Celebrating My Mum

Last week my mum & I celebrated her birthday with a trip to our favorite craft store, Pat Catan's, & lunch out at Montana's Rib & Chop House - yum!

This is the card I made her, using the retired Stampin' Up Fairyland stamp set & lots of sparkles:

Here's a layout I completed over the weekend.  This is my mum & my daughter at our Historical Society Tea in the spring of 2011.  The tea featured a fashion show of historic clothing through the decades, so my mum decorated her sponsored table with shoes.  The shoes pictured on the layout were my grandmother's baby shoes.  The teapot on the layout is from Cricut's Once Upon a Princess cartridge.

My mum is an artist, and I'm so thankful to her for always encouraging me & my daughter to be creative.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Hugs,
Marcy

Hooray, It's a New Year!

I'm so glad it's a new year.  Like so many of you, I'm looking forward to a fresh slate to start 2013. 

One of my goals is to schedule more time in my craft room.  So many of my projects last year were done in a rush at the last minute - so late, in fact, that I didn't even get pictures for my blog.  I've started working on this goal over the past few days by spending time in my craft room reorganizing and purging my stash.  I always feel more inspired by a clean, neat space, and looking through my supplies with fresh eyes made me want to start making stuff!

Here are a couple of cards I made this fall that I didn't get a chance to share here yet:

Birthday card using SU! Owl Together Now & DCWV's Green Stack

First day of school card using SU! Storybook Friends & Foofala papers

Thanks so much for sticking with me & here's to a fun, creative 2013!

Hugs,
Marcy

A Tale of Two Tails...or why I've not been crafting much lately

I grew up with a menagerie of various four-legged critters - cats & dogs of all ages and breeds, a bunny, some newts - even a skunk (de-scented, of course!)  My family has a long, multi-generational history of animal rescue.  So it made absolute sense to me that my husband & I would adopt a rescue when we were ready for a dog.  Gracie was a very sweet Labrador mix, and the whole family was heartbroken when we lost her to congenital liver failure a year & a half ago.  It took us awhile to decide that we were ready for a dog again and thought we had made the best, most informed, deliberate decision when we brought Finnegan home in July.   

This is the reason I want to share this story - sometimes rescue adoptions don't work out, through no fault of anybody's, the adopters', the dog's, the rescue's.  Sometimes it's just not the right fit.  About five weeks after we adopted Finn, we started to notice signs that he was becoming too overprotective of our family.  We live in very close proximity with a lot of other people, and with young children, we have a lot of young visitors to our home.  I spent a lot of time (much of it in tears) talking to a dog behaviorist, my mum (who's rescued and fostered a lot of dogs), and the owner of the rescue.  The consensus was that Finn was making the work of protecting us his full-time job.  We tried various behavior & environment modifications with little improvement.  With very heavy hearts, my husband & I returned Finn to the rescue.  As we turned him over to his new foster mom, we noticed a complete change in his body language.  We could see him physically relax, and he seemed to release a lot of pent-up stress.  This transformation, along with the understanding of the rescuers, assured us that we had made the right decision in bringing him back. 

One thing we had learned from our experience with Finnegan, though, was that we are indeed a dog family.  Our hearts and home were still open to providing a loving place for a rescue dog.  Every day I searched Petfinder looking for that special one.  Then checking a local rescue's Facebook page, I saw a listing for Labrador Retriever mix puppies.  A Lab would be a good fit for our active family.  We had experience with the breed and getting a puppy would enable us to properly socialize and train it.  We went to meet the puppies, filled out the application, and came home with this little guy, 8 week-old Plinker:

It's been quite a ride raising a puppy again, a very joy-filled ride.  Plinker is 14 weeks old now and full of energy and curiosity.  He's intelligent and is quickly learning basic commands. He loves fetch and taking long walks, especially when there are a lot of college girls about to fuss over him. :)

There's good news about Finn too.  He was adopted and has found his forever home!  We are so grateful to both rescues for giving dogs and people their much-needed second chance.

Hugs,
Marcy

Page Counter Using Cricut & Cinch

My son's second grade class is quite a group of voracious readers.  They've been keeping track of how many pages they read, and so I made them this counter to keep track of their pages as a whole class.  The count for September was more than 6,000 pages!

I used the Cricut cartridges Create a Critter for the bookworm & Base Camp for the letters and numbers.  The patterned paper is K&Company's Hopscotch. 

I love doing these little projects for the kids' school.  The teachers & students are always so appreciative.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Hugs,
Marcy

Robot Party!

For his 7th birthday, Ronan decided to celebrate with a robot party at our house. 

I made the invitations using a digi stamp from Maureen Manning at Mo's Digital Pencil and the sentiment is from Cricut's Robot Party cartridge.  I colored the image with Copic Sketch markers.

We played "pin the gears on the robot."  A game I made using a piece of poster board, a variety of cardstock, and various parts & pieces from the Robot Party cartridge, as well as some different shapes from my punches.

These are the cupcake toppers I made, also from the Robot Party cartridge.  I layered the circle designs, then added lollipops to the backs with glue dots.  We thought the sparkly silver sugar crystals looked "roboty."  

The kids all seemed to have a good time.  It was pretty hot, as it tends to be on July 13th, so I kept them well supplied with freezie pops and cold juice pouches in between games of Red Light - Green Light (with the twist of having to walk like a robot) and Robot Knock Down.

Now we have to switch "gears" and start thinking about what to do for Shannon's Medieval-themed birthday party in October.  :)

Hugs,
Marcy

My Heart & Time Have Been Stolen...

By this big, sweet, scruffy guy:

In the spring of last year our 12 year-old lab mix passed away, and we determined that we weren't going through that again.  Then, about a month ago, I saw this dear furry face listed with a rescue owned by one of my mum's friends, and I just couldn't get his face out of my mind.  Within less than a week, we went from not being sure about owning a dog again to it's hard to remember what things were like without him.

So please, meet Finnegan, our 2 year-old Irish Wolfhound mix. 

He is well loved & happy to be home!

Hugs,
Marcy

Kids' Stuff!

I love crafting for my kids and their friends.  The images are so fun and the colors are bright and cheerful.  It's just good, happy, playful stuff!

This is a birthday card for our little next door neighbor, using Stampin' Up's Under the Big Top and Toy Box (retired).

A birthday card for my son's classmate, using Unity's Cuter than Most set and a sentiment from Stampin' Up's Favorite Teddy Bear set (retired).

I tucked this card in my 6-year-old son's backpack.  Papers are Cosmo Cricket's Togetherness, and the sentiment is from Stampin' Up's Three Little Words set.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Hugs,
Marcy