A Cupcake Birthday Card

I finally had the opportunity to sit down and make a card today. WooHoo!

I used some patterned paper from DCWV glitter line for the scalloped background and then embellished the cupcake design with ink, chalk, glitter (of course) and a nice felt flower for the top. I added a few clear rhinestones and used the white opague inkssentials pen for the dot work.

The cupcake is hand cut out and mounted on thin foam tape for dimension. I just love the designs from The Cutting Cafe'. They have an awesome choice for printable stamping.


I used my corner rounder on the bottom edges to compliment the round circles in the design.

This is a close up of the chalking and glitter.

I love using this pen. It flows so smoothly and never skips!

I just used embossing glitter for a simple "Happy Birthday" sentiment on the inside.

I'm going to try to finish a couple Father's Day cards and do a bit of gardening today.

Enjoy your Sunday and for all those Michigander's out there.....GO WINGS!!!!

Darlene

Organizing my Wooden Stamps

Hi everyone!

I've been pretty busy here getting my stamps organized. I took my lighted Curio cabinet that has a mirror in the back and glass shelves in it and brought it into my scrapbook room. I decided to organize my wooden stamps by size and display them in the cabinet. I used the bottom area to display my mini books. It works perfect for now but if I make more I'll need to put them in a basket instead.

It makes the room very cozy when it's evening and the lights on the cabinet are turned on. I'm loving this room!

I've also been making some cards and trying to veggie and flower gardens tended to so there doesn't seem to be enought time to blog right now. I'll give it my best and add some pics of my new projects soon.

Darlene

Giving the Raspberry!

This is a video of our grandson Eli and our daughter Heather playing together in April 2009. He was just learning to talk and interact with people. My how fast they grow! I just had to share this because it is just precious. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did :-)

Darlene

I'm Back :-)

Wow it seems like it's been forever since I've posted. I was trying to decide on a replacement digital camera. I found one I like so I'm back!

My hubby and I have been busy making our garden fence. We have to keep out those dogs or we won't be eating any wonderful tomatoes this summer. We created a picket pattern and then cut each board out individually. These are a couple pics of the fence unstained.

We will be re-staining our two decks this summer (it truly needs it with these harsh Michigan winters) so we decided to use the same cedar color as our exhisiting decks on this new garden fence. It's a very nice rich color. I just love how it came out. Now I can begin the planting :-)

I also told you I would post a pic of the card I painted when I had a camera.

Here it is.....

I used black embossing powder for the "happy birthday"and acrylic paint for the daisy flower design.

I also put a strip of white paper on the inside bottom of the card that I had embossed with my Big Kick. It came out very pretty!

Enjoy your week!

Darlene

New Digital Camera Needed

Hi everyone!
Well it is sad to say but my digital camera is no longer working. It has been repaired once in the past and since I can get more mega pixels, etc. now for a cheaper price than fixing this 4 year old camera I am off to some stores to shop around.

Unfortunately I will not be able to post any pics of my hand painted cards until I purchase a new camera. Hopefully I will find something suitable within the next few days.

Keep checking back .....

Darlene

Doing a few creative things lately

I just realized that I've been a bit behind in my posting. I honestly have been working hard in our back yard. My husband and I have been building a beautiful picket fence for our vegetable garden and we have begun designing a privacy fence too. We are in need of replacing our basic yard fence and we decided some privacy would be nice.

I managed to make a few of these butterflies this week. These are great on cards and scrapbook layouts. I hand emboss them and hand chalk the colors. Of course I have to add some bling so they have some very classy bodies!

I also just completed a hand painted design for a birthday card. I used the bright papers and the design consists of white daisies with yellow centers. They look very pretty. I'll post the final card soon. Off to the yard for another long day of setting posts and cutting wood.

Take care everyone,

Darlene

FUN Visit with Eli

Tom and I enjoyed a great visit with our grandson Eli last weekend! We had a busy day on Saturday with Todd, Karli, Eli and Heather visiting for the day. We also had two crazy dogs getting involved in all the fun (especially with Eli's toys). Todd and Karli had a wedding to go to so we had Eli over night Saturday.

He had a nice bath (Heather helped and got as wet as Eli) and then snuggled in his blanket while Tom and I read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to him. He fell asleep in my arms so off to bed he went.

This photo was taken on Sunday morning right before he was being picked up by mom and dad for another busy day of fun. He's just a cutie!

We miss you little one!

The Attack of the .....Evil Dinner Fork

Oh Boy....let me start out this blog post with a little background on my wonderful a.k.a. dangerous (to himself) hubby Tom.

Most of my family and friends know how many times I say the sentence "Hmm....Tom hasn't left a trail of blood for me lately. He's due!"

My husband has had 911 called because his breathing stopped after his shoulder surgery, has almost passed out while on the roof leaning over telling me of his intent (I used the mother tone at that time and told him to lay on his back and pass out THAT way because I wasn't able to catch him), has fallen down, and also up, the stairs and injured his shoulder (weeks of physical therapy), had a 2 3/4" gash in his arm requiring 20 stitches, walked directly into the safety gate across the doorway and made an immediate lunge forward almost hitting his forhead into the wall in front of him (Flamingo knee position), almost biffing it directly into our plate glass window with scissors in his hand because he was avoiding the dog at his feet, need I go on....I think you all have the picture. He's a very dangerous man to HIMSELF. I've also come home from work in previous years to trails of blood on the floor. You learn very quickly to not be too reactive when you have this type of character in your life. You never know what you are going to find at the end of the trail. He also makes a great subject for pictures and humor on those "remember when" family stories" moments.

Well to get to the point of this post. My wonderful guy decided to make dinner for me Sunday night because I was on the phone with my son driving back to Missouri and I was helping him pass some road time. We were having a nice conversation when I said to him "hold on...Tom was that an injury walk I just saw?" I had been sitting in my bedroom by the doorwall just chilling out but I could see directly down the hall leading toward the main livingroom and kitchen. Tom's answer was "Well I'm not sure, it might be". I asked him if he needed me to get off the phone and assist him and he said no he was doing just fine. My son heard it all going on and said "Mom you might want to go in the bathroom and check on him. You know how Tom is and he might have actually hurt himself. He won't say anything until it's all taken care of". I asked Tom the question again and he admitted that he poked himself. I then asked for greater detail expecting the hear he was using a sharp knife to trim the chicken breasts he was cooking. I even said "Did you cut your self with a knife?" His reply was very disturbing and I truly didn't believe him. Let me inform all of you that my hubby is quite a jokester so you never really know the truth. Tom stated "No, it was a fork." I said "Yeah right!" He then said "No really, I stuck a fork in my finger." He again said he didn't need any help until I heard him talking to himself from the bathroom complaining about the bandaid wrappers....yes plural ....WRAPPERS. When Tom uses the plural form of a word in this type of situation I am already thinking Emergency Room.

I told my son I better go and off to the bathroom I went. NOT to my surprise did I find a sink full of let me gently said "red colored water" with a large collection of kleenex wrapped around his finger (that WAS NOT really stopping the bleeding very well). It finally stopped after I told him to sit down and hold his hand up high while I prepared the bandage. I asked him for the whole story and this is was he told me.

He had started to cook the chicken breasts in the pan (sprayed PAM so they wouldn't stick) but it was getting a bit dry and he thought he would add some butter. Well the butter was in the freezer. He unwrapped a frozen quarter stick and instead of cutting a chunk off on the cutting board and taking it to the pan he decided to use the pan as a prop and use the fork to pop a small chunk off into the pan. He said his instincts told him not to do it but he did it anyway. Well needless to say, he's a strong guy and the butter isn't THAT frozen and he used all his might and the butter broke off pretty easily and the fork when into his finger. I honestly can't imagine a dull normal dinner fork impailing a finger. The worst part is that it didn't just go in.... it went in one side of his index finger and out under the the tip of the nail of that same finger. Just the fact that the fork tine gets a bit wider in size is what stopped it so you get the picture. WOW. I can't believe it was only one tine too....usually Tom would do at least two for effect!


To make this long story as short as possible he's all bandaged and recuperating with a nice black and blue finger tip. He just got feeling back in it this morning.

My goodness.....there's no lack of excitement in this house LOL!

Have a SAFE week everyone!
Darlene

Scrapbook Room Re-Do Part 4

Tom finished installing all the molding/trim and I have filled the nail holes, sanded and painted them. It really sets off the colors I chose for the room. I painted the trim a "satin" finish which is the same color as the flat ceiling paint. It brings the whole room together. It's hard to see the exact color but the beige is a nice warm tone.






We added the register cover and vacuumed all the dust. We're very happy with how it looks so far. We now need to install the doors and then we will design the wall unit. This should be fun to decide exactly what we want and make it to our plans.








Sadie just relaxed once the vacuuming was done! She's a BIG help....NOT!





I also took a little time to create these fun 3D Origami flowers. I did some sanding and stamping on these so they could be used on more masculine scrapbook pages or cards. I really like making these!

See you in the near future.

An Awesome Day in Michigan

Wow were we blessed with beautiful sun and a gorgeous blue sky all day today. We watched the sunrise and enjoyed how it hit the decorator pillow on our spider back chair in the livingroom. You couldn't have asked for a prettier sight this morning. These aren't the best pics....I'm still saving pennies for an SLR camera so these will have to do for now.



I also had made some homemade veggie soup. I decided to hold back on adding any meat and go strickly veggies only. WOW it was so good just to have something basic once in a while. I set the table and put croutons and parmesan cheese out for toppings. I told my hubby Tom to go ahead and add the goodies and I would add mine after. Here is the results of our soup adventures.



The beginning of the "soup pot". I put onions, garlic, fresh mushrooms, cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini, swiss chard, spinach, carrots, celery, sweet red and yellow peppers and seasonings along with the chicken broth.


Almost done.... nice a basic. We loved it!

My boring place setting.....

and then Tom's creation....

He said you MUST have a smiley face at all times. LOL

Enjoy your weekend everyone....

Darlene