Lawn Fawnatics 109

 Hi friends! Are you enjoying the first week of autumn? It's been cooler here in Texas, so we have been loving it. Anything below 90 degrees feels amazing. lol I wanted to play along with a challenge and use some of my fall stamps, so I decided to finally ink up my cute apple set from Lawn Fawn for their Lawn Fawnatics challenge. I decided to go with a clean and simple card to let the red of the apples pop. 

That's it for me. I'm a Jeopardy fanatic and strangely it comes on in the morning in Texas. I gotta go get my laundry folded to get ready. 

Have a great rest of the week!

Rita 

MFT Witch

 

Hi friends! I wanted to pop in real quick and post my entry for the MFT Design Superstar Coloring contest. I feel a bit foolish posting it now that I've seen some of the other entries, but I did try, so... 

I love the MFT watercolor stencil. It makes for such a fun background. I used some of the colors from my witch to to stencil that and then layered my images on top. This witch is my absolute favorite image to color, so I had a blast sitting and coloring. 

Things are okay here. I've been having a lot of sinus headaches lately and struggling with that. We got a cold front in last night and it's a wonderful 70 degrees this morning. I hope my head appreciates that. Have a great week. 

Penny Black Kitty

We made it through Wednesday!!  Well, almost. lol Tonight I wanted to share the card I made for the Penny Black Saturday Challenge. It's monochromatic and I love doing those with grays. I grabbed my stamp and my warm gray Copic markers and went to work. After I finished my image panel, I made a background on watercolor paper using distress inks. I added some clouds at the bottom with a stencil and some white splatters at the top to be stars. I finished it off with some twine and a few star sequins. Oh, and the moon is shiny!  Wink of Stella just had to happen. :) 

Laila's hair is a huge part of the upset in our house some days, so I bribed her with some color to go and get it cut. lol The stylist layered it and thinned the back out some to try and help with the tangles. She likes it, so we'll see how this goes! Having to brush tangles for 30 minutes with a hyper, uncooperative kid is exhausting. 

Repeat the Dahlia

 Happy Sunday!!  Whew. I feel so behind with life, but I did manage to get a card made for today. This card is actually yesterday's card and it's for the challenge at A Blog Named Hero. They wanted repetition, so decided to try out a new stamp set that I hadn't inked up yet. It's pretty fun to color. I stamped it four times on the background and then shaded it just a little with some gray Copics. I stamped again on a scrap and colored it and die cut it. Super fun! My sentiment could use a bit of work. I just learned this weekend that there's different embossing powders for different things. I ordered some super fine white to see if it helps my sentiments stay more crisp, so I can't wait for that. My current jar is just regular. 

We had a little outing today. Just Costco and then a plant nursery. I got a little lemon tree and we planted it in a pot. I can't wait to watch it grow. ...and hopefully make lemonade! 

I hope you have a great week. Laila and I are going to be doing a standardized test so that I can make sure she's on track with her schooling. I hope she does okay with it. I want her to have some experience with those type of tests as well. Fingers (and toes) crossed. 

Hungry for Cupcakes

Hi friends! I hope your weekend is going well. It's been such a long day here, but I did get my card made. We are 17 days into our card every day challenge and we all three have stayed on track! It's crazy. This card I made for the new challenge at TIME OUT Challenges. Their prompt is hungry and well, who doesn't love a cupcake? We have a house divided on icing here, as Jason hates buttercream icing and I love it. So we don't get a lot of cupcakes. He's more of a cheesecake person anyway, so that's what he gets on his birthday. 

Look at my gorgeous visitor from yesterday. She stayed around and visited my flowers for a bit and I loved watching her. I think I got a bunch of mosquito bites while standing there, but she was so worth it. These butterflies are pretty rare to see in my area, so it was such a treat. 

Darth Troll

Hello! Happy Tuesday. I hope your week is going great so far. We are having a pretty good week here. We are learning about the start and spread of Islam, plus doing some plant experiments. I love learning along with Laila. Anyway, for my card today I wanted to play along with the TIME OUT Challenge. I knew I had this Trolls/Star Wars set I hadn't inked yet, so I grabbed it since their theme is Movies. Now strangely enough, I hadn't seen Star Wars until a few years ago when we got them to watch over the winter holidays. Laila fell in love with Darth Vader and everything she asked for, wore, or loved was him. We had light saber fights ALL day. It was crazy. She's calmed down with it all now, but she did recently go back and watch the first one a couple of days in a row. 

Here she is at Halloween that year. :) Obsessed! She wanted to wear this all the time. lol 

I'm off to read a book I picked up from the library today. I've seen some people say they couldn't put it down, so I may be in for a long night. Yikes. 

Sweet Birthday Bees

 Happy 4th of July!!  I hope you didn't eat 76 hotdogs like that Joey guy. Yikes.  (I can't even watch that competition because the wet, soggy buns make me gag). Anyway.... lol I wanted to play along with a couple of challenges and this adorable image seemed to fit well. The As You Like It challenge asked for our favorite stitching and why. I'm going to out myself and say that I find needles and thread confusing and dangerous. My mom is a quilter, but I can't even figure out how to turn on a sewing machine. lol So... my favorite stitching for crafting is stitched dies, especially the wonky stitches. Safe for me to use and no on button to find. :) Cute Card Thursday was the other challenge I did because hello? How cute are these "bees"? 

Now I think a nap may be in order because we shall have fireworks going until midnight or later. *yawn* I need to rest up for hamburgers and apple pie that we have for dinner. 

Bookish Boys

 Hello! Back for day 2! Today I played along with the Hero Arts Stay Crafty with Hero challenge. It's a masculine challenge, so I inked up the book background and colored it with dark, masculine colors. I love how it turned out!!  So fun to color too. 

Only 2 days in and I'll need to clean my room tomorrow before I stamp. :)  I hope you all have an enjoyable weekend.

Rita

Edgar Nevermore

Hi!!  Remember me? lol I took a bit of a break. I've been stamping a little here and there, but not very much if I'm being honest. My shoulder hurt for so long that I got out of the habit. Jason did get me a Vagabond for Mother's Day, so now I have an electric die cutter to help. I think it's starting to feel some better, but after doing some die cutting at the library yesterday, I could definitely feel it last night.  I did have an MRI and cortisone shots, so I'm way better than I was 7 months ago. Anyway, enough about my dumb shoulder. lol

I got some of the Stamping Bella Oddballs and I love their weirdness. I used the Edgar stamp to play along with the Crafty Gals Corner. Their current challenge is One for the Boys. I made this card for my fellow book nerd cousin. He turns 31 tomorrow. I hope he likes it and doesn't mind that it will be late. Oops. 

So this happened on Sunday. My baby girl is 9!!  She is Garfield obsessed, so we got her this cute cake. :) She loved it!! 

Woody Sunflower

 Hi friends! I am terrible at actually photographing and blogging my cards. I am going to make it a goal to try and do better this month. I do create from time to time, but this year has not been a good one for getting them mailed and I want to change that as well. :)  My friends over at Beyond the Blue have a fun challenge this week and I played along. I love the background and plan to do the technique again! I used a sunflower I had colored and stashed away to complete my card. 

So life... lol I'm still doing physical therapy for my shoulder and it pretty much feels like I've messed it up for life at this point. It's very frustrating. Getting old is rough!  Tomorrow I get my first COVID vaccine, so if that makes my other arm hurt, I guess I'll spend the weekend in bed with Netflix. lol

I hope you are all doing well and staying safe. 

Hugs.

Dumpster Fire 2020

Hi friends! I have been stamping away this month, but I am so behind on posting!!  I have made a card every day this month thanks to the support of awesome friends. It's so nice to have someone to chat with as you stamp. :) I got this cute? dumpster fire stamp set from Kindred Stamps and it seemed pretty appropriate for this year. Whew. lol I was thinking about even making some Christmas cards with it. Stay tuned for that. Can you believe it's December?? Yikes. 

It's still warm here in Texas, so we're seeing our lovely pollinators still yet. Last week I found this bee and it was lethargic and not moving. Laila and I gave it some water and it eventually perked up and flew. It was cool to be able to take some photos of it up close while it was so calm. It even walked on my hand for a bit as it gaining strength. 

I hope you all have a wonderful week and avoid any dumpster fires. Hugs. 

 

Harry Potter Card

Testing...1...2...3...

I took the custom domain off my blog since I kinda need to save money for homeschool supplies. Not sure how that will affect things, but I hope this makes it way to you. 

Hello!!  How are you? I'm actually still alive. Not stamping much, but I'm here. Homeschooling is taking up a lot of time and I'm slowly trying to work back in my hobby. We are currently doing a unit study on the first Harry Potter book, so I figured I'd color up this image and make a card. :) 

Things are going a bit better here, but of course there are still rough days. We do weekly therapy, weekly OT, and are seeing a psychiatrist for her anxiety/ADHD. I'm thankful for the progress. I'll share a few pictures below of some of our school and outings. 

First, here's one of our Cope's gray tree frogs. We raised tadpoles and now we have four pet frogs. I love them! It's so fun to watch them hunt down crickets. We took the opportunity to learn a lot about frogs as part of school. 

Here's Laila working on her cursive. Handwriting has been a huge issue, which is why we are doing OT. She has both fine and gross motor delays that need addressed. Cursive seems to be much easier than print and we are taking it super slow. 

This is Bellatrix, Laila's new pet. She's a Madagascar hissing cockroach. Laila loves her and she joins us a lot for our reading. She's pretty chill and not as freaky as I would have thought. Laila spent her own money to buy her at a reptile show. 

A couple weekends ago we traveled up to Fort Worth to see Dav Pilkey. Laila loves Dogman and Captain Underpants, so it was a great time. She did so well even though it was crowded and a bit chaotic. I was so proud of her. 

So that's where we are. I hope you all are doing well. Hope to be back with another card soon. 

Rainbow Easter

Hey!  Believe it or not, I'm still alive. lol Feeling a bit like a zombie, but I think I'm still a human...for now. :) I haven't had much time to create lately. I've been in a weird mental place where I haven't been creating or reading much. I think homeschooling just takes up all my energy. I did make this one a few weeks back and thought I'd check in and share it. My goal for the new few days is to actually make a card, so maybe I'll have something else to share.

Homeschooling is going well I think. It's not perfect, but it's less stressful than dealing with school. She's finding confidence again in doing her math. At first she would cry and tell me math made her stomach hurt. So much anxiety from school. It's sad. I'll share a few pictures of some of our learning below. Hope to be back soon!

Rita

Here's how I plan out our day. She can rearrange the magnetic labels into the order she would like to do the tasks. It works out great and allows her to have some say in our days.

Our hummingbird art. That was fun! We learned a lot about them during our week studying the United States.

Last week on our nature walk we found this friend enjoying the sun. Yikes!

Yesterday I surprised her with some muffins and books. She usually gets up and has breakfast before she comes in to wake me up, so she enjoyed it. I added some weird holidays to my calendar to do this occasionally. Dandelions will be coming up next. It will be books and an art project. :)

I'm off to go work in my garden before the rain comes and then maybe I can come color up something. Enjoy the rest of your week.

CAS Flowers

Hello and happy weekend. I hope you have some fun plans. I seem to have a cold, so my plans include napping, listening to some podcasts, and that's about it. lol I did a little coloring of this beautiful image this week, inspired by the amazing Shari Carroll. Sometimes CAS just works. I wanted to enter it in the Colour Crazy Craft Challenge as well as Penny's Paper-Crafty Challenge.

Stamps: Simon Says Stamp Sketched Flowers
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black
Dies: Avery Elle Wonky Stitched Dies
Copics: BG11, BG13, BG15, BG18, YR02, YR04, YR07, Y11, Y13, Y15, W0
Other: White Gel Pen

Maybe I'll get lucky and this hot mess will come cuddle with me. Probably not. She only likes me in times like this, when I'm trying to CLEAN. lol So NOT helpful. 

Do you Wanna Build a Snowman?

We've almost made it through half the week. lol It was a long day today, so I'm pooped. I forgot and only had one coffee. Then I broke my pour over coffee dripper and now I have no way to make coffee until Amazon brings me a new one. Hopefully no one is injured by my grumpy self tomorrow. Ha!!  I drive by Dunkin on my way home from dropping Laila off at school, so I figure I'll be visiting there tomorrow and Thursday. MUST HAVE THE COFFEE. 

I saw that we are supposed to have some cooler weather next week, so I made a snowman card. (Also, for you, Andrea. Thank you for sharing your snow picture with me.) Now it won't be cold enough for snow or anything, but 60s is great for here. It's been too hot lately.

Now I'm off to have a hot chocolate with a lot of marshmallows and read my book. :)

Fall Rabbit

Happy Sunday! I hope this finds everyone safe. The weather has been awful all over the place lately hasn't it? Goodness!!  I did take some time to stamp during our rainstorm yesterday. It wasn't even supposed to rain, but...  lol I used this cute, and free, digital stamp along with the sketch at Cheerful Sketches, the inspiration at TIME OUT Challenges, and the theme at Creative with Stamps.

   

I got in a distressing mood today and I kinda wish I had left it all clean. Can't undo that, right? lol Oh well. I can always remake it and leave the distressing stuff off. Do you ever do that? Think that might look good? ...and no! Why did I do that???

I won't have much time to craft this week. I have to volunteer at the school for the first three school days and then Jason will be home on Thursday. He is working an extra day on Friday, so I guess that will be my day to play. Or to catch up on chores. Dang laundry...it never ends!!

This past Friday I took the two neighborhood cats and got them spayed/neutered and their vaccinations. I still have the female with me to let her heal more and man! She's a sweetie pie. I'm still raising a few butterflies here and there as well. We didn't have a lot of Monarchs in the spring, but they are around more now.

And just in case anyone is wondering what Laila's into right now. lol

Guacamole Day?

Happy Wednesday. We've made it through half the week. Kinda. lol I hope yours is going better than mine. I did take time to play with this cute new set from Kindred Stamps. They have a Wacky Holiday of the Month club you can join and this is September's set. September 16th is Guacamole Day, so that's this month's wacky holiday. Funny, right? lol I can't wait to mail out some cards for it. I used the current sketch, flipped, from Sketch Saturday and played along with Simon Says Stamp Stamp It challenge for STAMPtember.

I'm off to shower and get ready for my first library volunteer shift. I am now regretting signing up since Laila's back to having issues at school, but I'll deal with my embarrassment and go I guess. She decided to hide her medicine last week instead of taking it, so I think that might be the issue. We talked about it and she took it today, so fingers crossed. It's one that can take weeks to work, so I'm sure we are starting over. This child!

Tiddly Inks Cat

Happy Friday!!  I can't believe we are over halfway done with August. It seems like the day are long, but the month is flying by. I've been trying to push myself into stamping more and I'm getting a few things made here and there. It usually takes me working on and off for a few days, but that's better than nothing, right? lol I had this cute kitty from Tiddly Inks printed off and I thought she might be fun to color. I made her into a card for the current Tiddly Inks Challenge. I think it is CAS enough?

We had meet the teacher night this week and man! Not only is her teacher awesome, but the classroom is fantastic. It's so big!  I hope it is a better year for her.

Have a great weekend! I figure I'll be busy getting ready for the first day of school on Monday. Yikes!

Hang in There

Happy Friday!  I managed a little crafty time today and my poor card looks a lot like our current weather. We need rain, so I can't really complain too much. My garden will be happy.  :)  I used the colors from the Calling All Sistahs challenge. I need to hunt out all my encouragement stamps so I can make up more of those type of cards. There's always people who need a lift!

I've been tired today, so now that I've managed to upload my card I am off to bed to read. Or maybe watch a show. I found the Stephen King Mr. Mercedes show to watch and I'm curious to see if it's as good as the book. I'm assuming no because they never are, but I will give it a go!

Have a wonderful weekend. 

Dog Explosion

Ever make one of those cards that you just can't wait to send??  We made a new friend during our trip to Kentucky and she had the three cutest dogs. I wanted to send her a little care package, so I had to include a card of course. :) I tried my best to color the dogs to look like hers. Yorkies are beyond my capability, but I tried. lol The dogs are from Lawn Fawn.

The inside has explosion stamped all over it. When we spent the night with her, Laila didn't get to see the dogs until the next morning. They pretty much exploded out of the bedroom all crazy and she was laughing saying it was like a dog explosion. We had fun laughing about that the whole trip. That was a pretty accurate description.  lol

Can I ask a huge favor from those of you who have Facebook?  Laila took some pictures this week with my DSLR and got this shot. She's entering it in a gardening photo contest to try and win a gift card. She's currently in second place, which is still a winner, but she's only like 11 likes out of first place. That's the difference of $100!!  If you have time to like it, you can find it here. Thank you!! We also have another junior photographer contest to enter at one of our favorite nurseries, so I need to print it and get a mat for it. I'm so proud of her. :)

Are you ready for Shark Week?