Dinosaur Valentines

In sticking with my theory of using what I have instead of buying more scrapping stuff....I decided to use the super cute new Roar! dinosaur stamp set to create 'manly' valentines for the boys for school.  The card will have a dinosaur toy attached to it, rather than the traditional candy...the parents will love me for not sending candy, I'm sure the kids will think I'm an old fuddy duddy, but such is life! ; )  For once, these were super easy to make and reproduce 33 times!  I random stamped a sheet of white daisy cardstock with the dinosaurs in pacifica, sunset, pear and desert sand.  Cut the heart using the Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge, and ink distressed the edges with desert sand (Jeny will be so proud of me)...and VOILA...33 cards are finished, except for the boys to write their names and their friend's names on them!  One more thing of one million off the to do list!!

Valentine you're DINO-MITE!  How cute is that!  The boys like them, so that's all that really matters! : )  Happy scrapping!!

New stamp set card swap

For training with my CTMH upline in January, the team decided to pick a stamp set, design a card and do a swap at the February training meeting.  I picked the Just a Number stamp set because it has smarty pants birthday sayings, that sound as though I could've written them myself.  I found a design in one of my card recipe books, thought it looked simple enough, and set out to make 1 for me and 12 for the swap.  You would think that I'd know by now that simple enough in the book, means painstaking to reproduce more than once...but I'm a slow learner.  It is sort of what I had in mind, but since I have way too much to do, and not even close to enough time, it has to do for now! : )

You know you're getting older when...the candles cost more than the cake!

The flames on the candles are actually super small hearts cut from my Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge, flipped them upside down!!  They are the only thing that made this card any easier to reproduce 13 times! : )

Family album for Mother in law

About a year ago I was given several pictures of my mother in law's, mother's side of the family--The Anderson family.  Between my love of scrapbooking, and interest in getting to know that side of the family better (even from such a distance), I came up with an album for her.  Here are a few of the pics of the pages, that I forgot to take good pictures of before I gave it to her (because I procrastinated up to xmas eve to get it done for her on xmas)!!  It's the first album I've ever made and given away, so it was difficult to create for someone else.  And it was incredibly challenging trying to put some kind of order and semblance to pictures of people from generations ago that I've never met, and not heard a lot about.  It was a good experience for me, and has gotten me interested in researching both my mom and dad's side of the family.  I have very few pictures of either side, but making a detailed family tree that I could pass along to my kids someday would be fun, and quite an adventure nevertheless!

PS  My website will be updated and fully functional in the very near future!  www.scrappinmama.jcrackington.com

Even I can create my own 'designer' paper!!

In my latest efforts to design stuff for workshops in January I was coming up empty in my paper selection.  I know that CTMH has created 8 paper packs per idea book, that last 6 months, and that should be enough, but with the very holiday stuff in this latest one, I've exhausted my options.  So I decided to try the whole random stamping technique to come up with my own 'designer' stuff.  After a few miserable attempts, I actually came up with something that I liked!  I like damask, and I like chocolate, so this is what came together after rummaging through several stamp sets.  I coupled that with the Celebrate the Everyday card guide from way back when, and VOILA!!  For my first attempt at something completely from 'scratch', I'm pleased with myself for stretching beyond my comfort zone...may even have to try this again!

Now if only I could come up with an argyle print like they did in this guide, I'd be tickled pink!

One option for 20 page workshop

Awhile back I found a template for a 20 page workshop on the consultant bulletin boards.  I used it and made 20 fabulous pages with the fanfare paper pack.  You crank out 20 pages and then embellish as you put pics on them.  It's sort of like the retired base pages, only much cooler!  I decided to give it a try with the new paper packs, a huge challenge considering that you only get 6 b&t pages per pack, and 6 sheets of cardstock.  I bought 2 packs of Believe, gathered a bunch of cardstock, and went to town.  I'd like to thank Myra Grodziuk (sp?) for the original template using the old paper pack, it saved me much time and misery trying to figure it out on my own!  I also had about a half a pack  of stickease leftover from another project, so I pre-embellished some of the pages.  And I cannot wait to use my Paper Doll Dress Up Cricut cartridge for some more cute reindeer, Santas, elves, sleighs, etc...  This will be one option for the 20 page workshop I'll be doing in January, the other option will actually be 10 pages of Elemental and 10 pages of Dreamin...if I can figure it out! ; )

Here's a sample of the 20 pages of Believe:

Green light, yellow light, RED light

Lucas' kindergarten teacher has been having 'fun' keeping 22 kids in her afternoon class under control.  So the kindergarten teachers collectively came up with a new reward system, referred to as the stoplight system.  You get a star at the end of the day if you don't receive any warnings, or lights.  A week of stars gets you a piece of candy at the end of the day on Friday!  You get a green light with the 1st warning, yellow with the 2nd and red with the 3rd, and you owe the teacher recess with a red light.  If there is more than one red light each day a note goes home, or she calls the parents to discuss.  It's only for 3 hours a day though, so I relaxed the rules a little, and added some GOOD rewards!  You still get a star for a green light.  You can do extra chores to get a yellow light reduced back to a green light, or to remove a green light...you may not get rid of a red light once you get there though.  Red light gets the Wii taken away for the day, or if it has already been played that day, no Wii the following day.  2nd red light gets the show before bedtime taken away.  3rd red light gets bedtime stories taken away.  4th red light gets the Wii taken away for a week.  5th red light states that you don't want to find out, cuz it's that bad!!!!  5 stars gets you 2 quarters, 10 stars gets you 4 quarters, 25 stars gets you ice cream at Baskin Robbins, Cold Stone or similar, 50 stars gets you lunch out at place of your choosing, 100 stars gets you a play date at Pojo's, Bounce, Black light mini golf, or similar.  And then we start over...and maybe change up the rewards a little too.

Here is a pic of the board I made for them...the letters of their names are their favorite BSU colors (barf) to encourage them further!  And it's like Christmas came a month early in this house!  They have done this for the weekend, and it's going rather well...we shall see if it lasts! : )

Angry Birds

My friend's son is having an Angy Birds themed birthday party on Saturday.  I bought him a couple of plush Angry Birds, and wanted to make some bags/boxes to put them in.  This is what my Cricut and I came up with!  LOVE that Cricut!  I never would have attempted this without it!

Have a great weekend everyone!