I thought I would introduce the youngest member of our family.

This is Maggie, she is a year old today and we have had her for ten months. She has a personality that doesn't end and is a joy to have around. In the picture on the left, she is in the bathroom window. To get to this window, she must go from the toilet up to the window which is on the other side of the bathtub/ shower enclosure and five feet up from the floor of the tub. She loves heights. The picture on the right was taken shortly after we got her. She is sitting on top of the front door. Believe it or not, she is napping. I got two more pictures of her up there before I climbed up on a stool to take her down. To this day, she still climbs the screen. I hear a big bang (her jumping up on the screen) and find her hanging at the top of the screen watching the birds that play in the eaves. She so wants to be outside. That is enough about Maggie. 

I am going to go find a challenge. The birthday cards I need to have in the mail yesterday have me stymied. They should be challenge enough, but if I can get my mind off of them for a while, perhaps something will come to me that I can be proud to send. Thank you for coming by and I hope you enjoyed reading about Maggie. Till next time...

Had my last Cricut Expression class this evening. Since we had gone over the buttons in the class last Thursday, tonight was mainly informational and getting more familiar with our Cricuts. We went over how to take care of the mats, types of vinyl and stenciling materials to use, what settings to use for the different materials and using the "air cut". We made cuts in vinyl, magnet, stencil and fabric materials. I was surprised at how easy it was to cut the magnet material with the regular blade and using the multi cut feature. Isn't that car just the cutest thing? To cut the fabric, it had a material called Heat and Bond ironed on to it. I had a bit of trouble getting the settings right for the fabric and I think that the way the grain of the fabric runs also has to do with getting good cuts. I will have to play with this one. We cut the shoe out of regular stenciling material and we also made a stencil out of the vinyl. All in all, it was a very good series of classes. I learned a lot and feel pretty comfortable with my Cricut Expression. I will definitely be using my Cricut more often.

This card was made using my Cricut and the Bloom cartridge. I used a Fiskar's combo punch to cut the cream mat. 

I had cut the flowers just playing around and the mat was also from playing around. I tried to make a card out of each of them Then I started putting the two pieces together . And this is what I came up with. I think this would make a great Christmas card, just need to change the verse. 

It seems that July is birthday month. I have five birthday cards to make, so here are two of what I'm playing around with.

The card on the right was made using the Celebrations cartridge. I'm still playing around with the card. The balloons, package and words were all cut with the Cricut. The card still needs something and I have some more ideas, but if you have any suggestions, they would be welcomed. 

For the card on the left, I used the Cuttlebug embossing folder, white ink over the embossing and colored some of the flowers. The notes are pearls and I used some Stickles on the staff. Inside the card are the words to the Happy Birthday song. The card looks better in person because the embellishments show up.

Thank you for looking

Just dropping by for a minute or two. Went to my second Cricut Expressions 101 class Thursday evening. I'm not posting any pictures of the things we cut because they are just "things". We played with the function buttons. We used the Summer in Paris cartridge again. A couple of the buttons I still don't understand their advantage, but I will figure it out.
Need 100 one inch stars? The Quantity button is great for that. Don't need to count any more. If 100 of them stars don't fit on the 12 x 12 page, just upload another page and press Cut. It will continue where it left off and stop when it reaches the desired number. A great feature for anyone that needs to cut multiples.
Remember on the little Cricut, how if you put too many characters to cut, it would let you know they wouldn't fit and you had to change the number, size, or whatever to get it on the page? With the Expressions if it doesn't fit, it will cut what will fit, then you load another page and it will continue where it left off till it reaches the requested number. That is going to save me lots of time.
We played with the Auto Fill mode (anyone need any Eiffel Tower BOs?), Fit to Length, Fit to page, Mix 'n Match (don't really understand this one yet), Multi Cut (great on chipboard, magnets, etc.; but don't use it on regular cardstock, it will cut the mat!) and the Flip button.
I am so glad I signed up and took this series of classes. When I first had a chance to use an Expressions, I was lost. Sure, I could do just plain cuts, but all the extra buttons looked very confusing. Now I feel more comfortable with my Expressions.
Next class is Monday. I can hardly wait. I love my new machine, just wish I didn't have to send it to Provo to get its boo boo fixed. It will take about two weeks to get it taken care of. My next project will be to learn to use the Design Studio. Maybe it won't be so intimidating once I'm really comfortable with my new Cricut toy.
Oh! ever been in a room with 17 ladies using the size dial on their Cricuts? Sounds like a warm summer evening. Take care

I partnered with Murphy's Law today. If it could go wrong, it did. Hopefull tonight will be much better. I went to a Cricut Expressions class last night. The Rep. was looking at my brand new Cricut and proceded to tell me that there was a problem with how the cutter housing was sitting. The arms around the housing don't mesh and makes the housing tilt. Not good. Got the machine at Michaels, so I went there this morning (couldn't find the sales slip) to exchange the machine. I was told they wouldn't do anything because I couldn't prove I bought it there. All I wanted to do was exchange the machine! I will now have to send it to Provo. I will not be doing any more shopping at Michaels this year. My little personal protest.

The day kept on going down hill. I wanted to post a picture of the page we made last night, but I can't get a good picture of it and no one around here has a 12 x 12 scanner. So the picture I am posting isn't very good.
The cartridge is Summer in Paris and the paper is from AC. As you can see here is a lot of intricate detail on this cartridge. The cartridge is part of the class package.
I really enjoyed the class and am looking forward to the next two.

Using my little Cricut, I made the following cards.

The birdcage and butterfly are from the Bloom cartridge. The frame I made using a Fiskars combo border/corner punch. I fell in love with this boarder and it is being used on a lot of my cards. I also went to JoAnn's and bought another combo punch.



The butterfly and swirl on this red card are from the Pink Journey Campaign Rose cartridge.





I enjoyed making these cards. They aren't fancy, but I like them.

Its been a busy week. There was 5th grade promotion on Friday and then 5th grade BBQ on Monday. The kids are now home from school for a week before going off to ASP for four weeks. The picture is of Jeffrey and his school principal. He was one proud kid that day.

The baby hummingbirds are gone. I think I'm going to create an album somewhere in cyberland. Don't know where yet, probably on my Facebook page.






My daughter took this picture of a dragon fly in our yard with her phone. She sent it to me; I thought him pretty, so am putting his picture here for others to enjoy also.




This is one of the first cards I made for swapping. I enjoy making cards and they are usually pretty simple. I don't put a lot of embellishment on them, and I have a color coordination problem. I put colors together that I like and sometimes they don't really go together. Sure wish I know how to get my pictures to sit where I want them to sit, not where they want. Guess they are like kids. Takes work, but satisfying.




The Owl card. I received the image and I was to color it and make it into a card. This isn't the one I actually sent, but its close. I used a Fiskars boarder punch and it was so easy. I don't know what brand of stamp was used, but it sure had me in a quandary as to how to color him. The only embellishment I used on this card is liquid embossing on the branch he sits on and put some sparkly in the center of the flower.




The butterfly card, well, I was to make a card using an item that was sent to me. What I received was a length of some sort of soft wire in a light rose color. I used my Cricut to cut out the butterfly and then outlined him with the soft wire. I spent hours on this card, most of the time trying to coordinate colors. I had cut the butterfly a couple of months ago, so had to work around that. And, of course, the paper I had used was gone. For the next mystery item card I make, I will get a picture of the item in the raw.



The images don't want to go where I want them to go, so I guess I will have to leave them where they want to be. At least they are still here, of that, I am thankful. It would also be nice if the screen I am working in looked like the preview.

Its Saturday and I decided I needed to open my new Cricut machine. I have had it for nearly two months, unopened, hidden under my desk. It was time to see if it knew what it could do, so I decided to make a card. This is what we came up with. The card needs so much help; I see no redeeming qualities to it, but I had fun cutting it out. Well, I didn't actually cut it out, my Cricut did. All I had to do was fold the card, put the blue behind the snowflake and add the blue to the face of the card including the word "believe". But it needed something else so I stuck a piece of cording along the side, that didn't help. Unless someone can tell/show me how to make the Cricut cut cards more interesting, I don't think I will be making any more of them. That doesn't mean I won't use my Cricut to make cards, I will just do it differently. So any suggestions on how to improve this card would be greatly appreciated.

On another note the hummingbird babies are getting so big. I look out my window and see their little heads above the rim of the nest. They appear to have their feathers, and mom doesn't stay around very much. I haven't seen her sit on the nest for a couple of days. Its been warm here probably in the 80s, so that may be warm enough for them. I am certainly going to miss them when they are gone. I just hope that I will be lucky enough to see them fly off.

Wow, its Friday already. Where has the week gone? Last weekend my grandson's gymnastics team had their awards celebration for the 2009/2010 year. It was so nice to see all the gymnasts in their dressy clothes. These children range in ages from 6 to 18, competitive levels 4 to 10. The three highest awards that the gym gives out are Most Improved, Coaches Award and Gymnast of the year for the girls team and the boys team. What a wonderful surprise for us; my grandson received the boys team Gymnast of the year award. Can I brag about him a little bit? He entered the world of gymnastics in March of 2007, in June the gym invited him to be on the competition team. He competed that season as a level 4, age 6. This year he competed at a level 6, age 8. They have moved him up to level 7 and he will compete as a 9 year old for the 2010/2011 season. His future goal is to go to Stanford and be on their gymnastics team.



I made two cards yesterday. I had loaned out the Cricut cartridge that I wanted to use for the sketch challenge card, so ended up using my Slice. The owl isn't quite as cute but I had my heart set on using an owl. I had the hardest time coming up with something for these cards. Here are my cards. I used the Slice to cut out the owl and the word "dream".
For the card on the right, I use a Cuttlebug embossing folder. The stamp is Hero Arts. I simply love and use this stamp the most.

I look at blogs and they all look so pretty and neat. I can't seem to get the "neat" part right. I will work on "pretty" when I get "neat" fixed. I upload my pictures, but can't move them around. Where they land is where they stay. I did manage to move the cards down from the top, but can't even them up or word wrap, or whatever to give some consistency to the post. They are the way they are now strictly by accident. I lost the "dream" card and had to upload it for the 4th time. I am going to format the text and post this before I have to upload something else again. There has to be an easier way.

I have a hummingbird nest in a tree in my front yard just beyond my window. I have been watching momma hummer as she has sat on her nest on rainy, windy, overcast and sunny days. Little baby heads have been peeking out for the past couple of days. Looks like the babies are about to "fly the coop". I don't know if I will see them fly away, but I know that I will miss them .
The picture on the left doesn't look like much but it is one of the babies sunning itself and waiting for mom to come back with some grub. The picture on the right is momma and that pointy thing just a smidgen to her right is one of the babies looking out from under her.
This is the second set of babies we have had this spring. There was a nest of Phoebes on my front porch. She built her nest on top of the porch light. There were three babies, unfortunately I couldn't get any pictures of them or the mom. The fledgling phoebes left the nest while we were camping over Memorial day weekend. The phoebes left me a nice pile of droppings right in from of my door. One would think that when they moved out, they would clean up after themselves. LOL. I am so glad to have had the opportunity of watching these birds.

My first card post. I made this card for a swap and could only use the colors Pink, Orange and black. The base is pink then the black frame and a light orange on top of that. I used some glitter and added a bit of green; while the glitter looks sparkly on the card itself, it doesn't show up in this picture.

<----There is my card, Whoopee. Took two tries to get it in my post.

Well, its Sunday morning and I'm sitting here with a cold cup of coffee going through different blogs looking at all the wonderful stuff everyone has been doing. (That's why my coffee is cold.) I joined SCS last night and have been struggling with how to post, reply and generally navigate the site. I have also tried to figure out how to "Follow" on other blogs. Don't know if this is the same as joining or signing a guest book or what. Well, I wanted something to do and I think I have found that something. Just setting up my blog is going to take me hours. While I will get frustrated, I will eventually find my way and be proud of my accomplishment.

I need to get ready for my grandson's gymnastics awards banquet. He is 9 years old, a level 6 gymnast. This year he made the All Stars team (level 6, 8-10 yr. olds). Several of the boys from his gym made the team. I could go on and on, but I must cut this short. Have a good day.

Hi, I'm Joyce. I'm just learning about blogging, so I hope you will bear with me while I work on my page. I have my Google Blogger for Dummies book close by as I work; I also know how to use the "help" button. This may take a few days 'cause when I see underlined blue words, I check to see if they can help me. I am also checking out other blogs and getting ideas of what I want and don't want for my blog. I also wonder if it is necessary to get other blogger's permission to add their link to my page. I guess I have to learn protocol for blogging.
Thank you to Susan Gunelius for the Dummies book, it has been a great help to me so far.