Alan's Birthday

Saturday was Alan's 48th birthday. I had a little surprise party for him. Josh took him on a bike ride while I got everyone to the house. This is everyone waiting for him to come through the door from the garage when the guys arrived back from their ride.
Doesn't he look surprised? He had no idea. He did notice Gary's car and wondered why he was here but I still think he was happily surprised. He sure enjoyed hanging out all afternoon with friends.
Is there a theme here with the gifts? I think so. Look how cute, Evan is giving him a little hug.
Happy Birthday Honey!!!!

Construction Update

Today is the end of day 8 of our remodel, I'm counting from the first day including any weekends even though no work is done on Sat/Sun. So anyways, the first picture is the view from the laundry door in the kitchen looking into the new extended room. You can see the doorway on the left, that was the exterior door to the office. Now an interior door. Yeah.
This is looking from inside the office at the door that was the exterior office door. You can see the wires hanging in on the wall, that would be all of our network and phone wiring just hanging there. The little section with the wires is Alan's new office closet, it got quite a bit smaller (at least 3/4 smaller). To the right of the closet is the new shower, previously part of Alan's office closet.
This is the view in the backyard. Where the red lines are on the sheer panel (plywood) that is where the new fiberglass backdoor will go tomorrow. The new door has a window and doggy door in it. Speaking of dogs, Sammie has been an absolute mess with all the noise. She sticks to us like glue. I've taken her with me to work and to drop off and pick up the kids depending on how much noise is happening. Just my luck, Alan is doing a bunch of day traveling so he's not around to deal with the majority of this, oh fun.
There you go, the end of day 8. Hopefully things will continue to go smoothly and quickly.

Kim

Construction

We officially started our remodel this week. The access to the office (an addition done prior to us owning the house) will be through the laundry room instead of through the master bedroom and master bathroom, we are getting an enlarged master bath with a big shower, yeah, and a walk in closet in the master bedroom. I can't wait until it's all done, it's gonna be sooooo cool.

These are pictures before we started, the view of the master bedroom wall that is changing, the view of the office entrance through the master bathroom that is changing and the view outside the backdoor (laundry room door on the left) which is where we are pushing out to make the exterior office door (door on the right) an interior door.

This is today, on day 4. The outside showing where the foundation will go for the laundry room addition and a view from the office into the bathroom area. Yes, that's a plastic wall at the end which is in my bedroom.

We are very excited. It's great to see the progress that is being made.

Tomorrow is hubby's birthday, can't wait.

SCSM5 - So Cal Stamp Mania 5

What a wonderful day today was. I went to Long Beach with over 100 of my best stamping buddies from SCS today to stamp. Everybody brought a shoebox project and a door prize. It was so much fun, I can't wait for next year.

I saw lots of people that I hadn't seen since last years event and met a bunch of new people too. There was just an amazing group of ladies gathered today, all headed by Jami, Emily and Joy. These three ladies put in so much of their time and effort to put on this event, thank you all for your efforts.

Here are some pictures of the event.






This is Jenny (jsinnott) and Robyn (funnygirlrobyn) with me (Mama Kim). We all live about 5 mintues apart so of course we carpooled. Thanks for driving Jen.






This is the shoebox project I made. It's a little vinyl covered notepad holder. I like to make little projects instead of cards.











These are the 11 projects I got to make at the event plus Robyn gave me one of her projects.















Here are some of the girls. First is Nancy Hill (nanni_50) and me.












The second is Toni (tonistamping), Jenny (jsinnott) and me.









We had a swap outside prior to starting the event. The set of 3 cards were the ones that Jenny made to swap. I ended up with all three because she loves me and I'm special :-)
The other card is my swap card, I made 32 cards. Some had a brown base and some were blue.
















This is Michelle (eliotstamps) and me. We met last year at the stamp mania event and have kept in touch throughout the last year. Michelle gave me one of her shoe box projects. I love the browns and pinks and I just love this designer paper.





















This is a beautiful bella card that Tangii gave me. She sent me a message asking for some help since she was nervous about her project, so we chatted through private messages and she said she felt much better. Isn't this just too cute?












My wonderfully sweet thank you gift for making the SCSM5 picture file with everyones avatar pictures. The little pictures even went into the roster this year.










Here is Denier and me. It was great to see her again and hear that her son Bug (Desmond) is doing great.

I'm kinda bummed because I didn't get a picture with Aubrey (montigg). Maybe she'll make it to one of the micro mini's I'm going to plan this year.










These were the two make and takes we did. The left one is the roster of all the attendees. The right one is a card hosted by Satmpendous. A very cute fishy card.








My raffle prize provided by hopestampseternal.com
Lots of fun stuff in there, a punch, ribbon, acrylic stamp, sakura pens, flowers, a box with candies and this shimmer spray that looks really neat. Can't wait to try it to see what it does.












A door prize I received from MichelleD. A great little lunch box filled with Nips candies.









As you can see I had so much fun. This is definitely a yearly event for me.
Night all, Kim

Purses, purses, purses everywhere

Hi all or at least Hi Chris - I know that you at least look at my blog, not sure if there are any others but such is life.

My kids are almost done with Spring Break, only the weekend left and then back to school and I guess I'll have to go back into the office to work instead of working from home. It was fun while it lasted.

I met a wonderful person today, her name is Robyn. She is a fellow SCS'er and stamper. I saw her post on the Stamp Mania thread on SCS, she had mentioned that she lived in my area so I contacted her. Well, one private message led to another and we hooked up at Starbucks today. We had such a blast getting to know each other. Neither of us could believe when we both got calls from my kids and her hubby that we had been there for over two hours and then continued chatting for another 30 minutes before leaving. She is going to take Christine's spot at the Stamp Mania since Chris can't go and we are going to carpool. I can't wait. I also hooked her up with the phone numbers for my Stampin Up Demo so she can get some supplies. What a small world it is, here we meet online and find out that we live less than 10 minutes apart. I can't wait to get to know her better. Oh yeah, we're both bookkeepers too!

I ran across this great card on SCS which used punches to make a purse, very very cute. I thought I would give it a try. Here is what I came up with.............................

All of these got a Happy Mother's Day sentiment so now I should be set for when that day arrives.

I made one a little different with a Born to shop sentiment I received through a pay it forward thread on SCS.

Hope everyone has a wonderful evening and keep doing whatever it is that makes you happy, for me it's stamping, family and friends. How about you?

;-) Kim

The Happenings............

Well it's after midnight on Thursday March 20th, actually it's Friday March 21st. I decided to stay up and play tonight since the kids start spring break tomorrow and there won't be any alarms going off in the morning. I have a rep from closet factory coming at 10am, so I just need to be presentable by 10am. That's easy peasy since I'm going to bed as soon as I finish typing.

This weeks Inkling showcased the Dahlia Fold technique. It makes some beautiful flowers so I thought I would give it a try. The tutorial said to use 1 1/4" circles, do you know how tiny those circles are to try and fold all over the place? Definitely not as easy as I thought it would be. I only made two petals and the green flower base. I think maybe a bigger circle would be better or tons of more practice. I also found that it doesn't work so well with cardstock as I used Wild Wasabi to make the flower base. The cardstock is too thick, but I didn't have any solid green designer paper to use. This is the card I ended up with. The flourish is by Rhonna Farrer. I think the card ended up simple but nice.

This is a technique called Split Negative. I saw this technique, where else, on SCS and decided to give it a try. I was thinking of using this for the stamp mania event but I think my white stamp pad would get ruined with the green at the event. It's pretty hard to clean the white off the stamps and people at the event are not quite as diligent about cleaning (at least that's what I noticed last year). So instead this is just some fun. It's always fun to try a new technique. Plus I had just gotten this set, Baroque Motifs, with my Sell-a-bration order. I love the swirl in this set and finally broke down and bought it.

I think these cards turned out really neat. I didn't want to over embellish so I just added some rhinestone flowers on one and rhinestone circles ontop of stamped flowers. I had to add the ribbon on the one card because I messed up my cut line and ended up with a 1/4" gap. Nothing a little ribbon can't cover up. Like Minnie (my demo) always says, "there are no mistakes in stamping, only room for embellishment"

I am so excited, I just got this Stampin Up set "Time Well Spent". This set is not available for sale, it is a level 3 hostess set, which means you can earn it with a $500 plus workshop or order. Well I don't know anyone to invite to a workshop and even though I love stamping, placing a $500 order myself is a bit on the extreme side. So, in search I went for someone looking to trade for this set. I found a very nice lady on SCS. Her hearts desire was the "From the Kitchen of" set and mine was the "Time Well Spent" set. Luck would have it, I was just about to place my Sell-a-bration order, so I ordered her set, mailed it to her and walla I got this beautiful set.

I made the card in the picture the day the set arrived and sent it to Lisa with whom I traded as a thank you card.

I have always loved cows, they are so sweet and gentle. Well at least the dairy cows are.

Here's a tidbit I bet you didn't know about me. While I was in Jr College after high school I worked at the Dairy Unit on campus. I milked the cows twice a day, at twelve hour intervals. We milked at 3am and 3pm, yes I was at the school at 3am in the morning to milk cows. It wasn't unusual for me to be running into my 8am class with my knee high rubber boots still on. Now isn't that a pretty picture?

I made these cards to use up some cow print scraps I had. I think there will always be a soft spot in my heart for cows.

A little of this and a little of that

Hi all

- I haven't posted in a while, see I told you that this blog thing was going to wear off pretty quickly. Life has been busy as usual, I had to take Lauren to the high school for the new student orientation. Wow that was hugely scarry yet interesting. I can't believe my daughter is going to high school. She told me yesterday about a boy at school that had a seizure. I ended up speaking to his folks this morning, since the younger kids go to school together, and found out that he is doing fine, he started having seizures the summer after second grade and is now in 6th grade. Really makes you look at your kids and see how blessed we are, if the worst thing we are dealing with is a teen attitude then we truly are blessed. My heart goes out to them.

Let's try to get on a lighter note now.

I've been doing a little bit of stamping. I am going to So Cal Stamp Mania 5 on April 19th. I finished my project & door prize. I am almost done with my swap cards, now that my SU order came in I can finish them with the Wild Wasabi stamp pad I just got.

I made a large blue sign to tape on the wall to mark the location for the convention swap. Take a look, it's super simple and disposable....


The little blue scalloped in the corner is my little badge to wear showing that I am participating in the convention swap. This too will hit the trash can as soon as the swap is over.








I finished my tile coasters for the summer themed coaster swap I joined. I sent them out and ended up being the first person to get them to the hostess so I even end up winning a little sumtin-sumtin.....................not sure what yet but I'll try to remember to post it when it arrives. I assume it's coming with the swapped tiles which isn't until June so we have a tad bit to wait.




What do you think about my coasters? Leave me a little feedback if you wish.......................


The top right was the first one but I didn't like the light shirt on bella nor the them having the same color pants so I changed bellas clothes.





"T's" birthday is today, he's now 25. "T" is Tim, the son of my mom's best friend Toni. He and my sister, who will be 25 in August, grew up together.

I wanted to send him a more masculine card so this is what I came up with. I started by wanting to make a square card, so I cut an 8x8 inch piece of white and afterwards realized, duh that was stupid, obviously I wasn't thinking!!!! So I folded it in half, cut it down a tad, added a piece of black on the back and went for one that could go into a regular bill type envelope. I used my new Print Pattern background stamp that just came this weekend. I have always loved that stamp for masculine cards and finally broke down and bought it during the sell-a-bration time. I also used the Birthday Whimsy, one of the free sell-a-bration sets I got. I hope he likes his card.

That's all for now.

Ta-ta................................................................................................................Kim