Insomniart

Fleece & Flour

Temps in Westerly, RI, have been just above 30 degrees. Thank heaven for fleece! In our house it doesn't matter how cold it is, we've got birthday fever! Last Friday the kids had no school, it was one of those district professional days and Hope had a birthday party to attend. We put together a cute toy in a butterfly sack I stamped and then I made a name frame for the birthday girl out of my alphabet stamps, designer paper, and a new steel die for my Sizzix in the shape of butterflies. I mostly stamped and adhered the different papers and textures inside the acrylic clear frame, but I also hot glued the prettiest card-stock butterfly onto the outside. 
There's only one week left in the biggest sale of the year from Stampin' Up! so if you need anything, call me or pop over to my business website here and click on the "shop now" button at the top.  For every $50 you spend you get a free selection from the sale-a-bration catalog and if you order online you get a free Idea Book too!
The last days of that sale have me very busy with orders coming in and stamp house parties to prepare for and I love it! Then, yesterday was my wonderful husband's birthday. Happy 39th, darling! I made a silly card for him that said I was stuck on him (not stuck with him, or he stuck with me!). My stamp club had worked with bleaching paper and that's why the flowers look that cool distressed white in the chocolate paper here: I have to go stamp Quinn's birthday invitations now for the family lunch. His 9th birthday is Sunday, just six days after his dad's. I told you it was birthday fever here!
Some other quick updates, I had strep throat last week {FUN}, which is why I haven't posted in a bit. I get strep several times a year and I've been told to have my tonsils removed but I can't seem to elect when to electively do that. After the antibiotics kicked in, I roasted a mini-thanksgiving birthday dinner for Kev, but I have at last count had THREE attempts at making his favorite lemon roll cake completely fail. I didn't have cake flour, so I tried to doctor the flour myself by adding baking powder and salt to regular flour, but no luck--the cake just flopped and flopped and flopped--so last night we picked up cake flour and I will give it a fourth try. {Not that the kids minded the box of Funfetti I made in order to have something to stick a candle in!} I'll let you know if I go through another dozen eggs before I finally redeem my limited baking skills with a hit.
Shivering in fleece and dusted in flour, Nancy

A Little Bit Irish

"Are we Irish?" asked the kids. We are, we're a mix of many things, but today, we are celebrating the part that is Irish! This little porcelain doll was on the breakfast table this morning while I heated some bacon and served the grapes and goaded the kids on with a "Top o' the mornin' to ye!" My son was so funny, when he did it back to me it sounded more like, "Yah, mon." But with some practice he got it. Here's my daughter in her wonderful new appliqued shirt from her Aunt {my favorite detail is the lucky one on the back!} and her paper barrette.

Craft Room Pot of Gold

Those of you near my age (39 this June) may remember when we were kids a kind of homemade barrette that was braided and had dangly tails to it. Like this. Well I have had the supplies to make one for awhile, thanks to my super crafty sister-in-law (who at this moment is sewing and I'm so jealous!) but I thought I had green ribbon and sure enough, NOPE. So there went my idea to make a St. Patrick's barrette for Hope and her cousin. And then I looked at the sheer volume of stuff in my craft room and thought, OK, there's got to be something I can do.
So I grabbed that Vidal Sassoon hair barrette and my Stampin' Up! satin ribbon in Kiwi Kiss (light green) and my Kiwi Kiss paper and a 3-heart punch (used the smallest of the 3) and then I grabbed a 1/2"circle of white to apply the four hearts to. Because when you put four hearts together it looks like a lucky shamrock! I glued the paper together with Crystal Effects glue and glittered them with dazzling diamonds, then placed a half-pearl from my Pretties kit in the center. I took my hot glue gun and secured the ribbon to the barrette awkwardly at first...you have to move quickly or the glue repels the ribbon instead of adhering it. Then I plopped the sparkly luck charm on the side. There's nothing dangling down the side like those funky '80s barrettes, but I've got time and a lot of pink ribbon to do that for summer. These are the moments where I think it's totally worth having massive amounts of craft supplies in your house! Go Green tomorrow!
 

New England Robin Nests and Ukrainian Eggs

I can't believe it's been six days since I could write! Truthfully, I'm just getting used to the new routine. My substitute recess/lunch aide job has called me every day...which is terrific! I mean in this economy I'm resolved to work as much as I can when the kids are at school and it doesn't conflict with when I'm needed at the restaurant and I'm only at Two Little Fish when Kevin is home with the kids so it does seem--on paper--to work out. Except for paperwork and laundry...that is piling up. We had a cub scout den meeting this week where Kevin and all the scout parents assisted the boys in building robin nesting houses and bird callers. Did you know that robins prefer open housing instead of a closed house with a small hole? Then at Daisies I got the young girls started on hand needlework! Jen and I got the idea from American 18th century samplers of young girls stitching samplers to learn their alphabet and their stitching. It was what I call vintage-retro-chic! Which when you write that it sounds like we're not challenging gender roles at all, so maybe next time I'll teach the cubs stitching and Kev can teach the girls to build! {wink} All the kids really loved learning something new, they get so excited when we challenge them with real grown-up skills.
Below is some photos of the last week of projects. Hope has been making puppets out of lunch sacks and now I'm out of lunch sacks! The highlight was making Ukrainian eggs at Jennifer's. I was very reluctant to try one, it's pretty intimidating to me, but you just take a stylus that melts wax and carefully draw intricate lines on the egg, then you dip it in the lightest dye, do some more designing and go a little darker on the dye each time. When I was done my arthritic shaky hands had a surprisingly pretty, if wobbly drawn, egg. The kit and the instruction came from our beloved family friends Kris & Kornel, who were experts! How did we do that with six kids in the house? We used a Paas kit first before breaking out the hot wax!


That's Kevin hanging the robin nest and Quinn beneath his sister's bird feeder using his bird caller. Step one of the eggs is using the stylus to apply the wax--notice how mine is blobby and shaky compared with the book! Then you dye, then you melt the wax off by heat of a candle and wipe away. The final results are inspiring! Last, I was able to stamp a small selection of thank you cards for the Dolphin Y swim team. I'm loving using the texture plates for my Sizzix machine! The dolphin is heat embossed. Well, off to keep my day afloat! Have a great week everyone!

Luck and Credit

The weekend blurred by. We had our last big commitment to our Y swim team with a regional all-day event Saturday, I tell you it was my first major indoor event like that as a mom and our local swim team and coaches and parent boosters do an a-ma-zing job! They made maneuvering around several hundred people in one building really efficient. (Congrats to my son, who had a true personal-best kind of day! Beaming smile here.) Both kids really enjoy the hubbub of the social activity and the physical exercise can't be beat. Of course, aspirin is a good idea for the noise levels, but when my kids are in the pool I sure contribute to that! If you're considering joining I would be happy to talk about it and refer you to their website, just drop me a note.
Sunday I had a wonderful stamp meeting with my downline. I have the good fortune that three talented women chose to join Stampin' Up! on my team and we really have a great time when we get together every other month for training and inspiration. If you are interested you can too right on my SU! website here. My great friend Amanda, a fellow stamp guru and she just happens to live two houses away, was able to come too to play and stamp and talk shop. We had a blast getting creative, learning some new ink techniques and sipping coffee and soup and the occasional pastry to stay warm! Usually we meet in Mystic to shave some time off the drive for one of our stampin' girls, but since she couldn't come we went round the corner to a local Tim Horton's. I find it best to have meetings like that out and not in my home. We laughed so so much it was surprising to think how much work we were getting done! It's so good to laugh. I really need that to keep the sails full, you know?
For once, daylight savings didn't totally blindside me. But it is later than I'd like right now, so I'll say good bye and leave you with a few photos. It was great working closing shift at our Two Little Fish tonight and having the sun stream in as late as 6:00! I already did the kids' backpacks for tomorrow, completed four loads of laundry and there's a good week ahead for me...I hope for you too! Remember to get creative! My sister-in-law inspires me to get creative all the time. She has the best ideas and we were just reminding one another all last week how important it is to take the time to do these special things for the special people in our lives and for ourselves.
       This card below is funny in that it has a lot of Irish campiness to it! I stared at it and thought should I glitter it? And realized with a laugh, why not? The card isn't exemplary of restraint, is it??? I brought this to our meeting today for the girls to make too. It was originally on a vanilla base, but mine got bent so I had to cut and fudge it onto a Glorious green piece when I got home. Splitcoaststampers has a gallery of St. Pat's ideas and this is a compilation of many ideas all thrown on one card. If I was copying one person, I would refer you with a link or credit right now, but these ideas are circulating all over the site and this is kind of a CASE or Copy And Share Everything. It is a code of honor in the paper crafting world. If it were a true original, you say so, if it's not, you credit, if it's out in the domain you CASE it and don't claim it as yours. Like all creative property always respect and help the people who help you. I do that with an annual membership to the Splitcoast Fan Club and I hope if you troll there a lot that you will too. Card details: The rainbow is done with 1/4 of the Coluzzle oval cutting system. The pot o' gold and the cute leprechaun are made from punches. Different size circles did the face and the pot and the gold pieces and pot legs. The scallop circle punch did the gold "pile" in the pot and with minor finagling, the clouds, plus of course the elfin beard. The word window punch does the lip of the pot and the lip of the top hat. The tag punch is the top of the hat and a white gel pen for sparkle and a red marker for smile and freckles. Inside the card I wrote: "In this economy, can you afford NOT to be Irish on St. Patrick's Day?? Here's wishing you, yours and me, mine!" The little leprechaun can also cover a small York Peppermint Patty, you know, a Patty for St. Pat's!

Part-time work requires full-time weekend catch-up.

So being a substitute recess aide has meant working every day in the middle of the school day for two hours. But the whole MUST-shower-and-look-decent thing takes time too. So add an hour. By the time I'm back and do my "I'm home" routine and take care of the dogs, well then the kids come home and it's off to afternoon activities. So the house looks like a shipwreck! A total and complete shipwreck! It would take me all weekend to catch up but guess what? I won't be home for more than half of it because of more activities! So OH WELL!
I began the morning by surprising the kiddos with a doughnut-breakfast-day for the kids on the way to school (for those of you not in Westerly, RI, I must explain we have three--yes THREE--drive-through doughnut shops less than three blocks from our house and another five that I can think of on the other side of our town so this is a local culture thing) and I had to drive around the block twice for my daughter to finish hers...it isn't easy when you have no top teeth! After they were safely at school I geared up for a busy day by driving the 1.5 mile stretch over to here:
This is what me and the kiddos call "Crasher Rock". At least once a month we swing by to this lookout with a snack and watch the high tide wash over the rock. Some waves do a KA-BLOOSH and others do a Ka-bip and some do a kabibble. We have a lot of fun deciding which is which based on the amount of spray that bounces off Crasher. This morning was low tide so with me and only a cup of coffee in hand, it was just ka-wiet! Get it? Quiet? Ka-wiet? I know I know, weak joke!
For those of you who don't live nearby, here's a snap of our family restaurant not all that far from this beautiful Atlantic Ocean: It's a humble and hard-working family clam shack. You'd love it. As for stamping, I did rip open my new box of stamp supplies and I have been stamping. I'll have a ton of samples for you soon! Have a wonderful weekend!
PS Anyone know anything about a Nintendo DS Action Replay for Pokemon? My son is verrry interested but the reviews I've heard are mixed. 

Breaking open a bad habit. Wide open.

A quick card in the Manhattan style from Stampin' Up! current Idea Book & Catalog. This is called Fifth Ave Floral. I designed this quickly this morning when I needed to have a fast card. No coloring, just stamping, sponging and a little piercing at the corners. The highlight of this card is the Filigree brad. They are so beautiful, you only need one although I kind of want to make a card with lots....we'll see. The pomegranate layer is textured card stock. The ribbon is retired organza, but the stamp set is new. And here, my stampers, is the lesson of the day. USE YOUR STUFF. I looked around my craft room last night and saw so many many things that I think are gorgeous and creative and that I can make into really meaningful things, but haven't yet because it's so new and pretty in it's darling little packaging. Tell me exactly what am I waiting for??? A super special occasion??? A hand-stamped invitation??
Dear Nancy,
We really love you and we love how much you like to look at us while we sit on this shelf.
We think that your 39th St. Patrick's Day week is the best reason to break out the fancy brads
and employ us on a card. You deserve it!
Love, your oft admired yet underused craft supplies.
P.S. Yes, you had better change the laundry first.
    What's worse? A new box was delivered today with more stuff.
Is my lesson learned? Expect some new posts soon...I'm going to open some pretty packages!

Domesticating the Lion

The lion of March is here. I love March because it's the month of my men. My husband's and my son's birthdays are this month, but before that I have several other occasions to tend to. I need to send a few belated wedding gifts and a get well card, I need to update some photographs and I can't really get all that and the cleaning and work shifts done when these big storms come in and make us do snow removal for two days! Doesn't Mother Nature understand? We've got pinewood derby cars to build and girl scout cookies to distribute and swim practices to attend and we can't do that when we can't go out!
AH, but the beauty of not going out! I organized in a fit of stamp-room-a-mania. I cleaned dishes that had piled up, I collected laundry from the far corners, I got a jump on the cards I need to make and I made lists that showed me just how far behind I am. I thought about what we'll want to give my nearly nine-year-old and I made a love note for my nearly 39-year-old. I whipped up some chicken parm from a recipe shared with my mother-in-law by her first neighbor nearly 40 years ago. It has Campbell's tomato soup in it and it's fantastic. Then I baked some of my mom's M&M cookies. I heated a special cocoa blend shared by one of my college roommates. So, the lion of March blew in, but I domesticated him! {Kinda--the look of the house would never let on this is true!}
Here's some pics of the kids playing in what with any luck will be our last big storm of '08-'09. The snow came up to Hope's knees...it was about 8 inches. Quinn had plenty to build a fort with and the sledding was key. Then, there's a nifty card/envelope set that I stamped for a color and technique challenge over at Splitcoast. The colors are Summer Sun, Kiwi Kiss and Pumpkin Pie, the tutorial for the card is here. Try one! The English major in me likes symmetry and meaning in my stamps, when I'm lucky enough to stumble across it. I liked the way the boy butterfly (green dots) and the girl (orange flowers) blend in the inside notecard as one when they couple. This uses Flight of the Butterfly and Hugs & Wishes, plus All Holidays and Baroque Motifs stamp sets plus eyelets, gold cord, earth elements brads, paper piercing on the inside card, sponging on the outside envie and Urban Garden designer paper. And the 3 heart punch.
So do you think there'll be school tomorrow? 

Snow Business!

When it's snowy, I catch up. We're burrowed in,  having hot cocoa, already in pjs, wondering if school will close. And I am stamping! Here's today's addition...I'm off to go finish supper. Happy snowfall!
Inside it says: "Shhh! Mama just needs a teeny tiny nippy nap!" Thanks to the House Mouse Challenge every Monday!

Spurring Progress

So with some discipline I set a bedtime of 10pm for a few days and got rid of my eyelid twitch. WHEW. Of course, it's 1:48 am right now so who knows what tomorrow will bring. I resumed exercising Wednesday after a near two-week hiatus only to have my middle age affliction of heel spurs return. If I had true courage I would video what it's like to walk first thing in the morning when the pain is at its worst. Something like a newborn four-legged creature moaning and hobble-skipping about searching for stability. Oh yeah, real graceful.
I loved my recess aid job on Friday, it was very cool opening milk cartons for kids and I felt useful and happy. I also felt that I really enjoy teaching stamping to grown-ups {wink}, they are much better listeners {usually}. I have to give the cute factor to the kiddos on the playground, not that my stamp clubbers aren't cute, but they don't wear pigtails or need help putting on their jacket! Quinn and Hope were so excited to sit with their cousins and classmates at movie night Friday night and eat lots of junk food while laying on the gym floor in the dark and listening to the very funny Ben Stiller as the lion. And for those of you who are Friends addicts like me, Ross is the voice of the giraffe!
Since my whole day today was controlled by the chores I neglected all week, I stole some time this evening to control some stamping. This card is for sketch challenge 217 at splitcoaststampers. I am using Easter themes a lot lately so I have less last minute stamping to do--yay for progress! The details on this card are a bit more intricate than I normally have. First, that is jumbo eyelets for wheels. I stamped and cut out two versions of the truck, one on designer paper without wheels, one on white without a cab or wheels but with the eggs and the people. I layered them with a bit of clear cello in between to look like the window was rolled down a bit. It's difficult to see the "window" in the photo so I put a detail pic below. I raised the center square to seem like the "bump" that knocked the eggs out of the truck. Inside the card I put the eggs where the sentiment should be and stamped just the tail-end of the truck on the left side so as to seem the truck was leaving. I like being whimsical inside and carrying the idea from the front of the card to the message. Stamps: Loads of Love, black ink and watercolor pencils with blender pen. Blue tafetta ribbon. Pink pirouette, whisper white, riding hood red and tangerine tango card stock. Zig Painty silver on the bumper and door handle. I masked the driver and used my trusty Stamp-a-ma-jig to ensure the woman appeared as the passenger and  eggs fit nicely on the truck. Sponged the squares in riding hood red ink. Don't forget the best sale of the year is on right now at Stampin' Up!