Getting Organized

I know my blog has been severely neglected- life just keeps going and blogging doesn't make it up the list- I think laundry has become a full time job in and of itself.... But I had this great idea (that has probably been had by a hundred other people) but it was new to me and so exciting I couldn't wait to share it here!  I saw this "hanging jewelry organizer" and since I own exactly 7 pieces of jewelry besides my wedding ring it looked like the perfect element & embellishment organizer!  It has 33 pockets on each side (that's 66 pockets!) and I was able to clear up so much shelf and desk top space by emptying out little bottles and boxes into the pretty clear pockets.  And the very best thing about it is it's portable!  I can hang it in my "cricut cupboard" (which is my old TV armoire) when I am working out there or haul it back to my bedroom desk when I'm working there.  So fun, it's changing my life already.  I have seen bigger ones (the kind for shoes I think) filled with punches and other tools and I think I need to get one of those now too- it can hang on the outside of my Cricut armoire, or behind my bedroom door.

Orla Kiely Inspired Card

I participated in the Tuesday Trigger Challenge over on Moxie Fab World- I created this card:

inspired by this great image of Orla Kiely tins:

I gravitate to making cards anyways but that picture was just perfect for a card! Love the colors and prints on them.  The papers in MME Darling Dear 6x6 pad had a similar feel. Today's the last day of this challenge but they have a new one each week so go check it out and play along!

Pink and Black and Yellow!

I love having some kind of direction when I'm tyring to make something, and when I saw this Tuesday Trigger Challenge image on the Moxie Fab World I was excited to make a card:

The challenge was to make something inspired by that picture, I loved the colors, the flowers and the crystals, perfect for a card! Here's mine:

Tomorrow there will be a new challenge up, go check it out as well as all the other interpretations!

I just had to share...

I've been skimming through my never-ending back-logged google reader feeds and am seeing so many awesome ideas!  I have been a bit lazy and found it's so easy to click that little "share to Facebook" button and feel like I've done my duty to share, but really I don't think many (if any!) of my Facebook friends care, but you do right?  Here's some favorite ideas out there:

Make these adorable Little Card Pocket Fans from Cathe Holden:

Or make this self zipping coin pouch from a ribbon: (from How About Orange)

And I think this would be a great DIY gift for those hard-to-shop-for tweens- Friendship Bracelet kits! 

Finally, I found a really awsesome designer blog called Sissy Print and it's loaded with gorgeous {free} printables!  She's got a ton of fun back to school things including bookplates and lunch bag tags, and I really love her "quotable Monday" prints, like this one:

Hmm that's what I'm most excited about today anyways, hope you have fun with this stuff too!  Now my head is swirling with ideas, I think I am going to go DO something...?  Good night, if you still read this blog, you're the best!

Fanatical About Botanical Card

Long time no blog! It's summer, and too hot to even breathe really, and I don't have much time when I'm not surrounded by children! Real quick I wanted to share a card I made for the Fanatical About Botanical Challenge in the Moxie Fab World! Really simple, but I think it turned out pretty too. 

For a ton of inspiration go check out what everyone else made!

Who's Your Hero?

Looking forward to the 4th of July weekend, these posters have been on my mind.  I want to teach my children about their country and what makes it great, where it came from and why it is different. (and know better myself)  I love what the artist Steve Nethercott had to say about them:  "In a world full of fantasy heroes and pop-stars, we should never forget the real heroes, with real courage, real strength, and real stories,"  I'm still trying to figure out where I would hang them, but I really want to getting some!  Along with the American Hero posters, he has a set of Bible hero posters and Book of Mormon hero posters that are really awesome. You can see them all HERE.
A few of my other favorites:

Hannah's Promise

Mother's of the Stripling Warriors

David and Goliath

Samuel the Lamanite

People are so good!

I just had to send a big thank you out to the strangers that came to our rescue yesterday!  Miss B is celebrating the big 1-0 this weekend and we have a little craft project planned for her party and I decided that I had just enough time before dinner to run to Hobby Lobby for supplies.  We were doing good for time until we got to the car to go home and I realized that I had locked my keys in the car!  And it was like one hundred and a million degrees outside! And it turned out to be a really great experience.  I had left my windows cracked, so we headed back into the store to find some kind of wire to make a door-unlocking tool.  A long stemmed sunflower seemed perfect, but once back out in the (aforementioned) heat I was not having much luck.  After a few minutes a man came over and offered to help and he seemed to have some good ideas so I let him have a go at it and within a few minutes he did it!  He confessed to having a lot of experience- not because he steals cars- but because he was a police officer!  I was so thankful to him and his wife/girlfriend who asked or at leasted allowed him to help us! As I was buckleing everyone in a woman drove up and handed me a bag full of ice cold water bottles and snacks she had picked up for us while we were out there and insisted I still take them.  My kids were so grateful and so happy that we had been so blessed by kind strangers.  I can't wait to pay it forward next time I see someone in a similar situation.  Thanks to our mystery heros! 

Oh and happy birthday to my first born!  She is such a great kid, I just wish she would stop growing up!

Finally! Pretty Forever Stamps!

I like the idea of buying stamps that will work forever, but I confess I can't stand the original "bell" design so when I saw these I was so excited!  They're so pretty! I don't know how long they've been out, but you can get them here. There are a bunch of other fun, new forever designs as well, including these:

Blossoms of Blue

image from Raceytay on etsy

Morning started out well- made it (almost) on time for church, heard some wonderful stories from a couple that just returned home from a mission in Zimbabwe, kids sang mother songs, made me some cute cards, and presented me with flowers, came home, had lunch and even got a little nap.  Woke up from my nap and started going through e-mails, when my hard drive started acting up, restarted my computer and found no files or programs showing up anywhere.  Sick computer.  (I'm on the backup now) Then one by one kids got really whiny, and HOT.  3 sick kids with fevers and various aches- (all in bed now) So no mother's day dinner at my mom's now darn it!  (happy Mother's Day mom!)  Frozen pizza for us.  Any hope of everyone sleeping all night?  Luckily the oldest 2 seem to be fine, so far. Sam's out of town this week and assuming everyone is well I'll be joining him Thursday night for the weekend- yippee!  Sunday is usually TV free at our house, but I always make exceptions when someone is sick- I'm thinking maybe that means I get to watch some shows tonight too? On to season 3 of Veronica Mars :-) 
(PS- what's a good TV series that I can start on Netflix when I'm done with this one??)

Teacher Appreciation Time!

I just wanted to share these little matchbook chocolate holders I did for all the teachers at the kids school.  I used the Ghiradelli Chocolate squares (currently come in bags of 50 at Costco) and they were pretty quick and simple to make. 

 I finally got some good use out of my MS scoring board and it made these go pretty quickly.  I cut a strip of patterned cardstock (American Crafts) 6 1/2" long by 2" wide, and scored it at 3/4", 3 1/2", and 3 7/8", then stuck in the note, folded it up, and stapled in the chocolate.

I also had to share that I won one of the random drawings at Moxie Fab World for a copy of 350 Cards & Gifts!  It arrived today and I am so excited- so many GREAT ideas, I knew I would probably have to go buy it if I didn't win it, but it was pretty exciting to win. :-)  There are also lots of great ideas on the site that can be used for teacher appreciation, Mother's Day and any other occasion you might want to make a little something for!

Tuesday Trigger Challenge- and I'm out!

I saw the Tuesday Trigger challenge over at Moxie Fab World and knew I had to do something with those colors for Charlie's overdue birthday thank you cards! He had a Buzz Lightyear party so the colors were perfect and I had this polka dot paper that worked too!  Click HERE to play along!

Here's the "trigger" picture:

And in other news I'm heading out of town tomorrow for a couple days with a friend (and her mom!) to Utah and I'm excited! I'm also nervous, not so much that things will fall apart here without me, but more that they'll go so smoothly no one will want me back! (though that might not be so bad after all...)

Happy Easter

Hope you all had a good Easter, full of fun and also some peaceful reflection.  We had a fun family party yesterday and got to attend a very different, but wonderful stake conference this weekend. A speaker encouraged us to ask questions in our hearts as we attend our church meetings, and to listen for God's personal answers to us through His spirit. I discovered that even surrounded by 5 wiggly and irreverent children, learning can happen!  How thankful I am today that God keeps His promises, and that Jesus Christ lives!  He truly is the Savior of the world, and He is my Savior, and I know through Him I can change and be a little better every day.

Card set and gift bag challenge

Moxie Fab World has had 6 challenges going on to celebrate the release of Paper Crafts magazines "350 Cards and Gifts" edition and I finally finished a couple things to enter!  I hoped to do a lot more but you know how that goes!  I especially love these because they are picking the winners at random, and that means I actually have some kind of chance :-) 
First I made this fun little card set to give someone for the card set challenge:

And they get bundled up and tied up in this little bag:

And then for the gift wrap challenge I wanted to share this simple baby gift bag:

The onesie is a card just clipped to twine strung across the front of the bag- so simple and if I may say so, so cute too!
You have a few hours left to enter- maybe I can get the kids to bed and do one more?
Check out the Moxie Fab blog for tons of inspiration HERE.

Wedding Card

Finally actually linking up to a couple card challenges today!  I used the CPS sketch this week, and I made it a gift card holder so I'm also linking to the Moxie Fab World gift card holder challenge. 

My brain works so much better on cards than full scrapbook layouts for some reason- this one is really simple and easy with the help of a triangle punch!
Next up, take of "Merry Christmas" from my blog header!  Yikes, I have been away a while haven't I?

In Short- the holidays happened!

And I'm back!  Hopefully much more frequently with fun & interresting things to share!

Mr C got potty trained, Mr H learned to walk, and got an ADORABLE haircut, pictures to come.

Christmas came and everyone was happy!  Even me, after I put a bunch of things on my "to don't" list.  What a relief to let go of so many "fun" things I wanted to cram into our December! (though maybe next year I'll be more organized and we'll do a few)

  I just had to share my little bare chested cherub- he reacted with the appropriate oooo's for each of his presents! We call that face "Cheerio mouth"
And our greatest holiday challenge was created by an elf named Holly- I would like to have a chat with her!  Miss G apparently wrote a letter to Santa and asked for a "wishing star"  What is a wishing star?  Well it's a star that gives you whatever you wish for of course!

She was taking requests from friends and making lists of what she was going to wish for when Santa brought it.  I couldn't say anything that would gently convince her that Santa might not be able to bring a wishing star. (after all, Santa's favorite elf was going to ask him to pick one up for her!)

Luckily Santa is very wise and came up with this sweet letter to give her along with a pretty little star ornament- because I was stumped! 

And Christmas turned out perfect!

New Years Resolution:  Procrastinate less!

I think that would cover a lot of other goals that I could set...

Slow cooker favorite

On busy days, I like to throw something in the crock pot all day. Yum...

Disclaimer:  I do not cook my children, nor would I encourage it.  He likes to climb into small spaces and hang out there- I did not put him there. Yes I did make sure no one plugged it in.

What does it say about me...

Is it bad that I put my Christmas wreath inside my door, instead of facing outside?  I just love my wreath, and my front door is not very attractive with that metal security screen door thing, it just wouldn't look nice out there, and who would see it anyways?  So it's inside this year, and I love it!

But I did start to feel a little sad for my bare unattractive front door so I gathered up some old big outdoor ornaments that I didn't quite know what to do with and hung them under a big bow (I'm not a bow maker)  but I think it turned out alright!  Better than nothing anyways, something festive to greet any visitors, and then they can come in and enjoy my wreath too. 

Today I'm spending a little time crafting!  Hopefully finished products will be worth sharing soon...

Time for Christmas Cards!

I LOVE getting and giving Christmas cards- it's really one of my favorite things about Christmas time.  Getting the mail is even more exciting than normal!  My favorite place for photo cards is Shutterfly.  Their selection gets bigger and better every year and I love the way their stationary cards feel compared to a basic photo.  Here are a few of my favorite designs this year:

I love that you can search for certain colors, or how many pictures you want to use, or by designer.  Plus if you like to do digital scrapbooking or design your own, you can upload and print your own creation on their cards HERE. 
Shutterfly has the best products and there's always sales if you get on their mailing list.  I've gotten cards, calendars, photo books (TONS of them!) mugs and of course prints from them and always been thrilled with them. I always make calendars for my parents Christmas gift with pictures of all of their grandkids and order them from Shutterfly- my mom requests it now.  I think I'm going to make Sam a desk calendar this year. Right now they have a promotion for bloggers to get 50 free cards and you can read about that HERE.  (thanks for letting me do this- I am hopefully getting free cards for it but I honestly LOVE Shutterfly products!) So have you ordered your cards yet??

Celebrations

Is it possible for a 5th child to really believe that they are loved every bit as much as the 1st child, even though their 1st birthday was celebrated with cake 5 minutes before bedtime, as opposed to big, extravagant party that baby #1 had on their 1st birthday? I hope so, because I sure love this little guy!  How is it possible that he is 1?

Miss G celebrated her birthday too- this took all my party planning energy, I really wanted to make up for the lack of celebrating last year when I was in that new baby fog! (see, last year his birthday was all about baby H!)  We did a pirate party complete with a treasure hunt, pin the patch on the pirate, cannon ball blast, (that was popping black balloons to retrieve treasure- thanks Sam for blowing up 50 balloons!) and decorating paper mache treasure chests.  I used some of the free printables from HERE as well as the cute pirate clip art I showed in the last post for decorations and to turn the hot dogs into little pirate ships- that might have been my favorite part! I never take enough pictures!

We have also been potty training, Thanksgiving, losing teeth, and working through mounds and mounds of laundry and dishes as usual!  I miss blogging and reading your blogs though!  Thanks for hanging around, I really appreciate those who take the time to read and comment, you're the best! Miss G left this letter for the tooth fairy and I loved it.

I couldn't bring myself to check the "no" box with that frowny face beside it so I had to leave a note explaining that I didn't have any real pictures of myself- she cut that part off and kept it somewhere safe...

If you want to be cute about it...

The talented ladies from  eighteen25 made this so cute and functional Christmas Notebook that puts mine to shame! 

If you want a fun project and a really cute notebook, check out their instructions and free printables HERE.  I want one!