Stamps, Paper, Scissors

It had to be done...

I hate to do this to you. I really do. Why did I do it? As when Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb Mt. Everest: Because it is there. That's why.

When this idea came to me, I resisted. "Surely SOMEONE ELSE will do this and relieve me of the responsibility of acting on this super-coolio idea! I'll just sit back and wait...it will show up on someone's blog, sometime. And then *I* won't have to do all of the meticulous crazy-making work necessary for it. I can just admire it, say it's been done and it doesn't need me to do it again!"

But I was doomed to disappointment. Nobody has done this. NO ONE. So after trying to deny the urge, the necessity that SOMEONE do this, I caved.

It took me over a day to do it properly. And when you see it, you are going to want to do this so bad, so bad, but it's one of those things that you have to have oodles of patience, a big bottle (or cup) of your favorite caffeine and as little interruption as possible. And chocolate definitely helps too.

But it is still exhausting...after I finished this card yesterday I had to sit down and take a nap. Really! And this morning, just posting about it is making me yawn....it's hard to write in this condition! But I MUST REVEAL the truth of this GOJUS technique...I can't hold it back any longer! Lookie:

Ingredients: (all SU!) Stamps - Oval All; Paper - Bella Rose DSP, Pink Pirouette, Riding Hood Red, Brushed Gold; Ink - Riding Hood Red, Versamark; Other - Manhattan Floral Textured Impressions die, gold grads, Large Oval Punch, Scallop Oval Punch, Riding Hood Red Tafetta ribbon, dimensionals, sponge wedge, Ticket Corner punch, gold EP, blender pen

Wha'?...sorry...I dozed off there for a minute!

So have you figured out how I did this?

That's right. I embossed this thing THREE TIMES. THREE TIMES!!! ONCE in brushed gold. ONCE in Riding Hood Red. ONCE in Pink Pirouette.

Then I meticulously cut out each piece of the flowers from the embossed lines, sponged the edges and glued them onto the brushed gold into the proper place using Tombo Mono Multi. It was a contemplative activity. I played my favorite thing to get into the scrapping/stamping zone: Prairie Home Companion cd's. I drank lots of Diet Coke. And when it was done, I carefully chose papers to go in the background and agonized over the choice of sentiment. I really wanted it to be a Mother's Day card, but the sentiment stamp that I have for that was just too big.

All right...it's time to say it. This is...this is...GOOOOOOOOOOJJJJJJJJJJJJJUUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSSSSS! (YILM! - this time I translate this as "Yawning...I love myself!!") And now that it is done, I probably will never do another. Will anyone will ever receive this card? I dunno...it is certainly going to be hard to part with!

And now that I have left you stunned, shivering over your cup of coffee or tea and saying, "OMGosh...this is so dang cool that I have to make one and I don't know if I have the intestinal fortitude!!!!" Get a grip! I am going to show you the birthday RAK's I got:

From top left by row: Amy Bell (amysings on SCS & Stampin' Addicts), Mary (Mary R on Stampin' Addicts), Jen Orbaker (Jennifer O on SCS), Melanie (Batgirl on SCS), Kylie (Krafty Kylie on SCS), Sherlie Magaret (Sherlie on SCS), and Karyn Pokorny (one of my customers who made this card at my class!)

Thank you, ladies! It is always great to get sweet hand made cards in the mail!

My birthday went very nicely. I had Mexican food for dinner, then ice cream for dessert. And Potbelly for lunch. Life is good...but tiring. Time for another nap! Ta!

Just to let you know how very...

...ahem...cough...yes, @N@L I am, when I get a set of stamps, I feel like I have to use every single one at least once. So when I got Never a Loss 4 Words from Kitchen Sink and saw the "blah blah blah" and the three "yada" stamps, I just knew I had to figure out a way of using them!

Here was my first thought...it's been a while since I've made one, but I thought that "blah blah blah" and "yada yada yada" would be good for a message pad:

Ingredients: Stamps - Kitchen Sink Stamps Playful Alphabet, Never a Loss 4 Words, Mix It Up - Monogram & Alphabet, Pretty Petals; Paper - Cool Caribbean, Whisper White; Ink - Cameo Coral, Certainly Celery, Tempting Turquoise, So Saffron; Other - 3 1/2" x 5" acrylic stand up photo frame, post-it notes, white gel pen.

Isn't this STINKIN' CUTE?!?!? (YILM!) To make the message pad stand, you create an insert for a 3 1/2" x 5" acrylic photo frame...but instead of standing the frame up, you lay it on it's back. Then you can stick a post it note pad to the top of the frame. Be careful to buy a good quality frame...the ones you find at dollar stores are usually too thin and break easily as you are writing on the pad. Because a standard post-it note pad was a little wider than I wanted, I used my craft pad to cut 1/2" off the side of the pad. Another view:

I was so in love with these colors, which are almost the same ones as the Verve challenge I did the other day (I left out the Pumpkin Pie) so I decided I had to make a card as well with the same elements:

Ingredients: Stamps - Kitchen Sink Stamps Playful Alphabet, Never a Loss 4 Words, Mix It Up - Monogram & Alphabet, Pretty Petals; Paper - Cool Caribbean, Whisper White; Ink - Cameo Coral, Certainly Celery, Tempting Turquoise, So Saffron; Other - white gel pen, Word Window Punch, silver brads, dotted grosgrain (Michael's), sponge wedges.

Sigh...I just amaze myself sometimes! (YILM!!)

I pulled out my very first set of Kitchen Sink Stamps, Pretty Petals, for this project. But it was hard to pull myself away from the brand new releases coming your way next week on June 3rd...if you want just a little peek, I will give you a tiny look at part of a card I made that uses three of the new sets:

Don't forget the contest to win FREE STAMPS from the Sink! And, if you want to see more sneak peeks of these stamps, check out Maria's Kitchen Sink Blog...she's got some great give aways and a new peek every day!

Yesterday was a busy day. Laurel graduated from the 8th grade. In parochial schools, this is a BIG deal! There was a mass, a graduation ceremony, then a dinner, followed by a bowling party! We didn't get home until midnight. Here's the lovely graduate (on the right) with her sister:

I have to admit I cried a couple of times. Laurel won a scholarship from the Men's Club of the parish...that surprised me (not that I thought she wasn't qualified, but somehow I expected that they would give them to kids who were parish members) and it made me very happy. Add to that the great slide show that one of the parents put together and I was a goner!

We spent a couple days gussying Laurel up for this. Her graduation present from us was getting her hair cut and highlighted, then we got her ears pierced yesterday. She looked GOJUS (and so did Emily!)

And now to acknowledge something wonderful I got this past week:

More love from Hawaii! Faye Tsukamoto sent me this selection of Hawaiian chocolate goodies and coffee! Here's her GOJUS rak card:

Isn't that STINKIN' Cute!?!? I will definitely have to CASE this one! Thank you Faye, for sending me chocolate when I desperately needed some! It's been a long hard week and the chocolate definitely has been helping keep me on an even keel!

Well, off to stamp some more! Ta!

Motherhood is not for WIMPS!

I have a stamp with that on it, and it is so true! Let me relate my experience of Saturday evening:

I was sitting at the computer, writing my sermon for today. The girls were watching television, Dan was downstairs working on a recording, and William was outside on a "hunt", which he announced started at 8 PM. He had come in and out of the house several times since then to tell us the progress of this hunt. Let me add that William, at 9 years old, has a huge imagination and almost always has a running dialog going, like he's narrating his own movie. This kid is almost never quiet unless he's asleep. So I can usually tell exactly where he is because of the noise he makes.

Around 9 PM I became aware that the usual sounds of William playing outside (lots of gun noises, yelling, and the sound of his bike going up and down the driveway and sidewalk) were absent. I had the front door open so I could easily hear him while he played. We have a very safe neighborhood, but I still don't allow my kids to venture out of sight of the house. I went out and started calling him. It was dark and there was no answer. His bike was gone. I started to feel a bit anxious, so I got in the car with Laurel, who started to get VERY worried about her brother. It was touching to see this, as Laurel and William are usually at each other's throats all the time. We drove around the immediate area looking for any sign of William's bike. No sign of him anywhere. So I went home, told Dan that William was missing and called the police at around 9:15.

Let me say this is not the first time William has had the police called to find him. When he was about 4 he was riding his tricycle outside and decided to follow a woman and her two children as they were walking by. Why this woman didn't tell William that he should turn back and go home, I will never know. But he was only one street over, where my husband found him. Which is why I looked first, before I called.

This time, as the last time, our neighbors realized quite early that something was wrong and they all hopped in their cars and started looking. Dan took his car and started looking. The police sent out cruisers in all directions and one officer came and started looking through our house trying to find William. She said a lot of kids hide in the house, thinking it's funny. I knew he wasn't in the house because the usual noise he would make was absent, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to look again.

Around 9:45, I was out front talking to the police officer, giving a complete description of what he looked like, what he was wearing, etc. and I looked down the street and spotted a small figure on a bicyle pedaling my way. It was William.

At first he said he didn't want to talk about what happened, but with gentle coaxing, we found out where he had gone. William had earned some money that day by picking up sticks in the yard. So all by his ownsome, he decided that he wanted to go to Target to buy a Lego set he's had his heart set on for some time. So he hopped on his bike around 8:45 and set off for Target...3 1/2 miles away!He was upset, not because anything bad had happened, but because he had gone all the way to Target, found the Lego set, took it to the cash register, only to find out he didn't have enough money to buy it!

Needless to say, we were all so thankful that William had returned that we didn't yell at him, though we made him promise to never ever do that again. The police officer was impressed that a 9 year old had managed a 7 mile bike ride in the dark, but she also told him not to ever do that again. After William had gone inside, she turned to me and told me that we had one "ballzy" 9 year old!

After that we had had a TALK with William and tried to make him feel the enormity of what he had done. We even had his sisters come in his room and pointed out their tear-stained faces.  We finally had gotten the kids in bed around 10:30, but it took me a while to calm myself down, plus I had to finish that sermon and practice the hymns on the piano that I would be playing at church. I finally got to bed at 1:30 AM. I was just drifting off to sleep when a knock comes on my door and Emily tells me that she has thrown up in her bed. So by the time I get that mess cleaned up and have got her settled on the couch, I am wide awake again. I end up staying up until 4 AM before I could finally sleep.

Sunday itself was relatively uneventful. I took Laurel and William to church and Emily stayed home, running a temp, but at least not throwing up. My husband was sick with the same influenza we have all had with a nasty cough, so we didn't go anywhere for Mother's Day, not that we ever do anyway. I don't cook on Mother's Day, but what usually ends up happening is that I go out and get a bucket of chicken. Since I had one child not eating, another child who wouldn't eat bucket chicken anyway and a husband who had already heated up some hot dogs and ate a very hearty lunch in the middle of the day, I just said, "NUTS!" and heated up leftover Chinese for myself.

So that's my Mother's Day tale. People often say, "God couldn't be everywhere, so that's why he made mothers." I don't think that's true. Instead, I am glad that God can be everywhere when I can't be...he certainly was looking out for William on his "excellent adventure." And it's always heartening to find that we have neighbors that are willing to come out of their homes and look for a lost child.

No stamping got done this weekend...but I did make it to the Great Lakes Mega Meet, which is a big scrapbooking show, on Thursday, so at least I got myself some nice Mother's Day gifts. I met BFF Paula and her friend Mary there and we had a blast. You wanna see?!?!

First I will have to state that when I go to these sorts of things, I keep a spending limit in mind. I pretty much stayed close to my limit, so I am proud of myself, but...I was thinking I would probably make it out of there without spending ANYTHING and that certainly didn't happen!

The first place I spent money was at the SEI booth:

These word albums see to be very popular and I was happy to get 40% off one of them. I loved the paper pad and had to have the buttons to match, which Paula and I are splitting since she also bought the same pad of paper.

I only bought one stamp, at the Judikins booth:

This is a background stamp the same size as SU!'s...love the fine crackle pattern, so different than anything I have from SU!. The ink cleaner is my favorite...I'm just about about of my original bottle, which I bought probably 12 years ago. It's very good at getting all kinds of ink off my stamps and I haven't been able to find it locally for a while.

The next stop was a booth called Stamp On It. They had lots of cool embellishments:

I loved these tiny dragonfly brads and these eensy weensy paperclips! Plus I bought these:

These are pearlescent chalks...I've seen them on a few blogs and I decided I would try a set and they were $1 off!!! How could I resist?!?!?

The final and most expensive purchase was at the Spellbinders booth:

I just loved the coffee pot and grinder, then those tea pots caught my eye. I had to have the apron and it was just a natural that I also purchase the chef's hat and the eensy spatula and oven mitt  too, right?

I also need to thank the lovely person who sent me this:

Thank you, Terry Suzuki, for the lovely give of chocolate with macadamia nuts AND the lovely card and die cuts. I've never gotten the alure of macadamia nuts before, but I must have gotten really old stale ones, because these were FANTASTIC! Were...'cause they came earlier this week and [cough] they are all gone now...what can I say? I was STRESSED!

Well today I really need to take my new goodies, get them settled in their new home downstairs and stamp. Ta!

Didja miss me? Didja?!?!?

Let me tell ya, this past week was a killer...a mojo killer!

My kids started softball practice for the new league they are playing on and practices, between the three of them, are 4 nights per week! Dan and I are planning on tag-teaming these, with me taking the girls and him taking William, but when he doesn't feel well, guess who gets to go? You got it...so I did three practices this week and only got out of the fourth because I had to go to a meeting for the graduation committee for 8th grade graduation.

The girls are old enough to be dropped off and picked back up from practice, but with the price of gas, I'm not too sure I'm going to do that often. And I need to get another cell-phone for them so they can call in case they need to be picked up immediately. Sigh...

Then we had new phone/internet/cable installed yesterday and that took up a bunch of time, during which I could not stamp, surf on the internet or even watch television. And since strangers were coming into my home, I felt a need to do some cleaning and since I have been TENSE (oh, my that came out in all caps!) it really was the only thing to do. So my bedroom is cleaner than it has been in...in...a long time, anyway! I cleaned the bathroom to a fare-thee-well while they were here and did laundry...my life...so fun.

Now I have more channels on the television than I know what to do with, a DVR, voice mail and call waiting (desperately needed as children turn into teenagers) PLUS my internet connection is super fast, really the only benefit I will probably get out of the whole thing (though listening to my voice mail online is kinda cool!) Just glad it's done and I have a clean house to show for it.

Of course, it is not absolutely clean yet. The kitchen still needs more work and there are a couple of closets I need to reorganize (believe me, I've been tossing and cleaning stuff for weeks with the stress of everything, so there isn't a whole lot to do.) This morning, my husband, bless him, asked me "So, what are you going to do today?" I said I was going to the chiropractor and then I was going to stamp because it had been days, DAYS, I tell ya! since I was able to do any at all.

"Aren't you going to finish cleaning the house?" he said.

All I can say is it's lucky he isn't feeling well...or I'd make sure he wasn't.

ANYWAY, I did finally get downstairs and made a card. It felt good...felt DANG GOOD! Lookie:

Ingredients: Stamps - Flourishes LLC Siberian Iris; Paper - PapertreyInk Spring Moss, SU! Rose Red, SU! Soft Sky, SU! Always Artichoke, D'Arches Watercolor Paper, Basic Grey Boxer 6 x 6 pad; Ink - Versafine Onyx Black, Always Artichoke; Other - PapertreyInk Spring Moss twill, 3/16" corner rounding punch (SU!), sewing machine, Making Memories metallic flower brads, dimensionals, SU! Watercolor Wonder Crayons, Cuttlebug Paisley Embossing Folder (Provocraft)

Is it not GOJUS?!?!? (YILM!!) This is  using the sketch challenge from Splitcoast (SCS173). I had a fun time using my watercolor crayons to color in the little topiary stamp from the Siberian Iris set from Flourishes LLC. I got the Boxer paper from Flourishes with my last batch of stamps and I just love the rich colors it contains.

Okay, I can hear you saying, "What kind of stitch is that you did on the artichoke mat and the focal piece?!?!? I don't have that stitch on my sewing machine!!!"

Well...it's called "I set my top tension too high so this is what I got instead of zig zag stitch!" And I liked it, so I decided not to start over. I was just too lazy to look for the instructions for my SewMini...I know I threaded the top wrong somehow, but I didn't want to do it over so there it is. If you want to duplicate it, you need to tighten the tension on your thread on your machine...experiment a bit to see what you get.

The other thing I have a tip for is the brads. I decided after the layers were all stitched together that I wanted these brads in the corner of the artichoke mat. But I hate, really hate, brad butts (the backside of the brad) showing on the inside of my card and will do almost anything to avoid it. So I took a wire cutter, cut off the poor little brads legs (did you hear them scream?), rolled up a glue dot and adhered them to the corners instead!

And now, as promised, here are the birthday RAK's I received:

These cards are from the SCS RAK user group. The card on the left is from Amy (g33kgr1) ...thank you Amy! The card on the right is from Melanie (Batgirl)...thank you, Melanie!!!

The card on the left is from Simone (*spazzgirl*) of the SCS Blogger RAK group and her blog is located here. Thank you Simone!

And the card on the right is from my good friend and sideline, Connie Seifert (conniestamper)...it had the added bonus of having some Dove Chocolates in it...had is the operative word. They were delicious! Thank you Connie!

And here are the last two! The one on the left is from Jen (VCJORDI) from the SCS BRAK Committee. Thank you Jen! The one on the right is from Stephanie Sebren (StephStamps1982) from SCS. Thank you Stephanie!

Well, time's a wastin' and stamping costs money...must dash and see if I can squeeze another card in before I get kicked out this evening for the big recording session my DH is having. The kids are going with their Sunday School to play laser tag...maybe I'm going to be doing some fun shopping for ME tonight? Ta!

If you've ever wondered....

What a demonstrators room looks like after she preps for a workshop, well here's a clue:

Usually, it looks worse than this! I don't know how I managed not to make a bigger mess!

Some interesting things about this mess:

New Papertrey colors -------->

arrived yesterday!

And this:

Joanne Walker sent me this lovely box of chocolate items....THANK YOU Joanne! I couldn't have gotten my workshop off the ground without your timely intervention! What was inside, the rest of you wonder:

Well, let's just say it was AWESOME stuff...so awesome that, well, it's GONE! There was some chocolate and nut covered English Toffee, a big ole piece of caramel with chocolate around the outside edge and some sort of fudge thing with chocolate on it on a stick and a chocolate covered caramel...sigh....I meant to make it last longer, I really, really did, but somehow, it just all got et. Yum!

The workshop went really well and I was very tired afterwards. So tired that my workshop bag is still packed and I did not stamp at all yesterday. Instead we went to the library. And today, we will be off to Kalamazoo for the day to visit the grandparents. We'll head back tomorrow and stop in Ypsilanti so that I can go get ANOTHER mammogram. Yes, they say they see a cyst on the first one, so they want "more views" and possibly an ultrasound. I guess one third of women my age will have at least one false positive, so I'm not worried about it...much! But I now know where George Foreman got the idea for his famous grill!

Think I'm gonna hide....

In my basement until someone tells me that spring has actually come. Word is that we have yet another snow storm on the way for this weekend. Ugh. Barf. Ugh barf.

Well, I'd love to show you one of my cards today, I don't have anything to show. Yesterday was spent mindlessly watching Project Runway, for which I blame my husband who got me hooked on it. So naturally, I had to watch all the episodes I had missed from the beginning, then I had to sit up here with children while Dan had someone in to record, and by the time that was done, it was time for the season finale and so no stamping was done whatsoever. Bleh.

So instead, I will call your attention to my new stamp sale list in the right margin over there. I still have to go through my wheels, but I have gone through my retired from the last catalog and priced 'em up for you. Note there is nothing from the Holiday Mini...we can't sell those for a year after they have debuted, so I have to hang on to those for now. I've removed all the sets that have sold, since there was a bit of confusion about whether some sets were available...for future reference, check the column that says "STATUS"...if someone is in the process of buying, it says "PENDING", if it is sold it says "SOLD". If it says PENDING, please still inquire...sometimes deals fall through and if you are the next in line, you may just get what you want.

And since I hate to leave you without SOMETHING to look at, I'll show you this great RAK card I received recently from Roseanne Knowles:

I think it's quite beautiful, don't you? Thank you Roseanne!!!

Well, now that I've gotten all these stamp sets priced, marked and cleared away, I finally get to stamp. After lunch...I think. Ta!

I could use some warm cookies just about now...

Today is the 20th of January, which means it's time for a new Dirty Dozen/Dirty Dozen Alumni Challenge!

This month's challenge was called "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". The parameters for the challenge were:

1. Use an image of a girl.
2. Use a non-A2 card size.
3. Use the theme "sweet" no matter how you define it.

You can view the other cards submitted for the challenge here.

Recently I had participated in an image swap (BTW, I don't routinely do image swaps, so please don't bombard me with requests!) with Claudia Rosa, one of my readers. She sent me some Magnolia images in exchange for some Sugar Nellie images. Magnolia stamps are really hot in the UK and Europe; they have some really cute images. One of them was perfect for the challenge:

Ingredients: Stamps - Magnolia Tilda with Cookie Sheet; Paper - Whisper White, Real Red, Daisy D's Maybe Baby Collection, Papertrey Stamper's Select White, Pale Plum; Ink - Adirondack Pitch Black; Other - Ribbon (American Crafts), mini scallop scissors, white gel pen, 1 1/4", 1 3/8" & Scallop Circle Punches, dimensionals, silver brads, Sakura Stardust glitter pen, Sakura glaze pen, Real Red marker, Prismacolor pencils, Gamsol.

Isn't it STINKIN' CUTE?!?!?! (YILM!) The sentiment, "Nothing says 'I love you' like a warm cookie", was hand drawn...I thunk it up all by myself! To create the greeting, I punched a hole in a post it note with my 1 1/4" circle punch, placed it over a piece of Whisper White cardstock and used a Micron pen to hand print the sentiment around the circle. Then I drew the cookie (yes, I can draw, I just choose not to, LOL!), colored it in and added some glaze with a pen on the frosting.

MMMM....cookies....chocolate chip, of course, would be better than the sugar cookies in this card...chocolaaaaaattteeee....

Speaking of which, some hearty THANKS are in order to my Personal Chocolate Fairy, who came through with the goods once again:













Thank you, Personal Chocolate Fairy, for the GOJUS card (LOVE that Berry Bliss paper!!!) and the delish Dove Milk Chocolate bar...which is calling my name in a very loud voice! It was hard to wait until the picture was taken, but now that it has been, I have an appointment to keep with that Dove Chocolate that can no longer be postponed! Tah!

It ain't easy bein' me....

I tell ya, if my head wasn't screwed on, I'd have lost it a long time ago. But more of that later.

First, I have a new creation to show off and blather about!

Ingredients: Stamps - Kitchen Sink Stamps 3-Step Daisy, Backgrounds & Borders; Paper - Blush Blossom, Pretty in Pink, Whisper White, Almost Amethyst; Ink - Blush Blossom, Pretty in Pink, Almost Amethyst, Lavendar Lace, Mellow Moss, Perfect Plum, Groovy Guava; Other - Groovy Guava double-stitched gingham ribbon, Robin's Nest Dew Drops (Sunflower), white gel pen, Stampin' Sponges, dimensionals.

Blush Blossom, Pretty in Pink & Almost Amethyst is one of my favorite color combinations of all time, but adding a touch of Groovy Guava made it even prettier! I used the sketch challenge from this week (SC153). And you're probably wondering where that plaid came from in the background!

I'll let you in on a little secret: it's the stripe stamp from Kitchen Sink Backgrounds & Borders! All I did was stamp it across the cardstock, then turn it 90 degrees and stamped again. Bingo! Instant plaid! It's SO PRETTY! I can't wait to try this again!

I also used some Dew Drops from the Robin's Nest on this card and I think they really make it sparkle! These are the hottest new embellishments out there. The bottle I used is called Sunflower, but some of the same colors are in the Flame assortment available at Kitchen Sink.

Now, you're probably wondering why it's so hard to be me!  Hee hee...Well, let me tell you a little story:

Once upon a time, a stamper who really, really loved herself got herself on a design team. And the owner of the stamp company sent the stamper a whole box of stuff to get started with. What with one thing and another, it took a little while for the stamper to get to putting away all the new stuff, but she had a friend coming over to stamp and she was way behind taking her Brother P-Touch and labeling all her new sets, so she started picking up and putting away and gathering all her new stamp sets together to label. And one set from the new DT was missing!

ACK! ACK! Now, if you are like this stamper and have that touch of OCD that makes crafting so absorbing and obsessive, you'll know that when you lose something, it really bugs you. It bugs  you so much that you can't enjoy doing anything else, until you find that something.

So the stamper (and her friend) looked and looked and looked (the stamper's friend also has the same problem with needing to KNOW where something is!) for the stamp set, but it had disappeared! Piles of paper were sifted through, lots of things that were sitting out were put away...properly and every CD case that might contain it was gone through. A lot of things that were missing were found, but not the stamp set. By the time the stamper's friend went home, not only had the stamper still not found the set, she was feeling sick. She began to wonder if she had actually gotten this set, or had only imagined getting it! She emailed the owner of the stamp company, abased herself abjectly, whined a bit,  and asked her to send a new one and offered to pay for it.

Right after she emailed the owner, she had a thought...what if? And sure enough, when she checked in the bottom of her computer cabinet, she found the set. It had fallen off the back of the slide out shelf that holds her scanner. See, things get piled on that shelf...you know, sketches she has printed out, bills she needs to pay, chocolate wrappers, permission slips for school and since there is no back to the shelf, things tend to migrate off the back.

What a relief! Unfortunately, the stamp company owner had already mailed out the new set by the time the stamper got a hold of her again, but the stamp company owner said not to worry, but to do something nice with the set when she got it. So I guess you'll have to wait to find out what that something nice might be!

In the meantime, I'm going to show you something nice someone did for me, knowing how hard it is to be me!

The card says, "No stamper should ever be without a supply of chocolate!" and is signed "Your personal Chocolate Fairy". That's it! No name, no return address, nothing except a post mark from South Carolina.

So whoever you are, BLESS YOU! Isn't this STINKIN' CUTE!?!?!? (and GOJUS! too!) Thanks so much to my personal Chocolate Fairy! I didn't know I had one, but I'm glad I do!

So now I get to go downstairs and play with my new stamps! While it's so hard to be me, sometimes it IS a lot of fun!

Interupting our regular program...

To show you a Blogger RAK:

This lovely Lizzie Anne card is from Kim Howard, whose blog is here. It's GOJUS!!! Thank you Kim!

And some yummy CRAK!!!

This sweet (or semi-sweet, heheheh) Noel card with it's accompanying CHOCOLATE is from Lynnette Zeigler. Lynnette was inspired to make this STINKIN' CUTE card from one of my STINKIN' CUTE cards from last year (has it been that long?!?!?!) Anyway, thank you Lynnette...the card rocks and the chocolate is delish!!

Happy Halloween!

And like any true designer, I stopped making Halloween projects about 2 weeks ago to concentrate on Christmas...I know that lots of you out there in the trenches are putting finishing touches on those exquisite goodies for your kids' parties or are taking surreptitious naps after staying up until 3 AM to finish the last hand-stamped treat container for your child's class. I'm a slacker mom, though. Slacker moms are really really good at coming up with ideas for the super moms of this world to do, but when it comes for doing them for our own kids, we are pretty hit and miss. This year it was no hit and all miss.

I didn't put up any Halloween decorations this year, something William is not too pleased about. But we are not giving out treats for the first time since we moved in, so didn't want to give the impression that there were any to be had. My kids are going to a party at someone else's house and will be trick or treating there. And I figured that since we are "in mourning" here, it would be entirely appropriate NOT to give out treats at all. I also didn't make any treats for my kids to take to school. I have found over the years that my kids get entirely Too Much candy and other junk on Halloween and I'm doing them and their friends all favors by not sending in any more. I'm saving the world, one Ding Dong at a time! That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

So while the rest of you were slaving away this morning, I scrapbooked:

Ingredients: Patterned Paper, Title - Cosmo Cricket Gretel; Cardstock - Bazill; Ink - Colorbox Fluid Chalk; Stamps - Karen Foster Snap Stamps Mini Formal; Chipboard Letters & Flower - Chatterbox; Ribbon - Fancy Pants, Stampin; Up!™; Brads - Making Memories; Journaling Pen, Photo Turn, Photo Corner Punch, Scallop Circle Punch, Dimensionals - Stampin' Up!™

The scan does not do just to this page, which is really GOJUS!!! (YILM!) I love this paper and had a ton of fun doing this page. I had taken the photos at Thanksgiving because I've seen so many cool cooking pages done by others so I wanted to try my hand at it PLUS this is an important tradition...much more important than the turkey itself. The paper was in my October DT packet from Scrappy Chic, so I knew I needed to get a move on and use it.

Ingredients: Patterned Paper & punch outs - My Mind's Eye Confetti Surprise Girl; Cardstock - Bazill Bling; Silk Flower - Bazill; Chipboard numbers - Chatterbox; Rub-Ons & Ribbon - American Crafts; Clipiola & Page Pebble - Making Memories.

This one was relatively quick (but GOJUS!), with just the one photo. I thought, after I started putting on the rub-ons, that maybe I should have put their names in the order that they are in the picture (Tina & Laurel), but the "l" was already down and it was too late. Oh well. My first time with rub-ons since I played in a band and we made our promotion flyers with them...don't ask how long ago that was, 'cause I ain't a-sayin'!

I also want to say thank you to all these folks:

April Carrol (reedross) - Chipboard & Glitter with brocade papers  SO GOJUS!
Pam Downs - Lovely as a Tree
RoseAnn (http://paperdelightz.blogspot.com) - Autumn Leaf Prints
Sharon Carr (scstamper) - my upline! - Fabulous Flowers
Milette Siler (duffgirl) - Lovely As A Tree
Jen (foodsgal) - Simply Scrappin' Kit card
Rhonda Griffin - (rhondag) - This I think was done with actual leaves! GOJUS!
Nicole Cook - Heartfelt Thanks

Such lovely cards, thank you so much!

Well, I gotta run and pick up my darlings from school. Doubtless they will be all hopped up on sugar because those super mom types bought treats for today, but that's okay. I'll bide my time until they are all in bed and go back and play with my rubbah!!!Some days that's all that holds me together until they are in bed, the thought of lovely paper and rubber stamps biding their time until I can play with them again. Tah!