Let me count the ways....

Hey everyone! Sorry I have missed a few days of blogging :) It's been busy here, and today is MATTS BIRTHDAY!! :) My very favorite husband is turning 26 today...





Isn't he cute? Well, I think so, hehe. I decided that in honor of Matt's Birthday I am going to share 26 things that I love about him..

- I really love how much he makes me laugh, and how much fun we have together. And now that we have a son, we all giggle :D

- He's tall! I love how tall he is, it makes me feel like the small girl and that I am protected :D

- He has great taste in music, and introduced me to some bands that are now my very favorites... but without him I never would have given them a chance.

- He has really nice hair, baldness is not in his horizion - ever!

- His family is amazing and accepted me as one of their own, and family is very important to him.



- He is accepting of my quirks/crazyness, and puts up with me!

- He is really genuine and sincere, a real nice guy ;)

- He knows almost every simpsons joke there has ever been, and randomly quotes them.

- If you need to know something about sports, ask him and there is a good chance that he knows!

- When we were living in Calgary far away from his family, they sent Christmas letters and he teared up when reading them.

- I love how he rolls up in his blankets like a giant taco, then he has a hugging pillow, a foot blanket, and....

- He has a comfort blanket named big bird, which is smelly and disgusting but he loves. And that's pretty cute.

- His cheeks are soft.

- He's an amazing daddy!

- He drove me alllll the way across Canada. I played Nintendo DS for 8 days while he drove... what a sweetie.

- He thnks almost everything I do is funny, or cute. I'm forever saying "what?!" and he says "Oh you're just cute"

- He is the best friend I've ever had.

- He works so hard for his family. Up until last week he had two jobs, and would still tidy up the house and feed/put Jude to sleep at night to give me a break.



- When I come to bed at night and he is already asleep, he hugs me.

- I love how we have "Family jumping time" every day after work, where he, Jude and I all jump up and down and giggle together.

- I love when he gets home from work and I feel like a dead mommy he looks at me like I'm beautiful!

- I love how cute he looks in a sweater vest.

- I love how he fusses over his hair in the rear view mirror.

- He is so proud of being Dutch, and owns a *lot* of dutch soccer merchandise, hehe.

- When I clean, he always tells me how nice the house looks and make me feel appreciated. He also likes my cooking even when I think it is boring, and always has something nice to say about my crafts :D

- I love how easy it has been to come up with 26 things I love about him, and how I could keep going forever..


So here's to you hon.. I hope the next 26 years of your life are as awesome as the first :) And I'm so happy I get to be there with you!

Gift Guide and some NEW Cards! Yay!

Ok here I am... back for the second time today with some photos of cards I made yesterday! I felt like I couldn't get into my 'groove', so they are not my favorite works.. but still pretty cute I think :)





Today's gift guide is a bit... 'woodsy'. Hope you like!

Owwwwwwwww.

Ok, I just dropped my *large* and heavy guilotine paper cutter on my foot. There was a bruise instantly.. I'm sure that means it will get worse in a couple of hours. Ow ow ow it hurts!!

Selena from Apron Thrift Girl tagged me a few days ago, and in true Chelsea form here I am replying way way late! Hey, better late than never since this will be the first time out of being tagged many times that I actually played along :D Just because I love Selena!

Rules:

1. link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
2. share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.
3. tag 7 people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
4. let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

7 weird facts about me that you might not know:

1.) I'm scared of the dark. I'm not sure why, but I think I have bad night vision. I can't clearly discern what anything is so my overactive imagination leads me to believe that the lamp in the corner of the room is really something sinister. I've always been sortof easily scareable, especially in the dark. Oh no - now you know my weakness!! hehe..

2.) Sometimes I get nervous in social situations. I want to say the right thing, but I'm not sure what it is. I feel like I say very stupid/dumb things a lot.. I guess I should just give in to the fact that I may possibly be seen as silly/blonde or that people probably think I'm a bit odd.

3.) I have this pen cup on my desk made from an empty can of sailor moon pasta with tomato sauce. I have had this pen cup for probably almost 10 years now, through multiple moves and yet it still remains.. the only remnant of my sailor moon fan days. I wish I still had my kitty plushes!

4.) I have a thing for built in shelving... it is my dream to one day own a home and have built ins custom made! I would die a happy girl if I could live somewhere with sweet quirky little randomly placed built ins.. I need a place to stash my cute goodies!

5.) I wear flip flops most of the year, as long as I possibly can. I have been known to even wear them when there is snow outside as long as the snow is crunchy enough.

6.) I own a burnt orange honda element that is named "Cloud Rider" and I love it! I know it is funny looking, but I find it charming. I can haul around almost anything in this vehicle...

7.) I have always been a creative person. As a child, I was very into arts and crafts. As a teen, I got interested in singing and theatre, and I took classical voice lessons for 9 years. During highschool, I decided I wanted to be a makeup artist and persued that for 6 years working for almost every major cosmetic line out there. Now I am a mommy and I make and sell papercrafts.. I think it would be weird for me if I didn't have at least one creative outlet in my life, no matter what I'm doing at the current time.

So I hope you enjoyed reading a bit about me :) I guess I found it hard to come up with things... anyways, I am tagging: Aimee, Chelsea Ann, Courtney, Diane, Elizabeth, Jenny, and Maree.

Check back later today for the gift guide :)

Oh, I recieved this in the mail today and it is *so* lovely..



If you haven't checked out her shop already, please visit Linds and snag one for yourself.

Only one month left!!!

One month until Christmas!! One month until Christmas!! And some other exciting news: Jude is in his playpen - feeding himself breakfast! He can hold the handles on a sippy or bottle now and do it all alone... aww my baby is growing up. He is also sitting all on his own now, and *just* about crawling...

I missed blogging yesterday, sorry guys. I actually went upstairs last night to have a bath and found it hadn't been drained from Jude's earlier bath... so I layed down while it was draining, and woke up at 8am. I slept from 8:30 to 8am!! I guess I needed that.

I made a bunch of stuff over the weekend, 9 cards and a few more dotty gingerbread ornaments. Here are some photos of some of the cards:








These cards are now available for sale in the Paper*Cakes Shoppe - so check em out.

It's Matt's birthday this weekend, and because he works for an American company and gets American holidays off, he has four days off in a row. Yeah, four days off in a row. I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!!!! He has worked two jobs for sooo long now, and was getting one day off a week if he was lucky. So I will be celebrating American thanksgiving as well this weekend, just not with turkey :)

Here is today's gift guide, featuring stuff for the wee-est of the wee..








I'm going to finish up this post with a question - are you guys thinking of shopping online for black friday? I was thinking of maybe doing a sale this weekend... but unsure of whether or not I should. What do you think? Maybe free shipping, or 25% off, or a bonus w/ purchase? Let me know what YOU think would work best!

Sunday Lovely Sunday

Whew! I just love Sundays, they are usually very quiet days around here. Today is Matt's last day working his second job - finally! I can't wait to have him around for the entire weekened... every weekend. Yesterday we stayed home and made some deeeeeelish food, including this:





It's stir fry, and home made egg rolls! Home made egg rolls you say? Yep! And they're super easy... all I do is shred up some carrot, onions, cabbage, and mix it in a bowl with some cooked vermicelli. I add spices like garlic, salt and pepper, chilis, and some rice wine vinnegar. Sometimes I add ground or shredded pork as well. The wraps are just the pre-made eggroll wraps you can find at the grocery store. I fry them in a big wok using sesame oil. They're super tasty, cheap, and easy! A batch of 15 ends up costing me under $5. A great party snack... try it sometime :)

So far today I've managed to make a few crafts, too! A couple cards, and more dotty gingerbread man ornaments:





These will be up in the shop soon! I have decided to start working on Valentine's stuff since I've pretty much missed the boat now for Christmas.... and I looooooooove pink so I might as well, right? ;) Are you going to send or give out valentines this year? I think that I probably will, being a card maker and all. I did say that about Christmas though, and I don't think it'll happen this year.

And now onto today's gift guide!

...oops!

I managed to snag an etsy treasury last night! Have a look at it and let me know what you think, it was my first time making one.



If you could like to view it on etsy (and leave me a comment, wink wink) please Click HERE!


We woke up this morning to a couple of feet of snow.. yes, a couple of feet! Winter has arrived in PEI, that's for sure. Matt and I are planning on staying home today and watching movies, playing video games, and eatinng comfort foods. I hope to bake some cupcakes later - it should be a really nice day. We very rarely get time like this together to just stay home and do nothing especially on a weekend.

Speaking of my husband, I just wanted to mention how proud of him I am this week! He works for a mutual funds company offering help to American customers over the phone, and this week he and his class finished training and are now "officially on the job". Yesterday was his first day on the phones, and he recieved a lot of positive feedback about how he was doing. He loves this new job and it is really great for our family, so I am so proud of him for being so good at it, hehe :) Go Matt! Love ya hun.

Ok - now onto the gift guide! Today I'm featuring items for little girls - I wish I had a little girl so I could buy the first two items!

Argh! :)

So, my personal life has been a bit dramatic the last couple of days... it's wearing me out! I've always been the type of person who does everything she can to avoid conflict.. bah! And, a TV we had in our sotrage unit was stolen :( I was hoping to sell it, since we had no use for it anymore. Ah well... I keep telling myself that maybe the person who took it needed it more than I did.

On the upside, I thought my Christmas stuff got water damaged this summer, but it didn't! Yay! I even found a little pink miniature tree that I'm going to set up in my studio.

Anywho.. onto some happy things. I've been making some ornaments! Here are some pics:






So far I've finished two pink, and two aqua, but I have 6 more little felty gingerbread men in waiting! I think they are so cute.. I am going to keep a couple of these for myself :) I rarely keep my crafts, but I want these!!

And now onto today's gift guide - no theme today other than "stuff Chelsea likes" hehe.

Gift Guide... Vintage!

First things first - did you know that I recently joined twitter? If you would like to follow me... click here.

Hey everyone! Hope your Thursday finds you well... how is it Thursday? I swear, yesterday was Monday! It snowed here last night, and I'm secretly excited. I hate that I will now have to scrape off my car in the mornings, but snow = CHRISTMAS!!

I don't know about you guys, but I am feeling the pinch this year with the economy being what it is, and I am curious what you are doing for Christmas this year? Do you have any money saving tips? Let me know! I need help - November 29th is my husband's birthday as well so these few months are always tight for us.

Anyways - onto the gift guide! I picked out a few things today that are somewhat 'vintage' themed. I hope you enjoy! The first item is pretty much the coolest thing ever, I wish I could buy it for my sewing area!








I think I should actually re-name the gift guide "Stuff Chelsea wants for Christmas"

And something funny to end the post with... did you read my open letter to Graco yesterday?? Well - someone from Graco did!! HAHAH.. I never expected that. Off to try and tidy the studio!

Ode to Paper*Cakes

Ode to Paper*Cakes
Originally uploaded by creative breathing

This photo was taken by the lovely Elizabeth, aka Creative Breathing. She is an amazng crafter, and more importantly an amazing friend... she was my second customer when the shop opened - this is what she purchased, displayed very lovingly :) If you are on flickr, check her photostream out!

Open Letter to Graco

Dear Graco;

I am currently mad at you. Some genius in your company decided that it would be a good idea to make pack and plays wider than a doorway. So, I attempted (yeah, attempted, because it was HARD!!) to assemble the stupid pack and play in the hallway, and now I can't get it down again OR through any doors - so I have a pack and play in my hallway that refuses to move. I am not able to pack, nor play. Instead, I am angry.

Love Always,
Chelsea


**Update: all is well now with the pack and play... it is in my studio now :) Jude can hang out in it while I craft!

Gift Guide Day Three! Get cooking!!

I found some cute cooking/kitchen themed stuff for today :) The sushi is Soap!!








And... while I was putting together this gift guide, I actually purchased this:


Oops.. well, I needed an apron!

Hope everyone is well today :) I am feeling a bit unmotivated.. I did put two baskets of laundry away, tidied the kitchen and bathroom, and made the bed... but now I just want to sit on my butt! I should be making crafts, but my studio is messy and I have no motivation to tidy it up. Anyone wanna come over and help? I need to figure out the best way to organize based on what I do/use every day. Right now, I'm trying to get a little shipping station set up for the Shop.

Gingerbread Ornament...

A friend of mine contacted me and asked her to make a custom Gingerbread Man ornament for her, here is what I came up with:




I think he is so cute, I want one for my OWN tree! :) Of course... that may not happen as I seem to never make any crafts for my own family, lol. I am thinking of offering these in the shop - how do you think they would do? Speaking of the shop, I had a large sale yesterday and now I am getting low on stock! It's such a challenge to find enough time to create items..

Annnnyways... on to today's gift guide! Today I am featuring ornaments, just for fun!





These are some of the ornaments I personally have in my faves! :) I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.