Pyles of Clutter

Card making

I made cards this week for a raffle gift for our recital this weekend. 

This is a birthday card.  I stamped the cupcake and the words, tied on the ribbon, string on the flower clip and then mount all together.  Cute.  The base cardstock is actually dark purple.  The color didn't turn out very well in the picture.

A general hello card.  I stamped the flower and word, mounted on an orange square, then mounted over that a piece of vellum with some metal brads.  I put the ribbon underneath that, then covered the inside with some white cardstock.  Again, pretty simple.

I made this card like a 5x7 postcard.  The whole front is this, with the circles, stars and the word thanks.  I cut out all the shapes and letters with my cricut out of scraps that I had.  Then you can write on the back and put it in a 5x7 envelope.  I really like this idea, something new.  It is on a light pink paper, again my camera didn't have the best picture taking day. 

Hope you like them!

Just a few crafty things

For Mr. Moses Lake, I made each of the contestants candy bouquets made of candy kisses.  This is what they looked like all together...

And this was what it looked like from the top, with all the bouquets together.  I had 8 small bouquets, of three "roses" each, the two finalists bouquets of 6 "roses", and the winner's bouquet of twelve "roses". 

I had a 5x7 picture of the drill team at Nationals sitting on my desk forever. I have a smaller one that I will put into her scrapbook, so I decided to go ahead to put this one in a frame.  I wanted to do something different though, so I got a big see through frame and made it up into this.  I thought it was pretty cute.  I'm not sure what Lil thought, but it's done anyway.

This is the Thank You card that I totally copied from Tracy.  She is amazing and has the most creative cards ever.  We loved it though.

Just a few crafty things.

Crafty again.

Crafty catch up:

My Very Good Friend Cindy is going to camp with all the girls.  She is over the first year girls, one of whom is my daughter, Zoey.  Lilly is a YCL this year, Youth Camp Leader.  She is required to do a devotional thought every night for the group she is over.  So we did a few crafty things to give the two sets of girls. 

These are the prayer rocks that we made for Lilly's group of girls.  The material we wrapped them in was the cutest ever.

Lilly found a story about helping your friends and being a life saver for them, so we made these little handouts to go with them.

Another devotional about friends using the song "Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold."  along with a goodie bag of silver and gold wrapped candy. 

These are for Cindy's group of girls.  I don't know why the picture is so blue.  Sorry about that.  This is a goodie to give on the day of "Hunt for the Best in Others."  We found some jungle animals and wrote characteristics that you could look for and appreciate in other people.  Wrapped in a little bag with a small tag.

For this day, the theme is "Keep your sights on Christ:  We got some pictures of Christ, printed a square of vellum with some glasses on them, and then put them together.  We will tie them to a pair of funky sunglasses for the girls.

The theme for this day is Jungle Survival.  I made up this little candy gram on how to survive the jungle out there. 

This day is themed PJ'S day--Prayers, Journals, and Scriptures.  I made the girls in the group these little journals that are 4x6 notebooks, covered with paper, with a ribbon on it.  Simple, small, easy to write in. 

These go with the journals.  They are scripture bookmarks.  I made each girls name on the front, with a quote about scripture reading on the back from President Hinckley.  This picture is a little fuzzy.  And blue.  Oh well, you get the point.

That is my crafty goodness for camp. 

I wrote about these gifts that we gave to Zoey's and Lilly's dance classes for recital.  This is what they look like:

These are for Zoey's class.  The N is missing it's red small letter.  This one was hers.  We put little name tags in the clothespin with the picture. 

Lilly wrote three characteristics on these rocks and then a little note to each girl about why she appreciated these characteristics.  It took a while, with 20 girls, but they were appreciated by the girls.  Something a little more personal. 

That is my crafty wrap up.  Hopefully, I will have more soon.  I love crafting!

Whirlwind weekend

Where can you go to be away from it all?  Where can you go to laugh so hard that you aspirate a Jr. Mint?  Where do you go to sleep with strangers?  Where can you go to ooooh and ahhh over paper designs?  Where can you go to mingle with friends?  Where do you learn how to fluff a pillow correctly?  Well, a scrapbook retreat of course! 

My Very Good Friend, Neighbor Jane Payne, and Deb Keeley have set up the greatest retreats for scrapbookers.  If you live in the northwest, please go and check out her link and look up scrapbook retreats.  We had so much fun, and I don't think I have laughed so hard in a very, very, very long time.  Now, I am not a great scrapbooker, but I do enjoy it, and I love to be around all those super talented, super fun women.  And children.  And baby.  I didn't actually take any pictures at the retreat but if you'd like to see some go to Darla's blog to see her awesome slide show of the first day of our scrapbooking. 

I would really like to describe in more detail all the fun I had with Darla, Tiffany and Karliegh, Alyson and Deb, Jane, Rachel and their girls, Donna, Michelle, and Megan, but honestly, words cannot describe what we went through.  You just had to be there.

My favorite pages that I got done:

AJ's prom day pictures

More AJ's prom day pictures

This weekend has spark my enthusiasm to get my desk all cleaned up and organized to be able to scrap a little every day, especially in the summer.  I'm making that one of my major goals to get this year all caught up in the scrapbooks.  It's a big goal, but I'm going for it!

Project #2376

A project:

It is a sort of tradition at drill team tryouts that partners wear matching shirts.  So for our new captains and lieutenants, I thought they ought to have some fun shirts to start off their year with.  I made these transfers on the computer that say "Drill Team Superstar."  Thank you to Scrapbook Factory!  It makes such an awesome print! 

And then the back... with names and titles. 

Good luck on a great year, girls!

A guilty pleasure

Even when I know it's ridiculous, I love to watch the awards shows.  I try to limit myself to just a few though, as not to be inundated with all the bling, and so this year, the only awards show I watched was the Oscars.  The one thing that drives me a little crazy about awards shows, is that every one has to have a cause.  I just want to be entertained.  Well, this year wasn't too bad.  The had several montages of older movies, and it reminded me of some that I wanted to see, that I had forgotten about.  I made a new list!  Fun.

So the best part about the whole experience was Lilly and I made cards during the show.  Our house is quite small, and we sat at our dining room table, making cards as we watched the tv.  Lilly is not renown for her creativity, so it was nice that she finally tapped into that and had a brilliant brainstorm.  This was her work:

This is the front of the card.

And this is the back.  I think she did great, and only with a minimium amount help from me!  Good job Lil! 

Tess decided also to show us her creative side, only not in a real positive way:

Red permanent marker on my nice white wall.   I'll be repainting again soon. 

The final results.

My girls have started performances for dance.  The theme of their production number this year is "Vegas".  It is a really cute number and I have loved it.  Here are some pictures of my beautiful bouquets that I had to make 20, my awesome sewing skills for the bibs, and the most elegant veils any dance company has ever seen.  Oh, and the girls are pretty awesome looking themselves.

Great napkins!  Zoey is second from the right.

Our "fat" boys...

Veils on some beautiful girls...

And the box of a million bouquets. 

This last weekend, we performed at the Gonzaga boys basketball game.  This is the fourth year in a row that we have performed there and it is a raucous event.  Yikes!  The energy there is amazing, but a lot of fun.  The fathers usually bring there dancing daughters, just so they can be in the building.  Getting tickets is out of the question!  Those games are sold out years in advance, no kidding!  Only the student tickets are usually left by the beginning of the season.  We could take 30 parents in to watch their dancers, and we had 33.  Funny.  We never have that many who come to watch otherwise.  Seriously, how many times can you watch the same dance over and over.  I do it, but I'm a little weird like that. 

It's done

Remember how I was crowing about my after-Christmas sale purchases; the millions of bath sets that I bought for half price?  I have been planning to repackage them cuter to have as birthday presents for my girls' friends.  Well, I finally got it done!  Yea for me!  I just got tired of them sitting on the floor of my garage, which is not used for our car.  It is really just our storage/exercise room. 

Anyway. 

I didn't take a before picture, but here is what the presents looked like when I got done:

I added a few things to each bath set, but everything I added was under a dollar.  The baskets I got from the dollar store, the candy was bought in a big bag and divided into smaller little bags.  I bought some small, fun colored nail polish, less than a dollar, to add in the basket.  I found some socks that were on clearance for less than a dollar to add to the mix.  I also bought some stickers that were under a dollar to add to the presents.  Each present cost me between $5 and $7.  Yahoo!! 

Here are some of my favorites:

I had this basket given to me, REGIFTING!!  I added a blue set of bath things, Skittles lipsmackers, Skittles candies, and one of the gratitude journals that I had made extra. 

This one had a pink and black theme, with pink bath stuff, pink and black socks, pink gum, black and white notecards in a pink basket.

I love using this tulle ribbon as a cover for the baskets.  It is so forgiving and makes the most beautiful bows.  LOVE IT!  I have it in four different colors.

I ran out of baskets, but had these clear bags I could use instead.  I added a sticker on the outside with all kinds of goodies on the inside. 

In all, I made 18 different baskets/bags for presents.  I still have some things I can put together, but not quite enough different things.  I will start looking again for great sales on things to add to it.  I'm so excited!

The best part of it all though, is that the girls are actually really excited to give these presents to their friends.  It is Megan's birthday soon, and she asked if she could choose one of these to be hers.  I think that is the greatest compliment, that the girls would want this themselves.  Good for me.

Matchbooks

I was so impressed with the quotes in this month's visiting teaching message, that I decided I wanted to do something using them.  I love the matchbook look, so I put some of the quotes together and made these.  I love the paper I used.  It was relatively easy, after I figured out what I was doing.  That is the time consuming thing. 

This is the inside.  Sorry the picture is blurry! 

Gratitude Journals

A little project by me:

I found these notebooks at Walmart for about $2.50.  I thought they were so cute!  They aren't full size, so I thought they would be perfect for my purpose, which is to make gratitude journals for my kids to go with our FHE lesson tomorrow on Gratitude.  But they seemed a little plain, so I dressed them up a bit. 

The Results:

I borrowed the saying from a journal that Jill had in her good mail.  I loved the tone on tone names, and I had some fun trying out my new stamps and paints that I got for Christmas with the gift card my mom gave me.  I'm happy with the results and hopefully the kids will be too.  I made a journal for AJ also, but it is decidedly less girly.  Just a plain notebook.  So sad to be a boy!