Monday, July 29, 2013

The Simple Things

Sometimes I can get so caught up in planning and coordinating activities for my boys. I forget that some of the best times are spontaneous, silly fun instead of my two hours of preparation for a craft activity that lasts five minutes.

An impromptu visit to the park with a bottle of bubble mix put huge smiles on our faces and didn't require any planning!





Create Hope Inspire

Monday, July 22, 2013

Toddler Must Do List

Lucas and I have been diligently working on one of my Pinterest Resolutions, which is the Toddler Years Must Do List. With school holidays in full swing, a lot of the items have been able to be crossed off the list, although the weather has not cooperated for a few of the ideas!



For the full list, please click here.

The items we have yet to do are:
  • Puppets
  • Feed a baby goat
  • Fly a kite
  • Hop over waves at the beach.
  • Look for crabs in the rocks, starfish in the rock pools.
  • Plant a spring flower to watch it grow.
  • Pick fruit off of trees
  • Watch a caterpillar become a butterfly
  • Explore the forest, touching everything.
  • Play ‘ look high/look low’ and see what types of creatures or plants they see.
  • An open gym day where your child can free play in the foam pit, the trampolines and the mats.
  • A Children’s Museum
  • Waterbeads
  • Sand castles
  • Playing with those arts and crafts poms poms
  • Anything messy.
  • Mud pies, mud holes, mud body paint
  • Make goop, gak or slime
  • Handprint art- we have tried this once and it was a complete disaster so I will revisit this!
  • Pudding Paint
The list still seems quite long, but we are getting there. I was supposed to take the boys to an open gym day this morning, but we are all blocked up with colds and generally feeling miserable so we may have a go at making slime today to match our runny noses!

We plan to go to Arion Farm this weekend so we should be able to cross "feed a baby goat" off the list.

Looking at the list, a lot of the outdoor things have not been crossed off yet. Lucas has never been to the beach and so this summer we will have to take him.  We also have a kite but have never flown it, so that is one item we should be able to cross off soon.

Some of the things we have done are:

Dress up- Lucas pretended to be Puss In Boots last Friday and is still wearing the boots and hat today!



Feeding the ducks



Playing in the snow



Watering neighbourhood flowers- this one was hilarious as he went to my next-door-neighbour's backyard and started squirting their hose everywhere. He didn't need prompting, this was one of those lovely spur of the moment toddler ideas that just happened to be on the list!



Read books together- we do a lot of this and Lucas' bedtime routine always includes stories.



Cooking- Lucas loves to help me bake!



Blowing bubbles



Sometimes the simple things can become the fondest memories. Now to do the list all over again with Adam too!

Linking up with Miriam at becoming the Mama I Want to Be.

Create Hope Inspire

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Butterfly Thank You Card

Time for another challenge card- these challenges really get me motivated to make cards, although they tend to be on the simpler side as I usually whip them up in less than twenty minutes while my boys are in the bath! This card is no exception, very simple but inspired by a challenge over at CASE Study.




















As soon as I saw the challenge I remembered some butterfly paper I have been hoarding. I cut out the paper, framing it with some extra tone on tone paper from the same range, and added a simple ribbon and sentiment. Quick and easy to do before my son gets into my ribbon stash!



Supplies used:
Creative Memories: Cheerful Spring Additions Paper Pack, Shapemaker System with Circle Punch, Foam Squares.
Stampin' Up: Bashful Blue Ribbon and cardstock, Elegant Eggplant ink,  Tagtastic stamp set.

Monday, July 8, 2013

A Star Studded Birthday

Masculine cards are something I struggle with, and so I love checking out the sketches at Seize The
Birthday to see what I can come up with. This week, the sketch was:


I really liked the star part of the sketch, and so I used that for the base of my card idea. As well as using a star in the circle, I added some punched out stars above the circle. The background paper was masculine and busy enough without me doing anything to it, but I did add some glitter to the star in a shooting star arrangement rather than having the banner across the circle. (I noticed as I uploaded the picture that the glitter is smudged, I will fix that!) A simple stamped sentiment completed my card.



Supplies used:
Basic Grey: Cupcake Chipboard Stickers.
Creative Memories: Green cardstock, Celebration PP, Custom Cutting System with Circle patterns.
Stampin' Up: Basic Grey marker, Dazzling Details, Merry Minis punch set, Up Up and Away stamp set.

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Winter Papercraft Sampler

While the weather outside has been rather warm these last few days, winter is still here and I am looking forward to hot chocolates, building snowmen and bundling up in warm knits. I am trying to start inexpensively decorating my house each season, and so I did this papercraft sampler to hang in a frame in my entranceway.



The squares are mounted on white cardstock at 12"x12", then the silver is 11"x11"and the navy cardstock is 10.5"x10.5". Each square is 2.5x2.5", with the inner squares at 2.25" x 2.25".

I had a lot of fun coming up with different designs and items for each square. Some of them are very traditional, such as the snowman, snowflakes and winter hat.



Other squares such as the hearts were tied into the winter theme by keeping the same colour scheme throughout the sampler.



I especially love my little penguin square!



I also wanted a few snowflake and glitter elements, as well as dimension with layered stickers and foam squares. The squares are a mixture of stickers, punches and stamps that I had in my supplies.



If you would like instructions on any particular square, please feel free to ask!

What is your favourite square?

Supplies used:
Stampin' Up: Silver glitter paper, Night of Navy Cardstock, Night of Navy Stampin' Write marker, Bashful Blue cardstock, Bashful Blue Ink, Bashful Blue ribbon, Classic Black ink, Summer Starfruit Stampin' Write Marker, I Heart hearts stamp set, Mini Glue Dots, Every little Bit stamp set, Cupcake Punch, Basic Rhinestones Jewels, petals plenty Embossing Folder, Polka Dots Embossing Folder, Northern Flurry Embossing Folder, Decorative Label punch, Itty Bitty punch set.
Creative Memories: White cardstock, Shape maker System, Circle Punch, 12" Rotary trimmer, Cheerful Power Palette, Cheerful Winter Additions, Memoranza 2008 paper, Quick Album Kit Winter Wonderland, Scallop Circle Punch, Foam Squares, Precision Point Adhesive, Jewel Winter Additions, Days Of Winter Layered Stickers, Circle Maker, Square Maker, Corner Rounder, Snowflake punch.
Provocraft: Cuttlebug

Linking up with Matariki Crafting, Show and Tell, An Inky Situation and Real Family Fun.
(I am having issues with buttons at the moment, so please click on the links!)

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Girly Friendship Card

This is my second post for today. I am combining challenges this week as I am in full swing crafting for my son's first birthday party.

I am linking up with the following three challenges.

Fusion- using just the card sketch:














Frosted Designs- Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Blog Hop to create a girly card. Of course, pink is girly anyway but I blinged my card up a bit with some rhinestones as well.

Use It Tuesday- Bring on the Sunshine! I used some extremely old epoxy stickers from 2006 to create this card, and the middle orange one reminds me of rays of sunshine. The pink and orange papers are from a 2009 collection, and the pink ribbon was sitting in my ribbon bag- I have no idea where it came from! The sticker sentiment is from a 2009 scrapbook kit range as well, I am having a great time finding stuff as I clean out my stash and use up my supplies.

Here is the finished card:



I am really close with a few good girlfriends, and this card might just cheer up one of them after a rough week!

Supplies used:
Creative Memories: Cheerful Title Stickers, Delight Power Palette Paper, Corner Rounder, Tape Runner.
Stampin' Up: Raspberry Ripple Cardstock, Mini Glue Dots, Basic Rhinestone Jewels.
MOD Design: Blackbird Epoxies.
Miscellaneous: Pink Polka Dot Ribbon.

Congratulations Heart Card

I am trying to keep up with all the card challenges I love to do, and last night was a rare occasion when I got to sit down and create. I loved the challenge over at CASE Study this month, where we had to create a card based on this design.




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I loved the tie-dye look and the triangles, so wanted to explore those two elements further. Here is what I came up with.
 


The first step was to brush some white cardstock with my three selected ink colours to create some tie dye triangles. I randomly inked up the white cardstock, then punched it into squares and cut each square in half to form a triangle. I did the same square punch with pink and blue cardstock, and then formed a heart shape out of the triangles.

The banner element of the challenge is reflected in my congratulations sentiment, which I added on top of some ribbon and popped up on Foam Squares for dimension. The white cardstock is matted on pink cardstock and was then placed on the blue card base.

I hope to use this card for an engagement or wedding card soon!

Supplies used:
Stampin' Up: Whisper White cardstock, Pool Party cardstock and ink, Calypso Coral cardstock and ink, Summer Starfruit ink and ribbon, Glue Dots, Itty Bitty Banners stamp set, sponge.
Creative Memories: Foam squares, Square Punch.
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