Lilacs Already?

We went out for an evening walk tonight and could smell these down the road. I can't believe that they are already blooming.

Inspiring Mother's Day Giveaway

Want to win these awesome items for your mother or yourself?

Go to Inspiring Ideas and enter to win, you have until April 26th! or you can find them at all Hallmark Gold Crown Stores

Birthday Bear Card

We made this card for the other sweet little boy turning 2 this weekend.

Just a simple and cute little bear floating away on balloons.

Robot Birthday Card

We have a double birthday party on Saturday. Two brothers born two weeks apart sharing one party.

We made them two different cards and here is the one we made for the sweetie turning 5. I'm not sure why it is, but I think little boys need a robot birthday card these days. His theme is a super hero one, but I don't have any super hero stamps so hopefully a good robot with suffice.

I printed this groovy graph paper on my home ink jet printer from a free printable I found online(I will have to find out who it is and add a link). There were six cut-outs to a page and I just cut out the one I wanted and stamped my little robot in the middle. I colored him in with Prisma Colored Pencils and then I went over it with a little Gamsol to smooth it out a bit.

I cut out the outer blue square thing with my new Spellbinders Nestabilities and then I added the shiny star sticker and the dark blue Rhinestones to the peaks.

I stamped the "Blast Off" on the front and then drew on the sewn-look border, I stamped a happy birthday message in the inside. I also stamped a "shooter" on the envelope and colored it to match and drew a "bullet path" dotted line.

Homemade Laundry Soap

Lately I have been seeing a lot of recipes for homemade laundry soap on the blogs I check somewhat regularly. One of the sites that I saw it on was Pea Pod Creations, but I decided to Google it and see just how hard it would be.

Turns out it is really quite easy!

All that you need is:

*A box of Borax(this is new style packaging)

*Super Washing Soda

*Fels Naptha

Walmart had the Borax and Cub Foods(here in MN) had the Washing Soda and the Nels Naptha stuff, all found in the laundry aisle.

First I cut down the Fels bar into smaller pieces so it wouldn't overwork my food processor.

Then I used the grating blade and chopped it down, I think you can use a hand grater but I wanted to get it done quickly. I'm sure there is a way to grind it even smaller...

Then I added:

1 cup of the grated Fels Naptha

1/2 cup of the Borax

3/4 cup of the Washing Soda

and mixed it well.

Here it is all jarred up and ready to use! 1-2 Tablespoons per load, won't get foamy like other detergents and will wash A LOT of loads. It appears to only cost penny's to do a load with this stuff.

Price Breakdown

Borax -$2.98

Washing Soda -$2.57

Fels Naptha -$1.07

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I grated the whole bar of soap and it was enough to make 3 batches of the above recipe.

Raffle Basket Cards

Our school had their annual Bingo Night last week. They also do raffle baskets that you can buy tickets for a drawing. There were some really great baskets to try to win!

Our Kindergarten class made up a Tea themed basket, but I thought we needed some handmade cards to add to the loot :)

I made up a dozen assorted cards & here they are:

Some of them are similar to the ones I made for my cousin's Silent Auction for their Catholic School. They were fun and easy to reproduce.

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I am also working on some other crafty projects that hopefully I can post soon!

Como Zoo Conservatory

We had Spring break last week and one of the days we went to Como Park Conservatory in St Paul. It is a zoo and conservatory and lots of fun! We usually get there a few times a year.

Here are some of our pics from the day - Sophia took most of them.

They had just switched it to the spring flowers and we were loving the bright colors!

Stopping to smell the flowers

Funky trees and leaves galore

Orchids

The funny thing is, this is the closest we got to a picture of an animal!

A penguin sculpture.

Crazy Eyes

These are the Easter Eggs that my mom colored with the kids this year.

I'm not quite sure where she found the crazy face kit, but the kids sure thought it was fun to make all of those silly faces!

When it came time to eat them, no body wanted to peel them apart....

Easter Egg Hunt

We went to our first "real" Easter Egg Hunt last weekend at a church near our house. We heard that it was s fun place to go, so we thought we would try it. They had music and a magician first and then the hunt. It was LOTS of fun!

She(we) found lots of eggs and are still eating candy:) as you can see all of the eggs in the grass around her.

I liked this pic because this is a genuine smile when she picked up an egg and not a posed look for the camera.

School Fundraiser

My cousin, who is my good buddy, asked me to help her with her project for her daughter's school fundraiser again this year. Each grade puts together a basket for the silent auction, her theme for this year is a "Stay in Touch basket".

Each child will bring something like stamps, a fancy pen, gift card for gas, dinner or groceries, basically things that will keep you in touch with other people.

She also thought they needed lots of cards and wanted the second grade class to help. I did a "One Sheet Wonder" thingy last year at her house, which turned out fine, but not my best work. This year I did it at home, using all of my supplies when I needed them.

I decided to make it as easy as possible for them as I could, so I found stamps that the kids could color and them matched them up with co-ordinating paper. I made a totally different layout for most of them. My cousin wasn't sure that she would know how to lay them out, so I made a little diagram that they could use when taping them together.

Here are most of the card "fronts" that I made up for them:

We wanted to have a variety of cards for all occasions.

I bagged them all up separately with their little diagram I added later.

My cousin said it went really well! All of the kids really enjoyed it and a lot of them had never made a card before. I am glad I could help to introduce these young minds to the world of card-making!! I just hope that it will help to raise some money for the school.

Sketch Challenge TESC105

I made this card for my quilting sister-in-laws' ( Alysons Petals) birthday. We had a small gathering at my parents house last weekend.

Sometimes it is easier to get started when you have a card layout to start from.

I found this one over at Taylored Expressions and thought it would be a fun one to use! I just bought my first Nestibilities Dies and finally tried them out. I think I need more practice to get a good emboss too...

This is some more of the fun paper I bought at Crafts Direct when I was there. I had to use a bird stamp on it because Alyson really seems to be into birds lately! She even posted something on Facebook about being old because she likes birds :) I colored them in with Prisma Colored Pencils.

I also worked really hard to make a yummy cake from scratch. It was good, but very rich! It took me all day to make the filling, the frosting and the cake, but well worth it.

Chocolate cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting and raspberry/whip cream filling. yum.

18th Birthday

My niece's 18th birthday was Saturday! I tried to post this then, but Blogger flipped my photos and I can't figure out how to fix them so please bear with me. I still don't know how to fix them, so I am just going with it.

She loves the color Teal, Zebra print and Bows!

This is what I came up with for her birthday card. It's a tri-fold card, but I didn't add an actual closure because I didn't have anything that would have worked and not ruined the ribbon look.

I glued this sentiment on the inside to keep it simple and sweet.

Just imagine this turned the right way, how cute huh?

The only sad part about all of these birthday cards is that I mailed them Priority last week and no one has received them yet! I also added some money and other fun things into the box - I just hope no one took it for themselves...

Birthday Cassette Card

My Nephew turns 15 on Monday - it's his golden birthday! I tried to make him a cool card to celebrate the big day

I found this sketch over at Jacksonbelle Embellishments as one of their Tuesday Sketch Challenges, you can find it here

The "Cassette Tape" is actually an iron on patch, so he can iron it on something later :) I love it when you can get 2 uses out of something.

Hopefully he even knows what a cassette tape is. he he

I didn't love how the ends were coming loose so I added these matching star brads on the ends to help hold them in place.

The sentiment is stamped in white & them embossed to make it stand out more. I lightly colored around the words with a Spica glitter pen for a subtle glittery effect

Celebrate Card

Here is another of the Birthday cards that I made to send to the family in Omaha.

Just cute, quick & simple ! I also bought this paper at Crafts Direct when I was there the other day. The stamp is from the $ section at Michael's. I colored it in with colored pencils. The other paper was scraps on my desk, along with the Rhinestones from my stash.

Make a Wish

I made some birthday cards to send down to my husbands family in Omaha.

We are a little late for two of them, but better late than never, right? Since I was sending a package down there we just thought we would include them all at once :)

I found this new paper at Crafts Direct in St. Cloud the other day and thought it would make for a super cute birthday card. The stamp is from a set by Stampin Up. The green ribbon I had in my stash and the fuchsia is American Crafts.

Haiti Relief Fundraiser Update

WOW!

So far, we have raised around $500 to donate to Haiti!!! That is so exciting :) I think I will continue do this for a few more weeks. Thank you to everyone who has purchased a necklace or passed my name on to someone else.

I was up really late on Saturday night making a whole pile of necklaces and my wonderful mother & aunts bought a whole bunch of them.

Here are some of the latest that I have to sell if you are still looking for one :)

Not the best photo as I took it with my cell phone, but hopefully you can get the idea. These also come with an 18" or 24" chain necklace.

Thanks Again!!