Waterfall on the 405

This was taken on my horrendous drive home on the 405 freeway today. That poor car on the other side of the fwy got stuck in the lake beneath that "waterfall" from all the runoff from the road above. It was quite a treacherous drive home, but I'm happy to say I made it home safely after an hour and forty minute drive in these torrential rains! Gonna sit back and unwind a little bit....catch you all later!

sweet little bird

It's quite the stormy week here in Southern CA. We've got "Rain Watch 2010" on all our news channels because rain happens so infrequently here. But I have to say, I enjoy the rain every now and then (not so much driving in it, but if I were home, I would love hearing it tapping on the roof and windows). You see, for those of you not in CA, this is the extent of our winter - can you believe it? The roads weren't bad at all today, though, since lots of people had the day off for Martin Luther King Day. Sadly, I was not one of them. Oh well!

Anyway, I do have a card share for you guys today. It's one of the thank you cards I made to send to our friends and family to thank them for all our fun Christmas gifts. Lucky for me, these were quick and easy to assemble thanks to the 2 Step Bird punch. Can you tell I've taken quite a liking to it? I love the bird and I love the branch. Such a cute punch! Here's a view of the full card: I'm getting a lot of use out of the Sweet Pea Designer Series Paper pad, too. The yellow design print is the reverse of the cute green-and-yellow polka dot print that I used for the birdie's wing. The finished card is 3 1/2" x 5", which SU sells in a pack of 20 which includes envelopes. So handy! Here's the full recipe for you.

{sweet little bird card}
*Stamp Set: Thank You Kindly
*Cardstock: Whisper White, Old Olive, Chocolate Chip, Sweet Pea Designer Series Paper
*Inks: Chocolate Chip
*Accessories: Pinking Hearts Border punch, Extra-Large Two-step Bird punch

Have a great day! Bye for now :)

100,000 hits and January Final Friday Giveaway

Hi all! WooHoo - I just passed my 100,000 blog hits! With that, I thought it would be a great time to announce January's Final Friday giveaway! For those of you who've visited my blog before, you may be familiar with the Freebie Friday giveaways I did last year in 2009. Well, this year, I thought I'd change it up a bit and do one giveaway each month, where I would announce the winner on the LAST Friday of each month. How does that sound? Since I just hit the 100,000 milestone, I'm gonna throw in one of the brand new Sale-a-bration stamp sets! Here's a look at what you could win:

*Scallop Border Punch
*Good Neighbors Stamp Set

Now, in order to play, all you need to do is leave me a comment on this post by midnight Pacific Time on Wednesday, Jan 27th. You have to leave me an email address in the post or a blog URL where I can leave a comment (not just your blogger profile). If there is no way I can get in touch with you from your post, I'm gonna have to pick another winner at random until I have a winner that has all the info. Is that cool? For those of you that are uncomfortable with leaving an email in a post, you can write your info like this: yourname at emailaccount dot com. Hope that helps. The winner will be announced on my blog on Friday, January 29th!

You can leave me a comment about anything, or you can answer this question: What is one thing you want to do in 2010? Mine is to run a marathon. I have yet to register for one, but I am leaning towards doing either the Orange County Marathon or Palos Verdes Marathon, which are both in May. It's a tough schedule to get marathon ready by then, so I really need to be good about training. As a matter of fact, I need to get ready to go out for a 6 mile run this afternoon! I look forward to reading your comments and finding out more about you! Thanks for playing and thanks so much for stopping by!

Monkeying around with Stampin 411's Challenge

Hi all! So glad it's the weekend! Not only did I get to sleep in, but I then proceeded to make some cards while I had my morning coffee. What a great start to the day! I was hankering to do a challenge, so I created 2 cards for the Stampin 411 challenge. How do you like that monkey? Isn't he just too stinkin' cute? He's another stamp from the Fox and Friends stamp set, which I can't seem to get enough of right now! Well, here's a peek at what the sketch looks like and then I'll show you the cards I made. I like the simplicity of the layout and the diagonal background gives you a lot of options to play around with colors and patterns. Here's the full cards I made - basically the same card, but the focal points are completely different. My Monkey card is more kiddish or can even go masculine, while the Sweet Pea is definitely a girly card. Here they are:
I had so much fun playing with a bunch of my new toys from the Occasions Mini! :) Here are the recipes:

{Monkey Card}
All supplies Stampin'Up!
*Stamps: Fox&Friends, Cheap Talk
*Cardstock: Chocolate Chip, Whisper White, Sweet Pea Designer Series Paper Stack
*Inks: Chocolate Chip
*Accessories: Old Olive Satin Ribbon, Scallop Trim Border, 2 Step Bird Punch, Basic Jumbo Grommets, Sweet Pea stitched felt

{Sweet Pea Birthday Card}
All supplies Stampin'Up! except for the twine
*Stamps: Well Scripted
*Cardstock: Chocolate Chip, Whisper White, Sweet Pea Designer Series Paper Stack
*Inks: Melon Mambo
*Accessories: Old Olive and Pretty In Pink Satin Ribbon, Playground Button, Sweet Pea stitched felt

Thanks for stopping by today - have a great weekend!

Mobile blogging - take 3

Ok. I'm hoping that the third time's the charm. Thanks to my friend, Rachel, I discovered the BlogPress app on my iPhone. The cool thing is that it's developed especially for Blogger and it's FREE! So, the true test is...will it post pictures? Here goes. This is the picture I attemped to post the other day:





These are the quick cards I made using the I {heart} Hearts stamp set from SU! This picture looks clear on my phone, but apologies if it looks blurry on the blog ;). I'll be excited if the picture posts! So here goes. Would love to hear what you think! By for now.

Cute little giraffe

Wow - can you believe I got to do a little bit of stamping tonight?! I feel like I've held out on crafts for way too long already for this year, so I decided to just carve out some time and do it. My fabulously fun goodies I ordered from the SU! Occasions Mini Catalog have been sitting idle in the box just waiting to be used...so I brought them out to play as you can see :) I'm loving Stampin'Up!'s new acrylic blocks and rubber stamp line they've introduced. How do you like the cute and sweet giraffe stamp? Isn't it adorable? I used the Vintage Labels Sale-a-bration stamp set for the sentiment. Now, these stamp sets are also available on the wood blocks, so for those of you that prefer the wood mount, you can still have that, too! How about another look at the card: The paper is from the Designer Series Paper Pad that's also in the Occasions mini and I have to say the papers are just scrumptuous! I'll even say it's one of my all time favorite paper packs that SU has put together so far. I used the Pinking Hearts border punch to step it up a little and finished it off with a button and twine. What do you think? Hope you like it. I thought I'd share a picture of what the acrylic stamps come in {BTW - how cute is THIS Fox & Friends stamp set!}:

It's a DVD sized case with all the images on the front. Inside, you can adhere the rubber stamps in the case, so you can keep all your stamps contained nice and neat in a low profile sort of case. Pretty cool. And, I'm not just saying that. I hope I get to stamp more this weekend!

Stay tuned for my new monthly Final Friday giveaway...I'll be sharing it soon and will announce the winner on the Final Friday of each month! Catch up with you guys in a bit ;) Bye for now!

Oops...here's the picture

I guess my first blog post was a true test. I discovered that I need to select the picture first, then compose my email. It's a good learning! On a positive note, I've discovered a new way to post! Yay!

Edited: Hmm..the picture didn't come through. I'll see what I can do to fix that. In the meantime, I'll stick to camera pictures {sadly, I don't have any ready to go for you guys right now..gonna try and work some in later this week!} Good night for now...it's late for me!