CTMH April Stamp of the Month Blog Hop

If the calendar says April then it really must be spring! Close To My Heart has a sweet spring stamp of the month set for April, called Flower Pot. It reminds me of the window boxes I saw in Europe (hence the inspiration for my card), and I will definitely be using it on some scrapbook pages.

It's also time for another CTMH Stamp of the Month Blog Hop. If you're coming from The Brae-er's amazing blog or just starting to hop, enjoy the creations with this stamp set along the way. If you'd like to read the details about my card, then stay a while; otherwise hop on over to to Alison's blog (after leaving a comment, of course!).

My card began with the Caboodle paper pack and a Colonial White standard side-fold card base. I used the faux wood grain technique on the Crystal Blue square, then drew in the "boards" with a Grey Wool marker. Does the Sweet Leaf bottom portion look like siding or wainscoting? I hope so! I used my scoring blade to score stripes on the card stock.

This card also involved a ton of paper piecing. I stamped the window stamp (which includes the shutters and the window box) in Chocolate ink three times: once on the card, once on Sweet Leaf card stock for the shutters, and once again on Chocolate textured card stock for the window box. I used my craft knife to cut out the window on the card front and scissor cut the rest. For the shutters, I cut out part of the inside of the window and then folded that piece back to give the shutters a bit of dimension. (They are colored just a bit with Sweet Leaf and Chocolate markers.) After cutting out the window box, I colored the top section to give it more dimension too. Assembly was easy: glue on the shutters and attach the window box (after gluing on the flowers) with a 3-D foam square for extra dimension.

To create the flowers, I stamped them in Chocolate on Buttercup card stock. Next I colored the centers of the flowers with a Sorbet marker and the leaves with my Sweet Leaf marker. Can you see how I drew a line down the center of the leaves for extra dimension? A Sorbet brad also added a bit of depth.

The hardest part was creating the curtains. Before assembling the card, I sort of fan-folded or pleated the Sorbet B&T, then glued them on at an agle behind the window opening. They are absolutely my favorite part of the card! Before I adhered the entire window box/Crystal Blue square to my card front, I glued on another square of B&T from the Caboodle collection to look like wallpaper in the room.

Hubby thinks this card needs a cat looking out the window, which would be precious except that I don't have a stamp that's the right size. He didn't agree that I needed a new stamp set either!

If you've read this far, thanks a bunch! Now hop on over to to Alison's blog for more Flower Pot fun.

Birthday Fun

Today is my birthday, and I must be getting pretty old if my Mom is referring to me as "plenty-eight!" Today was nice, and it was capped off with a lovely dinner at my parents' house with my entire family and dear family friend "Aunt" Joy.

Here's what Mom put on her blog about our dinner plans:
We'll start off with wine (for the tall folks) and appetizers of Brie/crackers and spinach-artichoke dip. The main entree is pork tenderloin, served with salad, Easy Cheesy Scalloped Potatoes, Green Beans with Mushrooms and Cheese, and of course, French bread. I know that's a lot of cheese. So fire the cook. We'll be heart healthy tomorrow!

It was all delicious! Green beans are my favorite veggie anyway, and these were DIVINE.

More about the presents later... The plenty-eight birthday girl is tired!

4-H DPA Success!

Ansley and three of her close friends (two pictured here) all took FIRST PLACE in their categories at the regional 4-H Cloverleaf DPA (4th-6th grade District Project Achievement) competition. Her speech was on the Havana Brown cat breed, and she did a fantastic job! (This is not just a proud momma speaking; my fifth graders have participated in CPA for as long as I've been teaching here- I think 11 years?- so I have sat through many a speech!)

I am so proud of every single kid who participated in DPA, whether they placed or not. Researching a topic, writing a speech, creating some posters, and then getting up presenting their topic in front of an audience takes a lot of courage and determination. Also, our county had 81 participants. Go, Union County!!!


Here's part of our group for their "crazy" photo op after the more serious group shot.

A few more of the participants...

We won't mention any of the secret crushes going on in 6th grade right now!

After church today, I think we are going to come home and relax a bit (in between loads of laundry and other chores). I am excited to get to see my parents again since they have come back home from their winter "retreat" to warmer weather. :)

TGIF and an Altered Journal

After a VERY stressful weekend at work, it is so nice to relax and unwind this evening! I am scrapbooking a bit tonight. Yes!

I wish I could go into detail about some of the things that have made this week so stressful, but most school/classroom "business" is confidential. One really sad thing that happened that I can share is that one of the students that we have worked so hard with has moved to Florida to live with his grandparents. While I think that he will really benefit from this move, I am so sad to see him go. We have worked so hard with him (and against him sometimes), and we won't get to reap what we've sowed (BTW, by "we" I mean my co-teacher and me). The Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways, though, because his move opened up a valuable opportunity for another student. I can only pray that it is all for the best!

Another great thing about this week was going to dinner last night with my fifth grade co-workers to celebrate our outstanding teacher of the year. Mrs. Hughes, you deserve this honor! We had her reception months ago but were finally able to get our team together for a good time. I haven't laughed so much in a long, long time!!! Dinner was great! To top it off, we presented her with a journal in which we had all written a special message. (I was honored to be asked to "jazz it up" a bit before giving it to her.)

Here's to good friends and the little blessings in life!

P.S. Please send good thoughts our way Saturday morning as Ansley presents her 4-H DPA (District Project Achievement) presentation!

Quote of the Week

"My favorite weather is bird-chirping weather."

~Loire Hartwould

After snowing most of the day yesterday (What is up with that?!?), today was an incredibly gorgeous spring-like day. Here's hoping Spring puts in a few more appearances before the end of the month! (Hopefully things will slow down just a little bit so that I can create a few new things to share too!)

Enjoy the weather no matter what it may be!

More March Card Class "Stamples"

Here are the other two cards we made at my card class today. They both measure 3"x6". It was extra fun welcoming two new stampers! Thanks for coming, Lynn and Nancy B.!

This pinwheel card just screams fun to me, no matter what your age. We turned it as a side-fold/vertical card, but it would also be cute horizontally. Here's a pattern to follow to create your own pinwheel. Do NOT cut all the way to the center! We used the Caboodle paper pack and embellished the card base with the stamp set that comes with the Caboodle Workshop on the Go.

What technique do you have to use with the You Rock paper pack? The Rock 'N Roll technique, of course! This technique and a 3-D foam square really help the star on this card POP.

It's not too late to get your own "A Little Everything" stamp set. Let me know if you haven't gotten one yet and I can hook you up. Thanks for looking!

A Little Everything Swap Cards (March CTMH Stamp of the Month)

Here are my monthly stamp of the month swap group's cards. Didn't they all do a great job? We used the You Rock papers with the CTMH stamp of the month, A Little Everything.

Clockwise starting at the top left: Carla Ramirez, Tanya Stone, Yours Truly, and Chris Hill


Top left: Taralyn
Bottom left: Pam Berry
Right: Camy Eisentrager

Finally, we have Bridget Mahler's lovely creation using the Caboodle paper pack. Have I mentioned how versatile this stamp of the month is?!?

Daffodil Days

Aren't these gorgeous? I wish I could say that I grew these, but my daffodils aren't blooming yet. These beauties are a gift for my Mom through the Relay for Life "Daffodil Days" program. Unfortunately for her, she's still out of town, so I get to enjoy them. (I did email her a picture at least.) Happy spring!

St. Patrick's Day Shenanigans

This afternoon we decided to make a GREEN cake for St. Patrick's Day! (One year when the girls were much smaller, a crazy leprechaun visited our house while they were at school and got green glitter EVERYWHERE! He also managed to make a mess of things around the house while he was at it.)

Our culinary creation is actually a lemon cake (one of our faves) that Macey and I dyed green. It turned out quite lovely, except for the big sag in the middle. That has never happened to me before, so I attribute this calamity to another naughty leprechaun.

I thought about adding green sprinkles and green sugar to the frosting, but we're all sweet enough. ;)

Yep, that's green milk with our green cake! Maybe we should have had green eggs and ham this morning.

Quote of the Week: St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day is an enchanted time - a day to begin transforming winter's dreams into summer's magic.

~Adrienne Cook

5 Foods Every Woman Should Eat More

Here are the five foods every woman should eat:
1. broccoli
2. onions
3. leafy greens (especially kale, spinach, watercress, arugula, cabbage, turnip and collard greens)
4. beans (We already knew they were good for your heart!)
5. wild salmon

To find out why and some recipes, click HERE.

Obviously this PSA wasn't brought to you by Lindt, Godiva, Hershey's, nor Nestles. Chocolate should definitely be on the list! I can eat all of the first four, but that last one, blech!

CTMH Product Spotlight Blog Hop: Liquid Glass

Are you familiar with Liquid Glass? It is one of my favorite CTMH products! (OK, I say this about all my stuff, but really, liquid glass is something you HAVE to have!) Since I love it so much, I joined this liquid glass blog hop. We have about 10 stops on the way, so be sure to visit them all. You may have arrived from Carol's blog, so keep on hopping (link to the Kristie's blog at the bottom).

Not only does liquid glass let you add some shine and gloss to whatever you put it on, it is also the best adhesive I have ever used. It does dry to a high-gloss finish, so remember that if you don't want it to show on your project.

For my card, I used liquid glass to create the cracked glass technique. A lot of people use clear embossing powder, but I like to cover my image in a few thin layers of liquid glass (letting the layers dry after each application). Then, start bending and almost folding your image so that the liquid glass cracks. I finished this image off by rubbing a bit of Chocolate ink onto the cracked glass so that it seeped into the cracks. The ink wipes write off the clear face of the clock image. (Let me know if you have any questions, as I do not have a supply list handy at the moment. I did use the CTMH Silhouette paper pack and Make It Count stamp set.)

This card is especially meaningful to me right now because this passage was read at my uncle's funeral this weekend. No matter what your faith, these are such true words.

Thanks for stopping by! Now hop on over to Kristie's blog!