LDS Baptism Invitation

As I said in my previous post, my oldest daughter, Kaylee, just turned 8!  This is a big birthday in our family.  In our faith (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Mormon) when our children turn eight years old they are baptized.  You can read about LDS baptism here if you would like.  It is such a special event no matter how old you are when you are baptized!  (I was 22.  Maybe that will be a post for another day!)  We really wanted to make Kaylee's baptism special & a day that she will cherish & remember forever.  I decided that I wanted to send out invitations to her baptism.  At first I thought I would just do a digital version that I could email out.  But I am still a little old fashioned I guess & I like sending & receiving cards & thank you notes in the mail, regardless of the high cost of postage these days!  So I still made one in my digital program but then had them printed up at Costco with their new signature greeting card option.  I was pleasantly surprised with how great the quality was & I loved how they turned out:

We had taken Kaylee to the temple one afternoon to take some pictures to use for her invitations & I'm so glad we did.  I'm no professional photographer, but I think the picture still turned out nice.  Then she picked aqua as an accent color for her baptism.  Oh yes, we of course needed an accent color for her baptism!  I made the invitation very simple & then on the back I typed up the address for the church, the address for our house where the dinner would be after the baptism & I also added the RSVP info.  I love those digital doily stamps too & they kind of became a theme for her baptism dinner.  I'll have to post pics of that too.

Digital Birth Announcements

For my older two girls I hand made their birth announcements to send out. It was a big job, but I really enjoyed making them both times. With baby #3, however, I knew I probably wouldn't have much time to hand make the birth announcements. So I turned to my favorite digital software, My Digital Studio by Stampin' Up! It is so fun & easy to use!

I took some pictures of Quinn & picked my favorite one that I wanted to use for the announcements. Then I just needed to figure out what style of announcement I wanted to use.

So here is the first design I came up with:

I like how it says "So worth the wait" since Quinn arrived a week after her due date! And I liked this announcement, but then I got to thinking that maybe it had a little too much going on.

So then I made this design:

I really love the bunting look that's so popular right now. But then I was looking at this design & I started thinking that it was maybe too plain.

So here was my third design & the one I had printed up & mailed out:

I love the birth announcements!

I love the colors & I love how it's simple, but still very pretty.

These are a great way to say "hello" to our little Quinn!

Handmade Christmas 2011: Digital Holiday Cards

I just love how our Christmas card turned out this year! Super simple!

Last year after making a gazillion handmade cards I had told my husband not to let me do it again this year. I love making cards, but for Christmas, I just need way too many cards now. So I decided to create a digital Christmas card in my Stampin' Up! My Digital Studio software to have printed. Getting a decent picture of my girls was an adventure all of its own, but this one was good enough for me. Luckily I had found a good Groupon deal so I had to pay fairly little for my cards too & they were printed on high-quality matte card stock & included free envelopes & shipping. Score! So when I got my cards I did use my corner punch to round the four corners of each card. Yes I have problems. But I love the look of the rounded corners & the company I used to print the cards didn't offer that option. It didn't take too long & it really makes the cards look nice. I still do miss the handmade cards, but this sure was fast & easy! Even if you don't have a program to create your own digital holiday card check around on sites such as Shutterfly or Pear Tree Greetings or even Costco, they have some really cute designs! And a lot of companies have been offering great deals. I know my sister-in-law ended up using maybe 3 or 4 different companies to create her cards with this year, but she got almost all of them for free! And how fun it is to have a few different designs to mail out! Just an idea if you haven't already sent out cards-it's not too late!

Ice Cream Birthday Party

We decided to have an ice cream party for my daughter's second birthday. She's not big on cake, but she loves ice cream! And it's the perfect cool treat for a hot summer birthday! I wanted to share a few of the things we did for her little party, it turned out so great!

I made her invites with the Stampin' Up! digital designing software, called My Digital Studio.

Here's the front:

And the back:

I also went ahead & made some thank you cards too:

They turned out really cute! They look even better all printed out. I love the colors!

I also decided (2 days before her party) to make her a little ice cream cone shirt:

I used my Silhouette & the heat transfer material & it was so fast & easy. It probably took me all of 10 minutes to finish. My only complaint is that my fabrics were a little sheer so you can see through them, but it still looked cute.

I also made a birthday hat headband:

Tasha over at Creation Corner has made these & they are just so adorable! Mine definitely isn't as cute & embellished as Tasha's, but it looked pretty cute. Tasha has a great tutorial on her blog on how to make these, check it out here.

Here's the birthday girl with her cute shirt & pettiskirt:

And her super cute birthday headband:

I made a birthday banner using my Big Shot:

With an ice cream cone in the middle, of course:

I made some of those tissue paper pom-poms to hang up too. They are super easy & look really cute. Here is the ice cream creation center:

I made some chocolate dipped cones which were a huge hit:

Some were plain chocolate, some had nuts & some had sprinkles. We also had all sorts of toppings so people could made their own sundaes too. And we had root beer in case anyone wanted a root beer float.

I tried out these yummy sauces from the Our Best Bites cookbook:

It's the hot fudge sauce, the buttermilk caramel sauce & the strawberry sauce. All were delicious! I'm not sure if these recipes are on their website or not too, but you can check here.

Enjoying her ice cream:

She had a special {pink} ice cream bowl too!

After ice cream, the kids went swimming in the little pool in the backyard. It was an easy, stress-free party & we had a blast!

Happy Birthday, Aidynn!

Princess Party Thank You Cards

I decided to try out My Digital Studio to make some thank you cards for my daughter's birthday gifts. There is nothing fancy to these, I kept them really simple. I made them postcards so they are just two-sided.

Here's the front:

Here's the back:

I needed 16 of these so I made the back fill in the blank so that it was easier for my daughter to only have to write a few words on each one. She's not used to writing that much yet, so she actually only wrote about half of them herself & then she just signed her name on the other half & I filled the out for her. This was the first time I had printed anything with the professional printing services that Stampin' Up! offers. They turned out really nice! I like the matte finish of it & the thick weight of the card stock. They were shipped to me super fast too, I was amazed!

Digital Valentines

I've decided that it's time to start going all lovey-dovey here on the blog in preparation for Valentine's Day, which is only 3 short weeks away! I have so many projects on my {To Do} list & I'm already feeling that I'm just not going to have time to make them all. Well, I'll just do what I can! So I decided to make some digital valentines this year. I simply imported my photos into My Digital Studio & then added some cuteness to create a cover for my card (I opened an 8-1/2 x 11 blank page, but then made sure to work in only a 5 x 7 area for later cropping purposes). Then I exported my project to jpeg, cropped it to 5 x 7 in iPhoto & then uploaded it to Costco. I've been wanting to see the quality of the Costco folded greeting cards for a while & thought this would be the perfect project to test it out on. It costs $7.99 for 10 cards, envelopes included. You can customize the front, both inside pages & back of the card, plus they will even print the return address on the envelopes for you. Sweet! The only thing is that you can't pick them up at the warehouse, so you have to pay for shipping which was $4.99. I can't wait to see how they turned out though. If they're nice then I see this as a great option for Christmas cards for next year! I'll let you know!

So I made 2 different designs. This is the one I chose to use for the cards I'm having printed through Costco:

We had some family pictures taken in AZ right after Christmas & I love how they turned out! I love this simple card front!

This was option #2:

I like this one too, but I ended up using these photos on the inside of the card.

I hope they turn our well!

Teacher Thank You Notes-Digital Style

My daughter's preschool class is putting together a special end of the year gift for their teachers. It is a digital book with photos & thank you notes from the families. I decided to use My Digital Studio for the thank you notes & I love how they turned out! And it was really fast to make them & then super easy to email over to the mom who is putting the whole book together. Another reason to love My Digital Studio!

Now if I could only get some of my digital scrapbooking done! :)

Merry Christmas!

I've been playing around in My Digital Studio with the Christmas card photo I took this year of my girls. The cards I'm making use this red & white brocade designer paper & olive ribbon, so I used matching digital products. So cute! But I guess I'm biased, right, since I'm Mommy! :)

A Birthday Card for Triplets

So I discovered another great use for the Stampin' Up! My Digital Studio software-creating ideas for cards that you want to hand stamp! Our friends have triplets whose birthday party we just went to. They have 2 girls & 1 boy so I needed a card that would work for the 3 kids. I also didn't have much time to physically hand stamp a card so I started playing around with ideas on My Digital Studio while holding the baby. I came up with a card I liked & then just reproduced it with my supplies. Fun!

Here's the digital version of the card:

And here's the hand stamped version that I made to give to the triplets:

I know I've said it a million times, but I LOVE My Digital Studio!