My little picasso

My two boys are so very different in almost every way. When Owen was Wyatt's age he was not one bit interested in coloring, drawing or writing. As much as I tried to get him to write, and hold the pencil even as  a preschooler he was not intrested. Wyatt from an early age has always liked to draw, so much that I have become good friends with the magic eraser (I love that thing).  He enjoys decorating anything he can get away with! You can give him a piece of paper and a crayon and he will be occupied for a long time. In the mornings when I do my work, he sits at the table and draws while I pay bills, and keep up with the books. The neat thing now is he is telling you what his pictures are. During therapy last week his coordinator came for her monthly visit. Wyatt drew her a picture and she said "wow Wyatt, that is a wonderful circle", he looked at her and said "Moon". We all laughed so hard, because he looked really put off that she didn't know it was a moon.  I really hope he continues to enjoy drawing, he has it in his genes (not from me)  so hopefully he will!

Bindi eyeing the crayon, don't know why but she love to eat crayons, and will devour one in just a few seconds paper and all!

Where is the sunshine?

I admit I am not a very good photographer, in my spare time I would love to learn how to take better photos. Someday soon I am going to invest in a SLR and learn how to use it! However now I have to make do with the digital point and shoot I have, and in good light it does a fine job! Unfortunately here it has been yucky and overcast so I had to work with what was dealt to me. I have adobe photoshop elements, and have play with it. I have seen others do incredible things with this from digial pages, and cards to editing pictues. I need to get a book to understand how to use it I guess. I  messed with it some, to make the picture sharper. I am sure there are tons of trick to fixing things, but I thought these were good enough to share. These two cards are being submitted to the Moxie Fab World Challenge Olympic of Stamping Challenge.

This card is using one of the new butterflies from the PTI set, it is stamped in  Memento rich cocoa ink, on dotted paper, and then cut out. The background is embossed and the sentiment is also stamped in cocoa ink.

This card I am submitting for the hero arts flower challenge also, all stamps are hero arts, PP is from PTI. All images stamped with memento rich cocoa ink. The flowers are mounted on one of the new wood stamps from hero arts. I wanted the image to be larger so I stamped two times and cut into squares to created the background.

Azalea card

While at Enchanted Cottage over the weekend I bought some peg stamp sets by http://www.rubberstamptapestry.com/ . I have some stamps that I bought from them some time ago, and forgot how easy and fun they are to create with. First I cut out the new spellbinder label 10 die, and used this to stamp with the set Azalea Terrace. The inks are veracolor in mauve, rasberry and peony, and PTI's spring moss. You really can't mess up using these stamps, if your image doesn't stamp clearly just stamp another image over it. I used stickles to give it a little glitter, the sentiment is from Hero Arts. The background pink is core'dination cardstock and embossed then sanded. The flower from hero arts, is sprayed with glimmer mist in key lime, I now see I need to buy more colors! This stuff really covers and looks so pretty.

 After finally seeing some decent snow here, I am ready for it to be spring! We spent Sunday tilling the garden and planting 11 new fruit trees! In 2-4 years we "should" have an abundance of plums, pears, apples, peaches, persimmons and figs! LOL! If we can get them through the first year they should have a good shot! We already have 2 peach trees that had not produced anything until we gave them some TLC. We love being able to walk out into the field and pick the peaches. Wyatt was especially fond of them. He will eat anything, and I think he and I will be spending a lot of time tending to our gardens this year. Now I need to order our seeds and transplants for the garden. One year I tried to start everything from seed, so much work wasted since I was very negligent on watering them! Now I seed to sow and plant transplants someone else grew, so much easier!

Flower card

I made this card for the Hero Arts Challenge the theme this month is Flowers or St. Patricks Day. Believe it or not I do not own one St. Patrick themed stamps, so flowers it is! I used PP from Cosmo Cricket, and my new die from spellbinders, love their deckled dies. They look great when you sponge on distressed inks, I used shabby shutter for the background deckled frame and the swirl stamp from Hero Arts. Then I sponged on dried marigold and spiced marmalade over the flower and used a white gel pen on it. The stem is colored with copics YG23 & YG25, and the scallop border is stamped in white ink and embossed.  I miss their old format, but am looking forward to seeing PTI new weekly challenges.

Yesterday, I got a much needed break and went to the Enchanted Cottage and Archivers with a friend it had been a crazy week and it was nice to get away from the day! We had so much fun, hopefully soon we can get together and use the new stuff we bought! I hope to have more time to work on stuff this week. I plan on sticking close to home since I will be driving my Husbands big truck for most of the week. I have no problem driving it, its the parking that I cannot do. Since we do not need any additional problems I think I will just drive it to and from Owen's school!

SNOW

The last few weeks have been busy here, I haven't had much time to work on crafty things. Hopefully things will settle down soon. Friday Night we actually got at least 6" of snow! I know for everyone up North that is a "dusting" now, but it was very exciting for us! In the 10 years we have lived here that is the most snow we have seen in NC! It was really good packing snow too, very wet and heavy. The power was out when the kids got up so we dressed in our warmest clothes, and all went outside to play. We quickly found out that Owen would never survive up North, the snow was too cold for him, it was too wet, etc! Wyatt loved it, although would not keep mittens on so I had to drag him in kicking and screaming a few times to warm back up. Owen eventually embraced the experience and we had a great snowball battle! It is quickly melting away, but we had a blast playing in it!

Two Tree cards

This month I have a few male birthdays that I needed to make cards for. I struggle designing cards for men, but the new set from PTI: Through the trees is perfect for this! There are three large tree images that allow for a full range of techniques. These cards are very simple, with a clean design layout. I stamped the tree trunk with Colorbox chalk ink in dark brown, then using the "kissing" technique removed some of the ink with the Hero Arts woodgrain stamp. I think having the grain show up on the trunk gives it a more rustic look. The leaves are stamped using Distresses Ink in Shabby Shutter. Don't forget to check out
http://www.nicholeheady.typepad.com/capture_the_moment/ from now until Feb 15th, they are celebrating their 3rd anniversary,  lot's of fun stuff going on there. !

Have to share a sweet picture of my baby, he turned 2 in Dec., and he is getting so big. Every day he says or does something new, it is fascinating to see him learn new things. He is finally starting to put two words together, something his speech therapist and I have been working with him on.  He has been late doing almost everything, not crawling until almost 12 months, did not walk until he was 20 months, and said very little until recently. We went through the CDSA Child developement service association where he was tested and received physical therapy until October, and is still receiving speech therapy. What we have determined is there doesn't seem to be any disability it is totally about his WILL!  He now runs, jumps and climbs, you would never know it took him longer than most. He has the cutest way to say things like puppies, and grapes, I love it. He also walks around with his finger to his lip going "hmm", and puts his hands up in the gesture of where is it when he is looking for something. The best thing we ever did with both of our boys was to teach them baby sign language. It make a huge difference with Owen when he was little, but with Wyatt it has been crucial in communicating with him.  I recommend it to everyone with little ones!