Monday, July 30, 2012

Sail Away!

Oh my goodness, where have I been! I finally started on facebook and I haven't quite got the hang of bouncing back and forth between these 2 social spectra's (is that even a word!?) Hope you're patient as I'm learning.
  I'm sort of on track for the 100 cards in 100 days, making 25 cards over the past week for a swap, but for my own personal goal I'm not including those in my numbers, since I want the inspiration to be creating daily, something that I'm still working on. I'll keep you 'posted' ~haha...pun intended : P  ~on how I make out with that over these coming weeks.

I made this card for a girlfriend's birthday this past week. I love this paper: Summer Smooches...not to mention the set Up, Up and Away. Great classic colours: Real Red and Tempting Turquoise are pulled from the smaller piece of Designer Series paper for the balloons.

Monday, July 16, 2012

100 Years Old

Well, the 100th Year of the Calgary Stampede is over. It started with Parade day and wrapped up with the Rodeo and Chuckwagon finals this Sunday. It's said that it has never rained on the parade and this was another year to boast banner weather for the parade again. It was the first time for my Girls seeing the parade! They loved it! We had a traditional pancake Stampede breakfast downtown and then settled in to watch several hours of pre parade and then all the marching bands and horse troops. My cousin was a clown entertaining in the pre-parade, she looked wonderful. The bands came from all over, the farthest away was New South Wales, Australia...imagine. We headed down to the Stampede Grounds and Midway on Tuesday...the hottest of our hot days. The Log ride was never more appreciated! We all really enjoyed the new Roller Coaster named after one of the Stampede's best bulls ~ Outlaw! I dragged the kids off the rides, just shy of the midway actually closing down for the day!...we're a bit nuts for rides and fun! We have a couple things we do each year, okay, eat, each year: Fresh Lemonades and Weadickvilles Sausage rolls. A favourite tradition of ours is visiting the barn area, we like all the animals and displays but really like to see the piglets and grab an ice cold milk and cookie, a nice break in the long day.
I made this card with the new set, Horse Frontier. With inspiration from the Stampede, I tried to mimic a bandana with the red paper and was really happy when I spied this stamp in the Lacy & Lovely set. I added some white gel pen to highlight a bit. I used the new Midnight Muse blue for layering and ran Espresso paper through the Big Shot with the new Wood Grain embossing folder to create the fence. I wanted a fence post to loop my 'rope' over... The brads were dipped in Espresso embossing powder to accent.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

July...Starting again!

Okay, I fell off that train of 100 cards hard...and I really loved the idea and how it felt being creative each night! ...but I'm back at it...I'm participating in a swap with some great gals so I will have some of those to add to the count, but really I like the idea of doing something every day...so that's my back on track goal for the coming weeks! I've been doing some embroidery,  I'm loving that..., so I'll share some of those squares from the sampler. I've also signed up for another class at Big Picture Classes with Nic Howard! and this is the first assignment. Plus I need to work on a couple more layouts over the next couple days. (IRL you can see the words on a piece of acetate saying my life)


It's been a busy few past days. We headed into the city to see Jersey Boys with my Mom and Dad. We all were tapping our toes and have been singing the songs since!  : D
We stayed to watch the Calgary Centennial Parade with the Girls (their first time at the parade.)
Our cousin was in the pre-parade, and some of the Wranglers from Rocky rode their horses, winning an entry award! We have friends in New South Wales, Australia, so it was of special interest to see a marching band from that far away in the parade! We enjoyed it all.
Cary and I celebrated our 15th Anniversary with dinner at East Side Mario's with the kids and our cousins. Reminiscing about our wedding celebrations as it approached and we were visiting with Cary's folks on their visit to the house earlier in the week. We'd had people camping over the Wedding weekend and served breakfast and buffalo burgers for Sunday lunch after the wedding...good memories of great times!