Let's Celebrate!! Life, Projects, and a 500th Post Giveaway!

Hello! Hello!!  Oh my word has it been a while since I blogged.  Its amazing how time flies in a blink and life consumes you.  Thankfully it hasn't been all busted pipes and frigid temps this time around but rather baby planning has sucked up lots of my moments!!  Now before you go getting ideas in your head thinking I'm about to blow up with a big belly and get crazy cravings - ha! - let me clarify.  This is the kind of baby we're expecting:

Yep a little Nigerian Dwarf doeling named Twilight.  Isn't she darling??  Oh yeah and she'll have playmates too!

This cutie lil' wiggle worm yet to be named and 

This little cuddle bug we think will be named Lucy Liu.  I got to bottle feed this sweetie pie when we visited her and it was like the best thing eva' I tell you!  So amazing how quickly she sucked her portion right on down then licked her little lips so satisfied.  Adorable I tell ya'.

So yeah.  Beyond making sure our kennels were very much cared for over the tough winter we had I was in full preparation/learning mode for my little dairy goats.  We have plans to raise them up to become good lil' milkers and there is lots to do to get ready for them to arrive thus my absence, so please forgive me.  I still managed to create amongst all this though and therefore have oodles to start sharing again with you!  Hopefully I can be better at that. ;)

This Celebrate card is the perfect choice to kick things off with I think.  First of all it was made for my newest Design Team - Turtle Soup - a fabulous community of scrappy peeps where challenges, sketches, conversation, and friendship is shared.  Second, it has a ton of my fav ScrapFX products on it.  I love how easily a card can come together with their chippies and stencils.

I have to give props to my girl Luckie on the inspiration for the background.  She always is so brilliant with using her stencils so I had to give her style a whirl in my own way.  To create this background I outlined the ScrapFX Numbers Collage Stencil (2014020) with my Micron pen on my patterned paper.  Next I colored in portions of the numbers with my NeoColorsII.  To blend down the colors I used a waterbrush until I was satisfied with the look.  It was as simple as that.  I think the only thing I may do different next time is let the colors bleed out of the shapes a bit more to give it more loose watercolor type look (Luckie does this look brilliantly - check her out!!), but other than that I like it.

To keep the celebration going since this is my 500th post - geesh if I actually blogged more I could have surpassed this long ago LOL - I'd like to have a giveaway!!

A while back I was asked and given the amazing opportunity to read and review the book Gilt Trip by Laura Childs.  As I've read and reviewed a couple of her books before I leaped at the chance to do so again!  Here's a little snippet about the book:

"Louisiana businessman Jerry Earl Leland served only a fraction of his five-year sentence for white-collar crime, thanks to some political connections and a few greased palms. But he won’t have long to enjoy his freedom… After Jerry Earl’s early release, his wife, Margo—a much-married Garden District doyenne—throws an extravagant Get Out of Jail Free Party, complete with a Zydeco band, champagne ice luge, and waiters in ties and tails. The guest list includes many prominent New Orleans socialites, as well as scrapbook shop owner Carmela Bertrand and her best friend, Ava Gruiex. But sometime during the swirl of partying and drinking, Jerry Earl is brutally murdered—then stuffed inside a clothes dryer.
Carmela has earned a reputation around town for solving murders, and when the grieving widow turns to her for help, she can’t say no. But Jerry Earl took a lot of people to the cleaners with his underhanded business tactics, so Carmela’s going to be hard-pressed to identify which of his enemies was steamed enough to kill him. As she sorts through Jerry Earl’s dirty laundry, she needs to collar the killer before another victim is set to tumble dry…"

Good stuff, right??  I must admit I'm a bookworm at heart.  I love books but here is the thing - once I start I either really get in to a book or I don't at all and toss it aside.  These scrapbooking mystery books are ones I CANNOT put down!!  I don't know how I was never aware of them to begin with but all I know is I'm hooked on the adventures of Carmela and Ava.

At the heart of this book is the mystery to be solved.  It will surely keep you on your toes as you try to put the pieces together along with Carmela and her best friend Ava.  One minute you think you have it all figured out and then the next something else pops up to change your mind and keep you turning pages.  Then there is the whole scrapbooking element.  Carmela is a scrapbooking shop owner and while she has become known for her murder mystery solving skills on the side she still has to work for living.  As a reader, you're invited in to her shop and see her work day unfold.  She holds classes, stocks inventory, shares tips, etc.  These tips are then passed on to the reader.  Carmela holds a passion for scrapbooking and papercrafting as much as we all do making her a character I could easily relate to and see myself going to if she owned a real shop.

So I have two signed copies of this book up for grabs.  If you'd like one of them just leave me a comment and I'll post winners on Monday to this thread.

Take care and have great days!!