thoroughly impressed: A few challenges...and back to work...

OK. HOW do all of you wonderful, creative bloggers out there in stamp-a-holic land find time to maintain your blog regularly? Obviously I'm new to this - but I started my blog over our blizzard time off from school. Now that we've finally gone back after more than a week off, I can't imagine coming home and being ready to blog after the long day, making dinner and whatever other mommy tasks happen between dinner and bedtime! Congratulations to all of you who make it work!! Funny thing is, I can still manage to find a bit of time to participate in some weekly challenges! Yay!!

I took another try at the green and purple challenge over at No Time to Stamp. This makes it official. Purple and I just do not get along! Doesn't mean I won't keep trying! :)

So after that color challenge and trying the color challenge at Stacy's Stampin Stage (curtain call color challenge: Act 17), I'm realizing that sketch challenges may be better for me than color ones! It's fun to try to stretch my brain around these, but I think I'm an earth colors girl at heart! But THAT, my stamping friends, is why they are called CHALLENGES!

I also tried one of the Mojo Monday (Mojo125) sketches. I'm late, of course, but...whoa...there's 270 challengers playing along! Funny thing is, I didn't even realize that's what it was when I tried it. It was a great layout on Lynn's blog, The Queen's Scene, that I thought would work for a card I needed to make. I needed one of those "generic" baby cards...no blue or pink, but green or yellow or pastel. Again, my brain had to work hard for this one! But then I remembered a SU pack of paper from last year that met the criteria. And it gelled. So, here is the stork card with the green and yellow. Wanna know what happened? The baby was born during the first blizzard. It's a girl. So now I need a girly pink card. :) I guess the other can go into the stash!

I know I've mentioned the weather 9 million times, but pretty much that's news around here. The other thing is we just got mail delivery back! (so now I can get my bills...hooray!) But there is so much snow piled up around the mailboxes on our court, you have to climb "mount postal" to get to the mail! The other day, my neighbor, Penny, climbed up there and was gracious enough to also snag our mail (which included a package from Amuse stamps, thank you very much!) So I used this FTL77 layout from Clean and Simple Stamping to make her a thank you note. Of course it's late for the challenge, but it wouldn't be made by me if it wasn't! I was really inspired by the layout and by Teresa's version on her blog. (Thanks, Teresa, for that reminder that spring will come!) This one also can be used for the Pink Elephant challenge to use ribbon...I LOVE ribbon!