Valentine's Day

This is the card I made for Gary. No stamping, just a punch, DSP and a rub-on. How easy is that?!

Gary's favorite candy bar is Snickers so I made this treat box and filled it with 6 mini Snickers. The box still looks like this today but the rest of the bag is almost gone....and Gary didn't eat them! :-(


I made these cute treats for the ladies that came to my Stamp-A-Stack on Valentine's Day. I also made one for my niece and nephew.

I'm 40!

Unlike so many people, I don't have a problem with 40. In fact, I couldn't wait to get there! I just knew that my 40th birthday would be an amazing day. January 14, 2009 was so much more than I could have ever imagined!

It began with family and friends calling to wish me happy birthday. I had a great work out and then went to my neighbor's house for hot chocolate and treats. My other neighbor asked me if I would be home around 2:30 or 3p so I was looking forward to a visit from her and her two boys later. I had a great day doing whatever I wanted to do and then my doorbell rang. I expected to see Jenn and the boys but when I opened the door I found SEVENTEEN kids on my front stoop & down the stairs! They were there singing "Happy Birthday" with a bouquet of tulips, a huge card and birthday balloons! Y'all know I started crying! :-D After they finished, one of the moms gave me a bottle of champagne from "the big kids". Do I have THE BEST neighbors or what?!!

Since I didn't get permission from their parents to post this picture on my blog, I've blurred out the faces of the precious "chorus" members but you can see how many there are. OH! These kids are all in elementary and pre-school so the oldest is in 5th grade. Can't you just hear those sweet voices singing "Happy Birthday" right now? It was as amazing as you're imagining!

This is what the kids had for me (minus the champagne).

My Birthday Cards

Along with the sweet angelic kids that made my 40th birthday, I received the following cards throughout the month. I have a wonderful life and wonderful friends! ;-)

Trish Brunkhart

Trevor (my son)

Sue-Lynn Bock

Ruthann Suttles

Penny Bongers
Michelle Gensheimer

Michele Bortvit

Mary Craig

Mary C.

Liz Bassett

Julie Galbreath

Judy Baughman

Jeanne Gibson

Jane Giggy

Hetty Sanders (all the way from the Netherlands!)

Chera Wiest

Cathy Silver

Barbara Gates

I have "puppies"

Meet Lily and Layla (left to right, 2 and 5 years old)

Lily is a love pup!
She is also a total lap dog! You can't really see her because I'm wearing a black shirt but she's laying in my lap like a baby! Seriously?!

My mother called me right before Christmas to see if we wanted to get Brittany a dog. Apparently some friends of the family had taken these two in from a lady that couldn't take care of them because she started traveling more for her job. Our friends took them in but they have a dog that is very old and she was NOT having new dogs invade her turf! She went into a depression and they decided they couldn't let their dog commit suicide in order to give these two a good home. They talked to my parents to see if they could give these two a good home and my mom called me and my brother thinking that maybe we could each take one. Me and the kids visited to see how the dogs were and after we dropped my mom off at her house I called back and asked if I could pick up both dogs the following day. They joined our family on Dec. 24, 2008 at 11a. :-D Aren't they just too cute?!

Christmas Projects

The first picture is the gift tag for Brittany's gifts. This was easy to do with our punches!


This next project was what I made to hold the "Magic Reindeer Food" for the kids in our neighborhood. I got the idea from a friend's blog (thank you Chera!). She took the directions for a triangle box directions from SplitCoastStampers and then added the details to make Rudolph. You can see her version here and go to the directions for the box here. The oval at the end of the ribbon says "Untie Here" because Gary told me that he wouldn't know how to open the box if I didn't have some kind of direction added to it.

Multiple reindeer but this is not all of them - SO easy to make!

Giftcard Holders

This year was "Gift card Central" around here! These are a few of the gift card holders I made for family members.

These first pictures are of Kimberly's gift card holder.

Closed

Open - it held 4 gift cards

These are pictures of Trevor's holder - it also held 4 gift cards:

Front - closed

A little bit open

Open so you can see where the gift cards were held.

More Gift Cards

These are for the Franklin family...First is Haley's.

Closed

Open

This one is Grant's.

Closed

Open

This one belongs to their mom & dad. I LOVE how easy this was with the Big Shot and punches!!

Closed

Open

Christmas Cards

I'm so far behind in updating that you're going to see a lot by the time I'm finished!


I didn't want to send out just one card for Christmas so these are the cards we sent to family and friends...