Our Loop-de-Loo stamp has been added to the shop!

And I wanted to say a special thank-you to Anne Gaal who sent me this sweet card using the stamp. I always love seeing our stamps in action!

For some reason I feel like I actually have 100 things to blog about...so I decided to start with the scrapping that actually happened this weekend! :) Friday I got the September Label Tulip kit, and since I had the weekend off work, I put it to good use.

Jenny, since you didn't email me the Wonder Pets pictures, I just stole them right off your blog, you put really HUGE pictures on your blog! (I stole what you wrote for the journaling too!) And this photo of Nathan and Alex in front of the plane was too cute not to scrap.

...and the one of Jeremy and Hayley...the picture was left over from the camping page I did last week, sitting there all lonely on my desk, and since this kit was nature/outdoor themed, it got scrapped too. :)

Here are a couple more DT layouts...
This super cute one is by Maria using the "Swirly Girly" stamp.

Anne made this layout (which, of course, blogger decided to turn on its side!) using the "Simply Sweet Scallops" "Candy Striper" and "Roller Coaster" stamps.

We don't go camping, but Joanne's pictures always make it look like so much fun. How cute are these ones of Jeremy and Hayley??!

Kadee just made several new cards with Apple Blossom Studio stamps. I think I might need to make a few this week, I feel inspired!

I am loving everything that the design team girls are creating lately, today I just wanted to share a couple more layouts.

This fun layout is by Anne-Marie and features our Swirly Girly stamp. All the bright colors and fun patterns make it so fun to look at.


And we have a layout by Beth using our Wet Paint and Joyous Journaling stamps. We all know that I couldn't make a visually appealing masculine layout if my life depended on it, which is why I love this one so much!


And an update on my grandma: I got to talk to her a little yesterday! :) My mother is down in Texas all week staying with her at the hospital, and I called to talk to my mom a while and got to talk to my grandma for a minute too. They were able to do surgery on her face on Tuesday, and want to start with some rehabilitation soon, she even stood for five seconds with assistance the other day. :) Things are looking hopeful!

I complain about living in Wisconsin. As a Kansas girl, it is just too cold here for me. If it wasn't for crazy long and snowy winters, Oak Creek would be a great place to live. It's wonderful and quiet, but close enough to Milwaukee that we can take a little afternoon trip downtown and go to Broadway Paper and Rubin's Furniture.

Sunday afternoon we went to Broadway Paper and they had some truly wonderful calendars.

This one by Snow & Graham is wonderful because their designs are carried to the back of the cards, so that you can frame them after the month is over, I would probably just put them all together and make a minibook of monthly baby pictures, though, since I have a niece coming in December, and another niece or nephew coming in January! :)

This was my favorite calendar, though. It is by Night Owl Paper Goods, and all made of woods and is just beautiful!
I was inspired by the wood calendar to make a little minibook with wood veneer covers. I'm still not entirely sure what I'll be doing with it, but it is super cute, easy to make, and the inside is filled with all my favorite blue and green scrap papers. I used chalk ink to stamp on the wood veneer, other inks seemed to soak in more and weren't as vibrant.

Tonight we watched the episode of Mythbusters where Adam tells the secret of how to rip a phonebook in half....and this is what my livingroom now looks like.

...also...it's not as easy as he makes it look.

My dad called me tonight after he had gotten home from taking my mom down to Texas. Grandma is doing SO much better than two weeks ago. He said that yesterday she even sat up for two hours and sat up to eat her supper, and she was very talkative. :) He said that her infection has gone down a lot and that hopefully they will be able to do the surgery on her face soon.

Thanks, everyone, for your continued prayers!

I know you guys have been thinking to yourselves, "Gee, I sure wish there were a way to effortlessly proclaim my love for Apple Blossom Studio stamps to the world!"

I'm here to tell you that those wishes have been granted! We have a new page of downloads available! :) I whipped up a couple of pretty wallpapers. (I keep switching between orange and purple, not able to decide my favorite!) I made them in 5 different sizes so that 90% of our visitors are covered, and if you have a screen resolution I didn't make, just email me, and I'll make sure you get some wallpaper too! :) We also have a little blinkie you can put in your blog sidebar or message board signatures. Have fun!

I don't know about you, but I could surf my whole day away on Etsy. Today I just want to share a few of my favorite shops....
A couple of weeks ago I came accross Vital, they have wonderful t-shirts, and I want pretty much one of each! But I bought the bike for me, and the seagull camera one for my Sweetie.

I also love this t-shirt by Brilliant Embers.

For beautiful jewelry I am in love with The Ardent Sparrow.

And Ther2dewi Designs makes me want to wear earings every day!


Yee-Haw has THE coolest letterpress stuff, so many different things, there's something for everyone.

Dingbat Press has these adorable recipe cards! (and much more!)


Annie Design makes cute crochet flowers, I think I need some for my scrapbooks.

And would you check out these amazing scarves by Fray!

High Street Market has a bunch of pretty vintage stuff.

as does Bella Days.

When we got married, Jason made a slideshow of pictures of us growing up and then pictures of the two of us together, and he cleaned up a bunch of my kid pictures, which I think I am just about finished scrapbooking. One of these days I am going to go album shopping so that I have a place to put all my 12x12s...8.5x11 layouts were so easy cause I could put them in regular old three ring binders.
Jenny emailed me pictures of Alex the other day. :) When I was organizing my layouts a couple of weeks ago I found that I have WAY more of Hayley than Alex...Joanne is really good about sending pictures. :)

And to update you about my grandma: When my uncle John went to see her yesterday she had woken up and remembered things and was very talkative. She still has an infection in her lungs, and they won't operate on her face until it has cleared up, and if the infection spreads it could cause problems, but I am very encouraged that she is so with-it. My dad is going to drive my mom down there this weekend, and she's going to stay the week there, but he has to be back for work and stuff. Sigh, I'm feeling a lot better knowing that she seems to be doing better. Thanks for your prayers!

....just putting it out there so that I actually follow through.

I think that I must be as affected by caffeine as the poor spider who made the bottom web. ....why else would I be so completely tired and worn-out and yet not able to sleep a wink? I really think it does terrible things to me, perhaps I should start a journal of all my symptoms each time I consume a caffeinated beverage, cause I am seriously nutty tonight.

Last Friday morning my mom called me witht he news that my grandma, Gloria Martin, down in Texas, was in the hospital. During the night someone or someones broke into her home and attacked her and brutally beat her and took her car and her purse. She was able somehow at 4:50 in the morning to call 911 even though she couldn't see and many of her fingers had been broken. She had to be flown to the hospital, where she is still in intensive care. She's had surgeries on her hands and the wounds on her scalp, but they have to wait for an infection to clear up before they can operate on her face. She is on a ventilator, and her face is majorly swolen, but she seems to try to respond when family members are talking to her.

I can't even imagine what kind of person or people could do something so terrible and senseless, and I've been having a hard time dealing with how God could let something like this happen. I've always been a strong believer (through others' trials) that God is ALWAYS in control and that everything has a reason...but this, I can't help but feel, is purely evil.

Proverbs 3:5- Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;

Jeremiah 29:11- "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."

Even though I don't understand it, I'm trying to trust, and not to let satan get his thoughts into my head, because God is good, ALL THE TIME.

So...I still have things from LAST Friday's to-do list that need to be done....when I'm at work or with other people I do better at focusing on other things but when I'm all alone I'm constantly thinking and worrying about my mom and her brother, and pretty much all of my energy and creativity is gone. Please pray for my grandma, for my mom, and especially for my uncle John and his family, they live down in Texas near my Grandma, and need extra strength to deal with everything. Thanks a bunch.

Jason and I look at websites a lot, and sometimes I find myself creatively inspired by a website design. I've had that bit of cityscape felt on my bulletin board for a couple of months, and loved it, but I just wasn't sure how to use it. When I saw the Rue Cler Bakery Website I fell in love and had to use it to make a scrapbook page. Of course my scrapbook layout didn't end up looking much like the website, but that's fine, it gave me an idea. :)

Something that is very helpful to me in scrapbooking is challenge blogs, there are about half a million of them out there (exaggeration), so they're a constant source of inspiration.


This is a layout by Anne-Marie for the challenge this week at Got Sketch?


And this layout by Elise is for this week's challenge at Scrapjacked.

Anne-Marie and Elise both used stamps from the new border collection, which are now added to the store!

The new gallery is also up, and I'm work on adding everything the DT girls have made so far. :) So much excitement!