Are you ever overwhelmed by a situation, thinking you wish you could scream from the roof and all you really need is a hug? I was feeling it over the past little while, especially with the holiday season. 

There's no need for details but there were quite a few who have been an answer to our prayers. I couldn't just go one without saying "Hello, I saw what you did there, and we appreciate it ... A LOT!" So we did cards in bulk.

Remember, not everything has to be over the top and out do the next one. A simple handwritten note, sent in the mail can be just the ticket.

This year got super crazy as soon as little Miss E. arrived in April. We spent the summer bouncing around in Utah and then ended up in Kentucky where Paul is teaching at a University. Graduation, a summer spent moving around with a toddler and newborn while we were praying that Paul would be able to find work.

Lately it seems our trend is to move in August with the school year. With Lady A's birthday in October it is a great chance to invite little friends and their family's over so that we can get to know them and they can get to know us. Most of my supplies are still in boxes so we went the route of a digital invitation. This way we can also be able to share it with our family back home. 

Our theme was Princess Sophia and I am ok with that I really enjoy Princess Sophia, she is a Disney princess closer to my daughters age going dealing with more similar issues, ya know than the traditional damsel who is just looking for her prince/knight in shining armor.

I found these great vector images here to place on the card. 

Here is another card from my dig thru memory lane. This is from a group of people I used to work with at Creating Keepsakes Magazine. That was my first real job after getting my Associates Degree and I loved it. This group of ladies are fantasticly wonderful and kind and going to work with them was like working in the middle of a creative bomb. Always fun stuff going on.

It's so simple, not over done, but she still has great detail to it. The stitching around the edge. She cut the square with our names right from our invitation too!

Have I ever mentioned how much I loved this job and everyone I worked with?! All the accents on the inside were hand drawn.

Check out the fun little details added. I love how she double traced the accents as well as the text on the left page. Simple and yet oozing with fun.

You know Joannie wouldn't leave anything undone! A simple little accent on the back with ribbon and square brads.

Packing up and moving in the Spring happend fast with everything else we had going on. One of my goals was to go through all of our boxes and get rid of things we didn't need/want and make sure we were not wasting space by packing a bunch of air. After moving so many times I stopped worrying about trying to open every box when we moved in some place new, it was also hard because we seemed to keep moving into places that were smaller than the last.

Well we moved into the biggest place we have ever been in, a cute little farm house a couple miles away from the University where Paul is teaching. The goal was to open every box and make sure we weren't holding onto un-needed items.

In doing so I came across this cute little card full of thoughts and advice from the family and friends at my baby shower for Lady A {there are some cute ones for Miss E as well but I put those in a safe spot, you know, so they won't get lost or ruined, and now I just need to remember where that was. Am I the only one that does that?}. 

Even since I did not make it I thought I would try to put together a list of supplies and tools needed to create this.

MATERIALS/SUPPLIES
Solid and Patterened Card Stock
4"x6" Picture sleeves like the ones here or click the link for different sizes.
Decorative Brads
Decorative Embelishments
Archival pens like these ones

TOOLS
Paper cuter {this is the one I use. It travels well and is great for projects that require simple straight cuts}
Small Hole punch/needle {pretty much anything that will help puncture the layers of paper and page sleeves so the brads can be placed}
Glue/Double Sided Tape

The ladies at church threw me a baby shower a couple weekends ago and they did such a great job. The colors for Lady #2 are yellow, grey and purple, I also decided to go with an elephant theme. I posted about the invitations here and check out these cute little party favors. That night I didn't have my camera and honestly, even if I did, there probably still would not be any photos {moving around, up and down, oh that sounds so miserable}.

At the end of the night I even took home some of the balloons for Lady A. When she came down the next morning she had such a look of excitement on face. We haven't really done balloons too much before and now she had these ones all to herself.

While l am trying to stay on top of my 49Fifty projects, it is getting harder and harder to keep up with writing about them all. It seems every time I sit down, in just a matter of minutes l am asleep. I can not wait to meet Lady #2, but I am also excited to able to sleep in my bed, get on the floor and play with my girls, all those wonderful things I used to be able to do before my body went wonky from this pregnancy.

Now it is time to make Thank You cards for all these wonderful ladies. Have I ever mentioned how much I love having my own personal cutting machine. Normally I like to create my own designs but right now l am looking for easy and fast. There is too much going on right now: Baby, packing, moving and an extremely sore body from the pregnancy. I found the best shape from the Silhouette online store, then took it into the Studio program and changed it a little to create my card shape.

I have a bunch of envelopes already so the only thing I really had to keep track of was making sure to size the cards to fit them.

Do you ever have those projects that while you are working on them you wonder the whole time if they will actually turn out. Then when you are done you could not be more pleased with them?

This was one of those for me. I love how they turned out and am so excited to give them to all those who have helped us get ready for Lady #2.

This week I have been thinking a lot about my Grandpa or Grandpa Great as we affectionately call him. His wife passed away just over a month after we first moved to the East Coast. They had been married almost 20 years, for my younger brothers she was the only grandma they remember. He still has his own place but my parents have given him a room at their place as well so he can be closer to family. My dad also built a huge chicken coup because my grandpa was not leaving his 'ladies'. All the great grand-kids have loved being able to watch and feed the ladies. It has been over two years and the little ones still get excited about going out in the morning to collect the eggs.

I thought it would be a fun idea to send him a card letting him know we are thinking of him this Easter season.

You can find the chicken here. The 'chicken wire' fence is one I designed so that it would be sure to fit the front of the card {a letter size piece of cardstock cut in half then folded}.

This weeks card is dedicated to my little sister. She is a very dedicated mother of two and has done a great job raising her kids. I have been able to look to her example on a number of occasions.

It seems kind of funny as I type that because we could not be more different. We are the closest siblings in age out of six, we look nothing alike and our personalities are very individual from each other. Growing up, friends at school thought on of us had to be adopted.

Recently she has decided to go back to school. I could not be more excited for her and her kids as they take on this new adventure. This will also help her in providing for her kids as they get older.

So I thought I would send her a quick note to let her know how excited I am for her and her family.

To give the card a little dimension and pop I curled the peddles of the flowers.

Designed and cut on my Silhouette Portrait.

My church family is the best. One thing they love to do is get together, and a baby shower is a wonderful reason for us to all hangout. I have been to more baby showers in the short time we have lived here than the rest of my life combined. The games are hilarious and there are a couple of us who are a bit competitive ~ always a good time.

This past week has been  crazy. Paul was out of town and I am just over 36 weeks. My body has not enjoyed this pregnancy and I have been sleeping in the recliner for the last 3-4 weeks. I have been falling asleep every time I sit down so I did not think I was going to get a card up this week.

Tonight {Saturday} we had a dinner before the Women's Conference {Lady A and I went for the dinner part but went home for the conference because it was too late to keep her up} with the ladies from church. I was handed an invitation to my own baby shower next weekend. YEA!!! There were four of us due within about six weeks of each other and I am the last one. We will also be moving shortly after and since I have tried to make it to every baby shower possible, I am super excited for one last get together with these ladies before we leave.

I have pinned a couple of items or shared some things on FB and these cards are perfect. For Lady A we did owls and for Lady #2 we want to do elephants and I will continue with the yellow and grey color scheme, I used them in the afghan I recently finished. Since this invitation was made on my behalf, and because I think it is so cute, I am counting it as my card for this week.

There is another baby shower this weekend, so guess what this card is for. A little girl baby shower!

I have loved the yellow and grey combination for years now. Both of my girls have afghans using those colors and if there is ever a baby number three, you can bet their afghan will have those colors in them too.

Starburst Afghan
Tulip Afghan

Have you noticed over the past few weeks/months that the shape of the moment is the honeycomb. {OK, even typing that has me thinking of Honeycomb cereal and now I am hungry.}  I love this shape and there seems to be an endless number of ways it can be used. Here is my simple card using the honeycomb as my inspiration.

I created the shapes in Adobe Illustrator and imported the file to my Silhouette Studio. BAM!! Shapes are cut just as fast as that and away we go creating the card.

'Tis the season for baby showers. These next few months the weekends will be full for me and it seems like half of them will be baby showers. Not that I mind, it is a great reason to get together with friends, play some games, eat yummy treats and let the dads take the kiddos for a bit.

This week I got out my trusty card kit and a few extra embellishments to sit down and put some cards together.

The card kit had a baby card packet but I have no idea where the instructions are so I put them together however I wanted. At first I was just going with the idea to get them done and move on. But after placing the simple pieces down that came in the kit I decided that I needed to add just a little something extra to help give them a personal touch.

With just a couple of simple extra touches I love how the cards turned out and am excited to give them out. Now to just find the perfect gifts to go with them.