Do the Hustle

It's week 2 of the So You Think You Can Dance Contest over at the My Favorite Things Forum on Splitcoast Stampers. This week the challenge is "Disco - It's Electric! Retro and Funky, Let's Get It On". Wow, Disco, what fun music, you got to get up and dance when you hear those tunes, great for walking on a threadmill too but stamping, I like to relax while I stamp and disco makes me want to move. However, this is one great contest with a whopper of a prize so I settled down to make a card.
Disco came out in the 70's and I was there for it. I have some great memories to draw upon for this card. I loved the Village People, they were the most fun group around and the songs were a hoot. Even today the DJ's play "YMCA" at weddings and parties. You must have seen them, among them there was a cop, a leather dude, a construction worker and an Indian. So I thought I'd take some of the WTG gals and make an alternate group, what if the Village People were woman, well there'd have to be a pregnant woman, a witch, how about a cowgirl, and a she-devil. They were taken from the stamp sets: "She's Having a Baby", "Totally Witchin", "Ride "Em Cowgirl" and "Party Girl". For the Cowgirl I extended her body a little and switched a microphone for the lasso. The witch and pregnant woman's clothes were paper pieced with K & CO Halloween paper, the cowgirl's dress is a scrap of leftover SU paper. Party Girl was colored with copics. Glitter, lame and sequins ruled the disco scene so I used stickles to punch up the outfits. the background paper is DCWV Glitter stack and the design is retro.
I tried to mimic the MFT font and wrote the sentiment by hand with a gold marker and mounted it on the black and white ribbon that came with the MFT Halloween ribbon pack. To finish it off there are three dew drops in the lower right corner.
What a fun time the 70's were, this challenge gave me some time to think to reminisce.
Thanks for visiting, I hope you will come back again.

There Are No Bad Cats

Who says Christmas cards have to be red and green? This one was made with fall colors using the Shirley's 2 Girls stamp "Bad or Good Cat". Let's set this record straight, there are no bad cats. Just cute little furballs trying to have fun. Oh but they do get into mischief. This little guy is just like my Shamus. He is the sweetest thing, he follows me like a dog would. Lots of times when I come home he's sitting in the window waiting for me. He cracks me up, he talks a lot in the morning when he wants to get fed but then he's quiet the rest of the day, instead of meowing he stares. When he wants a treat he'll sit in front of his bowl and stare at it, if there's something on the couch and he wants to sit next to me he'll sit on the floor and stare at the space next to me till I move whatever is in his spot. On the other hand there's Memphis, she will jump right up and sit on top of whatever's there. She'll get right in your face if she wants something. Memphis is pretty old now and doesn't play as much as she used to so the Christmas tree lights don't interest her but Shamus is nosey and has to get into everything, including the tree. This stamp just reminds me so much of Shamus I had to have it but this week it's colored more like Memphis. It's colored with copic markers and the lights are covered with stickles. The card was made for the Shirley's 2 Girls sketch challenge S2GSC29 with the twist to use chipboard. So I went to my kitty cat stash and pulled out the fish shape and the paw. The tag was in a fall collection and the sentiment on it is a rub on from Close to My Heart. The print dp is from 7 Gpysies and the olive paper is from Daisy D's. The paper edges were brushed with Ranger Distress Ink Vintage Photo.

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I Miss Summer

My feet are freezing and I'm wearing a sweatshirt. YUK! Bye, bye summer, the weathermen reported snow in northern NJ, UGH! I'm so unwilling to say goodbye to summer. My winter clothes are away and I don't want to get them out. So the Color Throwdown #64 challenge is to use Baja Breeze, Sahara Sand and Black or Chocolate. The Crafty Creations Challenge #37 is a color challenge to use Blue. Oooooh, that sounds like summer to me and anything that takes my mind off the cold is a good thing. I wanted to do the Cat's Pajama challenge TCPTUES #80 so I dug out the sets I have and chose the stamps with a cruise theme. That challenge is a supply challenge to use buttons. I didn't know what I was going to do for the button part yet but I figured I'd get to that later. I decided to make a tall card because The CCEE challenge this week is to "shape up and stand tall". I picked the porthole images so that they'd fit the tall aspect of the card. After I stamped them I punched them out with the SU small square punch and punched out the scalloped squares with another SU punch. This taupe cs was in my scrap bag as was the dp, which has palm trees on it. Ah, palm trees, there are palm trees in warm climates, like Florida. I wish I was there now. When the stamped pieces were laid on the card they didn't fill the space and that's when I figured out where and how to put the button on the card. The side of the card needed something too, so I went through my border punches and thought that the EK Success "Dotted Wave" worked nicely. The tag was punched with a Martha Stewart punch and the sentiment is handwritten. I miss summer, I wish my feet were warm at least this card makes me think of summer.

Thanks for visiting, I hope you'll come back again.

Howl Sweet Is She

Last week was a little hectic. There was an Adult Girl Scout meeting and the weekend was Octoberfest, a weekend retreat at Camp Hoover for adult girl scouts and friends. So with all that goes along with camping, card making was on the back burner and I missed my opportunity to howl. That's what I call it when I make a card for the Midnight Madness Sketch Challenges over on Priscilla's blog. It's always a fun challenge sometimes it's more difficult than other times but that's a good thing, isn't that what a challenge is all about. I like to work from sketches so since I stumbled upon this challenge I've tried to make it a regular part of my week.

This week when I opened the challenge to find MMSC23. The first thing that came to my mind was the fan quilt, which was one of my favorite quilts, not easy to make but lovely when completed. I wish I had the one I completed handy for a picture but I don't so I'm showing a square from one I've yet to put together so you'd get to see where my mind went. On the one I completed I appliqued doilies in the corner. The fan square makes me think of delicate patterns and lace. I thought about using the fabric square in the card but it's relatively large for a card so I decided to look for a stamp and paper that would have the same kind of feel. For that delicate look I go to my Crafty Secrets stamps. This time I chose the "Sweet Kids" set. The papers that I chose are from the Basic Grey "Wisteria" collection - Tea Lights, Cornflower and Gazebo. This led to my color choices, the cs is SU Almost Amethyst. Even though Basic Grey distresses their papers I brushed and edged the papers with Ranger Milled Lavender to get a little more color on the edges. The image was stamped in StazOn brown on SU Confetti White cs so that I could watercolor it. After the watercoloring a little bit of stickles was added to the flowers. To keep that delicate look going I used the Martha Stewart "Doily Lace" border punch on lavender card stock to use on the fan blade sides. The bling rhinestones are from Basic Grey.

By the way there are always lots of things happening over at Priscilla's site, blog candy, contests, blog hops, tutorials...you should go check it out.

So, are you wondering what the heck an old broad like me does at girl scout camp. I have gone horse back riding in the past but this year I took pity on the horses and stayed indoors. I did some paper crafting sessions with my favorite SU demonstrator Cyndy Ponczek. This year her buddy Debbie was there to assist. They are a lot of fun to play with. I also decided to try my hand at basket weaving. Debbie Z did a regular class in which you could make a full size basket but when she offered the chance to make a miniature basket in our downtime I jumped at it. I figured it would be easier to make a little one, boy was I wrong. It came out adorable but it was not easy to get your fingers in and around the little spaces. October is the most magnificent time of year at Camp Hoover. The leaves are changing and the colors are exploding, it's a great weekend.

Thanks for visiting, I hope you come back soon.

Don't forget it's breast cancer awareness month, please click the pink ribbon, and if you have a blog or website, you can put the ribbon on your site and help get more people to click.

A Season That Sparkles

This Friday Flourishes will have their biggest release ever. Their October release is six sets of stamps. The sneak peeks started today but if you've ever cruised through their collection you know that the stamps will be classy and beautiful, and certainly something you'd want to own. They've posted the Season That Sparkles Challenge. The winner of the challenge will receive the entire release so I wanted to enter.
So for this challenge I chose the "Wreaths of all Seasons" set. I stamped the winter wreath in Versamark and embossed it with silver powder on SU Confetti White card stock and then colored it with SU watercolor crayons and covered it with stickles for extra sparkle. The papers are Creative Memories "Candy Cane" and DCWV card stock. All of the paper were sponged and edged with Ranger's Distress Ink Faded Jeans. The border punch is Fiskar's Sunburst with Basic Gray Half Pearls and there are dew drops in the upper corners.
I haven't has much time to stamp since last week and it's late already so forgive the quick post. Thanks for visiting, please click the pink ribbon before you go.

Skating Kitty

I made this card on Friday afternoon before me and my "peeps"took off for camp. I didn't have enough time to upload it then so I planned to post it as soon as I got home which is exactly what I'm doing. I haven't unpacked or checked out the challenges posted this weekend and I'm in withdrawal so this is gonna be a fast post.
I fell immediately in love with this stamp. My first thought was to make her skating ensemble in powder blue but as I was going through my paper I stumbled across this Imaginisce "Candy Cane Lane" DSP and wanted to use it so I put the blue idea on the back burner and will make that another day. The layout is this week's The Cat's Pajama sketch challenge #79 and the stamp is a Cat's Pajama stamp called "Skating Kitty". The snowflake and sentiment are from SU "The Snowflake Spot" which were stamped in Versamark and embossed with silver powder. The paper stamped with the kitty is sponged with SU Bravo Burgundy. The white card stock on the edges of the snowflake paper and on the inside of the card is punched with the EK Success "snowflake" border punch. The burgundy card stock is DCWV neutrals.
Sorry to cut this short but I've got unpacking to do, blogs to catch up on and lots of other "to do's".
Thanks for stopping by, please come back again and don't forget to click on the pink ribbon.

Fight Like a Girl

Before you do anything else go over to the sidebar and click on the pink ribbon. I'm not asking politely today, I'm telling you to do it. You have no excuses, it takes about ten seconds and you can back arrow to be right back here. If you're breathing you should know that October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. If you're a mammal you have breasts, male or female you can get breast cancer. It's a vicious ugly killing disease and I hate it. I will click that button, I will shop on that site, I will make donations and I will keep asking and or telling you to click on the button till be defeat the disease. So FIGHT LIKE A GIRL, do whatever you can to join the fight. You can eat Yoplait yogurt and send in the lids and the company will donate $.10 per lid. You can walk or run and get donations for doing it, at my job you can make a donation and get to wear blue jeans. Use your mind and think positive thoughts, envision a world where no one ever has to fear the loss of health, life or tissue. FIGHT LIKE A GIRL. Do anything and everything you can, that's how real girls fight.

The Flourishes Timeless Tuesday Challenge #36 is to Use Pink as the Main Color. I used the Flourishes stamp set "Think Pink - Fight Like a Girl". The minute I saw that set I logged onto the store to buy it. First of all it's reast Cancer awareness, secondly, it has a flamingo in it, duh! and the flamingo has ribbons on its body and the "fight like a girl" sentiment is in two sizes and I just love the sentiment, so much that I stamped it all over the card stock base of this card.

I stamped the background in Su Pixie Pink and SU Pink Passion, the dress is stamped with Pink Passion and embossed it with clear powder, and popped up on dimensionals. The edges of the base were sponged with those inks too.

The layout is the for the Mojo Monday Mojo Madness 107 challenge. I stayed pretty true to the sketch. The dp is Stemma "Pretty Petals" and those fun pink circles are Em-bella-shments. Cute aren't they.

Just in case you didn't do it earlier, here's a reminder, go click the ribbon. Joining the fight can't get any easier.

Here's to Halloween

Aren't these the cutest mice? I think so but I know there are a lot of people out there who are afraid of mice and I had that come to mind when I was finishing up this card and checking my challenge list. That's when I realized this would actually qualify as a "Terrifying Treat", even I would be terrified if someone put these guys on a plate despite the fact that they are dressed up like yummy candy corn. So you think no one would, then you need to watch "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?". So with tongue in cheek I enter this into the Macabre Monday HDH008 challenge. Those cute little candy corn buttons are 3D so this is also for the Pile It On Challenge, the sketch is from the The Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge #38 and the 2 Red Bananas challenge "Here's to Halloween".
The stamp is House Mouse "Sweet Find" and it's stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black and colored with copics. The candy corn is covered with distress stickles. The papers are K & Co, "Tim Coffey's Halloween Specialty Pad".
I hope you aren't getting too tired of Halloween cards cause I expect there'll be a few more before the end of the month. Thanks for visiting and I hope to see you here again.

The Boo Crew

"The Boo Crew" is MFT's first digital stamp and that's one of the big surprises for October, there are a couple others available, "Think Pink" is one of them and if you've been here before you know I'm a big fan of thinking pink, and since I'm on the subject I'll tell you now, don't forget to click the ribbon before you go.
So this week's MFTMFC#19 challenge is to create something with the digital stamp. I have resisted digital stamps and papers but this image is just too cute to say no to so I printed it out and colored it in with copics and SU markers and I sponged it with a variety of inks. I was going to put it on a bag but then I realized I had some frames and this is pretty large so that it would look cute framed.
There are really cute Halloween buttons on it. I cut the shanks off them so that they could be put on the frame. So this can be used for the Pile It On Challenge to make something three dimensional. It's also good for the 2 Red Bananas - Here's to Halloween challenge.
I hope you all are getting into the Halloween spirit. It's such a fun holiday and there's so much cute stuff you can use to decorate. I'm really enjoying all the cards and challenges that I've found.
Thanks for visiting, I hope you'll come back.

Voila!

"Voila!" is the name of this chef stamp set from Stampin' Up. I thought he'd be perfect for a recipe holder. The big close pin was in the $1 bin at Target quite some time ago. I picked up a few of them to use for Christmas presents. So today I got a jump start to make one because the Paper Cutz Challenge #11 is to use a Pumpkin Pie recipe in your project.

The recipe card was made with the SU "From the Kitchen of" stamp set. I've had this set for a couple years and I'm finally busting it out. My SU friends have it too, and we also have recipe boxes that we're going to decorate some year. They're from the Christmas cookie swap that never happened two years ago. Too bad this is one of those stories that you have to be there for to find amusing but believe me when Eileen, Edna and Maddy read this they'll be laughing but I digress.

The color scheme is coffee and cream with a cherry on top for the Rosie Dee challenge #55. In case you didn't notice there's a cherry on the top of the dessert on the recipe card.

This week the Pile It On challenge#18 is to make it 3-D and this is anything but a flat card. With Pile It On the twist is to combine at least one other challenge with the one they post. You can find lots of challenges to try there.

The other details are that the card was stamped in SU Pumpkin Pie, the chef was stamped in Memento Tuxedo black and paper pieced with SEI "Oxford". His hat and scarf were covered with distress Scattered Straw Stickles and his buttons are made with Gunmetal Stickles. The rest was colored with copics.
Thanks for stopping by, if you have time leave a comment. Those comments make my day.

No Bad Cats

There are no bad cats only people with high expectations. Shamus is the most recent furry addition to our family. He joined us in the summer of 2007. My first kitty, Samantha joined me in 1980. In all these years I have had many cats, probably a dozen, and they have all been feral cats that came inside. My brother has had many cats too. Between the two of us we never had a cat bother a Christmas tree until we met Shamey. All I can say is that I was so happy that after hubby put the tree up back in 2007 I was busy and didn't start putting the decorations on right away. I have a lot of snow baby ornaments which are ceramic. I think I would have had a heart attack if Shamus knocked down the tree while they were on it. So that year the ornaments stayed packed and we tied ribbons all over the tree. Shamey climbed into that tree every day, he would climb up and down till he found a comfortable spot to lay down on. He really liked climbing around in it. I expected that it would fall over but it never did. Still baffles me. The tree was a pre-lit one and he chewed on some of the wires and now it's a partially lit tree. We thought he might have matured and tried the tree the next Christmas but he still liked getting into it. As I get older going up and down all the stairs with the decorations is a big job so these days we don't even bother to see if he's still interested. I have a lovely tiny little tabletop tree that's made up of pink ornaments which I love and Shamey ignores it so in the end we're all winners.

A couple weeks ago I won the sketch challenge on Shirley's 2 Girls with my Woof, Woof, Woof card. For my prize I got to pick the stamp of my choice and I choose the "Bad or Good Cat" stamp. When I saw that stamp I immediately thought of my furry little boy and had to have it. I didn't know that the Shirley's girls were going to have a cat theme for this month so how lucky for me that I had it in time for this challenge and how perfect is this sketch for showing off a picture of my kitty next to the S2G stamp. I pulled out my kitty scrapbook and was happy to see that I could fit the picture and the stamped image on the cat head shaped paper. I pulled out this My Mind's Eye paper and went to work. I stamped the cat in Memento Tuxedo Black and colored it in with my copics. The edges of the papers are sponged with Versamagic Sea Breeze. I wrapped the twine around the crossbar. I think it would also look cute with miniature lightsd strung around it but mine are stored at work with my miniature tree and I wasn't going out shopping. I settled for the twine as requested for the challenge. There's a teeny weeny kitty cat charm hanging off the twine. You can try clicking on the picture to enlarge it if you want to get a better look at it.

I hope you enjoyed reading about Shamus, he is one cutey pie, a very large cutey pie. He's so cute I could never call him bad.

Thanks for visiting, please come back again.

Make a Pumpkin

Over on Splitcoast Stampers the October Guest Designer Challenge has been posted on the MFT Forum. The challenge is to use fabric in your design. The winner will receive the following month's releases and be invited to participate in the blog hop. That's pretty exciting, if you're interested in participating get cracking cause you need to upload your card to the gallery by October 6, 10PM EST.

I decided to make a couple fabric pumpkins, they make cute decorations to give or keep and they are so easy anyone can make them and they take about a half hour to make. Honest! I made these with brownies and if they can do it so can you.

You don't need a lot of fancy equipment, just a few things that if you're a crafty person you're likely to have on hand. A piece of fabric, stuffing (you can use cotton balls if you don't have stuffing on hand, I didn't have any fluff so I crunched up some old batting scraps) , a glue gun (if you don't one and can't borrow one use fabric glue), beans (I didn't have any beans so I used rice, you can use pebbles or anything that'll weight the bottom down a little) and a twig (I grabbed the first three I found outside my door, you can be as picky as you want) a needle and thread. You can decorate the pumpkins with anything you like or leave them plain. If I had some pipe cleaners I might've twisted one around the stem and curled it since I didn't have any on hand I'm settling for the tag on the big one and the ribbon on the little one. What you put on it is up to you.

The pumpkin with the tag on it is about 4 inches across at the bottom and the other one is about 3-1/2 inches at the bottom. For my templates I used dishes. The larger one was made with a dinner plate and the smaller one with a dessert plate. If you want a larger pumpkin just cut out a larger circle, try using a big round serving platter. The bigger the pumpkin the more stuffing you'll need. Trace the outline of the plate onto the fabric, and cut it out. You don't need to be precise because the edge doesn't show. Thread your needle and sew a gathering stitch around the edge, make it about a half an inch or so in. Pull it slighty so that you can put your weight medium inside then put your stuffing inside. Don't overstuff it. The larger the pumpkin the more you can get away with understuffing them. They look cute when they are a little bit floppy. Once your stuffing is inside you pull the gathering tight and tie it off with a knot. At this point I usually do a little extra stitches tacking the gathering in place but it probably doesn't matter at all because the next step is to use your glue gun put a glop (yes, that is the technical term, go ahead and look it up) on the center of the gathering and put your twig there. And Voila, there's your pumpkin, ready for whatever decorations you want to put on them.

I made a tag using the MFT "Fright Night" stamp set. It's colored in with copics and the edge is sponged with Ranger Peeled Paint and Memento Dandelion. The paper is from K & CO Tim Coffey's Halloween Specialty pad. The border is punched with the EK Success "Boo" punch. I tied it onto the twig with a ribbon it's ready to go.

Thanks for stopping by, please click on the pink ribbon before you go.

Didn't I Say That...

I don't like to make Christmas cards or words to

that affect in an earlier post? I've been saying that for years. It's another case of what you resist persists. I prefer not to make or send Christmas cards so of course I keep finding challenges and stamp sets that are for Christmas. Go Figure, I've stopped trying to figure it out. I guess I'm going to have to start a list...

I recently purchases the Flourishes "Wreaths of All Seasons" set and decided to use one of them for this week's Flourish Timeless Tuesday challenge #35 to extend our creations outside the frame. The Simon Says Challenge this week is a colour challenge to use red and green. That color choice made me go to one of my all time favorite papers, Basic Grey, "Figgy Pudding - Forest" and to use the winter wreath stamp. This wreath is all twiggy and it seemed to me that it should be embossed in gold. Don't Christmas cards with gold embossing look rich. To get some more layers I pulled out a paper that I thought would match well, Basic Grey "Wassail - Cranberry Sauce". The pattern on this paper is also similar to the wreath. It's double sided so I flipped it for the middle solid red layer. So using the Basic Grey paper and embossing the wreath makes it work for the Basic Grey Week 4 challenge - embossing and the ABC challenge E is for Embossing.

Even thought Basic Grey prints it's paper to have a distressed look I still decided to sponge and edge the design papers with Ranger Vintage Photo. It adds another layer of richness. The Cranberry sauce paper was cut with the nestibilities die Label One. The corners of the solid red square were punched with an SU corner punch and the ribbon is thread through slots also punched with an SU punch and CTMH red bling was put in the corners and red stickle dots were added to the wreath. Each layer was pushed up with dimensionals.

Last week on an MFT forum Kim asked us to post the first card we made using and MFT stamp and that got some discussions on how much our stamping has evolved. Using the dimensionals to pump up the different layers is one of the biggest improvements to my cards. I had used them before but just occasionally now they seem to be on almost every card I make and they do make a difference. Also I distress the cards in one way or another most of the time. There's a lot more variety of embellishing now too. As I list the things I'm doing more of it's becoming apparent to me that I am doing a lot more now than when I made my first MFT card.

Thanks for visiting, I hope you enjoyed your visit and will come back again.

Before you leave don't forget to click on the pink ribbon.

A Long Overdue Shout Out

I don't know where my mind has been but I have a long overdue shout out for Kim and her design team over at My Favorite Things. I've been participating in MFT challenges since before I started blogging. I've won a few of the challenges and have not thought to post a thank you here. Over on Splitcoast Stampers there are forums where you can chat about anything. There are several MFT threads and they can be fun, interesting and/or educational. At any given time you can be chatting with Kim, the owner, or any of the Sweet Sixteen Design team. They are all friendly and ready to help you with any questions or problems you have. It's over on the threads that the challenges are posted and the winners announced. I've been posting here with links to the challenges but I've forgotten to post a thank you here. Well I owe a thank you right now because last week I was nominated as the MVP and won a $20 gift voucher and this week I won another $20 voucher for the 100MFTSKETCHES challenge. If you've been following my blog you've seen lots of my entries for this challenge. It ended up that I finished 46 of the 100 sketches that the very talented Cindy Haffner and Frances Byrne created. Another MFTer, Bonnie, came close and now we have challenged each other to see who will finish the 100 sketches first. Now that's fun to me and I owe that to the MFT threads. I am very grateful to MFT for all the great friends I have made there and to Kim for her generosity. She treats her customers like family. I am absolutely positive that if you go visit My Favorite Things you will be glad you did. If you're over at Splitcoast go visit the MFT Forum, there's weekly challenges with gift voucher prizes AND they are planning a new REALLY BIG CHALLENGE. It'll be like the Idol challenges which were great fun and the winner recieved a gift voucher for $250 and two stampers were given Design Team positions. This new challenge is going to be even bigger. It's gonna be a lot of fun. I can't wait.

You Got a Pizza...

but it's from the Isle of Man. My husband called me at work for no particular reason. He told me the kind of stuff that married people yak about that no one else would be interested in and then he told me I got a package from the Isle of Man. Now isn't the package the thing you would have told me first? Well I guess that's part of the men are from Mars stuff.

I am very, very happy to say that the pizza is my prize from the Craft Emporium for winning a challenge on Tuesday Taggers. I think this prize was awarded by random generator so no matter what your skill level is you should visit Tuesday Taggers and play along with the challenge. This week your project just has to have a tree on it. How hard is that to do? Who knows you could win a prize. The Craft Emporium sponsored the challenge the week I won and they sent me "the Complete Paper Crafting Kit - the Boyfriend" by Cosmo Cricket and who doesn't love Cosmo Cricket. I have had my eye on some of those papers for awhile.

So a big thank you to The Craft Emporium and Tuesday Taggers. I love my prize and the brain is already thinking about how I'm going to use it.

I'm Dreaming of a...

...warm Christmas, with every Christmas Card I make. Where the beach is sunny and bright and all my Christmases aren't white.

Have I mentioned how much I hate the cold? I'm sorry that I repeat myself but it keeps me amused, after all, I am easily amused.

When I was a kid my friend Susie told me that she hoped we had a white Christmas and I was appalled at the thought. Even back in the 7th grade I hated the snow. For a few years I tried to go down the if you can't beat it join it path and played in it. I actually loved skiing except for the fact that it was usually cold and I hated being cold so when I met my DH who didn't ski and wasn't interested in learning I gave it up and I never regretted it.

These days I dream of spending my winters in Florida. For now I will have to accept spending only Christmas week there but someday, someday my dream will come true. To reinforce my dream I have purchased the SU stamps "Shellebrate" so that I can pretend that I am one of the people who live in a warm climate and send sunny warm cards to torment the people who live in the snow belt. This card oughta be a start.

I used the Midnight Madness sketch challenge MMSC21. Oops, I forgot to try to come up with a "Howling" title. This is the first time I didn't stop to think about that before I started writing my post. I hope the design team forgive me, because this title was already screaming in my head before I even tried to think of one. I guess we can subtitle it "Howl Many Days Till Christmas". Whew, that makes me feel better, I really need to howl when I do the madness thing. If you like to get wild when you stamp go check out Priscilla's blog. If you just like to do a sketch challenge go check it out. If you'd like a chance to win an outrageous stamping station go check it out. There's lots of ways you can enter to win so go read all about it, I'll still be here when you finish. If you're not interested in contests you must be interested in paper crafts, why else would you be here, so go and check out the cards posted on her blog. There's always some great cards there and now there's a tutorial once a week. This week it was on making shaker cards, you know like a snow globe in your card. In globes or in cards are the only places I want to see snow.

The Color Dare #36 challenge is to use Creamy Caramel, Bermuda Bay and Barely Banana which work for a beach theme. The sand castle and pail were punched with the EK Success "Beach" border punch. Isn't it just the cutest? I used Memento Tuxedo Black to stamp the image on white cs and colored it in with copics and highlighted parts with stickles and a gelly roll pen. Ranger Tea Dye was brushed and edged on the papers.

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My Favorite Grave Marker

Strange title, huh? Well my last post has been stuck in my head. In that post I spoke a little bit about the trip I made with Vanessa to the cemetery. There's so many more details to this story that need to be told. First of all there's the back story of why we went to the cemetery. My father grew up in the depression and he had 3 brothers and 4 sisters. They were a poor family with a lot of kids to feed and clothe. They had an aunt who had no children of her own and she often gave my father gifts that she could barely afford. Because she had no children after she passed away my grandfather tended to her grave and that duty was passed onto my father. So flash forward to the time my story took place. My father called me to ask if I could do a favor for him. He had MS and at this time he had it for many years and it had advanced so much that he had great difficulty walking and was using a wheelchair most of the time. It was a week or so before Christmas and it was time to put the grave cover on his aunt's grave. So he asked me to pick up a wreath which I did and when I got to his house we (me and Vanessa) were sitting around bs-ing with him. He told us that he had promised his father he would never let the grave go uncovered at Christmas and he was practically in tears because he thought it wasn't going to get done and there was no way he could do it himself. By the way my father was superstitious and would never break a promise he made to his father. It was cold out and there was snow on the ground (I hate the cold, I hate being out in the winter) and at some point my father asked if I would put the wreath on the grave. I told him I didn't know where the grave was (and was silently thinking that I really don't want to go out in the snow to the mall, forget about to the cemetery). But he said he could give me directions and I'd be able to find it, so how could I say no. First he told me which cemetery it was in and we had a discussion about that cemetery. My Aunt Maggie is buried there too and she's in the middle of a gypsy section. To this day I remember her funeral which was way back in 1974. I remember it because of the wild graves surrounding her plot. There were pictures on them of the deceased in their finery. Very cool looking, old, old pictures. We talked about the picnics the gypsies have in the cemetery and how they leave offerings of food and poor drinks on the ground. At some point my father started giving me directions and when he said you turn right at the Mercedes I knew exactly what he was talking about but Vanessa had no idea so that started another tangent. Everyone from around here knows about the Mercedes gravestone. It's a full size exact duplicate of the car. It cost about ten times as much as the actual car would cost. (If you want to read more about it click here.) It is a local attraction and most people I know have some friend or family member buried there so they've all seen it but Vanessa is from Long Island so at the time was unfamiliar with it. So she wanted to go along with me to see the Mercedes. So my father gave me the rest of the directions which were pretty much turn left, turn right sort of stuff and then go to the end and dead ahead is a big tree and the grave is right under it. So off we traipsed and Vanessa was wowed by the Mercedes as everyone is. The picture doesn't do it justice, really, you have to imagine that it is as big as a full size car and carved out of marble. It is incredible. So after gawking for a short while we returned to our mission and followed the directions and low and behold there are a couple really big trees at the end of the road. We get out of the nice warm car and start checking the names and they don't match. So we get back in the car an retrace our steps and end up at the same place so we decide to amble around a little and see if we can find it. Remember I mentioned that the gypsies have pictures on their gravestones. Well they aren't the only ones. There was this one woman who I swear is now haunting her family. The picture is of her in her apron and pointing a wooden spoon at the camera as if she's waving a weapon. It was not a very flattering picture of Sophie. Well, then again I don't know what Sophie looked like in life. Let's just say the picture should have been pressed in the family bible instead of up on the gravestone and it cracked us up. We couldn't stop laughing about it. We laughed so hard we forgot how freaking cold we were. Eventually we gave up and had to bring back the wreath but in the end my brother knew where the grave was and he put the wreath on it.
So the moral of this story is "Beware of directions that include turn at the Mercedes and at the end of the road there's a really big tree".
By the way, that's not the only cemetery around here famous for gypsy plots, there's another one where my mother's father is buried. Stephen Crane is there too. There's an old movie I think it's named "King of the Gypsies" and part of it was filmed in that cemetery.
I hope I didn't bore you with my story, it's halloweenie time and this stuff just comes up. Thanks for visiting and I promise I'll have a card or a project instead of a cemetery next time.
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