Cards That Care Blog Hop

Hi! T.G.I.F.

 

I'm happy you could drop by today because it's a special and important day! I'm thrilled to be paricipating in the Cards that Care blog hop benefiting the elderly living in nursing homes. If you are hopping from blog to blog, your last stop would have been with Sheri Faypel.

 

 

Here's a card I made for the drive. I'll be working on several more in the next few days and hope you can join me!

 

The next stop along the hop is Becky Williams.

A few important details about the hop:
Your cards will need to be received by November 30, 2011.

• Please make the cards for Christmas or Holiday Wishes. Anyone can send a card, your children, church group, scout troops, etc.
• All cards need to have a message in it. Please also sign your name and where you are from. No need to put anything on the front of the envelope. Also, please don’t seal the envelope.
• All size cards are ok. Just please send them in an envelope.
• Please stick to just cards.
• And please don’t use any pins (safety reason).
• You can mail the cards to either:

Jennifer McGuireP.O. Box 428612
Cincinnati, OH 45242
Vera Yates P.O Box 17596 Sugar Land, TX 77496

• In each package, PLEASE include a piece of paper with your name, address, email address and how many cards you sent. This helps us in keeping track for prizes! For each card you send, you will get a chance at a prize. So the more cards you send, the better your chances.
• A few months ago, I had asked for volunteers to take cards to nursing homes. If you were one who contacted me to let me know your nursing home gave you the “OK” to do this, please email me again. I don’t want to miss anyone!

To thank you for your generosity in supporting this drive, we have PRIZES ready for several winners. Remember… the more cards you send the better your chances. Vera will be updating the prize list as more prizes come in – you can see the prize list HERE. And big thank you to all the fabulous companies who are supporting our card drive by donating awesome prizes! So far we have prizes from:

• Lawn Fawn
• Hero Arts
• Bella Blvd.
• May Arts
• Paper Crafts – a one year subscription!
• PSA Essentials
• Simon Says Stamp
• Paper Smooches
• Some Odd Girl
• Market Street Stamps
• The Twinery
• The Crafts Meow
• Sweet Stamp Shop
• Penny Black
• Avocado Arts
• Janes Doodles
• Eclectic Paperie
• … and more to come!

Hope you have a terrific weekend!

Kathy :)

Santa's Workshop

Hello!

This is my second post today so please scroll down to see the holiday cards I created for Bella Blvd. using their Christmas Wishes collection.

For this post, I'm so excited to share this snowy project with you! I created it a while ago and it's been hard to keep it under wraps! I was given the freedom to choose any Doodlebug line to work with and with Christmas so near, I chose Santa's Workshop.

Doesn't this look like a scene at the North Pole? I love the dimension I was able to create with this frame that has four pieces of glass. I purchased it years ago at Target and it was in the garage with a bunch of stuff to bring to the Goodwill!

It was really difficult to photograph this project because of the glare the glass created and it's also difficult to see all the rhinestones on each piece of glass.  In order to show you the details and how it came together, I took pictures of each level.

This is the last (back) layer in the frame. It includes this pretty 'Snowfall' paper attached with double stick tape, a Doodle-Pops snowflake and Doodles phrase.

This third layer shows off the rhinestones I used to create falling snow and includes three Doodle-Pops stickers...Rudy, Snowman and O'Christmas Tree. The snow covered hills were created with the Silhouette.

Here's the second layer of glass. More rhinestones, another Doodle-Pops, Little Helper, and some layered Icons stickers. The final, top layer of glass is the cover.

Once my project was assembled, I added some finishing touches, a grosgrain ribbon bow, two Cute Cuts tags, a Boutique Button and Christmas Doodle Twine.

And here you have it. This was really fun to make! I hope you enjoyed seeing the process. :)

Should we hop over to the Doodlebug blog and see the projects my teammates created and what collections they worked with? I'll beat you there! ;)

Christmas Card

Hi!

Now that we're in November, the countdown to Christmas begins! It's time to get busy making our holiday cards and gifts. So when I was given the choice to use any Bella Blvd. collection(s) for my cards today, I chose the festive Christmas Wishes collection.

This line includes some adorable penguins that I used for focal points on my cards!

Look at this little guy...he's so colorful and cute! And look at the pretty presents he brought! :)

These Christmas Wishes papers and accents made it quick and easy for me to create these cards!

I thought it would be fun to make little sentiment flags for my penguins. Simple straight pins work perfectly and since I have pop dots underneath the penguin, it was easy to stick them into my card!

Would you like to take a little hop with me over to the Bella Blvd. blog to see what my teammates created and which Bella collections they chose to work with? Let's go! :)

A Month of Thanks

Hi!

It's November! A month for focusing on our families and all that we are grateful for! It's also an exciting time of year as we prepare for Christmas...creating cards and gifts for those we love. Along with the usual Thanksgiving and Christmas cards we will celebrate birthdays and need to send thank you notes. With that in mind, I made this 'Thanks' card to share today.

I like stepping away from holiday and wintertime crafts for a bit. This 'Plastino' collection from Bella Blvd. filled the bill! These whimsical polka dots and sweet flowers are oh so fun! Brings me back to spring, my favorite season, just for a little while.

These darling flowers are framed on a Spellbinders die and I used a couple of sewing pins for the sentiment and tulip.

Now that I've had my break from holiday crafting, I'm ready to roll up my sleeves and get back to snowflakes and Santa! :)

Before I go, I want to share a few recipes I've tried in the last couple weeks because they are so good and the perfect comfort food for these cold fall days! Last week I made a pot of Minestrone Soup from Rachel Ray.

Each week I make something for lunch to last all week long. If I get to the end of the week and still look forward to lunch or wish I had more, I call that a success! I really enjoyed this soup and it felt good to be eating all those veggies!

On the menu this week for lunch is this Spicy Corn and Chicken Chili by Whole Foods.

This is oh so yummy! I used ground turkey meat instead of chicken and added some black beans. I love the way the corn adds a bit of sweetness to the spicy seasonings of the dish. I'm looking forward to lunch today! :)

This last recipe was made for dinner last night. Oh, if you haven't pulled out your crock pot recently I'm here to remind you of how wonderful it smells to have dinner cooking all day or how fabulous it is to come home from work or a long list of errands to have dinner ready and waiting!

This yummy looking meal is a Taco Chicken Bowl by Budget Bytes. It's supposed to be similar to a Chipolte Burrito Bowl. We don't have a Chipolte near us so I can't tell you if it does, but I can tell you it's delicious and my boys both love it! They are excited to have it again for dinner tonight! You got to love that...two nights at the table without complaints!!!! As a side note, I served this with quinoa instead of rice for a healthful alternative. And on another note, according to Budget Bytes, this dish just costs $1.33 per serving!

I hope you enjoyed my post and that you have a wonderful Wednesday!

Kathy :)