Merry Christmas!

Hello I just wanted to take a moment to wish all of our family and friends a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. This time of year goes by so fast. I'm always so busy posting blogs out my crafting that I miss taking a moment to share our love with all of you. We pray you have a blessed Christmas and New Year. We had a wonderful Christmas this year shared with our family. The boys were so cute! Mitch was overly excited as he opened his gifts. Marshall was worn out from all the excitement but it was special to celebrate his FIRST CHRISTMAS. We look forward to spending our New Years Eve with some very special friends.

Here are a few pictures for your enjoyment.

Newby Family on Christmas Eve

We had to force smiles for the camera out of Mitch

Marshall playing with a new toy

Take care and God Bless!!!

Scrap Time!

I have been dying to get some scrapbooking time in. I have so many pre-made pages from SCS swaps and all they have been doing is piling up. So I made a vow to myself that I would not sign up for any more swaps until I got some pages done. A confession, I have been avoiding my 8 month olds baby book because I want it to be "perfect" like my first son's and don't want to rush through it. Well today I took some much needed time on it and completed 4 pages. I'm now almost caught up to the day we left the hospital with him.

I purchased some page layout kits from addictedtoscrapbooking.com and used them today. I LOVE them!!! I wanted to share two layouts with you so here they are.

I could not resist this picture of my husband in the hospital. He was up for a 3am feeding and I just had to snap a sleepy picture of him. He is the best Daddy ever. :)

This was an alone day that my hubby and I had with our oldest son and newborn. It was so sweet and special to spend the time in the hospital with it being just us. This was when Mitch finally started to warm up to Marshall and gave him kisses.

Disney SS Exchange

On SCS I'm in a Disney SS swap. Our packages are to be mailed to receive by Christmas. So this week I thought I better get on the ball. I packed my box full of all kinds of goodies. I really wanted to try my hand at altering an item since I have never done any kind of altered container. Since my 8 month old is eating foods I thought I would use the stage 1 jar to create a fun storage jar. For my first altered item I was pretty pleased.

I create the card to place in the box to reveal who I am. :) I used stickles to accent the card. I did not want to color it in so I thought this create a nice accent and also provided some color.

Christmas Flap

I needed to create 15 quick Christmas cards for church. Since my time has been limited I wanted something simple and quick. I just cut a card base out of decorate card stock and then put a Bazzill solid color card stock flap on the front. I used my Inkadoo penguin stamps and stamped the front and accent it with stickles. Inside I stamped Merry Christmas with a Stampin Up stamp and then tied a piece of decorative ribbon on it.

Not the best production but like I said it was quick and simple.

Blogger Group #3 Challenge #1

I have finally returned from being out of town for a few days so I'm able to post our first blogger challenge. This is my first ever of this sort. Checking out others works of art are giving me some great inspiration. I'm not completly satisfied with how it turned out but just went with the idea in my head and came out with this.

The challenge was to have yellow and orange in the card and a flower stamp. So here it is!

Heading Out!

We'll be heading to NC at the crack of dawn (5am) to my in-laws for Thanksgiving. I'm excited to post our first Blogger #3 challenge when I get back. For now I'll just share some LOTW swaps I have been working on. I have also started putting together some card kits for a Round Robin card swap I'm in along with monthly page layout kits. They are not very exiting to take pics of though. So here are my LOTWs.

First is my letter S for Easter. I used my cricut to cut out the bunny, basket, and letter S. I used stickles to give it some sparkle but in the picture it looks yucky. It does look better in person.

Next is the letter H for the word laugh. This was a hard one to come up with so I just focused on creating it to be unisex for boy or girl.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Card Kit Creations

I was able to play with some pre-made card kits last night. One of my new loves is Bellas so I was excited when my color burst SS from SCS sent me some stamped images to play with. I always try to make the most out of my supplies. I'm not crazy about the color I colored my cat on the last card. I need to get some more subtle marker colors. Most of what I have are brighter colors since I'm just getting started with my stamping craft. I'm getting there!!

Burst of Green

Over at SCS I participate in swaps called Burst of Color. What you do is select a color you would like to receive and select a color you would like to send. You are then given a SS to send to and someone is given your name so you can also receive.

My sweet friend Tracey C had my name this time. She sent me a fabulous BURST OF GREEN!!!!

In the kit she included two card kits that I already made up. :) I'll include those in my next post.

Where do I even begin with what I received?A pack of Chip Chatter Green Tall Chipboard LettersBag-O-Buttons (assorted green)Spool of green dot ribbon Spare Parts Flower Assortment w/ BradsJumbo Spare Parts BradsMary Engelbreit Box with green ribbon, scalloped punches, and green stickles2 (very cute) card kitsGreat Disney and Boy Stickers2pk Sticky Notes8x8 Assortment of Card Stock and Pattern Paper8 1/2 x 11 Assortment of Card Stock and Pattern PaperBeautiful handmade cardPLUS two envelopes fulll of stamped images (Bellas, kids images, fall images, so many I can't recall all of them)

Skeet Shoot

So off the note of crafting, I will start off by saying that I am not a hunter. I have nothing against it by no means but it's not a sport I ever cared to take up. However I work at the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportmens Club. I am their office manager and their editor and layout coordinator for our bi-monthly publication. PFSC lobbies for the rights of hunters, anglers, trappers, and outdoors men along with teaching hunting safety.

ANYWAY with all that being said, on Monday the Sportsman's Channel hosted a skeet shoot and invited us to participate. So off we went! Well when everyone found out I worked for PFSC but never shot a gun they were determined to break me in. I was pretty proud of myself and actually really enjoyed it and had a great time. Out of about 50 rounds I only shot 2 clay birds but hey it was my first time.

So I now have a nice bruiser to share of my experience and I look forward to the next time.

Sunday Craft Day

Today during church my sweet 3 year old got sick. He fought me to go to church which is abnormal so I should have known he was not feeling good. He ran a temp all day, slept from about 1000am-3pm and then was up for about 3-4 hours watching tv. I did get some soup in him which eased my worry. He kept telling me he was better now but I could tell by his glassy eyes he was still not up to par. He fell back asleep around 730pm and I'm praying he has a good night sleep.

The upside is I got some good crafting done today. I finished a birthday border set for an SCS swap but forgot to include it in my picture taking.

Sometimes I like to stamp without coloring the images in. I just love my couch Riley and thought I would make this into my DH's b-day card (today is his b-day.) I'm disappointed I stamped the sentiment across the bottom because it did not turn out as I was hoping. My new obsession is buttons though. I wanted to accent with them on this card and thought it turned out as a good embellishment.

I have not done a non-stamp card in a long time. I had this paper laying on my craft table from an SCS scrapbook page swap I did. So I thought I would use it up which one allowed me to clean of my craft table and two allowed me to create a non-stamp card which was my own personal challenge for the week. Not sure about the ribbon but it's too late to remove it without botching up my paper.

I really do craft!

I know I have been MIA in the craft posting world for awhile now. The good news is I FINALLY have some pictures to share. Everything that I will be showing you is projects for swaps I'm signed up for at SCS. I will try my hardest to give credit to the hostesses if I can recall that info.

First is a Christmas border set that I created using a Bella stamp as one of the accent pieces. The rules were to create 2 borders and 3 accents. This is an SCS swap hosted by mommyx3girls. I have a birthday set to complete as well but I'm searching for the "perfect" paper.

Next is a set of non-Disney pirate pages I completed for a swap hosted by 2goofy. I also completed another set but can not locate that picture. It's hard to see the printed paper but it's a pirate theme and I cut YoHo! out with my Cricut and also the skull and cross bones. I accented it with buttons and used my skull wheel by SU. I really enjoyed this swap and can't wait to see everyone else's. We are a pirate fan family!!

Last but not least, my new addiction, LOTW swaps. LOTW means Letters of the Word. Basically you chose a letter in a word. I chose the letter T in the word Presents. Others in the swap make the other letters. When you get your swap back you get the entire word "Presents" but all the other letters are made by other swappers. I creates a really fun unique page title topper. I'll try to remeber to share a completed project after I do a layout using them. They are so easy to create and super fun.

This one is for a Christmas them LOTW swap hosted by crabbyscrapper.

Day 9 and going nuts!

Well today serves as day 9 of computer "issues." I got my computer back on Saturday with all my info pulled off of my hard drive (yea!!). So I did my lovely system restore to get my computer back to the factory settings and finally get my computer up and running. Well I quickly discovered that my mother board crashed not allowing my usb ports or my cd/dvd drive to work. So this means no downloading of pictures. I did craft this weekend though making a Christmas border set for a swap. I also created a Thanksgiving day card with my Riley turkey stamp. So hopefully sometime in the close future Dell will return my call and come fix my computer. They are "SUPPOSED" to call me today with a service time.

So blogger #3 friends I promise I'll share some work soon. In the mean time I'll continue to pack my brain with ideas.

Have a great day!

On the "crash" wagon!

Ok I'm on the computer crashed wagon and don't want to be on it. So my blogging and SCS checking is non existant right now. Ahhhhh, can you say WITHDRAW!! So today I'm at work and thought I would spend my breaks doing what I can to catch up.

I'm excited to tell you on SCS I joined this new blogger group. These ladies are fabulous! So friendly with great ideas and a love for card making and scrapbooking. If you want to visit any of their blogs their sites are listed to the right under the "Blogger #3" heading. I still have a bunch to add.

Since my computer crashed I have been lazy in the crafting world. I plan to get back into it tonight or tomorrow. Yesterday I swapped out some pages for a swap I was hosting so that was my "craft time" yesterday.

Hoping to have my laptop computer back by the weekend. (hopefully it's not wishful thinking) Have a great day and SCS blogger gals I love ya and can't wait to get going with our fun. I'm ready for a challenge!!!

Rally

So my boss called me last night and asked if I wanted to go to the John McCain/Sara Palin rally in Hershey today. I was so excited but knew I could not do it because of having the boys. Well I asked my brother and his fiances if they would be up for some babysitting and they accepted. Yea, I was so excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm not huge in to politics but with my new job I tend to keep a little more in tuned and now with the current election I have learned to become proud of what I stand for and I'm proud to say I support McCain and Palin. Here are some pics of our great rally day (that started at 430am.)

They brought the bus right into the Giant Center.

Our rally crew!

The two Mels (my boss)

That is a face of victory!!

Love her!

Proudly standing behind Guns and Religion!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Card Making Fool

I'm normally not a card maker but this week I was a card making fool. Ok so I'm not the best card maker but I'm having fun experimenting with new products and layout ides. So I won't chit chat, I'll just get right to the pics.

B-day Gifts

Next Friday (31st) is my 31st birthday. My parents headed out of town today for vacation so my step dad gave me my b-day gifts early. I was so excited, he made me a ribbon rack to store my ribbons on and then another little shelf to keep small spools, ink pads, etc on. I love both of them and was so excited. Of course I came home and organized right way. The only thing I noticed is I need a few more spools of larger ribbon to fill my rack (winks.) The sad thing is I have probably double that much ribbon not on spools that was bought by the yard at one point or another. They are all stored in zip log bags. Here are some pics for you to see my wonderful gifts.