And we're back...

...to painful ear infection land with Little Miss.

Last night my sweetie told me that her ear was hurting again really badly, and even after tylenol and ear drops we still spent the bulk of the night awake and trying to deal with it. Little thing is laying on the couch right now, and I am trying to find out if my pediatrician's office has some type of weekend clinic that I can take her to or if we are just going to go to urgent care. I wish I could just take the pain for her.

On the upside, my incredible friend Alondra came into town on Thursday and is spending two weeks with me. I have always felt that if you have even one friend like her you are extremely blessed, and I have a couple that are just like her. You know what they say, "A friend will help you move. A best friend will help you move a body." She is a body-moving friend. (No, we haven't actually done that---yet.)

So, no cards or stamping fun for the past few days as I have been showing Al around town and now dealing with a very forlorn little one. Hopefully I will have something light and pretty and fun to put up a bit later this week. I do hope that everyone is having a great weekend and enjoying the weather! Until next time...Happy Stamping!

Kim

A few pictures...

...of how we spent our evening last night. Little Miss A is old enough now to have a plan for Halloween that involves getting the most candy she possibly can by using all the cute she can muster. Let me tell you, she can pony up on the cute factor when needed! Here she is all decked out as Cinderella, complete with glass slippers on her nicely painted little piggies. We made a deal last night.

I agreed that she could wear the glass slippers to Miss Lydia's house, but after that we were switching to sandals for the rest of the festivities. This was a simple matter of good planning on my part, because I knew that those slippers not only had a heel on them, but would surely cause her feet to blister up. I, for one, do not relish the thought of being a half-mile from home and carrying an almost 5-year old and her 30 pounds of candy. No thank you!

Here is the little ham showing off her jack-o-lanterns on Wednesday. She and my DH are so much alike. They both wanted to have cool looking pumpkins outside, but neither one wants to touch the "yucky insides". So that left me doing all the initial cut and scoop work by myself. I did force my DH to carve the one on the right (with all the teeth) while I did the one on the left (note the big round "O" mouth that is very easy to do). He actually did reach into the pumpkin to pop the pieces out as he cut, but I noticed the speed at which he got to the kitchen sink to wash his hands off afterward. Coward.

First stop on candy night was a drive over to Lydia's house where the princess scored major loot! All chocolate in the bag...woohoo! She did manage to pose for a couple of pictures for me and on the way home she ate a Reese's cup and then the lack of an afternoon nap tackled her. The sleeping picture is her in the back of the car less than one mile from Lydia's house. I almost made the decision to just bring her home, put her in bed, fill her little candy bag with the stuff at our house and tell her, "Oh honey...don't you remember? You went all over the neighborhood last night getting candy. See? Your bag is full! You did great!"

Then I figured that she is too smart to be fooled by that on and woke her up. It still might have been worth a try!

After we walked all over our neighborhood she shed her costume and we took her to Sonic for a corn dog and ice cream. I know, I know, you are all impressed by what an incredibly good mother I am, looking out for the nutritional well-being of my charge. But, before anyone calls CPS on me, I want to say that there are a few days a year when you just have to kind of pitch all of the rules out the window, and doggone it, Halloween is one of them. We are back to well balanced meals today, I promise.

Besides, while we were at Sonic we got to meet Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin! What are the odds that she would be in Austin last night? I have to say her costume was pretty cute, and her hubby was dressed like the leader of any one of many Middle Eastern countries. I spent a couple minutes talking to this lady after I took her picture and she said she had a gun and a baby in her car for props. I told her that what she should have done was dress her hubby as a moose instead.

All in all, a very fun evening was had. I did not impose a stiff "mommy tax" on the child's candy, but I do admit that a couple of the mini Reese's cups were handed over to me by her as payola. Aren't kids great? Have a fun, safe, hopefully not over-sugared weekend! Tomorrow is the Komen, so I will be taking photos and posting afterward! Until next time everyone....Happy Stamping!

Kim

Little Miss makes her debut...

...into the card making world. Now, don't get me wrong, she as been stamping with me since she was just a little over 3 years old so she knows her way around a stamp pad and paper. But I have never heard her put on a demonstration like she did at our dinner table on Wednesday night.

Now, I know that there is no stamping at all in the following images, but we are going to forgive her that. The materials you see here are courtesy of Keli, who brought Little Miss a Simply Sent Kit box full of various cute papers and stickers a little while back. I have found that over the past few days, LM has been really enjoying using them even more than normal for her. So, let me tell you about the rest of this story.

As many of you know, every Tuesday at 1 p.m. on PACT channel 11 (on Time Warner Cable---Hey, TW!! I am still mad at you for making me miss a month of "Chuck") my friend Lydia has a 30 minute show called "Understand Blue Paper Arts", during which she features some incredible cards and projects, some simple, some more complex, but all worth watching. This has become one of my daughter's favorite things on television. It is my favorite thing on TV because the nice, comforting tones of Lydia's voice ALWAYS lull my rambunctious 4-year old into the blissful arms of silent slumber. I just never knew how much her little brain continued to process while she is sleeping until Wednesday night.

We are sitting at the table, and Little Miss asks if it is ok if she "makes a card" while she eats. I am intrigued at what might come of this, so I tell her that will be fine. She goes to her little box of goodies and comes back with a sticker sheet and piece of stationary. Then the magic happens. She looks up and me and the hubby and starts: "Tonight I am going to make a very cute little card with a star on it. This is so simple you can take it anywhere."

At this point I think that both of our jaws were hanging open as we realize that she is actually doing a demonstration, complete with product statements built right in.

"The first thing I want to show you is how to make a cute little pop-up star! You just take this sticker," as she retrieves the little "boom box" sticker you see on the left, "and fold it in half. You put half of it onto your star, then the other half on your card and stick it down, and you have this."

She stops at this point to do the Vanna White hands and showcase her lovely pop-up star that is proudly at the top of her card. Now, I know for a fact that I have never, not once, ever done any kind of pop-up card with, around, or near her. The fact that she figured out how to do a little fold to make the star come up makes me believe that she is absorbing all the stamping goodness she can from every source available to her at this point in her life.

Now she is convinced that we are thoroughly impressed, she moves on to her next step.

"These windows are very plain right now. But if you just look for some more stickers that fit in them, you can make it much prettier." Only four and already the concept of "embellishment" is firmly planted in her psyche. I could cry I am so proud. She pulls off two more stickers to

make her card prettier and puts them in the windows. "And there you have it! A pretty card with a pop-up star that didn't take too long to make!" She held up her card and waited for our reaction.

I kicked the hubby under the table and we both started to clap and tell her how great it is. I must say that her cabin looks like a fun place to visit. We already know it is in Texas (hence the Lone Star at the top and center) and it has good eats available, as evidenced by the chips and ice-cold lemonade just waiting for you in the window. I only regret that I did not have the presence of mind to grab the video camera and tape the entire event.

So, the next time you are perusing your channels be on the lookout for a new stamping show in town. And Lydia...you better watch out. Little Miss might try to steal your production team from you, and she isn't even a whole hand old yet...lol!

I hope everyone is having a great night, and until next time...Happy Stamping!

Kim

Country Roads...

...take me home. We are currently in Wild, Wonderful, West Virginia visiting with my father-in-law, JP. He is about the most wonderful guy you would ever want to meet and the best Paw-Paw Little Miss could ever ask for.

I wanted to thank everyone who was saying prayers that my family and I would have a safe flight here. Our flight was amazing! We flew over the top of the hurricane and got an incredible view. I would love to have some pictures to submit here of the sights I saw, but Little Miss has taken the window seat from me and refuses to relinquish it, so getting good shots was pretty much impossible. Add to that the fact that I am the MOST NERVOUS FLIER IN THE WORLD and you can see how it wouldn't work out so well.

Anyway, after leaving our house at around 5:30 yesterday morning (did y'all know that 5:30 comes twice a day? I did not.) we left Bergstrom around 8 a.m., flew into Nashville for a 2 hour layover, then on up to Columbus, OH, at which point we picked up our rental car and started our 3 hour drive into Charleston. I will vent just a tad about our rental car. It was absolutely filthy inside and out, and I intend to let the company know how bad it was as soon as I get home. Yuck!

Little Miss made sure last night to spend plenty of time explaining to her Paw-Paw the intricacies of Littlest Pet Shop versus Puppy in My Pocket and how you can make them play together. If only the world would figure out a system like hers, there would be no more war...lol! She then showed him everything in her backpack, talked my husband into letting her have a lollipop before dinner, and demonstrated her ability to eat 2 big slices of pizza. I am sure that Paw-Paw was impressed.

Today we are going to go grocery shopping then I will begin a 6 day cook-a-rama to fill up JP's freezer with homemade meals for when we return home. If I can figure out how to get pictures from my other digital camera onto the laptop I will show y'all some of the beautiful sights from here. I'll be home on the 20th, and can't wait to get back to my stamping table! (Keli is keeping it warm for me though....hi Keli!)

I hope everyone has a great week...and I'll see y'all soon! Until next time, Happy Stamping!

Kim

There's no need to fear...

...Underdog is here!

So, here is the story of this little creation. I ordered a multitude of stamp sets with my Sale-a-Bration benefits after seeing which ones made the cut through the retiring list. Of course, these sets required cutting and setting, so I put myself to the task of cutting out the rubber and getting them onto their blocks. Now, Little Miss A has always been creative. She loves to draw and play with stickers, paint, color, stamp, you name it, she does it. She is keeping me and company while I am busy cutting all this rubber and she asks me if she can play with the rubber pieces I am putting in my stamp room garbage can. I don't see any harm in it so I tell her as long as she only sticks them to a piece of paper that is fine. I fetch her a big piece of her drawing paper and get back to work.

Now, a little inside information about the child. She gets on kicks about any number of topics. She has always had a thing for all topics aquatic, and will wax poetic for days on end about Shamu and SeaWorld and sharks until you want to rupture your own eardrums just to make it stop. The only CD I have heard in my vehicle for the past 2 months is the soundtrack to "Believe", which is the current Shamu show at SeaWorld. Luckily I enjoy it as well, and hearing her rendition of it is hilarious, but to the uninitiated it can sort of feel like indoctrination into some sort of sea-faring mammal cult. I'm just saying, don't drink the Kool-Aid.

Anyway, one of her current movie kicks is Underdog (the new version), thanks to the fact that her daddy gave me a $20 the other night and sent me to the movies and stayed home and watched Underdog with our child and fed her ice cream and maybe, and I can't confirm or deny this, maybe let her paint his toenails. I'm just saying, he's a pretty good daddy to her. (OK, so I'm just kidding about the toenails part. Or am I?)

OK, tangent is over. So, about 5 minutes after raiding my trash can of all the rubber scraps she could fit into her Handy Manny construction hat, she holds up her paper and says, "Hey Mommy, it's Underdog!" And you know what? I think it was pretty worthy for a kid who isn't even an entire hand old yet. So I decided to share with you. Because I'm a giver. And because she didn't even get melty once while she was making it, and that is always a good thing!

I hope everyone has a great day! Until next time, Happy Stamping!!

Kim

Happy Birthday...

...to my sweet little niece, Haley, who turns three this Friday! Here is the card I made for her (and actually mailed on Monday, I would like to add). I have to put that disclaimer in because, well, I have an "issue" with getting cards sent off on time to arrive before the actual event.

Hello, my name is Kim, and I am a card-sending procrastinator. It is a well known fact within my family that if your card arrives within two weeks of your birthday, anniversary, or other special event then you have officially gotten an "on-time" card from me. It isn't that I don't care enough to send the very best, it is just that there is some missing switch in my brain that just physically prevents me from getting it into the mailbox on time. Call it "postal bravado" if you will, but I feel that I will always have time to mail it, then I realize that the card cannot physically travel from Austin to Alabama in 12 hours. Then, I will rationalize, if it is going to be late, might as well be really late. That way, it is like a little extra celebration for the recipient after their special day. So see, I love them more than the rest of my on time family. I want to extend their fun right on through the next couple of weeks. Because I'm a giver. Yeah, that's it!

So, back to the card. I usually try to shoot my pictures without flash because I get a really bad glare on my photos...mostly because I set my camera to "macro" to get those tight shots, but this time I had to add some flash so you could get an idea of how sparkly and cute this little "h" is. I know my girly-girl niece will love a sparkly "h" on her card, so I had to give her one. The image is from the retired set "Hip Hip Hooray" which I loved from the get go. I stamped the little critters using Basic Black and let them dry a couple of minutes before taking the blender pen and ink pads to them to color them in. I drew the colors for the image from the cardstock colors that I used, Pixie Pink, Green Galore, and Lavender Lace.

I stamped the main piece of cardstock all over with the cupcake and party hat images then added the "Happy Birthday" using Pink Passion over the top. I had to do a little bit of masking on the squirrel's head to keep the balloon lines from cutting right through it, but it was quick and easy. Then for the sticky cut letter I mounted it to a piece of Lavender Lace cardstock and cut it out before applying the glitter to it. I have to say, if you have not played with the sticky cuts yet they are way too much fun! I have never had such an easy time putting glitter on something as I did on this.

After finishing the card I ran it by Little Miss A for the final seal of approval. It got a "Mommy, it is gorgeous...did you make this one?" which is a compliment from her so I knew that I could put a stamp on it and send it on its way to my home state and my sweet niece.

On another line...I am going to take the child to SeaWorld on Thursday. Those of you who spent any time at my house about 2 years ago (when she was 2 1/2 years old) know that this is her most favorite place in the entire world. We go so often that the dolphins in the big petting/feeding tank know my daughter. I am not saying this indiscriminately either. She can walk up to the tank without one of those french-fry boats that the fish to feed the dolphins are kept in, and they will swim right to her. Every time. It is great fun for us, and everyone wonders how she does it, but I promise you, it is like they think she is a missing dolphin baby that has made it back to the pod. If it wasn't so darn cute I would be sort of creeped out by it.

She also makes a point to explain the difference between male and female killer whales to everyone around us at the "Believe" show (for those of you who don't know, male whale's dorsal fins stand straight up, the female's fins sort of curve over back toward the water) and she can sing all the lyrics to the songs of said show. I just know in my heart that one day she is going to work at SeaWorld in that dang tank full of potentially child-eating KILLER WHALES (they don't call them that because they are cuddly, people!) and I will have to stand watch at SeaWorld every single day to make sure that my child is not injured. I can feel the gray hairs popping up already. I wonder if you can color your hair with copic markers? If not, purchase Miss Clairol stock now girls, 'cuz I am going to make you rich one day.

I hope that everyone has a great day! Check out my schedule over at my Stampin' UP! website for my July events, and until next time....Happy Stamping!

Kim

You ever have one of those days....

...where you try to do something that is good or right or downright HEALTHY FOR YOURSELF and it just turns on you?

Let me describe my Tuesday to you. Warning...this post has absolutely nothing to do with stamping/crafting of any sort, unless you count "creative parenting" as a craft/hobby. It is also going to be long. Very, very long.

My sweet little A is taking swim lessons. I have wanted her to have them for the last year because little miss 4-going-on-14 thinks that she is invincible and can swim just fine and dandy, thank you very much. I finally convinced the dear husband that this is a good use of some of his hard-earned $$ because our sweet little daughter is just like him. She can't swim and she won't listen to a doggone thing I have to say to her. Just. Like. Him.

So, I get her all signed up for swim lessons and I start thinking to myself, "Self, you know that gas is $4 a gallon, and your Weight Watchers meetings would probably go better for you if you actually got up off of your butt and did something that could be considered exercise every now and then." Then I proceeded to convince myself that the way to go was to buy a bicycle trailer, the kind that you sit your kid in, and tow her happy little self to and from swim practice. "It would help the environment," my little inner voice said, "and then you can have that piece of Starbucks espresso chocolate at night without quite as much guilt." Enough said. The trailer was purchased.

Here is where the fun starts.

I manage to somehow decipher the directions on how to put the thing together, even though they were a combination of Chinese, Swedish, and some other indecipherable language as yet to be determined. Once I was convinced that my child's life would be relatively safe in said trailer, I decided to take it for a little test drive. You know, find my zone, get my biking legs going, all that good stuff. I mean, I have been riding a bike since I was 5, so how hard can this be?

Well, apparently, when you are 38 years old and out of shape and your main source of exercise is stamping background images onto paper it can get a little interesting. We took our first test ride down to the park that is about 6/10 of a mile from my house. By the time we got to the park, I had discovered a couple of things about myself.

1. 32 ounces of water is not enough for a 6/10 of a mile trip down the road. Apparently, my body mistook the Texas heat for the Serengeti Desert and decided that I was going to go into shock if I didn't drink at least 3 gallons of water RIGHT NOW. I now pack much more water.

2. Just because your bike seat says "Designed for Women" does not mean that it was designed for you, woman! My butt hurt in a way that I still cannot fully understand nor describe. Of course, the fact that I have extra butt probably accounts for most of that, but I'm working on it, dang it!

3. I know lots of cuss words, but when you are taking your 4 year old for a bike ride, you have to say them with your "inside" voice. The one inside your head. Oh yes, I could have given the guys on "Deadliest Catch" a run for their potty-mouthed money with the thoughts I was thinking.

4. I am overweight for a reason. In the words of my dear friend, M., back home in Alabama, "I like the taste of food and I do not like to sweat." I figure I am going to have to change one of those two things and it might as well be the sweating part because that comes pretty easily in Texas in the summertime.

So, we survived the trip and I figured that the pain would go away and we are going to bike to and from swim practice (roughly 2 1/2 miles round trip here folks). Monday goes really well. Little A and I wear our helmets (racing grey for me, pink kittens for her), she swims like a water bug for her new swim coach while I try to remember how my labor and delivery nurse turned a diaper into an ice pack for my butt when I got home, and all was well with the world. We return home and I am very pleased with myself.

Tuesday comes. We ride the bike to swim practice, but on the way I hit a pretty significant "bump", i.e.---huge crack in the sidewalk that jars my body in a way that I am pretty sure caused some kind of damage. Nevertheless, we make it to practice and all is well with the world. Until we come out, and see The Issue.

My front bike tire is completely, totally devoid of air. Flatter than the proverbial pancake. Now, knowing my dear little one's "flair for the dramatic" I decide to play it cool and try to make this fun. I tell her, "You did so great at swim practice, let's go on an adventure walk!" with as much enthusiasm as I could muster at this point in time. Off we start on our roughly 1 mile trek home.

Before we made it 100 yard LMDQ (little miss drama queen) begins to get "Melty". This is a word of her own making, and is used as a description of any situation in which she begins to sweat. Proper usage in a sentence usually goes like this: "Moooooommmm, I am getting all melty!" Now imagine that whine coming out of a 44" tall version of my husband, complete with the Scarlett O' Hara back of the hand to the forehead look. Yeah. Good Times.

Another 100 yards produced an even more pitiful whine of "I am running out of energy." This from the child who is 90 miles and hour with her hair on fire from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. every single day of her life. No naps, no breaks. All day long. Suddenly she is running out of energy? Did I get to "run out of energy" while I was in labor for 22 hours? I did not. I was not even given that option! Now, I know there are probably a thousand well thought out, correct answers for this child at this point, but what I came up with was, "Well, if you would stop whining you would have more energy to walk." Truthful, yes. Compassionate, no.

We continue on, and about the 4/10 of a mile mark she says to me, with complete sincerity, "I just can't take this anymore....we are never going to get to ride our bike again!" Now, I know this child, and she is pretty headstrong. She is about to go into full meltdown mode on me as I walk up Brodie Lane with her. We stop walking and I give her a big drink of cool water and try to rationalize. The bike will get fixed. We only have to walk a little farther, and all we have to do is take it one step at a time. "Honey, if this is the worst thing that happens to us today, we are going to have a great day." She looks at me, completely non-plussed. Just as she is about to let the alligator tears roll, I remember that there is a brand new bag of popsicles in the deep freezer in our garage.

"Hey baby," I said to her, "when we get home today, you can have two popsicles." A smile finally made it across her face and we made the rest of the walk whine-free. So, let this be a lesson to you all. Sometimes, all you have to do is put one foot in front of the other. And sometimes, a little bribery with a kiddo is not a bad thing!

If you stuck with it this far, thanks for reading! I hope everyone has a healthy, happy day, and I promise a stamping post a little later on. Until next time, Happy Stamping!

Kim