Life and fruit

Life tosses fruit at us all of the time. Sometimes it is little life disruptions in the form of small fruits: lemons, limes, or berries. Other times you duck a coconut just to get hit with a pineapple.

In younger year we learn to take lemons and make lemonade. After a few years of experience, we laugh at lemons. Toss them at us and we turn them into a full meal from lemon shrimp appetizer to a lemon meringue pie. It is the nature of the hard working mom to multi-task our way through the fruit salad of life.

I spent a week enjoying juggling limes. Limes are my friend as they make great margaritas. Drew and I traveled to Miami for his work and enjoyed warm weather, good food, and friends. The Monday night football game was a definite highlight. Sure, I had a ton of prep before we left and make-up work when we returned, but it was worth every second.

While sitting in the airport waiting for my flight, life decided to add some more fruit to the mix. My dean called to ask a favor. Would I take an accelerated English class starting in just 4 days?

Eeek! Just one little 9 week request would change my life enormously. 4 days of work instead of 2. An extra 13 hours of prep, grading, teaching time. 13 hours less to manage the mom job and house stuff. The upside? More money, a happy dean, a chance to touch the lives of additional students. The tiebreaker: the woman scheduled to teach the class was called to active duty in Iraq. How could I not?

And so I find myself hitting 2 weeks without a bit of scrapping. I can not wait until this weekend when I can tap into my mojo. Until then, you will find me chopping fruit until I can turn this latest medly into a tasty treat.

Thanks for the fun

The final challenge in the Cuttlebug Challenge Blog birthday celebration is to create thank you cards to send after the party ends. Normally, I do a photo birthday card showing some favorite shots of my birthday kid blowing out candles, opening presents, and playing games. It allows me to share the memory of the day with all of the family.

Even though this will not be our real thank you cards, it was still fun for Allie and I to put together. She felt we worked the tree image enough for our theme so we just used the same fabulous Earth Love papers, Thickers, our beloved Cuttlebug, and some favorite trim.

Thanks, Cuttlebug Team for the inspiration and fun!

Happy Card Day!

Happy World Cardmaking Day!

My day began very happy when the Fancy Pants Designs blog announced me as one of their winners! I am so excited and cannot wait to see what darling goodies arrive. I adore Fancy Pants!

I zipped on over to 2 Sketches 4 You and grabbed Kazan's Sketch 36 to start my cardmaking day off right. I wanted to use this ribbon that I fell madly in love with by Jillibean Soup. How much did I love it? I bought 5 of the same exact one. Red is my favorite color and my son is obsessed with numbers--how could I not?

It is a happy card that is perfect to send as a pick me up to a friend that needs a smile. Thanks for the great sketch Kazan.

Allie and I also made our thank you cards for the Cuttlebug Challenge Blog, but a thunderstorm rolled in making it dark and horrible for taking a good photo. Will be back with it tomorrow!

Hope yall had a great day of cardmaking!

Fancy Friday

Wow. What a long week. Filled with work, activities, meetings, volunteering, and more, every moment was scheduled. By the time I hit the couch on Thursday evening, I was all but brain dead.

Knowing that it was going to be crazy, I made certain to keep my Friday empty. The chores were done. The kids in school. The tivo full. I had all afternoon to scrap and play. Where to begin?

I stopped by the Fancy Pants Designs Friday Challenge. Their World Card Day challenge had me reaching for Rough and Tough and Krafty Boys collections. I was in the mood for a bit of paper piecing and had such fun putting together this little owl. Isn't he just too cute?


I am obsessed with pop dots lately and cannot resist layering items together. Using pop dots under letter stickers gives them such great look. Now the only question is who to send him to?