A new layout (finally!) and a Carissa update

Thank you so much to those who have been praying for Carissa. She was finally able to come home from the hospital today -- hooray! She'll still be on oxygen and treatment for the pneumonia and blood clots for quite a while, but she is definitely on the mend. Thank heavens for not-so-small miracles!



I have been itching to finish this layout since I started it at Christmas time -- it was just missing the title, so I finally took 5 minutes to finish it today! Aw, my sweet Sammy. In our faith (we're LDS) we donate 10% of our income to the church, and we recently taught Sammy this principle. He was so excited about being able to help in God's work, he wanted to do even more. I was so proud of him! It is such a great illustration of his loving, generous spirit -- I had to do a lo right away.

"giving" - Zooballoo, outlined with Cricut pens
"100%" - Printing Press, sized with DS
Paper: KI Memory Keepers (I think)
"Proud Mom Moment" stamp: Autumn Leaves
stitches: MM rub-ons (I finally figured out what to do with all those Xs!)

A personal request...

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Hi, my friends! Nothing new to share at the moment, but I wanted to ask for your prayers on behalf of my sweet sister Carissa. She is 22-years-old and has Down's Syndrome, and she is the light of our whole family.

She has been struggling with pneumonia and is now back in the hospital with blood clots in her lungs. The doctors are really stymied as to what is causing the problems and she hasn't been responding well to any of the treatments yet. It would mean so much to me if you could remember her in your prayers. Thank you so much.

Here is a pic of our sweetheart girl:

Way too much fun...

Sorry my blog is so outdated -- thanks to anyone still checking in! I am still feeling like garbage, but I'm officially at the end of the first trimester so I have hopes for brighter days ahead. I have been able to do a couple of really fun projects over the past few weeks that I wanted to share. I just did this one today -- my baby sister turned 18, and I needed a cool card that would match her fun and funky personality. I downloaded this great "Comic Junkie" digi-kit by Jana Crowley (the Queen of Quirk) at www.oscraps.com (that's where I got the background, cityscape, and big letter A) and the font (letteromatic) from www.1001freefonts.com. Then I found a great tutorial on turning a regular photo into comic book art at www.photoshoproadmap.com -- I can't wait to explore this site some more!



Here's what the original pic looked like:



This next project is a book I made for my brother-in-law and his fiance for their wedding -- they had one at each table. He wanted to tell the story of how they met and fell in love, but they didn't have pictures for a lot of the events. He loved the invite I made for my mom's birthday and asked if I could make them a book in that style. But of course! The second half (about the proposal) they had lots of pics for and I was out of time, so it's pretty straight forward, but the whole thing was really fun to make. Even more importantly, my BIL and new SIL said it was exactly what they wanted, and everyone in the family wanted to take one home! Ah, success....

Bright cards to beat the blahs!

I decided to make some bright cards to battle the morning sickness! Creating Keepsakes featured this color combo this month, and I really love it.






And I never posted these fun cards I made during the Christmas rush, but they're so much fun I can't resist!

My Big News!

Our big news for a Happy New Year -- we are expecting a baby! The due date is Sept. 1st, and we're so excited. I'm also totally freaked out, because my first two pregnancies were no walk in the park. With Sammy I was horribly sick for the first 5 months. With Joshy it was all 9 months, plus I was on bedrest for the last 3 months. I worked really hard during 2007 and lost 57 lbs, so I'm hoping that will help. Here's my last layout from my weight loss scrapbook! It uses the same digi-kit I used for my mom's party -- I just love it!



And here's my first layout for my little pregnancy journal. I've never done a real pregnancy journal before, but I have a lot of thoughts I want to get down right now. I got some super cute 4x6 albums from Target, and I'm going to use them so I can just slide the 4x6 pics in and create 4x6 journalling cards. For the album I bought a luscious digi-kit called "Meadow Bliss" by "Designs by Mindy" from www.designerdigitals.com. It has some really gorgeous stuff in it, so I can't wait to use it! I also got the super-cool Bamboo Fun pen tablet for Christmas (thanks, Mom and Dad!), which I used for the handwriting and doodled scallops on this layout. So fun!

Birthday Party for my mom!

I've been working on the plans for a big 50th birthday bash for my mom for months, and last night was the big night! I was so happy with how everything turned out (even though she wasn't really surprised after all...).

It all started with this adorable free digi-kit by Ronna Penner, which I downloaded from www.shabbyprincess.com. I used the flowers and paper from the kit to create this invitation. I drew the dress, balloons, and body parts on white paper with a thick marker, then scanned them in so I could work with them in my graphics program. I LOVED the result -- so much in fact, that I decided to base all the decorations for the party on the colors and feel of the kit!

I made these centerpieces for all the tables using Bazzill cardstock that coordinated with the kit. I cut all the hats from the Cricut Celebrations cartridge. This was the first time I used this cartridge! I never thought I wanted it, but I couldn't resist when I found it for $25. I'm SO glad I gave in! I bought these little tin pails at WalMart and put floral foam in the bottom. I painted bamboo skewers white and added the hats to the top, then filled the pails with curled ribbon. Each centerpiece was sitting on an oversized flower that I printed from the digi-kit.



Here are a few more examples of the various centerpieces:


Here's one of my favorite parts of the decorations! I printed this 2' x 5' banner on my dad's large format printer using elements from the kit. Then I made use of my parents' huge windows and the darkness for a fun and meaningful idea -- I got one of those markers they use for writing on car windows and asked all the guests to write one word they thought described my mom. She totally loved it!



I used the base design of the invitation to make this guest book/album, bound with the Bind-it-all. All the guests signed it, and there is plenty of room for pictures. I printed the inside pages with a border and some of the flowers from the kit, so they are all ready to adhere the pics and do some journalling, and the album will be done!



After the party was over, I grabbed my favorite out of all the party hats to make a card! I created the circle card with the window using Cricut Design Studio by making two 5" circles, welding them together, then adding a 3" circle to the middle of one of the big circles. I then cut the yellow scallop (which is the edge of the card -- the brown in the background is just so you can see the yellow better) with Mini Monograms and adhered the circle card to it. I added a 4" white circle to the inside for writing. I adhered the hat to the front, added the doodle outlines with a white gel pen, and wrote "happy birthday" on the band. I love it!



Phew! I have to admit I'm exhausted, but I love how it all turned out! And the best part of all is that it made my mom feel so happy and loved, and that was the whole point!

So excited about Cricut Design Studio!

I have some fun projects I want to show you all in a bit, but while I'm finishing those up I just had to say how excited I am about the new Cricut Design studio software! So far I've just downloaded the free trial version, but my little mind is just brimming with ideas about the possibilities. You can do so much with this software -- it makes the Cricut more flexible and creative than ever before. You can bet you'll see a lot of use of this software in my future projects. So far lots of people (including me) have had some technical difficulties, but I still think the potential far outweighs it. Hopefully PC will back up the software as well as they have the bug itself. Here's a very cool link -- a blog where you can download some really amazing cutting files!

http://cricutsoftcuts.blogspot.com/

Back soon!