Happy Monday

And happy Martin Luther King day. The boys have the day off of school today and we have a birthday party to attend. 


We have been busy just doing the normal running around type of things. Spencer started playing basketball this year, so yesterday we went to the mall to find him some basketball shoes. Connor was wanting to ride the big carousel there and while we were waiting in line to buy a token, a nice woman offered us one. She said they were from out of town and didn't need that one. I thought that was so nice of her to offer it to us and I want to say a big Thank You to her!  So here is Connor on the 2nd floor of the carousel ride. 

This Thursday is going to be an exciting day for us. Spencer made the finals for his school Spelling Bee! Twenty-six kids from the 4th and 5th grades will be competing. They had a party for all the finalists last Friday at school.  I think it made him feel really special that he earned this spot and that he would really like to win.  So we have been practicing and practicing spelling words.  I just hope he doesn't get too nervous. He can spell really well and the only thing that might trip him up is his nerves. I will let everyone know how he does on Thursday! We are very proud of him!


I'm also working on the Christmas mini album that Nikki Sivils sent me. I wrote about it in this post. I hope to have it done in the next day or two and then I will post it. 


Thanks again for visiting me and have a great week! 

A Fun Card

This is a fun card I made today. I love this stamp on the front of the card. It is so cute and I think it has tons of possibilities for different cards. 


But since I'm in the hating winter mood right now, I thought I would make this:

The title "Winter got you bummed?" is a combination of a stamp and rubons. The winter stamp actually has "wonderland" underneath it and I just used a post-it mask to not stamp that part. Although you can see a little speck of black there from the top of the "d" in wonderland. 

I used my Copic markers to color the snowmen's hats and scarfs and a little Diamond stickles for the snow accents. And the glitter white ric-rac ribbon came that way. I'm not even sure where I got that, but thought it looked cute as "snow drifts". 


And now for the inside of the card:

Does that make you feel all warm? Or does it depress you because summer is 5 looonnnnng months away!? 

I stickled her grass skirt. I didn't realize until I stamped her that the skirt came out black. I wanted it to have a brownish type tint to, so I used Cinnamon stickles. And the sand is an embossing power called Golden Sand. Added some rubons for my title and the Copics for coloring.


So that is what I did today. I hope you like it!


Thanks again for visiting me! 

My Attempt at Movie-Making

When I got my Macbook, one of the items I was really excited about was to be able to make and edit little movies. I took a class at the Apple store last month to learn how to do this. I need to take another one because when I tried to edit this movie, I forgot most everything I was taught. I have a feeling this would have taken the Apple girl that tutored me about 15 minutes to make. It took me about 3 hours.

I hope you enjoy my very novice attempt at making a movie. Make sure you have your sound on. I added a song to it! And if it is cold where you live, Stay Warm. And if it isn't cold where you live, I'm really, really jealous of you right now!

Thanks again for visiting me!

A few of my Favorite Pics of 2009

As we get ready to say goodbye to 2009 and hello to 2010, I thought I would post just a few of my favorite pictures of the year. I have taken so many this year because of the Project 365 that it was really hard to narrow them down. 

These two are favorites because they remind me of our trip to Disney World this last March. The top one because it is of the four of us and the bottom because of how exciting it was for the boys to open the Indiana Jones show. Here is the post of the video we have of this event. 

This next picture says Spring to me. The boys were in the backyard and found a four-leaf clover. It looks so perfect! 

This next one is pretty obvious. Just a silly picture of a silly boy in some silly glasses.

And my water fireworks. One of my all-time favorites!

I remember I went to take Maggie for a walk one night and got about 1/2 way down the block when I saw this huge cloud with lightening in it. So I ran back to the house, dropped Maggie off, and got my camera. Sorry Maggie, but I think this picture was worth you missing a walk!.

I love this picture of the boys in front of the Arch. When you grow up in St. Louis, I think you have to have one of these pictures. 

And how could we forget the little puppy that came to live with us. As much as she has driven me crazy this first year, she is super cute! Look at the little stub of a tail. :-)

And lastly, these two pictures of the boys at Gulf Shores. I love, love, love these pictures of them! 

Happy New Year everyone who comes to my little blog. I wish everyone a safe, healthy and happy 2010!


Thanks again for visiting me! 

Merry Christmas Eve

May all your Christmas wishes come true. 

My 18-Step Christmas Card

Here it is.........

The Christmas Card that ended up taking way more time than I thought it would. 

When I was trying to figure out what I wanted to make for my card this year, the only thing I knew for sure is that I wanted to use my Copics. I discovered these awesome markers this year, and was on the look out for a stamp that I could color with them.

I was in Archivers looking at stamps when I looked at the back of a Stampendous stamp and saw this Angel. I wanted that Angel for my card. It was perfect! I asked the nice Archivers lady if they had this stamp. Of course, she said no, that the angel is last year's stamp. So now I'm on a mission to find this stamp. I finally found it online and ordered it. This was about a week before Thanksgiving. It didn't arrive until after Thanksgiving. And since I wasn't exactly sure how big the angel was, I couldn't start cutting anything yet. 

So then the first week of December started my mass producing card assembly line. 

So here is the list of my 18 steps:

1. Cut the white squares.
2. Punch the border along one side.
3. Stamp angel.
4. Color angel with Copics.
5. Emboss Wings. (You can see that in above pic.)
6. Color Wings with Copics.
7. Round corners on white angel square.
8. Cut Red Base of card.
9. Emboss red base with Sizzix Polka Dot Embossing folder.
10. Stamp & Emboss greeting on front of card
11. Cut & Emboss inside label with the Spellbinders Nestabilities
12. Stamp Greeting on inside label.
13. Punch 1/2 circle on my picture pocket.
14. Make picture pocket.
15. Edit pictures and add swirl & Holiday brushes.
16. Print and cut pictures to 4x4 size
17. Round corners on all pictures.
18. Stamp Handmade By Christie on back. 

Yeah, I went a little crazy again. 

Here is the inside of the card. I used these three different pictures of us that we took while on vacation in the Gulf Shores. 

Here is the back with my special 

"Holiday Card" stamp.

And I made 60 of them. Yes, 60. 

Thanks for visiting me!

Super Easy Holiday Wall Art

So last week I was sitting in the doctor's office waiting room (just a check-up), when I picked up a copy of Southern Living magazine. I've never really looked at this magazine, but as I was perusing through it I came across the cutest idea.  Now I have looked all over their website for the instructions but I can't find them anywhere. And I didn't want to buy the magazine, so I just decided to improvise from my memory to make it. 

These are the supplies you will need. Three embroidery hoops (I have one 10" and two 14" hoops, orange felt, some buttons, scissors, hot glue gun, a scarf, and some fabric. I happened to have an old sweater set that was in my "to be donated/garage sale box" that I used. So this whole project cost me $5.16 for the 3 hoops and piece of orange felt since I already had everything else. Can you guess what I'm making? 

Lay your hoop over your fabric of choice

 and cut it out. 

You will end up with your three hoops

 looking like this.

Next I cut a long triangle out of the felt. 

To keep the edges of my fabric from fraying and showing, I hot glued them to the hoop. 

So your three hoops end up looking like this. 

Then lay out your face on the smallest hoop 

and hot glue them down.

 This is a no sewing project which I love!

Then hang the hoops up on the wall and you have a 3-dimensional snow man! 

I tried to use the wacky tac stuff to hang my hoops but it would not hold the larger hoops. I ended up just using a straight pen. For the scarf I hung it on one of those 3m hooks and then used a few straight pens to anchor it better too. 

Here is a side view. Now you could paint the hoops white if you wanted, but I like the look of them as they came. I added the vinyl hat and snowflakes. I cut the hat by hand, and used my Cricut for the snowflakes. 

The project was super fast to do. The actual snowman probably only took me a little over an hour to put together. The only thing I would have liked differently is to have the middle circle smaller than the bottom one. When I went to buy the hoops at Michaels, they didn't have any of the 12" size in stock. And I didn't want to drive all over the place for that size, so I just went with what they had. 

I hope you like my super, fast, easy, (inexpensive) Holiday wall art project!  Thanks again for visiting me!