Raspberry Suite Color Challenge

Well... I just realized that I missed the posting deadline for the challenge. Oh well... did the work... might as well post it anyway!

I needed to make one more Mother's Day card, for one of my grandmothers, so I chose to use the colors in Dawn McVey's color challenge. I love using the color challenges to make my cards. It provides me with the color scheme and most importantly... a deadline. I procrastinate... a lot... so this helps!!

Supply list:
Stamps - Polka Dot Basics, Faux Ribbon, Mother (all PTI)
Paper - Stampers Select White, Dark Chocolate, DC Bitty Dots, Aqua Mist, AM Bitty Dots (all PTI)
Ink - Dark Chocolate (PTI)
Other - Button (PTI Dark Chocolate), Basic Grey Mellow Chipboard flower, White twine (Joannes)

For My Mom

I made this frame for my mom for her birthday! I bought this stamp set because of a certain sentiment it included. It is the Mother set from Papertrey Ink. I love all of the set but I particularly love the sentiment I put on the bottom of the frame. The top says "Mother" and the bottom reads "Someone who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take". That is a true statement in my experience with my own mother! When Papertrey came out with this set, I knew I had to have it and make something special for my mom.

This is my mom blowing out her birthday candles. Don't pay close attention to the actual candles. My dad was in charge of the birthday cake/candles... enough said! :-) Dad did good... he just got a baby's first candle for the 1.
Ha!!

We celebrated my mom's birthday today at Chris and Brandy's (brother and SIL). After church, we got together for a lunch that Brandy, Cindi, and myself had prepared. Everything was great! I hope mom enjoyed it!

Something for Me

This is a necklace that I purchased recently. I used the money that I received from my grandmother for my birthday. I actually got it in the mail on my birthday! Perfect timing. My grandmother was happy that I used it on something I would enjoy. I LOVE this necklace.

I purchased a couple more things, for other people, that I will share at a later date.

I wanted to share this find with anyone who reads this because I love the jewelry that Erin makes and thought some of you might too. Erin has her own Etsy shop where you can purchase her handmade jewelry. If you don't know what Etsy is... it is an online shop where you can buy and sell things that are homemade.

This is a link to her etsy shop...

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5135533

and this is a link to her blog...

http://www.thevintagepearl.blogspot.com/

Great stuff!!

Michael... Papertrey and The Vintage Pearl... keep those stored away in your head in case you need to get me a gift! :-) Love you!

Stamp Index

Several months ago, I threw this stamp index together. I have so many stamps that I can't remember every image. To make projects easier, I stamped each image on paper and put them together in page protectors and secured them together with binder rings. I just add to it when I get a new stamp set. This index helps me to find an image I want to use on a card, etc. This system has worked well for me but I decided that I wanted to make it a little neater.

I purchased a big binder and am in the process of re stamping all of my images. This time I am stamping them all in black and giving each stamp set it's own page. I may have to purchase another big binder. This one is filling up quickly and I am not anywhere near done. I think this means that I have too many stamps. Nah... what am I saying? You can never have too many stamps.

I also have index sheets for my ink pads. I chose one stamp and stamped each color with that stamp. I wrote the color underneath so I could easily identify the ink color I want to use. I have different sheets for the different brands of ink that I have. Basically Stampin Up and Papertrey. My Stampin Up sheets are divided into their color families.

I have a couple of sheets of colored paper (doesn't show up well on white paper), also in the index, that I have used all of my punches on. I went around the edges of the paper and used each punch. This makes it easy for me to see what punches I have and what size circle punch (for example) I need to use to fit a certain image.

The newest thing that I am adding to my new binder is the tip sheets from Papertrey Ink. You can print off a tip sheet for each of their stamp sets. These tip sheets give you suggestions on how to use your images. I have found that a lot of the suggestions they give are things that I wouldn't have thought of on my own. I am putting each tip sheet behind it's stamp set. I already had all the tip sheets printed but had them somewhere else. I think this will help me to look at the tip sheet each time I use an image from a particular stamp set since they will be together.

Freckle Face

Can you see that sweet freckle? This is Carver's first freckle. He has had about 4 freckles come out, pop up, whatever they do, in the past week or so but this was the first one.

I love him!

Michael had several things going on last night so Carver and I had a mother and son date night. We went to eat at O'Charley's and then visited PetSmart to see the animals. Usually we only go to PetSmart to get food for our animals, but this night, we just went for Carver.

While we were in PetSmart, Carver watched the cutest little hamster run around on its wheel. The kid laughed and I mean belly laughed for a good 10 minutes watching that hamster. I love to hear him laugh like that!

The best part of the date happened while we were eating dinner. Carver is like his daddy and can hear a baby cry a mile away. Michael just usually wants the crying to stop. :-) Carver becomes concerned. He kept telling me that there was a baby crying. Finally, I suggested that maybe Carver say a prayer for the baby... pray that the baby wouldn't be upset or hurting anymore. This didn't seem to interest him too much so I said a quick prayer for the baby. Within a minute of my prayer, Carver put his hands together and prayed to God all by himself, for that baby, for a good minute. I have no idea what he was saying but God did! I made out some of the words... baby, crying, hurt, etc. Carver tends to mumble when he prays.

So a few minutes later, the manager came over to see how our dinner was. The manager was asking Carver questions about his food but Carver kept saying "baby crying". The manager didn't understand Carver so I told him what Carver said. The manager then asked Carver, "the baby was crying?" to which Carver replied, "I prayed for it". I had to tell the manager again what Carver was saying and boy was I one proud momma! The manager seemed shocked and didn't really know what to say.

I love him! Carver... not the manager. :-)