Getting Crafty with the Cameo Blog Hop!

Welcome to the Getting’ Crafty with the Cameo blog hop! You should be arriving from Lezlye, if not then I recommend you start the hop with our hostess Kristy and here is her site:Kristy Scraptastical Kreations We’re all so happy to have you hopping along with us, so grab a drink and sit back and enjoy. There is a great line up with some amazingly talented ladies that are super excited to share their projects with you using their Silhouette Cameo. =))

Since I am the last person on this great blog hop, i'm definitely sure you know what to do to win the AWESOME prizes that are up for grabs, make sure you comment and follow each blog and visit the companies' pages! My internet is being extremely slow so I can't post them up but Kristy has them all up :)

Now for MY prize! I haven't had a giveaway of my own in quite awhile and seeing how close i am to 800 followers, once I reach that I will have a giveaway for your choice of either a $10 gift card to Michaels or $10 Silhouette credit depending on if you own a Silhouette machine or not. Due to customs and all, my giveaway is only open to those in the US or Canada. Thanks! :))

PHEW!! Now that THAT is out of the way, on to my project! :) Alright, as all of you know I'm a die hard Cricut lover but when the Silhouette Cameo came out, I just HAD to have it. The fact that it could cut out AROUND Disney shapes (or any shape for that matter) was mostly what appealed to me. You can find my post with Disney Princess cut outs HERE!

My favorite feature is definitely the Silhouette store, the fact that you can buy a membership for $19 a month and get $150 in credit each month with shapes only being $.99? AWESOME! Let's just say, I haven't bought a Cricut cartridge in awhile ;) lol

Oh and have I told you how HANDY the Silhouette store is when you are in a HURRY? And by hurry I mean, running out the door with 3 kids under the age of 7, with 5 bags and then realizing you haven't made or bought a birthday card for the birthday boy. What to do? You go to the Silhouette store and download a printable card and print it out and DONE! Yup, TRUE STORY. Happened to me today! :)



Isn't the card adorable? I thought it went great with the gift!

I made this ADORABLE door hanger for my son who is a hard core Mario fan using the door hanger cut out from Silhouette and printing and cutting around a jpeg image for Mario!



One last project :) I am a scrapbooker at heart (that really is all I do with my machines besides home decor) so another favorite feature of my Cameo is that I can now outline ANY word or image and make it into a shadow! Not only that, but I can cut out any font on my computer. YAY! :) I made this layout with a background from the silhouette store as well as the Computer Nerds title from there as well. Aren't my babies adorable AND oh so technologically savvy?? Yeah... :)







If you are interested in seeing another project i've made with my Cameo, you can find my tissue boxHERE!



Thank you guys SO much for hopping along with us! We had a blast working on these projects and hopefully inspired some of you! :))

Bradley and his favorite toy!

**Fore warning...this is a long post. And it's not scrapbook related.**


As a lot of you who follow my blog know, Bradley is my middle son. He is turning 6 years old next Friday and he is just the sweetest, most loving little boy. He is autistic but you know what? I refuse to label him that anymore because he is so much more than that. This year alone has been SO life changing for him and he's been hitting all kinds of new milestones that it's just unbelievable and there is one device that I can say that has truly helped him in his journey.

We moved from a tiny little town this past January to a bigger city and with that came a new school. When I went to enroll the boys into their elementary school, I was very surprised and very nervous that Bradley would be in a "general" class. (By general I mean a regular class, not a special education class he has been in). I couldn't sleep the night before their first day. How would he adjust? Would he scream? What about the fact that there are NO doors in the Kindergarten area? Would he run away from his tutor? Who is going to make sure he stays seated? What if the other kids are mean and cruel to him? Well, the first day came and went and his teachers were so excited to tell me that he did great. Then the week ended and he had pretty much adjusted to his new routine. (If you know autism, you know that those kids LOVE routine). Well, come ARD meeting time. (ARD is Admission,Review,Dismissal which is a meeting where you set goals for your special needs children for the year, testing, etc.) His teachers told me that he could now say his ALPHABET. I was STUNNED. Alphabet? He can barely keep any eye contact with me! Then they proceeded to tell me that they let him play with their computer and iPads (his favorite is the principal's hahaha) and he could find his ABC youtube videos all by himself. Well of course I wondered, how did he figure it out? Well, the answer was simple.

Every afternoon while my husband was unemployed (he's working now! yay!) he would sit with Julianne and play youtube ABC videos. We never thought about sitting Bradley next to us because we figured he didn't want to watch or what not. Well, apparently he had been taking mental notes and had been watching because everything my husband did on the iPad, Bradley figured it out and showed his teachers :) So now, we allow Brad to use my husband's ipad (supervised of course!) and he and his sister absolutely LOVE dancing and singing their ABC's and numbers. So if you have an autistic child in your family and you are debating whether or not to purchase an iPad or even an iPod touch I can tell you, DON'T THINK TWICE. If you can afford it (and there are programs out there that you can qualify for that can help you!) definitely purchase one but if it's really out of your range, ask your school's principal to purchase them for the school! The more mainstream the tablets get, more schools are getting them but it's so important that you ask! That machine has helped Bradley (and even Julie) just do things that we could never get him to do. I know that people say technology is bad for kids and all that but in this case, I can first hand say that it has IMPROVED Brad's life.

*My cutie pie in his official Kindergarten photo*



*Not only for educational purposes, this kid can play a mean game of Temple Run! ha!*


*As you can see, learning his alphabet*




*On youtube all you have to do is type in ABC's and all the videos will pop up*

So milestones that Bradley has hit in the past 3 months are:
-Says ABC's
-Can point to each letter and spell words out
-Says "apple"
-Says "cookie"
-says "Ball"
-Says "goodbye"
-Says "no"

I'm so excited for his progress! :)