Blog Post #3 from vacation...My travel stamp kit.

I rarely travel without some sort of stamping paraphernalia, but it is rare for me to actually do anything with my stamps when we are traveling so I had decided that I wasn't going to take them on our Spring Break trip. Well, at the very last minute, I changed my mind and thank goodness that I did. I actually got to make several projects while we were gone thanks to several rainy days.

So here is a quick run-down of what I took with us (in case you want to pack a quick travel stamping bag.)

The little red and brown bag on the right was the bulk of my stash. I picked up this bag recently from Michaels. They had them on clearance for less than $10 and I figured it was a really compact easy way to carry all those little items.  

For this trip, this is what it held from the aerial view:

*a cup that holds: scissors, pencil, glue pen, 2 pixie glitter sticks, 6 watercolor pencils, paper piercer, waterbrush, brown and black zig writers, metal ruler

*punches: 3 martha stewart border punch, 1 small scallop circle punch, corner rounder

*tin full of multi-colored brads including silver, copper, and black

*pop dots

*card of MM ribbon

*4 Unity background cassette stamps

*approximately 6-10 mini scrapbook paper pad collections...these are good because they have lots of variety, are compact, and usually have matching cardstocks in them too (this time they were... a 4 1/2 x 6 1/2 K&Company pad, 2- 6x6 basic grey pads, 4x6 SEI pad, 2- 6x6 MM pads, 2- MM 8x8 collections, DCWV green mini pad, and 2 different journaling pads-one was MM and the other was Websters Pages)

*Fabri Tac

*several mini colorbox cat's eye inkpads

*push pad

*watercolor pencils

***************

The exterior pockets held:

*B-sized Unity handle

*3 more Unity stamp cassettes

*Black StazOn inkpad

*Brown memories inkpad

*Martha Stewart brown twill

*more random brads

*********

My eco-chic bag carried:

*My fiskars cutter

*ATG glue gun

*4 containers of Unity stamps 

*several sheets of 8 1/2 x11 cardstock white and kraft 

*my 12x12 glass cutter base which is perfect to use as a lap desk anywhere

And of course, I never go anywhere (not even on errands) without a few idea magazines and books....

Vacation Recap...TONS of photos!

The school district that we are in this year is a bit odd in that we didn't get a full week for Spring Break... instead we got a  total of 3 days out of school over the Easter weekend. Since our summer is going to be crazy with Ben deploying at the end of it, we decided to take as much advantage as we could of our very short break. We ended up renting a 3 bedroom log cabin on Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri.

{My photos are going to go backwards because that is the way that I uploaded them and I am too lazy to move them all so that they go the correct direction.}

Our last full day there was Easter. This was the best photo of Kat from her search for Easter eggs with the added bonus that Jacob was actually in the background...

******

Our final night there we were finally able to start a fire (it rained almost the entire time we were there) and cook out s'mores. I missed the photo where he had the marshmellow drizzling down his chin... ;o)

*******

This is one of the plank swinging bridges that I was talking about in my post from earlier today. These were built in the 30's and are still used by cars today. Just walking on it made it swing and there were huge gaps where the wood was rotting so I cannot honestly imagine actually driving across this one... and as you can see, it was pretty darn long...

******

There was lots of football throwing throughout the week. It's rare that we see Jacob anywhere without a football attached to him!

******

Ball caught in mid-air!

******

I had mentioned this house in the post from earlier in the week with the photo of Ben & I. Kelly, I had it wrong...this house is actually not in Lake of the Ozarks state park. It's at a state park called HaHaTonka (about 15-30 minutes away from the lake.) This "castle" was built at the turn of the century and then burned down in the 40's (there is much more to that whole story, but I won't get into it all here.) It reminded me so much of the castle ruins that we would wander through when we lived in England.

*****

One of the mammoth window frames on the house...

*******

I just like this photo... :o)

******

This photo has the look of them wandering through Greece or Rome with the color of it all, but no they are just in Missouri...

******

I love this profile shot that I got of Ben. This is a lookout just below the house.

******

The kids on the swing from the porch of our house....

******

Everything was just starting to bloom the weekend that we were there...

******

Jacob inside the Willmore Lodge...

And finally, a photo of all of us outside the Willmore Lodge...

Whew! If you made it to this point of this post, I salute you...LOL! That is a lot of photos, but I could have posted so many more, but I don't want to bore you!

I do have one more post to make today and that will contain the photos of my travel stamp kit. I didn't want to turn this post into a huge novel by adding that too....

A study in Green for Earth Day!

The Friday before our vacation, the EYC exercise was the color Green, so I took the lush, wet environment of Lake of the Ozarks to play with taking photos of all the different colored green mosses to see what kinds of effects that I could get...

I'll be doing another blog post this afternoon with the actual family photos from our trip and in that post I will talk a bit more about some of the places that these photos were taken..

In the Lake of the Ozarks region, there are 2 old (like 75+ year old...they were built in the 30's) swinging bridges that you can still drive across. One actually is still made from the wood planks (we weren't courageous enough to actually drive across that one), but this photo is the of the stone wall that supported that wooden bridge.

********

This was simply a random photo of moss growing in the railroad ties of the pathway of a trail that we hiked on. I like the little acorn shells in this too.

*******

Moss covered stone walkway.

*******

The first shoots of grass... a sure sign that Spring is coming.

*******

This was a random photo taken from the garden grounds at the Willmore Lodge.

I loved all the different mosses growing on this tree. There were several different kinds and colors.... just glorious (although probably not so great for the health of the tree.)

******

This is the close-up shot of the tree above... nature is just an amazing thing!

*******

And you know that I have to do some sort of papercraft with all of these exercises so this was my Green card...

Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. Wish Stick

*K&Company paper (stamped paper)

*SEI paper (everything else)

*ribbon 

*brads

*Memories inkpad

I'll be back later this afternoon with more of the real fun photos from our trip and a bit about my traveling stamp kit (and yes, I actually made this card on our trip so it came out of my traveling stamp kit.)

Another day, Another trial run with photos on my Mac...

Good Tuesday morning!! I have another new card to share with you, but you are going to have to excuse me while I play a bit more with uploading photos. As I am sure that you have already noticed, I did finally get photos to upload to the blog, but so far I have had limited success with making them click-able. I *think* that I figured it out this morning, but we will see when I push the "Publish" button to see if  it's actually working or not! LOL!!

Today I have a card that I made using Unity's kit of the month for April, Fresh Beginnings, using the Mojo Monday sketch #82. I always have great plans for doing these projects on Monday, but Kat doesn't seem to take naps anymore on Monday's so now it is becoming my Tuesday project. ;o) But anyway, I digress!

This is a hybrid card. These are some digital papers that I had printed up over a year ago when I bought them. I have no idea whose collection they are or where I got them, but if you want to know, I can go dig up my files and figure it out for you. Just let me know in the comments. This is about the cheapest card possible because I simply used my white cardstock (that I printed.) The ribbon was recycled off the Easter M&M's package, and then just brads. Everything else used on here is simply tools...stamps, inks, and punch. Easy Peasy!!

Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. Fresh Beginnings (April kit)

*digital paper collection

*copper brads

*Colorbox Graphite inkpad

*Martha Stewart border punch

*ribbon bow recycled from Easter M&M's

Whoohooo! It actually worked...my image today is click-able...now will I be able to remember how I did that?!? LOL! BTW, today is my dt day up on the Unity blog. I should have a couple of other pieces of art over there (which I will also upload here at some point this week!) There is TONS of fun upcoming with Unity Stamp Co. so keep yours eyes peeled...they are about to turn 1 year old and a big celebration is going to happen...(SOON!)

Slower than your average person...

I *think* that I may finally be getting this Mac thing...it has taken 2 books and approximately 20+ hours on here fiddling with buttons, but I think that I am starting to get it. This is one of those moments when I wonder how the heck I am going to be able to function at 50+ when I already have this much trouble on something that everyone tells me that they had no issues with...*sigh!* ... and I am only 38!?!? It's all been VERY frustrating.

But I do have tons to share with you all so I hope to blog every day this week to get it all up... and then Unity has some super fun stuff coming next week so I will be blogging each day next week too if everything goes according to plan. So stick around, some fun stuff coming AND I have a bit of fun for YOU at the end of this post since you all have been so sweet and supportive as I have gone through this transition period!!

I have so many vacation photos to share, but I will just share one today and probably do a vacation post on Wednesday. This is a photo that Jacob took of Ben & I. We are standing below the ruins of a castle that was built at the turn of the century, but burned in the 40's. I have some very cool photos of it... it made me very reminiscent of England and our explorations there, but I will definitely have more to share of that on Wednesday's post!

At the very last moment of packing, I decided to pack up a mini-stamping kit. I almost always take my stamping supplies with me when I travel, but I usually don't find the time to play with them. Well on this trip, we had rain 4 out of our 5 days there which meant that we spent a fair amount of time inside which translated into stamping time for me. I am so glad that I brought some of my supplies!

This is one of the cards that I made using the Unity Stamp Co. April kom, Fresh Beginnings. I just LOVE this little bird image! Do you see the text that goes around the bird... that is a separate stamp so you could circle that around most any small-medium sized stamp. I love that and there are 2 of these in this kit!

Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. Fresh Beginnings (April kom)

*Memories Brown inkpad

*Free papers that came with The Scrapbook Magazine issue 36

*copper brads

*Cuttlebug Swiss Dot embossing folder

Now, as a thank you for all of your support and patience while I have learned how to use my Mac, I am going to give away this Unity stamp kit, Love Birdies. Leave a comment on this post here and I will announce the winner Saturday morning so share that I am doing a stamp giveaway with your friends so that they can have a chance too!

Exercise Your Creativity- Week 16- Home Decor

YES! I finally got this to work (pretty much) right!!! Finally, I am making progress...

I apologize...

*first, for the lateness of this post. I have a new Mac computer and things that I do every week esp. all of the steps involved in my EYC posts, I find that I am having to learn to do all over again. It turns out that I just don't learn all that fast anymore. LOL!

IGNORE ALL THE RAMBLING IN THE LIGHT GREY!

*secondly, I apologize for the format of my Exercise in this post. I try to format these in jpeg so that you can easily print them, but I cannot figure out how to convert this. I hope that you can copy/paste this into your word document so that you can print it. If you find that you cannot do that, please let me know and I will try to find other options...

argh! It's there until I hit that publish button and then it disappears. I am so sorry everyone! I have had to simply take a photo of the document (that after I resize will only save in the temporary files on this computer...argh! anyone want a brand new iMac!??!? grrrr!) edited to add...I forgot that these photos that are not saving correctly are not posting as click-able. I swear I am NEVER going to get this Mac figured out. Everyone tells me that they are so easy so why can I NOT FIGURE IT OUT!!! Anyway, here is the file...maybe you can figure out some way to view it before I do...

Inspiration from the Internet:

from countryliving.com

*******

from countryliving.com

from roomservicehome.com

********

from mackenzie-childs.com

*************

from potterybarnkids.com

Moms Love HipHop!

... at least mine does! 

I am extremely lucky in that my mom loves papercrafts as much as I do and she plays along with us on Unity HipHop Thursdays...

I LOVE THAT!!

Today we are celebrating our mothers for Hip Hop, so I have a layout to share about my mom...

The journaling says, "I look at these photos of my mom and I when I was little and am always so startled by how young she was. But I love that she was (and still is) young because that has enabled us to grow into close friends as I have gotten older. She is truly my best friend and I love her as both my mom and my friend." ~Summer 1971

Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. My Mother My Friend (title)

*Unity Stamp Co. Tiny Giggle Grove (trees)

*Unity Stamp Co. Birdie Inspiration (border swirls, bird, journaling frame)

*Unity Stamp Co. Tiny Trinity (words)

*Little Yellow Bicycle paper (green)

*Cosmo Cricket Jack's World paper 

*Martha Stewart border punch

*MM velvet ribbon

*watercolor pencils (for the bird stamp)

*StazOn Jet Black inkpad

*Marvy Uchida scallop punches

*Bazzill kraft

*****************

I also created a card. This card could be sent to your mother or any member of the family.

Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. Birdie Inspiration

*Unity Stamp Co. Tiny Trinity (family sentiment)

*Cosmo Cricket Ever After paper collection

*Marvy Uchida scallop punches

*StazOn Jet Black inkpad

*watercolor pencils

*ribbon

***************

Now you need to hop on over and visit the Wonderfully Talented...

***Ms. Linsey***

I'm here...kind of!

I have not abandoned you!!! I have artwork and photos to share, but am trying to figure out how to do it all on my new Mac so don't give up on me! I hope to have a new blog post up today!