Mo's Weather Related Challenge

The challenge on Mo's Challenge Blog this week is to make a weather related card. I had printed this image the other day and thought it would be perfect, because for me, as soon as the weather changes a little and the first hint of spring is in the air, it is time to start getting my seeds planted and my pots ready. And a lot of the time I feel like I am standing at the door, holding my pots, waiting no so patiently for it to warm up enough to bring them outside. My card uses an image from Mo's Digital Pencil, paper, flower and brads from my stash.

My plants are growing! I have several little tiny tomatoes that are growing. Tomatoes and cucumbers are what I most look forward too every summer. I have been getting a few strawberries too, here and there. I have been fighting the birds for them and I think they are actually getting more of them than I am which I am not so happy about.

Speaking of little girls ready to grow some stuff; here is a picture of Samantha with her tomato plant. Ever since I have known her and she was a tiny little thing, she has loved tomatoes. Since she has taken such an interest in gardening, my dad sent her a tomato plant of her own. This is a tomitoe (sp?) plant. He has had these seeds for many many years, harvesting them and then starting the new ones each spring. Samantha was very happy to have her own plant to take home. Her mom grows some things too, but we tend to grow different things, except this year Samantha wanted her to plant all the same herbs that I have planted.

Have a great day!!

Seeing Spots

Good morning! This week's challenge on Mo's Digital Challenge Blog is "I See Spots". You know me, I love dots of any kind so this was right up my alley. I love  this image by Mo, it reminds me of Samantha when she was little. She has always loved cooking and helping out in the kitchen, even more as she is getting older and can do more and more. I am sure this card will go to Samantha soon, so I used her favorite color, yellow. The image was colored with Copics, the papers, buttons and ribbon from my stash.

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This is a picture of Samantha this past Christmas. Everyone got her cooking related things this year. She was pretty excited by all of her new gear that as soon as we were finished unwrapping gifts she was reorganizing a kitchen cabinet so she would have her own shelf in the kitchen. I gave her the cookbook she is holding because it is the book I learned how to cook from and two 6" chef's knives, one for my house when she is cooking here and another to keep at home when she cooks with her Mom. 

(P.S. And yes I asked her Mom before I gave a nine year old a real knife! I do ask if it is something that could potentially send a kid to the E.R. Samantha has been cooking for a long time and has been taught knife safety as well as general kitchen safety)

Bling it on Challenge

Ahh, it is Wednesday and that means the weekend is getting closer and closer. I have this card to show you that I am entering on the Mo's Challenge Blog. The challenge this week is to "bling it on". I realized that my stash is woefully missing a lot of bling. The closest thing I have is rhinestones, and I have enough of them that I could be the rhinestone cowboy! I used the image Prince Edward Island and colored it with Copics. For my bling I added some purple rhinestones and some shimmery, sheer ribbon, both from my stash. Papers are DCWV.

I have a "girl day" planned with my niece on Friday since she is on Spring Break, we are going to spend the day doing whatever she wants to do. On the good side she wants me to bring my Copics, I have been slowly building her a card making and stamping collection and she has a great collection of colored pencils but no Copics. So that part will be fun, but on the more negative side I see mall shopping in my future. I love to shop in craft stores, kitchen stores and book stores and that's about it. I almost never go shopping in a mall because to do all of that walking I have to use my cane. But since the day is about Zoie and not me, I will mall shop with a smile on my face!

If you will please keep my Dad and his Mom in your thoughts and prayers. She is in the hospital, they aren't quite sure what is going on, but she isn't doing too good. My Dad is also having a hard time with watching her go through this. 

My Dad's Retirement Card

Good morning! We spent the weekend at my parent's house, helping my Dad celebrate his retirement. When I sat down to make his card the other day I couldn't find an image that I really liked for this occasion. I knew I wanted something that represented at least one of the activities that I know he will be devoting a lot of time to during his retirement. I went to Mo Manning's store and found the perfect image. The image is called Big Guy's Garden and the face that he is gathering tomatoes made this the perfect choice for his retirement card. My Dad is a passionate gardener and takes special pride in his tomatoes. Some of the things in his garden, including some of his tomatoes, are from seeds that have been passed down for many generations in his family. After coloring the image with Copics, I remembered I had this fun paper from Cosmo Cricket. I kept the embellishments simple as I do with most masculine cards and just added some twine and some little silver studs at the bottom. The challenge on Mo's challenge blog is "Anything Goes", so I am entering this in the challenge over there.

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I decided to include some pictures from his reception we did at their church yesterday.

This is the oh so happy retiree.

This is my Mom and Dad.

This is my family; my parents, my sister, her husband their son Silas, my brother and his son Cole and daughter Zoie, and me and Kip. Silas has new sunglasses.

This sweet lady is someone I have known my entire life, she was also taught me and my sister in first grade. She is a beautiful soul, inside and out.

This is one of my youngest cousins and her husband and new baby Addison.

 This is a good friend of my Dad's. If you are even in Cleveland, TN you must have breakfast at the Rebel. The best sausage and gravy anywhere. The restaurant has been in their family for many year and is where my parents went on some of their first dates. This weekend when we drove in, we drove straight to the Rebel as we often do and stop there before we see anyone in my family. They have other delicious food too, but we always go for breakfast.

This is my Mom and my Granddad Bill.

Thanks for looking at my photos and really, if you are ever near Cleveland stop and visit the Rebel!!

Grandparents Anniversary Card

Last week, my grandparents celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary. I think that is pretty amazing. don't you?  As soon as I thought about making a card to commemorate their special day, I thought of this image, Young Love from Mo Manning and I knew this image would be perfect for them. I love the look of contentment on their faces, they seem to be content with life and with each other. I colored the image with Copics and used some paper that has been in my stash for quite a while. I kept the layout and the embellishments pretty simple, because I know that is what my grandmother especially enjoys, it seems to bother her is I put to much stuff on cards that I send to her. I wish I had been there to give this to them in person, but it just didn't work out. I hope they both liked their card!

I am also entering this in the Mo's Challenge Blog's Anything Goes with a Mo Image challenge.

Fan's Cricket

Good Morning! It is almost Friday, yeah the weekend is almost here. Anyone have exciting plans? The Downtown Library is having a Scottish celebration on Saturday and I think we are going to try and go there for a couple of hours. According to the schedule it looks like there will several different events going on, so that should be fun and something a little different. Since we are trying to be healthier our eating out isn't happening very much so we have been looking for alternatives that allow us to go out and do something fun without blowing all our hard work during the week. Then on Sunday Kip is going to see Rush in concert and I may plan a girl's night with my SIL.

Now on to the card! The challenge this week on Mo's Challenge Blog is Buttons and Bows. I used the image Fan's Cricket for my card today and colored her with Copic markers. My bow looks a little dark here, I have a hard time photographing bows when I use black ribbon. The paper is from DCWV's Far East paper pack. I love that paper and think I bought at least two of all the sizes it came in, its definitely one of my all time favorite paper packs. The ribbon and the bows both came from Hobby Lobby, I think. I have had those buttons forever. I bought a huge bag of black buttons to make some projects with a long time before I started stamping. I found the bag when I was organizing my stuff last month. Oh the things we find when we clean!

Mo's Glitz and Glimmer Challenge

Hello! I just love this image from Mo's Digital Pencil. As the owner of (or servant to, depending on who you ask) three cats I can so relate to this picture. The cats and I are at constant battle over the tree. The cat's quest is to climb it, undecorate it, run off with the tree skirt and generally make me crazy. It is getting a little better since we have wrapped some gifts and placed them under the tree. When I saw this image, I also knew it wold make a great card for some of my cat loving friends with the same problem. I am entering this card in Mo's Glitz and Glimmer challenge this week.  It's a little hard to see in the photo, but in addition to coloring everything with Copics, I used Spica markers on the ornaments and star and added a glittery border to the tree skirt. My glittery paper is from Hobby Lobby, and the ribbon is too and the buttons are from my stash.

Speaking  of tree skirts, every time I see one or hear those words together I think of the funniest episode of Designing Women. That episode was just about one of my top episodes of any show on TV. It is nearing Christmas and all the women are going to a Christmas party. Their friend Bernice came downstairs to join them and she was wearing a tree skirt as her party dress. throughout the rest of that episode she was still wearing a tree skirt in place of a real skirt. That still makes me laugh, and almost just as hard, all these years later. Thanks for dropping by!

Mo's Three Punch Challenge

See, I am working hard on my Christmas cards! I also decided to play along with the challenge on Mo's Challenge Blog. This week the challenge was to use three punches on your project and I used two different Martha Stewart punches and my Fiskars scallop punch. For some reason the red piece that I used the scallop punch on is blending in with the paper behind it, it stands out more ITK. The papers are from Basic Gray, the image from Mo's Digital Pencil and it was colored with Copic markers. I also added some Glossy Accents to the snow globe that she is holding.

I had a crazy afternoon yesterday. I was planning to run to the library and a couple of other errands and as soon as I shut the front door, I realized that in my haste, I grabbed the wrong key chain and I had no house key or car keys. I did have my phone so I could call my husband. He was kind enough to leave work and come and unlock the house. He was also kind enough not to laugh at me too much too!! I haven't done that in a long, long time. Fortunately it was a nice day so I just sat outside enjoying the fall day.

Copics used: Skin R000, Roo, R02, RV00, RV02

Hair: E19, E21, E25, E27, E29, E93

Dress: R35, R37, R39, R59, R89

Ruffles and sash: C3, C5, C7, C9

Leaves: YG91, YG93, YG95, YG97

Birthday Challenge

The challenge this week on Mo's Challenge Blog was to make  a project for a birthday. I have had this image for several months now. I bought it with the intention of making a birthday card for my brother for his birthday this year. When we were little, we spent hours and hours riding our big wheels down the hill by my parents house, running back up and then racing back down again. We wore those things out and between the three of us kids we went through several big wheels. Seth did have one that has these same colors on it which is where I got my color inspiration. I chose that star paper too, because it reminded me of Evil Knievel. We would try to come up with crazy stunts too, pretending to be that famous dare devil.  My parents lived on a hill that ran perpendicular to another street and on the other side of that street was a ditch and then a field. The goal was always to get airborne for a couple of seconds to jump that ditch. So my brother will get the meaning behind this card and hopefully it will bring back some of the same fond memories for him as it did for me.

Thanks for walking down memory lane with me! This is a digital image from Mo's Digital Pencil and was printed with my Epson printer and ink and them colored with Copic markers. The sentiment is from Clear Dollar  Stamps and was stamped with CTMH Star Spangled Blue ink. Paper and card stock is from DCWV. I left this card unembellished because that is more my brother's style!