Happy Mother's Day!

Hope everybody had a delightful Mother's Day! DaddyDude gave me a few hours of scrapping time, so I worked madly to finish my cropchocolate.com Design Team entry (will post it later), my CC Focus group project, and two final NSD challenges sponsored by CC (I completed 6 out of the main 8 challenges - that's respectable, right?).

Patterned paper (MME Hip Hip Hooray), ribbon trims and rhinestones (MME Lush Fuschia), adhesives (OMC and Snake Tape),
felt, sentiment rub-on (MM), velcro closures

This purse card was my May Focus Group project for CC - the challenge was to use fabric somewhere. I decided to make a felt flower (all glue-gun, no sewing). Incidentally, I recently purchased a book called Card Sketches for Paper Crafters (this is where I got the purse card template) and I love it! I'm all about saving time without sacrificing quality. :) 

Patterned paper, fuschia paper, & brad (MME Fuschia), brown cardstock (Bazzill), twine (MME Lime Twist), flowers (Prima), pearls (MM Paper Reverie), adhesive (OMC and Snake Tape), slide mount (Jest Charming)

For this NSD challenge, we were supposed to dig out our oldest scrapbooking embellishment. Well, I figured slide mounts were pretty old!

Patterned paper and stickers (Echo Park - Be Mine collection), twine (the Twinery), brads (MM), scalloped scissors (Provo Craft)

Last but not least, we were to use embellishments to create a bigger picture - I simply used brads to make another heart shape.

Whew! Now the "Fun Room" is a mess again (not that I had ever full organized it), but my next task is to get a bunch of twine off to my friend, scrapper al - thanks for being patient, scrap buddy! :)

Happy Mother's Day!

Hope all of you mothers out there had a fantabulous day!

The girls and I (kindly driven by Daddy Dude) spent a couple of hours this morning with Michelle - taking some stuff off her hands as she's getting ready to move - before driving over to visit with Grandma and Fred. The dimsum lunch was marvelous! Afterwards, we loaded up at the Japanese grocery store, got some yummy cream puffs, and headed back home.

Yesterday, the girls finally went to their very first Home Depot kids clinic - what fun they had! Even though they had run out of the original project (a tulip vase), they were fortunate enough to have a back-up project available - a planter basket. In my personal opinion, this basket was BETTER - and you scrappers out there know I was thinking, "wow, I could really use that in my scrap area!" Lucky for me, it was a Mother's Day crafts!

Here are the girls, working very hard, supervised by Daddy Dude. Isn't he doing a great job? ;)

And here are the girls with their finished projects! I thought they turned out really well - Daddy Dude thought Marika, especially, did a great job hammering. In fact, she was in tears that Daddy Dude wouldn't let her take the extra nails home! We are now looking for a vendor from whom we can order kid-friendly woodworking kits, so if anyone has any ideas, please share! I'm glad that now, I know who to give my extra craft hammers... :)

An Early Mother's Day Present

This morning, Marika's kindergarten class invited moms to come and enjoy some donuts and refreshments for an early Mother's Day celebration. I had heard they had been working on some Mother's Day presents for us... look how nicely presented it is!

And here's the present! I was pleasantly surprised (extremely so!) - I have no idea how the teacher managed to get these projects done without any of the moms (who volunteer) knowing! Marika can, apparently, keep a secret pretty well, too. It was very carefully made and looks beautiful - I'm thrilled it's something that will last for a long time and can't wait to display it somewhere! Thanks, kiddo!

Patterned paper (Making Memories Dilly Dally collection), ribbon (Making Memories - Chelsea), diecut letters (Quickutz), scalloped squares (Marvy-Uchida), corner rounder

Speaking of Mother's Day... this card was one of my May Chocolatier projects. I haven't decided if I'm giving this card to my mom this year or not - she's not the type to be particularly thrilled about homemade cards.

Here's Marika's first softball layout, also constructed from the Making Memories Dilly Dally Collection (title = Quickutz License Plate alphabet). I know the combination of bugs and baseball is a little unusual but considering Marika is an amateur bugologist... well, I think it works!

The Daily Grind (literally)

If you're familiar with the movie Top Gun, then you know what a wing man is. Marika is my wing man and a good one, too! I trust her to do a lot of things (some of which I wouldn't necessarily trust her big sister to do), such as handle Daisy by herself, take pictures with my camera, strip basil plants to make pesto, or help make my coffee.

For Mother's Day, DaddyDude surprised me with a beautiful French press coffee maker. He also knows I like shiny things, so I was doubly delighted. :)

Marika helps out by watching my 4-minute timer and then pressing the coffee when it's time. I allowed her a tiny taste this morning (it was caffeinated, after all) and she exclaimed, "it's good!" Uh, oh...

I love her desire to help me (it's so sweet!) and especially love to watch her being sooooo extremely careful. She only smiled for me because I asked - other than that, she was intently focusing on her task, carefully switching to the two-handed maneuver near the end.

Thanks, little helper o' mine! I love you! :)

It's all about Mika!

I love handmade gifts... this is what Mika gave me on Friday for Mother's Day, as she got out of school - cookie flowers! They were skewered and held in place with gumdrops. Wasn't that clever? She told me later, that she didn't like the gumdrops (I had to ask if she had licked my gumdrops - but she hadn't! Whew!). On Sunday, she said one of the flower cookies was for Daddy! But, Daddy said I didn't have to share... and I did offer him one!Hope everybody had a Happy Mother's Day!

I got to play soccer in the morning (though we lost miserably - hard not to, when it's 7 versus 11 (and they had 4 subs!)), so that was nice... even though I had to run off the field in the middle of the game because Marika got whacked in the nose by another child's knee and got a bloody nose...

Last week was HOT! The girls went to their best friends' house to play in their new pool. They had a great time, as always. On the way home, we passed a fire that had started brewing in the nearby regional park. I guess it must have looked worse than it was, although 80 acres or so were said to have burned. Whenever we see smoke plumes, it's always chilling.

Some big news! *Somebody* lost one of their two front teeth! This was the first time Mika had lost a tooth and NOT had the new one coming in, so the gap is very noticeable and somehow, makes her look much older. There was a little episode with the tooth fairy, though... she couldn't find the tooth so she had to write a note asking Mika to put it somewhere else. I'm sure Mika thinks the tooth fairy is pretty dense... but she did seem delighted with the correspondence (she wrote an apology note to the tooth fairy, saying next time, she would leave her tooth on the dresser). Doh!

And can you believe... Mika got her first pair of casual shoes with laces! Ah, what a world we live in now, where kids didn't have to learn how to tie shoelaces because velcro was such a fabulous invention! She's caught on pretty quickly on how to tie them... although it does take her some time to carefully do it... she seems to enjoy wearing these without socks. Or, is that the new fad???

And finally... (drumroll)... the synapses have made their connections and Mika, after a long hiatus of not riding her bike, hopped back onto it this week and within 3 days, had mastered riding the two-wheeler. Day 1, she was still falling down. Day 2, she was able to start herself but slammed into the house a few times (not a good noise from the inside!). By Day 3, she was speeding along, turning smoothly, and picking her bike up and climbing on. Yay! You go, girl!!! I can't wait to go on long bike rides with her!

Linnecards Mother's Day Card Challenge

Supplies: cardstock (Bazzill), patterned paper (Making Memories), rub-on (American crafts), stamp (Studio G), diecut letters, butterfly, parentheses, and tag (Quickutz), diecut scalloped oval (BossKut), ribbon (Making Memories, Offray), glitter (Stickles), epoxy embellishment (Making Memories), circle rhinestones (Paper Studio), flower rhinestones (Hero Arts), gold pen (Marvy Uchida), pop dots, Fiskars Apron Lace border punch

I hadn't made my Mother's Day cards yet, so when Sharon issued a Mother's Day card challenge at http://www.linnecards.com/blog/, I decided it was time to make some cards! Here are three Mother's Day cards plus a thank you card for a good friend...