Is it just me or is it gettin' hot in here?

OH, I just crack myself up.

Thursday has come to us once again, which means it's my turn to take on of Pam's fabulous challenges and attempt to inspire you all to play along!  Today the challenge at 365 Cards is to use our gardens as inspiration.  "Do you have a garden?  If so, what sorts of things do you have in your garden?  If not, what would you want in your garden?  That is what should inspire your card."

That's not too crazy, right?  My family used to have a small garden in our backyard.  I don't remember everything we had in there, but I know for sure that we had chili peppers.  We can go through dried chiles like nobody's business.  I remember one time my brother convinced my little sister to take a bite out of one... It's funny now. Hahaha.   Here's my chili-inspired card:

So what's in your garden?  I'm looking forward to seeing your creations!

Unconventional Valentine

Happy Valentine's Day! Or Single's Awareness Day... whichever one you're celebrating today. Haha ;-)

I'm quite literally on my way out the door to work this morning, but I wanted to share this card with you first.  I've been itching to make something with the "From My Kitchen" cartridge and this is what I came up with:

Kinda fun, no?

Happy Monday to ya! :-)

Color and Dimension... and Mice in the Jam

Hello Blogger-friends!  Happy Thursday, once again.  We've survived another week!  For my friends here in the States, I hope you all had a lovely Labor Day weekend.  We had some awesome weather here.  My sisters and I lit up a bonfire in the backyard and had a couple of friends over.  It was so much fun :-) And since no one had to be at school or work the next morning, we were outside until about 3 a.m.   We even ran out of firewood!  But that didn't stop us.  Earlier that afternoon, we'd seen a stack of wood on the curb a few blocks away.  So a quick trip around 1 a.m. solved that problem. Lol.

Today I've got a card to show you for the challenge over at 365 Cards.  Click on the link to view the details!

I love coloring with markers.  Especially new markers ;-)  The ones I use on my cards, most of the time, are a set of Prismacolor permanent markers that my dad used a bajillion years ago.  They sat up in a closet for the longest time and then, a couple of years ago, I adopted them.

Another thing I did on this card was use foam squares.  I never used to do a lot of layered or dimensional stuff when I first started making cards.  But recently I find myself using them on EVERYTHING. Haha.  My only problem is that sometimes even the 1/8" squares are a little too thick for my taste.  So in some cases (like today's card) I'll split each square into two layers.  You get more "pop" for your money and the card still fits in the envelope! *clapping*

Okay peeps, I've gotta get to sleep now (cuz it's still Wednesday night as I'm typing this)!!  See y'all soon... I'm shooting for at least one more post this week!

Cookin' Up Some Punny Stuff

*If you're looking for my card for 365 Cards, it's down toward the bottom!*

Hey there blogger-friends!  It's been a while since I've done a regular ol' "hey, look at this!" post.  This summer has been shaping up to be a pretty fun one so far.  I had a couple of goals that I made for myself, and I'm well on my way to meeting those!  The first one was to make cards to send in to Operation Write Home.  I picked up a medium-sized box at the post office the other day to see how close I was to actually filling it-- and I'm about half way there!

Oh, and speaking of cards (ummm... duh, what else would we be speaking about on here?), I added a couple of links over there on the sidebar.  Take a second and check out Susie's blog, where I was a featured stamper.  She has some great stuff to share! ---->>

My other goal was to see every show at the Muny this season.  Three down, four to go.  I've seen Beauty and the Beast, Titanic: The Musical and Damn Yankees.  I don't know if there's any other place like the Muny, but it's definitely one of my favorite attractions during the summer.  Because it's an outdoor theater (and because St. Louis weather is kind of ridiculous) it's a bit of a hit-or-miss situation with the rain.  This is the first year that I've gone and a show actually got rained out.  My whole family went to see Titanic a couple of weeks ago. They were predicting storms for that particular night, but we decided to go anyway, in hopes that any rain would be over with before the show was supposed to start.  Besides, we always do the free seats, so it's not like we were gonna lose money on tickets or anything.  No such luck.  It rained from the time we arrived until well into the evening when they finally canceled the show at 9:30.  Oh well :-) We had fun anyway-- This was our view from the free seats:

I ended up going a few nights later with a friend.
She had tickets.
They were really close.
It was awesome.
"Cats" is showing this week... I've never seen the show before, so I'm looking forward to it.

SO... finally, I've got a card to share with you.  This one is for today's challenge over at 365 Cards.  The challenge is to create a card with something related to the cooking of food. Well, it just so happens that I recently picked up some super cute stickers at Archivers for exactly this purpose.  I was fishing through the "hot spot" corner and I said to myself, "There's always some kind of food-related challenge and I never have anything for it... I'll buy these."  And whaddya know! Hehe.

HAHA.  I love puns. When I started making this, my original idea was that it could be used as a belated birthday card.  But it kinda works as any kind of apology card.

Also, I made this card LAST week, but never got around to posting it to the challenge...

This one was for 365 Cards' "Imagine This: Chalkboard" challenge.  It's almost back-to-school time!  I'll be back at work in almost exactly one month. *sigh* It's gonna go so fast.

Hope y'all are having a fabulous week!! Thanks for stopping by :-)

I'm A Freakin' Clearance Ninja!

"I'm a ninja!"
"No you're not."
"Did you see that?"
"See what?"
"Exactly."

I saw that on Facebook the other day and it made me actually LOL.

But ANYWAY, I was at Michael's today and they had some really cute paper on clearance.  I got 12x12 patterned cardstock for 14 cents/sheet. It was awesome.  Plus they had some great clear stamps in the dollar bins that I totally snatched up and I had a 50% off coupon which I used on a refill for my Xyron sticker maker.  Needless to say, it was a great day. Haha.

I've got a card to share with you for Day 107 challenge at 365 Cards.  The challenge was to use an argyle pattern, but the twist was that it had to represent "fabric" on the card.  I used this rocking horse from the "Paper Doll Dress Up" cart.  The idea was for it to look like one of those plushie-type rocking horses.  I added the stitching to make it look a little more fabric-y.

I wasn't sure about the sentiment.  My little sis said it looked like something for a baby card, but I liked the pun better ;-)  But then I was thinking this could be used as a baby thank you card-- you know, like after a shower or something.

Lemme know what you think!  Thanks so much for looking :-)

Learning Things About Myself

There is quite an interesting challenge at 365 Cards today.  To play along, you must create a card that reflects YOU.  I knew this one wasn't gonna be easy.  I don't even like when I have to write an "about me" paragraph for an online profile. Lol.


As I sat down to start making this card, I started thinking about what people who know me have said about me. One of the things my mom usually points out is that I'm a very "black and white" sort of thinker. (Ta-da! Color scheme!!)  I tend to keep things short and sweet and pretty simple.  I like things to have an order and a reason-- a pattern.  (Bazinga!!)  But at the same time, there's the creative side of me that loves spontaneity and doing silly things for no reason at all :-)  To represent this part of me, I decided to interrupt the black and white with a shock of green.  It's my favorite color.  Except when it looks like pukey green, which it kind of does in the photo.  In real life it's more of a lime green.  Also, I decided to do a birthday card because guess what... my birthday is Monday!! Woo hoo! Party time.

While I was thinking about all this stuff, I started wondering whether I would consider myself a "right-brained" person or a "left-brained" person.  People have told me that I'm very much like my mom (who, I would say, is definitely a left-brained thinker). But then just as many people have said that I'm like my dad, who is a graphic designer and artist and, I would say, tends to be more of a right-brained thinker.  So out of morbid curiosity, I found and took this test.  Turns out, I'm 49/51!!!!  I laughed when I saw the results.  It explains SO much. To borrow a line from the movie, Runaway Bride, "I am profoundly and irreversibly screwed up." LOL. Just kidding... sort of.


Haha. Thanks for stopping by today!

Should I Cry Or Dance For Joy?

Well, today has been a little bittersweet for me.  It was the last day of aftercare at the preschool where I work.  I'm looking forward to an awesome summer break, but I sure am going to miss those little boogers :-)

Yesterday they called all of the kids together and they gave us a card (signed by all of the kids) and a gift.  It was super sweet.  Then one of the teachers (who happens to be my aunt) asked them, "Now, what is the most special gift you can give to Miss Hannah and Miss Julie?"

Halie:  "A puppy!"

No.

Shaili:  "A kitten?!"

Uh, no.

Kadyn: "A SNAKE!"

Definitely no.  Correct answer:  A hug.  And say "thank you."  But it sure was funny. Haha.

Here are a couple of cards that I made for a few of the teachers that we see everyday:

On the insides, I used these super-cute stamps by Inkadinkadoo:

I think these are funny anyway, but when you work with little kids you realize-- Yeah, they really do say stuff like that!