The Mango Boys and Me

CASE Study - Welcome to the Neighborhood

2013-06-20T00:01:00.000-04:00

Where oh where is June going? We're on week 3 of my guest design spot over at CASE Study. I've loved being inspired by Lisa Spangler's fabulous cards. This week I went with the theme of house warming along with the color combo. I love orange and turquoise together. I used a lot more white space than Lisa's design and I love that. You can be inspired in so many different ways by the CASE Study cards.

What do you think? Pop on over to the CASE Study blog to check out the creations from the rest of the team and of course to play along!

Rejoice in the Season. {and cousin photos}

2013-06-19T05:00:00.000-04:00

I'm having fun creating just for the sake of creating this week. These stamps were still calling for me to make a couple more Christmas cards with different layouts and the same color combo. I think this is my all time favorite color combo (as you can tell by my blog header!)

Do you have a favorite of these two cards? My favorite is the second one.

Here are a few cousin snapshots from the weekend too! Shelby and Collin were practicing farting noises together! Ally in the upper right was laughing her head off at the two of them. And of course, it was good old fashion fun time...gymnastics, tickling, wiffle ball tournaments. We're very blessed that the kids all get along really well together.

PS I really should be putting these pictures in ProjectLife...but I'm behind!

Baseball is a love.

2013-06-18T05:00:00.000-04:00

Happy Tuesday. We've hit tournament week which means it is the last week of baseball. We're also giving the coaches thank you cards and a gift card from the team. So...out came my PTI baseball set to make several of these cards. I love this sentiment!

I thought you'd like to see some pictures of the last few games. Happy little boys out there. Marcel has been practicing hitting quite a bit. He had a rough start to the season being a bit afraid of the ball. He's finishing strong! At his game on Friday he went 3 for 4. His coach gives out game balls and apologized to Marcel for not giving him the game ball. Marcel's reply, "It's okay coach. I went 3 for 4. I got a milkshake. Life is good." I wish you could follow this little man around for the day. He cracks us up all the time!

CAS-ual Fridays Sneak Peek: Wonderful Words

2013-06-17T06:00:00.000-04:00

Guess what? It's time for another fabulous sneak peak of stamps from CAS-ual Fridays! Today we're popping in to share sneak peaks of the set Wonderful Words. I love, love, love sentiment sets so this one is perfect for me.

For my first card, I kept it extra CAS and stamped the sentiment in multiple colors. I think this would be great to do in more masculine colors for a card set for guys.

My next card was super easy...but would be great to mass produce. I let the patterned paper do the talking on this card with the subtle flower and sentiment from the set popping out from inside the circle.

Last, but certainly not least, I'm highlight another sentiment from the set. I love coral right now...I used the stalks from Casual Elegance.

Pop on over to the CAS-ual Fridays blog for a chance to win and to check out the gorgeous creations by the other team members.

Happy Father's Day!

2013-06-16T07:00:00.002-04:00

We are up and at it early this morning to go watch my nephew, Connor, play lacrosse. We're having a fabulous weekend celebrating Father's Day with our family. Normally, the boys and I would get up and make Pat breakfast, but an 8 am game means donuts! So, I'm here typing up this early and quickly. I am so blessed to be married to the most amazing husband and incredible father to our four boys.

I'm doubly blessed that I had the most loving, encouraging father. It has been eight years since my dad has been gone. I miss him dearly. It is the little things I miss. The slight squeeze of a hand. The pride he took in a job well done. Him calling me pumpkin. Dancing with him. His laughter that filled a room. His memories are always close to my heart.

Happy Father's Day!

PS These two cards are also being entered in the FUSION Challenge.

More Plaid...

2013-06-15T07:15:00.003-04:00

Good morning...we have gorgeous weather this weekend...perfect for baseball, lacrosse games, 2 graduations parties and our family cookout tonight! But, before the day gets started I have a Father's Day card to share with you. This card will go to my father-in-law. He is simply amazing. He is a fabulous role model for us all and we love him with all our heart.

I made this a few weeks ago following the same technique I used for this card. I'll be popping this into the Fusion Card Challenge (and I'll have another one for my hubby for this same challenge!)

Hope you all have a fabulous Saturday!

Merry Christmas

2013-06-14T05:00:00.000-04:00

Well hello Friday! How's this Friday treating you? Off to work and then it will be a cousin weekend with Pat's brother/sister-in-law and kids coming in for the weekend! We're looking forward to lots of cousin play time in between baseball and lacrosse games for our nephew. The whole gang is coming over Saturday night for a family/father's day cookout. It will be busy, but fun for sure!

Before I go, I have a card to share for the current Retro Sketch. When I saw this card of Cristina's, I immediately thought of berries for a Christmas card. The sketch was the perfect chance to try it out. I think I'll be making more of these! And...this is also going to be entered for the Cloud9 Anything Goes challenge.

CASE Study Guest Designer - Week 2

2013-06-13T00:01:00.000-04:00

Hello again...it's Friday Eve...can you see me doing a happy dance? I'm back for my second week of guest designing at CASE Study! Lisa has a gorgeous card for us this week. I love the subtle splash of patterned papers on her card and the perfect placement of the pearls. My card above also shows how I was inspired by the soft embossing on Lisa's card. I took a bit of a bolder image to emboss in the background and inked it up with Ranger Pumice Stone. I die cut a few leaves and add a few pearls to finish off the design.

So what do you think? Pop on over to the CASE Study blog to play along with us!

Vintage Christmas

2013-06-12T05:00:00.000-04:00

The challenge over at Festive Friday is to create a vintage Christmas card. I had to check in with Moe as I wasn't quite sure if this passed for vintage, but Moe gave me the nod of approval due to the bow on my card! For the poinsettia leaves on the card base, I took a Spica pen and outlined the leaves to make them pop out a bit more on the red. In real life, it adds a bit of shimmer to the finished product!

I'm loving these Festive Friday challenges as they are helping me get a few more cards done before the craziness of November and December arrive. And yes, I say this every time I play along!

Happy 4th of July!

2013-06-11T05:00:00.000-04:00

Summer already seems to be flying by! Before we know it, July 4th will be here! I was inspired by the star in the FUSION inspiration photo along with the stripes. I decided to create a card by stamping inside the negative star image. Off I went and had a happy July 4th card! We'll be away for July 4th with Pat's side of the family celebrating his parents 50th wedding anniversary! Lots of family, games and overall good times for us to look forward to in a few weeks!

And here are a few pictures from our dinner out for my mum's birthday. We had a very nice night out and went out for ice cream afterwards. The older two and Collin were not in the mood to have their picture taken so Pat jumped right in!

A Quick Thanks!

2013-06-10T05:00:00.001-04:00

I am very, very late in making thank you cards so that Ryan can write thank yous for his birthday gifts. We'll get them out this week, so it is less than a month since his actual birthday, but yikes! I normally am much better about the boys writing their thank you notes! So, yesterday I decided I needed to get them made and the color combo at ColourQ was perfect for pulling out my Craft's Meow Typically Teen sentiment and a Hero Arts sentiment.

And in other boy news at our house, Collin has decided it is time to where deodorant. He could probably wait at least another year, but he wants to do it! So...we've had no less than 20 conversations about it in the last day or so. Cracking me up: "I'm going to take a shower and when I get out of the shower, I'll put on deodorant." "I went to the pool, so when I get home I need to put on more deodorant." "I'm going to bed. I don't need to put on more deodorant before I go to bed." We'll see how long he remembers to put on deodorant before we move into the conversations of, "Collin, seriously, you need to shower and put on deodorant!"

Edited to add later in the evening Sunday night: Here's a picture of the little man, who also decided yesterday that he would use hair gel after he took a shower. Later in the evening her proclaimed, "I put on hair gel, but I forgot my deodorant." The picture is fuzzy because he is refusing to let me take his picture these days :)!

On Your Special Day

2013-06-09T05:00:00.000-04:00

Happy Sunday my friends! We've had a beautiful, relaxing weekend so far and I'm sure it is going to continue. I'm popping in to share my mum's birthday card with you. Cristina was a very big enabler with the most recent WPlus9 release and I had to buy this new set. I had lots of fun die cutting and stamping the flowers. I'm sure you'll be seeing lots of these flowers. My brother and sister-in-law gave my mum gorgeous roses for her birthday yesterday that match the colors of the flowers on her card. So she has roses to match her card :)

The card was also inspired by the Tuesday Trigger below. There are tons of jumping off points from this inspiration photo but I was inspired by the yellows and the floral patterns.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend! xoxo

I have you in my heart.

2013-06-08T08:42:00.001-04:00

Good morning. I'm popping in to wish my fabulous and wonderful mum, a very, very happy birthday! We love you mum with all our hearts (I'll share her cards tomorrow or Monday :)!)

I think Stampin' Ups Pool Party wins the favorite color right now. Pairing it with Real Red I love, love, love it. So...I'm popping in this morning before we head out the door for baseball to share a card using the current CASE this Sketch Challenge. I love these CAS layouts. The flowers and sentiment are Hero Arts and the border is WPlus9.

Hope you are having a fabulous weekend. We're off to baseball games this morning...two 11 am games, one noon game and a game to umpire...and the weather is simply perfect!

A Plaid Hello

2013-06-07T05:00:00.000-04:00

Hi there. I am in love with the color combo at the MUSE Challenge this week so I decided I needed to play along again! I am also inspired by Laura's fabulous plaid cards so I gave plaid a go myself last night. I used the PTI Super Stripes set paired with the diamonds from the The Craft's Meow Retro Christmas set. They work fabulously together to create this card.

Before I go, I have to brag about Jonathon. Wednesday was his last day of school and awards day for the sixth grade class. We received a letter a few weeks ago that Jonathon won the My Voice, My Choice award for his class. When he received his earlier award for high honors, he looked over surprised to see us there. At the end of the assembly the principal announced if the children were wondering why it their parents were there it was because they had won the award. The award is given to students demonstrating respect, responsibility and caring towards their classmates. Each homeroom teacher choose a boy and girl from their class. A very big honor...his smile says it all and we were certainly smiling from ear to ear!

CASE Study Guest Designer

2013-06-06T00:01:00.000-04:00

Hello Friends! I was so excited when I got a note from Chupa asking me to be the Guest Designer for the CASE Study challenge. There is a fantastic design team for this challenge, so I'm pretty honored to be guest designing for them. Now! Onto the challenge for this week! Check out Lisa Spangler's inspiration card below. If you are a Hero Arts fan, I'm sure you are familiar with Lisa's amazing work, but if not, be sure to pop on over to her blog as I have no doubt that you will be inspired.

I'll admit to the inspiration card stumping me for a little bit, but I kept going back to the colors and the free form of how the colors were applied. So, I went for the color inspiration in a bit of a brighter hue and tried to add a touch of the graphic feel of the card.

I also thought I'd show you another card inspired by Lisa's card above. This was the first card I made. I like it, but not quite as much as the one above! I don't color so I wasn't even thrilled with my scribbles over my embossed sentiment!

I'd love to see how Lisa's card inspires you. Come play along with us over at CASE Study!

Stamps for first card: CAS-ual Fridays Breathe

Second card: Verve Take Note

Just Because

2013-06-05T02:00:00.000-04:00

Hello there friends. I hope that your week is moving right along in a good direction! We have a fun challenge for you today! CAS-ual Fridays is the sponsor for the current CARDS challenge. The challenge this time is a sketch challenge. Being a CAS girl at heart, I'll admit to at first being a bit intimidated by the shapes and the layers in the sketch below. So...my end result is not CAS, but not super layered either. I am in love with Pool Party, Island Indigo and Lucky Limeade colors from Stampin' Up. You can see they inspired the colors for my card! I used the Beanstalk and Loving Thoughts set to create my card.

The Girl Friday Ink Squad all have fabulous creations to share with you too. We thought it would be fun to do a little blog hop to make it easy and fun for you :) Be sure to leave a comment on each of the blogs as you hop along. One of the blogs...and it's still a mystery as to which one it will be...will have a random winner who will receive a really great prize!

If you got lost or sidetracked along the way, here is the lineup:

CAS-ual Fridays Stamps

The prize for the sketch challenge is really awesome but you'll have to make it through to the CARDS blog to see it! Be sure to follow their instructions to include your project for your chance to win, you have until June 17th to play along.

Now off you go to see what Virginia has created for your oohing and aahing delight!

Hello

2013-06-04T05:00:00.000-04:00

Hello, hello...we have beautiful, cool weather tonight. The boys are outside playing and looking forward to only two more days of school until summer! I had a quick play with this week's MUSE Challenge. I was inspired by the blues and yellows in Laurie's fabulous card. At first I tried to ink up stripes, but after three attempts, I threw that card away! So...I went back to my trusty PaperSmooches dies, a Lil Inkers Polaroid frame and off I went. Another CAS card in the books.

Before I go, I thought I'd share a couple of pictures from Elizabeth's graduation party. We had a great time celebrating with her this weekend. Hard to believe she'll be off to Ohio State in a few short months attending their Honors Engineering program...clever girl she is! Ryan has passed her in height...Jonathon's growing but needs a few more years!

I love this picture of Elizabeth and my mum. I think you can certainly see the family resemblance! Hope you have a great Tuesday!

Here's Laurie's MUSE inspiration card...

Thanks Ever So Much Erin!

2013-06-03T05:00:00.000-04:00

Hello there..happy, happy Monday! We ended up with an absolutely beautiful weekend. They called for lots of rain, but thankfully we only had a small shower on Friday and Saturday night. It was so nice to have sun and mid 70s for the weekend. I also had a fairly quiet weekend with Ryan and Jonathon since Pat was camping with Collin and Marcel.

I have been looking forward to playing along with Erin's 1000th blog post challenge. She always rocks the May Arts ribbon so her challenge for us was perfect...make a card with May Arts goodies. To say the May Arts ribbon is fabulous is an understatement. It ties bows perfectly! I decided to play along used the current Retro Sketch....and also to used up some of my patterned paper. I'm currently loving the Simple Stories Vintage Bliss paper pack.

And...if you haven't stopped by Erin's blog...she is a gem of a friend...we love comparing work and boy stories. Even though we haven't met in person, I'm sure we'd have no problem chatting live too!

Before I go, here's a picture of the campers from the YMCA Indian Guides camps. The boys decided on a cabin this weekend instead of tents. Love all their happy faces!

My Own Personal 10 Minute Craft Dash

2013-06-01T08:10:00.004-04:00

Happy Saturday my friends. We're up and at it early this morning. Ryan and Jonathon had their baseball umpiring meeting every Saturday (we leave the house at 6:30!). So...I've been up and going since Pat is camping with Indian Guides with Collin and Marcel. I did the drop off and came back for a quick run. As I was running, the Fusion Sketch Challenge was running through my head. My PaperSmooches dies were already cut out and stamped so this was my own personal 10 minute craft dash! The card came together very quickly! Have to love when that happens. I need to pre-cut my dies and stamp them more often!

I leave you with this picture of my little cutey, Marcel. We had his end of the year picnic for first grade yesterday. He's such a happy little man. His teacher put together a slide show of the class. Amazing to see how much they change in just nine months..baby teeth, to no teeth, to adult teeth for this little guy. Even more amazing is to see how is writing journal has transformed. Love him.

And now for my next ten minute dash to the baseball fields for pick up....hope you have a fabulous Saturday!

Hats Off Grad!

2013-05-30T05:00:00.000-04:00

Hello there, it's been a bit too long since I've played at CAS-ual Fridays! I'll admit that this is a new to the blog card, but is one that I've had in my stash for quite some time. That said, it goes perfectly with this week's CAS-ual Fridays challenge: red, white and blue! This card was signed, sealed and delivered to a new grad! I love the combination of the touch of patterned paper, stamping and a small die cut row of stars! My kind of CAS graduation card!

Happy Friday eve my friends!

For You Dad

2013-05-29T06:00:00.000-04:00

Hello, hello! It's time to pop in and share a card for CAS-ual Fridays! I started with a one layer card for this design, but decided I wanted a bit more color on the card so I trimmed out the top layer and popped it up on a blue card base! I admit to being a bit challenged on good color combos so I used this color board from Pinterest to inspire my card.

I love the Brickworks set that I used for the sentiment on this card. It has great combinations of sentiments for this time of year (graduations and father's day!). I used up all my grad cards over the weekend getting ready for the six parties we have coming up to celebrate graduations! So...I decided to change it up and move on to the next holiday, Father's Day! The graphic portion of the card uses the amazing Zigs and Zags set...if you love chevrons this is a must have for you!

Happy Birthday Ardyth!

2013-05-29T03:00:00.000-04:00

Hello there! Guess what...the fabulous Darnell was oh so sweet and organized a birthday party for the amazing Ardyth! If you don't know Ardyth, she is an absolute gem of a blogging friend with an amazing eye for color and extreme creativity. She has an eye for graphics that never ceases to amaze me! She has a love for CAS cards, a passion for her church, family and friends and it simply shines through in her blog each and every day. So, when Darnell asked me to participate in a blog hop to honor Ardyth's birthday I was a very quick yes. Happy birthday Ardyth! I hope you have an amazing day! My card above is a nod to Ardyth's eye for color, graphic style and square card making! Doesn't quite do her justice!

I also though it would be fun to share a challenge card for two challenges: Festive Friday (a nod to Ardyth being on the design team) and Fusion Challenge. I had a lot of fun using my new Lil Inker snowflake die for this card!

A Teacher's Thank You

2013-05-28T05:00:00.000-04:00

I always say that I want my children to have teachers that I feel love them as much as I do. That doesn't happen every year, but when it does it is an absolute blessing. This year, Collin's teachers, definitely fit that wish. They are absolutely amazing with him. When I saw Moe's teacher inspired set over at Verve, I knew I had to have it for this sentiment. It is simply perfect! I love when Collin tells me how much he loves his teachers and when they are proud of him the shy smile that comes to his face. My card today is for the Verve Diva Dare - stars and stripes! My CAS version of stars and stripes! Hope you all have a fabulous Tuesday!

Super Sized Hug

2013-05-27T00:01:00.000-04:00

Hello friends. This is my last official post as a member of the PaperSmooches Sparks teams. I have LOVED being on this team, but the term is up and don't you worry the next design team looks amazing and I can't wait to continue to be inspired! Plus, PaperSmooches stamps are simply awesome!

So today we have a photo inspiration for you!

At first, I didn't even notice the polka dot background. If I would have, I think I would have gone for a gray polka dot scheme, but I jumped off on the rainbow theme!

For my card, I used the Needle Little Love set to create the rainbow border and the Think Fast set to create a fun little thinking of you card. I love, love, love fountain drinks so I'm sure this stamp will get a lot of use! Pop on over to PaperSmooches Sparks to play along and check out the fabulous cards from the design team!

Deepest Sympathy

2013-05-26T05:00:00.000-04:00

I had a serious crafting session Friday night (makes me oh so happy!). I had my iPad with lots of my favorite challenges up, Pandora radio, little boys playing outside and I was a happy girl. Pat was with Collin at a birthday party. A happy girl creating away. I wanted to play along with Maile's last inspiration card at CASE Study. My first card is the fully stamped card below. It was okay, but I wasn't in love with it. So then I started hunting through my patterned paper. I die cut the leaves on the card above and then die cut some smaller flowers. I wasn't really thrilled so I looked through my patterned paper again and cut out this bloom from Crate Paper. Much happier with the end result! Happy Sunday my friends. A day with no plans equals a perfect day for me!