I won! I actually won some blog candy!!!!

One of my favorite blogs is Jennifer McGuire from Two Peas in a Bucket. She had some phenomenal tutorial videos on her site and makes beautiful cards and scrapbook pages. She also loves God and loves her family. She's a step mom also and inspires me all the time.

From time to time, she has some blog candy and although I have never won any blog candy, I keep playing along, hoping that one day my ship will come in.

Well, it came in today. Check out this entry on Jennifer's blog. Yep, that's me!

And, God knew that today I really needed a little boost from him. On the way home from Kendall's ortho appointment, my check engine light came on in the Honda. It didn't just come on and stay on, it was flashing, which come to find out is really bad news. I called AAA and they towed it to the Honda dealership. Hopefully I will find out in the morning what the problem is. This, after I just got a new battery installed on Friday and we had to fork out a substantial amount of money to have the stove replaced in our house in Santa Maria. Argh!

None of this is the end of the world, but God still knew that I needed a little gift tonight and some chipboard albums from Cosmo Cricket will do me just fine. Thank you God!!!! And, thank you Jennifer :).

Hershey York Peppermint 100 Calorie Bars

Who doesn't love Thin Mint Girlscout Cookies? They are absolutely the BEST! Ok, maybe not as good as homemade chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven, but for a boxed cookie, they just can't be beat. Well, thanks to Hershey, you can get that same great Thin Mint flavor year round, for only 100 calories for two good-sized wafer cookies and they taste just as good as the real thing! I don't even think York and Hershey were necessarily trying to mimic the Thin Mint cookie flavor, but that was the first thing that came to mind when I bit into one of these lovely little cookies this afternoon. I think the only thing better would be to dip them into some vanilla ice cream. Yum.....

Christmas in September

My friend Leslie has been at it again! She is cleaning house to prepare for the birth of her first child (her name is going to be Ruby, how cute is that?) and has given up Scrapbooking to focus on some other hobbies. She decided to purge and GAVE away all of these great products to me....for free! She posted a message on Facebook that she had a bunch of product to give away to the first one to send her a message. I told her that if there was no one local (she lives in VA) that I would be happy to take all of the Stampin' Up! products off of her hands because I didn't want her to get stuck with it after all.....as it ended up, there was no one local and I happened to be the first one to message her. She had some Creative Memories products also, but I didn't want to be a complete hog so I *volunteered* to take all of the SU! products off of her hands. I had no idea what I was in for until I received two, very heavy boxes filled with product. I now own almost every, single ink pad and 5 new stamp sets. All for free! I sent Leslie a check for all of the postage, plus a little extra and we sent a beautiful gift for baby Ruby, but what a gift this was. She could have sold it on ebay or Craigs list, but she gave it all away.

Thank you Leslie, and thank you God for this special gift.

MAC Prep & Prime

I'm starting a new feature on my blog to showcase a few of my favorite things. I love reading reviews of products by other bloggers and although this blog is not designed as an advertising mechanism, I want to share some tried and true products that I have found work for me. Yes, yes, I realize you can pick up Glamour's annual product review guide for beauty products, but I'm not going to focus strictly on beauty products. I might share a kitchen tool or gadget or shoe....the possibilities are endless.

Today, I am starting with a beauty product. This is MAC's Prep and Prime Eye cream. I have been using this cream for about 4 years now and I just love it. I don't know about all women, but I end up with a crease in my eye shadow at some point in the day. It might be in the afternoon on a hot, summer day, or at the end of a very long work day. It is inevitable that at some point, the crease will magically appear. This cream does not eliminate the crease all together, but it helps prolong the inevitable. The main thing I love about this cream is that it helps to apply eye shadow extremely smoothly. It provides a base to the lid so that anything that is added on top of the base will go on smoothly and gives an extra polished look. One jar will last a good year, and it travels really well.

Tip - for those of you that don't know, save all of your MAC packaging. When you have accumulated 6 empty containers (used to be 5 but whatever), you can turn them all in to your local MAC store or MAC counter at a department store and they will give you a free lipstick of your choice! I would recycle the packaging anyway, but I'm not going to turn down a free lipstick!

Jen's Sketch Challenge 10/03/09

Sorry I'm a bit late in posting this. I am still getting caught up from my glorious trip to California (pics coming soon). I need to get back into the groove and spend some more time in my craft room, but did manage to carve out a little time this week to make this fun Halloween card for Jen's sketch challenge.

I purchased this absolutely adorable Halloween pp by Bo Bunny at Archiver's on Wednesday night after attending a Timeless Traditions cardmaking class (where I met some really nice ladies). I have been searching for some cute Halloween pp but nothing has really struck me. I did fall in love with the dsp by SU! but just haven't made a purchase in a while and didn't want to wait for the shipment to arrive. Then, the moment happened....I saw the Bo Bunny display and absolutey adored the collection. Some of it is very versatile, you don't have to use it strictly for Halloween projects, which I like. I like paper that fits the theme, but can also be used year round if the inspiration strikes you.

The spiderweb and skull stickers are from Making Memories....aren't they so much fun? I also really like the crescent moon bling from Little Yellow Bicycle. The sentiment is from Inkadinkadoo. The stamp is actually all in one line, but using a Post-It and my Stampamajig, I split it into two lines to fit on the card.

Hope you enjoy!

Never Forget

Sketch Challenge 09/09/09

Time for another fabulous sketch challenge from Jen del Muro. I made a somewhat monochromatic card for this challenge, which is not my specialty, but when you are working with great products, life is much easier! I got this beautiful 6x6 Making Memories paper pack on sale for $2.99 at Archiver's and broke it out for the first time with this card. All papers, with the exception of the small strip of Very Vanilla and the Kraft cs square are from this paper collection. I used my SU! Short & Sweet stamp set for the sentiment and small heart and that incredible flourish stamp is from Unity's August KOTM (first time I was able to break out this kit and try any of the stamps.) I stamped the image in Chocolate Chip ink multiple times onto some Kraft cs and then sponged the edges with my SU! sponge. I finished it off with some heart-shaped chipboard from 7 Gypsies that I covered in patterned paper and sanded the edges with my Making Memories sanding block.

Thanks for yet again another wonderful challenge Jen!