Inchies Done Up

A while ago I posted the results of the inchie swap I was in. Here is a finished inchie project using the same inchies:
Quick and simple. . . 10 minutes from start to finish. Now that's a quick card!

Chance for Candy

Stamps, Paper, Scissors and Donkey Smiles: 5000 Mark Blog Candy!

Monogram Refrigerator Magnet Tutorial

Just a reminder;
Daily Blog Posts: Moments in Time
Detailed Family Posts: Funk Family Blog
All blog links are located to the right on this blog~Rachele

A Gift For Me

My Sweet daughter Mikensee made me a couple of great Mother's Day gifts and I just had to share!

First this altered tin stuffed with Kit Kat's. . . Yum!


Didn't she do a great jog? She's only 11 and she did this in her room completely on her own. She used her paper stash, but raided the tin and flowers from me. She only has her own white ribbon, so she colored it with her markers to match! Clever girl!

Then she made me this flower pot/pen holder. She made this with her Achievement Day leaders. Thanks KC, you know it made my day!

It's a Hybrid!

This is my first digital/Hybrid project. You can see the pages on my

digital ink blog

from the link to the right if you want to see them. I like how it turned out, but I have a long way to go before digital is faster for me than paper. . . There is a LOT to learn!

Happiness. . .

is a project once envisioned, realized:





Mini folio scrapbook/card. Approximately 3.5" X 5.5".

Isn't it cute?

CTMH: Garden Green, Olive, New England Ivy, Pansy Purple CS and INK
CTMH: Happiness Is and Serendipity
Ribbon: Diane Ribbons

Ch, Ch, Ch, Changes

In an effort to meet some of my personal goals, I've been working on my blogs. I will have an all new look really soon, but even before then you will find new content on some of the blog links from the right bar of this blog. I am also changing my publishing to partial articles so that you will need to click on and link to my blog for the full content. I'm doing this, not to make it hard on you, but so you can easily click the other linked blogs without having to subscribe to them.

New Blogs:

Our Story Is Here - The Funk Family Blog

Moment in Time - A Daily Photo Log

My Gratitude Blog


In addition to these I'm working on My Gallery Blog so that all of my artwork will be in one place (you can see small portions of it here and portions on my CMTH site), My Ink Boutique Classes, and a For Sale Blog listing items I am creating to sell, project kits and items from my stash that need to find a new home!

Hope you like the changes and find them to be an improvement. If you have comments, please post them here! You don't have to be a registered blogger to comment. You can post an anonymous comment, but please sign it with who you are! I'm excited about all of the changes, but can't wait for the unveiling of my blog make-over!

Chance To Win

CTMH is offering a great May National Scrapbooking Promotion! From my web-site you can see a tip a day for the entire month of May, enter a drawing to win a Magic Moments Scrapbooking Kit (a $49.95 US retail value) during May or win your entire shopping cart free. You can also purchase the Magic Moments with special incentives as well. IN ADDITION to this drawing, one customer per day is getting their entire shopping cart for free! All you have to do is a place an order through my site for your chance to win! Each day they post an update to see who's won!

PTI Challenge, Past Due

But hopefully worth the post date!

I signed up to do the PTI Bloghop, but my blog wasn't chosen this month (random selection process), so I didn't worry about completing them in time for the hop, but I loved my idea so I had to make it come to life! The challenge was to use a contact sheet of samples of the newest PTI BT papers. Basically 1.5 inch square samples downloaded and printed on your choice of materials. Here is what I made using this contact sheet:

A Mother's Work

Thank you for wondering where I have been. Your emails and thoughts are appreciated and heard!

I have been taking care of Wyatt, dealing with a little personal illness and tooth ache issue, feeding, bathing, cleaning up after and teaching my 4 little darlings, finishing Dawn's baby shower ensemble (pictured below), doing a little yard work, washing piles of laundry, cleaning house (my never ending nemesis), caring for new baby bunnies (also pictured below), helping the girls prepare for their piano recital, getting further behind, looking forward to summer, taking care of church and my callings and responsibilities that go along with them, and handling my real estate business with one closing and another listing going into escrow this month along with keeping the other sellers happy in this market. (Mikensee who has been doing sentence diagramming for the past 2 years would kill me if she read the previous sentence and I told her to diagram it!) I've been living in a bit of a funk and trying to work out some personal life goals (not there yet, but still working!) I've decided that I don't bounce like I used to and that twins are still a lot of work, even if they are 4 and getting ready for kindergarten. I've also decided that motherhood, although filled with fleeting rewards, is hard and not all that fulfilling in the short term! I know motherhood is wonderful; a true gift and I love it! I wouldn't trade it for anything (not even the NYC single professional living in a pristine penthouse, childhood dream I once lived for) but I'm just being real. There is nothing rewarding or glamorous about 4 year old temper-tantrums or 6 year old stubbornness or preteen drama - and yes I'm living all of these realities! I gained some much needed perspective from my friend Tamara this week who is the mother of my other favorite set of twins. It is so easy to get caught up in the daily drudgery that sometimes it seems like mountains of laundry and fingerprint smudges on every touchable surface are all that I can see. So I did what I tell my kids to do when they are upset and I took a deep breath. Tonight I baked some cookies just because I wanted some and I'm taking a minute to blog a bit, because I want to. I might still take a bubble bath and paint my toenails! Tomorrow will still be tough, but school will be out soon and I'm going to try and just have some fun. I'm going to enjoy my kids and work on some projects I really want to do, but don't usually allow myself to. I'm going to try not to wait to have fun until after all the work is done, because lets face it, a mother's work is never done.

Here is the finished Baby Shower Ensemble:




Here are Pork Chop and Petunia (the calico):



They are already (in less than a week) 3 times this size and Petunia has outgrown Pork Chop. They have no ears (we'll call it natural causes, but they were eaten) so they look like guinea pigs more than bunnies, but they sure are cute. We had 4, but lost two due to other "natural" accidents in the night. Mooey was my favorite because he looked just like a little holstein cow.

Please say a little prayer for Copper. We haven't seen him since this morning and it just isn't like him to be separated from Penny for too long.

This is my two up and coming concert pianists (their performances will be featured in a day or two on The Funk Family Blog.)




I hope you aren't drowning in drudgery at your house. If you are, please take a moment and think about it. Life happens only once. I hope to live it and not just clean it!

Take Two!

That's what you get with identical twins! So here we are a month later and guess where I spent my day? You guessed it! Wyatt had his tonsils and adenoids taken out today.
So much for my plans to wait until after summer. At Walker's surgical check up last week, Dr. S looked in Wyatt's throat and made us the appointment for today. FORTUNATELY after my last experience things were much improved. Maybe they actually read my survey and took drastic improvement measures. Perhaps we just had better luck. Maybe I wasn't so nervous (nope, that isn't it!) Or, we just had a completely different team. In any case, things went much better. Wyatt was so stinking cute. His surgery was later in the day and he just kept asking, "Okay, can I have my french fry's now?" I promised he could have french fry's after the surgery if he still wanted them. The poor kid was starving! No stickers today either. . . Wyatt got dinosaurs! They even gave us some to take home to Walker.




He woke up quickly from anesthesia and freaked! The Anesthesiologist quickly gave him some pain med. . . unfortunately he then went to the nurses, still freaked and they gave him a second dose. We had to wait in recovery a while longer (which might have aided the more relaxed tone of today's events) to make sure he was okay from the double dose of pain killer, but after the intial sobbing he fell into a deep sleep and slept until we got through the pharmacy and almost done getting gas. . . he was ready for McDonald's! He didn't wolf it down and only ate a few bites, but bless his heart, he got his fry's!

We were once again warned that the worst is yet to come. . . been there done that! Bring it on!!!

Color Combo Challenge 1

If you are a paper crafter (or into paper craft blogs) at all, you are familiar with the proverbial color combo challenges. . . well have I got one for you! Today's color combo challenge is courtesy of my DD, Jessica. Jessica thinks if her shirt has something pink in it and she wears all pink; she matches (this theory is also displayed in the photo below.) She frequently asks me if her outfit choice coordinates because I have given her numerous lessons on how to pick outfits and that matching isn't the goal, coordinating is! If Jessica had her way today, this is what she would have worn and thus the color challenge. . .


Oh Jessica, this is one big Color Combo Challenge!

I did it!

I made my blog signature!

Taking a Trip . . .

Tonight I was looking at some stamps. . . Particularly this one:

Don't you just love her?

I was trying to explain to Mikensee why I like this stamp so much (and actually all the stamps by this artist) and it hit me. . . Vintage Holly Hobby! So I started to try and show her who Holly Hobby was and the paper piecing pop art of Holly Hobby I made for my room (oh these were the coolest!). I so desperately wanted a Holly Hobby Bedroom complete with bed canopy! While I was showing her Holly Hobby I somehow turned to telling her about Strawberry Shortcake! Remember her? This is what I was lucky enough to own:





I actually had the very first issue Strawberry Shortcake doll and Blueberry Muffin (with the hard plastic hat!) Telling her about this I could actually smell them. I can still feel the plastic smooth hair and how I felt making those little strawberry shortcakes in my very own Strawberry Bake Shop! There was so much that came later but as I told her, I was 9 in '79 and by 1984 when she hit her prime I was 14 and on to bigger and better things! (Probably Punky Brewster!) So funny actually how something so simple could bring back such a flood of memories! We went from Strawberry Shortcake to Care Bears and then on to Rainbow Brite. I gave her Rainbow Brite PJ's for Christmas and she adores them, but it was fun to hunt the story of Rainbow Brite down and read it with her! (Remember Twink and Starlite?) I'm probably actually really dating myself, but I was amazed to discover that I was the first generation to actually have these really cool icons and the flood of what has come since. So, I'm going to encourage you today to spend a little time on a trip down memory lane and dig up some of your childhood joys to share with someone special in you life. I am going to bed with a smile on my face and the smell of semi-yummy plastic strawberries and blueberries wafting in the air.

My Nose is Melting

And other "W" isms keep me laughing every day.

"My Nose is Melting" is the answer Mikensee received to her inquiry as to why Walker was snorting through the dinner prayer.

"No, No, NO! I don't want to get married!" is what he was shouting as I asked him why he was dressed like pink cotton candy! This face says it all:


But what do these faces mean?





Wyatt is famous for asking "Do you want to help me eat?" This he asks when he's hungry and wants someone to make him something.

"We just kissed ourselves." Made famous by Wyatt and Walker after giving each other a love.

"Mom, come see! We found a machine!" They both exclaimed in complete amazement when our carpet cleaner was found mysteriously located in the living room.

We frequently have these comments when one or the other has exclaimed anger or displeasure with my rules: "Mom, you are my best friend." "Mom, I love you, but Wyatt don't." or "Mom, I love you, but Walker didn't." "Mom, I just love your cheeks and elbows. Don't you want some tasty neck?"

"I slept 3 times!" This they say when they come to get in bed with us and it's still dark outside. . . this because I tell them they have to sleep in their own bed for 30 minutes before they can get up - Yes, I'll use this as long as possible! It still works on Jessica!

It's a Boy!

Have you ever looked at something so long that it just doesn't make sense anymore? It's a Boy just seems weird! It should be He's a Boy! or A Baby Boy! But "It's a Boy!" just doesn't make sense to me anymore! Maybe because I just finished these 65 invitations to my friend Dawn's Baby Shower and I've stamped 40 more for the favors which aren't done yet!

Like Fish To Water

Friday Night Funk Family Fun. . . the first time that Wyatt, Walker and Jessica have ever ice-skated and they looked like pros. I tried really hard to capture the joy they all felt stepping out onto the ice, but it is really hard to skate, take pictures and see in the dark! I had no idea that our skate would be in almost pitch black, but it was. Didn't matter to the boys or Jessica though. They stepped onto the ice and skated as if they were born to do it. It was so much fun to watch Wyatt as he built up confidence speed and just grinned from ear to ear. Our little joy boy just couldn't contain himself and he never quit grinning. He discovered the cones and had a blast going through and over them. Jessica made herself a big girl friend and they were both quite enamored with each other. Jessica liked Bailey because she was a real skater (wore a skate skirt) and Bailey Jessica because she can be just so stinking sweet!!! They kids skated for 2 solid hours with one small Zamboni break and the boys were mad, mad, mad when it was time to go. At one point after the boys had been separated for a while they met back up, hugged each other and never separated again for the entire night. We shared the rink with a high school group and it was so much fun to hear them ooh and aah over how cute they were and also talk about how great they skated. Mikensee has ice-skated once before, but she didn't remember at all and wasn't fond of the high school "group" or the dark, but she is ready to go again. Several of the "pros" told us we ought to sign the boys up for hockey. . . so much talent, so little time, (so little money. . . sigh).

You Are My SuNsHINnE

I have no idea why anyone would make a headband that looks like a sunshine or a flower (especially when it's the size of a basketball), but apparently someone, somewhere, thought there might be a market for these lovely items of apparel. . . I'd just like to say "THANK YOU" to whomever, wherever it was because they really brightened my shopping trip today!










Did you catch the price tag? $6.99 Yeah, Right!

An Apology

To the winners of my blog candy. I haven't forgotten, nor will I, but I just haven't gotten the packages out yet! I hope you haven't lost faith or confidence in me and just know they are coming!!!

A Tradition is a Tradition and don't your forget it!

If you are a long time blog reader or if you've perused back through some of my posts you've no doubt seen my Conference Cinnamon Rolls or at least the recipe. Conference was this weekend and due to many circumstances beyond my control I did not get cinnamon rolls made on Friday night. I instead (thinking ahead at my busy week) bought Costco Blueberry Muffins. Usually my kids BEG, if not WAIL for me to buy them and I usually don't. Can you imagine, then, my shock when instead of being pleased with their Conference breakfast they were mad? You should have seen the absolute look of disgust of blueberry muffins and fresh strawberries on their plates where conference cinnamon rolls should be! They pouted, they complained, they were really disappointed. Lesson learned. . . a tradition is a tradition and I dare not forget it! So, here they are on Sunday morning with Cinnamon Rolls and FRESH Smoothies (instead of just OJ). I did my best to make it up to them. . .I think they appreciate it. W & W each ate 3 and then Walker complained that his tummy hurt. . . imagine!



P.S. The Strawberries and Fresh Smoothies are my get out of guilt ticket for serving a cinnamon roll sugar fest to my kids 2 days in a row 2 times a year! Try it! It works for me.

A Little Late

I made about 20 of these little guys for Easter Treats and meant to post and link up the directions, but didn't get it done. . . I used her tutorial here for the small ones, but then decided I could make them larger so I did! Here is a sample of a couple. I made about 20 all together. They are so easy my DD (11) made a bunch too. Aren't they cute??!!??