Cards... I forgot

After recuperating from the dance show madness and making three cards, I forgot to post about them. So here they are:


As I've mentioned before, my MIL
loves fat birds, so when I saw this wood stamp at ACMoore I knew I had to get it. It's a simple card, but I love the dark brown (Colorbok - Chestnut) and the light brown of the Kraft paper (from Stampin Up).





I would love to do more of this type of card in the future. I'll have to look through my stamps to see if any do the justice of this one.






This year I ended up making my FIL and Joe the same card. I used the wallet album by Shabby Princess (my all-time favorite digital scrapbooking designer) . It can be a few different things.







It's actual purpose is to hold album pages that fit in the slats on the right side. I took liberties with this though and found that it can either hold a gift card or money, also. I ended up folding up money and putting it in there and writing a greeting on the left side for my FIL.


I ended up doing the album thing for Joe, since I bought him a gift. So I used the version where the left side has an opening for a picture. By the time I had cut out the pieces, assembled them and promptly ran out of adhesive, it was 3am. So I gave Joe his without the picture and the album pages inside. (Maybe I'll show off the album pages in a few days)




The best part about wallet album is that it has a way of being sealed shut. It has a flat and you just apply some velcro with adhesive on the back and you're done.





So all you need to make this card/album is a printer, a pair of scissors, adhesive, glue dots (I used them for the pockets) or glue, velcro and a light colored gel pen to write a sentiment. Easy Peasy.

That's all from me today. I'm out... til next time.

I Will Follow Him...

... wherever he may go. There isn't an ocean so deep. A mountain so high it can't keep... keep me away...

So after listening to that song and the song "Heatwave" about 900,000 times between listening in my car (while going over the moves in my head) and practicing in the studio, the dance show finally came... and went. It was bitter sweet because we spent hours of hard work to perfect moves and learn how to tap together to get to the show, but after is kind of a let down. I don't get to see my tap buddies for MONTHS when for months I would see them every week or so.

The only thing getting me through is knowing that it starts all over again in September. Yay! So without further ado - Here's the tap number I was in, for all who are interested:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyK2zW7JOJU

My wonderful husband taped it for me... and sat through the entire dress rehearsal. He's such a trooper. My MIL (Marie) and SILs (Katie and Mandy) all came to the show. For which I appreciate and hope they enjoyed themselves.

Movie Tuesday

It's been a while since I've had one of these, but here it is... Elijah being a ham for the camera.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpZjFAZJZrM

Transformation of a Bedroom - Part 1 - Planning

We have lived in our current residence for 5 years, this month, and there's tons of things I would love to do to the house to make it more homey. Unfortunately, we only rent, so I feel like anything we do to the house will be throwing money away, because we won't be able to get any money back from our investment.

That being said, we still feel the need to fix things up and change things to make a house, a home. But instead of investing hundreds of dollars on remodeling, we try to do it as cheap as possible. So comes the next series of blog postings... We are going to re-do Elijah's bedroom.

This is what it looks like now. White walls, gold(?) shag carpet, empty walls... for the most part, a few necessities and that's it.

Before now, a nice bedroom wasn't needed because he only slept in the room. I mean, who needs decorations and a nice color pallet to sleep? But since he's getting older (he's just about 2 and a half) and can go up and down the steps as he pleases, Joe thought having a nice bedroom for Elijah would be good.

After much discussion, friendly (and not so friendly) debates and looking at Home Depot, Lowes and pictures online, we decided on the following things:


We are painting this room in Behr Disney color "Blue Balloon",

or something close to it, and doing white trim.

We are installing a chair rail along the one wall where his bed is now and painting below it with chalk board paint. Kind of like this picture, but upside down.

We are also planning on re-carpeting. When we remodeled (if you want to call it that) our bedroom we got a really good deal at Lowes for carpet that was only like $1.50 a square foot, with installation and a free padding upgrade. We ended up getting our whole master bedroom (20x17) and closets carpeted for about $500... with carpeting left over. We plan on trying to get the same deal with Elijah's carpeting.

Even though they did a wonderful job installing it, we decided since his room is square, that we would buy the padding and carpeting and do it ourselves... to save a bit of dough. The carpet is probably going to be a light beige color, but I'm not sure. Right now, money is more important than color... to a point. If it's not exactly light beige, I could deal, as long as it looks good with the walls.

Of course things could change, cause this -is- just the planning portion. I will update as things go along. Also, make sure to stay tuned for the next installment: Furniture and Accessories.

Charlotte is 2...

My neice turned 2 on May 14th, but they didn't have her birthday party until last Sunday. Being the procrastinator I am, I couldn't have her card done way ahead of time (even though I had an idea of what I wanted to do since January). That ruins the fun of the adrenaline pumping at 12:30am the day of the party, freaking out cause the card doesn't look right. It doesn't look... finished.



This is, what I decided was, the finished card:




I sketched a backwards 2 on some colored cardstock from StampinUp (this is probably the only time in my life I wished I had a cricut, cause it would have been TONS faster) and surprisingly it doesn't look like a 5-year-old did it. I cut it out as neatly as possible and glued it straight onto the card... to hide the evidence. Then I applied the puffy flower stickers and the giraffe by Crayola. You can't tell by the pic, but the eyes on the giraffe move. Originally that was the whole card. I was going to write "Happy Birthday Charlotte" underneath, but it didn't look right, so I looked through my stuff and found this yellow, metal clip thing by Making Memories.


Even with that addition, it still didn't look done, so I rummaged around a little more, found my mat pack from StampinUp (it's a paper piercer and stitching template together) and white gel pen. Added faux stitching to the outside and it finally looked complete.

Thanks for taking a look. I shall be posting more cards soon. As you know Father's Day is fast approaching and I am at a loss for what to do for cards. Masculine cards are the hardest thing for me to create, so we'll see how it goes. Off to search the "interwebs" for inspiration...