Pumpkins!

Well, I had intended on working on making cards yesterday, but instead got side tracked into canning pumpkin, and making pumpkin pie and pumpkin scones.  The pie and scones are delish!  Then I decided to make hubby a dinner that he hadn't had before.  Since my garden is overflowing with eggplant, I am preparing and freezing most of it.  But last night I decided to make him some Eggplant Parmesan.  He loved it!  The recipe for the scones came off the Internet and is was billed as Starbuck's Pumpkin Scone recipe, it was close, so perhaps it was.  The Pie recipe is an old family recipe, and the  eggplant Parmesan was off the new show called "The Chew" on ABC.  This was the second recipe off the show that I tried and so far we are batting 100!  Both recipes were great and used foods that my hubby had never tried before :)  The first recipe we tried off there was Symon's Pork and Beans Supreme.  No, not your regular pork and beans that you are thinking.  The pork was in the form of pork cutlets, served on a bed of wilted kale and cannelli beans, covered with a light white wine, garlic and butter sauce - amazingly great!  Today/tonight I did however get to start on a card.  My craft room doesn't have sufficient lighting in it for me to work after dusk though, so I am almost finished and will finish and post tomorrow.  Thanks for stopping and reading, stop back tomorrow and you'll get to see the card!  Blessings :)

Oh, Taste and See

Good evening!  It's been quite a day today, I woke up with part of our ceiling letting go of a huge leak right over my head!  Not a fun way to wake up and then to see the mess that had to be cleaned, well, let's just say my whole day was quickly rearranged for me.  Obviously I had to strip the bed to wash all the linen's, so, I thought while I was at it, why not just rearrange the whole room as well!  LOL That proceeded to take all morning before the room was back to usable again, but in completely different order.  I didn't get back as soon as I wanted with another card because I am participating in a webinar series called "From Overwhelmed to Organized" put on by the ScrapRack.  The class can be used to utilize their system that they sell, or you can apply it to what you have on hand and make it work.  The first session required us to empty all of our drawers, tables, totes, etc and put all of our "stuff" in one of four groups.  We had to know the madness behind the method, and then know the steps of the method.  First week was pretty easy, all I did was take most everything out of my craft studio and through (not literally) everything on the Great Room floor -- What a mess!!!!!  Week two, which is this week, we are to go through all of our paper(s)/cardstock, pads, etc and separate them into 3 of the 4 groups.  The first group I have is Rainbow, all the plain cardstock and plain papers are put together in stacks that coordinate in Rainbow colors.  Then we are to take the loose printed  papers and separate them likewise.  Pads of papers we are to let be, but make a color reference, theme ref, or Holiday reference for them.  We are only required to get 8" completed for this week, but I have mine almost completely finished.  I would have finished today if I hadn't had the bedroom ceiling emergency.  The best part of going through all this paper is finding so many pages that just seemed to disappear from the top of the piles I had into never-never land.  I found so many possibilities for card making that I was going nuts!  The hardest part of the job soon became staying on track.  I finally rewarded myself Sunday afternoon and made a card for our pastor since October is Pastor appreciation month.  That is the card I have to show you tonight :)

One of the first papers that caught my eye was this We R Memory Keepers Restoration road and Restoration Upholstery Tacks.  I love the muted greens, blues and Latte type browns in this set of papers.  The papers seemed kind of plain though, so I took a Touch of Elegance flourish stamp from one of my LOC (Layers of Colors) stamps and used different sections of it inked up with Distress Ink Peeled Paint.  Then I smudged up the edges of all the papers and die cuts and sprayed all of them with Lindsy's Stamp Gang Starburst Spray Bells of Ireland.  The die cuts are Spellbinder's Label 10.  The smallest die cut is on a 'Starburst" vellum I found at my LSS back when we had one.  With the edges hit lightly with the Peeled Paint, it just seemed like it was just to plain, so I grabbed the LOC flourish stamp again and this time some SU white craft ink and stamped some white swirls, twirls and leaves on the edges of the vellum.  To make the white stand out a little more, I embossed the white ink with clear embossing powder.  Next I stamped a verse from LOC in PP and clear embossed it also.  Finally I layered everything up raising up the verse layers off the card front with dimensional Dots.  Finishing up with 3 small Wild Orchid Roses and one liatris stem, one Fairy Tale rose, and two self-made mums.  I quit with the decorating here because this card is as I said before going to our pastor, I am sure he will appreciate some "pretties" but to much and well, you get the picture.  Below are some close ups so you can see the stamping and raised layers.

The last picture you can see the Fairy Tale Rose that I colored with Bachelor Button Blue from Lindsy's as well, to match the blue blocks in the harlequin and Tack Papers.  I spritzed it with a touch of Walnut ink afterwards to tone it down just a tad.   Well, hope you enjoyed my "time off" project.  Tomorrow I must finish my paper clean up and organization, and prepare for tomorrow nights class.  If Time allows, I will make and post another card from some of the wonderful Long Lost Papers I have found during my organization .  I'll be back soon regardless :)  Until later, Remember to take time for yourself and reward yourself for great accomplishments, be it in paper or something else.  Blessings to all,

Cindy Lou  <3



Busy, Busy, Busy

The past few weeks have been crazy busy!  All the tomatoes in my garden got ready at the same time, so I put up (canned) 40 quart jars of tomato sauce.  There are still more tomatoes out there, but there is no more energy left in me.  In addition to the tomatoes, my green beans second sowing came in so I froze them after blanching and also Eggplant which I grilled and then froze for later use.  I still have more Eggplant to go.  Then on the lighter side I made some blackberry/strawberry/blueberry/raspberry jam, turned out very tasty!  Nothing better than fresh homemade jam :)  Then at the beginning of the week, Wal*mart had Georgia peaches in, so I bought 4.5 pounds and made peach jam.  Had to test that too, even though I don't care for peaches, and must admit that was tasty as well.  In between all of that, we went up to Michigan to hubby's families rental on Lake Michigan.  We had a blast there and best of all, the nice warm sand allowed me to easily balance and I actually walked more than 2 miles each day!  That was such a treat since I haven't walked more than 100' without pain since the accident in 2006.

 

 

 

But alas, amidst all the fun, I received an email that a dear friend's mother passed, and two days later our neighbor's father passed.  So once I got home it was time to make some cards. 

Both cards were to be sent to men, so I took a more masculine approach to the sympathy cards.  Using spellbinders and MFT dies, foil paper, Archiver's Navy Cardstock, a type of vellum I had recieved in my club scrap kit, and some unknown DP, this is what I came up with:

I used cuttlebug's fluer d'lis on the navy cardstock and the spellbinder's Impressibilities Fluer d' lis on the vellum.  Pearls are from the $1.00 bin at Archivers.  The silver accents in the corners don't photograph well, but you can see one corner that does show it fairly well.  The inside is just simply another spellbinder label 10 size 3 layered on a size 4 regular blue cs with a sentiment.  Today, I am hoping to participate in a tag challenge that is going on. We'll see how that goes, I have lots to do today again, more than I have time for, so playing with paper may not be in my schedule.  I am hoping though ;) Have a great day and hope to be back again soon!  Blessings.

There are some days, and then there are Some Days!

Well, I finally got the blog working and now our computer breaks down!  I have a separate computer that I do all our picture work on, downloading, image setting, cropping, saving, etc., and when I went to download a card from my camera to the puter . . . The computer was off, or so I thought.  Turns out it must have been zapped by lightening during the last storm.  The surge protector is red and the computer won't come on regardless of what we do, so . . . I will get the card on, but it might take me a minute.  I have to find my camera software to put it on this computer and then move everything around.  So please, be patient,  and you'll get to see my most recent playing.  And boy have I learned alot and love the playing I have been doing!  Later everyone!  off to see if I can get things moving in the right direction.  Blessings!

I think we have it figured out!

With the help of my sweet hubby, I think we have figured out my "blog issues".  I am much happier dealing with paper, so this technology stuff kind of stumps me on occassion.  Fortunately for me, my hubby likes to play on the net and figure out issues and finally came to my rescue.  Now I just have to add in my pictures that I have been storing up of all the cards and things I have been making.  And all the new play things I have discovered over the past few months!  Lots to play with, lots to stimulate the mind!  My gardens are looking better and better each day so there is lots of stimulation there also.  I am blessed in many ways, I hope you enjoy seeing them as much as I enjoy creating them.

This is just a simple card, I love playing with new techniques, here I was playing with gamasol over copics.  My favorite fall flower is the Sunflower.  The center is with Flowersoft, dies are Sizzix, bow with the BowMaker, edging with Martha Stewart. Paper from PTI.  Thanks for visiting!