Moments in Time

I love Bella stamps. There is a Bella for almost every occasion and they're just so darn cute. Here are two cards I made for a swap on SplitCoastStampers.com. The first is made with the PMSabella stamp. Who doesn't have those times where you just need to veg out in front of the tv in your sweats, surrounded by your favorite snacks?

Now, this stamp I *had* to buy. Her name is Lisabella. How can you not buy a stamp that has the same name as yourself?
Here's another version of this card I made when I was first working out the design of the swap card.

"Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man." - - Benjamin Franklin

Happy New Year! I've given up making resolutions. I never keep them and then it's just one more thing to feel guilty about. I can feel guilty about enough things, I don't need to add anything! ;-) However, I do think I'm going to try this: http://www.triplux.com/dayzero/. I learned about this from my Sept98mom friend, Gwyneth. You make a list of 101 things that you are going to accomplish in 1001 days (approx. 2.75 years). I like this because it's a big enough list that I'm sure to complete a few things here and there which be encouraging (I'm accomplishing things) rather than discouraging (when I don't accomplish that New Year's resolution).

One more sort of New Year's-y thing I'm doing is deciding on a word for the year. Check out Ali Edward's blog for details. I know that I want my next year to be calmer and more organized (which will make it calmer). I'm just not sure of the right word yet...

For you stampers, here's a card sketch in honor of the New Year (click on any of these images to make them larger):

The sketch was inspired by my current foster dog, Chloe. (Isn't she cute?)

One more new thing.... the new Angel Company catalog & idea book is here.

There are lots of new stamp sets and a ton of new accessories and tools! Best of all... we now carry both the Bind It All and the Scor-Pal. Both of those have been on my wish list; I'm so excited! I'll be having a catalog Open House on January 19th to show off the new catalog and some of the great new items. Email me if you'd like details.

Have a great weekend!

Sadly, 90% of my Christmas card recipients did not get a hand stamped card. But I did manage to send some out to my TAC direct downline, and several stamping/scrapbooking friends. This was my 2007 Christmas card.

(Snowflake stamp by The Angel Company, all paper from Hobby Lobby.) I've seen a combo of red, cream and dark chocolate brown or black this year. I get tired of the usual red & green for Christmas, so I decided to give this combo a try.

I bought this Fluffles stamp A) because it's just so darn cute & funny and B) because I knew it would be perfect for Ali's card. (You know you're stamp addicted when that's all it takes to make you buy a stamp!) She loved it! I used a lot of glitter on it for my glitter girl. The pine bough looks yellowish, but it's because of the Icicles glitter on it.


This is Jessica's card. I bought this stamp from CC Designs because it was cute and went with the reindeer giftwrap paper that I bought this year. (You can see a pattern to my buying, can't you? Doesn't take much, lol.)


I also made her this card to hold the Old Navy card we gave her for Christmas. The stamp is a "Hanna stamp" -- I knew it would get a lot of use with two clothes crazy girls in my house! :-)

Hallelujah, winter break has begun! I think everyone at work today was really ready for this break - the kids, the teachers and the staff. (In fact, it would probably be a tie as to who was happiest!)

The stamping portion of my blog has been pretty much neglected! Here are a few card sketches I created today for my yahoogroup, midmoStampAngels. (Click on either sketch to see a larger version.)

If you'd like to be aware of current and future Angel Company promotions and get my weekly stamping/scrapbooking newsletter, the "W", click below to join my yahoogroup.


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Click to join midmoStampAngels


Oh before I forget, I've been tagged by my friend and fellow Sept98Mom, Carla. I'm supposed to show my desktop but I'll admit that I'm not sure how to do that. I will share that this little guy is on my desktop (don't look at me - my husband did it!):


I'll tag Gwyneth and Kelly. Surely one of them knows how to do this properly!

Thursday saw our first appreciable snowfall of the year. Ali and our neighbor, Katie, had fun making their first snowman of the season. (Those electrical boxes make nice props, huh? lol)

This weekend saw the arrival of more frozen precipitation, only this time in the form of sleet/freezing rain. Yuck! Although we got a snow day out of it, so I shouldn't complain. Tomorrow will be cleaning and baking day. I've spent a lot of time baking for Christmas. I got the most delicious recipe for Chocolate Caramel bars from my fellow Sept98Mom, Tami. Yum!

I found some time to stamp this weekend -- for fun! (i.e., not a craft show!) I participated in a few of the Stamping Bella challenges over on SplitCoastStampers.com. Here are my two Bellas (click on either photo to see it larger):



The past few months, I've been stamping a lot for craft/vendor shows. Here are some of my domino pins:

I love stamping on dominoes! They're fun and fast.

These are some lunch pail tins that I "altered". I covered them with scrapbooking paper, using Modge Podge, and embellished them with glitter, ribbon and silk/paper flowers. A lady called to order these from me (she saw my vendor display at Curves) and it turns out she used to be in my book club. I guess it really is a "small world"! (Click on either picture to see it larger.)



Well, it's off to bed for me so I can get up and finish my baking tomorrow. Good night!

Another weekend ended - already! At least this is a short week for me and the girls. We only have school on Monday and Tuesday. I need a long weekend!

It was another busy weekend. Friday night I hosted book club. (We read "A Thousand Splendid Suns". Loved it. Jess had a basketball game Saturday morning. Her team won easily and Jess scored a basket. (Yay, Jessica!) Today the girls and I volunteered for the Humane Society, assembling "Pet Packages" (an annual fundraiser where the packages are sold at local businesses). We came home smelling like pig's ears. The girls and I didn't appreciate the aftereffect, but Dixie thought I smelled just great! :-) This afternoon Ali went to a b'day party and Jess marched in the annual downtown Holiday Parade. That's it for parades until Memorial Day and I can't say I'll miss them. Three parades in less than a month is a bit much. I rented Amazing Grace this afternoon. It wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped, but I still enjoyed it. I enjoyed learning about Willilam Wilburforce and the English abolition movement. It was not something I'd heard about in school.

I finally assembled a photo album of most of the pages that I finished at my October scrapbook retreat. Look for the link under "Albums" on the right. Also, my Dixie album can be seen here.

Oops! I forgot that I was going to post the current Angel Company promotions. Flyers for two current promtotions can be viewed on The Angel Company's Promotions page. I really love the Oh My Golly promotion - I love the paper and the stamps! Another cool promotion are the Surprise Boxes. For $50, you receive a box of assorted papercrafting supplies from previous catalogs. The package is advertised as being worth at least $100 and people are reporting that they contain over $200 worth of merchandise. Here are some sample Surprise Box contents. And, don't forget our Stamp of the Month set, Button Words. Orders can be placed through me (just send me an email) or through my online ordering site.

Have a great (short!) week!

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. :-)

Well, we're off on vacation in another hour. Right now, two weeks seems almost two long, but I think it will go by fast. I miss Dixie already. Poor Ali cried when we left her last night. But Dixie is staying with a friend from work, Denise, who breeds and LOVES labs. Dixie can go swimming every day and, I think, will have fun. Hopefully she won't miss us too much either.

Before our trip, I finished all my ATCs for my upcoming swaps. I've added them to my Projects gallery. The project I am really excited about is my new, alterable "Memory Purse". You can see all the pictures (including before and after shots) in my gallery. Here's one shot. (You can see a larger view by clicking on it.
I LOVE how this turned out. I love the paper collection - Mulberry Meadow. All products are made by The Angel Company, with the exception of the "smile" sticker on the tag. That's by Creative Memories and I bought it from my friend & super CM consultant, Jill. :-)

I also finished reading "The Yacoubian Building". Great book. Written by an Egyptian for the Middle Eastern market, it's an interesting insight into that culture and way of thinking. There's an interesting side story that relates to the current conditions in the Middle East and the rise of the jihadist movement.

I'm off to do some last minute packing and then it's open road for the next 7 hours or so!

All that wretched cleaning and organizing paid off. It was so nice to work in my CLEAN room! Ugh, I can definitely see why I let it get so messy though. Keeping things all picked up and put away in there is not easy. It's just not in my nature. I'm definitely the messy, creative type. :-/

If you look in my Projects album, you'll see pictures of the ATCs (Artist Trading Cards) that I made today for two swaps that I'm in. Here's a sneak peek. (You can click on the image to see a larger version.)



The girls have been busy creating, too. They built a house and cars (out of boxes) for their Webkinz stuffed animals. Look for pictures!

...when you're having fun.

Well, we haven't just been having fun. I've spent more hours than I care to think in my craft room cleaning, sorting, organizing and purging. (Gotta love FreeCycle!) But, I am almost done (whew!) and look forward to some crafting time tomorrow. Check back for some pictures of the finished projects.

Recent fun for the kids: going out to lunch (Panera), out for ice cream (Randy's), and having friends over. We also saw Night at the Museum. I was never in a hurry to see this movie but I actually liked it a lot. (The preview clips with the movie threw me. I have this thing about monkeys. They give me the creeps. I don't know why.) Anyway, we also saw Ratatouille. Great movie with wonderous animation. I'm always blown away by great animation and want to know more about how the movie was done. I checked out the official Ratatouille site, but didn't find anything there. You can definitely see the stamp of Brad Bird, who also directed "The Incredibles". Several of the characters have Edna-like elements to them. (I think Collette is a younger, prettier, much taller and slightly softer version of Edna.) That's a good thing to me, because Edna was my favorite character in The Incredibles (Although I'm glad I didn't get named Edna - which is what my father wanted to name me - eek!.)

We've got the first leg of our NJ trip planned. We're stopping in Columbus the first night. We'll just make it a relax and hang out at the pool evening after a long day in the car. The next day we're stopping at Hershey, PA to do the "sundown special" at Hershey Park. It's Hershey's 100th anniversary this year, which makes it kind of special. The next morning we may do some sight seeing around the town, then head off for Aunt Jean's house in NJ. While we're there we may go into NYC to the Museum of Natural History. I've always wanted to take them there and seeing Night of the Museum has piqued Jessica's interest. Just planning the trip out has been arduous enough (trying to please everyone when no one else wants to do any work in researching/deciding - I feel like the Little Red Hen!). I haven't yet worked out the entire trip.

Off to my craft room to finish cleaning so I can actually MAKE something in there tomorrow! :-)