It's that Sweet Time Again!

Yep it's Wednesday which means that it is time for another wonderful sweet sketch to play with from Sweet Sketch Wednesday. Have you heard of it before... or are you new to this blog? Well be sure to check out the SSW blog each Wednesday for some wonderfully creative sketches to play with that you will want to use over and over again!

Here is today's sketch...

The card that I decided to make this week has a specially sweet meaning because it is the card that I gave to my sweet baby sister Michelle (who I named my own daughter after!) Her birthday was actually last week, but I couldn't share this with you then until the sketch was released! So let's wish her a public Happy Birthday today OK?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHELLE!!

My daughter's Michelle and Leah with their Aunt Michelle (in the middle.)

So Many Candles

The candles border stamp and the cake stamp (in the Hodge Podge of Happiness kit) come from Unity. The sentiment stamp is one of Dee Gruenig's that I bought at my local craft store. The DP is from BG's Lime Ricky collection and I colored my images using my copics and stamped the sentiment with SU's Pumpkin Pie.

If you look closely at the candles I have added stickles where the flame is to make it shimmer if the light hits it right. The paper flowers are from Prima and I can't remember the name of the company that made the fabric flowers on the bottom. I colored some BG brads with my Copics to customize the color for this card.

Here is a picture of my sister Michelle with her fiance Claude.

They are getting married in January 2010!

The family met up at my sister's house last Thursday for a little surprise with cake and ice cream! I hope she had a special day! I love you Michelle!!

To see more of what the DT created with this week's sketch head on over to the Sweet Sketch Wednesday blog and start hopping around. You can also get to their blogs using my list on the side bar!

May the rest of your Wednesday be even sweeter than it has already and may your bucket overflow with happy celebrations with sweet people that you love!

Happy Birthday Michelle!

While I am writing this, it is still the 29th of March (but by the time you are reading this it is probably already the 30th.) Today is my oldest daughter Michelle's birthday! She and her boyfriend went to Disney to celebrate, so we will get together hopefully later this week for a family dinner. I can't believe that she is 24 years old. In some ways it seems just yesterday that she was born and I held her in my arms with such adoration!

Isn't it funny how when you have your first child you think that there couldn't be anyone that you can love any more than you love them? I remember specifically feeling that way when I first held Michelle and again when I was expecting my second daughter. Well thankfully, when you have more children God somehow gives us even more love to share with them too!

Michelle is growing up to be such a responsible young lady. She is currently employed at a local Police Department as a call taker training to become a dispatcher. She loves her job and is great at it! Michelle has lived out of the house for many years now and is really starting to understand what it takes to make it on her own! (Thank God!!) I am so proud of her and just love how our relationship changes as she matures.

Since I shared some of the layouts I had made of Ricky when it was his birthday back on March 1st, I thought it was only fair to do the same for Michelle!

So please enjoy some scrapbook layouts that I have created over the years of my first born daughter Michelle!

Michelle was a Cheerleader one year for our community's Football Team!

Here Michelle is getting Fiddle lessons from her Granny (my mom!)

Michelle's Ninth Grade School Year layout

This layout is so old that she doesn't even have this car anymore!! LOL!

This is one of my favorite layouts of Michelle and her sister Leah!

I didn't start scrapbooking until my kids were a bit older. So I don't have any layouts completed yet of Michelle as a baby. It is daunting to think of how far behind I am on scrapbooking. I have tried to make an album of each of my kids' school years on top of all the family photos that I want to scrap also! I figured I will just keep working at it layout by layout! I just hope I get more caught up before my kids start having kids!

Thanks for looking at my beautiful daughter! It is a pleasure to share her with you! She is one incredible young woman and I love her dearly!

Happy Birthday Sweetie!!

I will be back on Monday (schedule willing) with some cards I made on Sunday!

God Bless you and may your bucket be overflowing with many scrapbook pages of your loved ones to look through!

A Special Birthday Card for a Special Daughter!

On March 29th my oldest daughter Michelle will be turning 24! I can't even believe that so much time has passed since I first held her in my arms! My how time really does fly!

I wanted to get her card done a little early so I could mail it out to her because she will be out of town on her actual birthday. To give you a little history on why I chose to make this card for Michelle, you would have to realize that our family spent about 2 1/2 years in Japan while her father was serving in the Navy. I took Michelle to Japan when she was just three months old and her sister Leah was born over there.

We have always been fond of Japan and things oriental since then and we feel a small connection with that other side of the world. When Michelle was little she was given a doll from one of our neighbors named Makinosan (pronounced Mah-kee-no-san). We have been saving that doll every since and the Geisha lady on the front of the card reminds me of the face of the doll that Michelle was given. Our neighbor nicknamed Michelle "Michan" (pronounced Mee-chan). We have really neat memories of some of the culture over there and I know it will always be special for my daughters to recall that they lived in Japan!

So here is the card I made for my oldest daughter Michelle...

The Fine Print: DP: Red Asian Paper (Far and Away), Black ornamental (MM Fifth Ave); CS: Bazzill; Specialty Paper: Starburst Trans. (The Paper Co.); Stamps: Geisha girl unknown (rec'd in a swap), Sentiment: Custer's Last Stamp; Silver Corner Sticker: Flowersoft; Ink: Amuse and Copics; Pearls: Darice (?); White Satin ribbon and Red Flowers: unknown. Red Fun Fur: Lion's Brand from Joann's.

The sketch for this card is using another one of Julee's Mojo Monday Sketches! They really are great sketches to use and if you haven't tried it, then please do, you won't be disappointed.

The color combination that works so well with the Asian Theme is from a new Challenge Blog that I just started following called ResQ Challenge. A great group of ladies, some of whom I have met through Stamp TV are hosting this blog to help others find their crafting mojo when it goes dry.

This week's challenge was the first one and the theme was "celebrations." I chose to use the Birthday theme and then we also had to go scavenging depending on what month our birthdays fall into another person's gallery looking for inspiration of a certain type. You can find the details on the blog under the description for the challenge.

I chose to find my inspiration from eliotstamps and used this picture's color combination for my card! I love red, black and white together! It is so classic and in my case, so oriental!

Thanks for looking today... I am hoping to get some more cards made today that need to get out in the mail soon. So until next time have a great day!

May your bucket overflow with fond memories of the travels you have made in your life!

Where Did I Disappear to Already?

Wow! That's all I can say for what has happened to me for the past three days! I am sorry for disappearing from blogland, but I couldn't help it!

It all started in the middle of the night on Monday (early Tuesday morning) when my phone rang at the ungodly hour of 2am. It was work and I was called in for the delivery of an extremely premature (26 week) baby. Unfortunately I had only gotten to bed two hours earlier, so I was already very tired. I didn't leave work until 7am after I had stabilized and transferred the baby to a higher level NICU. I tried to lay down when I got home and didn't have much success, so I ended up taking about an hour nap later in the day.

This was my day off and I had plans with Tiffani (my best friend) to go out to dinner, get a couple of drinks and go see the new Sex in The City movie. Since I rarely get days off, I couldn't let my lack of a little sleep stop our plans, so I plugged along. I got home about midnight that night and was feeling very tired!

I slept all night on Tuesday and thought for sure that I would wake up raring to go, but instead, I was dead to the world. I couldn't barely muster up enough energy to prepare any food or start the couple loads of laundry that I managed to do. I can't tell you how exhausted and weak I was. I laid around all day and either watched TV or napped. I didn't even turn on my computer which is very rare for me.

I thought it might have been a combination of the lack of sleep coupled with the dieting and low calorie intake that had left me listless, but I really don't know because I never felt like this when I dieted before. I was certain that by Thursday I would be back to myself, but when work called me in at a little after 7am, I was still exhausted and unable to find my energy again! Now I was really disturbed because I couldn't bear to let my life slip by me without participating in it!

So Thursday turned into another lounge fest where I practically did nothing. Thankfully my oldest daughter Michelle (pictured below with Tiffany) had come over to hang out with me, so I did enjoy my time visiting with her. She shares my passion in the show "So You Think You Can Dance" and we watched some reruns that she hadn't seen yet. I also met Tiffani for lunch which is something we try to do whenever she is inspecting property in my neck of the woods. She is dieting with me so she is the perfect pal to talk about dieting and food with!

I am still just amazed at how tired I was for the past three days. I apologize to our customers, because I didn't design or convert one file and now I feel so far behind. But I am happy to say that I feel back to myself this morning. I awoke at 6:30 this morning and noticed that I felt like my old self again! So I think I am back on track and will try to make up for my lost time!

Now for a quick update on a couple of things...

My diet is going well! I have lost a total of 4 pounds since Monday and I hope that as soon as I start expending some calories by doing anything other than lying around that I will lose some more still this week!

I promised you pictures of my daughter Tiffany dressed as Wendy! She was so adorable and she even looks just like the animated Wendy from the commercials. She pitched the ball across the plate, but because it all happened so fast, no one got a picture of the actual pitch, but just the before and after shots! Oh well... she is still so darned cute and will have these memories for a life time! What a cool opportunity!!

So today starts with a c-section at work, then I hope to work on WBW some and also have to make two more graduation cards and one birthday card! I hope I have my mojo back and will be able to create some nice cards! Again another long post, but try to think of it as four days worth wrapped into one!

Have a phenomenal day! I plan to!!

Kelly :-)