Moments in Time

Jess went to a school party Thursday night with her best friend, Jessie. The party had a Fall theme with dressing up optional. Jess went as an 80's girl and her friend Jessie went as a pirate. Aren't they cute? ;-) They had fun.

On Friday night, I had a few friends from my local moms' group over. We spent the evening chatting, eating, stamping and scrapbooking. It was fun! I made this card for a swap on Saturday:
I went with my friend Lisa to her stamp club and came home with these swaps: Lots of great cards! I made this card while I was there (I really love this stamp set!):
I have been so busy making Christmas stuff for the craft show, that I have been dying to make some Autumn cards. It was so fun to play with the fall colors!

And here is a picture of my best friend.... Dixie. She's the friend who craves time with me the most and feels my rejection the worst. She's looking very dejected because I wouldn't take her for a walk. A) I was tired and (admittedly) grumpy and didn't feel like taking a walk, and B) Jess had already taken her for one earlier. But, of course, a walk from someone else doesn't count. It has to be a walk with me. How can you say no to someone who feels that way about you? We went for a walk. :-)

...wherefore art thou, Autumn? I still can't believe it's the middle of October! Our weather's been a bit cooler, but still abnormally warm and we'll be back up into the mid 70s by tomorrow. Most of the trees are still green and I miss the beautiful colors of Fall. I'm having a hard time getting into the pumpkin and Halloween mood.

One harbinger of Fall is here.... school pictures. (These are all thumbnails - click on them to see the full sized version.) This is Jessica's school picture. She has her Daddy's half smile in this one.

As school staff, I got my "school photo" too! For me, it's very smiley. (I'm not a smiley person and always *think* I'm smiling when apparently I'm not.)

Ali had her school picture taken last month, but we don't have it yet. We just got her soccer pictures today, though. They came out really cute! (Of course, I'm biased, but...)

Well, I hate to blog and run, but homework, dinner, stamp orders and Christmas cards await...

Well, at least in my craft room it is. I've uploaded the first 3 Christmas card designs that I'm making for my upcoming craft show. Look for the Photo Album link on your right for my Christmas Cards album. Once you're in the album, click on each link to see the whole card. (My blog software seems to chop them into squares when they show up as thumbnails.)

"Hot! Hot! Hot!" to quote Buster Poindexter... This weekend was ridiculously warm. There's something wrong about being at a craft fair, looking at pumpkins and snowmen while sweat literally runs down your back! Still, we managed to put a bit of Autumn in our weekend.

On Saturday, I came home from the Hatton craft show with this gorgeous pumpkin (it's "stuffed"):


Dean had started decorating the mantel with a few of his new Halloween decorations. I added some mini pumpkins that I'd brought home from Hatton:


On Sunday, Ali's Brownie troop went on the annual corn maze trip while Jess and I went to Michael's. While I shopped, Jess made this rather unique pumpkin (note the braces, lol!):


I've also got Christmas on my mind - my crafting space is now overrun with snowmen as I've started cranking out cards for an upcoming craft show. Thankfully, the cooler weather is finally here. I know I'll be complaining about the cold soon enough, but pumpkins and 90 degree weather are an odd mix! I'm ready for it to be FALL!

Awww, he is the cutest little thing, isn't he? (Remind me of that the next time he runs out the back door and squeezes himself under the bottom deck stair!) He misses his Mommy. Jess is spending the night at a friend's house and Tiggy normally sleeps with Jess, often in her bed. Now that she's officially a teenager (and boys are soon to enter the picture), I guess we all better get used to Friday nights without Jess!

Ali took the SRI (Scholastic Reading Inventory) in school this week and I am dying to find out her score. (She'll get it next week, we think.) She told me it was "a piece of cake" and that "I nailed it". When we mentioned to the teacher at Open House that the class had taken the test, Ms. Dunn told us that both she and the student teacher were amazed at the questions Ali was answering - apparently correctly. I always suspected the little bugger was at least as smart as her big sis - - it's a matter of motivating her to use those smarts!

I've also been really itching to make something this week. I've been visiting SplitCoastStampers.com and various blogs and amassed a bunch of ideas that I'm dying to try out. One of them is a criss cross card (see the tutorial here: http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/crisscrosscard.php). Here's my first attempt at one:


I made these Christmas gift bags for a swap I'm in:


Tomorrow I'm off to visit a stamp store and scrapbook store with a friend. We're also going to stop by a large annual craft show in Hatton. More inspiration! :-)

and some days you're the hydrant!

Gotta love that quote. :-) I haven't had much creative time these days, but I did create some 8X8 scrapbook pages last Saturday. I really liked how this one came out. The dog in the picture is Bugsy, our foster from last March. (He's almost a dead ringer for the dog on the stamp that is part of this stamp set.)



It's made using Kamalaht, one of my favorite paper lines from The Angel Company. It was perfect with Bugsy's coloring!