A Busy Sunday afternoon

Fall is in the air! Yesterday was our first taste of this. It was wonderful with temperatures only in the mid 70's. We turned our AC off, opened the windows, and totally enjoyed the cool breeze blowing in. I felt energenic and went to my studio to clean out my many drawers and tubs of scrapbooking stuff. Over the last month I have cleaned, straightened, and finally rediscovered the carpet in my office, but still needed to go thru and organize everything that was out of sight. I got as far as my Sizzix station and as I was getting things all lined up I noticed several Sizzix dies that was bought during the summer for the fall but had not been used. http://www.sizzix.com/outlet have tons of nice dies on clearance. I had seven new dies that were calling my name! So, within just a few minutes all thoughts of cleaning was tossed out the window and I sat and played all afternoon. I did break away and make dinner, but that was almost the extent of my day. My husband came down with a nasty cold Saturday afternoon and still wasn't feeling the greatest, so he was was quiet watching TV and napping all day. Here are three cards that I made yesterday. The card with the tied ribbon is my favorite. Very easy and simple too.

My husband would say I sure do need to be spending my energy cleaning the house and not tucked away in my studio playing. He's been wrong before, but not this time. LOL! But oh well...I'm not leaving! Here is a quick card I made as I was attempting to go thru and organize my Sizzix dies. I have found several nice ones at http://www.sizzix.com/outlet  Really a great place to pick up some cheap dies.

Alex's 10th birthday

Well, in a little over an hour from now Rick and I will be on our way to Fort Worth for Alexandria's 10th birthday! She actually turned 10 yesterday on the 14th, but her party is on Saturday. We debated which weekend to have her party, but I was uncomfortable with flying around 9/11.  Last year we had to miss her birthday, the first one for me, because of my Mom's open heart surgery and having to go to Florida.  Alex has asked us for the last two weeks if we have our bags packed. Here is Alex's card. I actually should have thought of making it prior to tonight, but I just didn't think about it. I hope she likes it.

Day two!!

Another grueling day in my craftroom. I would so much love to stop and do some stamping, but Momma

will be here soon and she is such great motivation to clean!! Her white glove get's me each visit.

Cleaning...cleaning...cleaning

I have not totally cleaned my craftroom is a long time and boy does it show! My friend just had a yardsale at her store and I had such a wreck of a room, I couldn't get around all of the mess to find much of anything for the yardsale. But, I am working on it now! I just hope my energy will last another day or two to finish the room!

On a roll!

Well, I have been in the card maker mood. My husband... I am sure wished I was in the housecleaning or dinner making mood! But anyway, I'm on my way to work. One more card for Audrey. Hopefully she won't see the crooked papers along the top. I thought I was cutting them straight, but maybe I didn't line them up after applying the adhesive. Oh well....I've made worse!

Audrey is home!

Shortly after talking to my sister yesterday, she was discharged from the hospital. Yippee! Sooo happy for her. She is now home safe and sound. She is weak as a kitten and still has a large degree of abdominal pain, but all in all, she is healing and slowly her symptoms are resolving. Here is another card I made for her. I am not a pink person, but I thought the Stampin Up papers worked nicely.

My Sister Audrey....

One week ago tomorrow my oldest sister was admitted to the ICU in the Buffalo area. The weekend prior she had driven to Flint, MI to attend a small high school reunion on Saturday at the local park where most of us, at least once, skipped school and played hookie. I must say for me, it wasn't just once.......Through out the day on Monday Audrey had frequent BM's and abdominal cramping. Sometime during the early morning on Tuesday, she started spotting and then had a couple hours of heavy rectal bleeding and had her husband take her to their local emergency room. She was quickly admitted for a probable E-Coli bacterial infection. Over the next two to three days her situation worsened and her diagnosis was changed to Renal Failure. Her first three to four days in the hospital was terrifying for our family. Because of the large amount of blood loss and continued extremely low blood pressures, her doctor's mentioned the possibility of blood transfusions, kidney dialysis, and pneumonia. Then on the morning of the fourth day, she started battling back. Her pressures were slightly higher and her bloating, edema, and abdominal pain was less. Every day after that she was slowly, day by day getting stronger. She had a few set backs, including a fever and fluid in her lungs, but she held steadfast. Yesterday afternoon she was moved to a private room. The only recent complication is a rapid heart rate and she will be evaluated by a Cardiologist some time today. The doctor's are saying if she continues to improve without any further set backs, she will most likely go home around Wednesday. They also requested a list of every meal, snack, and beverage she consumed over the weekend of her trip to Michigan, but nothing was found. No trace or hint of anything. They have no idea how or where she might have gotten infected. We are just happy she is on the road to a full recovery. I made her this card tonight. Normally I would post any project I make on my Facebook page, but I don't want her to see it online before she receives it. Tonight our family is so thankful and blessed that Audrey is gaining her strength each day and will be able to go home soon.... alive and well.

Tags are Mailed....hopefully!

Well, I took my five tags to the post office yesterday and got them mailed out. With a tag swap you have to include a self-addressed paid return envelope. This will be for the host of the swap to return the tags made by others back to you. When I arrived, I was the only one in line. She is an avid scraper too and we started a conversation about the tag swap and the unknown cost for my return postage. In the middle of her discussing the pricing options for shipping several customers walked in and was totally not interested in my delima. In a hurry we quickly decided to put one dollar more in postage on the return envelope than what I had on the outgoing package. I quickly paid for my purchased envelopes and postage and left. It was only after I was on my way to work an hour later that I remembered I was never given a receipt, the option to have my package insured, have it a Priority Mail delivery, or to have delivery confirmation added. I just have to think positive that it is safely on it's way to Pensacola and will arrive by Tuesday. Wouldn't it be a scream if it get's lost or doesn't arrive? Oh no. Can't even entertain that thought!

Tags are finished!

Well, my tags are finally done! Good thing because they are due on Kathy's http://paperphenomenon.blogspot.com/ desk on the 31st. This is my first first online tag swap for me to participate in. All of us turn in five identical tags and then whoever holds the swap will swap the tags around and if I heard correctly each person will get five tags back in the mail. I am not sure if I will get one of mine back from our group or not. I think she has six groups of five ladies in the beach tag swap. I just found out that a scraper that lives within a half hour from me is also in Kathy's swap. How cool is that? I will be dropping my tags off at the post office this afternoon and they should be there by the deadline. I really enjoyed making them once I had an idea on what I wanted to do. This is the second Cricut project I have done this month. I have not used my Cricut in such a long time, so it was nice to dust it off and not have it just sit in the corner. Kathy also did a Ustream backpack album in Augusut on her blog and I recently bought the Locker Talk cartridge for this. I still need the My Community cartridge, but I'm in no hurry and looking for a good price for it on Ebay. I can't wait to make Alex one of these backbacks!

Beautiful Butterflies

A week or so ago we had tons of nasty caterpillars on our back porch crawling everywhere. Some even managed to come into our house. Needless to say, no barefeet in the kitchen in the middle of the night! One of our neighbors mentioned there were dozens and dozens of them all out on the street one morning. Never had this to happen before. Kind of creepy! Anyway, my husband told me to kill them before they got to his garden and ate what the rabbits missed. But I just couldn't kill any of them. The few that made it into my house, I carefully picked them up, and dropped them in the grass out back. Well, a few days later I noticed dozens of large butterflies in our flower beds. I have never seen so many beautiful butterflies at one time. You know me, my camera is always close to my side, so here are some pictures of these pretty creatures. So glad I didn't have the heart to squish them in their earlier form!

My Stampin Up Wish List

I sure do wish I had discovered Stampin Up products ten years ago when I first got into scrapbooking. I have drawers and shelves full of papers, inks, and markers in all colors, but not many of them coordinate. Then I discovered with SU all of their inks and markers fully corrdinate and match with their standard paper packs and Designer Papers. They also have several adorable stamp sets that have coordinating punches. So I started ordering a few new things here and there within the last year and have collected a lot of used stamp sets over the same time with Ebay. SU also has a clearance section on their website and I have recently bought many full sets of papers and other items real cheap this way. I still have a long way to go, but slowly working on it. I now attend a monthly card class and we have such a great time. Typically we make three cards or projects each month. Initally we paid $10.00 per class, but we have since formed a small club where the members pay a minimum $30.00 and everyone will rotate and on their month receive a free hostess set for $150.00 in orders. I was lucky enough and got the second month in our rotation and will play the host this Friday, the 20th. I am excited and looking forward to it. I also have to bring a snack and beverage for our small group. Anyway this is my wish list with SU. There are many more items I would love to have and enjoy, but these are the main ones I will be hoping to order over the next several months.

Uploading more than one picture....

Well, I am trying to figure out why I cannot post more than one picture at a time. I just did a "help" search and it told me this was possible, but I was going about it the wrong way. I am a computer duhhhh so sometimes it takes awhile for me to catch up to speed! But...I am posting this only to see if what I just read will work. Sooooo it it goes.......

Well....it works! Darn I wish I had gone to my "help" button a long time ago!!

Mini cover

Well, I think I completed the front cover of my mini. I just love the paper, but it is a very busy pattern, so I tried not to go over board and have too much on it. I LOVE pearls and used many on here, but maybe it'll be okay. I went back after this pic was taken and added some gold Glimmer Mist to the tag. I am in the minority. Still not a huge fan of GM.  I know...I am the only one that's not!  My #1 fan, my husband, is not at home so I will have to wing it on the cover. I like to get his opinion on my crafts. He has a pretty good eye for balancing things out. Kind of helps me know when to stop with the embellishments! I still don't have a theme for the mini. I would love to make it for my Mom, but she just doesn't appreciate the hard work to complete a page or mini. She does love my homemade cards tho. So I have gotten thru to her on that! In the past when I have showed her an album, she just says scrapbooking is just too much trouble...just throw the pics in a photo album. Oh nooo. Can't do that! Then I thought of my cousin that died last September. She would have totally love this album, but her sister who I would give the book to is almost blind. So back to square one. Oh well....now to decorate the inside.

K&Company & Linen Closet Mini

It feels so good to be able to sit down and scrap. With my two Grands here this summer it really took a backseat while I was having fun with them. But now they are back in Fort Worth and I have tons of pics to scrap! I started this mini this weekend and all that is left now is to embellish it. I think I want to use a lot of ribbons and flowers, but that part will have to wait until tomorrow. I need to get showered and off to work! Enjoy....

Lot's of new yummy's!

It has been a great shopping weekend for me so far. Yesterday I picked up my Stampin Up order from Andrea  http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/andreaclayton/ . I ordered the cutest stamp set. It is the Greeting Card Kids # 120633 shown above. It is soooo adorable! If they have anything this year to go on a wait list, this would be the stamp set to do it. Totally cute and I can't wait to use it. I also bought the Large Tab Punch. I have been wanting this for so long. It is great with the mini's I love to make. Then today Rick and I went to Cullman for lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant. It was delicious as always. Afterwards we went to my favorite local scrapbook store...  http://www.scrapinkats.com/ I am making an Autumn mini and a Exploding envelope mini and needed some fall papers to make them. I forgot Kathy now has a Hoarder's Closet in the back of her store. It is a large room off her main store filled with tons of older goodies. I found several nice items to take home. It was a quick trip because Rick was sitting out in the truck with a sore back, looking at his watch, waiting on me. After getting back in the car I remembered that I totally forgot to get paper for my Exploding envelope mini. I have tons of paper at home, but I needed 12 pieces of paper, 4 sheets each of the same paper, so we stopped by Hobby Lobby which is just across the street and I ran in there for the paper. While there I "happened" to stop by the Spellbinders section and found the Label One at 30% off! I have searched and looked everywhere for this set, but couldn't find it anywhere. Becca Feeken at SplitCoasters is famous in using these on her beautiful projects. Well, time for me to get busy. I just signed up for a tag swap with Kathy Files at http://paperphenomenon.blogspot.com/ and I am sure she would love it if I got busy with the required five tags I have to make. Night-night.

Our garden is slowly winding down

Our garden and flower beds were so fickle this summer. We had a very cold winter with snow five times this year and our dirt just didn't want to warm up at the normal time as it has before. My husband is a stickler for planting certain things at specific ground temperature. He gets with his garden buddies and they exchange all of these tips, hints, and garden recipes with each other. Anything they say is the Gospel in Rick's eyes.  Well, he waited on planting the okra until the ground was a certain temperature this spring, which didn't happen as early as last year. So now most of our garden has petered out, but our okra is just taking off. We planted corn for the first time this year and it was wonderful! It is all nicely cleaned and frozen in the freezer. Our carrots were planted too close to each other and as a result the baby carrots were long and thin. Just too much trouble to clean as they were, so they were trashed. Next summer we will space them better. Our crook neck squash was nice until the dreaded mildew got to it along with our cantaloupes, pumpkins, and watermelon. They were loaded too, but just as they were getting to be a nice size, the mildew zapped them. We also had some huge gross beetles and multiple tiny grasshoppers that swarmed and invaded our garden. Our tomatoes are overflowing with fruit. I made some delicious Salsa today using jalapenos, garlic, and tomatoes from our garden. This was the first time for me to attempt making it and it turned out so good! I have the onion breath and indigestion to show for it tonight! Mainly the few vegetables we have left are bell peppers, jalapenos. tomatoes, and the okra. We are already thinking of planting a fall garden with cool crops, but other than lettuce, and we are not big salad eaters, we really don't have any idea on what we can plant. A guess a Google search will answer our questions there. LOL. Next year we have plans for a few more plants. Not too many, but we would like to plant some green beans and maybe some herbs. Here is a picture of our garden when it was all growing nicely. In the front center we planted Cone Flowers for color. They really added to the beauty of the garden.