celebrating mom

What do you give the woman who has everything? Something handmade from the heart, of course! Well, I guess that my Mom doesn't have everything, but after years of giving her quilting supplies, I needed to change things up for Mother's Day. 

My Mom is special. As I'm sure yours is. But, this year, my family has come to rely on her like we never have before. With three of us working, and only two cars, she has become indespensable to us as a taxi. She has become a confidant to our moody teens. As always, she is our personal tailor. I often come home to find a few BJ's staples on my kitchen counter. The list of what she does goes on and on. Generous is the word that describes her best. She is precious to all of us!

Here is the gift I'll be giving her this Mother's Day. 

I am in love with how it turned out! I'm not crazy about my handwriting, so I considered using some of my favorite fonts. But in the end, I wanted this project to be very personal, and so I featured our handwriting throughout the project. 

I didn't have just the right patterned paper, so I decided to stamp my own! Mom's favorite color is yellow, so it was an easy choice for this project. 

I highlighted important words by using pink marker on Whisper White card stock to remind Mom of what she means to us. 

Both of our girls came up with a list of words that describe their Gram. I plugged them into an online word search generator, and then stamped the grid and highlighted the words. 

Please don't ask me how long it took me to come up with a method for stamping a neat grid! And don't ask me how many times I had to crumple up my work and start over! It's totally embarrassing. I WILL tell you how I did it! Someone should take advantage of my hopeless mistakes. ; ) With a pencil, I lightly drew lines, horizontally and vertically, 1/4" apart, to create boxes for each letter. Ten letters fit vertically on my paper, so the grid is 10 letters by 10 letters. Then I stamped the letters in the boxes. In hindsight, it seems logical, but you wouldn't believe how many ways I tried, and failed. 

I think that this Mother's Day is going to be pretty wonderful for my Mom. As a quilter, she really appreciates a handmade gift. She's why I'm so crafty! 

Happy Mother's Day, and happy  stamping!

this means war

Spring has finally sprung in the great northeast! How do I know, you may ask? Well, it's not the temperatures. They vary wildly. Just yesterday it was so beautiful out that I was running errands in a t-shirt. But we had a fire roaring that night just to stay warm in the living room! I know that spring is here because of our dog, Remy. Here he is. Isn't he just adorable? Yup he is. And I love him tons.

It's a good thing that I love him tons. Especially in the spring. So, let me tell you how Remy tells me that spring is here. Every time he moves, twitches, shakes, rolls around on the floor, brushes by the couch, sneezes... he leaves behind massive amounts of puppy fur! There are dog hair tumbleweeds under every piece of furniture in the house! And the moment I have them all swept up, he drops more hair. It's an unending war between me and Remy hair. So, it's a good thing that he's so dang lovable. I guess we'll have to keep him.

The good news is that winter has lost it's icy grip on my world. I'm starting to think about the flower bed that needs a bit of attention. I know that when I finally make the time to go out and tend to it, I'll find itty bitty green things doing miraculous things! But today, I only had enough time to put together a card featuring flowers. It's pretty cute too!

I used one of my favorite techniques for the multi colored flowers: coloring an acrylic block with marker, spritzing it with water, and stamping onto paper. I make my own patterned paper that way. Incredibly quick and easy for a big payoff!

Happy stamping!