We have new baby chicks! I wanted to try and hatch babies out of the incubator and so Jason's dad and stepmom loaned us the incubator and gave us some of their eggs to try it. I thought that it would be a great learning experience for Addy. (And me! I've never hatched out eggs before) The 21 days were up yesterday, but Monday night they started hatching!

 Waiting for the egg to hatch is the hardest part!!

Anticipation!

It's a long waiting game sometimes!!

And it's out!! Addy was totally amazed by this!

A beautiful, healthy chick has just arrived! :)

 The one in front is called a naked neck chicken. They aren't the prettiest ever, but Addy loves them and they're a hardy chicken. We now have 3!

Chicken hatching is fun. I now have 7 healthy chicks and maybe more if the other eggs hatch. One is having some distress, but I'm hoping that it can pull through and survive. I think if it does it might be called Lucky!

 

Blog set up! Gee, I never knew that I might possibly be not as tech savvy as I thought! LOL But I've just kept tinkering with it until I think that I might have it right! Too many things going on this week. A wedding and grooms cake. Easter. Making a banner for the wedding (thank goodness it's already cut out) and making 2 quick bouquets for the bridesmaids. I'm tired already! But it's all to expand my scrapping budget this month and get my Cuttlebug. So even though next week may be one of those "I did so much, now I don't want to do nothing" weeks, when I get that baby in I'll be a happy camper!

Gotta love a lazy weekend! Got a page done and started my Heritage album. I'll post some pictures of it tomorrow since my camera battery decided to die on me! haha, I've taken too many silly pictures the last couple of days! Another cold snap this week and the SO starting nights on his outage will send me to the scraproom! Like I really need an excuse!
I went to my cousin's house last night and tried out the Cuttlebug. It's a must have in my book. I can't figure out what rock I was hiding under where that was concerned! My next purchase is definitely one of those. They make regular paper look so much more polished and finished. I can't believe that I was buying embossed paper all this time for special stuff when I could have just had one of these. The only downside as far as I'm concerned is the fact that it doesn't emboss large sheets of paper. But for now I'll take the smaller one and dream about getting a bigger one when I can afford it!!

You have to love having machines that do so much work at the push of a button and a little design work. Addy's birthday in February is a prime example! We usually have her party here at our house and this year was no exception. I always make her cake of some sort and since we do a family party we have a meal on top of it all. This year her party was at 3 pm and I had made her purple cupcakes, was cleaning and cooking and thinking how great it was that I had everything almost done with several hours to spare! Then I realized that we were having a party and there was no decorations!!! I quickly realized that I could cut pennant shapes with my E2 and print the letters with my Imagine. She had asked for chickens (real ones) for her birthday and so I decided to make her a chick birthday card and a cake topper for her large cupcake cake. It took about an hour, but we had decorations!!

I printed this from the Imagine More cards cartridge on a pre made card and used a Tim Holtz pink Distress Ink Pad to ink the edges. I tied some pink ribbon around it and it was done!

I printed the same image about 6 inches to make the cake topper. I adhered to a straw and inserted it into the top of the cupcake.

Addy loved it and I was happy with the results!

Addy's chickens! Yep, we're chicken farmers now!!

One of my favorite things to make are cards. I put a lot of time into planning the perfect card and thinking about the reaction from my friends when they receive something that I have enjoyed making! This is really an easy card to make!!  I just love the retro look of it. I am a retro junkie! Let me walk you through the steps of making this one for your own!

This is a standard 5x6 1/2 card that I bought pre made from Hobby Lobby. You may choose to cut your own- that's up to you, just remember to cut in this size. I used a Martha Stewart lace edge punch to punch the border on the bottom of the card. These cards lie flat when you get them and to me it makes it easier to decorate, and then fold right before I put the finishing touches on the front.

I keep lots of mat pads and after the design was punched I discovered that the 4 1/2x 6 1/2 inch pre cut was a perfect fit for the background. No trimming was needed!

Attach your desired background image. I used a medium yellow with minimal print from the Paper Studio Khloe Lane matstack.

Next, I selected the Surburbia image Joan from the basic shapes. To size your images, I use the Cricut Craft Room and made the cuts at 3.306 width and 4.208 height. I cut the bottom (shadow) from Bazzil Bling in a grass green color and then the top in basic black.

I used foam mounting rounds in 1/2 inch to add some depth to the finished cut.
For the Happy Hour label I cut out the phrase from Surburbia also under the Housewife Italic font. This was sized at 2.569 width and 2.069 height.  I reversed the cut this time with the black as the shadow and the letters in the green, offsetting the letters just a bit. I then used the Lacy Labels cartridge to make the mat for my letters. I picked a scalloped label called Scallop 1 and sized it to 4.069 width and 3.222 height. It was cut from a blue green piece of patterned paper from the Paper Studio matstack Linen Door.
I tilted the letters on the label and then adhered it onto the card base at the far left edge-middle. I then added the lady cutout.

The inside of the card is made from a large recipe stamp that I have and stamped onto blue green paper. You could use a recipe card if you don't have a stamp and it would look just as good.

I wrote out the party details using "recipe" form and mounted it onto black cardstock, which I then adhered to the inside of the card. Also at this time I went ahead and folded the card.

And now you get to add the finishing touches! I used small rhinestones and Stickles to make the earrings and neckline stand out for my fancy lady! I thought since she was holding a martini glass, she had to be fancy! And then the very finishing touch that I put on all my cards is to stamp the back with my unique and handmade stamp! A simple, easy card that took about 30 minutes to make!