Lifesaver

 Hi friends! I missed you yesterday. lol I was so exhausted by the time I got my card made that I didn't get a chance to blog it. I did stamp though. I'm doing this with a couple of friends and we have all made it 12 days in a row so far! Amazing. Today I played along with The Crafter's Cafe Chalelnge blog. It is anything goes. I hope they like my card. :) 

Now I am off to rest as it has been a super long day!!  Super long. We thought that Jack got out the door and we spent a lot of time looking and crying. He must have been napping hard under the guest bed or something because he ended up coming out looking sleepy. I was so scared I had lost him. That put us behind with school, but we made up time and got it all finished. 

Flowery Friend

 Hello!!!  10pm, but here I am with a card. My eyes say it's time for electronics to be off, so I finished just in time! This is a bit of an old school card for me. Colored card base, flowery designer paper, ribbon... but, why not? The paper and stamps were from an old Simon Says Stamp card kit and I used some Early Espresso seam binding from my Stampin' Up! days. I had an awful time with my sentiment. It kept smearing on me, so I finally heat embossed it with clear embossing powder. I don't know if something is wrong with my EE ink pad or if I'm just not used to SU ink pads now. But, I got it. :) 

I hope you are having a wonderful week! It's almost Friday! (like literally in two hours here) lol 

Rita 

Easter Peeps

More Easter!! I pulled up some challenges to work on and it seemed like TGIF Challenges! and Cut It Up just worked out perfectly for my Peeps! I need to get a few more Easter cards made and get them mailed. I haven't mailed anything in ages and I feel awful about that. :( Hopefully I can send out some belated birthday and Easter cards soon.

I hope you've had a wonderful weekend. We had a thunderstorm blow through earlier, but its nice out now other than the wet grass. The temperature went down and I'm always up for cooler weather. Good wishes for a great upcoming week!

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. 

Encouraging Hugs

Two days in a row?! lol I admit, I cheated and scheduled this one yesterday so that I actually got it posted. :) I loved the inspiration picture at Calling All Sistahs, so I used the new set that came in the September card kit to play along. Isn't that spray of flowers gorgeous??? I love it. The sentiments are all gorgeous as well. If you haven't played along with this challenge, it's a great one for making encouraging cards you can send to a friend who might need a pick me up. I also wanted to link up with the Dragonfly Dreams challenge.

I hope each of you has a wonderful week full of kindness and love. As we get closer to the rush of the holiday season, remember to take care of yourselves. I find the last three months of the year particularly challenging, so I'm already thinking of ways to simplify and keep my stress level down. 

Hugs.

Patriotic Encouragement

Hey!!!  I hope everyone had a great 4th of July. It was pretty low key here as we are still recovering from our trip to visit my parents. I did make this card, but of course I'm late posting. I played along with the sketch at Die Cuttin Divas and the colors from the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge. I haven't used brads in ages, so it was fun to get those out. :)  Oh, and my corner rounder! Do you like pulling out those neglected tools and supplies sometimes? I do, but I need the motivation like this sketch to do it. My die cut is the star that was featured in one of the kits from Simon Says Stamps. I cut it out three times and pieced it together.

We had a nice visit to Kentucky. My dad was still in the hospital when we got there, but he was released the next day. He had been dealing with hospitalization at least once a week for a while, but he managed to stay healthy our whole trip. I'm thinking it was due to Laila's excellent nursing skills. She was so good with him. We weren't sure how she would handle him being so sick, but she was amazing. 

She had a great birthday. We had cupcakes on her actual birthday along with some gifts. The next day we took her to the Ripley's Aquarium in the Smoky Mountains. Then on Saturday she had her party at the local swimming pool. She loved being around all my family and getting all that attention.  It was hard for her to leave. :(  We are slowly trying to get back to our routine, but so far we've had a roof leak that we have to get fixed and soooo much rain!!  

FMS 324 Teacher Valentine

Happy Valentine's Day! or Ash Wednesday. Or both. :) I managed to stamp something this week for Laila's teacher. I hope she liked it. I used the new sketch at Freshly Made Sketches. It's a fun one! I am not sure if teachers get sick of apples or why we even associate teachers with apples. I think I need to be on the lookout for non-apple teacher sets. lol This set is from Simon Says Stamp.

My house and stamp room are a mess, so I need to work on cleaning this week. It's been one of those weeks where there seems to be some errand that must be done every day and takes way too long. WAY TOO LONG. I was hoping to go to IKEA for some stuff tomorrow, but I might put it off until Friday and just clean. 

This is what I get when I ask to take her picture. Stinker! She had a rough morning at school, but a good afternoon. She's back at her regular class, but the behavior program failed to send someone with her to help her transition back.  They are supposed to be fixing that and if someone isn't there by Friday I guess the not nice momma is going to school. I hate having to do that, but things are reverting back to before the program. What's the point of her going if you just let it go and don't support her? Ugh. She does have a person with her in class now, but not someone that's trained or even knows her really. So not helpful right now. So send good thoughts that it gets cleared up so that I don't have to go yell. 

SSSCK Feb 2018

Happy Monday. Did you survive the big game? Have to call in "sick" today? lol We had a nice time watching the game and eating snacks. I'm still battling my lovely sinus infection, so Jason did most of the cooking. He pretty much did most of everything over the weekend. I am hoping to feel better soon, but I'm back to a headache again today. I may have to call the doctor soon to make sure I don't need to do something else to kick this. I did work on a card over the weekend and finally finished that. It's using the newest card kit from Simon Says Stamp. It seemed to take forever for mine to get here. It took a lot of postal detours!  :) I wanted to enter in it their Wednesday challenge since it is anything goes. 

My pretty girl. :)  She is hopefully finishing up her last week at the behavior program this week. They will have someone with her for a while to transition her back to her class when she goes. We finally got her testing results for the gifted and talented program and she scored high enough to qualify. They'll start those services next month.  I guess that makes her an official twice exceptional kiddo and that sure explains a lot. I don't think our school district has anything special for 2E kids though. 

I'm off to have a coffee and see if I can work on a little cleaning. It will be slow going, but I want to at least get my bathrooms cleaned today. 

Have a wonderful week!

Fine and Beautiful

Here's another card from the card kit. It comes with this pretty cards, I'm guessing they are like Project Life cards, and they make creating pretty easy. I didn't have to stamp anything on this one. :) It has so many of them and that makes it hard to use up the kit!

Our library has some of the best programs. Once a month they have a group of ladies who have therapy dogs some in so the kids can read to them. It's more petting them, but it's fun. Laila is a little timid around some of the loud or large dogs, but she loves Dakota. Dakota's mom also has a beagle named Scout and that's Laila's favorite. She just happened to be a little under the weather this month.

Yesterday at the new program was awful. I am hoping it is better today. It's feeling like we made a big mistake agreeing to it. :/ It has yet another reward system to help with behavior and those are useless with her. With the way it's going, there would be no way they'd let her go back to her school after the 10 days. I don't know the maximum time they can keep them, but she's the only girl and maybe even the youngest. Someone asked about autism testing. I've asked and asked and all the professionals say no. Her testing last year included testing for that and they said no as well. I did read some about it showing up once the ADHD was under control, so we'll see I guess. Most of the testing was developed around boys and it tends to present different in girls. I do feel that it's more than what we've been told so far, but I don't know what. The special ed evaluation that's due next month may have more answers or lead to more questions. It does seem that we (school, teacher, us) all agree that she does need someone with her, but I'm guessing that would only happen if she is granted an IEP. I don't know. It's such a process to try and get your kid the help they need. They don't make it easy at all. I see why people end up hiring advocates to navigate the process.

I'm off to try and create a bit before it's time for pickup. I cried all evening after picking her up yesterday, so let's hope this evening is better.

Edited to add a picture we got from one of the specialists:

I like to see her smiling. :)

Thank you CASE

I'm up to five cards made with this SSS card kit from March 2015 in the past month. Woo hoo! I do think I need a break, so I'm going to switch out to something else for bit. I'll keep it nearby though, just to remind myself that I still have tons left to use. I was going to go for a month of no buying, but I forgot and got the newest card kit. Ugh! Bad me. lol I think after that I will break for a while though. I want to save any extra month for paint and maybe some organization stuff.  I am still finishing up the challenge on my kitchen, but I know the craft room/office comes up at some point. I'm scared. Why do I have so much stuff???? It's addicting, right??

Anyway, the kit comes with an inspiration sheet and this was CASEd from that. It's from a lovely card by the fabulous Debby Hughes. I am always in awe of her work. Mine never turns out half as good, but it's fun to try.

I hope you had a great week! I think this coming week will finally be a normal one for us. Well, kinda. Laila is now attending a behavior program at a different campus, so that will throw things off. She gets out an hour earlier and it's the opposite way of her other school, right through two other school zones. I hope she doesn't have to stay longer than the minimum ten days, but we'll see.

It has become so clear to me why so many parents of kids like her end up homeschooling. Things are just not designed for them in public school. She's at almost a third grade reading level, but stuck learning sight words like he and she in class. I'm sure she's bored. The results from the gifted and talented testing come back soon and I hope she qualifies and will get something more challenging to do. Unfortunately though, she doesn't handle frustration and failure well, so challenging can bring about tantrums. She's a perfectionist like her momma and we don't like messing up or not being good at things. I hate that she's dealing with that. I know I've missed out on a lot of things because of it. I hope to help her not have a lot of regrets like I do. Anyway, send good thoughts that something falls into place soon and we can all stop being so stressed out. Her evaluation for an IEP isn't due until the end of February, so it may be a while before we get there. I fear we will end up in a battle, but we'll see.

See you tomorrow with another yellow and black card. lol

Flowers for a Friend

Hi! Just popping in to share this second card I made with the March 2015 card kit. It sure doesn't seem like it was that long ago that I got it, but I guess time really does fly!  I still have a ton of papers and stuff to use from the kit, but I figure I need to take a little break and work on Valentine's Day stuff. Those stamps and papers need used as well! :)

It's been cold and believe it or not, it snowed for the second time this winter. Laila was all excited about it yesterday. They haven't had school all week, but she'll finally go back tomorrow.

Off to finish up dinner. I made Emeril's red sauce recipe today, so we are having spaghetti. I found a lot of pasta during the pantry clean up. I probably won't have to buy any this year. lol Costco strikes again! 

Stay warm. :)

Freshly Made Sketches 319

Hey guys!  Talk about behind... I was the hostess over at Freshly Made Sketches this week and I never did get my blog post done over here.  It has been a rough transition back to school for Laila. Add in that yesterday was the anniversary of Eli's death and that I joined this crazy home organization challenge and well....I've been a busy mess.  I like to stress/angry clean, so it was a perfect week for that. My kitchen and pantry are almost finished and it's so nice. So anyway...

One of the things on my list this year is to use up some of the card kits that piled up on me. I am starting with this one, so this is my first project with it. I got some awesome new inks for Altenew for Christmas and oh boy do I love them!  Four shades of gray and they are beautiful and stamp so well.

I hope you were able to join us and I apologize for being so late. I hope to get back to creating once I finish up the kitchen. I just haven't felt creative at all lately, so I've poured my energy into other areas. It makes me sad, but creativity just seems impossible to force. I may try to color a little today just to get my fingers inky.

Freshly Made Sketches 303

I just realized that I forgot to do my blog post for Freshly Made Sketches. I worked on my card to take my mind off things Tuesday, but I guess I didn't get to the posting part.  Karren really challenged us with this sketch!  Who doesn't love a challenging challenge, right? :) You get to put on your creative thinking cap and that's what I did. I had pulled one of my card kits from Simon Says Stamp from my stash to attempt to use it up as much as possible this week, so I worked on a design using that and only that.  I think it turned out okay and I hope it's close enough to the sketch.

I know Texas is getting a lot of news coverage, but we are fine.  We were some of the lucky ones in our area who didn't flood.  All of my friends here are fine as well. School is still delayed and next Thursday is the best case first day.  Laila's principal's house flooded and was still full of water as of yesterday. I'm sure our school will be helping with that as much as we can. The school itself did not flood, so we are thankful for that. There is just so much devastation around the area that it is almost unreal right now. It will be a long time before anything is close to normal again. But, we are lucky. So lucky. If the worst thing facing you is waiting in lines for hours to enter a grocery store, that's not much you can complain about when people lost their lives and homes. Things did begin opening back up yesterday, but some will be months coming back. It is just truly heartbreaking. 

It has been amazing to see how the community, both individuals and businesses, have jumped in to help. We've gathered supplies to take to temporary shelters twice now and their needs were already met before we could get there. Restaurants are closing to focus on making food for first responders. Churches quickly opened up as shelters. People with boats and lifted trucks assisting strangers. I know on our local group a truck owner picked up a pregnant lady having contractions five minutes apart and got her to the hospital so she could give birth. Political and racial divides went out the window and it has been people helping people. We need more of that. 

I'm off to make coffee and turn on the news for a bit. Have a good week and keep sending good thoughts this way. 

Hugs. 

DTGD Day 1

Happy Saturday! I hope you are finding some time to get crafty today.  If you are a member over at Splitcoast, the Dare to Get Dirty challenges start today.  I've been working on a couple this morning and thought I'd share them.  This first one is for a fun challenge from Lydia.  She always has fun ones that push me to try something hard.  I think the result is fun, so yay!

The second challenge was from Dina and I enjoyed creating for it as well.  I feel like we need more rainbows and sunshine in our world right now, so I may make up a few of these to send out.  It was a pretty simple one, so that shouldn't be too hard.

That's it for now. I'm going to go grab lunch and then come back to work on the next challenges.  I found a good comedy to keep me company.  There's nothing better than creating and laughing!

SSS Flowers on My Mind

Over the weekend I came in my room to stamp and felt stuck.  I decided to pull out a card kit from Simon Says Stamp and try to recreate one of the samples.  Shari Carroll made an amazing card on the reveal post so I decided to try it.  Mine isn't half as awesome as hers, but it was fun to work on it.  I appreciate her ability to layer and do a collage type design.  I learned that I need a medium gray ink pad though.  My SU Basic Gray crapped out and they don't make it anymore.  Hopefully I can find something similar as I love that color as use it a lot.

I'm not feeling creative today either as I have a headache, but I'm heading to my desk to try it. I might have to have another sample recreating. :)  There's actually a lot of learning involved in that, so I might need to do it more often.

I hope you are having a great week!

SSS FLICKR Ice Cream

Trying to keep up a bit of stamping.  I've been feeling a bit down again lately, so I wanted to add some creative time in with my gardening.  If you see me not posting much, send me a kick in the butt email. :)   I saw the Simon Says Stamp flickr challenge was to use stencils, so I grabbed on and this was the end result.  Kinda fun for summer, huh?  I love this ice cream set. I also used a new for me Copic combo.  Fun!!

Laila loved her Pokemon birthday party.  She must be excited because she keeps telling EVERYONE that she's five.  lol  I just hope she's as excited about school since it starts in less than 2 months! Yikes!

Have a great week!
Rita

Summer Coffee Lovers Blog Hop

Talk about last minute!  We've been on vacation and after a 17 hour drive yesterday, we're finally home.  I was sad to miss the Coffee Lover's Blog Hop, so I took a bit this afternoon to make a card.  It's the summer edition, so I thought I'd make a fun, bright card.  Hopefully you can see the coffee cup.  My photography when tired is SO bad.  Goodness.

I'll share some pictures of our trip and Laila's birthday a bit later.  I have to run and check on the kitten and make sure she's not climbing the curtains.  :) 

Freshly Made Sketches 287

I woke up early one day over the weekend and thought I'd try to play along with my friends at Freshly Made Sketches.  For some reason they keep me on the team roster even though I spend all my time on the bench.  :)  Jen T had a fun sketch that immediately made me think of this cute set from Simon Says Stamp.  It came together and I love the result.  :) Yay!

I'm off to have my coffee and see how much of A Handmaid's Tale I can watch before Laila wakes up.  I hate that Hulu only releases one episode at a time, but I do love Wednesdays now.  :) 

Simon Says Stamp Coffee and Tea

Back with my coloring for yesterday.  I love coffee sets, so last month's card kit from Simon Says Stamp was perfect for me.  I am always drawn to red and kraft (aka Crumb Cake), so I used it. Why not, right?  :) I colored the cups with grays and browns, added an embossed piece, and that was pretty much it.

Stamps:  Simon Says Stamp Coffee and Tea
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black
Paper:  Stampin; Up! Real Red and Crumb Cake, Neenah Solar White
Other: Simon Says Stamp Stitched Circles dies, Tim Holtz On the Go embossing folder

I'm working on a card with the SU Indescribable Gift set that is very different from my last one.  I'll try to post it later today, but Jason's working overtime... It may or may not happen.  Laila isn't the best at entertaining herself.

Speaking of Laila, I do have an update on her testing.. We finally got her reports back this week and they diagnosed her with ADHD, combined type and Oppositional Defiant Disorder.  The recommendations were a playgroup, which she's in already, and therapy for her and our family  I hope we can get that going and help get her prepared for kindergarten in the fall.  I'm so nervous about it.  Our experiences with school haven't been positive at all.  I am going to make an appointment soon with the principal so he knows us and can maybe help with placement  She will need a teacher with the patience of a saint!