Pay It Forward Game - Spread the LOVE

Pay it forward is a great thing to do!

On Aug 26, 2012, I participated in a "Pay It Forward" blog post at
Scramping with Carol. I was one of the first few people to respond, and as such, I will receive a handmade gift from Carol Labuski (a woman I don't personally know - but I follow her blog, since she always has wonderful creations posted!)... AND I won't even know exactly when it will arrive!... Won't that be awesome?!!! With my brain, I'll totally forget all about it and when the gift comes, I really will be surprised! lol :)

Rules of the game - and you know there are some :) 

They are as follows:

1. To the first 3 people to comment on this post.... I will send a
    
     surprise gift!*  This gift will be handmade by me and I will send
    
     it sometime within the next year (yep... 365 days!) 
    
     Exactly when... well... that will be a surprise!

2. To sign up to receive a gift from me, you must play along, too.

    Share the love on your blog ("pay it forward") by promising to

    send a handmade goodie to the first 3 people who comment on

    your blog post.

3. Of course to do #2, you MUST have a blog!

4. After commenting on my post, you must post this Pay It Forward

     game on your blog to spread the love. If you haven’t posted it

     within 48 hours, then the next commenter will be chosen.

If you want to join in and spread the love around, just comment below and then post the Pay It Forward game on your blog.... AND if you’re one of the first 3 to comment, I’ll send you something before the end of August next year!

* (Sorry, I can't afford overseas shipping) Open to residents in the U.S. or Canada only

Avree

Finally.......

           A close-up photo of that precious baby girl! (I've told both parents that I want 24 pictures a day, at least, but they are NOT cooperating! I think they've tuned me out, lol :(

But I had to share this latest one..... can you tell, I'll be obsessed with posting her photos? I'll try to curb my urges to do that, so I won't overwhelm the Blogger system!!! and you!!

New Mom and Baby Girl

Well, I promised "more later"... here she is!!!...

Our New Granddaughter

Avree Diane

(about one hour old)

Born Monday August 13, 2012 - 4:31 PM

Weight - 8 lbs 7.5 ozs

Length - 22 inches ---21 inches (confirmed by pediatrician at checkup)

And just absolutely PERFECT!!!

and the next morning... sleeping on Mom!

She looks almost exactly like her mom did when she was born.

We can't wait to see her in person in about 3 weeks, when they come for our son's wedding! She'll get to meet this whole side of the family, which is extremely small and only consists of the two of us, her Uncle Josh and brand new Aunt Michelle, her Great-Aunt Melissa (my sister), her second-cousin Derek (my nephew and sister's son) and his fiance, Sandea, as well as my BFF and "adopted" Granny, Carol... she can't wait to get her hands on

Avree either!!

You'll probably be seeing lots more of this little gal on here in the coming months, if I can get her momma to take pictures with a "real" camera, and not just on her phone, lol :)

It's Official!

We're finally GRANDPARENTS!!!... Avree Diane has arrived! :) ... More later...

True Friend

Another quote I saw and made into a small sign to be able to cut out.

I thought I could use this on the front of a card. Might need an encouragment card sometime.

Not a Lack of Love

I ran across this quote somewhere... I can't remember now exactly where, but it was someone's favorite quote, and just typed out.... Anyhoo....

With our son's upcoming wedding and our own 32nd anniversary in October, I have 'marriage' on the brain! When I saw this, I thought "yep, that's sure true!"

So I put the quote in the square box to make it into something I could cut out. And I've counted my blessings that my hubby and I are friends! :)

Engaged!.... (long post with many pictures!)

Our son is getting married on September 8th! Last Tuesday eve, they surprised us with some engagement photos, and this is one of them:

(I added the text)



They had come up for a wedding of friends, the next day, and I had been working on the wedding card for them to take to the happy couple (another Floral Impressions Easel Card!) I wasn't done with making the 3D envelope box it had to go in, so Michelle got to see the card up close and personal! Now, she and her women folk are all "crafty" women (just not in scrapbooking or cardmaking.) 

So, I was very flattered at her attention to and comments about the card.... so much so, that I decided to make her an even more elaborate one... one with a different engagement photo that she mentioned was one of her favorites. I made it so they could use it as a photo decor item in their home (or just throw it out if they didn't like it, lol)

Michelle's sister and SIL gave her a bridal brunch for her shower on Saturday. With my health, I wasn't sure I'd make it since it's more than 2 hours away, but I did. YAY! It was a fun and happy event! There were over 30 women attending, and she received many nice gifts for their new home together.
I had my real gift shipped ahead just in case I didn't make it, so I ended up taking her the photo decor and a card, that turned into a kind of mini-album.

Here's the photo of the decor piece I made:

click to see photo larger

Michelle's wedding colors are pastels... a pink-azalea color, yellow and a touch of purple. Her favorite flowers are daisies, which will be her bouquet. Her bridesmaid's will be in the pink tones and the wedding cake will be chocolate with yellow icing and daisies flowing all over the top and sides, gradually thinning out as they get to the bottom layer. With all that in mind....

That's why I did the easel part of the project in yellow (some Basic Grey color I don't remember). I triple matted the photo, first on white cardstock embossed with an ivy pattern, then on a patterned paper from my stash that I thought complimented the pattern in her dress, and then on
Gold Mirricard from Marco's. The sentiment's I did in MS Word, and matted them on CTMH Cotton Candy cardstock.

There are 2 sizes of daisies on here.... the smaller ones, as well as the small pink roses, yellow cherry blossoms, and the leaves are from I Am Roses.
All the smaller flowers were white to start with, but I painted them with
Lindy's Stamp Gang's Starburst Spray in Cotton Candy Pink and I used their Yellow Rose of Texas Magical Micas... that's in their Prairie Wildflowers set.

The base is 7.25" x 12" and built on chipboard for extra sturdiness. The bottom patterned paper is of small yellow daisies on a white background and the whole paper had a golden shimmer to it. (You'll be able to see it better in the photo of the matching card.) The next layer is the Gold Mirricard again, and then topped with daisy patterned paper from my stash that is so old, I don't even remember the store I purchased it from, lol :)! But it's made from a real photo of a field of daisies, and it really made exactly the look I was going for! I love when that happens!

The 3 large daisies on the project I made myself! I'm so proud of these as they're my first attempt at daisies!.... I started each with 2 paper flowers from CTMH. I had to hand-cut all the niches in each petal of every layer, to get them to resemble the other daisies. I glued the 2 paper flowers together, with petals slightly off-set, making a daisy. In the center of each, I put a CTMH clear button, then covered each button with a custom two-color yellow flower soft to get the "fuzzy" look I wanted. I liked how they turned out so much, that I covered the centers of the I Am Roses daisies with the flower soft as well. I finished it off with some butterflies (punch from Martha Stewart) in CTMH Floral Impressions paper (retired), inked with CTMH Gypsy ink, to get the bit of purple added in, and topped them off with some bling swirls marking their "flight" pattern, and CTMH Bitty Sparkles for their bodies! 

I also made a matching 3D box to hold both this easel project and the card.
Since it had to be longer than 12", I covered the seam with the daisy paper.

And I knew way ahead of time, that I was going to make a card "booklet" (or mini album) for Michelle, because of the things I wanted to include in it. So, I matched the card to this elaborate easel decor piece I had made!

This is the card front with all I Am Roses embellishments. You can see the yellow daisy paper better here, but still not the gold shimmer it had... you had to hold it at an angle to see the shimmer! Same Basic Grey yellow cardstock as the easel, and all the inside 'pages' are CTMH Cotton Candy cardstock.

The inside pages are as follows:

This is a poem I wrote for Michelle to welcome her to our family!

(sorry the photo is a little blurry)

These pages are the "Recipes"!

Left one I wrote for a happy marriage and right one

to add to the recipe book she received!

It's a recipe for Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal NO-Bake Cookies!

Just a crazy personal note to her!

And because I had the gift sent to her home,

the last paragraph tells her to turn the page

to see her gift that should arrive soon.

(but she got it the day before! Go figure!)

It's a PINK KitchenAid Mixer with a flexible edge attachment

(see the small photo on the left)

I made this photo collage on PicMonkey's free online photo editing site. The images are all from Google Images... top one says "Bridal Shower" on the umbrella, second one is gold wedding bands, 3rd is the flexible edge attachment, and the bottom one is the wedding cake Michelle wants (from Martha Stewart Weddings).

Can you tell her favorite color is pink?

Well this post is finally done!... I told you it was long and had lots of pictures in the title, so if you made it all the way down here, thank you so much for taking your precious time to check out my blog post! :)

Have a GREAT day!