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! :)

Silhouette Cameo- Tissue box

Heeeeey! I know that the last time I might have been a little hard on my Cameo, complaining about the learning curve and what not but let me tell you, I couldn't live without it now! My family has been blessed with moving into a much larger home and I am now allowed space to have my cameo next to my desktop and I. LOVE. it. So now that we have somewhat settled in a bit I have been playing with it for awhile and tonight, after watching the Fighter on netflix with my dad, I decided I wanted to make a tissue box :) Now, I have the premium membership with Silhouette so every month I pay the $19.99 but I get $150 in credits to use in their store of images. I LOVE my Cameo for 3D stuff so this works out great!





**Don't mind the "tissue paper". I used some toilet paper because I didn't have actual tissue paper.** ;) LOL

I used the DCWV paper stack called "La Bella Rouge" for the accent. It's so lacy and pretty!

Mexican Paper Doll- Ole Cartridge

Wow! It feels like FOREVER since i've been on here :) It's been so incredibly busy and crazy with us moving into our new home and getting settled in,etc. Now we are kinda getting back into a routine so hopefully I get more time to craft :)

I was so excited when PC announced the Ole cartridge, not only because of my Mexicanness (haha!) but because my kids had to make paperdolls showcasing their heritage and this was perfect! Well, I received it on Saturday and I got right to work making Jacob his paperdoll. I wanted it to look like him in his regular day clothes but wearing some traditional "accessories" so I made him a sombrero and maraccas. Of course, used my Peachy Keen face stamps and inked him. He came out sooooo cute!

New Year Resolutions!

Wow, it's been a month since I last posted! Sorry- we've just had a crazy past few weeks with the holidays, moving to a bigger house, my husband trying to find another job, a few health tests (luckily everything came back normal!) and a princess turning 2 it's just been sooooo insanely busy! Today I want to write about New Years Resolutions and give you a bit of mine :) I have actually always done pretty good with keeping them but this time I'm going to use my blog to once again, update it with my progress so if I don't always post about "crafty" stuff, sorry! :D

After I had my daughter in January of 2010 I decided to go on a diet and of course, lost the 75+ pounds I had gained. By January of '11 I had lost 70 of those pounds and life was great, then my husband lost his job and I just couldn't fit off the stress and the weight started creeping back up. This entire past year I have been fighting this battle, everyday saying "today is the day" and then falling off the wagon time and time again. Well now that we are in the new year and I have managed to gain back 30 pounds, I have restarted counting my WW points and rejoined a gym so wish me luck! I hope to be able to celebrate my birthday in my size 6 dress that I last wore 3 years ago! :) I have downloaded Fitness Pal on my iphone and iTrackBites so i'm hoping that will help with my calories :) I plan on updating my blog weekly with progress notes along the way.

Resolution #2- LEARN HOW TO COOK! We've been blessed with being able to move into a much bigger house and with that comes more kitchen space! For the time being, we have to really cut back so I really want to learn how to cook to be able to save money,etc. I have been Pinning different ideas on Pinterest that i can't wait to try out! :)

I hope you all had a great Holiday and are getting back to regular life! :)


STATS-
Current Weight- 175
Goal Weight- 125
2lb weight loss a week

New Testament cart

I have had my eye on this particular cartridge since it was first released but had absolutely NO luck finding it anywhere! So on Black Friday I asked my husband (who is a Michaels manager) to keep an eye out for one. They didn't get any in but the Joanns did and they were selling theirs for $26! :) yippeee! I was so excited to score one and couldn't wait to make a project (cause you know I just had to absolutely have it!) and it's been 3 weeks and just barely broke it out :/ lol.

A little bit of back story here- I grew up being a P.K. (or for those who don't know, Preacher's Kid). My father was a spanish minister for our local Church of Christ since I was about 5 years old until I turned 17 so I grew up with biblical values and teachings. Now, being the rebellious teen I was, I went down a bad path for a bit until finally growing up and realizing that I needed God and church back in my life (and to also raise my own children). So now my family is back in church, (we are still members of the Church of Christ, that'll never change!) and life is gooood. Have i ever told you guys how blessed I truly am? I might bicker and whine but God always sees us through, we've had a VERY challenging year and now it looks like i'm finishing off the year with what the doctor believes to be a kidney stone but I KNOW that God is in control (I do have to keep reminding myself, i'm only human!). He truly is good and he is LOVE! :)

Anyways, so obviously totally not ashamed to proclaim my love of the Lord and if you were to ever walk through my house you will be constantly reminded :) So I thought that cutting out this bible verse on my Cricut Mini would go GREAT under my Jesus Christ wall hanging :)) I love this cart, I cannot wait to cut out more verses and just scatter them throughout my house!



Also, thought I would put some pics of my kiddos anxiously awaiting under the Christmas tree...they are my GREATEST blessings!

Sophie Blog Hop!

Hey guys! Welcome to the Sophie Blog Hop! This hop will feature projects made using the Cricut Circle Exclusive cartridge Sophie. This is the first cartridge of the Circle's second year! All of the bloggers today are Cricut Circle members. Interesting in learning more about the Circle? Click HERE.

If you are starting from my blog make sure you head on over to Michelle over HERE, where the blog hop starts! There is quite a bit of inspiration so make sure you check everyone out :)

First I wanted to share a picture of my little girl, people say she is my mini me :)She loves pink, glitter, Disney Princesses and as you can see, she LOVES the Cricut. (Don't worry, she didn't touch anywhere near the blade!)




I'll be honest with you. I wasn't a fan of this cartridge in the beginning. I'm very "cutesy", I like child like characters mainly because most of my scrapbooking is of my kids and I make the occassional card that is usually intended for children as well (LOTS of nieces and nephews!). But once I really started to look at the booklet, I fell in love with the butterflies and thought this doily backgruond would be perfect for a scrapbook page! Very simple page but you can see that teh design makes it look like some effort was put into it :) The awesome thing about this design is that I was able to use my extra butterflies (the negatives) and offset a few to make it really pop. Did some faux stitching and that's it! :D

**You could also use the extras for a card or something!**


That's me and my honey :) I love him for him, but I also love him because he supports my scrapbooking obsession ;)


Thank you for stopping by! :)) Your next stop is Rexann over HERE!