapbook (an Australian company).

Today the kids and I went shopping for their school supplies. It was quite a combined list for a 1st grader and 6th grader, but I'm happy to report that we were able to cover everything by visiting just 2 stores! Woo hoo to Target and Office Depot for making our shopping mission much shorter than I thought it would be :)

It's TCP Tuesday!

This week I'm hosting the Stamp Challenge, so pull out your TCP Stamps and make a holiday card! That's right - Christmas in July! You can use any holiday stamp, any colors, just show us something festive :) If you're uploading to Splitcoast, please use the keyword TCPTUES18 so that we can find your fabulous creations and include you in the "Holey Moley Monday" slideshow on Alma's blog. Leave a comment here with a link to your card - I can't wait to see what you come up with!

My card was made using the wreath image from the TCP "Poochie Christmas" clear set. Patterned paper is Basic Grey's "Scarlet Letter" collection, and the Stickles color on the wreaths is Platinum.

As always, be sure to check out the creations of the other DT members whose blogs are linked over on the left. Have fun!!

Paint colors

Just 3 weeks until Jamie starts 1st grade! Nattie starts a day earlier - the middle school lets the new 6th-graders have the school to themselves for the day so that they can get used to their new surroundings. Isn't that a great idea?

We had a quiet day on Saturday and I got a bunch of cards made/started (see posts below). Iain grilled some tasty chicken which we had with a salad for dinner, and we watched a movie with the kiddos. On Sunday we went out to Home Depot and picked up paint for Nattie's room and the family room. Nattie picked out her own color: "Orange Peel"...I think we'll need sunglasses to enter her room :) For the family room we've chosen "Pepper Spice". I'll be sure to post photos once we get started in a couple of weeks!

Simply the Best!

This kitty image from Hero Arts is lots of fun to color with all those stripes! I colored him (he just seems like a boy!) to match the patterned paper by My Mind's Eye. I also stamped him twice to "pop" the image off the front of the card and add some dimension. The sentiment "Simply the best" is from the "Feeling Groovy" set newly released by Verve Visual. You can see the whole set here. Thanks for stopping by!

Back to the cards!

Hi everyone, I had so much fun this weekend getting back to my craft room and doing some stamping. I was working with new releases that are coming up for a couple of companies - you are going to LOVE them! I also worked with some images that I received in a stamped image swap on Splitcoast Stampers.

One of the cards I made was this Peppermint card. The image is one of the My Favorite Things Presents... new stamps from MFT. You can see the stamp right here.

Lava entering the ocean!

The Park Rangers told us that lava is entering the ocean outside the National Park boundaries. The State of Hawaii set up a safe viewing area that is open from 2pm to 8pm each day. So we hopped in the car and headed down to the end of Highway 130 to check it out...

As we approached the end of the highway we could see the plumes of steam rising from the ocean. When we parked the car we had to walk a mile over hardened lava just to get to the viewing site. The walk itself was an amazing sight! Other visitors told us that after sunset the scene is spectacular because you can see more of the red "glow" of the lava.

Kilauea

This was one of our favorite parts of the trip. We drove to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and learned that in March of this year there had been an explosion at the Halema'uma'u Crater. This was the first explosion at that particular location since 1982 and debris was scattered over a 75-acre area! Because of the gases being released from the newly-formed vent, we were not able to drive all around the crater. But check out the photos from the viewpoints we were able to get to...

You can read more about the recent Kilauea activity here.

South Point

We drove down the west coast of the Big Island to South Point. This is the southernmost point in the United States - pretty cool! It was very windy down there - and many of the trees had grown accordingly! We also found a bunch of hermit crabs in one of the tide pools :)

Big Sale at The Cat's Pajamas!

If you haven't noticed the blinkie over on the left, I wanted to let you know that Alma's throwing a big sale this week over at The Cat's Pajamas! Yeah! 25% off EVERYTHING on her site from July 25th - July 27th. Click HERE to check it all out!


Happy Shopping!

Pretty flowers around the hotel grounds

Shaved Ice for the kiddos :)

Here are Nattie and Jamie having a "small" (yes, this was the small size!) shaved ice on Monday afternoon in Kona :)

Our Hotel

Here are a few pics of where we stayed. We were at the Marriott in Waikoloa, which is on the northwest side of the island. The pool area was great: there was a slide and also a little sand pool for the little kiddos, so there was something for everyone. We were about a minute from the beach (check out the lava in the foreground of the beach photo!).

Happy Mail

I forgot to mention a couple of pieces of happy mail that arrived just before I left :) One was a set of stamps that Julee added to my Verve Visual order as a thank you for this card I had published in "Just Cards 10" using some of Verve's stamps :)

And the other was a brand new ATC holder, courtesy of Linda (blogger, friend, and super TCP fan), who recently hosted a terrific ATC swap where all us swappers used our TCP stamps. I got some amazing pieces of art back - and thank you, Linda, for your super-sweet gift! You rock!

Well, it's time for me to hit the hay but I'll be back tomorrow with some vacation photos in between catching up on laundry, grocery shopping, Nattie's ortho appointment and her piano lesson :) Night night!

Coming home...

Nattie and I are sitting in Kona airport getting ready to board. We're flying through the night and will get back to Denver (via L.A.) around 9.30am Wednesday.

The four of us had an awesome time! We did some exploring, some shopping, and spent lots of time at the hotel pool and beach. We're ready to see our furbabies though!

Thanks for all those "happy vacation" wishes! Talk to you all soon!

TCP Tuesday :)

Through the wonders of technology I'm able to post my TCP Tuesday card! This week is the Inspiration Challenge hosted by Jen who is standing in for Carole :) Have fun with this one!

Jen's challenge is to create a card using the fabric shown at the left as inspiration. For my card I used some of the color scheme and a similar shape - and this is what I came up with :)

Gone till next week :)

Tomorrow morning (well, actually in the middle of the night!) we're heading off to the airport to fly to Hawaii! Yeah! It's kind of funny, because Nattie and I are flying with one airline and Iain and Jamie are flying with another. Iain had enough frequent flyer miles with both airlines for 2 tickets, so we're using them all up!

We're staying at the Marriott Waikoloa Beach Resort and Spa. Looking forward to the change of scenery and hanging out with Iain and the kiddos for 7 days! All that's left to do here is the last of the laundry. We took Tasha to the boarding place this afternoon and our neighbor will take care of our furbabies :)

See you in a week!

Cat Squares from Sarah

I ordered some Cat Squares from my blogging friend Sarah's Etsy shop. As you'll see from these photos, Pickle and Aspen love them!! Here's a link to her shop.

Weekend to-do list

Laundry

Take Nattie to Kohl's for a few more pairs of shorts

Squeeze in some cardmaking time - for next week's TCP Tuesday card

Hair cut and color for me; hair cut for Nattie, Iain and Jamie

More laundry

Today's card's ingredients - patterned paper: Bo Bunny; stamped image: Stampendous; sentiment stamp: A Muse. Colored with colored pencils and Gamsol.

Be Calm cards

Happy Friday, everyone! Today's cards were made with one of the new images from My Favorite Things Presents...

Patterned paper: My Mind's Eye 29th Street Collection; Flowers: Prima; Markers: Copics; Brads: Making Memories

Happy Girls

Here's a photo of Nattie and Vivian that I took outside this morning. Vivian flies back to California today and I know Nattie will be sad to see her leave. The week flew by! Yesterday Iain took them to Elitch Gardens in Denver where they rode rollercoasters and water rides all day long :)

All about your Summer :)

I found this quick summer quiz over at 3x Thursday. Copy the questions to your blog and let us all learn how your summer's going :) I've posted a photo of Nattie and Jamie from Summer 2003: Jamie was 1 and Nattie was 6; the photo was taken in La Jolla, CA. Boy, they have both grown up a lot since then!

1. What activities/events have you done so far this summer? Anything cool? The kids had a week of art camp at the start of summer which they loved! Jamie has just finished 2 weeks of swim lessons. We have also visited the Denver Museum of Science and Nature, seen "Wall-E" (very cute!), played with bubbles, played with water guns, and grilled a lot! I had my CA trip, and this week one of Nattie's friends from CA is visiting us - it was her first solo flight!

2. What's up for the second half of summer? Got any plans? Anything that you want to do that you haven't done yet? We leave for Hawaii on Tuesday for a whole week! Woo hoo! The kiddos also have one more week of art camp before the end of summer break. Then, of course there is registration/orientation for school (Nattie starts middle school this year). Apart from that I plan on letting them enjoy those last few weeks before the return to school...

3. What's the bestest thing about summer? What's the worst? The best things are simply being able to take it easy. I make a point of not scheduling too many activities for Nattie and Jamie; they need to have time to just be kids and enjoy the break: sleeping in (well, if 9am counts as sleeping in), having the occasional day in jammies, playing outside, and staying up later. The worst things are the bugs and allergies! Those bugs seem to think I am a feast in the summer! LOL!!

I look forward to reading what you've been up to!

My TCP Tuesday card for this week :)

Sorry for being a little late, but here's my card for the TCP Tuesday sketch that was posted yesterday. I made a bright and cheery Get Well card using TCP stamps - you can see the stamps here. The patterned paper is by Autumn Leaves, and I paper pieced the bowl and the spoon using the patterned paper. I also added some shading with my Copics and faux stitching with my Signo white gel pen.

The kids and I are heading out to see Wall-E this afternoon. Have a great Wednesday!

It's TCP Tuesday!

Today it is Leigh's turn to challenge us - and she has a sketch for us to use with our TCP stamps. Check out all the details on Leigh's blog right here - and I'll be back later today with my card! Have a terrific Tuesday :)

Just answering a couple of questions :)

I wanted to do a short post about a couple of questions people had about things they had seen on my cards. I hope this helps - and, of course, please post if you'd like any more information :)

The scalloped circles I use on many of my cards are some of my favorite shapes to use in cardmaking. The style really dresses up a card without too much effort. Sometimes I use the Marvy punches (Mega and Giga sizes - the pink and purple ones), and sometimes I use the Nestabilities dies in my Cuttlebug machine. Overall, I prefer the Nestabilities because there are more sizes of the die available which means that you can customize what size of circle you want to cut in relation to the stamped image. I have seen the Marvy punches in Michael's and JoAnn's, but to be honest the supply doesn't seem to be very consistent so it often depends on sheer luck as to whether or not the punches will be in stock. Here is a link to an online seller of the punches, and here's one place where you can check out the Nestabilities dies.

On one of my recent TCP Tuesday cards (I've posted it again here on the left for you to see), I used a scalloped circle and then used a plain hand punch to add punched holes around the edge. I really like the effect it made!




Another question that has come up is about my coloring materials. The images that you see colored more boldly on my cards are most likely colored with my Copic markers that I got through My Favorite Things; I also like the PrismaColor markers (PrismaColors can be picked up individually or in sets at Michael's - a great deal with a coupon!).




I also use a technique with regular colored pencils (not watercolor ones), Gamsol (a.k.a. odorless mineral spirits) and blending stumps. I found out about this technique from a tutorial by Cecilia Ross on Splitcoast Stampers - here's a link for you to check it out since it explains the process way better than I could! I love the style of this method: it's a little bolder than watercoloring, but not as intense as the markers.



Have fun! I hope this information helps!


ETA: you can find the Odorless Mineral Spirits at Michael's near the artists' paints: it is made by a brand called Mona Lisa. Happy shopping!

Happy Flowers

I made this card over the weekend and have it listed on my Etsy store. I had my first customers yesterday! Yeah!

The stamp is by Stampendous, and for extra dimension I stamped the flowers twice and added an extra layer to the petals part with pop dots. The little flower charm is one I had in my stash :) Patterned paper: Sweetwater.

It is pouring with rain here! I feel like I'm back home in Scotland :) Have a happy Monday, everyone!

Tagged!

I was tagged by Lindsay! Here we go...

Each player answers the questions themselves. At the end of the post the player then tags 4 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment letting them know that they've been tagged and ask them to read you blog. Then you let the person who tagged you know when you posted your answers.

Ten Years Ago:

That would be July 1998! Wow! I feel old... :) We were living in Vallejo, CA. Nattie was almost 2 years old! I was 26 and Iain was 32. We were youngsters - LOL! I think around this time we started trying for a second child, although it took until March 2002 for Jamie to arrive :) We had just 2 cats: Pebbles and Charlie, who are no longer with us :(

Five things on todays to-do list:

1. Finish this tag
2. Finish and put away laundry
3. Go out for dinner with my hubby! Yeah!
4. Go to the gym (done!)
5. Getting the basement and Nattie's bedroom cleaned up for her friend arriving tomorrow from CA

Snack I Enjoy:

British crisps (potato chips)

Things I would do if I was a millionaire:

Pay off our debts, family members' debts, pre-pay for the kids' tuition, buy a holiday home :)

Places I have lived:

This is a long list :)
Hitchin (nr. London), England
Henlow, England
Dalgety Bay, Scotland
Edinburgh, Scotland
San Diego, CA
Rancho Bernardo (north San Diego County), CA
Orlando, FL
Waltham, MA
Canton, MA
Richmond, CA
Vallejo, CA
Murrieta, CA and now
Conifer, CO

4 People I am tagging:
Patti
Sue
Linda
Janet

Saturday hailstones!

As I'm sitting here typing this there are big hailstones falling outside! Strange July weather! Hopefully it'll alleviate some of my allergy symptoms; I've had a rough time of it over the last couple of days. Ugh!

Today's card is made with a stamp I picked up in CA; it's by A Muse and I really enjoyed coloring it with my Copics to match the paper from My Mind's Eye (Garden Party - My Sunshine Collection). Have a great Saturday!

Happy 4th!

Have a great day, whatever you're up to!

Stamps: My Favorite Things

Butterfly

This sweet little butterfly is one of the latest releases from Queen Kat Designs. The images were designed by Lindsay, one of the DT members. Congrats, Lindsay!

For the card on the left, I used Basic Grey's "Phoebe" line. The other card is made with Bo Bunny paper - so sunny and cheerful!

This morning I'm taking Jamie to his swimming lesson - he's doing so well this week! Then, this evening after Nattie's piano lesson we're going down to Littleton to see some fireworks - yeah! I hope you have a happy 4th of July weekend - what are your plans?

Here's the Scoop...

Kim (a.k.a. "The MFT Lady") is turning 40 this weekend! HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIM! Wishing you a fabulous day filled with special treats! Enjoy!

Stamps: MFT "Here's the Scoop";
Patterned paper: American Crafts