Paper Players and Dynamic Duos

  

After two days of twenty minute naps, Laila finally crashed for a bit today.   I was thankful for the break and headed to my room to try to stamp a bit.  I decided to combine the clean-and-simple sketch at The Paper Players with the colors at Dynamic Duos.

If you are like me, you have a tons of stamps that have a little (or in my case, a lot) of dust on them.  I decided to pull a couple of them out tonight to make a card.   I need to justify keeping them, right?   I did use current colors and lots of little flowers and pearls.  I was inspired by a lovely watercolor of cherry blossoms that a former colleague painted for me.  My card is not as lovely as her painting, but I kinda like it.  :)   

We've been doing a lot of floor time lately, but still no crawling.   She is learning to roll back and forth pretty good though.  I'm in no rush for her to become mobile because I know once it happens we are going to be chasing her all over the place!   That girl has some serious energy!  

I hope everyone has a great week. 

The Original Pinweel Card

I thought I'd share my original pinwheel card.  I thought it turned out okay, but it just wasn't the fun card I'd imagined in my head so I changed the colors to the one you saw on my Freshly Made Sketches post.  I love the design of this one, so I might make up a few more in different colors.   That die is just so easy to use that I love playing with it.  

She's really got the hang of sitting up playing now!   She loves eating her pureed solids that we've been making for her too.  I don't know if her having 3 little meals is the key or not, but she's slept 10-12 hours for the past few nights.   It's been kinda nice.  I know she'll change that up when we least expect it, but I'll enjoy it for as long as it lasts.  

Blue Flower

    

Since I've decided to work on some CAS skills, I thought it might be fun to try out a couple of challenges that are just for that!   I am combining the sketch at clean&simple with the cue at CASology.

I guess I should have printed out the sketch instead of doing it from memory. :)  I guess my brain can't even handle something that simple these days.  I am having a second cup of coffee, so maybe that will help me the rest of the day.  I used one of my favorite tools, the Fun Flowers die, and two of my favorite colors.  Simple, but sometimes simple is good, right?  

I just love this girl.  We are having such a good week!   

Trying CAS...

I loved the sketch at Retro Sketches last week but didn't find time to play.  Laila went to bed early tonight so I decided to go straighten up my desk and then try it.   As stampers I feel like we should always be trying to improve or try new things, so I have been inspired by my fellow Freshly Made Sketches designer, Jen Mitchell, to try some white cards.  She is such a talented stamper and I love her work.  I know I won't get to her caliber ever, but I would love to be able to make a decent clean-and-simple card with lots of white.  Uh huh.   So here is attempt #1:

So not great, but it's a start, right?   Jen has been using some fun Washi tape on some of her recent cards and I wanted to play with it too!   I had no idea what it really was, but I managed to get it on my card and didn't tape myself up.   I wish I'd done the piercing AFTER I put the tape down, but I was feeling a bit lazy and didn't start over. I guess I didn't realize it was so transparent.   Lesson learned though!  :)

LOL   Gotta love a messy pea-covered face!  :)   We had a nice day today.   We went to the infant program at the library and she did great.  I hope we can go again, but they always seems to fall during her nap times.   She took an early nap today so we were able to hurry and get ready for it.   I really need more social interaction and it was nice to chat a bit with the mom next to me.  

FMS69: Pinwheels!

It's time for a new challenge at Freshly Made Sketches!  This week is special because our dear Linda S. is the hostess and this is her very first sketch.  Exciting, huh?!  Now I hope she won't mind that I took a lot of liberties with it.  I totally dreamed up this card one night as I was thinking about the sketch and for once, the reality was even better!  I am happy to say that I actually like this one.  :)   I'm usually my own worst critic, so I probably need to frame it and keep it.  

I'm really beginning to wonder how we are going to live without Pool Party.   Island Indigo too really.  I just love those colors.  I mean I guess I can go back to Baja Breeze and Not Quite Navy, but I really do love these guys too.   Sigh.  Change, we can handle it, right?   Maybe SU will be nice and somehow add them to the next catalog.   Do you like the pinwheels?  I love pinwheels and the new die in the Spring catalog makes it so easy to make them!  I am stoked that I bought it now.   No more trying to punch holes in darn paper; the die does that for me!  

A certain someone is growing up way too fast!   I think she's teething AGAIN (does it ever really stop once they start?!), so we are trying an amber teething necklace.  My husband thinks it's a bit crazy, but I'm up for anything that might help her feel better.  She refuses to chew on anything except for her hands and fingers so we are having to put lanolin on them to help with the chapping and redness.   She's really enjoying her solid foods and we are having a blast making baby food for her.   

A Day of Remembrance

I hope to be back on Tuesday with a card and maybe an announcement of a new business venture, but for now my goal is just to survive tomorrow.   January 14, 2009 was the last day that I got to hold my sweet Eli.   At at little after 7pm that night he took his last breath in my arms.  I'll never forget that moment.  If you haven't heard about SMA, I would love for you to take a few minutes today to learn about it.   

FMS68: Giving Starfruit a Chance

It's time for a new sketch at Freshly Made Sketches!  This week Jen Mitchell is our hostess and sketch designer.  We have had some great versatile sketches lately and this is another one that can do so many things.   

So I can't lie, this isn't my favorite card.  I promised myself I'd give new things a try in the new year, but Summer Starfruit and I will never be friends.  I thought I'd give it a chance and I did.   I just can't do it though.  It's not a color that looks good to my eye.  I know other people love it and I'll leave it for them.  :)  Now Gumball Green and Midnight Muse?  I love those guys!   They are awesome.  But anyway, this is a clean version of the quilted heart with lots of different embossing folders.   This one could almost be manly if it wasn't for the flowers on the one panel. 

Laila has been so great about sitting in her chair after eating so that we can eat or clean the kitchen.   Yesterday she was sitting there flipping the pages of her book like a big girl.  I try to read to her a lot in hopes of her loving books as much as I do.   

Club Time!

This week is my fun Friday night stamp club week!  I'm so excited to spend time with my super awesome ladies.   Today I've been working on some ideas of what we'll make, but I have a big problem! I have not been sleeping well, so my creativity is a bit off with the exhaustion.  I wanted to use my much neglected heart framelits and after seeing a similar idea on Pinterest over and over last year, I decided to make a card like Wendy featured here on her blog.

That picture is awful, but you get the idea!  The color is Calypso Coral and I used one of those snazzy clear buttons from the main catalog.   What do you think?   I wish I had a larger Valentine's Day sentiment, but that's all I had to work with.   Hopefully my ladies will like it and it will give them an idea of fun things you can do with the framelits and designer papers.

Here's a shot of Laila waiting on the nurse for her shots yesterday.  Poor thing.  She only cried during the shots and for a minute after.  I have to admit, I did too!   I am not good at seeing my baby girl upset like that.   She didn't have any other issues though. She napped a bit more than normal and then slept from 8pm to 6:30am this morning!   I downloaded a white noise app for the iPod Touch and left it on in her room all night.  I don't know if it was the shots, the noise, or the next serving of solids, but she slept great.   I needed that night of sleep too.  I still work up a few times worried about her, but it was a much better night than I've been having.  

We've been having to bundle up lately to go out!   It has actually been a bit cold here in Texas.