Slacker!

That would be me! Yes sirree, totally copping to it. Got a lot of balls in the air right now. Some personal, some professional, all taking up a lot of nap time work time hours (including the naps I'd like to be taking) and the poor little old blog here is getting neglected. Hoping it all evens out in the end. Rather be busy than bored, right? Fake it 'til I make it, ladies.

Old picture btw. VERY OLD. Blonde highlights were a very bad idea. I'd kill for that dinky waist right about now though, but I'm not really willing to give up the ice cream. Note to self: must look into girdles.


Thought I'd throw a few goodies up today to prove that I'm still kicking. Fun with color and borders stamps on this card. All Papertrey Ink. Their stuff makes projects so effortless.


Speaking of fav stamp companies, did you see the news about Hero? They now have Silhouette shapes to download. Short of my major man crush Mike Rowe coming to my front door and sweeping me off to Tahiti (sorry Matt!...I'll only go if Cheryl Burke shows up for you at the same time), I couldn't be more excited. Stamping and dies are where it is for me. Creatively speaking, mind you.

OK. In a single blog post, I've mentioned Mike Rowe, ice cream, stamps, die cuts, and naps. All my dopamine receptors are firing. Going to need a minute to myself. Catch ya'll later.

Baby Shower

I had a boy baby shower to go to last week and for once, I was more than on the ball with getting projects done on time. Ah...the beauty of being unemployed. :) It's amazing what you can get done.

Here's the card. It's a bit obscene with product usage. Silhouette, Cricut, and Spellbinders. If it was something I was going to submit, I would never get it picked up. But here in blog land, we can get away with using two electronic die cut machines and manual dies on the same project. Just don't add up how much it costs, 'kay?


Banner and vellum doilie are Silhouette (I've been looking for years for a PERFECT banner, finally got it). The boy cutout is from Cricut. And the embossed scalloped oval is Spellbinders. I created an oval with the same dimensions as my Spellbinders die in the Silhouette software so I could morphed the oval doilie to fit the same ratio of height to width. Make sense? Cool, huh? Sentiment is by Hero Arts.

Of course, I bought Baby Boy an adorable sock monkey outfit from one of my favorite kid stores. Have ya'll been to Crazy 8? Imagine Gymboree being the Gap, Crazy 8 would be Old Navy. Same company, same style, slightly less price point. Only Crazy 8's quality is a few steps ahead of Old Navy (which only seems to be getting worse over time). Any who, check out their website if you like "decorating" your little ones.

With the serious gift checked off the list, time to tease the new parents. I saw these off duty/on duty pillow cases awhile ago and filed them away in my head. I knew I could make my own. Iron on some heat'n'bond on some QUALITY (it's really key!) cotton fabric and cut out with some manual dies. The heat'n'bond makes the fabric more like paper by stablizing the fibers, resulting in a nicer, easier cut. Then you just iron on. I highly recommend prewashing your fabric and pillow cases beforehand to prevent puckering issues after future washings. Dies by QK. Pillowcases by Target. $10 project, which is the cost of a fun gag gift in my mind. Although come 3 months or so, I bet they'll start hauling them out. Truth rings a little truer at 2 AM when it comes to late night feedings.



In other crafty news, a fun announcement over at the Silhouette blog today. Thank you for all your clicks! I feel like I won a high school election:). I have another project up on the Hero Arts blog today as well. When it rains, it pours aye?

Happy Happy!

This song is on repeat on my iPod. Always makes me smile. He's not much to look at. Dreadlocks are so not sexy. But he's got a catchy and appealing tune here. Hope it makes you smile today.

Quick Favors...and Not So Quick Ghost Cookies

Here's another Silhouette project for ya'll. I am always curious the sizes some of the boxes/envelopes/3-D cuts make. Thought I'd try one out. This little Halloween treat bag is cut at the maximum for my machine. Holds a couple cavities worth of candy, which is impressive. Are you anything like me on Halloween night with the rationing of two to three pieces of candy per trick-or-treater at the beginning, yet shoveling huge handfuls into their bags by the end? This is definitely an end-of-the-night hand out. :)


I wanted to make the spider web stand out more. See on the original cut that it is part of the bag?




Ungroup your bag, copy/paste just the spider web part, and then create a circle around it. Will cut the black part of my little treat bag. Like I've said in the past, ultimate versatility. Check out the Silhouette blog today for a download giveaway.



Other supplies: Hero Arts stamps and Cuttlebug tag.

Onto the cookies! In my perfect Mom world, I would like to have a cookie recipe a week that I make for the kid(s). Lots of seasonal stuff. Each week would be different, so 52 different awesome cookie recipes. Like I said...perfect Mom world. I may be overreaching a bit. Those weeks that Oprah is good, the kids might have to just deal with a bag of Oreos from time to time.

Seems like I have a recipe for October if I ever intend to go through with the crazy plan. Ghost meringues (see photo above) from the cookbook I bought a few weeks ago. I was planning on giving them out to neighbors, but decided they are too good to share. Chocolate eyeballs and cotton candy tasting meringue are a delicious taste sensation. Besides, Hank is crazy about them. Must be the whoooooo, whooooo, whooooo sounds I make as I fly a ghost cookie through the air to him:). Mixing and measuring isn't a time drain, but they do take two hours to cook. Totally worth the effort when they turn out this cute.

I wasn't going to type up the recipe because it was copyrighted, but I found somebody who already did it for me:). How about I just link over and let her take the heat if there is any? Enjoy and go get some baking done!:)

Open...IF YOU DARE!!!

Do me a favor and click like crazy over the next week to the new Silhouette blog. Just a single second out of your day can pay off in just a few weeks with daily projects and inspirations from some fabulous scrappers and paper artists...and maybe little old me. And let me tell you right now, I will BRING IT. Consider yourself warned. If this happens, you will be in serious danger of a slow seduction and will fall under the Silhouette's spell. I told you Kerri Bradford was a Silhouette temptress, didn't I? Pure evil in the best possible way. She's recruited me as a handmaiden and I will woo whomever crosses my path. So click on over only if you think you'll be strong enough to resist temptation. Or maybe only click if you secretly desire a little papercrafting seduction. Come on...admit it...who doesn't want a little bit of that in their life? Trust me, once I get going, you will not be able to say no. Forgone conclusion my friends. Resistance is futile. Love that little machine. :)


And just to put a little walk in my talk, how about a Silhouette project? Happy Halloween! My mom will be getting this in the mail tomorrow with a few photos of my favorite little spook hidden inside. I created a rectangle in the Silhouette software, overlaid the pumpkin carved face, and cut. I then stole the stem off another pumpkin (without having to cut out anything else) and completed my card. All rounded out with a white embossed sentiment from Hero Arts, which I stamped on a curve. Super simple and super cute.

images and stamps

Halloween Card

Here's a little something I had hiding on my hard drive. Figured I'd better put it up before the spooky season passes.

The pumpkin stamp was one piece, but I lobbed the top off with a scalloped oval Nestabilities and filled it with candy brads by Making Memories. I had a lot of fun with it.

Other supplies:

Spider web background: Silhouette design
Stamp: Little Yellow Bicycle and Papertrey Ink
Ribbon and cardstocks: Papertrey Ink
Brads: Making Memories
Nestibilities by Spellbinders
Striped paper by Making Memories

I have a couple questions in my comments section about a few of the designs I've used over the last couple weeks. Both the spider from my wall vinyl post and the envelope I used for my Grandmas are Silhouette designs. I can't link over to the direct images because they aren't online, but I can tell you the file names so you can run a search on your Silhouette software.

Spider: spider_C20091002104717_19007
Envelope: envelope_2123


In other non crafty news, got a few book recommendations for ya'll. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane is the perfect book for Halloween. I found it a bit hard to get into, but loved the ending. Plays with the idea that some of the accusations during the Salem Witch trials could actually have been true. Not that they were, this is fiction folks. And just finished Sarah's Key after looking at it in the Target book section for over a year. Books on the Holocaust are never easy reads. This one is no different. But it is something that needs to be remembered. I'm very glad I read it. Riveted for the day it took me to devour it.

Ooh, before I forget....another Nazi book that is really good My Enemy's Cradle. Put it under the hard-to-believe category for historical fiction. Those Nazis ran a breeding program to increase the population of Aryan children. It was a woman's duty of reproductive age to make Nazi babies, even if they weren't married. True story. This is the tale of a secretly Jewish woman who is placed in one of these "gestational houses" while preggo. Very good. Go forth and read!:)

Monkey on My Back

Back during my long creative nuclear winter (that was November 2008 to about right now), I had this oh-so-brilliant idea to paint a floor cloth for underneath my kitchen table. I was frustrated with what I could purchase rug-wise as nothing seemed to meet my criteria of being inexpensive, stylish, and water/stain proof. A floor cloth seemed like the obvious solution. At the time. I could paint it myself in the colors I wanted, it got sealed with poly acrylic allowing it to withstand the food monster we call Hank, and it would cost me a grand total of $100 and a long weekend. Minus a few brain cells from the poly acrylic fumes, of course. I was in.

But seeing as it was creative nuclear winter, it just became so much easier to buy the indoor/outdoor rug on sale at Pottery Barn in August. $200 seemed like a bargain. Have not regretted it one bit. Just had this one lingering problem...the 10x7 piece of rolled canvas in the basement that was a daily reminder to my husband that I didn't look before I leaped. He sure liked to bring it up.


Well ladies, I rise triumphantly out of the dog house today when I used it as a backdrop for Halloween photos. Raided Matt's tool box for some clamps and attached it to our projector screen in the playroom. Viola! Instant photo studio. Call the neighborhood kids over for a Halloween photo shoot. Now the only monkey on my back is...well...Hank.





Getting all three to cooperate at the same time was impossible. But at least it was worth a laugh when their antics revealed the weak spot in my design. Oops!