Lexi's Dance Recital

Today was Lexi's dance recital. Here she is all dressed up. She loves dressing up.

Lexi is on the end on the left side. It was hard to get a good picture, because we couldn't use a flash and I wasn't close up. I will have to eventually get a telephoto lens. She danced to "My Favorite Things". This morning I recorded her singing the songs that she was dancing to. I have these little recorder boxes from CTMH that you can put on your scrapbook pages.
This is the "Daddy Daughter Dance". It was so sweet. The song that they danced to was one that gets you chocked up. It was a song about a little girl dressed like Cinderella and wanting her Daddy to dance with her at the ball. But he was always so busy. And, she tugged on his shirt saying "Daddy Please". The last part of the song is of her engaged to be married and asking her Daddy to practice dancing with her. A real tear jerker. Lexi and her dad are the 5th from the left, close to the middle.
And, lastly here is Bill and me with our little "Cinderella".

Cataloging my CTMH Stamps

This is one job that you really have to be motivated to start! It is a lot of work. Yesterday when I came home from work, I got the bug in me to get my stamps organized so that I would know what I have and can find them when I need them. These are my CTMH stamps. Most of them have been sitting on a shelf in the garage ,mostly untouched because I don't know what I have. I really like these little boxes by CTMH. I am finding that they really are the best thing for storage. I tried these bigger containers. You can see them, but they don't close up like the CTMH ones and they don't stack. I like to keep things neat and use less space. This system just isn't working. At first it did and then I started accumulating more and more.

My stamps are all organized by like kind. So, with each box, I went through my extra catalogs to find pictures of the stamps in that box. I cut out the pictures and attached them to 8 1/2 x 11 cardstock. When I finished I will put a label on the boxes that matches the description in the binder.

I found this cute photo album at Target. It came with magnetic pages. I took them out and replaced them with Page Protectors.I divided up the pages with Index Dividers. I followed along, pretty much, with how CTMH has them organized in their catalog. But, I put them in an order that made sense to me. I started with Sentiments, since these are the stamps that get a lot of use.Followed by the Monthly Word Puzzles. These are great stamps to have because they are loaded with pictures and sayings for each month of the year. There are other Word Puzzles, but if they fell along the lines of a specific Holliday like Christmas or Valentine's day, I put them in that catagory.Next came the Tags, Borders and Misc. This category also includes backgrounds, and stamps with calendars on them. The next set of the stamps were divided by Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer. The Fall stamps include, School, Fall Leaves and Halloween.

Winter includes Snow and Christmas. Following this category, I added Valentine's Day because I have a lot of Love stamps.

The next category is Spring. It includes flowers, insects and Easter.

Next comes Summer. This category covers the beach, Fourth of July, picnic, Hawaii, Trees and Outdoors.

The next category is Family. This is kind of a general category with anything kid or people. This includes baby, kids, princesses, boy trucks and the "Bella" like stamps.

Next I added the Birthday Category.

And, lastly, is the Font category. It also includes the Alpha Solos. You will notice that there are no pictures. The reason is that I thought I was all done and then I saw the box and it is big. I will finish it later.

Here is what the binder looks like with the pages in it. Hope this post helps you. Since I went to all the trouble of getting organized, I just couldn't help but share. I have a lot more organizing to do with my other stamps and embelishments, but at least this is a start. If you have any tips for me, please pass them along.

Bella Birfffffday Skip,Hop, and Dance!!!

Welcome to the Birthday Blog Skip, Hop & Dance sponsored by Stamping Bella! If you've just happened upon my blog, you can CLICK HERE to start from the beginning at Bloggabella.In honor of Em's Birthday, I chose Tatiana Ketto. She is one of my favorites. I love her funky hair and clothes. To go with her, I used Basic Grey's Lime Ricky paper. Tatiana is watercolored with Prisma Colored pencils and Mineral Spirits. The sentiment is from Penny Black and the image was cut using Nestabilities. Thanks so much for stopping by! Now it's time to hop on over to Sharon's Blog. Have a great day!
If for some reason there is a gap in the blogs ~ you can go HERE to find the master list ;-) ~

How about a prize? In addition to the fabulous eye candy, we have decided to hide a prize somewhere along the hop! One pre-selected blogger will draw a random winner from the comments on her post, and the winner will receive a $40 Gift Voucher to Stamping Bella!!! The fun part is...we're not telling you who it is! So as you hop, make sure you leave comments on every post so you have a chance to win!! We will announce the winner on Monday in the Splitcoast forum. MWAH!

It's Mojo Monday

It's been awhile since I have participated in any sketch challenges. When I came home from work, Lexi wanted to make a card using my Gorjuss Girl Stamps. I used today's Mojo Monday sketch. The paper and brad used are Eva from Basic Grey. The hydrangea is from Prima and the ribbon is CTMH. It feels good to finally make a card again.

Two more Kauai Layouts

Here are a couple more layouts that I did using Moon Doggie. I still have the journaling left, but I thought I would share anyway. This has been a tough week for me. I had a hard time adjusting to the time change when I went back to work on Monday. Hawaii is three hours ahead of us, and I was wide awake at 11:00 every night this week. It was hard when the alarm went off at 5:15. Today I am just vegging out. Maybe I will do a little scrapbooking.

Another Kauai Layout

Here is another Moon Doggie Layout. I used CTMH's Workshop design for this layout. Someone asked me if I bought Lexi's swimsuit to match the paper. lol. No I didn't...but, I am so loving this paper.

My Kauai layouts

Since I got home from vacation, I have been busy scrapbooking my Kauai pictures. This layout is of me and Bill cruising the Na Pali Coastline. I love this "Moon Doggie" paper and "Extreme Happiness" stamp set. This layout was inspired by one in the Summer CTMH Catalog.

One Lovely Blog Award

Hi Everyone. I am back from vacation and have returned to work and the daily chores. We had so much fun and I can't wait to scrapbook my pictures. On my return, I had a nice thing to come home to. This blog award. I received it from Liz. Check out her blog for some inspiration. Thank you Liz :)

The rules for this award are as follows:

1. Accept the award and post it on your blog with the name of the person who granted it, with their blog address.
2. Pass on the award to 15 other bloggers that you have newly discovered and don't forget to let them know.


I love blog surfing and have discovered quite a few new blogs, for now I will send this award to 5 bloggers who's blogs I love and have given me inspiration.



The first on my list is my new Bella Sister Shaela. Her blog has a great name "Under my yellow umbrella". Isn't that just too cute?

The following are all CTMH Consultants who have recently gotten into the blogging world or have had blogs that I just recently discovered.


2. Erin
3. Amy
4. Yvette
5. Naomi

Day 7 in Paradise

Today is our last full day in Paradise and mine and Bill's 27th anniversary.

To celebrate, Bill and I went on a 4 hour sunset dinner cruise to the NaPali Coast aboard the Blue Dolphin.

The cruise was wonderful and the sites spectaculare. This was a nice ending to our vacation. We even saw flying fish. I tried to get a picture, but they flew way too fast for me. I will have to get up early tomorrow morning for my last walk on the beach, before I head back to reality.

Day 6 in Paradise

Today was a day of sight seeing and photography. When I got my new camera, I was so excited to come to Kauai and take pictures of the beautiful birds on the island. I have not had much luck in getting the pictures that I wanted, however, I did find this bird in a tree. Yes. It is a chicken. lol. Roosters rool the roost on this island. I am not kidding. Everywhere you go, they are there.

Here is a mother hen with her chicks.

This bird is a familiar site on all the Hawaiian Islands.

This pretty little grey and red bird was hard to catch for a photo, but I finally caught up with him.

There are so many gorgeous flowers on this island and I had fun photographing them.

This is my favorite Hawaiian Flower. The Plumeria. Not only is it beautiful but it is fragrant.

On our drive we saw the Opaeka Falls.

And, the Wailua Falls, also known as, Fantasy Island. Back in the 70's there was a tv show called Fantasy Island. Some of you might remember the little guy, named Tatoo saying "Da plane, Da plane".

This is a picture of the Wailua River.

Here is a picture of Lexi with one of the "baby coconuts" that she collected.

I had fun taking this picture. I, actually, laid down on the ground to take it.

There is a small light house at the end of the little cove that our beach sits in.

Tonight while waiting for dinner, a nice man took these family pictures for us.