Grinchmas Coffee

Hi friends! I just realized I totally forgot to post yesterday. I did stamp and have kept my streak so far. :) Yay! Yesterday I made this card for both a Splitcoast Falliday Fest challenge and the Coffee Lovers Fall and Winter blog hop. I got this cute set from The Sassy Club last year and totally forgot about it. I found it in my drawer this weekend might have squealed a bit. I am not a big Christmas person as I find it stressful and difficult emotionally. So Grinchy stamps are perfect. :) I made a little pocket inside for a gift card since the challenge was to make a gift card holder. 

Now I'm off to stamp a bit tonight. :) 
 

Fall Leaves

Back again! Don't faint. lol Thank you to those who have reached out. It's always nice to know someone is still following along with me. :) Do you have a favorite season? I LOVE autumn, but we don't really have one here in Texas. My husband ordered and planted a red maple in our backyard this month so that I could maybe have a little bit of the colors in the years to come. I thought that was so sweet. For now though, I enjoy the colors in my crafting. This card was done using a technique from the Falliday Fest challenges. You can find the directions here. 

The leaves are Lawn Fawn dies and I used a few colors of Distress Oxides. I don't have all of those, just one of each color really. It works though. 

My sweet girl. I sure do miss her a bunch. I thought they returned her to me so thoughtfully. I keep touching her urn every time I walk by. I've lived in Texas for 18 years and she was with me for all but 6 months of that. I just love cats and she was a special one. We have two others, but they aren't "my" cats if that makes sense. 

The Shining Moon

 

Hello strangers!  How is everyone?? Surviving COVID? Election? It's been crazy, right?  I know my mental health is in the crapper, so I made a deal with myself to try and stamp every day this month. I've made it so far! I've been doing the Falliday Fest challenges on Splitcoast along with a friend. It's good to have accountability, huh? This is the card I made for the challenge using a source of light. 

The tree die cut is Tim Holtz, the moon is Altenew, and the sentiment is from Neat & Tangled. It was simple, but my Facebook friends loved it. 

We're still just here. Laila's still a work in progress. We found a new psychiatrist and she seems to actually listen. Hopefully we can get her stabilized and happy. I had to stay goodbye to my 18 year old kitty last week so I've been struggling a lot with missing her. I got her ashes back today. 

Witch Way is the Candy

Happy Saturday!  I hope everyone is having a great weekend. I've been having a bit of a low key one. Laila seems to be getting sick again, so I don't want to take her out too much. I worked a bit on more of the Falliday Fest challenges from Splitcoast Stampers. This one was a new to me technique called dendritic printing. It was an interesting one for sure. If you haven't tried it, it's a great way to use up some acrylic paint! Here's the link to the YouTube video.

Sorry for the witch again! I had an extra one colored and wanted to use it! I need to put away the Halloween stamps soon and work on some Thanksgiving cards. I also need to mail the tons of Halloween cards I keep making. That's on my to-do list for Monday.

We did do a couple of fun things today. Laila and Jason made the Halloween House.  I struggle in doing those because I'm too much of a perfectionist and would take 6 days to complete it. I am not the mom who enjoys crafts with their kid. I try, but I'm biting my tongue the whole time.  It was nice to let him handle that one. lol  Then we went to a cool program at the library where kids can come and read to some of the therapy dogs in our area. Not much reading happened, but we enjoyed the dogs so much. Most of them are so sweet and calm.

Laila's still struggling at school. Thursday we ended up picking her up around noon. She had decided to be totally defiant and non-compliant. The staff seem to spend a lot of time sitting in the hallway with her. It makes me sad and I wish we knew how to make things easier for her and the teacher. We had the initial 504 meeting yesterday and they agreed to do a functional behavior assessment and work on a behavior intervention plan. It looks like most of her first year will be trying to figure out what works. It's really getting me down to continue to hear so much negative. She has a great principal, teacher, and counselor, so there's at least that. She's just so different than any kid most people have worked with that it's hard for people to know what to do with her. It makes me feel better to know it's not just her clueless parents who struggle. Keep sending good thoughts and let's hope we can keep improving each week.

Now I'm off to finish up Mindhunter on Netflix. I think I have 1.5 episodes left. :) It's been my binge show the past few days. Have a great Sunday!

Falliday Monarchs

I thought I'd share another card that I made using a technique from the Online Card Classes Merry Making class. Again, not a holiday card. lol I just can't get in the mood. I have struggled with all the October, November, and December holidays since we lost Eli and Christmas is the worst of those. I dread it, so I'm just using what we are learning to make things that make me happy. I will eventually use the techniques from some winter cards, but I'm just not there yet. I also made this for one of the Splitcoast Falliday Fest challenges. We were asked to make a general or kind card and mail it to a random person that we don't know.  You know I love my Monarchs, so I thought I might try to find the address for a random person in one of my Monarch groups. :) I think they'd appreciate receiving it. The stamp and sentiment are from Inspired by Stamping.

This cutie had an awesome day at school today! I read an article on Friday that really spoke to me, so I messaged her teacher this weekend and we agreed to try out some ideas from it. She had her best day so far!  I am hoping that maybe what we put in place will help, so keep your fingers, toes, and eyes crossed for us. Maybe even your arms and legs. We need good days!  She was so happy and proud and so was I.

Now I'm off to bed. Little Lady is on a mission to destroy my stamp room and I'm tired of fighting with her.  Have a great Tuesday!

Falliday French Foliage

Hey guys! Happy Monday! I've been stamping, but I haven't had time to do posts or upload. I moved my room around and had to set back up my light tent and computer. Jason helped me and I'm finally back up and running! This card is one for the Falliday Fest challenges on Splitcoast. We were asked to use a technique that starts with the same letter as our first name. I haven't done rock and roll in a while, so I decided to grab French Foliage and try it! I need to practice! lol

A pretty Gulf Fritillary from this weekend. I think my butterfly raising is about over. We have a few eggs in the garden, but I need a break. I have one Giant Swallowtail left to feed, but after that it's just waiting on the others to come out and then clean up all my equipment.  I need the break. It's been fun, but it is seriously a lot of work!

For those who asked about the moon background on my MFT Witch Way is the Candy card, it's just a background made on watercolor paper with Brusho crystals. I made it when I first got them and was trying to figure them out. I had put the results in my to-use bin and finally found a way to use them!

Oh Christmas Trees

Happy Sunday.  I can't believe we are almost at the end of October.  It is going to be Thanksgiving and then Christmas before we know it.  I decided I have enough fall/gratitude cards to mail out, so I'm trying to focus a bit on Christmas.  I managed to do another of the Falliday Fest challenges and have one more in progress.  The deadline to upload them is noon tomorrow, so fingers crossed I can finish that last one.

This card was inspired by the challenge all about hard candy Christmas.  My Mamaw always had a jar of the striped hard candy during the holidays.  I remember picking a piece and hoping it was a fruity one and not another mint. lol  The red striped paper along with the added green of the trees reminds me of that candy and my childhood.  Did you eat that too?  I feel like I should look for some to introduce it to Laila.

The stamps and circle die are from Simon Says Stamp and the embossing folder is Stampin' Up!  The trees are Wild Wasabi and Garden Green.  I like using those two greens together.

I think we are going to try and carve up some jack-o-lanterns and then have dinner.  I hope this week is a good one for you!  I will hopefully be back soon with a card using Stampin' Up!'s Santa Stache.  That set cracks me up!  :)

Fall Colors

Hey!  How is everyone on this fine Friday?   I can't believe I haven't posted since Monday.  Well, I can, but that's breaking my recent streak of doing better.  lol  Jason worked overtime this week and I was solo parenting for most of it.  He was home yesterday and I totally took off for brunch with a friend.   I wanted to share a couple more challenge cards with you.  I have a lot of cards made up for Fall now, so I need to start sending those out soon.   This one uses my most favorite Stampin' Up! set, French Foliage along with a sentiment from Truly Grateful.  I stamped on the Kraft paper that was sold back in my demo days.  Do they still have that?  I love it!

And this card...  Lori challenged us to use wheat and I think this counts, right?  lol I pulled out the distress inks for this one.  The wheat is from Concord & 9th and the sentiment from wPlus9.

Laila started going to a cooperative play groun this week and it's from 4:30 to 5:30, so we have to stop for dinner on our way home.  She picked Panera this week.  She seems to enjoy the class so far, so I hope it will benefit her.  With this description, it seems to cover much of what she needs help on. The Cooperative Play group addresses social skills, communication, and emotional regulation skills.  They work on things such as taking turns, expressively identifying how they feel, flexibility with non-preferred activities, keeping their body in the group, thinking with their eyes, cooperative play and communicating with peers during play, along with other skills.  If I could list her issues, it would be most of those. Thank goodness we can at least work on them while we are waiting on an evaluation/diagnosis.

I'm off to clean up my desk.  It's a wreck as is my floor.  Creativity is messy!

Thank You Snorlax

Today I'm sharing the last two of the Falliday Fest cards.  I don't know if I'll have time to do any of the other challenges before the deadline or not, but we shall see how the week goes.  :)   This is for another card drive that is part of the challenges.  They will be going to men and women in the armed forces who have become sick or injured during their service.  The theme was patriotic thank you cards.  This design should be easy to produce quite a few of, so I might enlist Laila to help me make up some.  All the products except for the sentiment are Stampin' Up!   The sentiment is from Altenew and can be easily substituted for any thank you sentiment you might have.

This is the silly card that Laila and I made this week.  Our family has been taken over by a Pokemon Go obesssion!  We've been watching the old shows together as well.   I managed to find the cut files for a few of the Pokemon and we used my Silhouette Cameo to make this Snorlax.  He seemed like he'd be fun on the blue Christmas challenge.   lol  Laila has already claimed him and he's on her dresser.

We did some Halloween/Fall projects yesterday.  Laila painted this pumpkin and then we baked a pumpkin bundt cake. It was delicious too! Here's a link to the recipe in case you want to try it!  I'm off to do a few chores and shower.  We are heading to the library today for new books.  :)

Halloween & Santa

Sharing a couple more cards today.  I came in last night and colored a bit and was able to turn those images into cards for the Falliday Fest challenges.  This one is for a pink Christmas challenge.  A friend sent me this cute Stampin' Up! Naughty or Nice set and the Santa stamp is so cute!   Doesn't he look good in pink? :)

The next challenge I did was a good/bad witch card.  I picked the bad witch and used lots of greens and blacks.  Now I want to go watch The Wizard of Oz.  I miss waiting on it to come on that one time of year.  It's funny how much things have changed from my childhood sometimes.

I'm off to rest a bit.  Jason is working overtime today so I have four days of solo parenting this week.  I hope I make it.  My depression/anxiety is the worst it has even been right and it can be hard to make it through one day.  Four?  Well, send positive thoughts!

Owls and Puppies Oh MY!

Yappy Saturday!  Just checking in with a couple of cards.  I haven't stamped much this week, but I finally made myself come try and was able to make a few.  More Falliday challenges.  Today is the last day and I think there's a week to play catch up.  I won't finish them, but I do hope to do a few more.  This challenge was to make a pet thank you card.  It is for a card drive for the Tri-County Humane Society in Minnesota.  I'm glad they are doing some card drives for the challenges.  I'm trying to at least do those and maybe follow up with a few more of the theme before I mail them.

(Did you see I used some Baja Breeze for this one?  I totally hoard it, but I need to use it!)

I had to edit and add that I used the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches!  I am taking a little time off, but I want to play along as I can. :)

Sorry for the bad picture.  I prefer taking them on our dining room table with natural lighting, but Laila seems to pile all her crap up on it and it's a half-day job to clear it off.

Next was a challenge to make an owl card.  I love this Winter Owl stamp from Lawn Fawn and thought it would be fun to use.  I wanted to make Jason a card.  All the things going on with Laila are putting a lot of stress on our marriage.  I don't know how that will all play out, but I hope we can figure out how to make it work.  I love him.  Marriage is hard though, especially with an extra challenging child.  I'm going to sneak out and put in the car so he'll find it going to work tomorrow.

Laila picked Pikachu as her Halloween costume for the year.  It was so hard to find one in her size, but I finally got this one.  It's kinda cute and is actually pajamas so she can wear it after Halloween too.  She seems to be in some crazy growth spurt with how she's eating, so we shall see how long it actually fits.  Of course this happens AFTER we buy her pants for winter and new shoes!

Falliday Fest Continues

Sharing two more cards from the Failliday Fest challenges on Splitcoast. Anyone else playing along?   I am having so much fun with them.  They are helping to pull me out of my slump.  With all that's been going in my personal life lately, I haven't even wanted to step into my room and create.  I'm so thankful for this motivation.  :)   This challenge was to make a birthday card with "wrinkles".   Laila has been in here playing with my crimper, so I used that.  I found this image printed out in my pile and colored it with my Copics.

And here's my Stampin' Up! card for you guys.  :)   I love Lovely as a Tree.  It's such a beautiful set and can be used for so many occasions.  The challenge for this was called Snowy Leaves.  I used the crayon resist technique and my distress inks to make my snowy tree.   I added a simple sentiment and left is.   There's a little Wink of Stella on the snow, but it's hard to get that in the picture.

A no-reply Blogger asked me where to find the template for the angel card.  It is on the Falliday Fest challenge, so you have to go to Splitcoast to get that.  The main thread for that particular challenge is here and the first entry has template at the bottom.  I get a lot of questions from people whose comments come in as no-reply and it makes it difficult to answer those.  If you want to check if that's you and possibly change it, here's a link on how to do that.  :) I always feel bad because I can't email back a quick answer and I usually forget to include it in my next post.  Baby brain apparently never goes away!  lol

I hope everyone has a great week!  I'm hoping for cooler temperatures to come back.  We got a little taste of it and then it got all hot and yucky again.  The weed pollen can go away with those high temperatures.  I've had a headache since Tuesday and nothing is helping.  I hate allergies!

Falliday Leaves and Halloween

Back with more cards for the Falliday challenges!  I'm like seven behind, so I don't know if I'll catch up before it ends or not.  I'm working on them, but it takes me a long time to make one.  This challenge was to use fall colors for your card.  I love this sheet of patterned paper from Stampin' Up! so I based my card around that.   The stamps/dies are from Concord & 9th.

The next challenge I worked on was for a joy fold card.  I am not that great at anything outside of a traditional fold, but this one is pretty easy to make.  Thank goodness for great tutorials.  lol  I went with a Halloween theme as I seem to have a lot of paper and stamps for that now.  Here's the inside:

That's all for now.  I have to clean my desk and my room up to be able to make anything else.  It is a wreck.  Laila has been in here with me this week and she's "helped" a lot in hiding the carpet.  lol   I'll be back when I can see my desk and floor again.  Have a great weekend!

Falliday for Christmas

Still working my way through the fun Falliday challenges over on Splitcoast.  I miss Hope You Can Cling To, but I'm glad they were able to make a new event with challenges.  This card is for Ann's challenge.  She gave us an angel template to work with and this was what I ended up with. Weird confession, but I don't like angels.  You hear that word too much when your child dies and I have an aversion to it now.  I decided to be inspired by the angels I do like, the Willow Tree ones.   I chose my colors based on those and I think it turned out nice.  I might use this card and find a new Willow Tree angel as a just because gift for my mom.  :)

Here's a simple wreath card for Holly's challenge.  She asked us to use holly leaves and berries.  I don't have anything that looks exactly like that, but I tried using this cute wreath set.  It's been neglected from back in my demo days, so it was nice to ink it up.

Just a question:  I know a lot of people began following me because of Stampin' Up! and I know I don't use those products as much lately.  I've fallen in love with Copics and distress inks and I don't find those as easy to use with SU.   Would you like me to go back to using some SU maybe once a week or so?  It would likely be retired products, so keep that in mind.

This morning we attended a program for 3-5 year olds that's a part of our local school system.  I talked to the director yesterday and she thinks it will be good for Laila to come as much as we can.  The assessment team for the district are sometimes on the same campus, so it might help if we can one day have them come observe her in a classroom setting.  She's awesome at one-on-one interactions with adults, so they don't see her social/behavorial issues that happen in the classroom setting.  She did okay today, but it took her a long time to warm up and come into the room. I'm glad Jason was there as backup.  They have events/classes every day, but it can be difficult to get a space in them.  There are way more kids who want to come than teachers to host.  Today they made a fire truck with food, made a fireman puppet, and did some singing/group time.

Falliday Leaves

Hey!  I missed you guys yesterday.  I had a card to post, but things got busy and I didn't have time to sit down and do it.  I'll share more on that later.  :)   First here is my card.  Dina's challenge was to use die cuts for masking.  I cut some leaves out of masking paper and masked off some watercolor paper.  I followed up with some Brusho crystals.  I finished it off with a bit of distress ink and a die cut sentiment.   Fun, huh?  the Stampin' Up! Dictionary stamp added some fun detail as well.  Be sure to go check out the Falliday challenges!

Stamps:  Stampin' Up! Dictionary (retired)
Ink:  Brusho Crystals, Vintage Photo distress ink
Paper:  Stampin' Up! More Mustard, Canson Watercolor paper
Other:  Lawn Fawn Stitched Leaves dies, Concord & 9th grateful die, bakers twine, masking paper

Now about yesterday...

As I sat down to eat dinner I looked outside and saw a little dog.  He was cute, a little black scruffy one.  I looked closer and I could tell that he was a stray.  His fur was matted and he was so dirty.  I set up our extra dog crate, got some food, and headed out to see if I could catch him.  I didn't know what I was going to do with it, but I at least wanted to feed him.   I caught him and he was the sweetest thing.  Laila and I took him to a vet and they didn't find a microchip.  He had a collar but no tags. I could tell he had been out on his own for a while.  I contacted a local rescue and they were able to take him.  I was sad to leave him, but my life is too crazy for anything else.  Here he is:

Laila and I drove him over to the rescue's vet this morning.  Last I heard he was being groomed.  I can't wait to see some after pictures and see him in a loving home.

I appreciate everyone's words about Laila and sharing our struggles. I'll try to share as I can to let you know how we are.  I know Kelly mentioned that I don't share as many photos of Laila like I used to.  Part of the reason for that is because she doesn't make eye contact with the camera much anymore.  It's a struggle to have her be still long enough to snap one too.  If I do ask her to take one, I get this.  lol

Falliday Fest: Thankful Leaf

I'm feeling very thankful today.  My camera and purse arrived safe and sound on Wednesday so I was able to get better pictures for my newest cards.  On top of that, today starts a fun set of October challenges on Splitcoast Stampers called Falliday Fest.  I love crafting with fall supplies, so I'm excited to see all the challenges!  There's also tutorials for new projects as well.  Today's card is for Lydia's challenge to use some fall colors that you'd find in New York, her home state, and include some text.  I don't think if you can see it, but there's some text on the bottom left and the top right side.  Very subtle, but there!

Stamps:  Concord & 9th Lace Leaf
Ink: Distress Inks:  Shabby Shutters Spiced Marmalade, Scattered Straw, Barn Door, Gathered Twigs, Vintage Photo
Paper:  Stampin' Up! Early Espresso, Neenah Solar White
Other:  My Favorite Things Blueprints 20

I seem to have lost a lot of blog subscribers lately.  I'm going to guess it's from sharing too much about Laila and our current struggles.  I've decided to stop sharing and stick with just cards for now.  I apologize for annoying people.