Wednesday’s Color Throwdown

Today our hostess is Broni and she picked this interesting color combo to challenge us.  And yes, it challenged me!  But before I get into that…
I have re-entered the world of the living!  Hurricane Irene knocked out our power for 5 days and internet for 6.  I had so much catching up to do, but it could have been worse. So, sorry I have been absent for a while.   On the bright side-yesterday was the first day of school!  Lordy, I have been counting down the days! 
First, Joey began the 3rd grade today…

Too cool for school he thinks!
Then my baby…Sean, started kindergarten today. Sigh.  This is the only picture he let me take.  He made a face, hid, or waved his hands every time I pointed the camera at him.  This was taken on the bus on the way home.  Finally, he smiled for me.  He loved it!

Tomorrow is Sean’s first full day of school and my first time ever as a stay at home mom with both kids in school!  Six whole hours alone!  I have so much to do I don’t know what to do first!  I know, deep breath, there will be so many days like this…but I am so excited! 
Okay, now for my card.  My peach parfait is more orange, but I love this paper from DCWV Café Mediterranean Stack.  I used three patterns from the pad.

I used the PTI Mat Stack 4 Collection and Mat Stack die for the main label and sentiment.   The flowers are all from Prima, some with buttons in the center and brads.  The butterfly is a Martha Stewart punch and the body created with Viva Decor Pearls.   The decorative border is another Martha Stewart punch.  
The design team, and our September guestie, has some really beautiful samples to share – so check ‘em out!  And don’t forget to visit the Color Throwdown to enter your own creation this week!  Have a great day!!
Broni ~ Barbara ~ Tammy ~ Kristin ~ Laura ~ Carole and our September guest designer Julee Tilman

Fun Stuff

Good morning! It’s lightly raining and has been above freezing the last 3 days so the snow has slowly been diminishing so it’s a good morning for me for sure!

We celebrated my 5 year olds birthday the end of January and I tried my hand at Cake Pops. I followed the design recipe from Cake Pops by Bakerella. So many fun ideas! I made these pirate Cake Pops to hand out as favors to his little guests.

I should have taken the picture before I wrapped them since I got hot spots where the light reflected off the plastic, but you get the gist of them. I used edible markers from Wilton that I picked up in Michaels to draw on their faces. They stink! Even following directions and wiping the tip after each use the stupid pen wouldn’t write at all after the first 6 or so. When you look at them up close you can see what difficulty I had coloring. Stupid pen. I am going to have to research edible markers and see what will work better.

In any case, they tasted delish!

I happened to have my camera handy when I noticed Rosie taking a nap. Has she got the life or what?

This position cracks me up! The funniest is when she wakes up and the hair on her head is plastered on one side and sticking up on the other! She gets static to in the winter and she gets very fluffy! Too cute!

Lastly I am going to take down the Cbox. It isn’t used that much and the spam is daily now. It’s so annoying. It amazes me that there is such scum out there that trolls the web and posts fishing messages on every piece of communication that they can. I am tired of seeing it. My email address is posted under my profile so you can always reach me that way.

Tomorrow is the first sneak peek for February Flourishes. You don’t want to miss it! I won’t have a Color Throwdown post but you can see my card on the Color Throwdown blog.

See ya tomorrow!

Is it my blogaversary again?!

How does this keep getting past me? Remember last year it snuck up on me and I said to come back soon I’d be posting blog candy…uh, then I never got around to it and before you know it another year has gone by! Today is my 3rd blogaversary and to make up for being a huge slacker last year I am going to chose 2 winners from comments on this here post! I have made up two packages, each containing a Flourishes stamp set and a pad of patterned paper. I also have a Martha Stewart cardinal punch and several High Hopes images. I will divide up the goodies and pick two random winners!

So let’s give you something to comment on…I never seemed to get around to posting this:

I attended a wedding at the end of September and this was the card I gave. It was a true autumn wedding and these were the bridal colors. I embossed the white shimmer background panel with the In Bloom Impression plate from Papertrey Ink. I then used the In Bloom stamp set, stamping the largest flower on patterned paper from Autumn Abundance and the leaves on another pattern. The word Cherish is from an SU set and a few simple pearls just finish it off.

Ok, there you have it! Here are the rules! Hate them, I know, I know….

1. You must be a follower of my blog to be eligible to win a prize!
2. Leave a comment on this post-only one please :)
3. You have until 11:59pm eastern time Friday January 14th. I will choose 2 random winners on Saturday morning.
4. Don’t forget to leave me a way to contact you if you do not have a blog or an email address on your profile!

Thank you for all of your wonderful comments and words of encouragement! I wish I could give every loyal follower a prize!Good luck!

Check back tomorrow for the first Flourishes January sneek peak!

Just a quick post to say...

You guys are the best! I have been blessed with the sweetest over the top comments on my last few cards and I am filled with such joy right now! I have been overwhelmed for sometime now with things in my life that I have not been as involved in blogging and commenting as I would like to be and I really miss everyone! Things will be a changin' soon though, I promise!

Thank you, thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart!

Hello

I missed yesterdays High Hopes challenge because I was so busy this weekend! I will spend the next few days just trying to catch up…and I meant to get this posted earlier, but well, that’s how it goes sometimes. Anyway, last Sunday we celebrated my mother’s birthday and I wanted to share some pictures of the cupcakes I made for her.

I used the book Hello Cupcake and followed the directions to make these chocolate butterflies. Takes a little practice to get the hang of the chocolate drawing…but they didn’t come out too bad. I was impressed enough that I want to do it again in different colors. I used boxed chocolate fudge cake mix for the cupcakes and make my own buttercream frosting tinted light yellow.

I made a dozen butterflies some small and some large and put them all together on a plate then pulled out my new Papertrey Ink set Butterfly Dreams to make a decoration for the center. I die cut the butterflies, then stamped and colored them with Copics. I glued them each to a floral wire stem and gathered them for a fun centerpiece. Here’s a close up of the butterflies.

And here’s a closeup of the centerpiece.

Then I used more of the same butterflies along with images from the set Turning A New Leaf which I stamped in various Versa Magic inks and added a series of white dots with a gel pen.

I am headed today to yet another kiddie birthday party, the fourth one in four days! This has not been any kind of spring break for ME! The kids of course are loving it.

Be back tomorrow with The Color Throwdown! Have a great day!

Photography and Poetry and Beer

Wait, that should be Beer, photography, then poetry...yeah...

I have a wonderful friend John Radigan who is an amazing photographer, teacher, and writer. I have been very fortunate to have taken several workshops with John. You can visit his website or the Adirondack Photography website for a list of workshops that are offered. It’s a wonderful experience and I highly recommend you take one…or more!

John began a blog called ADKLIGHT to help him put down thoughts as he writes his book. Here his photography has a dream like quality and his poetry thought provoking. Did I mention that he’s single? Well, just sayin’…

Head on over to ADKLIGHT for a daily dose of inspiration…and don’t forget to raise a pint! Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Here’s to you John! You were right, there is a picture of me swilling a pint on my blog! Mmmmm…

ps - I know the photo is a bit blurry but there's a very good explanation for that...the softening reduces harsh lines and wrinkles. It has absolutely nothing to do with me, uh I mean the photographer, being on their second pint.

A visit with the seals

Sunday my family and I decided to take a ride to the east end of Long Island, to West Hampton, to a beach where the harbor seals hang out in the winter. They were very far out…and I couldn’t get much detail of them as a group even with my 300mm lens…of course had I not been too lazy to carry my tripod they might have been a bit clearer. The first picture you can see how far out they were in the bay…they are basking on a sandbar.

Here they are a bit closer…I think they were smiling for the camera!

There were several that were playing in the water…

They kept getting closer…

Curious things they are!

And so cute!

But man it was cold at the beach today! They usually stay here until April, so we will head back again another weekend and this time I will bring my tripod!

Happy Monday! Or not…

Is it really New Year's Eve already?

Yikes! I've been off since Christmas Eve and I seem to have lost all conception of time and day. It's children really...you know they kill adult brain cells, right? Thank goodness they're cute! Anyway, I finally found a way to recover the corrupt files from my cf card from my digital camera. I had taken pictures of some Christmas cards that I wanted to share and also some pictures of my puppy romping through the snow for the first time. I am so glad I was able to recover them. I am just going to post them all here without detail. If anyone wants to know any products please contact me!

I was able to get the back door open after mother nature dropped about 16 inches on us last week and I shoveled this path to the grass in my backyard including about a 3 foot circle for Rosie to do her, uh, business...


After a few cautious steps and a thorough smell down she began to run back in forth in the path.

Then she went for it-an all out romp into the deep fluffy white stuff itself! This is my favorite picture! Can't you just see the joy in that furry face?! The snow was up to her head and when she ran through it it looked as though she was swimming-it was really funny!



Here are a couple of money holders I made to send off to my niece and nephew...I used an EK Success reindeer punch.




This image is from Penny Black...Peas on Earth, get it?! Oh, just cracks me up! Yeah, I'm easy...

Another Forever Bear...I love these cuties!


Oh, and my Bella Carollers. I love these adorable animals!

I wish everyone a very Happy and Healthy New Year! Be back soon with regular posts! Have a great holiday weekend!

Merry Christmas

Yeah, that's me...always a day late and a dollar short, lol! I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas!

The boys do their best Rudolph impressions...

Rosie the elf helped out too...

It never ceases to amaze me....

The inhumanity and total disrespect for human decency. The greed for money and power...it makes me sick. I read this post on www.emailsfromcrazypeople.com (warning, explicit language) which is a letter from the owner of Paradou, a restaurant in New York City, to his employees. Today, on the same site I am seeing responses from the owner to the media and others who sent him threating emails and it's even worse than the first. I just want to make sure that none of my readers ever patronize this restaurant...and if there is anything I can do to help put it out of business I will surely jump on that band wagon!

Here is the article I read today written about the incident. Vulgarity removed...I want to remain a PG site!

Owner of trendy Manhattan restaurant Paradou plumbs new depths of evil bad-bossitudeVadim Ponorovsky, the owner of the restaurant Paradou in trendy Park Slope Manhattan's meat-packing district, sent his employees an email in which he called them "lazy motherf******" because they failed to extract enough email addresses from their customers (he has a spam list and he makes it his servers' duty to get email addresses out of diners). Ponorovsky went on to call his employees "f****** lazy disrespectful a*******," "f****** children," and said, "Effective immediately, any server or host who fails to collect at least 20 emails per week, will be fined $100. Anyone failing to collect at least 20 emails for two weeks in a month will be fired immediately. No matter what. No matter who you are." He also threatened to fire his entire staff, saying, "I have absolutely no respect for any of you," and "Go find another place to work."
And now, he's sent along a followup to the trade press, saying that this is just the way he talks, that "if you talked to anyone who ever worked for me, I could say without any sense of self-aggrandizement that they'd say I was the best boss they've worked for." In support of this he cites the fact that he's never missed payroll (e.g., he pays his employees the wages they earn), that he lets them work for him again after their vacations, and that they get to eat for free at the restaurant where they work.
He also declares himself to be a Reaganite and villifies anyone who disagrees with his treatment of his employees, who can only become wealthy if he gets rich first, through the magic of "trickle-down."
"If my staff has the ability for self-reflection and seeing the big picture, they should ask, 'Why would one of us f*** the rest of us so badly by damaging our ability to make money?" Ponorvosky says. "The first casualties of this will be the people who all of these protesters are 'defending.' No thought is given to 'the trickle-down,' to use Ronald Reagan's favorite expression." As for the people who are vowing to shut Paradou down, Ponorvsky says, "These people have no sense of rightness or goodness."
article reprint (sans bad words!) from www.boingboing.net

Just sharing...

Just a few photo's today...Joey's first day of First Grade-which he loves! And look how big Rosie is getting! Ooh, she's a feisty little one that pup!



I just can't resist this face! She loves her lion and her pacifier...and she treats them appropriately-the lion she throws all over and growls at and the pacifier she carries around and whines. It's very funny!

I know it's not polite to brag

And I know I have mentioned several times that I am a nature photographer and even shared a few pictures...but now here's the proof. I have a subscription to Adirondack Life Magazine as my family has a summer home there on Schroon Lake and I have been vacationing there my whole life. I have been so busy that not only have I been neglecting my blog but also my reading. I got this issue a couple of weeks ago, October 2009, and never even opened it until a friend and founder of the Adirondack Photography Institute, John Radigan, mailed me his copy with a note.


Here on page 28 is a shot I took of a spider web two falls ago with a macro lens. If you look really close you can see the red maple leaf reflected in each water droplet on the web. I have to say that this is one of my very favorite photo's of all time and I was elated, ecstatic, overjoyed, and ridiculously giddy when I opened up to see this! You can read the entire article here.

Now my hubby can stop laughing at me whenever I say I am going to submit a photo to ADK Life Mag-because I've been saying it for years and never did it! Thanks for letting me gloat!

Cool waves and it's a bowling party

It's been so hot here the last week that I wish I was that fish in the water! I hate the hot hot humid weather. I'm a crank when I am sticky, ew! So today the fish is appropriate...the cool colors and waves are refreshing!

This fish school is another new release from Whipper Snapper. It's colored with Copics and paired up with some fun paper from Imaginisce. I punched the top edge of the dp panel with a Fiskars Wave Border punch and added some random raindrops to the dp and for the fish's bubbles. Hello is from the Anna Wight designed set Sending Happy Thoughts.

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We celebrated Joey's birthday at a local bowling alley with some of his friends on Sunday. I appropriately made him bowling pin and bowling ball cupcakes. The design came from Hello Cupcake, a wonderful cupcake decorating book. Mine however were less like bowling pins and more like melting ghosts...but in the end they were cute and the kids loved them! And I was done making them by midnight Saturday night and able to take some pictures and get some sleep...so it was all good! You can't expect anything less than last minute with me these days... Anyway, here are some pics!

Just an FYI

Head on over to Lacey's blog for some awesome blog candy! She reached 100,000 hits and put together an amazing package for one lucky winner! Don't forget to browse her beautiful blog too...she is a wonderful designer! Okay that's 3 today, and I usually only post 3 in a week! Now I'm done!

He's 6 today...

Today is my first borns birthday. My baby is all grown up. How did this...

and this...

become this?


Happy 6th Birthday Joey! I love you!

For the Bride to be...

My husband's niece is getting married soon and on Sunday I attended her bridal shower. I adore Jodi and her fiance Chris and she is going to be a gorgeous bride! They are such a fun couple and I know their wedding is going to be a blast! She is a huge fan of leopard and polka dots and although it would have been obvious to go in that direction, I decided I just had to use the gorgeous new Paper Trey Ink set In Bloom. I had seen so many amazing cards made with it!

Oh, and I am soooo glad that I didn't go with leopard! She got more lingerie and towels and items with a leopard print-yikes!


So I stamped the flowers and leaves on Prism cardstock. The large flower was stamped three times and each section cut out and popped up on each other. I colored with Prisma pencils and oms where each layer meets, just making it a bit deeper. Then I used my Quickie glue pen to add ultra fine glitter all around it. The base paper is Vintage Cream also from PaperTrey and I stamped it with a linen bg stamp, with a Versa Magic Dew Drop in Wheat, that I bought unmounted at a stamp show a few years ago but I can't remember who makes it... I finished it off with a piece of PaperTrey ribbon and a button from my stash with their awesome twine threaded through it! This picture does not do it justice by any means...it's really stunning irl (if I do say so myself!).

The next pictures are the front, back, and a few inside pages of the recipe book that I made for her. Oh how I struggled with the binding! I wanted to use my Bind It All but I couldn't figure out how to get the holes evenly spaced at each end of the cover. I spent so much time on it! I just gave up and went for rings instead.

I had completed all of the inside pages first and went whimsical. But when it came to doing the cover I was just at a loss. I had lots of small images but nothing that I felt was appropriate for the front. I ended up making it coordinate with the card instead.

These are all recipes that are tried and true and many that I make often. I wish I could say that I created them, but they are just a compilation of some favorites that I have found over the years. I thought of a few more after I was done, but I thought that making more pages to add would be a good first anniversary gift! Jodi, bless her heart, thinks I am the worlds best cook! I really have just found some of the best cooks and copy their recipes!

All paper used inside the book, with exception to the white cardstock the recipe is printed on, is from Paper Trey.

The cover paper is Bo Bunny black swiss dots. And the interior is an Imaginesce ( red with large pink dots) and Doodlebugs (black on white dots).

The images are from all different sources. Many of them are from Whipper Snapper sets created by Anna Wight, such as Chicken's in the Kitchen and What's Cookin'.


Several of these recipes are from Cathy, affectionately known as the Noble Pig. If you like to cook, and have a good sense of humor, you must head over there now! She creates or adapts recipes, and if they pass her test she passes them on to us...step by step with great photos! Her blog is a wealth of culinary information and lots of other stuff too!

This clam is from Outlines. Isn't he cute? Too bad he's gonna be dinner! I got this recipe from my mom and she doesn't remember where it originated from. There are lots out there that are similar but not the same as this one...and it's always a big hit!


You don't know what you're missing until you make this recipe from Pioneer Woman!



I had to add the disclaimer...not that the recipient might notice any boo boo's but they're there!

I apologize for the less than quality photo's. I have light box in my basement in my craft area, but several overhead lights have burned out and my two little standing lights for the box were really not strong enough to light the whole book. And of course, I finished last minute and just photographed this book minutes before I had to jump into the shower and get ready to go to the shower!

If anyone wants further details on stamps used or even recipes, please email me! I am more than happy to get the info for you!