The best birthday party ever!

This last weekend we celebrated Lacie's 9th birthday. It really was the funnest birthday party I've ever thrown! It was a jump rope party, since Lacie just made the jump rope team at school.


As all the girls got to our home, they were each given a jump rope to play with. I had my neighbor girl and a friend of hers teach the girls some tricks and they also did single rope turning while the girls ran through playing games like school.





They even made up a song in honor of Lacie that the girls had to jump to and see how many jumps they could get.

We then went inside for pizza. After pizza we opened presents and she got some really fun gifts!

After gifts it was time for a craft. I made each of the girls drawstring backpacks that they could take home. Half of them were like the picture to the left and half were just the opposite colors. Each girl had to feed the laces through the casing of the backpack to make it hers. They LOVED them! It was so cute to hear them all talking about what they were going to do with there backpacks.

Now that they had a cute backpack they needed something to put inside it besides just a jumprope. We went to the living room for a game of Cootie Candy. I put a bunch of candy on a tray and one girl was told to leave the room. The girls then had to pick one piece of candy on the tray that was the "cootie candy" The girl was then invited back into the room and began picking candy until she picked the cootie candy. She got to keep all that she had picked prior to that. I was shocked! Some girls got almost the entire tray! It was really fun!

We then played Chinese Jump Rope. It is a game where two people stand about 4 feet apart and have an elastic streched around their ankles. Another player then has to do a series of jumps in, out, on, etc. the elastic. If they complete the series of jumps without messing up, they advance a level and the elastic moves up to the knees. I missed getting a picture of this but they absolutely loved this game!

I rented the movie "Jump In" so we turned that on while some continued to play chinese jump rope. I almost forgot to do cake and ice cream, so we paused the movie and sang a quick happy birthday song. Lacie just loved her party and so did I.

Explosion Card

Unfortunately, no luck with the camera. I purchased a new battery and it still is not working. So...I'll share some older pictures. I actually just made this card a couple of weeks ago and was so happy with the way it turned out. It's called an explosion card and rightfully so! When you open the card it literally explodes. It's really fun and very pleasing for the person opening the card. I'm sure I'll teach the ladies in my club how to make it at some point!

Camera Problems!!!

I'm so frustrated! Of the two cameras we have, they have both, simultaneously, decided to stop working! I wanted to post the other card we made at club, but that will have to wait. I will be taking a little trip to the camera store today!

Anyway, yesterday and Saturday was the General Conference for my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was so wonderful! It's such a blessing to listen to our prophet and the leaders of the church. It was exciting to hear the announcement of 5 new temples to be built around the world! Two of them are to be built in the U.S., one in Argentina, one in Canada and one in Rome, Italy. It will be exciting to see if the church does something architecturally (is that a word?) unique to the Rome, Italy temple. No matter what they do, all the temples are beautiful! This picture is of our family a couple years ago in front of the SLC temple. Other topics during the conference included virture and how we must not let virtue leave our lives, safety and how it comes by obedience, marriage, christian courage, unity, testimony, teaching as the Savior taught, the sacrament, listening to the spirit, and enduring trials among many others. It's one of those experiences that you feel your cup has been filled. I'm truly grateful for all those who prayerfully prepared and spoke. What a blessing!

Email feed

Opps! If any of you have tried to put your email into the feedblitz box, it probably didn't work. I just now confirmed my registration with feedblitz and now we're good to go! Sorry for the mix-up!

My Fam!

I got the comment the other day that I don't have any pictures of Brady on my blog. Well...I should probably give you a picture of all of my cute kids. (Okay, you're going to get the whole family!) I must admit, that whole growing up thing really does happen fast. Some days I wish it would happen faster (teenagers, you know) but overall I just love seeing them grow and develop. This picture was taken last spring at Easter time.

Baja Silver Sensation

I love Baja Breeze and Brushed Silver together! This is one of the cards we made for stamp club. The paper used is baja breeze, brushed silver and Urban Garden DSP. We used the Upsy Daisy stamp set. The flowers are stamped with versa mark and embossed with silver ep. The words are stamped with baja breeze ink. The paper is distressed with the distressing tool from the tool kit. We used the slot punch and inserted the basic gray taffeta ribbon behind the brushed silver. This card came together quite simply but has an elegant feel.



Today I worked on a project that I will share in a couple of days. I'm so excited about it but wish it didn't take so long! On a positive note, now it's done and I can just duplicate it. It probably sounds like I'm speaking a foreign language, I'll stop!

Table Treat

Here are the table treats we made at stamp club. The directions are at this link: http://andreawalford.com/?page_id=292

For the first treat, I used a transparency and the Sock Monkey stamp set. I colored the monkey with blender pens and punched him out with the 1 3/8" punch. I also used the scalloped circle punch. The second treat is made with Purely Pomegranate DSP (no longer available) and the tag is made with Seeing Spots stamp set. Tomorrow I'll upload the cards we made for club. Have a great day!

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