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.

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.

I am lucky enough to be in the Young Women's Presidency in our ward and I love serving all of our girls.

Last weekend there was a youth volleyball tournament and we, as leaders, were at a bit of a loss. Two of us are in our third trimester and a couple had previous things going on so they were not able to coach or be at the game. We had another lady step up and be the coach for our youth. She put in a couple of weekends and jumped right in helping them with technique and communication. 

Here is a card from all the youth to say Thanks to her {and her family} for putting in the time to help when the leaders were unable.

A quick tip on how I aligned my lettering.

I wanted to make sure my lettering lined up just how I had it cut so I took the cut out of 'Ashford Youth' and placed it on the card right where I wanted to lace my lettering. As I placed a small amount of glue on each letter I placed them  back into the cut out. Make sure not to get too much glue on your letters because it will spread when you push the letter down and glue it to the cut out that will be lifted off at the end. Also, if there is a tricky letter like an 'S' simply tear out the inner parts because you really only need to get the outside edges lined up and the rest will site perfectly. This will help so there will not be so many small places for the glue to adhere to the wrong thing.

For the second photo I tried to get one where the flash really bounced off of it so you could clearly see how I had laid the letters into the cut out.

Update: I was so worried about our activities being cancelled a lot lately I forgot to mention what I used and where you can get it. The shapes and letters were cut out on my Silhouette Portrait and the volleyball shapes can be found here, in their online store. The font for 'Ashford Youth' was just a random one I had on my computer.

I was in the Young Women Presidency at church and we were recently released. I was very anxious and hesitant about accepting this calling, the last time I served in YW's it was not the best experience. No laundry will be aired here, but it was enough that I almost turned down the calling this time.

I am so glad I accepted it!!!

Our President was great! She made me feel so accepted and seeing how much she cared for and loved the girls helped set the standard for everything we did as a Presidency. So, I needed to write her and make sure I let her know how much I appreciated her love and example.

I went without a filter on the image because I wanted to try and show the true colors of this card. I love the yellow and blue together.

The flower is an image from a piece of cardstock that I cut out with an x-acto knife. It took a bit of time but I love how it turned out. Glue Dots and Glue Strips were used to place the flower and help it pop out from the background.

Growing up we had some neighbors that we loved. One summer I spent everyday babysitting their little girl and I loved every day of it. We lost touch over the years after they moved. BUT...thanks to the small world of Facebook we have been able to reconnect and keep in touch.

Since we have moved out to the East Coast she has been generous enough to share her buddy passes with us so that we could go home for the holidays a couple of times, our niece and nephew came to visit and to help get everyone home for a family funeral. Here is what I came up with. I looked at the JetBlue Website to get a couple of ideas, this is where the color scheme come from, and this is what I came up with.

If I were to ask her about what kind of gift card I could get her to say thanks, she would tell me not to worry about it. Any old gift card would not do, I wanted to make sure it was one that she would actually use so I asked her daughter and she gave me some great ideas. On the inside I made a card slot to place the gift card.