my blog

baptism invites.

It’s funny what you learn from experiences, and I must say I learned a lot from Hunter’s baptism. Not that it wasn’t wonderful and special, but we tried to keep it really low key and invited family only, but as hard as we tried, everybody just wanted to be there. I felt very unprepared as people kept showing up and showing up and I hate not being prepared. So with Ava’s baptism we decided to do invitations. This way I knew who was coming and since we were serving dinner afterwards I could be better prepared.

I had no idea what I was going to do for her invitation. I bought some pretty paper, printed a whole slew of pictures and just sat down to create. I always make up one from start to finish and then I do assembly line cutting. I find it to be the most efficient way of getting things done. So we cut and laid out all the parts of the invitation first.

And Ava and I assembled them together.

The stitched flower and leaf are from Stampin’ Up, but I’m pretty sure they are retired now. Sorry.

I did do some with buttons instead of the flower, I really liked them both.

The inside had a vellum overlay with the baptism information.

And for reference, this was Hunter’s baptism invite.

If you want to know any of the fonts I used, or paper company names or anything else leave a comment. ♥

halloween cards.

I figured it was time to stray a little from the food side of Halloween and show you some fun cards that I made this year.

I used the new Stampin’ Up bat punch with chunky black glitter and embossed the background with a dots folder. I love the little pearls I added to the witches boots, my favorite part for sure!

For this little guy, I double embossed the background using a spider web folder (which I LOVE!) pop dotted the little spider and added some cute googly eyes.

 

I tried a new technique on this card, I know it doesn’t look very impressive, but I thought it had a cool effect.

I’m talking about the spider web that is half black and half white. I glittered the other web for some sparkle!

Lastly some chunky glittered candelabras and I love the sentiment on this one. A wicked Halloween!!

These cards are 100% Stampin’ Up, so if you have any questions or want to know what products I used, just send me an email!

I double posted today, so check out the yummy snack ideas below!

turning 8; part 1

My biggest boy turned 8 this past month, and it was a very exciting birthday indeed. In our Church, you get baptized when you turn 8, so it was a very special birthday for Hunter.

We decided to do his baptism on his actual birthday, and about a week before I took Hunter out to do a special photo shoot.

Now let me tell you, my boy, as handsome as he is, is not very photogenic, and I worked very hard for these few pictures of him.

I really wanted family far away to feel like they were apart of this special day, even though we knew they wouldn’t be able to attend, and since I love a challenge I decided that I was going to make invitations the week before his baptism. (yes, call me crazy)

I ended up designing them like a flip book of pictures, filled with the baptism information. The final dimensions were somewhere around 6”x9”.

Here’s the finished invite.

Then you would flip over the first section.

I added “I’m trying to be like Jesus” to the side of the picture in Photoshop, before I had the pictures printed.

Then you opened it up to the last section which had all the information about the baptism printed on vellum.

With a picture of Hunter in the background.

Once I had the final design down, I whipped these up in a couple hours (with help from Darren of course) Designing and figuring out sizes etc. was a nightmare and caused me a few tears along the way, but I’m glad I did it. We got them mailed out the next day and hopefully everyone has gotten it by now. ☺

I’m going to try to get the rest of his birthday stuff up today, but I have a cranky baby that is teething and needs some momma love. Be back soon! ♥

keeping it clean.

I swear, nothing is happening in my life. I’m boring.

I have a gazillion pictures I could post, from Christmas and Grey’s blessing, plus the hundreds more I take weekly, but then I would have to spend hours getting them onto my blog and it’s weird, but I’m not feeling the computer lately. I would rather be cooking or scrapbooking or even cleaning..gasp! (I know, can you believe it, me cleaning!!)

But, I feel bad when I see its been almost a week without a post, so I thought I would share another “it works for me” idea (well I’m hoping it will work)

So I’ve started this new motivational cleaning system for myself (more on that later) and like I said before, I LOVE it! I’m actually keeping my house clean (and no, it’s not fly lady ha-ha) But the problem is, I’m doing all the cleaning and my kids are doing all the messing. So I made this weekly reward chart for the family.

If the kids (and parents) can keep the main floor of the house clean for an entire week (checking off each day, or stamping a flower in this case) then at the end of the week we will do a special family activity together.

As usual, they are very excited and eager to do their housework. (We’ll see how long this keeps up)

Anyways, I quickly made this with some scrapbook paper and a couple stickers. The pink part of the paper is laminated, so weekly when I rip off the old one and add a new one, it won’t wreck the paper underneath.

I {heart} laminating!!

Anyways, I’ll keep you posted if this works. And I promise to share my new cleaning system with you soon. (Which reminds me, I should probably be cleaning something now…lol)