My arms...

...are stretching like a rubber chicken!  LOL!  Hope was on my back and I was holding her arms and she started to slip off and yelled "my arms are stretching like a rubber chicken".  I thought it was pretty funny!

Then she decided to put on three layers of pajamas.  She looks like a football player.  Then she tooted and said, "well football players toot on the field".  LOL!

She was full of it tonight!

Well, speaking of full of it...another of my classmates from HS turned 40 today (if I remembered his birthday correctly)!!!!!  My friend Kenny Mason turns 40!!!!!  Happy Birthday Kenny!

I am positive I have shared this before, but...my favorite memory is when we were in Kindergarten and I went with my mom to his house.  His mom used to cut my mom's hair and I would go and play during her appointment.  Anyway...we were back in his room playing and he closed the door and backed me up against it and said...Give me a kiss, baby!  LOL!

So, in honor of Kenny's 40th birthday, here is your dose of creative inspiration tonight...

These cards were inspired by the Moxie Fab World Tuesday Trigger.  The yellows, blue/turquoise and gingham prints (although it is a different color) in the photo, were great jumping off points.

Here is the inspirational trigger picture.  I pulled the colors from the picture.  I love the color combination, although they are a little more vivid than in the picture.  Here is the link if you want to play along.

Well, that is it for tonight.  I need to go get ready for the Parenthood season finale.  I am so sad it is done for the season.  I REALLY hope it makes it back for a 5th season.  I only started watching this show regularly last season, so I am catching up on the first two seasons on Netflix.  I am loving the first season and will get my dose of the show that way for a while.  :)

Darla

I think this is an Outside Activity????

Yeah, we always seem to do messy activities when it is too yucky to be outside.  There was no exception today.  Yesterday, while out shopping, Grandma Karen offered to buy you something at Michaels and you decided to get a box to make a mosaic stepping stone.  Well, we didn't read the box very good and the box only had the mix and no form or fun mosaics to add to it.

So...Joe was kind enough to take Hope back to Michael's this afternoon to get more stuff for this messy activity.  :)  They mixed this....

...and did this...

...and then the decorating began!

And now we just have to wait a few days for it to dry.  Beautiful work Hope!

I forgot to share some other pictures from last week.  Hope had lego club at school and I got to help out that night.  Here is Hope sharing her creation with the other lego club members.

This is a close up of her creation, the Super Slide on an Airplane.  Cool!

As I was walking around the library, I came across this sign and CRACKED UP!!!!!!  LOL!

Well, once you stop laughing, enjoy some cards created by yours truly!   Most of the papers in these cards are from an older line from Pink Paislee.  Do you see a theme that I am working through some of my older collections and getting them used up.  Oh yes I am.  

Be prepared to see some layouts and cards from several older collections, but some of my favorites.  I just hadn't found the right layout to use the papers and now I finally have.  Yeah!

 Alright, I gotta run and get ready.  We are going out into the snow to eat at The Machine Shed.  I am really hoping they still have their chicken pot pie!  Yum!

Darla

Oh Scratch! YUM!

I am in SO MUCH TROUBLE!!!  A new cupcake bakery opened this weekend, so we stopped in the check it out and of course had to come home with one for each of us.  It is called Scratch Cupcakery.

Hope came home with a Princess cupcake.  Karen (Joe's mom) got a raspberry one, which I think was my favorite one out of all of them (she let me try a bite).  :)  Joe got Happy Day!

And I ordered the Blackout, which was a triple chocolate combo with chocolate buttercream frosting, chocolate cake and a chocolate filling.  It was good, but my head was spinning by the time I got done eating it.  YUM!

The weather is beautiful, so a lot of our snow is melting today.  YEAH!  But the nice weather is short lived as it will be back to single digits by Monday.  Boo!

So since we are hoping for an early spring, here are some spring inspired cards to share with you...

These were made from Pink Paislee papers from a few years ago.

Some of them I added some beautiful laces too and sometimes a touch of glitter to the pattern in the papers.

The button below is one I got from Joe's grandmother in a big container of buttons from her.  :)

For Christmas I received a small jar of antique buttons that were originally Joe's other grandmother's.  The small jar was an old prescription bottle from 1973.  That was the year I was born.  :)

I will have fun using the buttons that were inside the jar.  :)

Well, I am off to try and work off my sugar coma from the cupcake I had.  Oy!

Enjoy your weekend!

Darla

  

Mom, did you hear about the incident?

This question took me by surprise when I picked Hope up this afternoon.  I figured there was an email from her teacher waiting for me in my inbox, but then she started to giggle and told me...

Well, this morning the door on another bus wouldn't close and so my bus stopped behind it on the side of the road and picked up all the kids on the bus.  So she got to sit with a boy from her class, Peter.

She giggled again and said, he LOVES ME!  Mom, he whispered in my ear that he loved me!  Yikes!  Here we go again!  I just had to laugh.  He is a new boy in her class, so probably just a "new kid" crush.  :)  Mom, we were also late for school!

Then once we got in the van she said they had been coming up with funny jokes and she had come up with the funniest one of ALL!  What is angrier than an angry bird?  An angry chicken!!!!  And then she laughed her head off and tried to explain to me why a chicken is angrier than a regular bird.  I don't get it, but still laughed my head off!!!!!  LOL!

Then while I was cooking super, Hope was singing SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPEALIDCIOUS (or something like that)!  Ironically, I loved this song when I was a kid and used to sing it over and over and over too.  You know, the song from Mary Poppins.  They have been singing it at school in music class.

Well, so far, that was my evening in a nutshell, how about you?  LOL

So here are some cards to share with you...

I hope I get to send one of these baby cards to a friend of mine really soon, who has been matched with a birth family and have been chosen to adopt their baby.  Prayers to all involved, for peace and comfort to the birth family and prayers to (hopefully) the new adoptive parents.

Well, I am off to keep watching the premier of American Idol!  Love me some Keith Urban accent!  :)

Darla

More Birthday...

I think we are FINALLY done with Hope's birthday week.  :)  She invited five other girls to open gym time at her gymnastics gym and then we all came back to our house for cake pops and play time.

It actually worked out pretty good, so they just had a little time to play after eating the cake pops.

It was the first time Hope and I used her cake pop making machine.  It worked pretty good, but there is a learning curve to some of it.  We will do better next time.  :)  I ended up wrapping a card board box in fun paper and poked holes in the top for the pop sticks to hold and display the cake pops.  It worked great.

Here are a few more cards using the Crate Paper scraps from the baby gift album I made a while back.  Some of the cards even worked to make into kids birthday cards.

Alright, it is cold outside, so I am going to go snuggle up for a while.  Sure do miss my furry snuggle buddy.  :(  Goodnight!

Darla

Thanks for the memories Reilly!

Yesterday was a hard day that I knew was coming...our dog Reilly died.  I am so thankful that I was able to be there for him just like he was there for me during some of the darkest days of my life.

I had Hope give him a hug and a kiss before she left for school.  On the way down the stairs she asked if there are funerals for dogs.  :)   I got her on the bus and shortly after I got back to the house he passed with me by his side.  It was very sad, but peaceful.

He LOVED playing in the snow, so I was also glad that we got some significant snow for him to play in this winter.  Somehow I knew it would probably be his last year for snow.  :(

He was always so happy.  It always looked like he was smiling and would always wag his tail anytime he was around.

He was sometimes a big ol' furry beast!  He had so much fur!!!!!  And it was always so soft.

He got me through a lot of tough times...he filled my empty arms while we waited for a baby....he snuggled with me during times of loss...he helped me through the year when dad was sick...all the aches and pains, disappointment, etc during our infertility years...job losses...and just ordinary bad days.

He brought a special something to our family since they day his cute little puppy self came into our lives 13 years ago.  He was so cute!!!!

Reilly...I know you are up there with the best...dad and all his grand-dogs (Polly, Wally, Sammy and Lucy) and I am sure he has already called you dumb dumb like he used to.  :)  Thanks for being everything a dog should be!  Love and miss you...

Darla

Proceed to Party...

Red Solo Cup, I lift you up....yep this is the song Hope turned on when we got home.  SO for her birthday party tonight, we decided to use red Solo cups.  LOL!!!!

Hope turned EIGHT years old today.  I can't believe it!!!!  She received a lot of birthday wishes from everyone and I think she had a pretty good birthday.

This morning we had a sign on the door for her.  Here she is being CRAZY eight in front of it.  :)

You would think as crafty as I am that I would have made a beautiful crafty sign...yep didn't think of it. I don't know why, guess I have had too many other things on my mind.  Maybe next year.  :)

Grandma Deloris and I took cupcakes to school to celebrate with her classmates.  Of course she requested rainbow cupcakes like normal.  This is Hope with her teacher Mrs. Harper.

Then tonight we dined on gourmet macaroni and cheese (AKA-Kraft from a box) and turkey burgers.  And of course a birthday cookie.  We don't do anything normal around here do we????

Before we got to eat, she insisted on unwrapping her gifts.  She got the scooter for her dolls from Grandma Deloris.  We got her a few small things...markers and sketch pad, which were sneakily wrapped in an American Girl Doll box.  So she was a little surprised when she opened that box and it wasn't from American Girl.  :(  She also wants the doll camper from Target, but they are nowhere to be found right now.  So we wrapped up a pictures as an IOU.  :) 

She also got legos AND her very out laptop.  She had mentioned the other day that was one thing on her list.  So Joe got an old one we had in the basement and cleaned it out so she can play a few of her own games on it.  And there are no major worries of her breaking it since we hadn't used it in years anyway.  

And she can learn responsibility of taking care of it too.

And I also downloaded a few other pictures of the eagles, which were on the little camera.  I can't believe I was able to get a picture this good with a point and shoot camera.  Pretty cool!!!

Alright, here is a birthday layout I did for Hope's 6th birthday, that I haven't shared yet.  That year I took her to get her nails done and she wanted rainbow nails.  She picked out a different color for each finger.  The man at the salon wasn't sure what to think at first and then thought it was funny!

I used the heart charm to encircle the number six, since it was for her 6th birthday.

To make the rainbow I cut circles and just layered them on top of each other and then cut the circle out of the middle.  Then I just cut it in half.  Now I have another rainbow to use on a card at a later date.

Alright, it is time for the birthday girl to get to bed, so goodnight!

Darla