Penguin Gift Bags

I'm back with another Penguin project we made for Khloë's birthday party. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We had so much fun watching Khloë open her presents. Of course one of her favorite things was a box. She sat inside it while her Uncle pushed her around like a car. She was all giggles. Another favorite of hers was my sisters cat. I wish I had gotten a picture. My sisters cat is the most docile thing I've ever seen. He's this big boy cat that walks around the house with clothes on. Khloë pulled on his clothes, pet him (not very softly) and put her fingers up his nose. He just laid there and let her do it. Then she decided to ride him like a pony. Luckily I was close by and kept crazy kitty from getting smooshed. As I pulled Khloë off of him he still just laid there! Then she wanted to give him kisses right on the big ol' kitty smacker. No problem. Nothing bothered him. I'll try to have my sister send me a picture of him so I can post it.
Back to my project of the day.

Sorry for the poor quality of the picture. I took it with my cell phone and forgot to get one at the party with my real camera. I used Creat a Critter for the penguin to match all the other decorations. I ordered the skinny bags from Stampin' Up after someone on the Cricut Message Board let me know where to get them. Love them! The jelly beans are from the Jelly Belly Factory. We're lucky enough to have one in our city. Any and every kind of jelly bean you could ever want. They even have a new flavor called baby wipes. Trust me - don't try it. They taste exactly the way you think they would and you can't get the clean baby powder taste out of your mouth for the rest of the day. Not good.

Here is another picture with some more penguin bags and some that say Khloë on them. I got really tired of making penguins after awhile, even though I think they are the cutest little critters ever. I used Hello Kitty Font to cut out Khloë and Art Philosophy to cut out the background to attach the name.
Have a wonderful day. Cindy

Glitter Ornaments and a Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone. I wanted to come by real quick and share a picture of my Christmas ornaments I made for the family. I used the floor wax method and Martha Stewart glitter. Once that was done I used my Cricut to cut out everyones name with vinyl.

I used Quarter Note for the font on the girls names. For the boys names I used A Child's Year. Super easy to do and a fun project for kids.
I orded the wooden dowel tree off the internet. I think I will change out the star and use the stand year round for the holidays. Change to a bunny and it's an instant Easter tree. A clover and it's St. Patricks Day!

I'm not sure if you can see the little envelopes on some of the ornaments or not. I cut them out using the Walk in my Garden Cricut cartridge. I'll add a little something inside for the kiddos.

 

 

A little glue dot on the top to keep it closed and then tied to the bulb.

Happy and safe Holidays to everyone. Cindy

Birthday Cake

First thing I have to say is a great big THANK YOU to my sister for making such an awesome cake for my little grand-daughters first birthday. She used the same penguin from the Create A Critter cartridge and tied in all the same colors as the other decorations.

The cake was so cute I didn't want to cut it. In the end we took the top layer off and cut the bottom layer. It was as yummy as it looked. Over the next few days I'm hoping I can post some pictures of the other decorations and favors. Somehow I didn't take close-up pictures of some of the things at the party so I'm hoping my daughter in law has some on her camera. Check back later. Cindy

Penguins everywhere!

I have made so many penguins lately that it's time for a break. They are very cute, but those little feet and beaks are torture to glue on one by one. I thought I would share the way I put my pieces together after cutting them out with my Cricut.

I was cutting out 15 penguins at a time. I like to leave all of my pieces on my mat while I work so that I don't lose any of those tiny feet or beaks.

You can see in the picture above that I leave the back layer of the penguins attached to the mat and glue the other layers right on top. This helps hold the pieces still while I work and nothing gets lost.

And here are some of the finished penguins.

We used penguins for toppers on the party favors, on toothpicks for finger foods, the banner that I already showed and also for the birthday cake. I was very pleased with everything matching and because we're having such cold weather lately the penguins with their cute little scarves are a perfect theme.

Birthday Banner

I just have to say 'I LOVE MY CRICUT!' Before having my Cricut I would have never been able to make such pretty personalized things. I'll admit that I spend a lot of money on my Cricut habit, but it also saves me a lot of money. Take for example this banner. If I wanted a birthday banner before having my Cricut I would have bought one. It would have cost me more money and it wouldn't have looked as nice. It also wouldn't be personalized with Khloë's name or have the perfect pink color and her favorite penguins.

I still need to add some more tulle and make it a little fluffier (LOL), but you get the idea. This was my very first time making rosettes too. I think I'm hooked. It was so fun. I want  to add rosettes to everything now.

For the font I used the Monogram setting on the Gypsy Font. I really like the swirly cut-outs in the letters so that you can see the background color. The scallop triangle banners were cut using Birthday Bash. After cutting the pink triangle pieces I ran them through my cuttlebug and embossed them with dots.

Khloë likes penguins and they are the theme for her birthday. I found the cute little penguin for her banner on the Create a Critter cartridge. One of my favorite cartridges. There's a critter for every occasion.

Next I'll be making some party favors, but first I need to make a trip to the Jelly Belly Factory for some pink, black and white jelly beans. Have a great weekend everyone. Cindy

Family Layout

Another Thanksgiving layout today. I really like this new paper. Now I just need to get my pictures developed.

Once again I used the Quarter Note cartridge for the font and Kate's Kitchen to fill in the color. It's so nice to be able to use my Imagine to flood fill my letters with the perfect color. I will be doing this alot now that I have the hang of it.

Thankful Layout

I am so happy I finally got my Cricut Imagine replacement from Provo Craft. I wanted to try it out right away and make sure it works. It does and I am very relieved. I hope it continues to work because this machine is awesome. For my layout I used some of the paper I got at the Scrapbook Expo. I love the colors for Thanksgiving. I used my Cricut Quarternote cartridge for the font and the Imagine cartridge called Kates Kitchen to fill in the title with color. The colors and prints on Kate's Kitchen work perfectly for Thanksgiving.

Birthday Invitation

First off I would like to send out a huge thank you to my Circle friend Linda, AKA Tulip Collector. She was so kind to send me some vellum and pink tulle so that I could start working on my little Khloë's birthday invitations. I love how they came out.

The theme for her party will be pink, black and white with penguins. I was so excited when I was able to get this picture of her with her favorite penguin toy.

Now I just need to get a bunch of copies of the picture printed at Costco and start assembling. Then I'll need to start on some party favors and decorations. Thank you for stopping by and taking a look.

Life is good layout

Well, I still haven't started on my Thanksgiving decorations or my Christmas cards, but I do have another layout today.

Does this layout have enough color for you? LOL. I used more Echo Park paper. The title was cut from the Cricut cartridge Graphically Speaking at 2.45".

Oh Happy Day layout and a winner

Happy Monday. I have a new layout today and a winner of my blog candy. First I'll share my layout. The paper is Echo Part and the title was cut from Don Juan at 4".

And now on to my Blog Candy winner. Picked by Random.org was Dedrah! Thank you so much for following my blog and the nice comments.

Dedrah send me your address so that I can get your prize package to you.

See you back here soon. Cindy

Blog Make-over

***Update at the end of this post***

I am loving my new blog make-over. I had set it up myself awhile back, but then blogger had problems and I removed most of the graphics. It has been pretty plain for months and to tell you the truth I was very tired of it. Then I came across a blog make-over post on another blog and decided it was time to have something done. I contacted Chris at http://chatterscene-mom.blogspot.com/ and it was the best thing I could have done. Chris is awesome. She is so patient and helpful. When I started this venture I had no idea what I wanted, but Chris helped me through every step of picking graphics and colors. She did an amazing job and I highly recommend her if you're looking for a fresh look on your blog.

Check back with me later today to see a new layout and also to enter to win some blog candy in honor of my new beautiful blog. I'll have all the details later. Thank you for stopping by. Cindy

***Update***
I wanted to share my layout today. I'm still using the same papers I got from the scrapbook expo. For the title I used my Cricut cartridge Cupcake Wrappers. I think I'm going to use this cartridge for a lot of titles. I really like how it came out.
I wasn't able to take a picture of the blog candy before it got dark, but I will be picking a winner on Sunday night. So far in the candy pile I have some Creative Memories photo splits, some alphabet stickers, eyelets, buttons and a magnetic holder. I'll try to get a picture put up tomorrow. All you have to do is be a follower  and leave me a comment about what you think of the new look for my blog.
My layout

Have a wonderful weekend.
Cindy

Happy Friday and another Layout

Well, we finally made it to Friday again. Tomorrow is my Daughter in Laws birthday so after I get this post finished I need to get her card done.
I really like the way this layout came out, but I'm afraid I didn't take any pictures of our trip to the county fair this year. I know I have a couple on my cell phone, but they might not work. I might have to use these pages for another time.

I do have one tip for you. Do you see the strips of paper in different colors in the middle of the page? All of those strips were on the end of each piece of paper where it has the name of the paper company and the name of the kit. There are also these little strips to show a sample of the paper. I cut all of those off and used them. They are the perfect size for stuff like this. Hope you have enjoyed my layouts this week. I probably won't have much time to craft this weekend, but I'll be back soon. Take care, Cindy

Let The Sun Shine In

Am I really back with another layout? You bet I am. I'm thinking that after I make as many layouts as I can with this paper I will use the scraps to make some cards. I still have a few more layouts to make first though.

Looking at these papers and the layouts I'm making, it makes me realize that summer is almost over. Our warm days are coming to an end. I'm really not ready for winter and rain. Cold is definitely not my friend! Okay, enough of that kind of talk. Back to summer pages.

That cloud paper is probably my favorite. I could use that stuff all the time. The stickers are great too and I don't usually use stickers. They're nice and thick though, kinda like cardstock, but sticky. Even the photo corners are stickers that came in the kit.
One more layout tomorrow and then I'll have to evaluate my paper situation to see if I have enough for more layouts or if I'll start my cards. Stay tuned.

Summer Fun layout

I'm back with another layout using my new Echo Park paper. This particular paper pack is called Summer Days and it couldn't be more perfect. Well, maybe if I had more of it! The colors and patterns are so fun. Every page is double sided giving me double the options. It is a little hard picking which side to use, but by using pieces I can use both!

Doesn't it make you wanna go out for an ice cream cone? We just had a new ice cream shop open by our house. Maybe I'll have to check it out and take my camera.
Check back tomorrow for another layout. Cindy

Love my new paper!

I cannot tell you how much I love this paper. It's so bright and cheery. I put this layout together in no time at all. It was so easy because the paper is so inspiring. I didn't even use my Cricut (yet). I will probably cut out a title for the top left corner when I pick out the pictures I want to use.

What do you think? When I look at this layout it makes me smile. Am I just weird? LOL.

I will definitely be back in a day or two with another layout using this paper. I'm glad I got two packs. Catch ya later.

Sacramento Scrapbook Expo

Hello. I hope everyone had a great weekend. It certainly went by too fast and now we're back at Sunday night already. Ready or not, back to work tomorrow.
Anyway, I was able to go to the Sacramento Scrapbook Expo on Saturday morning. I usually go both days, but I had to work on Friday. It's probably a good thing though. Now I have to pay for everything I bought..... that I didn't need!
I was only at the Expo for a short time because afterwards I was going to look at houses with my Daughter in Law. I love to look at houses so it was a great day for me. We saw some nice houses and some not so nice houses. One of them didn't even have carpeting in it. I guess it had good "bones", but that was about it. LOL.
Back to my Expo shopping. Wanna see what I got? Keep in mind I didn't NEED anything. I was hoping to see a Scrap n Easel in person, but didn't find one. So here is what I bought:

Isn't it pretty? I found out when I flew to Las Vegas for the Circle Meet-up and Crop that I needed some scrapbook luggage that could fly with me. I already had plenty of scrapbook bags, but the only one with wheels was too big to check at the airport unless I wanted to pay extra, which I didn't. This set can be used together the way I have it in the picture or can be used separately depending on how much 'stuff' I need to take with me.  Here is a picture showing the front organizers open:

Both bags have a drop down front with dividers for paper or layout kits. There are also loops to hold pens. I can hardly wait to go to another crop so that I can pack it all up.

I also got some paper. I REALLY didn't need paper, but it was such a good price :-) I got these SEI paper packs for $4 and $5 each.

Aren't they gorgeous? You should be seeing lots of layouts in the near future.  I also bought some Echo Park paper kits. These are my favorite and I'll be using these first. Such fun colors.

So that's it. Some paper and scrap bags. I'm gonna go to my room now and get started on some layouts. Check back to see what I come up with.
Cindy

Pretty in Pink layout

Happy Friday. Any plans this weekend? Tomorrow is the local scrapbook expo and I'm hoping to go. Today I'm taking my Imagine to Fed ex to be shipped back to Provo Craft. Hopefully it won't take them too long to send me out a replacement. Then I have some shopping to do. Just household stuff to buy today. Tomorrow will be the fun shopping.
For now I finally have my layout finished. This one took me forever because other stuff kept coming up. (like my Imagine not working)

These are pictures of little Khloe when she was just 2 months old. It's hard to believe how fast she's growing. I hope everyone has a good weekend. I'm gonna keep this post short so I can get my errands done. See you back here soon.

My Imagine must go back

I'm so sad. I had just decided to do the updates for my Gypsy and my Imagine so that I could transition to using my Imagine full time instead of my Expression. I did the Gypsy update but the Imagine wouldn't connect. Then my Imagine totally stopped accepting paper. I called customer support at Provo Craft and a very nice gentleman tried to help me. He walked me through trying to update my Imagine with no luck. He then told me I would have to try to do a system restore and update in "safe-mode". Ugh. He got me started and then let me off the phone because he said it could take over an hour to finish. Well, an hour later it still hadn't even gotten the first of three steps started. It was just sitting there refusing to accept anything from my computer. I will have to call PC back when I get home today and probably need to send my Imagine back for a replacement.

I've had my Imagine since March, but I've never done an update on it before. I've only used it a handful of times and only with the Imagine cartridges. Now that I need to update I find out it doesn't work. I'm sure glad I didn't get rid of those huge boxes. Hopefully everything will work out and not take too long.

Have a wonderful week. I have a layout almost finished to post, but wasn't able to finish it last night due to my Imagine fiasco. See you soon, Cindy

Halloween at 2 months

I'm back with a layout. It's been a little while since I've gotten a layout done using PageMaps. So far just a boy layout though. I'll have to work on a girl version tomorrow.

Here is the sketch:

And here is the completed layout with pictures of my son at 2 months old (almost 20 years ago).

Oh how I wish I had a better camera back then. It's hard to believe so much time has passed since those baby days. I used the Cricut Happy Hauntings cartridge for all of the cuts except the scallop under the pictures. For that I used the Art Philosophy cartridge. The papers I used were all from my stash that I've had around for a few years. I'm still trying to use what I have and not buy any paper. It makes it a little harder to scrapbook when I don't have the exact color I want, but I'm making it work.
See you next time. Cindy

Monday Morning After

Good morning. I just wanted to stop in and say 'hi'. Monday sure did come too fast. The weekend was a lot of fun and I packed a lot into it for a change. Unfortunately no crafting due to the fact that I wasn't home much.
Friday night my Mom called and asked if hubby and I would like to meet her and her boyfriend at Cache Creek Casino for lunch. It's about an hour away for us and 2 hours for them. We didn't have anything important planned and I had never been there, so we decided to go. I played a little on the penny slot machines, but once I lost $30 I was done. (that could have been a cartridge!)LOL. I didn't feel too bad about it because when we signed up for our players card we each got a free $25 credit. I used mine to buy lunch for hubby and I and then I got a blended coffee before we left... all on the card. I'm justifying my $30 loss as I really only lost $5 after lunch and coffee. Heehee.
On the way home from the casino we took a little detour to find a Rite Aid store. I had no idea how hard it was to find those stores. I had the weekly ad with me and there were some pretty good sales and coupons. We ended up getting two nice size bottles of Listerine, two deoderants and two good sized bottles of body wash. They were both bonus size and one of them had an additional trial size deoderant with it. All of that for just over $5.
On Sunday I drove out to see the kiddos and baby Khloe.

We started out by going to a dog show. It was small and not too many dogs, but it was fun. Khloe loved all the dogs until a pair of gigantic Saint Bernards came up and one of them gave her a kiss. They were so mellow. The one that gave her a kiss just leaned in real slow, nuzzled Khloe and then gave her the sweetest little kiss on the cheek. Other than being absolutely huge (I think it's head was bigger than Khloe's entire body) it was the sweetest thing. They were so gentle. Khloe thought they were a little too big for her taste though. I wish I had my camera out at the time. It would have been a great picture.
After the dog show we looked at some model houses. One of my favorite things to do is look at model houses. They are always so beautifully decorated. Whenever I'm in the mood to paint or change something at home I go look at models to get ideas. Khloe had a lot of fun checking everything out as well.

I have a lot of pictures of my son at model houses when he was young. Now I'll have to scrapbook some pictures of Khloe at the models. She's such a good sport. Look at that cute little pose!

I'll be back soon with some layouts. Hopefully I'll get some craft time after work today. Have a great week. Cindy

Happy Friday and More Layouts

I am so glad it's Friday. How about you? Any plans for the weekend? It's supposed to be nice weather for us so we're going to head out to a local dog show on Sunday. It should be fun. Haven't been to one in a few years.
Tomorrow I'm hoping to have a little extra time in my day for some cleaning and organizing. I've been getting some pretty good deals with coupons lately (not quite as good as the people on tv though) so I need to figure out where I'm going to store all of my goodies. Speaking of good deals, Cricut.com has a special right now when you buy a paper trimmer you get a free Yourstory machine. Yep, got it. Gonna give it away for Christmas. They also had a free Cupcake Lite cartridge when you spend $40. Got that too. I just wish I could buy crafty stuff for everyone on my Christmas list. LOL.
So I figured since I will probably not be crafting all weekend I should get my Vegas mini finished and posted. I still need to add some journaling and I'll probably add more pages at a later time, but for now it's done. Here are the last pages:

And the back cover looks like this:

I am so ready to go back. Of course I'm really looking forward to a Circle meet-up in Hawaii too. LOL. Have a good weekend.

My forgotten post

Good evening. I'm home and finally able to post more pages for my Vegas mini. When I saw these mini playing cards I fell in love with them. Aren't they adorable?

Once again it was tough to pick out the pictures to add to these pages. I think these pictures are a good representation of the fun I had though. The picture on the left side was taken at the Friday crop. The picture on the top right was taken at the lunch on Thursday with my California Circle sisters. That's us again in the bottom picture. A little dress-up fun with the King!

Just a few pages left. I might still add some more pages after I finish the ones I have, but for now I'm just going to fill the pages that came in the kit. See you back here tomorrow. Cindy

More Layout Pages

Wow, Monday again already? The weekends go by way too fast. Luckily I was able to get these two pages finished before I had to be back to work.

This mini scrapbook kit is making my album super easy to assemble. The shapes of the pages and the papers are wonderful. I inked all of the edges with black ink before glueing everything down. Then I added my pictures. Here are the two pages with pictures.

I don't have the binding rings in yet because I'm waiting to punch the holes when all the pages are done. You can see in the bottom picture on the left hand side that my hubby found his way to the Circle dinner. Of course he was the life of the party. I DID warn the girls before he showed up! Of course he was his normal sweet interactive self. He even bought a round of drinks for everyone. See you next time with a couple more pages. Cindy

Vegas Mini page 2 and 3

It's so nice to be crafting again. Yesterday was a wonderful relaxing craft day. I almost got distracted in the morning and started cleaning, but we'll have none of that! LOL. I've started to use coupons for our groceries lately and it has become very addicting. The money I save by using coupons goes into a jar. I keep track of how much I save during each shopping trip. I haven't decided what I'll spend it on, but I'm sure it will be something to do with crafting. Maybe I'll be able to go on the Cricut Cruise and I can use my coupon money for extra spending. Now that would be awesome.

Okay, back to scrapbooking.... I have page 2 and 3 of my Vegas mini today.

Here are the two pages together with pictures. Going back and looking at these pictures makes me miss my new friends. I'm really looking forward to when there is another Cricut Circle function that I can attend.

See all those smiles? I really didn't get anything accomplished during our Circle Scrap, but it sure was fun spending the day with these girls. Angie was our host and what a great host she was. She kept us busy with Bingo and other games. We decorated candy tubes and had a delicious lunch. We also had a special cupcake treat made by Bethany's hubby.
Later at dinner (yummy Italian food) we chatted some more and had yet another delicious dessert made by Bill, Bethanys husband. It was one of the best tasting cakes I've ever had. Unfortunately I don't even know what kind it was. I'll have to ask her. Maybe she'll even share the recipe.
See you back here soon, Cindy

Vegas Mini Album

Happy Saturday everyone. I finally got back into my scraproom today. When I was at the Cricut Circle Scrap party in Las Vegas I bought a Vegas Mini Album kit. I opened it up and dumped the contents onto my desk.

I then got started on the assembly. My biggest fear is that I have way too many pictures for a mini album. It will be tough narrowing them down. I may have to add more pages.

The front cover looks like this once the papers are adhered to the chipboard.

I chose a picture from the Cricut Circle lunch for the front of my mini. I had a great time meeting all the girls and having some relaxing time to chat. Oh, lunch was very yummy too.

That's it for today, but I'm going to keep working and I'll have page two ready for posting tomorrow.  Be sure to come back and check it out.

Cindy