Busy weekend and Monday

I just wanted to let you know I have been crafting up a storm but I haven't had anytime to take pics this week yet. I've had a crazy busy and exciting couple of days!

First two VERY exciting things for me!! #1 Ginger Scraps online magazine choose one of my scrapbook layouts for publication!! Woooowho! They choose little ole' ME! I'm so honored! Ok I'll layoff the exclamations now, but that's pretty exciting its the first time I've every been published for anything :)

#2 Don't forget that next week I'm the Growing in Unity girl. Come back for some fab projects and prizes :)

This is what I've been up to this last few days!
*Last Thursday was a play date and lunch with a good friend and our kiddos.
* Friday was fish fry at home and crafty night after the boys were in bed.
*Saturday was a girls day out at a woman's expo in Appleton, a little quilt shop, antique shopping and of course a stop at Archiver's. My scores?? Some yummy Basic Grey fabric, a metal flower frog, a few new Unity stamps and 3 of the new Tim Holtz distress stains. I can't wait to play with them! After all the "hard" shopping (lol) I came home and my wonderful hubby grilled me a great tenderloin on his new grill (his new toy) along with sauteed mushrooms and my favorite tri-tators :) He is so good to me! After such a yummy meal how could I tell him no I didn't want to watch a movie with him? <3

*Sunday we were off to the outlet mall for summer clothes shopping for the boys and a basketball fundraiser at my husbands school. Home for dinner and Mom over for the night.

*And finally Monday early start to the day with dropping the boys at the sitter's for the day and off with the girls to Baraboo for a trip to The Memory Bank (LSS) some more antique shopping and checking out the town. What a good time!! Much needed break for Mommy :) Today's scores??? A printers tray (the real kind) for....wait for it....$20!!! I couldn't believe it considering the antique store we were in before that I found one for $95 (Yipes) and the one I got was in better condition. Go me :) I also got about 6 new twinkling H2O's, some fab ribbon and a new Spellbinder. Good day today :D

So I will do my best to take some pictures for you tomorrow... Thank You to all of you who check in on me from time to time to read about my little ole' life and see my creations!

Friends with Flair

So I finally got a card done for the Friends with Flair (FWF) challenge that they have every Friday over on the Unity blog :) They have made some fun changes over there this week make sure you hop over to check them out and their NEW challenge is also posted! The prize is pretty generous if you ask me.

It has been a pretty gloomy day here in Wisconsin, I thought it was supposed to be spring, come on already! But that's o.k. because it gave me the inspiration I needed to get a few projects done for my upcoming Growning in Unity (GUI) spotlight the week of April 25th :) I'm really kind of excited about this and I have some really fabulous projects in mind for you guys! I hope that you will come back and check them out and besides I'll be having some blog candy that week too, who doesn't like a chance to win. So without further ado here is my FWF card for today.

I used My Mind's Eye papers, copic markers and with the watercolor technique, Viva Decor pearl pens and glassy accent pens and momento ink. I wish the lighting had been better today, the gloominess made it hard to capture all the detail on this card. 

I hope you all enjoyed today's card :) Thanks for stopping by!!

Link Up the Love

So I've been thinking about this post for about two days knowing that I wanted to do it but not sure how I wanted it to go....

I'm joining a great group of people from over at K Andrew's blog, http://www.gettingcricky.com/ this week K asked us to "Link up the love" because the bloggy world has become a bit impersonable and we don't always take the time to get to know the person behind the post. I agree with her and admit that I am even guilty of not always leaving a comment even when I think a project is faboulous because I think the person won't notice or I'm short on time. I have made a vow to be better! It only takes a few seconds and it could make the persons day, I know that I ALWAYS smile when I get a comment :)

So instead of a project in todays post I'm going to tell you a little more about me, the person behind the post, and hope you will browse and enjoy the projects in the posts below.

...Most of you already know my name is Becky, lol, so I'll skip the obvious. What you may not know about me is why I have a small, ok big, affection for squirrels (but I'm sure you can tell from my blog) This affection stems back to my college days when my friends told me that I had the personality of a squirrel. Now this involved a lot of drinking, come on it was college, but it stuck and it became my licence plate and I now have little squirrel knick knacks all over my house. They have kind of become my mascot and they always make me smile. I think it may be my way of hanging on to my college days and staying close with those friends who so long ago gave me that nick name without knowing how far it would go :)

I also love to browse antique shops for fun. Now that doesn't happen to often anymore with little ones you know little hands and breakables are not always a good combination. But when I need an escape every once in a while I will find an antique shop and get lost. I am usually looking for buttons or things I can incorporate in my crafty creations. But I also like to collect things to decorate my craft room with. In some of the pictures below you will see some of the vintage thread spools that I found on one of my last trips. I also found this adorable little cast iron stove that I couldn't pass up. It now adorns the shelf in my new scrap room.

But the most important thing about me above and beyond my crafting passion is that I am the mom to the two most wonderful and beautiful boys in the whole wide world! They are the light of my life and they keep me going every day and recently I was fortunate enough to be given the chance to stay home with them again.

There is a ton more I could tell you a ton more about me but this post is getting a bit long winded. So now I would love it if you would all play along with us and join the rest of us in "Linking up the Love".

All you have to do is add your link to this list and don't forget to stop by K Andrew's blog.







 
Thanks for reading tonight!



H2O inspired

I told you ladies about the blog hop that Creative Imaginations and Memory Box have put together this week and I can't tell you how inspired I have been by playing along. I decided to break out my twinkling H2O's last night and play around. ( They haven't seen the light in years!) So here is what I came up with...  If you want to see the details more clearly you can just click on the pictures. That adorable topiary tree is an Impression Obsession stamp and the sentiment is from Unity stamp company. They dp is from October Afternoon and beautiful little brads are from American Crafts. I love everything about this card and the pictures just don't do it justice. It is very hard to see the Twinkling H2O's in the pictures.  Anyway just a quick post today to share my latest favorite creation.  Hope you enjoyed :)

Busy as a bee

****Edited**** I completely forgot to link this to the All Things Unity Blog!! I entered my Berry Adorable card in their All Things Unity (ATU) challenge #28. This challenge was all about buttons, one of my favorite things :)  Make sure you hop over to their blog and see all the wonderful creations over there! Those girls really out do themselves and are a constant inspiration to me! Make sure you leave them some love while you are there :)


I have been bitten by the crafty bug and I just can't stop! I don't even want to sleep at night (and if I didn't have little ones I probably wouldn't). Inspiration is coming from everywhere this week.

I want to start with a card I made for the challenge over at K Andrew's Simply Sunday Challenge at Getting Cricky blog. If you haven't been by her blog to check her out yet, PLEASE go! She is a super talented and sweet lady! Kristal is the person who designed my blog banner for me :) She has such a huge heart. Her challenge for this week was to create an inspired heart project using anything that inspired us. Well if you don't know this about me, I love to browse antique stores looking for fun finds to use in my creations and decorate my scrap space. The strawberry buttons on this card were found on one of my recent trips and they were the inspiration for this card. I'm always like a kid in a candy store when I find a booth with a button bucket in it. I have to stay away from those glass cases, lol, the price starts to go up when you get to those :D So for this card I left two of the strawberrys naked and I used my copics to color the other one. All of the design papers are Jillibean Soup and the cardstock is Bazzill. I know its hard to see but the die cut that is behind the dp is a Heartfelt Creations Spellbinder. The Stamp is Unity and the ribbon is Maya Road.

Now when you are done looking at all my scrappy goodness hop over to K Andrew's blog and check out all the other crafty creators this week!

Today has been a great day! I won my first blog hop prize ever! Creative Imaginations and Memory Box, two of my favorite companies, teamed up to do a blog hop and the projects they are posting are amazing. If you have a few minutes jump on over to the Memory Box blog or the Creative Imaginations blog. I'm telling ya these projects rock!

I have been in more of a card making and stamping mood lately than scrapbooking, I've been having so much fun with my Unity stamps and all the paper that I have around I've been a card making maniac! So without further ado here are some more of this weeks creations...

Wow, sorry about all the pictures. I hope you enjoyed and thanks for listening to me ramble on tonight! See you again very soon!

Cards Cards and More Cards

I'm so proud of myself! Today's major accomplishment was organizing all the photos in my computer and getting 3/4ths of them edited so that I can send them off to snapfish. Plus I got my post for you ready in the same day, yeah me! So I've been telling you about all the fun I had at my crop get-a-way in Baraboo and all the projects that I got done so I thought I would finally show you, lol! This was going to be an extremely heavy picture laden post but I decided to make a photobucket slide show for you. *Warning* I may be OBSESSED with Memory Box papers and Unity Stamp Company stamps right now, hahaha! Just a theme I noticed. No really, I found the Minuet 6x6 paper collection at The Memory Bank  and I couldn't put it away it was so irresistible. I have always loved Memory box but this has to be my favorite paper collection by far. I also brought all of my Unity Stamp Company Kit of the Month (KOTM) kits with me. If you don't know about their KOTM it is absolutely F.A.B.U.L.O.U.S! For only $31/month (includes shipping) you get a full 8.5xll sheet of cling mounted rubber stamps and a ton of perks to go with it. Go check out all the details {HERE}. Moral of the story, I love them and can't get enough.

Here are some pictures of the quaint little cabin we stayed at and some of the fun we had at the dress shop across the hall from Pam's store. We called it our princess party, really we were just being kinda dorky :) (keep in mind this was a don't do your make up pajama kinda weekend, lol)

I think this picture is appropriate for "The End"Hope you enjoyed...

Monkies in my Bed

Whooo Weeee! What a busy last week I've had. I finalized all the last dirty details of closing my business and I can now say that I think everything is behind me. I've also been playing around with my blog a bit with the help of a friend, and very talented lady, who created my header and avatar I think I have a new look. What do you ladies think??

 I also went away for my first ever crop retreat weekend. I had a blast and can't wait to go again! Myself and two of my friends traveled to The Memory Bank in Baraboo, WI to one of my friend Pam's store and cropped the weekend away. Pam's inlaws also own a bed and breakfast where we stayed. It was such a quaint place and very much remined me of my grandparents house when I was a young girl.  I finished a mini album to send to my Grandma and about a dozen cards this weekend, not much considering we were there all weekend. But the food was good and the company was even better!

So without further ado here is the layout I made of my two adorable little men.

My  oldest little guy Ian loves his little brother Ethan so much that he wakes up every morning and runs to his crib to tell him good morning. I think it is absolutely adorable that he can't wait to see his little brother every morning :) So what does a good mom do?? She wakes up prepared with the camera, ready to caputure the moment!



For this layout I used Basic Grey's Oliver collection, Bazzill, Thickers, some random buttons from my stash and Jolee's hot fix jewels.

I hope you enjoyed todays creation and I'll be back with some more to share with you tomorrow.

~Hugs~

Becky



Blossoms of the heart

Well this week I have done a lot of soul searching with it being my first full week home and the store being closed. I'd like to say that I'm enjoying every minute of it and that everything is perfect but I have to be honest and this is my format for that. I am perpetually bored and I think it completely sucks that I don't have the dream to live. {for now} I am not one for self pitty so I'll move on but I just needed to get that off my chest. I read a post from Angela over at Unity Stamp Co. this week that really hit home and tugged at my heart strings because I relate with EVERYthing she said in her post. If you would like to read Angela's post you can do so {Here}.

Any way the reason that I'm speaking of all of this is because Angela totally inspired the wall project for my new scrapbook room that you can see pictures of over on the side bar. After I read her post I knew exactly what I was going to do with the canvas that I bought from Archiver's almost 2 months ago. I have been terrified of messing it up, LOL! I had also been saving these perfectly pretty prima flowers and pearly bling for the right project.

For this project I first sprayed the canvas with Tattered Angel's Glimmer Mist in coffee, bronze and copper. I then cut the vase from the Walk In My Garden cricut cartridge using Crate Paper's Brooke Collection. I then stamped "Blossom" from Unity Stamp Company. You can order that on their website. {Here} And last but not least I add the Prima flowers and bling. I just loved how this project turned out! So here's to you Angela, Thank YOU!!


Now stay tuned for the rest of the week, I have a few cards made using one of my Unity Kit of the Month stamps and  a scrapbook layout finished to post. I am also very excited about the crop that I am going on at the end of this week at The Memory Bank in Baraboo, WI with some good friends :) Hopefully I will get a lot more done than yacking all weekend long, LOL!

~Hugs to everyone~
        Becky