Give a Hoot..isn't it too CUTE!

Hello all just got back from my vacation and had a wonderful time. Here are a few fun pics to share!

Now it is back to reality need to do a lot of summer clean up before school starts.  Clean out the boys closets, rooms, etc. repaint and a lot more UGH!  But I did do a fun thing since I have been home too, I made a project for the Amy Mattes DT...here is the latest.....

I love these owls from the HOOTIE Collection!  They are just too cute!  You too can have them if you want to get your hands on some go by the One Pink Lemon shop and  pick some up. For now why don't you pay me a visit at the Amy Mattes blog and leave me a little love/comment.

(((HUGS)))
Christine

The latest...Hey Cupcake!

My latest project for Amy Mattes Designs!  I made this little project using a cute pic of my sweet little niece Sofie.  She came to visit with the rest of my family just last week.  We celebrated my older niece, Madi's b-day. I made cupcakes that had blue frosting with a lollipop sticking up in the center. Sofie enjoyed them a lot as you can tell!

If you like this project, go by the Amy Matte's blog and check out all the fun stuff there.  You can find out how to make great things and where to buy some of the greatest digital downloadable goodies on the Internet.

Love to all of you and thanks for stopping by!

Christine

A new project and a bit of the past...

Hi all Here is a project that I have up at Amy Mattes Designs :0)  Go pay me a visit over there and leave me some love.  Then go down to the post below mine and enter to win a fun giveaway! Come on what do you have to lose?! Hurry up and get on over there.  Hurry go go go HERE!

Now on to a bit more serious stuff. I am a bit low these days.  I lost a friend of mine to cancer just a few weeks ago. She fought her battle against cancer for 8 years. Her name is Robyn Howland and she is/was not only a beautiful person, but a person full of love that really filled my kid's days with laughter.  Initially she was Nicholas' preschool teacher and then later Adam's.  We became fast friends. This coming Saturday is her funeral. I was asked by the daycare director for some pictures of my boys with her from the past.  Here they are....

                                    Nicholas and Miss Robby- 2003

Adam and Miss Robby - 2005



My oldest son Nicholas who is now 11 wrote this which will be read at her funeral:              How Miss Robby was a wonderful person

Miss Robby was a nice, happy, frog-loving preschool teacher. She was and is always going to be my favorite teacher I’ll ever have. She always acted silly and made things a whole lot more fun for me and everybody else. She loved frogs, the green, hopping creatures of the world. She even had a tattoo of one! She is the nicest teacher I’ve ever had. I loved how she always greeted the kids and parents when they arrived instead of dully saying: “Oh, good… You’re here.” She was actually friends with my mom (Christine Pizzo-Spina), my brother (Adam Spina), and me, Nicholas Spina. She would even come over for a pizza and movie night every once in a while. She always made it better than if she wasn’t there.


Miss Robby always made everything better, and was always funny. She even made preschool better for me. She was always happy, which made me feel the same.


Miss Robby was the funniest, nicest, happiest and best school teacher I have ever known in my 11 long years of life.

Okay my next post will be cheerier. I promise :0)

Much love,
Christine

Woohoo! Yippee and all that kind of stuff!!!!!

Well first of all!  Thank you tallyscrapper! You all rock! I love you big time!  The Light it up blue crop was a success!  Thanks to your help we raised $100 towards my walk for Autism Speaks!  Thanks for your help and support.  Thanks to all the Tally gals for participating and making this happen. 

Secondly, I made my first post over at Amy Mattes Designs! Yay me! :0) I am so excited to be a part of her new design team. Here is the project that I posted

They are just little intial plates for my friend who just had twin baby boys!  Their names are John and Charlie!  How cute is that?!  I am hoping to meet the little guys when I go to visit Las Vegas during spring break.

And lastly my peeps....there is a new challenge up at Scrap it Forward which you really should be checking out!  We are going Green and there is a cute prize to go with it! Hurry and get on over there!

Okay I am off for now!

Much love,

Christine

This is BIG...It's almost time!!!

I am so EXCITED!!!! It is almost time!! Are you ready? It is almost time to join Tallyscrapper and....
What does that mean?  It means we are going to have a fundraising crop at Tallyscrapper and light it up Blue For Autism Awareness month.  This is the first of my fundraisers for my walk on November 12th :0)  There will be a big grand prize and a lot of games and other prizes too.  You can read all about it here.  Raffle tickets are only $5.45  What a deal!  Want to see the grand prize?  Here it is.................


                   

and this

So what do you have to do?  Well first you need to join the friendliest message board around at http://www.tallyscrapper.com/   Second you need to join in the fun.  Third just come and play along. There will be other games and challenges as well. Come and support Team We CAN!1 The crop begins on April 1st! You don't want to miss it!   Oh and by the way..my sweet Adam did the editing on the Video and I didn't have the heart to tell him that he made a boo boo on the Light it up blue part... He wrote "lighted".  No biggie..you get the idea. The fact that he can make videos and upload them to you tube is good enough for me ;0)

Now you can watch our "award winning..show stopping video...yawn

;0)  Much Love..Christine!

A great week for me!

This was a good week for me. First off I received an email from Miss Amy Mattes. She is an up and coming digital designer who has asked me to be part of her new design team ;0) And of course I said. YES!! She creates many wonderful digital designs that can be downloaded onto your computer and  crafty people like YOU can make fun stuff like this card that I just made last night! Isn't that fun!?? You can check out some of her great designs at these two etsy shops: http://www.etsy.com/shop/chocolatesundae and http://www.aboyslife.etsy.com/. The best part is, once you buy and download these designs you can manipulate them anyway that you want...size, color, shape..etc.

I made this card for my school staff who just happened to send me flowers since I have been out sick for awhile. I thought it was suitable for the occassion ;0)

The second most fabulous thing that happened to me this week is that I won a gigantuan spool of ribbon from May Arts this week! It isn't just a yard or two is about 30 yards of ribbon! HELLO! Cute stuff. Here it is!

Lastly, I received a big box of goodies from my Tallyscrapper sis Pam!  She sent me the most awesome bunch of love. Thank you so much for all the fun. I should have taken a picture of it,but of course I already started digging into it all!  Thanks!

Oh and p.s. here is my layout for a cool new challenge blog called "Hello Cutie Challenges".  Go check it out..

ooh and a giveaway at PURPLE PUMPKIN here!
http://purplepumpkincrafts.blogspot.com/2011/03/its-giveaway-time.html?showComment=1301460817390#c7830020077602523835

A tally Oops and a Nerdy Girl?

So I got Scrappy Last night and came up with two layuts wihich I lurve! Yes I do.
Here is my first. It was for a challenge on the Survivor Challenge on Tallyscrapper.  The prompt called for us to use a GREEN DAY song in our Title ..YAY! and 2 pics...easy enough since I heart Green day.  Problem is that I left out 2 other key ingredients..it had to be monocromatic and needed something plucked from nature on the layout...whoops. I remember that now..back to the drawing board.  At least I got a good layout out of it!

And then there is a call for a guest Designer for the Nerdy Victorious girls on The Envious Blog...Lots of fun. I have visited their blog many times for inspiration and I like their style.  THEN I SAW THE CALL and thought..why not?  So here is the layout I made.

So now I must help the kids with homework and then I am off to more scrapping.  A new layout for my survivor challenge. And just more scrappy fun because today I feel inspired!

2 BIG Giveaways today...lookie Lookie!

Oh my, never under estimate the thoughtfulness of others!  Today 2 great companies are giving away loads of goodies!  First off Imaginisce  is giving away a big ol' box of yummy goodies to 4 lucky winners...yes 4 and I am crossing my fingers on that one! Here is the link you should try your luck too! http://www.facebook.com/Imaginisce

And next a fantastic Kit club called We Scrap Kits is giving away...are you ready.....12 months worth of kits.  Yes you read me correctly. 12 months!!!!!!!!!!  And uh huh. I am going to share that link too.  Can't keep all this good news to myself.  So here ya go wescrapkits.blogspot.com

Now, if I were you, I would get my bootay...over to these fantastic companies and first off thank them for this amazing chance to win such a wonderful bounty of scrapbook goodness...and then I would enter and cross my fingers...avoid the cracks in the sidewalk, spread fairy dust or whatever it is you do for good luck.

(((Okay big scrappy hugs)))
         Christine

Checking in :0)

Hello Friends,
Well wish I could say that I feel all better but I am still under the weather ;0(.
I have made a few layouts that I can share with ya though.. so here they are.

Both of these were made for challenges on Tallyscrapper.  The second one happens to be my favorite because it is of my grandparents, my mother and her brother back in 1953 in New York.  I just love that picure of them on the slide.  I also love the picture because it reminds me of how my grandfather was such a pleasant man. He wasn't just smiling for the picture. He was always that happy, that pleasant.  I never saw a stern look on his face.  Everything was always just "fine fine". What a beautiful man he was.



Lastly friends you must know that there is some great blog candy on Scrap it Forward for one lucky reader.  Could it be you? Look how yummy it is!

If you want to learn how to win it.  Just go on over and take a look. It is easy and worth it!

Much Love!

Christine

Just a quick little note :0)

Some of you know that I have been feeling a bit under the weather lately, so I will make this quick.  Wishing all you a happy upcoming Valentine's day AND....
I just wanted to let you know that there is a fun little challenge over at Scrap it Forward worth knowing about. Go Check it out because the prize is yummy and all you have to do is make a card for an unsuspecting Valentine!

Here's mine!  Now go on over there and do the same!

Design Star, Goodies to share and Good peeps!

Well so much... a lot lately to post these days, for me.  I know..kooky huh?  I am liking it!  First off, Tallyscrapper has a challenge up to be the next DESIGN STAR!  So I thought, what they hey, Let's give that bugger a try!  So yep I did!  Here are my layouts.  Do you want to give it a whirl too?  Go on?  Give it a shot!

Also GOOD NEWS!  If you haven't heard already Scrap it forward  is running full speed ahead with a challenge ready to go!  A prize is waiting..JUST FOR YOU! Check it out...perhaps you may win. :0)

Speaking of Challenges I decided to participate in yet another challenge on a blog that I discovered just the other day. It is called Sarah Hurley Challenge Blog .  There Melly, one of the DT members, posted what she called a "wee sketch", which could be interpreted in any way, I suppose. So here is my take on it.  Wish me luck ;0)

  

Now on to the Goodies and good Peeps. The goodies and the good peeps go together you see. At CHA we met dozens of good people and as you can see got a lot of goodies for my crop to benefit Autism Speaks which will happen in April.  This is only a fraction of what we were able to get our hands on and the best part is we had great people and companies willing to send us more!  People like Miss Jenni Bowlin :0) even showed interest!  I have to say that the most beautiful person inside and out that I met is a woman, an artist, an inspiration, named Doveen Schecter. the founder of  Dove of the East.  She has lived the most extraordinary life, her artwork is amazing and her heart is of pure GOLD.  Within 5 minutes of meeting me she was handing me over a beautiful scrapbook collection to giveaway during my fundraising crop. No questions asked. She just listened to my story, and had faith.  Thank you Doveen. You are beautiful. Here is a pic of Doveen, Illyse and I.  Please go and take a look at her site.  I will also be linking her to our challenge blog!

I feel blessed to know that there are still people who can have faith in others and be willing to lend a helping hand.  We all need to reach out to one another. Big or small gestures always make a difference.  Much love.

Thanks to everyone who make a difference in my life

What a ball and so much to see!

CHA was so much fun as it always is. As a tradition. We have to take our..we are here pic and I have to take some goofy pics because, that is how I am. So let me get those out of the way...

The gang is all here!

  

GCD provided this for me!

Another Cosmo please! Oh I really shouldn't ;0)





In disguise for a top secret scrappy mission!

Okay So we saw a ton of wonderful beautiful fantastic goodies at CHA.  Yes we did!  Here is a bit of the goods! 

 Here is my Sassafras

  This I completely adore!  I love their new Foldies. They are a lot of fun!  I didn't get a pic of them because there were a lot of peeps around their booth at the time,but you can get a good glimpse on their blog at http://sassafras.typepad.com/sassafras/ .  It is a cool new way to get that layered flowers look without a whole lot of effort! and let me tell you something...It looks darn good!

So I also made my way around a lot of other booths and found a few new companies and also saw a lot of friends new and old. It is so nice to see friends that you usually only see online.  Hey you Julie by the way!  Yes I am talking to you!  I had the best time catching up on the silly stuff. ;0)

Okay back to the scrappy...there was a lot to see and too many pics to take so I will just show you a few more that really either made me smile, inspired me or made me realize that I will be going to the scrappy IOU poor house soon ;0)

Oh my, this Cosmo Cricket just about  killed me the upcycle line was my favorite for sure.  It was all fun but this was my fave!  And of course their old time display was so much fun that I had to go an take the picture with the Cosmo glass. I did ask permission first.

 

okay let's see...hmm what more ooh what I found truly AMAZING was the DIE CUTS with a VIEW booth. They must have had some astounding designers at hand.  The design work was beyond breath taking it was..jaw dropping. Just look at these dresses and table settings made out of paper!

And finally only because this is such a loooonnnng blog post I will put up some October Afternoon ;0)

There are so many more things to just share. People I met and the good things that happened,but I think that will have to be saved for another day. For now I think that this will do.  Thanks for stopping by!  Much love!

Me ;0)