MEGA Cool Blog Candy!

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Merry Christmas!

Finished!

Well I did it, I didnt think I would but I did. I finished all of the 12 Tags of Christmas! I am so proud of myself- and you know what they look pretty darn good too- I think I am getting a hang of this crafting thing. Anyway here is a picture of all 12 tags. Please tell me what you think.
Merry Christmas!

Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas 2009

Well I have drooled over these tags for 2 years now- not feeling at all confident that I could create one, but this year I decided to give it a try. It is day 3 for Tim and day 3 for me, I have completed days 1 and 2. So here is a peek at Mr. Holtz's day 1 tag and my version of it. I didnt have all of the same stamps, ink, tools etc, so I had to improvise, but I think it turned out well! Tell me what you think! Now I'm off to get inky!

Tim's Tag

My Tag

I am a WINNER!

Well I have known it all along but now someone else knows that I am a winner too! Just kidding! :) A cyber friend of mine Allie has a blog, and on her blog she posted a Sesame Street challenge to create something using Sesame Street as the topic since it was their 40th annv. Now I was/am a huge fan of Sesame Street so I was extremely excited to join in her challenge. I purchased some SS wood stamps at Hobby Lobby last year on sale, and boy am I glad I did, they were great for this challenge. I created a chipboard book using the stamps and the song lyrics for "Won't you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street". Well Allie liked my book and guess what??? I WON the contest, well I tied for the win, Allie liked another entry as well and so we both won, but I am secure enough in my winning to share. I get to be featured on Allie's blog and I get to add the "Croppie" award to my blog. Here is my book, it was so much fun to make.






Thanks for taking a peek, and thanks to Allie for the challenge, I had tons of fun!

Long Time- no news

Really a lot has gone on since I published last- Since Thanksgiving is just around the corner- I wanted to list a few people that I am thankful for everyday:
I really am a lucky girl to have so many people that love and support me!
I am thankful for my new husband:

This is Paul and I on our wedding day- It was quite an event

I am thankful for my beautiful daughter. Maggie you mean more to me than I could ever express.

Here she is getting ready to play in the CFHS Powder Puff football game- GO SENIORS!

I am thankful for my 2 wonderful nephews. Cutie Pie Noah.

And Cutie Pie Carter!

I am very thankful for my Pretty Princess Niece Teagan. Who I love having at school with me everyday- it is so great seeing her grow and learn in kindergarten.
I am also thankful for the rest of my family as well- Mom and Dad, my sisters and my new family. I love you all- Happy Thanksgiving!

My Senior

We had to finish Maggie's senior page for her yearbook this year. It was fun choosing the pictures (even though she wouldnt let me help her pick them out), and writing a letter that would be on the page. It was really hard thinking of what I wanted to tell her, I wanted to put something that would make her smile when she reads it the day that she gets her yearbook and 20 years from now when she reads it again. Anyway I hope she liked it, here it is:

Dear Maggie,
A Team- that is what we are and always will be- I can remember how excited I was so long ago waiting for you to arrive. I would talk to you while you were in my tummy and tell you all of my dreams and wishes for you. Now, 17 years later I am sitting here writing you this senior letter telling you how very proud I am of you and all of the accomplishments you have made. Life has not been easy for you, but you made the best of it, always laughed and smiled and always held your head up high. Maggie, you are so much more than I could have ever hoped for in a daughter all those years ago. You have a wonderful future ahead of you, and I know that you will excel at whatever you choose to become. This world, MY world is a better place everyday just because you are in it. I am truly honored and blessed to be your friend,
your team-mate and most importantly your mom.
I love you with all of my heart,
Mom

Win a GYPSY!

You can enter to win a Gypsy! OH I hope I win!!! They look so cool!

Honor Thy Senior

Well its offical- Maggie is a SENIOR- and I guess that means I am getting old. I never in a million years thought this day would come as fast as it did. Maggie had her very last first day of school today. It was a day to remember...

I wish you lots of luck this year kiddo! Study hard and and make me proud! I love you!

End of Summer Fun!

Well unfourtnately its that time again- Summer Vacation is OVER and school is starting back- I love the feeling of a new beginning, but I am dreading going back more than ever this year- I have enjoyed staying home- going to the beach- swimming in the pool and just hanging out in general- We have tried to do a few "touristy" things the last couple of weekends before we go back.

First we went to the ever popular "Build-a-Bear" they are running a special for the month of August- Any bear-any hanging outfit- and any pair of shoes for $30- That is a GREAT deal- so we took Teagan to build her a bear. She decided on the way that she was going to name her bear "Patch"- who knows why or where she got that name- but "Patch" is was going to be.

It didnt take her long to pick out the animal she wanted to build- now it turns out that Patch is not a bear- he is a dog- and of course she picked out the strangest looking dog they had.

Here she is giving Patch to the lady to stuff...

After you stuff him, you have to take him to the tub and wash and brush your pet- This was lots of fun- Teagan made sure that Patch was really clean and fluffy.

Here is Noah wondering when he is going to have his turn at building a bear...

And after looking around the store at all of the outfits- Teagan decided that Patch was definantly princess material- so of course she should dress like a princess- Princess Aurora for that matter- so Princess Patch Aurora it is. And here she is all dressed up and ready to be named. This weeked we had another grand adventure- we went to Freestyle Music Park... Oh Boy what lots of fun we had at Freestyle- They had lots of rides for Maggie and Teagan to rides- and an awesome fireworks show at the end of the night- The Time Machine Roller Coaster was the best - we got to visit the 80's and the 90's for some retro music- we rode and sang the whole ride.

Teagan and Maggie rode all of the spinning rides from the Fairie Boats to the Crazy Taxi Cars. Noah even got in on the action- Maggie took him for a ride on the Merry-Go-Round. Then we headed over to the part of the park called "Kids in America" . Teagan had a great time riding the hang gliders, and pedal planes, bouncy dune buggies, and big rig trucks. All in all we had a great time at Freestyle- we cant wait to go back-

...Wonder what next weekend will bring???

Altered Tins

I am in a swap with one of my yahoo groups and we had to decorate tins- like altoids boxes-

I was a little bit nervous at first, I didnt really know where to begin-The group is an all things Tim Holtz group so we had to use as many of his products as we could- here they are:

The first tin was decorated with stream/cranberry alcohol ink- after the ink was dry I dabbed silver alcohol ink all over to give it a shiny tint. The flowers on top were made out of the new grunge paper- I traced the flowers and cut them out, then I inked them with faded jeans distress ink, and I sprayed them with copper perfect pearls mixed with water. The penny in the center is a canadian penny that I found in my car.

Other embelishments include- a word tag, brad and game spinner from Tim Holtz, a piece of tulle, and various stickers, rubons and stamped images.

The 2nd tin was inked with alcohol inks as well once dry it was inked with gold alcohol for the shiny effect. The embelishments included are the stamped skull and crossbones on the top. I stamped the image onto grunge paper and cut it out, then I embossed the image with ranger black embossing powder to give it the evil look, I also did the crow the same way.

Other emblishments include- twine, prima silk flowers, stamped images from Tim Holtz, and various stickers and rubons.

Last but not least I did a tiny pill tin- it is so cute- but because it is smaller than the others it was difficult to decorate.

I inked it with alcohol inks as well. The embelishments include a grungeboard tag, and heart that were inked with fired brick and faded jeans distress ink, ribbon, stickers, rubons and a word pin.

I had a lot of fun creating the tins, I cant wait to do some more! Dawn :)

New Digital Stuff...

I have been working like crazy creating layouts and finishing scrapbooks. I gave my nephew Carter his scrapbook this weekend. Amber didnt know that I was making it- I hope she liked it- that is the main reason that I create- I love to make things for the people I love. :)


This is 1 of a 5 page layout that I created to go with all of our bike week pictures. I made them all in a sequence like they were a court case. It was really cool the way they turned out. If you get down to Murphy's Law South ask Jo to show you the layout hanging on the wall.


Ok well I guess my computer is being really stubborn- I cant get anymore to upload. Ill add more later. Dawn :)

Totally Addicted to Digital Scrappin'

Ok- I admit it, I am TOTALLY addicted to digital scrapbooking- I spent about 20 hours on Tuesday creating every layout I could think of since my free version of Photoshop was expiring at midnight- here are some LO's that I wanted to share.

This one was created after my very exciting 4th of july- yes we had fireworks and proposals- what really stinks is that Paul didnt wait long enough for Kat to get her camera so we have no pictures of the down on one knee thing... But I did take some pics. of the fireworks.


This is a layout about Noah and me- I wanted him to know how much I wanted to hold him.













Paul and I went to Carolina Beach this past weekend. We had a great time, just playing tourist. This is a page that I did telling him all of the things I enjoyed doing at the beach.




More to come later-
Love Dawn

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Happy 4th

Love to all

Dawn

New Layouts- My Summer Creations

I have been working everynight on a few layouts- I have created several in the past few weeks for Mom and Holly and Myself- I wanted to share a few- I really love summer, it gives me a chance to play- I love staying up late and then sleeping late.

This is Teagan doing her favorite thing- eating ice cream at the Water Park

Here she is dancing in the "Balbacano"-

Last but not least we have the Cinco De Mayo layout!

I hope you enjoy!

Dawn :)

Digital Layouts!!!! I figured it out!!! Yeah Me!!!!

OK I finally figured it out- Thanks to 2 peas in a bucket.com for their awesome tutorials about photoshop and other topics related to crafting.

Anyway here is one of my digital layouts- I am getting better- this was the very first one I did- I love scrapping digitally- not as much as paper and glue- but it is a lot of fun.



This is another layout that I did. It was a lot of fun- I figured out how to use elements like stamps- that is what the black dots on the sides are. There is a whole other world in digital scrapbooking. It's kind of neat!

Hope you enjoy!

Love to all,

Dawn

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Love to all,

Dawn

Digital Scrapbooking

Ok so its summer and I am not working that leaves me with some extra time on my hands- I have been reading several blogs lately where the girls are using Adobe Photoshop to create some fantastic scrapbook pages, they look just like the ones that I create with paper and embelishments but they are all done on the computer- Soooo I had to give it a try- now I didnt buy Photoshop (are you kidding me its 100- but costco has a 30 cupon if you are interested) anyway Adobe lets you have a trial version for 30 days so I have been "trying" it out, and I LOVE it- now its not as much fun as the glue and paper and such, but it does give really neat results- I have been trying to upload some of my pages but blogger is being a pain and not uploading them- I will continue to try.
If you want more info about digital scrapbooking contact me and I will share what I know- I have done some digging around and found free papers and embelishments to download.

Happy Happy Birthday!

We have lots of birthdays in our family: Lets see how they all turned out...

First we celebrated Paul's 36th (my, my he's getting old)- on May 27th- we had dinner with his family and friends at Ichiro's - the dinner was good, seeing the family and friends was great, but the cake was WONDERFUL! Birthday cake is my favorite food!

Teagan told Paul that she was going to have a Hannah Montanna cake because that was her favorite and he could have a Spongebob cake because that was his favorite- well here it is (or was- it was too yummy to last long).

Then we had Carter's 1st birthday in Columbia- we had a great time at the bubble party- Carter didnt know what to think about all of the people there , his cake and the balloons. We all had a great time helping Carter celebrate the big 1.


















And last but certainly not least on June 6th we had Teagan's 5th birthday. Teagan had a Hannah Montanna Pool/Slumber Party- She had a Hannah Montanna cake, Hannah Montanna plates, Hannah Montanna Cups, Hannah Montanna "Nakins", Hannah Montanna goody bags- If it had Hannah Montanna on it she had it. She even got a Hannah Montanna bike from MeMe and Papa Red. She had lots of fun swimming in the pool, eating hotdogs and cake and then having 3 little girls and Maggie spend the night for a real Slumber party. Wow it is hard to beleive that Teagan is already 5, seems like yesterday she was celebrating the big 1.

Well all of these parties and not one of them was mine. Oh well mine will be here in 4 months- I am already making my list. I like to celebrate my birth month- not just the day :)

Bikes, Babes, and Waves

My favorite picture ever!!!

I know I am a slacker when it comes to blogging- I really don't know anyone who reads it besides my family and they know everything anyway- but here goes. I haven't created anything lately- I did do a couple of demos at AC Moore and I am going to teach a class there in July so that is exciting, I haven't taken pictures of my recent tags I will try to post them later. I do have some pictures of the past couple of weeks events that we have been going through.

First there was Cinco De Mayo- now here is a great holiday for us- we get to celebrate the 5th of May, we need to figure out how to have a celebration every month...

Here we are at Murphy's , had a great time with Kat and Dee- and various other regulars.

Then came Bike Week 2009- I think that I have permanent seat marks on my backside from riding so much, (but it was GREAT). Anyway we spent the majority of the week with Paul's friends (and now my friends) from Boston- Manch Vegas Choppers. They were a GREAT bunch of guys who come every year for 10 days. There were 8 in the group, and we did a lot of traveling with them. We rode all over the south end as well as to Pawley's and Georgetown. It was a lot of fun, riding in a large group- some of the guys were a little "different" looking so you can imagine some of the looks that we got- and for most of the time I was the only girl- so it was like I had a posse' with me everywhere I went.

Kat and I are sitting on the swing at Dead Dog in the Inlet.

Paul and I are at Murphy's again- I think that we lived there part of last week. :)

This is Donnie- a.k.a Manch Vegas Chopper- he is the sweetest guy- We had a lot of fun hanging out this week! Donnie was part of the posse' that watched out for me. I never got to far away thats for sure.

And last but not least a day on the beach, catching some rays (me) and waves (Paul). Sundays are becoming our beach days- we have enjoyed playing in the sand with Teagan, fishing with Kat and Dee or surfing with Paul, Tom and his sons.

Here are some pics. of Paul surfing on Sunday:

Ok not really surfing yet- but my camera is crappy and the shots of him in the water are too far away-

That is pretty much it- we have been busy- lots of fun but really busy!

We also had Keirsten's 40th birthday, the Super Suckers Concert and mother's day all in between, more about those later!

Love to all,

Dawn