Weekend Adventures: Card Making

Over the last few years, my mom has gotten involved with her local VFW. She's made a lot of friends along the way. One of those friends invited us to attend a 'Cupcakes and Cards' party at her sister's house, who happens to be a Stampin' Up demonstrator. So, a couple weeks ago, I went to a card making party with a group of 50 and 60 year-old women. 

At this particular workshop/party, we got to make 13 unique cards. It's one of the larger parties that Dee, our hostess, has each year. She was crazy organized! We all got a large folder with 13 separate ziploc bags that had all the paper materials we would need to create each card. Then, there were corresponding tupperware containers that had the instructions and any of the stamps that were needed.

I didn't take too many pictures during the party itself - I had my hands full with ink and glitter - but, these are some of my favorite cards that we made:

I seriously love the fact that I've got a small stash of cards that I can go to when I need to send a thank you or a simple hello to a friend. It makes me want to get more involved in card making. But then I remember that we're still on a budget in this house, and card making supplies isn't a part of that budget. Maybe one day...

If you'd like more information on Stampin' Up, you can check out Dee's website here. 

Follow Up: Social Media Buttons

So, after some fiddling around, the social media buttons finally look like they are suppose to look - small, petite and cute!

I must say a big "Thank You!" to Isa and Kira who quickly replied to my comments asking for help.

First, I tried to make things work through Flickr, by resizing the images using their built in software. However, no matter what I did, the buttons still came up rather large in my sidebar.

Then, Kira suggested that it was perhaps the image hosting site that was causing the problem. So, per her advice, I opened up a Photobucket account and uploaded the images onto there.

I did have a little problem uploading the RSS button; for whatever reason, only half of the image would load. But, Photobucket has a neat little feature called Auto-Fix which filled out the rest of the button. The only downside is that the feature changed the original color of the button. Since I didn't want to fool around anymore with the editing, I saved it as is. Then, I went to the Pinterest button and auto-fixed it, hoping it would save it in the same new color, which it did!

It's been a bit of a learning curve, but I'm happy that I've finally figured this one all out. Maybe one of these days I'll graduate into the big leagues of HTML. But for now, I'm happy with my really basic knowledge :)

So what do you guys think? Any of you head over to Isa's page and snag a set of buttons for your page?

Never Too Late

This is a post I should have written a long time ago. But as I've mentioned before, I've been a little busy, so I write whenever I have a little bit of down time and need to take my mind off of all the wedding & school chaos.

A while ago I came across this cute little blog, Oopsey Daisy, which is written by Alison, the self-proclaimed queen of oopsey daisies. At this point I'm not even sure I remember how I stumbled across it. Probably through a series of links that all started with Pinterest. Regardless, as I was looking around on her blog, I came across her weekly giveaway which featured these amazing necklaces from Tinker B Boutique (which by the way is owned by Melanie from Reasons to Skip the Housework).

She creates pendants using Scrabble pieces. That's right, Scrabble pieces! Like this adorable pumpkin pendant that would be the perfect addition to any outfit this fall.

Now I have entered quite a few blog contests, and I have never won anything. But, against the odds, somehow my name was chosen and I became the lucky recipient of two pendants. The hardest part: narrowing down which ones I wanted! Eventually I managed to narrow it down to two of them. The first is the Pink & Brown Zebra Alpha Letter pendant.

I thought this was so cute! And, it gave me an excuse to purchase something with the initial of my new last name. :)

The second piece I chose was a breast cancer awareness pendant. I couldn't find a link to it on Melanie's etsy shop. However, from this page, you can see it in the bottom right corner.

Here they both are on my bathroom counter.

I love them both! Right now I've been wearing the Hope necklace, being that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and all. I don't feel like I can wear the initial necklace quite yet - not until after the wedding (which is only 3 weeks away!!). But who knows, maybe I'll wear it to the wedding showers or something. :)

Anyhoo, I wanted to take the time and thank both Alison, for hosting the giveaway, and Melanie, for creating these amazing gems. I figured its better late than never when it comes to saying "Thank You!"