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Living the Sweet Life...indeed

It's been a good week.  A busy one, but a good one.  I was able to catch up on some crafting and do some cards so I have birthdays covered in the weeks to come.  I've finished up all the favors for my parents 50th Anniversary party and I am getting all the RSVPs back now.  Wow, almost everyone is coming.

50 years...can you believe that?  And they still call each other by their "pet" names.  Mom calls Dad "Loverboy" and Dad calls Mom "Luvies".  Isn't that cute?

We've got family and friends coming in from all over the US for this party.  Says something about the couple that people would take the time and the expense to be there to celebrate.

So, here are the cards I've worked on this week for friends, family and co-workers.  Mostly birthdays.

This ones for my sister in law, Lethia, because she loves purple.

I made a whole set of these Thank Yous

Any my Daddy's Father's Day Card

Embossing

Happy Memorial Day everyone!  What a busy weekend we've had and today we have "No Plans" day.  It is a welcome break.  Saturday we had a Confirmation party and yesterday we had a triple birthday party. 

Today, peace and quiet.

I'm way behind on Challenges.  So here is my catch up for Embossing.  I need to go out to get some felt for the felt challenge as I currently don't own any.

So here is my entry.  I stamped Fresh Snow on Ripe Avocade and applied white embossing powder.  I use one of my favorite sets, "Through the Trees" and the background is with Background Basics: Retro.

My busy Saturday

I had another almost full day of crafting.  It was awesome.  Probably my last for a while as we head into birthday, graduation and other party season in my large family.  Seems like all the kids birthdays are in the summer.  Next week we have parties all weekend long and I have a crafting friend coming for a sleepover during the week to help me finish up my favors for my parents 50th Anniversary party.  I'm starting to get the RSVP's back in the mail.  So that will be here before you know it.

So I stayed home this afternoon and finished up some crafting items that I needed to make for the week.  Two birthday gift card holders, a "Welcome to the Neighborhood" set for a coworker who is moving into the cube next to me, and a sympathy card for a friend who lost her mother this week.

Strange thing, that "Welcome to the Neighborhood gift", but it has a story.  I've been working at my current company for six years and have never had someone in any office near me.  I started in one end of the building alone and was excited when they were going to move my cube elsewhere on the floor, but they ended up moving my office to the same cube, just on the flip further side of the office.  So I stayed in the same situation...no people.

Now I get someone in the cube next to me and no longer need to talk to myself all day long.

So here are the items I made today.

Lotsa Blooms

This weekend was a nice quiet weekend.  We celebrated Johns birthday and treated him out for dinner and for a massage, which was his first.

I was able to spend a little time stamping and put together a mass produced card for a swap, and a card for the Challenge.

So here are my cards for this weekend:

Happy Mother's Day

Hi Everyone.  I hope you are having a wonderful and relaxing Mother's Day.  I am.  I did a little crafting this morning making a card for my brother in law for his birthday.  He is in the military in training, so it is extra special for us to wish him a Happy Birthday. 

Have a great day!

Mother's Day

Mother's Day is a big ta-do around here.  We pamper Mom and she deserves it.  I always get her the same gift, the only one she ever asks for...her perfume.  This year I wrapped it up special with my first homemade decorated box.  I also made a Mother's Day card for her too.

This year we are going to the Boat Club for dinner with my parents and a cousin.  I already recieved my Mother's Day presents yesterday and today.  Three boxes of crafting supplies:  about 10 punches, 10 Magolia stamps, 3 Greeting Farms stamps, several paper stacks from Wild Rose Studios in the UK with matching brads, about 15 packs of Prima mini roses in various colors, 4 Spellbinder labels dies, 4 PTI stamp sets, a new trimmer and 20 copic markers.  I made out good! You can see I used some of the roses on the box below.

Up, Up and Away...

Oh those zingy springy colors!  Gotta love'em.  This week's first color challenge was a challenge for me.  It took me three tries to come up with a version I liked.  I am still struggling trying to "step out of the box" so to speak and trying techniques and styles that are outside of what I usually like.  It didn't measure up this time and I went back to a style I feel comfortable with.

Maybe I'll venture out a bit as we go along with these challenges.

So here is my first entry for our very first Papertrey Chicks Color Challenge.

Another quiet day

Well, another quiet lazy day at home.  I love it!  I had two days to craft all day in a row.  All the stars have aligned or something, because that never happens!

Here are two of the cards I created today.  Both are for co-worker birthdays.

Fly away

Today is a lazy Spring day and I am loving it.  I am spending the entire day crafting.  I am finishing up wrapping the last of the nuggets of 3 cases of Nugget Tins as favors for my parent's 50 Anniversary Party.  I've wrapped over 1000 nuggets so far and still going.

I was able to finish up a card yesterday for one of my co-workers, get off a thank you note and also work on a swap that I signed up for for PTI on SCS.

Here is the completed card for my coworker.  I must admit, I thought twice about getting this stamp set.  I kept taking it out of my cart and putting it back in.  I'm so glad I left it in.  I love it!  I cased a card from Erin from the PTI DT

Weight Loss Wonders - aka Ramblings for the day

It is day five of my diet and I am down 4.5 lbs so far.  I've never lost that much in a week before.  Last year I did Weight Watchers and it was so frustrating.  Each week I would weigh in and be down 0.5, then 0.2, then 0.5...I kept losing, but so small that it would take me decades to get to my goal.

I then started Jillian Michaels and though I lost 35 lbs on it and her program is the one I will still with going forward, I had hit a plateau.  I just needed a morale boost that comes from losing a whole chunk of weight fast.  I decided on the Medifast plan and it is working.  If I can just lose the 20-30 lbs then I can continue with Master Your Metabolism.

MYM is going to be the one program that will be my lifestyle change.  It made so much sense to me.  I think Americans as a whole are overweight because of all of the High Fructose Corn Syrup and other chemicals that have been added to every product since the 70s.  This is why this generation will be the first in which they will outlive their children.

So this family is embarking on new territory.  Organic foods will be the mainstay here.  We will grow our produce this summer using non genitically modified seeds.  Yuck, did you know the seeds you buy in the store are modified in a lab to not to prdduce new plants the next year?  This way you are forced to buy their seeds again.  If you buy heirloom seeds, you can save the seeds from this years harvest and plant them next year.

So, here I am 4.5 lbs down and feeling good.  I hope by the time my weigh in on Wednesday I will be down about 6-8 lbs.


So, as embarrassed as I am, here is my "before" picture.  Maybe it being out there in web-land will motivate me to never look like this again.

Arrrgyle!

Well, I too didn't have anything argyle, so inspired by your creativity, I went and created my own paper as well on the computer.

Here's my attempt.   I used Sweet Blush instead of Hibiscus Burst because I thought the pink was just too "flashy" for me.

Paper:  Self made Argyle, Smokey Shadow, Sweet Blush, Stampers Select White
Other Items:  Friskars Wavey punches, Satin Ribbon in Sweet Blush (PTI), Copics
Stamps:  Magnoliaicious Tilda with Rose, PTI Mega Mixed Messages

Food...Glorious food.....

Food, glorious food!
We're anxious to try it.
Three banquets a day --
Our favourite diet!....
- Oliver

What is it about food that draws us in? Today is day two of my Medifast diet and I struggled yesterday, but stuck to it. I wasn't the least bit hungry, BUT, I was struggling with psychological draws to foods at times. I missed TV with a bag of pretzels, I missed having something other then a shake or salad for lunch.

So this weight problem definately is not a hunger issue, it is a psychological issue for me. It is much like quitting smoking, however with food, you need to eat! So much harder to get under control.

I have a year to lose 75 lbs in time for my wedding. I can do this! This needs to be a lifestyle change for me, not a diet. I need to relearn that food is fuel, nothing more. It can no longer comfort me or occupy my time. I must find other ways to do that.

Does anyone else struggle with triggers for food? If so, what are yours and how do you cope with them?

Here are some newer cards.

This one was a congrats card for a co-workers recent promotion.

This one will be a birthday card for my niece.

And my parents 50th Wedding Anniversary Invitations and favors.  Put together 60 of these chocolate tins so far, wrapping over 720 Hershey Nuggets individually.

New cards

Some of my recent cards:

Color Me Creative Class 2

For our second class, we are working on coloring wood.  Here is my attempt.

Color Me Creative Class

I have always enjoyed coloring, even back in grade school.  So it came as no surprise that I love to use Copic Markers as well.  But it occured to me after seeing so many of the beautiful creations on different blogs, especially Suzanne Dean's blog that I was not using shading and light effectively.

She is offering a new Color Me Creative Copics Class for different levels and I have signed up.  Our first video driven class was how to shade folds in clothing. 

Here are my first attempts.

The Poppy Seed Challenge

Lisa Johnson has posted a new challenge called the Poppy Seed Challenge.

It contains the following requirements:
•There will be very little structure... just 3 "seeds" to start with. The seeds I'm talking about are simply elements in three different categories. Color, embellishment and an image element. There will usually be just one of each of these seeds that will be required to participate. (So I would ever required you to used 20 gems or something like that! LOL!)


•I will have a Mr. Linky in the challenge post for you to enter. You will need to make sure that you enter the URL that is specific to your post/gallery page so I can tell which project you are entering.

• Anything goes... card, pages, altered, tags... whatever comes!

•It would be great if you could copy the challenge image into your blog post, if you have a blog, to inspire others to participate. Everyone learns more when more participate!

•I will try to post challenges at least twice a month and you will have a week to enter! This is such a great way to sprout inspiration when you need it.

•Five (5) entrants will be highlighted on my blog, showing your great projects and linking back to your blog/gallery.
Here is the official, first ever, Poppy Seed Challenge ....

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I'm a brand new stamper, and this is my first time participating in a challenge. Here is my entry:
 

Lady Bugs, Dots, Spots and More

These are my first cards made with my new Papertrey Ink stamps.

The first card I made with the Little Lady set and the Polka Dot Basics set

This next one I made with the new Asian Fusion set that released this month

And this last one I made with the Out on a Limb Revised set