Quilt

James's aunt Toots is big int quilting and asked my mother in law if I'd be interested in a quilt for Ryan. Marge said she wasn't sure but when she asked me, my answer was "OF COURSE!" I don't care how many blankets I have, there is nothing like a handmade blanket! I'm actually using one that Marge made for James years and years ago and LOVE it. Anyway, she got the quilt finished and mailed it to us; I just have to show you all! She had enough scraps left over that she even quilted a pillow sham to match!! I was so excited to get it! Literally brought tears to my eyes! She used green with multi colored dots as the background, different colors of brown and then she picked fabric that respresented "us"; baseball - I love baseball and she has a grandson that plays minor league ball that they travel around watching, dogs - this one doesn't need any explaination, sand/sand castles - they live in Florida and safari animals - those are my favorites and our living room is decorated with elephants, zebras, elephants. I love how much thought, effort and LOVE was put into this quilt!

It's beginning to look a LOT like Christmas...

James and I have now finished 'decking the halls' and putting all of our Christmas stuff out in the house. I'm so excited about it! I was out of town last year so we didn't put a tree up and the closer it got to Christmas, the more depressed I got not having a tree up. We went all out this year; 2 trees in the living room! I don't have pictures of all of the decorations but I took pics of the main things and thought I'd share. (The picture of the nativity is one of James's - he managed to get one of the blue LED lights pointed right on the baby Jesus and it made such a cool effect!) Also, James kind of likes nutcrackers...

Keegan's 18th Birthday!

Ok, so as if it wasn't hard enough for me to accept that Hannah turned 16 in October, now her brother goes and turns 18 (on December 9th)! What in the heck are these kids thinking? A better question is: Where does the time go?? I seriously remember the day that he was born! - we'd waited so long for him; those were the longest 9 months of our lives, I think! He is stubborn and bull-headed but I LOVE the person that he has become! His momma has done an excellent job! Happy Birthday, Keeg!!

I found the idea for this card in a magazine from the UK (http://www.originpublishing.co.uk/magazine.asp?id=24)called Beautiful Cards. I LOVE this magazine. I'd like to take credit for this one, but, well, I can't. Marge stepped in to make the pocket for me and before I knew it, she had the whole card finished! =) Isn't it adorable?! In case you can't tell, it is a gift card holder too! Love it! Keegan is into Japanese culture, so James and I spent time looking on the internet for the perfect "Engrish" message to put inside the card and this is what we came up with: "It is in the giving of a birthday to a year you become one year older. Happy Birthday of you!" He will love it =)

Oh Christmas wreath, Oh Christmas wreath...

I have been in the Christmas spirit since the beginning of October and can NOT wait to put the tree up! I stopped at Michael's tonight and got stuff to make a new wreath for the front door. I already have a Christmas wreath but wanted something a bit more traditional. I'm pleased with how it turned out and of course, it's still hanging on the front door!! As soon as I can convince my hubby to drag the boxes up from the basement, we will be all decked out for the holidays!!!

Archiver's Contest

I got an email from Archiver's saying that they were having a "Share Your Story" contest: Write an essay, 500 words or less, about how scrapbooking and/or memory preservation has affected or helped develop a special bond with a friend or family member in your life. Include a photo of you together with the person or people in your story. The prize is: A scrapbooking weekend for four at the Archiver’s store location of his or her choice including reserved seating in Archiver’s workroom Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, including 4 free seats at Archiver’s Friday and Saturday night ScrapMania, and one $100 Archiver’s Gift card. Total value of prize package is $220.00. All prizes are awarded "AS IS" and WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, expressed or implied, except as provided by the manufacturer. Sponsor reserves the right to substitute a prize of equal or greater value.

I thought "what the heck" and decided to write an essay and submit it. Below is my submission and the picture I sent with it.

My favorite person to scrapbook with is my wonderful Mother-in-Law, Marge. She and I have always been close but we spend lots of time scrap booking and shopping for scrap booking items together. My mother was not involved in my wedding at all. Marge was with me every step of the way helping me get it all planned. We started scrapping together after my wedding in 2004. She and I sat side by side and made my beautiful 80 page wedding scrapbook together. I didn’t have a good mom growing up and she didn’t have any daughters, so this relationship is perfect for both of us and scrap booking is a great way for us to spend time together, chat and have fun! My husband and I are in the process of adopting and, once again, she and I are beating the pavement looking for the perfect papers and embellishments for the baby book and working side by side to make this book perfect for our little boy! She was always a bit apprehensive to get involved in scrapping but now she sees how much fun it can be, ESPECIALLY when we do it together, so she has embraced it completely now! I find that most of the time, she is the yin to my yang and vice versa, as we work on pages together. When one of gets stuck, the other can look at the page and help to figure out what it needs to be completed. Very rarely do we go shopping for scrapping supplies without the other. We have just as much fun shopping as we do making the pages! We are both now also into making cards. We send pictures back and forth to each other of the cards that we make and sometimes even send them to each other. I am the luckiest girl in the world to have the “mother” I always wanted and to have this great hobby to share with her!

Wedding gift

This is what I came up with for James's cousin's wedding gift. I had NO ideas but got this one from SplitCoastStampers. It's a basic page with their wedding invitation in a floating frame. I thought it turned out ok. The verse I found to add to the page is:

One day two hearts become one in unity
With patience, love and hard work,
Forever they will be.
~Dana Roberts Clark

Short, sweet and straight to the point =)

Simple thank-you card

Yesterday, my best friend, Teri, came over to help me get the nursery organized and de-cluttered. She is so awesome! With this particular project, I don't know how I would have done it without her - I was so overwhelmed! We got it all put away and in order in about an hour. The room looks great!! I feel more relaxed about it now. She also brought us a "travel package" filled with goodies for our long trip to Texas. She is the awesomest!! Love you, Teri!

*I put the glitter on the hearts by using a glue pad (like a stamp pad only you have to put glue on the pad before you use it) - I used a rubber stamp on the glue pad and then sprinkled the image with glitter. Just like embossing only SO MUCH EASIER!! This could possibly be one of my new favorite products. The same company that makes Staz-On makes this stuff; got it at Michael's.*

Wedding card

James's cousin, Amy, is getting married on November 13th (Friday the 13th!). I LOVE fall weddings! I was actually on the ball with this one and got the card made in advance! =) That doesn't always happen. Not sure what got into me tonight but I was in the mood to do it, had an idea and decided I had to run with it. Enjoy!

Shh.....

I am doing the best I can to wait for December 18th (or so; hopefully SOONER) to get here. This was one of those things that I bought on clearance at Michael's forever ago because it was a good deal but had no idea what I was gonna do with it. On Saturday, I had the blue paint out to paint some other things I had intentionally bought for the baby's room and thought, "what the heck". So, this became a door hanger for the nursery. Gotta love stickers and Mod Podge! =)

Hannah's Birthday!

Although it's still hard for me to believe, my "baby" (aka cousin, Hannah) is turning 16 on October 25th! YIKES! She is now as old as I was when she was born! This is the card that I made for her. I'd like to say that for whatever reason, I could not get a good picture of this one. The colors don't look right and the Tinkerbell was so much cuter in person! It all looks blue but it was purple. Oh well, guess you get the idea anyway. I made the Tinkerbell with a Cuttlebug die/embossing template. SO easy to do!! She got her box from us today so I can now post this....

Baby Girl Card

Nothing fancy, my friend Chu had a kind of unexpected C-section so I had to quickly get a card together for her! =) It was fun to use some pink, though, since it seems all the stuff I've made for people with new babies has been BLUE! Congrats, Chu & Robert and big brother Josh!!

CCHS Homecoming Dance

Pictures of Hannah's sophomore year homecoming pictures. My sister-in-law filled in for me and was there to fix her hair and do makeup and, most importantly, to take pics for me to scrap!! I got these pages done yesterday - once I got the pictures printed, I could NOT wait to do the pages! Isn't she beautiful?!

An early Christmas gift for ME!

My mother-in-law ordered this and decided that I needed to get it early since it should be opened to make sure it was correct, anyway. With the help of my good friend, Sherrill, last weekend James put this up in the living room! I LOVE IT! It finishes off the wall perfectly! The picture doesn't do it much justice, but I tried. If you want to see it in person, gotta come for a visit!!! (OH and I got a GPS yesterday!) My in-laws ROCK! And no, I was not bribed to say that!! Under our name, it says "The love of family is life's greatest blessing". How true that is! Though I've come to realize that 'family' doesn't mean 'blood'. One of my favorite quotes is: "The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof." -Richard David Bach

Another Birthday card & checkbook cover

When I showed these to James, he asked "Have you made a checkbook cover for everyone you know, yet?" What a wise guy! =) They're easy to make and personalized, something I think everyone would like! These are for James's cousin and my friend, Linda. I just got the butterfly stamp set from Stampin' Up! and couldn't wait to use it and she loves cats, which was my reason for doing the cat paper for the checkbook cover (I even bought that sheet of paper especially for that, which I don't do often!)

Christmas Gift for Liz & Shawn

Marge and I made this page as a Christmas gift for my aunt and uncle. They will be married 2 years on December 1st and don't have many wedding photos so I thought this would be something nice for them to display. Liz and her friend, Sherrill, were in town this weekend and I decided to give this to her early because I have no idea what the plans are for Christmas and didn't want to risk it getting broken in the mail. Merry Christmas, in September!

Family Page

This is another old project that I recently stumbled across. It's a scrapbook page that I made for my scrapbook but then loved it so much I made the same one for my aunt, Liz and sister-in-law, Amber and framed theirs. Without even realizing it, I'm posting this on 9-11. Hard to believe that the tragedy hit America 8 years ago today! This post seems pretty fitting; dedicated to family.

End of the School Year Scrapbook

At the end of last school year, Jayne's teacher put together a cute little scrapbook for all of the kids in their classes. (I can't imagine doing this for 24 students!!) James's teacher sent home a CD with all of the pics from the year and Krista wanted the same thing done for him - I offered to take on this task. It was so much fun! The album was a spiral bound 10x7 album from Just a Buck with about 30 pages in it. I had a lot of fun doing this, reliving things that he would talk about and seeing the kids that i would see in his classroom every day that I picked him up. Thought I'd share!

FALL!

We have had the most beautiful weather here the past few days! Nice enough that we have even turned the AC off, which hardly ever happens! My allergies aren't liking it much but I am taking some OTC stuff to help out because I love the cool air! With all of this cooler weather comes thoughts of stew and bonfires and COFFEE, not just for breakfast! In honor of fall, I got out my supplies this afternoon and made a new fall wreath for the front door and an arrangement that sits on the table on the porch. I know it's not fall for like another month, but I'm a rebel!

Wow, it's been almost a month!

Things have been hectic around here and I've had no time and no motivation to accomplish anything scrap book related until this weekend! One of neighbors turned 44 and invited us to her birthday party last night. Here is her card and, you guessed it, a checkbook cover! =)

My mother-in-law's birhtday cards

I found the idea for this card on sizzix.com about 2 months ago. I had no idea what I was in for, though! Each PETAL of the flowers is a separate piece and the die only allows you to punch 4 petals at once. I also added rhinestones and pearls to the center of each of the little flowers. Very time consuming to cut them out but not as bad as I thought to put it all together. She's a scrapbooker, too, so I know she can appreciate the time and effort that went into this one. The other card is just a little 2 3/4 x 4 notecard...I found a nice sentiment online that I wanted to use and just did a simple card with a Prima paper butterfly in one of Marge's favorite colors.

Another birthday card and checkbook cover

A simple, understated 30th birthday card =) The checkbook cover was a little more work. My friend, Chu, loves an anime show called Bleach. I have NO idea what it is so I did my research and found some pictures on the internet. I don't know the characters or anything else about it so I chose one with the whole cast and thought that it turned out pretty well.

James & Jayne's birthday cards

The Haubner twins will be 5 on July 13th and are counting down the days! I've had their presents for a long time but just now got the time to work on their cards. It was nice having Hannah here - she likes working the Sizzix machine and was such a big help with these cards! This was a 2 night project because we didn't have enough steam to finish them on Monday night but we got them assembled and completed yesterday. Mark 2 more things off my list! YAY!

Helping the Haubners with scrapbook pages...

On Monday, Krista (my "boss" - hard for me to think of her that way!) asked me if would mind helping the kids each make a scrapbook page for a birthday party they were going to that night. DUH! =) She made copies of pictures of the kids with the birthday girl and wanted those on there and then gave us a ladybug stamp to use, since that was the theme of the party. Jayne had already done hers, I think she's a scrapper in the making, but decided that it needed a few extra embellishments so she worked on it with us. James is not really into crafts much though he has recently started to color a lot so he colored a picture and we cut it out to make that the main part of his page - seemed fitting. He also likes to use the craft punches, so he punched out the shapes for his page. Jenna pooped out and was asleep before we even got started on this so Jayne colored a picture and she and I put her page together. It was so much fun! I'm excited that Jayne is getting into this - she loves making cards and things for people!

Another Checkbook Cover

This one was a little harder to do and required a lot of help from my computer-savvy husband to make it happen. My friend, Kathy, owns an online business and I wanted to use her logo to make her check book cover. The logo was too big to just photo shop so it took James quite a while to get it just right. She's into south west type things and I wasn't able to find any stickers or even nice photos online that I could copy and I think this turned out better anyway.

Love notes?!

For some reason, Jayne (one of the 4 year old twins that I watch) decided that she wanted to make a picture for my husband. She worked long and hard on it at the little table in their play room and wouldn't let me even have a peek before it was finished! She also has a brother named James so she called in to me, asking how to spell "Fischer" because she wanted to put James' name on it but didn't want her brother stealing it! *laughs* She also told me to be sure to tell James to take this picture to work and hang it up, which he proudly did. He then decided to draw her a picture in return and had me bring it to her. She was so proud of it that she had to clear everything off of her white board and hang it up there (I have no idea where it is today, though). Am I passing love notes back and forth between Jayne and my husband?! =) I thought it was so cute. As you know, I just have to share:

Misty's Birthday present

Well, part of it, at least. =) I made this tote bag for her - just an iron on and a canvas tote bag from Michael's.....

A productive 4th of July

With no plans and nothing really to do (who wants to clean the house?!), Hannah and I came to the basement to do a little scrapping. To my surprise, she even jumped in and made a birthday card and a book mark for herself! I've been trying to convert her.... *laughs* My accomplishments were a birthday card for my sister in law and I made Hannah a cover for a planner for next year, since she doesn't have a check book...yet. We've had iTunes playing in the background and have had a fun girls' night! The first picture is the card that I made and then the planner cover and the other ones are Hannah's things. Oh and I forgot to mention that we've been to Archiver's since she's been in Cincinnati! She seemed to enjoy herself =)

New Baby card

One of my REALLY good friends, Kathy, is getting a Labradoodle puppy some time in the very near future (she is a rescue and had a broken leg, so Kathy can't get her until that is all taken care of). You know I'm a sucker for furbabies anyway, so I decided that I'd make her a card to have ready when she finally gets Sierra! Below is a picture of the card that I made AND a picture of Sierra....