Valentine’s Day is fast , so I decided to use this theme for this week’s Mojo Monday.

This week’s sketch:

My card:

When I first saw this week’s sketch I thought it would be easy to come up with a design. But looks can be deceiving – what looks simple can sometimes be very tricky.  I had a hard time coming up with something that wasn’t too simple (or boring) or too fussy (not my style!). It took a while but I have to say that I am pretty happy with what I ended up with.

Here are the details:

Card Stock: Pretty in Pink, Real Red, Whisper White, Love Patterns DSP, Red Glimmer Paper

Ink: Real Red

Tools: Big Shot, Fashionable Hearts Embosslits Die, Perfect Polka Dots Embossing Folder, dimensionals, Corner Punch, Large Oval Punch and Scallop Oval Punch

Thanks for looking and if you want to know how you can enter the world of Stampin’ Up, leave me a comment and I would be happy to help.

I love to read. Always have. Doesn’t matter what form, books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, I’ll read just about anything.

So when we had children, I was determined to pass my love of reading on to them. I even read to them while they were in the womb (TMI?). When they were little, we read to them constantly and starting taking them to the public library.

Now that they are both in school, they visit the school library once a week and are always excited to show me the books they bring home. And they love going to our local library to pick out even more books.

We also read together as a family. My kids would much rather sit at the kitchen table and listen to an audiobook while colouring, than sit in front of the tv. It’s an activity we all enjoy. In fact, our son likes to read so much, he has read the entire Harry Potter series and he’s only 8!

January 27th is Family Literacy Day and Jessica Roy, the librarian at the Main Branch, asked me to share this with all of you:

Families are invited to celebrate Family Literacy Day at the Ottawa Public Library, Main branch at 120 Metcalfe this Sunday, January 22nd from 2-3pm. Children’s entertainer, Suzanne Pinel will help present literacy awards followed by a fun and highly interactive performance by children’s musician, Doug Barr. The event is free and no registration is required.

You can find more information on our website here:

http://biblioottawalibrary.ca/en/main/program?eid=36455

So if you are looking for things to do this weekend or a place to warm up after a skate on the canal, drop by the Main Branch of the Ottawa Public Library. Sounds like a lot of fun and great way to further a love of reading in your own children.

My nephew T is now a six year old. Six!!! I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around that since my daughter’s six birthday is not far behind.

Anyway, this year he decided he wanted Lego Ninjago to be the theme of his party. Now if you know my sister at all, you know that she loves to buy paper goods, particularly those found in a party store. So just imagine how she felt when she discovered you could not buy Lego Ninjago themed party goods. The horror!

What do you do when you can’t buy what you want? You make it. We scoured the Internet for ideas, although there weren’t many and managed to come up with some ideas that made the birthday boy very happy.

It was my job to create the birthday banner and cake. First I found a good template of a Ninjago Mini figure and used the head for the banner. This is what I came up with:

For the cake we decided to do a cake / cupcake tower combo.  T’s favourite Ninjago character is Kai, so I based the cake portion on him and my husband created a Japanese Torii to go on top.  The cupcakes were simple with the faces of Kai, Jay and Cole. I was very happy with the way the icing colours turned out, especially the black!

My sister also got crafty and created some Ninjago balloons using yellow balloons, tissue paper and photocopies of their eyes. Awesome aren’t they!

Last but not least, she also created some themed cups and loot bags.

The kids had a great time, the birthday boy was extremely happy and maybe, just maybe I may have cured my sister’s addiction to party good stores. Well a girl can dream can’t she.