Father's Day Weekend

We're getting ready to leave to the Dell's on our mini-vacation.

The kids are so excited to go see Yogi Bear. I've got to admit of all the campsites we've stayed at over the years Yogi Bear is by far the coolest, CLEANEST camp resort around.

This year I decided to order some of Mark's favorite spices and sauce from our favorite BBQ joint, Iron Works in Austin, Texas.

The brisket is to die for.....

For those who know Mark, you'll understand the card I made for him this year. For those who don't know, once the warm weather arrives 80 - 90% of our meals are cooked on the grill. Mark loves and I mean LOVES grilling! He makes everything from your traditional BBQ meats to grilled banana's, pineapples, veggies, etc....

The man even made an omelet just for the heck of saying he did it! LOL

Here's his card along with some of Iron Works products. I need to package it all so its ready for the kids to give to him Sunday morning.

Happy Father's Day!

Apron and Chef stamps are from too much fun rubber stamps

to make it more realistic I stamped the apron on white linen cloth and I also stuffed the top of the chefs hat. The sentiment is foiled in red.

Last day of school at Six Flags Great America

What a way to celebrate the beginning of summer vacation! SAC celebrated by taking the kids to Six Flags in Gurnee, IL.
It had been years since Mark and I went so we decided to tag as chaperone's. Let me tell you though, we were the "COOL" parents. Why? Because we were the only two not only getting on every roller coaster with our kids but we dragged them to the first seats of the first cart on every ride! The kids were a bit nervous at the beginning but we told them the only to get over there fear was to get on the scariest ride first and face their fears. They did it and boyeee did we convert them into roller coaster junkies!! LOL
The school left around 3pm but lucky our kids got permission from their parents to stick around with us until it closed at 9pm. Around 8:30 we were quite a site to see, all of us were dragging our bodies across the park on the way back to the car.
We indulged in day of roller coasters, Italian lemonades, burgers, funnel cake and more.....

What a great way to start off the summer!

Malik, Abraham & Zack getting ready to go on the Superman coaster

My hubby and me waiting in line for the Superman coaster

So how were we the next day????
......yeah......
35 years of roller coasters, bungee jumping all came back to haunt us the following morning. Sports creme and Motrin did absolutely NOTHING to alleviate the soreness in our backs! OUCHIE!!!

.....but the boys had a blast and that made it all worth while!

Welcome Warm Weather!!

I just had to show off my prized Peonies. These are from Asian Peony tree that grows 3' - 4', the flowers it blooms are "MAMMOTH" size, the picture below shows a close up, the largest Peony it blooms this year had a 10" diameter!

Malik's lounging around with our neighbor Christian after an afternoon of swimming.

Lunch Break for my munchkins!

After playing with the sprinklers Ian, Miranda and our other little neighbor Alex are chilling inside their clubhouse and big brother Malik watches over them.

Hello again!

Wow, it's been forever since I've posted anything on here.
For starters Malik is finally out of school, yippee!!
He got all A's and a B+ in social studies.
We're getting ready for a couple camping trips this summer, the first will be this weekend for Father's day. It'll just be our little family but it'll be so much fun and relaxing!!
Then we're going to the Dells for the 4th of July in a big group of 14! We've got our sites all reserved it's going to be sooo much fun I can't wait for this trip.
The card/ invitations has been going very well also, I've had a steady amount of orders ranging from wedding, graduations, Luau's and birthdays.
Here are some previews of my orders:

(This is for my friend's hubby's Graduation/ Birthday party)

(This is an order for a 50's party)

(This is a completed wedding order)

(This is an order for a student at Malik's school)

365 Cards

Lately I've been wondering if it's "ever" going to get warm in Chicago again. The weather has been rather cold and rainy creating many stuffy noses within my family.
What started with one child ended up almost 3 weeks later with everyone having shared the lovely flu bug.

Now that I'm the last to entertain this pesky bug I'm really hoping warm weather is right around the corner so we can open the windows and air everything out. :)

Getting back to my papercrafts...

I joined 365 cards as a guest designer and my date finally arrived (yeah) :)
My challenge was to create a card using some kind of fruit. While I do have a few fruit stamps, I've got to admit I've only used them once so this truly was a challenge for me. I created my card using the peaches stamp from Lockhart stamps. I colored them using a super soft water soluable pencils from Caran D'Ache. These pencils are totally unlike any watercolor pencils in the market, I love the way you can blend colors flawlessly. I kept my layers simple with Bazzill textured cardstock and kept it clean by adding some additional texture using my Scor-it.

Tea Please

I fell in love with this stamp set from MFT when we received their catalog at the store. I knew it was one I had to have in my life. After I designed the cards for class I couldn't wait to take my set home with me and begin playing with it.
I've been on a "pink" kick lately so I decided to make a little gift for my good friend Selvi, she'll be receiving this later on this morning. :)
The card is made using Prism card stock and Pebbles pattern paper. I stamped the image on Quartz card stock, I colored the image w/ Copic markers and added white flock to the bunny with my glue pen. Of course I couldn't pass up the chance to further embellish him by added a pom-pom for his tail and black glass beads for his eyes.

I made the box using my scoreboard from Crafter's Companion, I embellished the box with Azalea Stardream Card stock, Pebbles pattern paper, grosgrain ribbon and I printed the sentiment and used my oval and scallop oval punch from Marvy.

Now comes the goodies.....

I absolutely LOVE Cherry Blossoms, so when I ran across an online tea store that sells 100% Cherry Blossom tea I jumped and order a few packs of tea and some French pink sugar.
I know Selvi would enjoy it also so I wrapped up a few of them and created little labels for them.
You can also eat the actual Cherry Blossoms once they been soaked in your cup, they also provided some Youji Sticks for this purpose.

I really enjoyed making this for her, I hope she enjoys it. :)

Commencement Invitations

Wow! Time sure flies by... I didn't realize so much time had passed since my last post.

The weather is "finally" getting warming in Chicago but boyeee is it living up to it's nickname, "The Windy City":)

I've been running around as usually not knowing whether I'm coming or going, unfortunately, it's left me little time to sit and create until this week.

I've been commissioned by my son's school to design their commencement announcements and a parent and very good friend asked me to create a personalize announcement for her son Adem who will be graduating from 8th grade.

I want Adem's cards to be unique so I started googling templates I could use as a reference point, boy, did I find a lot of them! I decided to use this a template I found on SCS. My pockets are an A6 however, I may enlarge them to an A7 once I get Adem's photo and adhere it to the side of the announcement.

I the patterned paper, "Hats off" and "Graduation" by Reminisce, these papers retail at $2/sheet, I got REALLY lucky because I only paid $.10/per sheet on clearance! Woo-Hoo!!!!

I made the tassel. OMG! Talk about tedious work! I used metallic embroidery thread, each tassel will be about 2". They took time to make but WOW, I think they came out pretty good especially for it being my first time making a tassel!

Here's a my sample:

Once I get wallet size pics of Adem in his cap & gown it will be placed right next to the announcement. I conveniently covered that half right now so it wouldn't look lonely in the photographs.