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!

First Day of School Blues

Well, it's official, summer is really over. Today is my daughter's first day back to school. The big 3rd grade. I hear all of the time from mom's who are so happy to have their kids back in school and I just don't get it. It makes about as much sense to me as women who say they love being pregnant. It just doesn't register with me. I LOVE having my kids at home. We just have a great time together. Granted maybe I'll feel differently when they are teenagers but for now, I miss my girl. I have one more year before my son goes off to preschool so he and I are on our own. I will try to enjoy every minute of it. And to top it all off, it is a rainy day here today and I'm on my way to get my teeth cleaned. How's that for a big WAHOO! OK. Enough whining for now. Here's a few more of my mom's cards that I have to share with you. Still on the lookout for some 6x6 envelopes though. Right there on my to do list for the day.
This uses mostly Scenic Route stuff. The graph paper is Cosmo Cricket. And the rest is from my scraps.

Well, looky here, more Cosmo Cricket graph paper. It is my new white dots. Can't seem to stop using it. The pink dot paper is My Mind's Eye, Abbey Road and the blue dots are Fancy Pants. Scraps for everything else. The large pink glitter letters are American Crafts and the small glitter letters are Making Memories.

The cute pink paper is from Cosmo Cricket's Girl Friday line. I love that line (the graph paper I'm always using is too). The turquoise dots and red strip are My Mind's Eye. The paper frill is from Bazzill and the flowers are mostly from my favorite K&Co. flower pad. The letter stickers are American Crafts. And the jewel strip are Heidi Swapp.

If this card looks familiar then you are a reader of CARDS magazine. This is a direct scraplift of the card on the cover of the September issue by Kandis Smith. I love her card and I wanted to make one too. The paper for this are from Cosmo Cricket. The round sticker is from Making Memories. The chipboard letters are Heidi Swapp. The cherries are my own design using the Cosmo Cricket ones for inspiration. I cut them out of Doodlebug glitter paper. That vintage red and white label is from Jenny's Granny. Granny was the sweetest, happiest, never have anything bad to say, woman and Jenny ended up with these little labels from Granny's things. She shared a few and they went perfect with this card. I remember Granny whey I see them. The rub-ons on the label are American Crafts. I love this card even though it's not very original to myself.

This card uses mostly Abbey Road paper from My Mind's Eye. That little brad is from that collection too. The glitter letters are American Crafts. The flower was made from the Stampin' Up scallop circle punch and other random circles cut from my scraps.

I think that there are a few more cards to share later. For now I must head out to the dentist, library, grocery store (Albertson's double coupons to burn), and a few thousand other places. Hope you all have a great day.

Opening A Can Of Worms

Recently I attended a 4 day Cub Scout Leader training called Akela's Trail. Somehow I have found myself a Cub Scout Leader. I heard the gasps and I'm offended. Anywhoooo, I had the most wonderful people in my den (Go Red Den!) and had a great time. Well as great a time as one can have sleeping in a tent during thunderstorms, being eaten alive by mosquitos (Can you say West Nile? They loved my OFF! almost as much as they enjoyed my blood.), and sleep deprivation. It's not that I can't camp. In fact, I'm really pretty good at it. I even love the great outdoors, it's just not the sleepovers that I'm in to that much. It's hard for me to sleep with my head slightly downhill (no matter which direction I sleep in, how is that possible?) and a rock in the small of my back while thinking of my perfectly nice bed at home. Well, I guess I'll stop whining and get to the point. At Akela's Trail we set some goals to improve our dens and packs when we get home. They call them Paw Prints. One of mine was to take care of this catastrophe...

This beautiful disaster is called the Cub Scout Closet at the church. No one dared to open it because it would cause a small avalanche. We would do rock, paper, scissors to see who had to open it to get the flag out for flag ceremony. OK, maybe that's a slight exaggeration but truthfully the den leaders never used any of this stuff because who even knows what's in there. My goal was to find out exactly what was in there, save the useful stuff and get rid of the rest. I also was to make a list of all of the treasures in there for the den leaders to use. So I felt brave a couple of weeks ago and emptied the whole thing....

...turns out there was even a small child in there (I kept him). No really these are my two "helpers" in this endeavor. We found all kinds of things and my "helpers" thought that the Scout closet was a gold mine. They ended up bringing home more "treasures" than I had hoped so I've been secretly throwing those away for the past couple of weeks (you moms know what I'm talking about). We found all kinds of really "great" stuff and some that made us really scratch our heads. Here are two of my personal favorites...

I realize that the picture isn't really clear but what I'm holding in my hand is a bottle of "Sweet Citrus Body Spray". Now I haven't been in Scouts that long but for the life of me I can't figure out what could possibly have happened to land this treasure in the Cub Scout closet. I have imagined some reasons but it is in fact a mystery. And then there is this little number....

Why, pray tell, would this be in the Cub Scout closet? The picture actually makes this thing look more beautiful than it really is in real life (and that's not saying much). It is not in any way attractive nor can I visualize it sitting in the middle of the table at den meeting. I also can't imagine that there is a belt loop, badge or pin in Cub Scouts for floral arranging. Plus, even if there is, I bet our Cubs could really do better than this. Our Cubs rock! Now, I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad but if there is another one of these around and it happens to be in the center of your dining room table...run, do not walk to the nearest trash can immediately. This thing can cause all kinds of unnecessary head spinning and even convulsions. Well, after an entire Saturday of wading through each and every item in that mess and filling the church's dumpster (don't tell anybody, people start to panic when you begin throwing junk away)and one trip to Walmart for bins, this is what I left for the den leaders to find the next Sunday when I showed it to them at our meeting and presented them with their list of items left in there...

There were gasps and comments like, "Hey, I didn't know there was shower curtain pins in there." (I actually didn't know they were called that, thank goodness they were still in the package.) I also made a very nice plea (or threat, whatever you want to call it) that it stay this way for at least a month. They seemed receptive. Now why do I post this transformation on my blog you ask? Well, two reasons, 1) I post my projects here and this was one big project! and 2) and really this is the real reason, I can't seem to get my pictures to load right on my e-mail and I need to share my Paw Print success with the GREATEST den leader EVER! H.S. is the most amazing scout grandma and I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to be in her den for 4 days. We really did have the best den. Love you guys. And for anyone else who has had to muddle through my Scout Closet story, thanks for humoring me and I'll be back soon with some more cards to share.

What?!!!

Okay. Given all the information that I wrote in my previous post about my love of the handy tape measure, this little story would seem unbelievable, but alas, it is all too true. Imagine a crazy powdered sugar covered woman finishing a cake for a party at 6:30 p.m. at approximately 5:30 p.m. It takes about 30 minutes to drive to the party therefore leaving me with 30 minutes to get in the tub and wash off the sticky, as well as put these sweet little cards in their box with the envelopes and tie the bow. Yikes! I raced through my bath, put on my makeup, combed through my hair and let it dry a bit while I put together my mom's gift. Imagine my surprise when I put the envelopes in the box with the cards and realized that they were 1" too small. That's right, I didn't measure my envelopes before I made all of these cards. I thought that I remembered the size but nope, apparently I remembered wrong. Yeesh! Honestly, I was so grateful to not have the glitch of the day be something regarding the cake that I just stood there and laughed. Oh and hit my head while saying, "Duh". I'm hoping and praying that I can find some 6x6" envelopes here in my area today or else I will have to order them on the internet. Which means for my mom, Happy Birthday, hope you love your cards, too bad you can't use them for 10-14 days. Oh brother.

Most of this paper and the little brad is the darling Abbey Road collection from My Mind's Eye, with a little Cosmo Cricket thrown in. The rub-ons are old Heidi Grace I've had FOREVER. The bird is based on the Abbey Road bird but theirs was too big so I had to make my own.

The grid paper is Pink Paisley and all of the dot paper is Fancy Pants. The chipboard letters are from Basic Grey and the letter stickers are Making Memories.

Black dots are Fancy Pants. Red dots are Cosmo Cricket. The flowers are from the greatest little die cut pad from K & Co. I found it at Michaels. It is an entire paper pad of cute flowers that I always seem to be layering together lately. Love that thing. I can't remember the green scallops right off the top of my head but if you're crazy about them and you really must know, I'm sure I could get back to you on that. Once again, the letter stickers are Making Memories.

The paisley, stripes and flower center are We R Memory Keepers. I love those colors. The dots are Fancy Pants. The pink flower is from Imaginisce and the green scallop circle was made with the Stampin' Up punch. The rub-on is Basic Grey. The jewel brad is from my vast collection.

These are more of the flowers from my K & Co. pad. Aren't they so great! The stripey scallop along the side is from My Mind's Eye. The dots are Fancy Pants. The chipboard is from Making Memories but I covered it with Cosmo Cricket's grid paper. The glitter chipboard letters are American Crafts. The brown striped paper is from the same folks who made the green scallops above. The same thing applies. If it keeps you up all night thinking about who makes that, I will happily dig through my scrap bin and find out for you. Just drop me a line. I totally understand laying awake at night trying to figure out things that bug me. Maybe that's why I feel so tired today. Or maybe it's because I took my daughter on a little adventure yesterday before school starts. She's a little rock hound. She's always finding pretty rocks and saving them. And I'm always finding them in the washing machine. So I took her to Spencer Opal Mines. They have a little mini mine there that you can dig in and break rocks open with your hammer to look for opals. They haul dump truck loads in from the actual mine and you pay to dig around in the piles. It's just right behind their store/restaraunt. We had a great time. We met a sweet couple from Michigan. We were the only 4 people digging yesterday, so it was pretty nice. We had a little lunch in the restaraunt and my daughter did a little shopping in the shiny rock department. It's a pretty fun little mini adventure if you have some desire to hunt for sparkly rocks or kids with that desire. Plus, they have "real" fries (fresh cut) and their specialty burger called the "triplet" (named after their opals) was pretty dang hard to beat. Oh and one more thing....fry sauce! Sweet! Nothing better than "real" fries and fry sauce for this Idaho girl. Oh happy day!

Happy Birthday To You!

Today is my mom's birthday and my dad and I have been working on a BIG project for her this week. It all started about a week ago. My dad came over and asked me if I would have time to make a cake for my mom's birthday. Of course I said, "Sure". Then he says, "I was thinking it would be cool to make a grand piano cake." I said, "Yeah, I could probably figure that out. I'd need some kind of base though." "I can probably come up with a base for it", he says. Okay, then. I leave the next day for Jenny's house to spend most of the week before my daughter starts school again and we can't stay at Jenny's. I thought about how to make a piano cake but I wasn't too concerned. Mostly I was concentrating on making my mom some more cards for her gift. Then I came home and my dad comes over to show me the base he has been working on. He has reference photos and he found the measurements for a Steinway on the internet (I didn't know my dad used the internet except to swear at the occasional attempt at an e-mail). He used his work calculator (he's a construction estimator) and came up with an EXACT scale for a Steinway. Here I should just add that we are a dangerous pair. I got my over attention to detail from my dad and so together we start heading into minutiae. Once when I helped him set up the Halloween party at the church, he and I actually used a tape measure to ensure that the tables were spaced evenly (54" apart, just so you know). That's when I started to get a little nervous and worried about how this cake was going to turn out. Later that day, he called me and informed me that he went to the music store with his trusty tape measure (what would we do without those things) and measured how deep a grand piano is and, using his calculator came to the conclusion that the box of the piano, where the cake actually is, needed to be 2 and 1/8" high (don't forget the eighth). I just love that guy! Well, he made me the most beautiful cake stand that could be imagined and after a solid 11 hours of work (yes, the cake was 10 minutes late to it's own party) this is what we came up with.

A little F.Y.I. for you. That cake is exactly 2 1/8" inches high. Guess how I know. When I made the first layer, it measured 1" so I stacked on the second layer and measured it. It was 3" tall. What?!!! I then used my tape measure (keep it in my purse, you know) and placed toothpicks all the way around the cake at 2 1/8" then using the toothpicks as a guide, I cut off the extra 7/8". I need help, I know but I fully expected my dad to break out his tape measure and check it for me. He didn't (probably because he can eyeball to the nearest 1/8", he's got skills, I tell you).

Yes, that is a part of the actual music for "Happy Birthday To You." Painted it on with a toothpick. Minutiae I tell you, minutiae. I'm so glad to be my father's daughter. Much of my creativity comes from my attention to detail. I have the best parents EVER. My mom loved her cake and didn't have the heart to cut it even though the inside contained the most fabulous White Chocolate Lemon Poundcake ever. I just LOVE that recipe. One of these days, I should post it. And lest you think that I have given up on cards to spend time with the baked goods. Here's one of the cards I made for my mom. There are seventeen total so you'll have to wait a while to see the rest. I worked at a feverish pace while I was staying at Jenny's so I didn't keep real great track of all the different products I used but if there is something that you would like to know about, just drop me a line and I will get back to you. Well that's all of my adventures for the last couple of weeks.
Finally, one more Happy Birthday to the coolest mom. She absolutely amazes me. I want to be just like her when I grow up.

Bad Blogger, Bad, Bad, Bad

Ok, so I can't believe that it has really been almost a month since I have updated my blog. Summer has really thrown me for a loop. Schedules and plans have gone completely out the window. It's been a crazy summer here for us. I have done a few cards and things but I just haven't found a minute to take pictures. It seems the only times I can fit pictures in are early in the morning or late at night. Bad light makes for some bad pictures. Here's something that I made this week for my daughter's 8th birthday. The "A" cake topper was made from gum paste and the rest of the cake was done with fondant. My daughter is really into Littlest Pet Shop so she chose a few of her favorites and I tried my best to duplicate them in fondant. I know that it is possible to just attach the actual pets onto the cake but I just wanted to see if I could do it. I love a challenge and plus non-food decorations on cakes kind of bug me. Can anyone say Cakewrecks ? That blog brings much laughter into my day. If you've never looked at it, you should. Cupcake cakes and non-food decorations are also annoying to others it turns out. It's nice not to be alone in my silly peeves.
Besides it made for much fun for my nephew. He had a great time switching heads with the cat and the bird and then just eating the cats head. You sure can't do that with actual Littlest Pet Shop toys. Boys...I don't know if I'll ever get them but they sure make me laugh in the meantime.