Welcome to our newest granddaughter!

Wow! Our 4th great-granddaughter is over one month old already. Then, on September 29th, our 25th granddaughter, Katherine Nicolle, entered this crazy world. We are worried about her, as she was born three weeks early because Mommy "failed" the Stress test! Her little lungs hadn't developed properly and she has to be on oxygen for at least one month. She spent a whole week in the hospital because she had developed Strep B and pneumonia. But on Monday she was able to go home, after Mommy spent a night at the hospital learning how to handle the monitor going off during the night. We are so excited that she is able to be home with her family!

She has a two big brothers, Derek, who is 17 years old, Ben, who just turned 5, and three "big" sisters, Tasha, 14 years old, Cassie, 10 years old and Lizzy who is now about 16 months old. The boys were hoping for another brother, but will love Katie anyway! We live more than one days drive away so we won't get to see her for a while. However, our son has posted some pictures on his webpage and she is such a cutie. Lots and lots of black hair, she weighed 6 lbs. 12 ozs and 19 1/2 inches long. Life just keeps getting busier and busier. There are now 12 grandsons and 13 granddaughters. My husband promised when we got married that he would keep life interesting and it sure is that!

I won, I won, I won

I am so excited! I won the "A Very Merry Christmas" stamp set from Gina K.!! It has already come in the mail and I have been having so much fun working with the set. I will have a card ready to post soon. I have tried several things and am deciding which way I want to go with it for my Christmas cards this year. There are so many possibilities and I just can't decide how to do it. I am also waiting until I have some extra cash so I can order some of her new paper, ink and ribbon. Check out the Gina K. Designs blog! Gina K. rocks! I love the stamptv.ning blog site too. She has so many terrific video tutorials. I don't know how she does it all! What a fantastic woman.

Cutting Above/Gypsy

Check out HSN September 24th. Watch the HSN/Provo Craft launch on September 24th starting at 12 AM. Be sure to DVR or TIVO the show if you will not be home. While watching see if you can spot our very own Maggie and friends doing a 10 second infomercial using the Gypsy!! Gypsy is the new, fantastic tool that will expand the value of your Cricut cartridges.

More exciting news!! Cutting Above is THE new place for industry news, review information, tutorials, videos and just about anything else related to scrapbooking and die cut machines!! They are even offering you a chance to win a new Gypsy. Check out the debut of the new Cutting Above blog at http://cuttingabove.blogspot.com/2009/09/cutting-above-gypsy-giveaway.html.

Odds and ends

What a long time since I last posted. I have been very busy this summer. We decided to plant our first ever garden this year and it has been fun, as well as lots of work. We opted for the square foot garden and it has been an interesting experiment. We only have one box this year and will definitely add a couple more for next year, even though it wasn't very productive this year. The first mistake was in deciding to do this too late in the summer. Next year we will get started earlier and be a little more diligent in what we plant. We did have a few good items, like some great tomatoes, a few zucchini and yellow crookneck squash. But the big item was our trash barrel of Yukon Gold potatoes! Next year we will have three barrels and plant three different types of potatoes.

We have also made a couple of trips this summer. First to visit our oldest son and his family in North Logan, UT. Their second son returned from two years in Barcelona Spain! He served a mission there and it was really great to have him back home. The next trip was to meet our newest great-grandchild. Elena was born on August 26th and we enjoyed getting acquainted with her. She is the fourth great-grandchild, but first girl. Next up will be a trip to see my sister and her husband in Anaconda, MT. They are going to be there for a week and then follow us back home to finally see our new home in Billings. In October, we hope we will be able to go down to Orem, UT and meet our 25th grandchild.

I also keep very busy with my cardmaking. I have been asked to make all the birthday cards for the ladies in our church. That amounts to more than 100 cards a year. Then there are about 60 or so members of the family. Add to that all the new babies, anniversaries, weddings and holidays, you can see that this keeps me very busy. But this is my first love (after my husband and family) and I treasure every moment spent in my craft room. I also spend a lot of time online, checking out all the cardmaking blogs to get new ideas. I will try and be more diligent about posting.
Here are a couple of my recent cards.

Black & White

This card was inspired by Gina K. She had a
challenge to create something in black and white.
I had seen a card on another blog that caught my eye with three panels. So I decided to incorporate the two ideas and came up with this beauty. My card is black and I used my CuttleBug Swiss Dots Embossing folder for the white background.

I then used my Stampin' Up ticket corner punch as I think it gives that card some personality. I stamped three panels with the retired Stampin' Up set "Long Stemmed" from the year 2000.

I was also interested in Gina's challenge to do something on the diagonal. So I used the black and white ribbon from corner to corner. To stay with the effect I also used the ticket punch on the black matting behind the flowers and on the flowers. These would also look beautiful if they were colored, but I think that the black and white effect is very elegant and the swiss dots really add to that effect.

I am very happy with the way this turned out and hope you like it too.

Welcome

Welcome! This is my first attempt at creating a Blog. I enjoy so much viewing blogs about cardmaking, as that is one of my loves and joys in life. I have been creating my own greeting cards for at least five or six years now. Between making cards to give to my family and friends, I also love to search the computer for new ideas. I started out feeling as if I couldn't even think for myself. Now I can create some beautiful cards, though I still do a lot of scrap-lifting.

Some of my best ideas are usually just happenstance. I will sit down at my craft table and just start putting things together. I have also used "recipes" and I know that they can help the creative juices for me.

I created this card for one of my Granddaughter's sixteen birthday. The window is acetate with an outline sticker that I colored with my gel markers. The Sweet 16 were punches from Ecstacy Crafts, as well as the letter and number stickers. I spend a good lot of my day in my craft room. I also do a workshop at church where I supply everything. The ladies love to come in and "create" beautiful cards. It is such a pleasure to share my "talent".

I have so many favorite spots that I love to check out for ideas. I recently purchased a Scor-Pal and have fallen in love with this tool! So I will go to the Scor-Pal Pals website to see what they can teach me. I also love going to Split Coast Stampers website. They offer such a hugh variety of ideas because of the number of contributors. Because of this, I am also a big fan of Stampin' Up.

I created this cute little number for two of my granddaughters that were getting married. I used my Scor-Pal to score the diagonal lines on the upper lefthand corner. I had also just purchased the Threading Water punch from Fiskars and had to try it out. The stickers were more Ecstacy Crafts and the hearts are paper clips. I had picked up the flowers from Robert's Craft while I was down in Orem this summer. Didn't it turn out nice?

Well, time for dinner. See you later.