I'm late...

I'm late, I'm late for a very important date. Well, not really. I have one more day to get my swaps done and two days for them to be in the mail.

You know the foam sleeves you put on a can to keep the contents cold? I have one that  says "If it wasn't for the last minute, I wouldn't get anything done". It seems to be my motto. I'm a procrastinator and have been for most of my life. Actually, I'm not posting to tell you my life story, but to show you the card I'm entering in to the August FREE Stamp of the Month Challenge over at Delightful Inspiration. I so enjoy doing these challenges. Here is my August entry.

Isn't that cat adorable? This card is also one of my swap cards. Its the Build a Sketch that we have monthly at SSSD. This month pieces were the 5.5 x 4.25 foundation, 5.25 x 4 background, .75 x 4 rectangle, a star any size and the 4.5 x 2.5 rectangle with a < cut out of it.

More swaps for August. I love doing swaps and challenges. Keeps me busy, keeps me thinking, even tho I wait until the end of the month to do them. Actually, I had all of them done except for the Mystery item card. This one was a hard one for me. We were sent cutouts of a rooster, a cow and a pig. I can use one or all of them. My partner used all three animals. I only used one.

I Googled, Yahooed, and Binged cards using pigs, roosters and cows. I didn't find any that I really liked, so I came up with what you see above. My sentiment was done in Word and printed on Vellum, and the map card stock is from Farm House Paper Company. I couldn't find a wagon that would work, so I made my own. the paper for it is also Farm House. The "wheels" were black (I thought) until I scanned the card. Oops, green is good. The white spots are felt. Not a very useful card for my partner, but I hope she likes it.

My recipe card. I had fun making this one. Items needed are one glitter color, two pumpkins and three strips 1 x 5.5 or 4.24, depending on the layout

The glitter technique I used on the pumpkins was July's technique swap. I also took a class using the technique. I love it. The glitter doesn't show up here, the card is prettier in person because the pumpkins sparkle.

My final swap card is the technique swap. I don't do well with free hand stuff. I like to use the embossed image and color it in, but I don't do well shadowing the background. The effect of this was to look like watercolor.

I love SU's Boarding on Romance stamp set. I probably should have used a more open stamp, but I like this set. I also didn't read the directions correctly and made a minor mistake that doesn't affect the card. My card is plain and simple. I like it that way.

Those are my August swaps. I still have another challenge I need to do for August, but it won't get posted until September. I'm going camping in two days. Whoopee!!

Thanks for stopping by and have a safe Labor Day weekend.  Take care

My July swaps

Its August and I haven't posted for a few weeks. I don't have the scrapbook page I want to post completed, so I'm going back to July and post the swaps I did.

 The card above is the Build A Sketch. We had five pieces to play with. 4.25 x 5.5, 5.25 x 4, 3.75 x 2.5, 2.25 x 7/8, 4 x .75 and 2.5 x 4.5 with a < cut in it. Colors I used are Baja Breeze, Cherry Cobbler and More Mustard. The large cupcake is SU Build a cupcake punch and the little cupcakes I found online.

 The card below is the Recipe Card, recipe being: No rectangles at all, one ribbon, two punches and three buttons. I used SU Build an Owl punch, the card was made using Spellbinders Labels Twenty-Four, I used the largest of the five. The buttons, well they have been hanging around my craftroom for years.

No, I'm not making Christmas cards yet. This is the Technique card. It was lots of fun and I think I'm hooked on the technique. Items that needed to be used were outline sticker, ultra fine glitter and markers. I used Copics for the coloring, and not sure what brand the glitter is, it also has been hanging around for ages. I'm going to be using more of it in the future. The whole card base is bathed in glitter after applying the gold outline sticker. and then the colors were applied to the glitterd areas.

The Mystery card. I had an item sent to me that I was to use on a card. July's item was a fancy wood toothpick. Can you find it? The layout is Delightful Inspiration Sketch #26.

Now I must go work on a scrapbook page that's all about me and one of my favorite things. Its a challenge in an SCS forum group.More about the challenge in a future post.

Thanks for stopping by. Take Care

You Color My World

July's free stamp of the month challenge at Delightful Inspiration is over at midnight tomorrow. I'm certainly late this month. Anyway, the digi for this month is Painting Ladybug. It is a cute digi and I enjoyed coloring it. The color possibilities were endless, however, I decided to make it into my SSSD August Color of the Month card. The colors for August are Gumball Green, Melon Mambo and So Saffron.

After coloring with my SU pens, I applied SU Candy Dots in Melon Mambo, So Saffron and Garden Green. I didn't have Gumball Green in the dots.  I used Black Diamond Stickles on the ladybug's back. For the first time in several years, I used my QuicKutz mini alpha dies, CK Typist font.

Thanks for stopping by. Take care

Ford's Theater

We finally made it to Ford's Theater in Washington DC. It was quite interesting. Before we even left home, Jeffery had put Ford's Theater and the Petersen House on our "to see" list. We didn't get to it until our last trip into Washington DC by ourselves. We rode the Metro into Washington and our Metro trips were adventures of their own, but I digress. While we took lots of pictures in the Theater and at the Petersen House, not many get onto the scrapbook pages. 

These are the first pages I have done in a long time that include journaling. While I had planned on putting pages together of our trip to VA and surrounding areas, a forum at SCS had a challenge to make a vacation page. No notoriety, no prize, just satisfaction. Whoopee! I did it and on time.

Hope you like my pages. Thanks for stopping by. Take care

Washington DC

We went into Washington DC today and had a tour of the Capital. I did take some pictures, they weren't good but will be a reminder to us of the things we saw.  While not very good, we do have proof that we were there and this is the first time, in a long time, that I have pictures of me in front of any of the things we have gone to see.  So here goes...

First stop was the Capital building. We had a tour scheduled for 11:40 a.m. today.
After watching a short film we began our tour in the rotunda
then on to a room where Congressional meeting were held when the Capital was first built. After that we went down to a room directly under the Rotunda. They call this room "The Crypt". It was built as a final resting place for George Washington. As often happens even with the best of plans, he is not buried there, in fact, no one is. The story about why was interesting. The rooms we saw held beautiful paintings such as the Rotunda ceiling and there were many statues. Now how does one decide which statue to take a picture of? The pictures below are the only ones I took. Blogspot won't play nice and let me put the pictures where I want them or in the order I want them in, so...

Rotunda Ceiling

plaque

From the Crypt

After our tour of the three rooms of the Capital we went for lunch. We went to Old Ebbit Grill. I had salmon and it was delicious, I forgot to take a picture of it before I ate it. However, I did get a picture of my dessert, Peanut butter pie. It also was delicious.

After eating a scrumptious lunch we took a walk over to the White House.

It wasn't too crowded out on the street so we were able to get some nice pictures. There were fourteen of us and we all took pictures of each other in our little family groups and the group as a whole. Below is a picture of my grandson in front of the White House. It really is a shame that they have suspended tours. It would have been wonderful to get pictures of us closer and without the fence behind.

As we were leaving, it started to rain. Thank you, rain, for waiting till we were ready to go back to our hotel. It really only sprinkled and it was nice to walk in the rain.

It was a very nice day spent with family. Tomorrow we go again.
I will try to do a better job of taking pictures. LOL

Never, never again

I am never going to visit VA again! Oh, the people are very nice, the roads are nice and the area I'm in is absolutely beautiful. We went to a nice little zoo and had a good time. I will put a few pictures at the bottom of this post. We went to a 50th wedding anniversary party and had a great time. More on that in another post.

So why am I never visiting VA again? Because every time I get on the road to go someplace I GET LOST!! I have never had this problem before. When I left the airport to go to our hotel, I took HWY 28 as directed, but I went South instead of North. I pulled off to call for help. I haven't been in VA for more than an hour and I'm already lost. It took my GPS a good 20 min. to find the satellites. I finally got to the hotel. Later in the evening we went to Five Guys. Got lost again. I never get lost. I'll save this story for the scrapbook. Its too embarrassing to go public with. I did make it to my brother's and back without any missed turns. That was day one.

Day two didn't fair much better. We did get to Wagman's with no hitches. Feeling better about going out on the road we went to the zoo just 20 mins. down the road. Only one "U" turn. However it took us nearly an hour and three tolls to get back to the hotel. I am not going to share that story except to say that when you type an address into the GPS, ya better make sure its the right city before ya tell it "GO". Ok, go ahead, laugh, I did later on in the evening. I'm seeing a lot of VA that I didn't expect to see and if it keeps going like this, I'm gonna see a lot more of it.

If you have stayed with me so far, let me share a couple of pictures with you. I think you might enjoy them.

This was taken from our floor looking across inside the hotel.

Isn't he just the cutest baby camel you have ever seen? Sorry its fuzzy, but he wouldn't stay still.

Jeffrey is talking to the baby camel.

Baby camel is telling Jeffrey a secret. Actually, he's trying to eat Jeffrey's hair.

Outta my way!

Told ya to move, its my board.

Can I help?

 We enjoyed looking at the animals, hope you
enjoyed our pictures. Thanks for stopping
by.

Flight reservations made, car and hotel reservations are made. Necessary addresses in the GPS and important phone numbers in my phone. I can now relax. Oh no, I can't relax yet, I still have to pack.

I'm heading to VA for my brother's 50th wedding celebration.I have had a lot of ups and downs with getting things set to go. Making reservations, cancelling reservations, making more reservations and cancelling. I'm pretty sure everything is set now. It better be, I leave the end of the week.

I'm quite nervous about this trip. I'm using an airline that I haven't used before and its a "red eye" flight. Landing in Washington DC at an obscenely early hour in the a.m.

With all my preparing and anticipation, I have had a lot of nervous energy. Wish it could have been directed at house cleaning, but it wasn't. Here is what I did with that nervous energy.

 I do hope this is an ok host/hostess gift. I  made it with the idea of giving it to the family that may be putting up with me, oops, putting me up. They have been a big help in getting my hotel lodgings for the first few nights while all the relatives are there. . I'm going to be there for nine days I think I will be shuffled around from couch to couch which is ok, it will give me more quality time with individual family members. I will be putting some thank you gifts together for others that may put me up.

As for a gift for the honored couple, I have absolutely no idea.