The Stamping Pad

Check out this great contest from Gamestop and Today's Mama

TodaysMama and Gamestop are giving away a sleighful of gifts this holiday season and to enter I’m sharing this meme with you.

 

1. What is your holiday wish for your family? health and joy. I hope that 10, 20, 30 years down the road my kids and their families still want to spend the holidays with me.

2. What is your Christmas morning tradition? Eat an early breakfast and then open all the gifts. Play around and watch Christmas Vacation and A Christmas Story. Eat a late lunch and just play and eat.

3. If you could ask Santa for one, completely decadent wish for yourself, what would it be? To lose 45 pounds. Wouldn't that be wonderful to wake up Christmas Morning with not a thing to wear.

4. How do you make the holidays special without spending any money? Watching movies, playing the Wii, long walks and just playing with the kids.

5. What games did you play with your family growing up? Trivial Pursuit and monopoly.

6. What holiday tradition have you carried on from your own childhood? Opening one gift on Christmas Eve.

7. Where would you go for a Christmas-away-from-home trip? St. Kitts or the kids really want to go to Atlantis.

8. Check out GameStop  and tell us, what are the three top items on your GameStop Wish List this year?  A dsi for the little one, Assassins Creed Brotherhood for the Big Daddy, and a new game for the Wii.

BUT WAIT. Did you think we were done? Oh, you must not know us at all.

We have another stockpile of gifts from GameStop that you can enter to win with our extra entry options.

• Runner Up #1 will receive a XBox 360 250 GB with Kinect and a $250 GameStop gift card.
• Runner Up #2 will receive a Nintendo Red DSi XL Bundle and a $250 GameStop gift card.
• Runner Up #3 will receive a Nintendo Red Wii Bundle and a $250 GameStop gift card.

Extra Entry Options include:

• “Like” Gamestop on Facebook
• Follow @gamestop on Twitter
• Head back to the tippy-top of this post and hit that “Retweet” button.

The deadline to post your meme and comment is Friday, December 10th (same deadline applies for extra entry methods).

Happy Halloween

Here at the Bieber house we are gearing up for Halloween. We are sooo ready for it. The kids are counting how many sleeps until Trick-or-Treat and I'm counting how many sleeps until we can take down the decorations.  We've been super busy making teacher gifts and candy for the kids at our bus stop. And since I'm one of the room Mom's for Keely's 2nd grade class I've also been busy assembling treat bags for 25 kids. Fun Fun!!! Here are some pic's of the fun things we've been doing.

 
I made 4 of these jars for teacher gifts this year. They are full of candy wrapped in stamped avery labels. Yum Yum.

 
Treat bags for the little goblins. I hope they bring a smile to their little faces.

 
Here are the treats we made for the kids at the bus stop. I saw them here and thought they were just too cute. Of course mine didn't turn out as cute as the sample but I'm happy with them anyway. I tried to find those edible eyes but couldn't so I used chocolate chips instead. I think it will work. At least when I showed them to my 4 year he knew right away they were mummies. 

Well Happy Halloween I hope everyone has a spooky night.

 

The Little Man

 

This is Korbin. Today he is 4 years and 11 months old. Holy Smokes how is that possible. Just yesterday I brought him home from the hospital. He was so tiny and so needy. Now he can dress himself (and he has quite the sense of style) and doesn't even need me to hold his hand on the way into preschool anymore. The only thing I still get to do is style his hair and give the occassional back rub when he isn't feeling well. Boy time sure does fly by. I just wanted to share these pic's of my handsome little man.
And while I'm posting cute kid pics here is dash-3. This one isn't so cute to me right now. She is neck deep in the terrible twos and is driving me more and more crazy each day. Granted she looks cute but time isn't flying where she is concerned. Happy Stamping my Friends. Enjoy your weekend.

  

Papertrey September Blog Hop Challenge

 
This month's Challenge was to show off some new skills that you have discovered over the years. Well I'm not sure if this is really a skill or not but here goes. I've learned to use less stuff. I just love simple cards and I think that less is more. I always believed this but after looking at lots of blogs including Maile Belles I've become more firm in this belief. I think her cards are so beautiful and yet oh so simple. And just because they are simple doesn't mean that just anyone can create them. I do believe that simple cards are not easy to create but when you make a good one it is just beautiful.

My next four cards are created after a long break from card making. I don't think I have stamped since July. I've just been so busy with summer and kids that I really haven't been very inspired or had the time. When I saw the wreath set this month I knew this would get me stamping and boy did it. I had so much fun making these cards. I made these in 2 days. That is huge for me. Thanks for stopping by today and Happy Stamping.

Mary

As you can tell I am lovin' this new set from papertrey. Yippie it got me stamping again. 

A Quick Post

Hi Friends,

I'm just posting a quick card today. Things are getting busy with the Holiday weekend coming up.
This card is so simple looking. But as is true with most simple looking cards it did take a few minutes to put together. I hope you enjoy and have a wonderful holiday weekend.

Supplies:

Cardstock: Enchanted Evening and Spring Rain from PTI

Sentiment: A Muse Artstamps

Ink: SU!

Ribbon: SU!

Impression Plate from PTI

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Stamping.

mary

Happy Monday

I hope everyone had a happy monday. We skipped out on the gym today and went to hang at the pool for a couple of hours. We have such a nice pool here at our YMCA. This is my first experience with any YMCA and I can say that I have been very impressed and happy with it. I've been missing out for a long time, since we haven't ever lived anywhere that had access to a YMCA. I've always enjoyed the song and now I'm getting to enjoy the place too. The pool is so conducive to children. It really is amazing. The only down side is the crowd. It is always busy, but just like a round table, there is always room for one more.

I made this card for a recent magazine call and it didn't get picked up and I just loved it so I'll share it here.
I don't need a congratulations on your new home card very often but if I did this is a cute one to send. I made the background paper with the argyle set from PTI. I was a little hesitant to get this set a first, but I'm glad I did. I use it quite a bit. It seems very versatile. Well, thanks for stopping by today. Happy Stamping.

Supplies:

Cardstock: Pure Poppy, White from PTI

Stamps: PTI

Ink: Pure Poppy from PTI

Copic Markers

Twine from PTI

Buttons from PTI

Sentiments from A Muse Artstamps

Have a great day.

mary

Missing Again...

Yep that's me. Long Story short is we had more company, my husband took a week off from work and I got sick again. But I'm feeling better now and I have lots of cards to share this week. This card is one of many rejections from a recent magazine call. I thought it turned out really cute so I'll share it here.
Since I've been not well this card seems perfect. I used the Papertrey Ink cloud die and after I cut it out I ran it through my big shot with the canvas impression plate. I love how those clouds turned out.

Supplies used:

Cardstock: Spring Rain, Enchanted Evening from PTI

Ribbon: Enchanted Evening Saddle Stitch from PTI

Dies: Cloud and Canvas Impression Plate from PTI

Sentiment from A Muse Artstamsp

Ink: Night of Navy from SU!

Rhinestones: Kaiser Scrapbooking

thanks for stopping by today. Happy Stamping

Mary

Gone to Long

Sorry I've been MIA lately. We had a round of sickness at the Bieber house. All the kids got sick, Delaney got a trip to the Doctor out of it, after 3 nights of not sleeping. Then I got sick. Then we had company. And after all that I lost my "Crafty Mojo". So this morning while running with Korbin and Delaney I came up with this card. Nothing fancy just simple me.
Supplies Used:

Lemon Tart cardstock and Patternend Paper from PaperTrey Ink

Lemon Tart ribbon from PaperTrey Ink

Flower stamps from Papertrey Ink

Sentiment from A Muse Artstamps

Ink from Stampin' Up!

Here is a pic from our run this morning. I took this at our turnaround point. One day I'll get the nerve to see if this is a driveway or just a road. this is the nicest trail around these parts. It's an old highway that was closed after the new highway was built. It's great for bikers and runners since it's closed to all other traffic and it's paved and has some shade. Korbin loves to go out here because we get to see all kinds of wildlife. Today we saw some frogs and 1 snake. The bad part was the biting flys were out and they are mean.  Korbin has been training wheel free for about 2 weeks now and man can that boy ride. Today we went a little over 4 miles and he wore flip flops. Imagine how far he could go in real shoes. I'm amazed by him.
Thanks for stopping by today. Happy Stamping.

Mary

Fun Card

I hope everyone had a fun Memorial Day Weekend. We enjoyed our extra day. Our Big Daddy was home so we went to the Aquarium for the day and enjoyed watching the river otters splash and play. Then we enjoyed the evening just taking it easy and sitting in the hot hot sun.

Here is a fun little card that I made over the weekend. I got to make this in between fixing breakfast and getting people dressed and ready to go to the Aquarium. It seems most of my cards take days to complete because just when I sit down to make one someone needs a drink, or a snack, or help with a toy, or help with homework, or a diaper change. But luckly this card was done in less than an hour. And it turned out pretty cute. I love it.

Supplies:

Cardstock: Papertrey Ink

Ink: Night of Navy, Kiwi Kiss, Really Rust from Stampin' Up!

Stamps: Flowers from Papertrey Ink, Sentiment from SU!

Ribbon: SU!

Thanks for stopping by today.

Mary

Coffee Cozy

I've been seeing these coffee cozies all over the web lately and I thought I would try to make one of my own. I love the ones Dawn McVey made here on her blog so this was my starting point. I knew that I wanted to make them stay put really well so I thought I would use the cardboard cozy that your get from your favorite coffee store as a base. After taking it apart I just decided to sew it to my felt. That way the felt would still have grippers on the back to grip the cup. It seems to be working so far. here are my step by step photos.
First I cut my green felt to the same size of the cardboard cozy.

Then I used pinking shears to trim some black felt and pin it all together. You have three layers, the cardboard, the black trim and the green. Now sew it all together.

I liked how it turned out and I think I will use it. I will try to make another one because I know the next one will turn out much better. I'm not the best seamstress, so my lines are crooked and I should have left more tail on the trim to sew together. I only left about 1/2 inch and some of it didn't get stitched together. Oh well I can always try again.

Thanks for looking and Happy STamping.

Mary