Hula Anya & More

I have been a busy girl today! I made a set of baby thank-you cards for my friend's daughter-in-law, who is having a little girl soon. Here are a couple of those:

Baby Bella Pea by Stamping Bella
Bella baby buggy bumper, also by Stamping Bella

I've also been working on sets of cards as end-of-year teacher gifts for Trevor's teachers, clinician, and principal, who have been so extremely awesome to us this year. Here's a few - I can't show you too many, because they may be reading my blog and I don't want to ruin the surprise! :o)

This one is from the "Hope & Grace" set by the Greeting Farm

Botanical Blooms by Stampin' Up!

This one I just kind of threw together, and I actually really like the results!


And finally, these 2 were for the Club Anya "I Wanna Be Just Like..." challenge - I used Hula Anya for both of them:

Hope you enjoyed! Peace!

Jeremy's birthday party

Yesterday was Jeremy's 38th birthday and we had a party/cookout. It was a LOT of fun. Here are some of the pics.

Timmy stopped by before work, so I had to make him pose for a picture with me before he left, of course:

My friend Tardy in the red - he brought the "coo-coo juice" - this is him mixing it up:

Kerri-Lynn and me:
Missy and Dan:
Trevor and Dan - I can't believe Trev is actually taller than him!

Jeremy - the birthday boy!

Me and Missy:

Me and Holly:

My sis Shell and me:

Me and my friend Michael Francis - hee hee:

Angela and me:

Me and Dan - it's starting to get dark out now and we've been drinking Tardy's coo-coo juice for hours... we had a LOT of fun!
This is my bro-in-law Jay, my sister's hubby, and me:
This is my friend Tardy and me - we get more affectionate as the night goes on.... :o)
Missy and me kissing Sean - I have been friends with Sean since we were about 5:

Another of my BFF's, Kev and me:

Kev and me again - I love this picture, maybe it's because it's one of the few pictures that you can tell I actually have eyes:

Me and my girl Cassidy:

Jeremy and Angela at the end of the night - ROFLMAO - a picture speaks a thousand words:

Happy Birthday Jeremy!

Happy Birthday to my hubby Jeremy! Today is his birthday, and we are having a big combination birthday/Memorial Day party/cookout for him. It starts in just about 2 hours. So what am I doing? Stamping, of course. hee hee I spent all day yesterday cleaning and getting ready for the party, and I just HAD to stamp this morning because tonight is the deadline for Miss Anya's "I want to be just like..." challenge. Here is my submission - you like?

Sorry - Ian is in hiding while my card is out for publication! He'll be back 30 days after the publication date! Thanks! :)

This was just another one I made while playing with my new rubbah, I had bought one Ian and one Anya, along with Hope & Grace (I LOVE the Greeting Farm stamps!!):

And this is one of the other stamps I just got, this is Hula Anya:
Hope you all have a fun, safe weekend! I am off to par-tay! :o) Peace.

Lazy weekend!

Saturday was beautiful outside, Jeremy planted a few tomato plants in our garden and did yardwork. I ran errands in the morning after meeting friends for breakfast, and then I watched him. hee hee Here he is petting the neighbor's dog, Sam. I am not a dog person, but Sam is a really good dog. I like Sam. Sam likes attention, as you can see:

Now here's Trevor playing with him, shaking hands:
And Sam appears to be smiling in this one, LOL:

This is what I bought Jeremy for his birthday gift. It's an outdoor fire pit. I think I am more excited about it than he is. hee hee I also bought him a ticket to see the Dave Mathews Band at Fenway Park next week, too, so he can't complain. :o)

OK my plant/nature friends - this pretty plant is growing in one of the corners of my house - help! What is it? I like it, I just want to know what it is!

Here are the flowers close-up:

Now on to the cards! Here is a chance to win some yummy blog candy at Passion for Crafts. Not only do I like her blog candy, but I love her style, too.

Here are a couple of cards I made this weekend. This is using Elzybells Knight & Princess stamp:

This one is using my favorite Ketto, MissMatch. I placed an order for some Kettos and a few other things at Stamping Bella and I cannot wait for them to arrive, it's like Christmas!

That's all for now! Peace.

Birds and blog candy

I love our yard. My house is surrounded by trees, and we see all kinds of birds in them. I hear owls all the time, I see hawks, cardinals, robins, chickadees, and lots more. I've never really been all that interested in birds until recently. I think they are fascinating and beautiful! One day, Jeremy called me at work to tell me that he had hung a birdfeeder in the pine tree right outside our kitchen window, and that it "sounded like the Congo out there." LOL He took a picture and I think they are American Goldfinch:

Anyone? Am I right? LOL

Then I was sitting on my porch one day, hoping to catch a photo of something good, when this pair of cardinals came long. I had no idea that female cardinals look so... well, not like cardinals at all! It was so interesting watching them - they are always together, and the male hovers above her, hopping from branch to branch while she sits there chowing away on birdseed. LOL You go, girl!

Here she is, a little suspicious of me, but still not disturbed enough to stop eating. hee hee

Now even closer - hey! Is she freaking posing for me? Isn't she pretty?

And here's the male, watching over her protectively. Awww... ain't love grand?

Now on to the stamping stuff! Here's a cute and quick graduation card that I made with one of the first digital images I've purchased, Grad Anya. Isn't she adorable?

There are so very many blogs out there, and my bookmarked list of "favorites" was growing so long, that I had to make a separate list of "most favorites"... hee hee FionaJ Cards is one of my most favorite! She's giving away some yummy blog candy, so check it out.

That's all for today. Peace!

Cassidy & Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day! This is the card that I made for my mom, using Stamping Bella's MissMatch Ketto, thanks to the generosity of one of my fellow SCS Wish RAK members (my own Missmatch Ketto is on its way to me... yippee!):

Now I promised I'd come back to brag about Cassidy after my previous bragging post about Trevor. ;o) Here she is, 14 years old, this is on the back porch of gram's house this morning:

Cassidy was my adventurous baby. She started talking and walking long before she turned one. We had to take her crib down when she was about a year and a half old, because she kept jumping out of it and she ended up knocking her front tooth up into her gums (it came back down on its' own fine)!!! People always told me that boys were the ones who ran you ragged - not in my family! Cassidy was always the one taking risks - she had staples in her scalp twice before she was 3 after climbing on furniture. We bought gates - she climbed over them. Trevor would be about 4 and Cassidy 2, and he'd come to me, "Mama - Cassidy is on the bureau again." I'd go in the bedroom and there she'd be, proud as a peacock, sitting on top of the bureau grinning at me.

She was a riot and she still makes us laugh. She is so smart - she's a great writer, I love reading the things that she writes. She is a complete sweetheart and has a heart of gold. She loves her friends and would do anything for them. She gets her feelings hurt easily - she is a lot like her mom, in a lot of ways. She's been my little buddy since she was just a baby - she's always wanted to be with me, and she is still like that in a lot of ways. When she was about three or four, she'd sit on the dryer while I folded laundry asking me a billion questions, and I loved it. She always wanted to tag along with me everywhere I went, and I'm so glad that I let her. She's a teenager now, so she has her moments - but for the most part, she's a complete pleasure. I love her beautiful blue eyes, her gorgeous smile, I love her infectious laugh, I love how she can be shy sometimes but obnoxiously NOT shy other times... so much like me... hee hee She's just turning into a wonderful young lady, and I am so very proud of her.

Happy Mother's Day! Peace.

Trevor update - 100th post!

Happy 100th post! LOL I just happened to notice when I went to start this that it's my 100th post. My, how time flies! When I started this blog back in April of 2008, this was one of the first blog entries that I had written about Trev. Since that time, he's grown up so much. He'll be 16 in July and he's at least 6 inches taller than me already.

A lot has changed since then, too. Trevor now attends a wonderful private school where he has absolutely thrived. His grades went from C's and D's and F's (public school) to A's, B's and C's. He was getting migraines almost daily - he hardly ever even gets a headache anymore. He has matured academically, socially, and emotionally. I'm so very proud of him.

Don't get me wrong - we still have our moments. Asperger's is not something that goes away or can be "cured." It's just something that makes Trevor unique. It's funny, usually the first thing that people ask me when I tell them that Trev has Asperger's is "Don't they have medication for that?" Nope, no medication for autism/Asperger's. But really, I'm not sure I'd even want to "cure" him... he is who he is because of the Asperger's, you know? It's hard to explain - we went through so much heartbreak and turmoil when he was younger, the only thing I would say is that I wish we had known all along that he had Asperger's, it would have made life so much easier for HIM. But hindsight is 20/20, as they say, and we didn't know. But I still believe that everything happens for a reason, and that Trevor will grow up to be a better person because of our experiences and the way we handled them.

Anyway, since I'm always quick to spill my guts when I'm upset and I need to vent, today's post is going to be nothing but positive! This is a list of everything that I LOVE about Trevor:

He is so smart - I love having conversations with him. If the topic interests him, we can talk for hours. He leaves me the funniest voice mail messages on my cell phone, sometimes they are so long that it cuts him off. LOL He is the most generous kid in the world - he'd give anyone the shirt off of his back if they needed it. He's extremely loving and very forgiving, especially to the people he loves. He is the most understanding of my kids, too - if I plan on doing or buying something but then realize later that I can't afford it that week or it just won't work out like I had hoped, he's the one to say "it's OK, mom, maybe next week." He is always thinking of others, especially me. He has a wicked guilty conscience, which leads him to "tell on himself" when he does do something "wrong" - he absolutely hates to disappoint anyone (again, especially me). :o) He is never embarrassed to be around his family or to show affection to us. He's just an all-around awesome kid, and I am so glad he's mine.

Thanks for letting me brag about my oldest pride and joy. I happen to think he's pretty special and I wouldn't trade him for anything in the world.

Tune in tomorrow when I will be bragging about my lovely daughter, my youngest pride and joy. Peace!

Queen Bee

A friend of mine has a mother-in-law whom everyone calls "Queen Bee". When she saw a couple of my cards that I had made with these images, she asked me to make one for her m-i-l in the colors red or purple. So I combined them and made these 2 cards, from which she can choose:

I love this stamp - it's Queen Bee from the Bella (Stamping Bella, that is), designed by my favorite artist, Christy Croll.

Happy Monday, my friends. Have a great week. Peace.