Mojo 80: What happens when your 2 1/2 year old won't nap

Every afternoon P is supposed to have quiet time/nap time. D has her little afternoon nap at the same time so this is the two hours that I should be getting to myself. A lot of the time I come down into the dungeon (aka the basement) and work away at crafty things.


Today however P decided that quiet time was clearly for babies. This meant my ability to focus was limited. It also meant that after I'd figured out my layout and had everything ready to go, I foolishly put everything together and then decided to stamp my sentiment. Mistake. Because I screwed up the stamp. Its neither straight nor clean, and by the time I'd done it there was no going back. So its not too sharp. But I blame the kid ;P

So here's the sketch

Here's my card

Stamps: Baroque Motif (SU)

Ink: Cranberry (Colourbox)

Paper: Woodland Classic (Martha Stewart)

This one gave me lots o' trouble

I'm not sure why but this weeks Mojo Monday Sketch #79 gave me a heap of trouble.

I could not decide on a paper that I liked. I couldn't decide on which stamps I wanted to use. I couldn't make a choice on the colour that I wanted, what sentiment to include on the card. It was all about indecision this time around. Then add on the ridiculousness that became the scalloped edging. Holy crow, I must have punched out 20 of those edges and just couldn't get it right so I finally relented and used a handy dandy little cutting tool my sister gave me last year for Christmas.

So here's the outcome:

Stamps: Polka Dots & Petals, Sincere Salutations (SU)

Ink: Ice Blue, French Blue, Ice Jade, Wisteria (Colourbox)

Paper: Some random Martha Stewart paper I think it may be called Picnic

Ribbon: Dashes Dots & Checks

Sweet Treat

This has nothing to do with cards, paper, stamps or ink, and everything to do with eggs, flour, sugar and food colouring.

Today was my youngest daughters 1st birthday. So of course we have to have the big do to birthday cake. I had these grand plans to make this awesomely awesome birthday cake with all kinds of safari animals on it, and in the end I ended up with a decent cake with one very odd looking giraffe.

I had seen instructions a while ago posted on a message board that I frequent on how to make a rainbow cake, so that's what I decided to do. It took two tries because apparently I cannot read instructions. The first time I made the cake batter, coloured it and had it already to go to pour into the pan and could not figure out for the life of me why in the world it was so thick. I tried to pour it, and it was like glue. So the husband says, "maybe you need a little more water". What water? I forgot to add any water to it so that batch got chucked. I read the instructions when I mixed it up the second time so the batter worked much much better.

My decorating artistic flared lacked a little bit on this one. I was in a bit of rush and had a two year old and the 1 year old tugging on my leg. So there were no straight lines, wrong tips used for the piping bag and well one very odd looking, oddly coloured giraffe was what resulted (gosh I can see this ending up on Cake Wrecks).

The cake turned out pretty cool on the inside (sorry for the lack of decent photo - apparently my whole family sucks at taking pictures; its not just me with cards)

Apparently both of my children weren't available the day when babies are taught that they must mush cake and get it all over themselves and love it, because neither of my kids have done that on their first birthdays. They are both dainty little things apparently who do not appreciate the fine things in life like buttercream icing.

Almost a week to get the creative juices flowing

I've made a little pact with myself that I'm going to try to do the Mojo Monday sketch every week. It gets the old creative juices flowing and gives me an excuse to hide out in the basement away from my crazy kiddies for an hour or two a week.

I really liked doing this weeks sketch

Here's what I came up with

Stamps: Just Like You (SU), Thanks (Kolette Hall)

Ink: Colour Box; Ice Jade, Black, Sea Grass & Warm Red

Paper: Coney Island (American Crafts)

My First Ever: Mojo Monday #77

So I'm too big of a chicken to actually enter these in Mojo Monday's sketch challenge but I haven't made cards for a couple of weeks and thought it was a great sketch so I'd try my hands at it.

So here's the sketch

And here's what I came up with.

I'm not really happy with this one. Its alright, but it wasn't really what I wanted to do. I was having a hard time finding co-ordinating paper in my rather large stashes of paper.

I'm much more happy with this birthday card. I really like the colours and the simplicity.

As with most paper related things that I make I have no idea what paper I used. I have to remember to write this stuff down, or make a note of it before I'm done the cards.

I also realize I still am awful at taking pictures. I need to switch my camera lens to my macro so I can take a decent close up.