a bag of chips

Winners!

Drumroll please!

For the Stampin' Up! paper pack, congrats to Jody W!

For the Stampin' Up! Botanical Blooms stamp set, congrats to Lynn M!

For Donna Downey's "Fabric Scrapbooking", congrats to Candice PJ! 

For Donna Downey's "Designing Layouts", congrats to Kyla!

For Lisa Bearnson's "50 Moments...", congrats to Sherri!

For Stacy Julian's "Photo Freedom", congrats to Steph M!

For Becky Higgins' "Family History Scrapbooking", congrats to Rhonda P!

For the Lisa Bearnson CKU album kit, "10 Things I Love", congrats to Hanna!

Now, because I love surprises, I have a few more little things to give away that I found while digging myself out from under the embarrassingly large mess in my studio:

A Making Memories "Slice" apron and a nifty little craft notebook by Creative Options goes to Elisa!

A cute tote from the Tombow booth at CHA and a copy of the March/April 2009 Simple Scrapbooks issue goes to Jenny in Illinois (aka Horshak)!

Whew!  That was fun! 

If you lucky ladies would please send me an email (link is just below my face in the upper left corner) I'll get these out over the next week or so.

Congrats everyone, and thanks so much for playing.

A milestone. And some other stuff.

Yesterday was a great day. One of those days when you don't realize just how good things have been lately until you're in the middle of something quite wonderful. 

Yesterday during a school assembly, Aidan was given an award for "Progress and Improvement", one of three kids in his classroom to get this award. As I sat there with our girls waiting for his name to be called, I had the chance to remember back over the last few months just how rough it was for awhile (again) - and how much he has improved these last few weeks, how hard he's worked to get to this very moment, and how proud he is of himself. And, of course, we're over-the-moon-and-back proud of him.

This kid has been winking like a pro since he was two-and-a-half. Lookout, ladies. He's a charmer. 

And, of course, there's the Badge of Honor for all to see on the backside of my car. Yup, I'm one proud mama:

Then as part of his treat for his award, he wanted to go to IKEA for some playtime in the ballpit and then have Swedish meatballs for dinner. While Aidan and Makena were playing downstairs, Nadia, Chris and I strolled around upstairs. Our little goofball was bouncing around on this bed when I asked her to look at mommy. So she did this:

A few weekends ago, Makena asked me to draw a picture of daddy. Um, okay. Nubby magnetic pen in hand, I drew my best likeness of the man we love on her favorite doodle board.  She did the rest:

She's always been daddy's girl. I love their special bond - it's the way it should be.

And then, in other news, hell froze over:

I have Photoshop again. It only took 72 days, four phone calls, 18346 f-bombs, and 537 tears for it to get here. Holy hell, Batman. That process SUCKED. 

But it's here and I'm back in the saddle again. Yeeehaw!

More Stampin' Up!

Still in the spirit of Sale-a-Bration (which is going on until March 31), I made a few more things with my favorite stamp set from the Sale-a-Bration catalog and the darling papers from the catalog, too. 

One of the things I love to do when I scrap is to get inspiration from my own work. I know me and and I know my style, so I'm the easiest person for me to copy. (Narcissist much?) So for the following layout, I gained inspiration from the layout I created earlier in February and used the green ribbon, letter stickers and butterfly rub-on for this layout about my sweet niece:

And for this card I kept it VERY simple, which is always the best way to approach cards for the card-challenged like me:

The flower stamps and the sentiment are in the same stamp set in the Sale-a-Bration catalog. I just love those flowers. The white ink is SU!s white craft ink and the brads are SU!s "So Saffron".

I took total advantage of Sale-a-Bration and placed an order for some favorites: Kraft paper in 8.5 x 11 and in 12 x 12 (you know how I love kraft paper), some new dies for my SU Big Shot (hearts, butterflies and ovals, oh my!), and got another set of these cute floral stamps and some more of that sweet paper. So, now that I have two of these items, I just *HAVE* to give those extras away. I just *HAVE* to!

I have a brand-new unmounted set of the Botanical Blooms floral stamp from the Sale-a-Bration catalog (page 7), and an unopened set of the Delicate Dots patterned papers (page 8) to send to two lucky commenters. I'll pick the winners next Wednesday evening, so leave me a comment. 

Woohoo! It's like RAK-apalooza around here lately. Good luck!