Mojo is BACK!

I am super happy with the two cards I made yesterday. I feel like I am out of my creative slump that I've been in. Yay!

Here's the first card I'm going to share...I'll save the other one for later in the week.



I used one of the recent sketches from Splitcoaststampers weekly sketch challenge. The image is a House Mouse image that I got in a swap. I don't own it but isn't it adorable?

Then today we went to the school's 'carnival'. They had inflatable rides - all you want to ride - for $2.00 per person. Here are a few of my favorite pictures of the day.

The RACE is on:


King of the hill:


I Barely Survived:


The carnival lasted for four hours...but within two hours they wanted to come home. It was hot so I'm glad we went early. Even then it was too hot by noon.

Have a great weekend!

I think I'll hang on to you!

I have a lot to share this week. I went on a bit of a cardmaking spree. And I have some other pics to share as well.

So first of all, let me share a card to get the ball rolling...



On the inside of the card it says: "I think I'll hold on to you".

This is a Stampendous Changito stamp...I think it came out around Father's Day time. I don't own it, but was lucky enough to have someone send me some images. It's SO cute! I colored it in using prismacolor pencils and odorless mineral spirits. I love how the jeans look worn. To do that I only put color around the edges and blended towards the middle leaving the middle lighter. Here's a close up of the image.



On the personal front...I thought I'd show you what my Friday night was like. Take two boys, add a friend, two bedrooms across from each other, and MANY blankets/towels/etc later and this is what you get.

See the "firetruck"? It is the bridge between the two bedrooms. They can enter the 'fort' from either bedroom. The second bedroom has most of the fort in it.



And here you can see just a TINY bit of the corner of the firetruck and then the rest of the fort in the second bedroom:



It seems every weekend (and many weeknights) I end up with at least 1 if not 2 extra kids. Most the time I don't mind. But lately, I swear they are eating me out of house and home. Don't other people feed their kids? Or is it just that my food tastes so much better? The neighbor girl was telling my youngest son how lucky they were because I buy good food and I don't make them clean the house. I keep telling my kids they are spoiled but they don't believe me (of course).

Today I am off to the pet store to get baby crickets for the lizards the kids caught. Super mom to the rescue! LOL.

Snow Day!

We rarely get snow here...so my kids had never seen the white cold stuff. They enjoyed it for the first 20 minutes or so...and now have decided they never want to see it again! LOL. I think better (warmer) clothing would have helped. Maybe we'll try again some time in the future. I think I had more fun playing in the snow and laughing at myself than they did. (Although they enjoyed jumping on top of me when I was already down!)



Of course on the way home yesterday my power steering went out on my car. At least it waited till I was almost all the way home. Now I need to figure out what happened and how much it's going to cost to fix it. Where is my dang brother when I need him?????

Simple Changito & Baby Horney Toad

First...a card to share...


I really like the color combo (kind of a aqua blue and red). I used my cuttlebug and nestabilities again to cut out the circle and scalloped circle and to emboss the circle. This close up shows that better.

And on to things unrelated to cardmaking...remember a posting a few weeks back where I showed a picture of my son with a "horney toad" and I talked about the babies and how cute they are? Well, my son comes into the house again a couple days ago with the smallest baby I've ever seen. He/she has to be a newborn (are they new'born' if they hatch??? hmm).

Here's the baby:


And here's the adult for comparison:



After he caught the baby he wanted to save it to show to daddy. So we put it in a container with about an inch of dirt in the bottom. He quickly dug himself into the dirt and all but disappeared. About an hour later my son comes out and he's sure that the critter has escaped because he's drug his fingers through the dirt and he can't find him. I look in the container and see what looks like a clump of dirt. I gently touch the clump and it scurries out of the dirt. He was too cute. After we showed him to Dad we let him loose again.

Boys...they are just too much fun. :-)

Playing with New Stamps

Today I played with my new Changito stamps that I got at the stamping convention a couple weeks ago.

What do you think?



I even broke out the cuttlebug and my nestabilities and did the cutting/embossing on the white part and then the scallop outside. I also sponged on some ink around the outside to highlight the embossing. I thought about stamping him another time, cutting out just the hat and popping that up with adhesives. But with the main image already being popped up I figured it would get too thick with another layer popped. The other thought was to add just a bit of grey shading to the hat. It looks so stark. But I wasn't sure I could do it justice. So I left it as it was.

On another note...my personal monkeys were wrestling today and I grabbed some pictures. This takes me back to the days of my childhood. Growing up with three older brothers it seemed like there was always 'horseplay' going on. Inevitably, my Mom would eventually wander into the living room to try and break it up and about that time my brother would reach out and grab at her leg too and she'd screech. (It was all in fun...my brothers were probably late teens by then.)



Love the look on the oldest's face in this one. Even though he is older (and bigger) his little brother is more of a scrapper. So, for him to have the upper hand is truly a victory and it shows on his face. :-)



But, it didn't last for long. Now little brother is on top...



Hope you enjoyed the 'monkey' posting for the day (both the changito monkey stamp and my monkeys!) More to come later this week.

Diet Coke and Mentos

My kids just crack me up. We've started giving our kids the choice of cash or a party for their birthday. They also get their choice of a family activity and their choice of a cake. My kids have birthdays about a month apart.

Well last month was my oldest son's birthday. He chose cash. In the past we've literally had the cash they bought what they wanted and I gave them the left over cash when they were done. This past month my husband was the "holder of the cash" and he did buy the two playstation games my son wanted but the excess cash never made it back to my son and he never asked for it. He was happy with his two new games.

Last night the youngest one comes up to me. His birthday is Sunday. He tells me that he wants ME to hold his money because HE wants the left over cash! LOL. He's too smart for his own britches some times! (He's turning 8).

Here are some recent pictures of the boys doing a "diet coke and mentos experiment":

First you go buy 2 liters of diet coke (we bought multiple so both kids could try it). Then you buy a package of mentos (I'd recommend a full pack per bottle - we did half a pack and didn't get the results we really wanted). Then you complete the following steps...

1. Carefully set up the bottle of diet coke in a wide open area. We had a little plastic tube that came with our mentos (at the $1 store!) that was just for "loading". Anyways, get it all set up to go. We also used a small stick to keep the mentos seperate from the coke till everyone backed up.



2. We used a stick to keep the mentos from dropping into the coke until we were ready.



3. Then the appointed child pulls the stick out and RUNS so they don't get doused with diet coke.



4. Enjoy the sight of the spewing diet coke.



I think the record height for this is around 20-30 feet in the air. Ours was more like 10. But we used about a 1/3 of a tube of Mentos. So I'd try a whole pack. Supposedly salt and a few other things also cause an enhanced reaction.

Well, I gotta get ready for work. Have a Happy Friday!

Jane

Blast from the Past

I was searching for a decent photo of me on our hard drives last night and discovered an older section of photos. Now I have pictures of older things I've done that I can share as fillers!



This is a card that I CASED (copied). I received the original card in a swap and liked it so much that I had to make my own. It's been long enough ago (several years) that I have NO idea who I copied it from. But I did copy it. I love the colors and the layout.

Ok...one personal photo and then I have to get off here and get dressed for work! I also found this photo of my Dad with the boys. My Dad passed away in August 2005 - when my boys were 5 and 8. So this is a special photo to have and keep.



I tried to fix the lighting the best I could. I don't own any fancy software. But this looks much better than it originally did. Now you can at least see all the faces! Before the light was way too bright and they were all washed out.

k...gotta run.

Jane

Happy Monday???

Good morning all -

Not sure how I'm feeling about it being Monday. But I guess I don't have much of a choice. So...I'll stick with GOOD morning! :-)

Just a few quick pics of the boys to share. I did make a couple cards this weekend but haven't taken pics of them yet.

I love this picture of Dakota. I swear he was a fish in another life!



And here is Mario...they are loving jumping off the ladder!



Dakota...mid cannonball...



That's it for now. I gotta go get ready for work. The boys are probably going to have to stay out of the pool today (which they aren't happy about). Even with sunscreen and only allowing them in for an hour at a time a few times a day...they are still sunburned. For anyone who can't decide about a relatively inexpensive pool...I highly suggest it. This is the second summer where we've bought a pool (for under $100). Technically you are supposed to be able to use them for more than one year. But the last one the kids were smaller and ended up getting it so dirty that I didn't even bother saving it. I figured a whole summer of entertainment for $100 is a pretty good deal! Eventually I'd love to get a bigger family size outdoor pool but right now these little cheap ones work. This one isn't so little...it's 14 feet wide by almost 4 feet deep. It would have been over $100 new but we got it off craigslist. It was supposed to be new in box. For the most part it looks new. It does have a slight leak but when it's full of water the weight of the water pushes down enough that it doesn't leak (it's at the bottom of the pool).

Ok...now I really DO have to run! Have a great day!

Jane

Grasshopper cutie

I love how this little card turned out! I made it weekend before last when I had a "stamping play date" with my friend, Concetta. Is it darling?



I used her Stampin' Up set (can't remember the name) and her paper (also Stampin Up) and her nestabilities. Can you see how the circle is cut and embossed and then layered with scallops? That's what the nestabilities do.

On another note (and just for those of you who are queasy about snakes! LOL). Here is a current picture of Dakota with his snake...it's getting HUGE!



I'm not a snake lover, but I'm not terrified of them either. I will hold this one if I need to. I do think it's amazing how they can have such a long thin body and still make everything work and move around the way they do.

Hope everyone is off to a great week!

Jane

Boys and Their Toys

Happy Sunday everyone!

I hope everyone has had a good weekend. I can't believe it is already over! They go by too quickly. Luckily my weeks go by pretty quickly as well. So, before I know it...it'll be NEXT weekend. :-)

I did get a fair amount of stamping done this weekend. You can expect lots of new stuff this week. But...I haven't taken pictures of the items yet. So, in the meantime...figured I'd share some pictures of our weekend activities.

Activity #1 - Go Carts!

We bought two of these little go carts (vintage 70's) a while back off craigslist. The guy said they were running when he parked them but they'd been parked a long time. We paid the man and loaded them both up in my PT Cruiser (yep, 2 go carts, 2 kids, and 2 adults inside an enclosed PT Cruiser...don't ask me how! LOL.) I think he thought we were crazy. Personally, I was having flashbacks of my Dad refusing to pay for delivery on our swamp cooler and instead tying it to the top of his Plymouth Horizon and driving home 60 miles with it up there! That cooler was as big as his car!

Anyhow, my hubby has been working on the go carts and got one of them running. First time on them...my youngest pressed the gas too hard and ran the go cart into #1-a pole and #2-the brick that goes around our home. Both boys decided they were too scary and wouldn't try them again. Well, last night I talked the youngest into trying again ('cause I hadn't seen him the first time and I needed a few pictures). So here he is in all his glory.


Here is Dad getting it started for him...look at that unsure look on his little face. ;-)


Here he is again...ready to go!


He's going pretty fast here! Look at his hair on end!


And here is the biggest kid of all...my hubby! Although I'm really surprised at how quick these little go carts go!

Activity #2 - WWII Planes Tour

This activity was held at a small airport about 6 miles from our house. A little expensive ($10 for adults and $5 for kids) but they really enjoyed it. I didn't go on the plane...so any poor photography can be blamed on my hubby! LOL. You could even get flights on these planes but they were expensive (hundreds of dollars). I saw this one family come up and plop down $2,000 for them all to go up in the plane! Wow, I wish I had that kind of money!

Anyhow, here are some pics of the boys (and the planes).









There were a total of 3 restored planes there. I want to say they were a B17, a B24, and a B25...but I won't swear to that.

Anyways, watch next week for new artwork!

Jane

Rattlesnake Cave

Today my hubby informed me that we were going to take the boys and go for a little hike. Sad thing is...is that it was a relatively little hike and yet I felt like I was ready to die. There are days I really hate myself and my inability to control my weight. Today is one of those days. Argh! Anyways, I didn't die and I DID get some good pictures. So thought I'd share them here!



Trail up to the cave



Looking in to the cave



Looking UP inside the cave



Both Mario and Dakota inside the cave (had to use the flash...tried it without the flash and ended up with two bright spots but no faces)



Me and the boys inside the cave



Mario and Mom coming through the channel between the two caves



Mario and Dakota outside - on top of the world!



Dakota on top of a rock (I was inside the cave taking the picture looking up at him). Made the lighting difficult.

I think that's most of the decent photos. Hope you enjoyed them! I don't think I'll share the one of the EMT's when they had to come pick me up after I had a heart attack! ;-) LOL.

Jane

Boys and Chicks!

Boy that title sounds a little dirty, eh? But, nope, it's just what it sounds like.



Here are my boys:







I went into the oldest one's bedroom the other night to tuck 'em in and they were both curled up together sleeping. I had to take a picture. To me, there is nothing more beautiful than a child sleeping.

And...now for my chicks!



This is my first attempted at my Design Team project for the LSS. Any thoughts/comments? I'm making 4 of these matching cards and a holder for them to go in. Still not sure I'm loving it. I have a few more ideas but it will require stopping by the store and picking up more stuff. This stamp set is a clear set from Stampendous and has the Chick plus accessories (the basket, the bunny ears, a purse, a flag, santa hat, etc, etc).

1st idea - What you see...stick with easter theme.
2nd idea - Make sucker covers, alter a band aid tin for them to go in (Was thinking I could do a "U suck girlfriend" saying and use the purse with the chick. Maybe in pink/black?)
3rd idea - Make a gift card holder and use the purse with the Chick (also probably pink/black combo.

Any thoughts?

Jane

And yet.....MORE monkeys!

I promise...last monkey card for awhile! :-) I do love how this one turned out. The layout was a sketch challenge on SCS...all stamps are from Stampendous.



And...if that weren't ENOUGH monkeys...I thought I'd share a few more FAMILY monkeys! LOL.

This is (from left to right) my brother Dallas (who is two years older than me), my brother John (who is 10 years older than me), and then myself...please keep in mind this is what I look like on Black Friday...with little sleep! Too bad I don't know how to photoshop myself into a 20 year old thin cheerleader type! LOL.



And here are my two boys...



That's all for now!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Jane