PNWHS new adoptions coordinator

A couple of months ago I became the adoptions coordinator for PNWHS. :) It is a lot of fun but also takes a lot of time. Here are some of the animals I've picked up since I started-

Ball python

Russian tortoise

Ornate box turtle

Corn snake

I'm still stampin but I am the worst about remembering to take pictures before I send out my cards. :P I've got a cool notebook thing I made for my mom to show you. I will try to post it before the end of the weekend. :)

AMUSE world tour for A*MUSE*A*PALOOZA

Did you happen to see who won the A*MUSE*A*PALOOZA world tour????

ME!!!! HURRAY!!!

I'll snap pics of my prize when it comes. :D

Sparkle Creations Rubber Stamps!

Welcome to the Grand Opening blog hop for Sparkle Creations Rubber Stamps! To start at the beginning of the blog hop, please go to the Sparkle Creations Rubber Stamps.

Today is an exciting day as we're releasing 8 new darling stamps! And we're giving away a ton of prizes! One lucky person will win the grand prize of all 8 images. There are also 5 single stamp prizes hidden, so make sure you comment on everyone's blogs! You will have until midnight Eastern time to comment and the winners will be announced on the Sparkle Creations Rubber Stamps blog.

Here's my card!

Sparkle described this stamp to me MONTHS ago and I knew I had to have it!

Meet Scooter Chloe!

Chloe and her scooter are paper pieced with Basic Grey's Lemonade collection. It is bright, fun and summery, just like Chloe. :) The sentiment is from Doodle Factory. It's hard to see but parts of the scooter are painted with Smooches and highlighted with a Rose Stardust pen.

This is a great stamp and I know I'll be using it often!

Sparkle will be offering free standard shipping for all orders over $25 for the weekend (til midnight EST Sunday), and the code is FREESHIP. Thank you for stopping by and now it's time to go to Stephanie Kraft's blog! She's made something super cute and you won't want to miss it!

Summer pictures

Flowers

Fresh berries

Grilling

Fireworks

Swimming in the lake

Hurray for SUMMER!

Cornish Heritage Farms closing! :(

I am so bummed. Cornish Heritage Farms has decided to close. The carry Kim Hughes stamps and some other ones that I just loved. Here are the details-
Orders for any stamps will be accepted until Thursday, July 15th, 2010.
We will be closed on Friday, July 16th for stock take.
We will reopen Saturday July 17th, 2010 but we will not be pressing any new rubber, only remaining inventory will be sold at gradually discounted rates until it is all gone.
Our last day of trading will be Thursday Aug 5th, 2010.

Happy 4th!

Hope you have a wonderful and safe Independence day! We will watch the fireworks show at the Space Needle on TV. Then we bought the kids a bunch of fireworks and are setting them off in "the circle" in our back yard. The stinkies are very excited. :)

A little Paper Makeup!

I recently ordered a bunch of stamps from Paper Makeup. I LOVE the monsters by Stephen Hammond. :) They have some really cute fairies there and a new line of animals that are simply darling.

My friend Sparkle recently started a new stamp company! Her store official opens on July 10th! There will be a blog hop on July 10th to celebrate her grand opening! I have some cute cards to show off too. :D See you then!

Spring in Washington

Apple blossoms...

Lilac...

Stuff is just sprouting everywhere!


I haven't been making as many cards as I would like and I am SO behind on my scrapbooking but it is just too nice outside to be inside!!! I do have some new cards to show you using Doodle Factories newest release and some of my new Paper Make Up stamps. :) Check back soon!

Pets

An animal came to us this week in incredibly bad shape. She can barely walk and is very deformed from poor nutrition. Sadly, she'll need to be put down this evening.

If you're going to get a pet, any pet, please do your homework first. Every health issue this animal has could have been completely avoided with proper housing and diet.

I'm not mad, just so, so sad that she won't get to have a long and happy life.

Baby cards

I need some baby cards for a shower this week so it was time to get stampin'!


I used Basic Grey Granola and Figgy Pudding for two different looks. I'm not sure which I'll use but I really like how they came together. :)

**I haven't forgotten about my EMERGE project for February. It's all printed and mounted and I just have to add some finishing touches. I'm thrilled with how it turned out and it was very fun to photograph too. :) Here's a sneak peak of one of the letters-

This R is from an old fortune telling machine near a magic shop at Pike Place Market. I loved the bright R against the green patina!

Yeah! Who says Mondays stink?

Today has been GREAT!

Tracey emailed me and I won the challenge for Jenn's baby card! I won a free stamp set plus the sentiments! I am so stinkin' excited. I am going to try to hold out until the new release but there are stamp sets that have been calling my name for a long time now...

I went to the beach this afternoon and got seven pieces of bonfire glass, one red, TWO pink (this is a very rare color and my first pieces of this color), one orange and a larger piece of bright yellow. I found other really great pieces too (and a bunch of sea pottery) but those were my top finds.

Hope you had a great day too!

You send me!

The TCP Tuesday challenge this week is paper piecing. It's as if this challenge was made with me in mind!!! :)

I've had this little flying letter and sentiment for a while. Mine are rubber but I think they are sold now in an acrylic set. The swirl is from a Christmas set. I stamped it and then touched it up with a sakura stardust pen. The paper is some of my Basic Grey.

A purple cow kind of day.

Obviously I'm in a Basic Grey/Doodle Factory mood lately. I just can't get enough! :)
This cow and saying are from the Country set. I paper pieced the cow and colored her spots, ears and udder with my copics. I'm lovin' how this turned out and might pull it from my Etsy store if I need a thank you card before it sells. :)



I woke up today and just felt like getting outside and doing something. It was in the mid 50s here, the sun was shining and it just smelled good and kinda springy outside. We loaded the kids into the van and headed over to the Market. We picked up a bunch of dollar bags at the #2 Arcade (yum!) and went over to Uli's sausage. If you've never been, you are really missing out. I think we've eaten almost every kind of sausage he makes and it is all incredible. I also got all my pictures done for my word of the year. I'm excited to get those developed and do something with them. We also took the kids over to the Bug Safari for one of our famous "Shirk Family Adventures". It was pretty interesting but tiny. Everyone seemed to have a good time, even Kait who wasn't thrilled with the idea said she had fun.
We decided it was too early to head home and went to the beach. It was so nice! They have huge fire pits there so Jason went and got some firewood and we grilled up a bunch of our sausage, some asparagus (this was one of the $1 bags at the arcade! woo hoo!) and roasted marsh mellows for dessert. It was a very nice, picture perfect day. :)

Welcome Jenn's baby!!!

There's a contest going on right now at the Starving Artistamps blog. Simply make a baby card for Jenn and her hubby with a little baby tip and you can win a Starving Artistamps stamp set AND a set of sentiments! This is GREAT prize! I would love to win a Doodle Factory set with sentiments. :) For all the details, just click on the link.

Here's my card-
I used Basic Grey's Porcelain paper and Doodle Factory's Oh Baby! stamp set. I've had these little safety pins FOREVER (years!) and this was a great excuse to use them.



I hope Jenn likes the card and that everything goes well when it's time for her to deliver. She is scheduled to have her baby on the 11th so that's the deadline for this contest!

A yakking Yak!

This stamp set came out a while ago and of course I had to buy it because I LOVE Doodle Factory! But... I wasn't really sure what to do with it. It has sat sadly uninked in my binder for months. I am challenging myself this week to use some of my old Basic Grey paper (so I can justify buying all those new amazing lines that came out at CHA) and ink up some unloved stamps (to justify the new ones that are on their way to me now). ;)

I really like how this card came out. It turned out just like I had imagined it would. I love it when that happens! :)

Have you been thinking about your word of the year yet?

Ali Edwards- One Little Word

One Little Word.
I saw this on her blog.
I saw this on friends' blogs.
But I just didn't feel like I had a specific word that would represent what I wanted to accomplish or focus on in 2010. Honestly, I hadn't been feeling like myself for a few years now. I felt like my migraines ruled everything. When they were bad, I couldn't be the mom or wife I wanted to be let alone have extra time to accomplish much of anything. In the last three months though, that's changed. I've had two migraines in three months when I used to get at least three migraines a week. I have my life and my time back. And because of that, I decided to really sit down and pick a word to motivate and inspire me this year.

My word is EMERGE.

I hope to emerge from 2010 becoming the person I want to be and to get back the person I was.

There is a super fun challenge this week to make your word with pictures of the letters in your word. I'm going to head out and take some pictures over the next couple of days for my word. I'll post my creation on Monday or Tuesday.

Check out the Ali's post. Maybe it's something that can inspire you. If not today, maybe someday soon. :)

Valentine card #1

***These pictures suck. Jason bought a new camera/video recorder and it sucks. It is going back to Best Buy tomorrow.***


I love the Twitterpated paper. :) It is one of my absolute favorites. The squirrel and saying are from Doodle Factory. I colored him with my copics. After taking this pic, I thought that the green areas looked a little bare. I put some circle/dot things I have from Stamping Bella in the upper left and bottom right corners. It looks better now, more balanced.

A baking/horse birthday party invitation- I think I did it!

I had an Etsy request for a horse birthday invitation. It is also going to be a baking party. Hope they like it! :)

Now I'm off to make Hello Kitty favor tags...

*I made a million Valentine's day cards today. A couple are going to my Etsy store but the others are for teachers. I'll post them this week. :)

For Valentines day!

I made the heart with the ribbon through it for another card but it didn't go with the card when it came together. I really liked it though so I put a card together for it. :)
The paper is from Bittersweet (Basic Grey), the hearts are grunge board (this stuff is so cool- it is like chipboard but flexible which makes it so easy to distress) and the rub-ons and ribbon are from my CTMH stash. :)