Operation Julie's Smile Blog Hop

“I am so glad that you joined us on this amazing blog hop for Operation Julie’s Smile. If you came here from Tifany deGough’s blog, then you are in the right spot. If not, you may want to start from the beginning at the Sweet Stamp Shop’s blog and take your time. You have ALL WEEKEND to hop with us and win prizes!”

The creative blogging community is coming together this weekend to help one of our friends, Julie Ranae.  You may know her as the Design Team Coordinator for many wonderful companies from bakers twine, die cuts, rubber stamps and more.  What many people don’t know about Julie Ranae is that she has had some pretty major dental surgeries in her lifetime due to medication she had to take as a child.  It was in her plans to think about having all of her teeth  replaced at some point in the next 5 years, a decision that was pretty easy to plan out.  But then it happened…she chipped her front teeth on a weekend a month ago. The dentist told her there was no way to save them & that it was his recommendation that she give in and have all her teeth removed soon, but for that day, they needed to get her front teeth done so her gums could begin to heal. He said he would 'work out payments with her to have ALL this work done...but when she called to make her appt for the first step of impressions, they told her the amount of money that was needed and that the 'payments' applied only to the two teeth that were extracted that day. Her husband Paul was with her & that too, was his understanding as well. So this is how she has found herself in this situation…Needing at least $4000 to get started and another $3000 to finish the process…a total of $7000. Nicole Rixon, owner of Sweet Stamp Shop put together this benefit after finding out about this situation and before Julie Ranae knew it, it took flight! Because she is an event organizer by trade, she has taken on the job of organizing all of the blogs in this hop as her way of ‘working overtime’ for what she needs, the same as if she were able to work overtime at an outside job to pay for the work to be done. It is the goal of all of these generous friends & sponsors to help make this situation more do-able for our friend so that she can share a brand new smile with all of us soon. If there is anything you can do to help with a financial donation, there is a donation button ready for you to click.  Any amount is appreciated and ALL DONATIONS will be eligible for prizes from our sponsor pool of over $2500.”


I wanted to share with you today a very simple idea that my son initiated actually. It seems to be the birthday season in his class at the moment and he is celebrating someones birthday almost every week. In his vast 9 years of birthday party experience??! he told me he wanted a birthday tag that he could just write the persons name on and go - not unlike "nutella and go"which is what he happened to have in his other hand at the time. Being the accomodating Mami that i am i decided to make his wish come true and came up with this clean and simple tag...well bunch of tags actually..his go-to stack shall we say.

(Stamp: Stampin Up, Ink: Versamark)

I simply printed the sentiment on my computer and stamped the fun bunch of kids underneath. I love the pink/brown combo so blossom and cappuccino Twinery twine was a no-brainer. I decided he should also at least write his own name and left a huge blank at the top for him to creatively draw the recipients name. The latter may not quite gel with my son's rather more minimalistic approach but at least i left him a suitable space should the mood arise one fine day.

“I hope you enjoyed your stop here on the hop!  The next stop is Grace Hester’s blog.  Make sure you leave a comment here before you go so that you can have a chance at the amazing prizes up for grabs and if you can, please make a donation so we can help bring back a new smile for our friend”

JULIE RANAE