Slowly but surely

I'm getting back into it. My 4 yo has been invited to several birthday parties and making the birthday cards is getting me back into the swing of things. I didn't get a good pic of the one from last weekend and while I'm not thrilled with these pics, I decided to share with you all anyway so you don't think I've vanished.

Today's card is for one of her classmates who celebrated his 5th birthday at Chuck E Cheese's. Man, it was crazy there today but all the kids seemed to enjoy themselves and dd and my 6 yo have decided they want their next party at Chuck E Cheese's--we'll see :-)

Here's the deets! The card base is River Rock which is a retired SU In Color. I had it put to the side since I'm deciding if I want to sell off my retired In Colors right now or not but had to use it since it goes so great with the BasicGrey Archaic paper which is a perfect match for the SU Prehistoric Pals set. I rounded the corners of the patterned paper and the cardbase with the SU small corner rounded. The dino is inked up in Versamagic Sahara Sand and then I went around him a little with Versamagic Gingerbread for a little more depth. He's stamped on Very Vanilla and cut and embossed with a circle Nestability and mounted on a Close to Cocoa circle. I lightly sponged some Memento New Sprout and Summer Sky over him and then mounted the whole piece to the front of the card on dimensionals. The sentiment uses the same cardstocks and is from PTI's Mixed Messages which is stamped with Brilliance Coffee Bean and then lightly sponged with Memento New Sprout. I added a few dew drops and tied some Taupe Grosgrain ribbon on the side.

Since I've been seeing how people are also doing the inside of the cards, I decided I'd have to give it a try as well. I added some Very Vanilla cardstock with another strip of the BasicGrey Archaic paper to the inside. The dino is stamped with Memento Desert Sand. I actually think it turned out cute and plan to do this more often since it really doesn't take much more time to do it.

Thanks for visiting! I think I'm going to go play a little more tonight since dh decided to go to the gym and play basketball for most of the day and is now paying for it "resting" on the couch. I think he's realizing his body can't do the same things he was able to have it do when he was younger without having to give it some recovery time.

Tagged

My blogging buddy, Marie, just tagged me. This is actually a pretty fun tag. In this tag, you post the 4th picture in the 4th folder of your picture files and then tag 4 others. Since I haven't been stamping much, I can do this one :-) Last month, we went to see the Blue Angels when they were in San Francisco for Fleet Week. Here's a pic of the kids eating their lunch in the back of the car while we're waiting on the planes.

How is everyone? This weekend, we took the kids and my nephew out to the beach for a photo shoot. My SIL and I want to give my parents a nice pic of the grandkids for Christmas. The photographer got some great shots and if you want to see the sneak peek, you can check out her blog here: Angela Chandler. If you're in the Bay Area and looking for a reasonably priced good photographer, check her out!

So, for this one, I'm going to tag the following peeps:

Colleen

Simone

Malieta

Brooke

Thanks for visiting!

Get out and Vote!!!!!

If you haven't already done so, please go out and vote! Every vote counts so make sure that your voice is heard. As a woman of color, the right to vote is extremely important to me. Voting is a privilege that many people in this world don't have the right to take part in. Do your part--get out and vote!

It feels strange. . .

to not stamp and blog regularly. . .I'm having withdrawals and waiting for life to slow down so I can find the time to stamp or workout or do something for myself again. . .but I don't think it's going to happen unless I make it happen.

Right now, I'm in the final days of my SU demoship. I've been in pending and I just don't have enough that I want to buy from SU to get myself out of pending, nor do I have a couple hundred dollars to spend on SU stuff that I don't absolutely love when there's a world of other stamping goodies out there. I posted a goodbye at the demo threads at SCS and took myself off the demo groups--it's weird to go to the SCS forums and not see the demo threads. I'll survive though.

Until then, I want to thank those of you who are still following along. I will be back as soon as I can squeeze out a few precious moments in my stamping area.

I know, I know. . .

I said I was going to post more regularly but I still haven't gotten a ton of crafting done lately. I started a project that I'm hoping to get to later this evening.

However, I am working with one of my teachers to do some art on a grander scheme. We have the opportunity to work with an organization to create a large wall mural with a group of students. This whole project is fully funded and an artist will work with some of our students for 16 weeks in all aspects of the design and creation of the project. This is all happening rather quickly since they had a school they were set to work with fall through. Now, I'm scrambling to put everything together and get board approval for this project.

I think this is going to be an amazing experience for a group of kids here at my school!!!!! This is set to be a service learning project which will take what they're doing in the classroom and enhance it while giving them the opportunity to create a work of art that will enhance the community. Can you imagine the chance to do something like this at the age of 8? What an incredible way to boost achievement--they'll learn a subject, do artwork that is linked to the curricular unit they are studying, design a mosaic, and then finally create the mosaic which will be here for years to come!!!!!!!

I am beyond excited about this opportunity and hope that I can dot all my i's and cross all of my t's correctly so that this project can be approved.

How about some eye candy?

So, let me jump back into the swing of things by giving you some Tuesday eye candy :-) Dh and I watched the premiere of "Life on Mars" last week and besides it being a good show, the lead character is definitely eye candy worthy.

Presenting Jason O'Mara. . .enjoy!!!!

Oh, and did you see my thermometer in my left hand sidebar? See how nice it is in the Bay Area now? I love Fall around here :-) So sorry for those of you in the snow!

Thanks for visiting and I plan to get some stamping done this evening!

Have you missed me?

I'm still waiting for things to slow down and it's just not happening. I generally do my stamping late at night when the kids are asleep or settling down but I'm beat most nights and falling asleep early. I know it will balance itself out eventually. At least I love my job and the kids are doing well.

Here's a card I made for a friend of Miles from camp. He recently went to her birthday party and I whipped this out pretty quickly.

The cardbase is PTI Stamper's Select White and the patterned paper is from BasicGrey's Eva Collection. It made this card come together quickly!!!!! I spotted some Elzybells at my LSS recently and finally got them. They're cute and I've wanted them for awhile and when I saw them in person, I couldn't resist much longer. So, Princess is stamped on Neenah Solar White with Memento Tuxedo Black and colored in with Copics. I glittered her up with a Quickie Glue pen and Doodlebug Sugar Coating Glitter--I got the assortment pack and these little jars hold a lot of glitter! She's punched out with my key tag punch and popped up on the card front with dimensionals. The ribbon is PTI's Double Stitched Sweet Blush which is such a great color! Finally, I stamped the sentiment for SU's Upsy Daisy with Brilliance Moonlight White on the dp. It showed up better in rl and I just couldn't get it to show up any better in the pic. Eazy peazy lemon squeezey!

Thanks for visiting and bearing with me during my stamping drought :-) I'm thinking it's time to change my blog since summer is over but may hold out a few more weeks since we generally have our nice weather right now.

I really haven't fallen off the face of the earth.

I know it's been ages since I've blogged and I really want to jump back into the swing of things. I've done some stamping but one card was last minute and I didn't get time to set it up and take a pic of it so you'll just have to take my word for it when I tell you how cute it was :-) The other one is on my camera and I'll work on getting it put up for your viewing pleasure.

Life has been hectic lately. I love the new job--my staff is awesome!!! I'm really blessed to have such high quality teachers on staff. They are so hard working and work together really well. It's amazing to walk around and pop into the classes and see just how much learning is going on. The kids are really engaged in their work and it's just such a great feeling. I can honestly and truly say that I feel comfortable with my own kids here and I would have no problem with them being in any classroom on campus.

It's convenient having the boys here and we all often carpool together with dh dropping us off or me taking him to BART and keeping the car here. Of course, even going together, we're generally not leaving work early so it's between 6:30 and 7 when we finally make it home. Add in checking to see that homework is done and dinner, baths, walking the dogs, etc and that just doesn't leave a whole lot of time for much stamping in the evenings and I'm really having WITHDRAWALS!!!! I say I'm going to stamp every night but when things wind down, I'm tired. Maybe tonight will be a little different.

On to other things. My blogging buddy, Colleen, tagged me and I love these so I'm definitely going to participate. Here are the rules:

1. Link your tagger and list these rules on your blog.

2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.

3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.


Here's my randomness

1. Like Colleen, my 2 front teeth are fake :-) I went face forward down a flight of stairs on Christmas day when I was 8 and broke the two front teeth. I had them capped and as an adult, my uncle who is a dentist redid them and I have porcelein veneers on them now.

2. I love to travel which is fortunate since dh does as well. Before the youngest kidlets were born, dh and I took off a lot for quick trips. We still try to get away as much as possible but since airfare is pricey for a family of 5, we do a lot of car trips.

3. I never thought I'd work in public education as long as I have, especially with little kids. When I first got into teaching, I only wanted to teach high school and I was only going to do it for 3-5 years and then go back and get my doctorate and become a college professor. Ironic that I'm an elementary principal given what I originally started out thinking I'd do.

4. I don't like geese. When I was little, we went fishing and as I was walking by the water, a bunch of geese attacked me. I remember standing there crying and my mom running and getting me away from them.

5. I love warm weather. My ideal place to live would be somewhere that was 65-85 year round. I don't ever want to live somewhere that has 4 seasons! I don't need snow and extreme cold or extreme heat either!

6. People often think I speak Spanish but I don't.

7. I switch back and forth between glasses and contacts. I want to look into getting LASIK soon.

Now I'm going to tag

Marie

Renee

Katie

Malieta

Lynn

Cindy

Mary


Thanks for visiting!

Good Intentions

Man, I have not stamped in about 2 weeks and had every intention of doing so tonight until I really looked at my space and decided I need to straighten and organize it a little bit.  Mind you, I  am not the most organized person on the face of the earth and don't mind a little clutter here and there but I seriously could not carve out a card front sized piece of space to work on so it was time to get to work.  Ok, I do admit I left my desk and space in a bit of a shambles during the Dare to Get Dirty Challenges so I had a lot to work with.

I did get all of my paper, ink, ribbons, punches, and acrylic blocks put away as well as the stamps (which need to be organized and cataloged at some point).  I just gotta go through the remainder of the scraps and stuff (random embellishments, dimensionals sheets that that have to be put away, left over dew drops that I find in random places, etc) and then I can create.

Other than that, this is part of what we've been doing this summer.  Enjoy and thanks for visiting!

Busy Busy

No Eye Candy today. I'm busy and at a training for the next few days that includes homework so I'm not getting much online time right now. I probably won't do much blogging this week but I'll be back next week (or sooner if I find some time)