Happy Birthday Baby!

Yesterday, yes, September 11th, was my baby's third birthday. I can't believe he is 3. He has grown so fast. It amazes me. He is such a great boy. A total smart alec (which I love) and loves to tease but he's just as sweet at can be. I just love that guy. He is totally obsessed with NASCAR. He can't recognize his numbers but he can tell you what 18, 24, 17 and all of the NASCAR cars. He'll say, "Number 24, Jeff Gordon." when he sees a 24 car. His favorite ("my guy") is number 18. He is sometimes the M&M car and sometimes the Interstate Battery car (these are the things mom's learn when they have a little NASCAR fan). Therefore, I had to make a car themed cake for Jake's birthday party.
Once again, I collaborated with my dad (also a NASCAR fan) on the details of a racing tire and once again, he came up with scale measurements for me. We are a dangerous pair I tell you. He also kept me in Pepsi all day since I hadn't had much sleep.

The car crossing the finish line is Jake's guy, #18 and Jeff Gordon is coming in second. I had to make a red car (mostly because I had a bunch of red gum paste and I didn't want to color more) and since I didn't particularly want the Budweiser car represented on my 3 year olds cake, I went with the Target car. It's not necessarily Jake's favorite (he still knows the name of the driver, though) but it was red. I know that many a kid has had a Budweiser car but I guess I'm just a prude. Three seems a little young to have "Budweiser" in your vocabulary. We had a little family barbeque to celebrate and we borrowed the Hot Wheels track that our friend built (the kids love that thing). I had my daughter hide 20 Hot Wheel cars around the yard and they had fun finding the cars and racing them on the track. My kids have a "mud pit" in the corner of our yard and while yesterday it was just a dirt pit the kids usually spend most of their time digging in it. Dirt and boxes, all a kid needs. Makes me wonder why we bought Jake toys for his birthday.

Last But Not Least

Well, this is finally it...the rest of the cards I made for my mom's birthday. I'm still astounded at the fact that I was able to get all of these done it just two trips to Jenny's. I'm usually pretty slow. Something about being too detail oriented (a fact that I have already confessed to in my piano cake post). And one trip was even cut short by my son throwing up. Maybe I'm getting faster. I did invest in a new CARDS mag just for some major inspiration though. How I love that magazine. It's crazy expensive but every now and then I just have to have a CARDS fix and I break down and buy it.
OK, while Jenny was on a Sonic run, she stopped at the dollar store and found these cool little paper flowers with the corsage pins in them. She picked them up and we both worked on finding the perfect use for them. We hated the funky green colored silk ivy leaves glued to the back of them so we cut them off and I needed the pin to point a different direction so I tugged it out of the glue but the flowers are super cute. The picture doesn't even do them justice. The brown patterned paper and the circle tag are Pink Paislee. The pink paper is really old Scenic Route. The ribbon is from American Crafts and the letter stickers (both kinds) are Making Memories. The leaves are just cut from scraps of Crate Paper, ran through a paper distresser and wadded up.

Lots of Scenic Route (blue dots and "Be Happy" chipboard). The graph paper is...you guessed it...Cosmo Cricket. The flowers are my own little design cut from Doodlebug's glitter paper. A little giant ric rac and jewels, of course and voila! Makes me want to be happy for some reason.

The other day when I was at the D.I., I found an old pattern for a swing coat. It hadn't even been taken out of the package. I bought it because I loved the vintage look and I figured that I could find a home for it. I made the flower out of the pattern. The pattern was so old that there was a name and address for Meg Carter on it so you could write to her with any questions or problems you had assembling your swing coat. The entire time I was working on this card I imagined how many letters Meg Carter received every day and what her life was like (probably pretty busy) and what she's up to now (if she's still alive). If you look really closely at the flower you can see "Carter" on one of the petals. I don't know why it was so fascinating but it was. Maybe because I miss the personal approach from back in the day. Meg Carter would be crazy to put her name and address to her desk at McCall pattern company on anything these days. Kinda sad. But that's just the way it goes I guess. Wow! Off on a tangent there. Back to the card...the patterned paper and tag are Cosmo Cricket and the letter stickers are Making Memories.

This card uses lots of my favorite flowers right now...you know the ones...from my pad by K&Co. How I love those things. There are actually 8 of them all stacked together to make these 3 flowers. The grass is also from that pad. The blue dots are Scenic Route again and the "Live Out Loud" tag is Pink Paislee.

This paper is more of the Abbey Road collection by My Mind's Eye. I used up quite a bit of that stuff on this project. The pink dots are one of my favorites. There is also more graph paper from Cosmo Cricket and the flowers are once again from my K&Co. pad. The rub on is Basic Grey. That cute brad is also Abbey Road. I spent more on that one package of Abbey Road brads than I think I have spent on brads before (at least in a really long time) but I am crazy in love with them. Ridiculously cute! They just make me happy! Hope you all are finding something in your day to make you happy too!