Card Crazy

Well I don't know about you- but I got a lot of fun stuff done tonight! I'm about to call it a night, read my magazine and hit the sack but before I do I wanted to share some fun cards I got done. I basically only did cards tonight, so here are a few:

*Friendship: (features Prima Calypso flowers. Love these!)




*Wish: (sorry for the fuzzy picture)




*Hoppy For You




*Happy Mother's Day




*Sweet Stuff (used Diamond Glaze to make the lollipop)

The Pink Elephant Challenge #2- All That Glitters

Hey yall! Here's my super quick card for the Pink Elephant Challenge this week. You were supposed to use anything with bling/sparkle/etc. SO, I used glitter paper, bling on my flowers AND used my Diamond Glaze over the word "happy" and put some pretty purple glitter on it. Super easy card- under a minute! Enjoy

Pink Elephant Challenge 1

The Challenge for this week on Pink Elephant is a color challenge using only pink, black, and white. Here is my creation:




How adorable is this? I really like layering flowers of different colors/sizes/textures. I'm also trying to get used to mix & matching letter stickers to use up the gazillion that I have!

Supplies used: Cardstock-the Glitter Stack/DCWV, Flowers- Queen & Co, other- letter stickers, ribbon, eyelet

Valentine's Day Sketch Challenge

So I decided I'm actually going to try my hand at sketch challenges. Here's the sketch for this week from I Heart 2 Stamp (you can link to the blog by finding it in my blog list)



Here's my version of this sketch: (anyone doing the drum roll for me??):

I used the same supplies for both cards, but each is a little bit different. One card has 2 rounded corners, the other only has 1. One card has sanded edges, the other doesn't. They don't follow the sketch perfectly, BUT, this was a stretch for me because I used two pattern papers on a card and I generally don't do that. They are pretty cute though!

Supplies used:
Paper: Basic Grey Gypsy collection, Flowers: Imaginisce "Bitty Blossoms" Paper Mix, other: ribbon, brads, vellum

Vacation is Scheduled!

Oh you really have no idea how much I am looking forward to our Florida vacation! Most of you know that I was born in St. Pete, FL and consider myself to be a Floridian even though I'm stuck in the wannabe tundra that is Wisconsin. I love the heat, humidity, beaches, sand always in your shoe, flip flops being dress shoes, etc. Most of my family still live in Florida and I miss them terribly, and of my family- only my Aunt Ginger & Uncle Danny have met my daughter. It is really important to me that they all meet my kids and that my kids get to spend time with them. When I think of my childhood- I think of my uncles and grandparents-somebody was always around. That's what I miss the most living up here. I miss having family like that to just stop over at your house or to call up to go to lunch with, etc.



So this year we decided that we were going to Florida, come hell or high water. Which might literally happen because we're going in the middle of October, which is almost at the end of hurricane season. As a former Florida resident, I've been through my share of hurricanes- which I love. Is that weird? I love hurricanes, storms, etc. There is a sick part of me hoping for a hurricane, but then the bigger part of me really wants to get a Florida fix, so I'm hoping for sunny days with the occassional rain in the afternoon.

Oh- and for those who don't know, we've elected to drive instead of fly. I know- I can already hear you groaning about that. But there are lots of reasons we're doing this- the main points being:
1. It's actually cheaper if gas stays under $2.75/gallon
2. I like road trips
3. We wouldn't have to rent a car with 2 car seats
4. If we flew, the amount of stuff we'd have to carry is unbelievable- definitely not worth it.

Is this set in stone? No. If plane tickets get incredibly cheap, it would make more sense to fly and then rent a car with car seats. I think I'd have to have car seats on the plane for the kids. If that's the case that's insane. I know for sure Matt doesn't want to carry two car seats- I'm not even going to ask because I know the look I would get. :)

But if we drive, we leave Superior super early on October 15, with anticipated arrival in Florida October 17. Then we would leave Florida the following Friday, with anticipated arrival back in Wisconsin on Sunday. We'd obviously have to spend the night somewhere in the middle, probably Tennessee and hopefully have dinner or something with an uncle and cousin who live there. Nothing is really planned yet since we just got the dates. If you have any travel ideas/tips- LET ME KNOW!! We haven't taken a vacation with the kids ever (not including weekend trips), so we're like vacation virgins at this point. :) LOL.

Duluth Maritime Festival

Well about two weekends ago there was this (what we thought) small festival happening in Canal Park and we thought it'd be fun since three sailboats were coming, blah blah blah. Well, 25,000 people later, we quickly realized that this was NOT a small festival. We were SUPER fortunate to have three authentic sailboats from the early 1900's come to the Duluth Port. Our plan to tour the boats was pretty much gone when we heard on the radio there was no more available parking in DULUTH, and that if you were able to walk there, you'd be in line for hours. Well, we never got to tour them obviously, but we went on a harbor cruise and I got some cool pictures of the boats. The sails aren't up, but they are still beautiful!

This is the Niagra (also the largest of the 3 boats that came). This one has real cannons on it, and they actually shot cannon balls out into the harbor- which we didn't get to see, but you could hear it over in Superior (about 6 miles away) and people who were in Canal Park said it shook buildings!!:





I can't remember which one this is. This is the "middle" sized one. I couldn't get a good picture of the small one.




Here's Olivia and I. She was TERRIFIED when the boat started out (we've done this cruise a few times with her) because this is the first time it was a really choppy ride. When the boat went out onto the lake, it was rocking and rolling- you could barely stand up. Water was spashing up the front of the boat- I was getting sea sick! But once we toured the harbor, it was just fine. That's what a 5 mph wind does on our big lake.






Jack on the other hand, LOVED it, and was squealing during the whole thing. :)

Almost Vacation Time!

Well this Saturday is our yard sale and I am hoping for decent weather and big sales. I have so much stuff to get rid of, so I hope a lot of it moves.

We have our summer mini-vacation all planned out. We are for sure going to Como Zoo on 7/19, and then we decided on the Children's Museum for 7/20. We hit a few snags on the way- such as friends of ours who we were going to stay with are now going to be out of town. Luckily, I was able to find a really nice hotel for $79/night and they have a great breakfast, huge pool, and a playground. Doesn't get much better than that! The Children's Museum is even going to be free since it happens to be the 3rd Sunday- so they advise no strollers. Yikes. Olivia will do well, but that means Matt and I take turns carrying Jackson in the Snugli. I don't know that I like that so much. Plus, whoever isn't carrying Jackson is carrying the diaper bag backpack thing. Double yikes. So we'll see how that goes. Matt doesn't like crowds or large amounts of people, so if it's out of control- we'll do something else or come home early. I could maybe stop at the Mall of America to shop at Archiver's. Or IKEA!!! Oh.. maybe we'll do that. :) We'll see!

So I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Olivia likes our "trips" but this will be Jackson's longest car ride. We're a little nervous because of his reflux- he normally screams the entire car ride around town- so we're driving almost two hours on the way there, and then almost 3 hours on the way back (depending on traffic). I HOPE it goes well. Keep your fingers crossed.

Other than that, not much else is new. I got some picutres developed so we'll see if they turned out good. I've posted some cute ones on here already. I'll go through and see if there are any other fun ones and maybe post later.