My Heart Hurts...

As most of you know, I have a very good friend named Jessica. Her and her husband, Jesse have 5 children and the youngest two are twins, Grayson and Emma. Recently, Grayson was diagnosed with a brain tumor. They are unsure what type of tumor it is, all they know is that it's growing.

Today, they saw the pediatric neuro-oncologist and got some answers but things are still up in the air. Grayson is scheduled to have lots of tests next week. You can read all about it on Jessica's Blog - You're Always In My Heart!

If you are interested in supporting Grayson and his family, there is a Card Benefit that has been set up. The cards that Jess and her family have been receiving have really been a comfort. There is also a donation site set up for Grayson too. If you are interested in that, you can donate from Jessica's Blog or by clicking the donation button in my side bar.

I honestly have to say, I admire Jessica's strength right now. My heart breaks for her and her family but she is so strong and optimistic. I pray for her and her family!

And on a lighter note, as you can see, I have given my blog a make-over! Bring on the spring! I'd love to know what you think!!

Don't forget to come back on Friday for the Happy April Fool's Day Blog Hop Hosted By It's A JOY. It should be an interesting one! I can't wait to participate and see what everyone comes up with.

Thanks everyone for visiting my blog and stay tuned for new craft projects!! See ya soon!

Much love and creativity,

I'm a Versatile Blogger

<----Lookie what I got!!! :P It's always nice to receive awards from other bloggers who have been somehow inspired by your blog! I won this award from Tiffany at Sparkled Memories. The requirements of accepting this award are:
1. Thank the person who gave you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award on to 15 other bloggers.

First of all, Thank you so much, Tiffany!!! I appreciate that you like my blog and I'm honored that you felt I deserved this award!!!

Now, 7 things about myself. Here goes:

1. I am the mother of 4 kids and I named them A, B, C, D on purpose (Alissa, Brandon, Catelynn and Dylon).
2. I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in April 2009 and take weekly Interferon injections to control the progression of the disease.
3. My husband and I have been together for 14 years and married for 11.
4. We moved our family from sunny Phoenix, Arizona to freezing cold Minnesota 5 years ago and hope to move back home someday soon.
5. I recently lost 51 pounds and went from a size 18 to a size 10.
6. I'm a huge New Kids On The Block fan and have been since 1988. Last year I went on a cruise with them and had the time of my life!
7. I love to do crafty things and love that my husband supports me in this!

And now, I'm required to pass this award on to 15 other bloggers so here they are:

1. You're Always In My Heart
2. Disney Dreamer Designs
3. Recycled Genius
4. Purple Lily Studio
5. More Than Favors
6. Sweet Magnolia Rose
7. Pause Dream Enjoy
8. Oh For JOY
9. Memories By Meredith
10. Live Laugh Scrap
11. Pat's Scraps
12. Grma Gayle's Corner
13. Cindylu's Scrapping Room
14. Chick-N-Scrap
15. Simple Southern Blessings

Thanks again to Tiffany for this award. I feel honored! :)

Have a great night everyone.

Much love and creativity,

Fun Hair Bows

I came down to my craft room with my daughter tonight to do some work on the birthday banner for my friend, Jessica at You're Always In My Heart. As you know, she has twins, a daughter, Emma and a son, Grayson who are turning 1 in May.

My daughter wanted to make some hair bows while I worked on the banners. Well, I started doing that and wound up not liking the way the cuts I was making were turning out so I gave up on the banners for right now (until I find the right cut) and decided to make some bows with my daughter.

Earlier today, I'd gone to the craft store and bought some flowers that I realized can also be taken apart and used for scrapbooking too! Whoo Hoo. This is great because I absolutely LOVE to use flowers on my scrap pages.

Anyway, I found this really cool website that gives free tutorials on how to make hair bows so I did some experimenting with some of them.

Here are some pics of my favorite ones.

I really like this one. My daughter likes pink so I thought she'd really like this one. I can't wait to see her face tomorrow when she sees it. I love that she's still little enough that she can enjoy this kind of thing and I've really found that making these bows brings me joy and happiness!

I need to get some clips for these ones, I ordered some alligator clips and am still waiting for them to get here.

I really like these too. They are simple enough that my 15-year-old will most likely wear them too.

This one is neat but I think it would look better on a fabric headband because the flower itself is about 7 inches in diameter so it's pretty big.

Not so sure about this one as far as the colors go. But I have lots more of these flowers to work with so I'm sure I'll get it perfected at some point!!!!

Also, my husband and children made me a birthday cake. It was so good. Marble with fudge frosting and then my oldest daughter did the writing on it.

You can't really tell but the candles were in the number of 37!! LOL.

I had a great birthday and I'm so glad you all got to enjoy it with me!!!

Ooohhh, I also won a blog award. I'll post that tomorrow!!! Just want to say thank you to Tiffany at Sparkled Memories for the Versatile Blogger Award. I really appreciate that she loves my blog!!!!

Eeeekkkk, thanks again. I will post all about this tomorrow. For now, it's off to bed I go! Good night all my bloggie friends and followers! I hope you had a great day!

Much love and creativity,

Happy Birthday and My Favorite Things Winner!

Good Morning all my friends and followers!!!!!!

Today is the day! It's March 28 and the only day of the year that I get to call my own!!! So, Happy Birthday to me!!! :)

Using random.org, I drew the winner of the My Favorite Things Blog Hop this morning. It was number 4.

shersl84bed said...
I'm a follower. Family is my favorite thing also. Love your layouts.

Smiles Sher
www.patternsbysher.blogspot.com
ShersL84bed@aol.com

March 26, 2011 11:28 AM

So Sher, please check your email, I will be contacting you for your address!!

Thank you to all of the participants and I hope you all have a fabulous week!

Much love and creativity,

Cute Clippies and Bows

First of all, I would like to thank everyone who participated in the My Favorite Things Blog Hop celebrating with me, my 37th Birthday. It's just not as scary as I thought it would be. You all made that possible so, a very fabulous THANK YOU to Cindy, Cherie, Darlene, Jenny, Gayle, Jessica and Jessica for participating in my blog hop and celebrating my birthday and a great big thank you to everyone else who visited not only my blog but everyone's blog on the hop as well. Ya'll made my 37th birthday a wonderful day to remember!!!!!

Tonight, my oldest daughter and I sat down and made some cute bows and clips. It really brings me joy when I find something that we both like to do and lately, she's be very "into" bows and such. She's even been wearing them, which is totally surprising to me considering this is the girl that wouldn't have anything to do with anything "girlie" less than a year ago. Ah well, I won't complain, I'll just be happy with the fact that we share a common interest. She wants to start a website and sell our bows. Maybe someday! (I do believe this is her "I'm-almost-16-and-really-want-a-car" voice talking!!! Hahahaha.

I just thought that I'd share some of the things we've made over the last few days. Hope you like them.

I ordered some alligator clips today and can't wait until they get here so I can explore the bow making process some more.

Anyway, thanks again for looking and I will be drawing the winners on Monday, March 28th (my Birthday) for this blog hop's blog candy! Hope you all had a great weekend and had as much fun as I did!!!

Have a great week!

Much love and creativity,

My Favorite Things Blog Hop

Hi friends and followers and welcome to my very first blog hop! Thank you so much for sharing my birthday with me!!!! I'm so excited about hosting this blog hop, although I think I just may have bit off more than I can chew because I have SO MANY FAVORITE THINGS!!!!!!

What I decided to do for my post is to post some of my most favorite layouts and then share some pictures of my favorite people! I hope you enjoy.

Okay, first, this layout was made for this hop. I don't know about any of you but I'm pretty much nonfunctional without that first cup of coffee. If I'm lucky enough, I get to have a Starbucks coffee and that's like a big treat!

For this project, I cut out a Starbucks cup with an emblem that I found on the net. I was able to use my Cricut to cut this project. So much fun. I then took a coffee cup and dipped it in coffee and then stained the paper at the top with the coffee stains. I cut the lettering using the Plantin School Book cart at 2 inches. I looked through all of my pictures but couldn't find one of me actually drinking coffee, LOL, so that will come later!

Next, this is the first project I made with my Cricut Expression. I'm a huge fan of New Kids on the Block. In 2008, as most of you know, they reunited and so I went to the reunion show and was able to meet them. It was so much fun. So this layout was from then. It's another one of my favorites.

The next couple layouts are just some that I had fun doing. I loved the colors and the pictures that I used for each of them.

This first one was from 2008. My very best friend and I planned a girl's weekend in Las Vegas. We were sitting in the car waiting to go over Hoover Dam and so I took a picture of my freshly pedicured feet! Cute huh??? I love it!

This layout is a picture of my sweet little angel, Catelynn. She was 2 in this picture. I just love the contrast between the colors and the black and white. She's a great model because she loves to have her picture taken. Even now at 7 years old, she still loves to be in front of the camera!

These next pictures are just some of my favorite people.

My 15-year-old daughter, Alissa

My 10-year-old son, Brandon

My 7-year-old daughter, Catelynn

My 5-year-old son, Dylon

Our family, Me, Alissa, Catelynn, Brandon, Dylon and my husband, Mark at the corn field maze.

Please click on any picture to enlarge it

Okay, now for the fun stuff! The BLOG CANDY:

You can't have a blog hop without some fun candy!!!!

I've made it pretty easy to win this candy!!!! And, I'm offering several ways to get additional entries!

1. Leave me a comment on this post.
2. "Like" my Facebook page Krystal's Kreativity.
3. Follow my blog.
4. For an additional entry, please hop over to my friend, Jessica's Facebook page and "Like" her new boutique too. Little Blessings Boutique
5. Lastly, you can gain one more entry by participating in the Card Benefit for Grayson

*NOTE* After you do each of the above, come back to my blog and leave a SEPARATE comment so you can be entered each time! I will draw the winner on Monday, March 28 via random.org.

So, now that you have all the information for my hop, you can hop on over to Cindy at The Scrapping Room

For your convenience, here's a list of all of the blogs on the hop. Thanks again for stopping by and feel free to come back anytime!!!!

Thank you for sharing my birthday with me!

Krystal at Krystal's Kreativity <---YOU ARE HERE
Cindy at The Scrapping Room
Cherie at One Heart Scrapper
Darlene at Simple Southern Blessings
Jenny at PaperCut Creations
Gayle at Grma Gayle's Corner
Jessica at Chick-n-Scrap
Jessica at You're Always In My Heart

Much love and creativity,

Card Benefit for Grayson

Happy Monday Morning everyone!!

This week is going to be a busy one for me. I'm preparing for My Favorite Things blog hop to celebrate my 37th Birthday. Click the link for details. I'd love to have you join us on that. It's going to be fun!!

Also, over the weekend, I spoke to one of my very close friends who has been going through a rough time with her son, Grayson. He's 9 months old and was recently diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. After having another MRI last week, she found that the tumor has grown and the doctors are at a loss for what kind of treatment he can have. They basically told her to take him home and have fun with him. They have several more appointments scheduled this week with a pediatric neuro-oncologist. They are keeping hope alive for him. At this moment, he doesn't seem to be acting sick, he laughs, plays, and is just a beautiful little ray of sunshine!! Feel free to follow her story by visiting her blog at You're Always In My heart.

A family friend has set up a card benefit for this family. If you'd like information on that, please visit their Facebook Page for all of the details. All this family is asking for are prayers and support. They are understandably scared and just need some reassurance and to know that they are not alone.

On a very happy, much lighter note, Jessica has asked me to participate in the twins' birthday party festivities. I'm so happy she would like my help. I'm going to be making birthday banners for both kids. When I have that done, I'll post pictures to show you all. I'm super excited and honored that Jess would ask me to be a part of this very special day for her children! I can't wait!!

Well, for now, that's it. I'll be in my craft room today making some goodies that I can't wait to share with you.

I am also on the hunt for another challenge to participate in.

Talk to ya all soon!!

Much love and creativity,

Prayers For My Friend

It's always such a sad thing when you hear stories of people suffering but it's especially hard when you hear of it being a child. You never want to think about your children being in pain or having health issues. Being a mom, I listen to stories of other parent's struggles and I imagine how I would react in that situation with my own children.

I have a friend right now who is going through a very rough time. She has 5 children, the last two being twins, a girl and a boy. They just turned 9 months old.

Grayson has had a hard time reaching all the milestones that babies reach. A few months ago, she noticed that he started shaking. He'd have these episodes all the time and they weren't sure what it was. So they took him to the doctor and the doctor ordered an MRI. It was then that they found out that Grayson had a brain tumor. Even harder to swallow was that it was in a place in his brain that is too dangerous to biopsy or operate on so they aren't sure what the nature of the tumor is. Their doctor just told them to keep an eye on him and see if he develops any new symptoms or if the symptoms he has get worse to contact them.

Over the course of the last few months since his diagnosis, Jessica has been having a physical therapist and an occupational therapist come in and work with Grayson. Up until about a week ago, he was making progress. He was able to eat more solid foods like his sister, he was finally able to sit up on his own and he had finally started to crawl. But, over the last couple of weeks, he's started breaking into these horrible screaming fits for a couple minutes at a time and then he'd stop. He also started regressing and his therapists have told Jessica that she needed to make him an appointment with the pediatric neurologist. About 4 days ago, Grayson started throwing up. She thought it was due to a flu or virus but he continues to throw up so she made the appointment with the neurologist and they immediately scheduled an MRI, which he is having right now as we speak.

This is a picture of Grayson and Emma.

If you would like to read more about Jessica and follow her story, please visit her blog, You're Always In My Heart.

Please keep Jessica and her family in your heart. Thanks!

*UPDATE* Jess just told me that the tumor has grown in both directions and they have referred her to a pediatric oncologist. Please, please keep this family in your prayers. My heart just breaks for her.


Much love and creativity,

11th Wedding Anniversary!

Today is my 11th wedding anniversary. I met my husband on March 23, 1997. We had our first date on March 25th. We got married 3 years later (almost to the day). Now, here we are, 11 years and 4 kids later and I love him more today than I did the day I married him! It's been a wonderful, amazing journey that I hope lasts until the end of time!

I made my husband 2 cards for our anniversary. I think they turned out pretty good. :)

I'll keep the sentiment to myself on this one but that's a police officer and a librarian. :P

I used my Cricut Expression for both of these cards.
I used Stretch Your Imagination and My Community cartridges.

These are the flowers my husband gave me! I love him! :)


Thanks for looking!

Much love and creativity,

100th Day Of School

Today is the 100th day of school for my kids. Nope, no spring break here. My kids don't get the typical week off for spring break because they only go to school 4 days a week so their spring break is only a couple of days.

Anyway, my daughter needed 100 items to bring to school. They count them in class. Here's what I made.

I got the container from Free SVG Blog

I can't remember where the hot air balloons came from so if anyone knows, please let me know so I can give credit where credit is due!!! :)

As I was doing this project, my oldest daughter informed me (at 10:30 PM) that she had a choir concert tomorrow and wanted to know if I'd make her a bow. Needless to say, I couldn't say no. (Silly me, it took me until 1 AM to get everything done).

Now, I consider myself crafty but when it comes to making bows, I'm kind of clumsy. I don't really have a plan. So to make this, I used a clip and hot glue. I didn't have a very big selection of grosgrain ribbon since I mostly do paper crafts but I was able to find this little bit. The school colors are black and gold.

I took a clear band and tied the black thin ribbon to it. Then I bunched it up and hot glued it to the barrette. My daughter is a freshman so I wanted to make it dainty but not too girly that she wouldn't want to wear it. I took the gold and white ribbons and tied them in a simple bow and then glued them on top. (I am not thrilled with the hot glue job but it worked in a pinch).

And this is my lovely daughter in her new hair bow.

Hope you all enjoy and have a great week!!!

Much love and creativity,