Lisa Banner

Ok, can you tell that I am a little bored! Of course I have SOOOOO much I should/could be doing - but hey, this is OJT, right? My friend Lisa owns a cute little boutique in Lynchburg, Virginia and just to play around I made this for her.

Watermark for photos

This is my first attempt at creating a watermark to put on my photos/cards before loading them to my blog. Simple, clean look. Photoshop takes a long time to figure out, but I am getting there! I am going to try this for some other things as well. Who knows!

Vacation 2008

This picture says it all! Head for the Ocean. Jonathan spelled it out in the sand and that is where you could find us for the whole week we were in Myrtle Beach. Once again, we had the best weather possible - it was in the 80s and sunny all week. No rain, no extreme heat, just absolutely beautiful.

The boys were trying to "capture" teeny tiny sand crabs here. They weren't fast enough - the crabs were very happy about that. They did get a little mad, however, and one of their bigger, stronger brothers paid Jonathan back with a nice bite on the bottom of his foot. He hightailed it out of the water pretty quickly!

Surfer Boy Jonathan. He didn't do as well on the waves this year as last - but he still had fun trying.

Cody, taking a break after several hours on the beach and in the pool. He much prefers the pool - but really he would take either!

Jonathan will do just about anything for a laugh!

Hey - I was on vacation with my family - this picture proves it. This is the only picture of me though.

We really had a great time and I look forward to going back again. Maybe next year we will be able to take Zeb! That would be a treat. Rotten dog!

Halloween Card

Wow, I am way ahead of the game for Halloween, if only in the card making realm of things. I love the idea of halloween and I buy tons of crap for halloween, but I never seem to get it out and decorate. What's up with that??? I have no idea what the kids will want to be for halloween this year. The "Deadskins" football players have been DONE! It was easy though and didn't really cost me anything. We have the jerseys all I needed was a little makeup and some colored hair spray!

They totally cracked me up - some of our neighbors wanted to withhold the candy though, not a slight on the precious Redskins! Funny thing is - Jonathan LOVES the redskins.

For the card -
Paper: (SU!) Black, Pumpkin Pie
Stamps (PTI) Birds of a Feather
Other: (SU!) Ribbon; (Making Memories) Chipboard Buttons "Halloween"

Boys have birthdays too!

You would never know that boys have birthdays in my world - it seems like all the cards I make are so girly! Whoda thunk that I have 2 boys - and NO girls. I have several boy birthdays coming up soon - like Cody who will be 11 this year! I don't think this card is too juvenile yet, almost, but not yet. We already gave him his birthday present - a new bat. They are sooo expensive. I had no idea! Anyway, he spent what seemed like hours picking out his new bat and his is as happy as a pig in you know what. The poor neighbors have been hearing him on the hit-a-way since he brought it home.
This isn't him with his new bat - but I thought I would add a shot of him at the All-Star tournament. He was literally inches away from a home run! He was so excited and almost forgot to run. Fortunately his feet kicked it in gear and he made it to second. Cody, dear heart, is not the speediest kid on the field...but we love him anyway! The next game he played the other team intentionally walked him. He was totally pissed, but we tried to explain that it was a compliment! The other team's coach came up and told him so after the game was over (we won!!)

Back to the card - heres the recipe:
Paper- (Cosmo Cricket Cogsmo) Cogs, Mr. Roboto, Bandwidth. The background paper was just something I found in my stash that matched the blue perfectly
Stamps - (SU!) So many scallops
Ink - (Brilliance) Graphite Black
Other - SU! Scallop Punch

How Patriotic

I know this card is a wee bit late for 4th of July - but hey, I wasn't home! (To be honest, I didn't make the card until after the 4th but so what, right?) We spent the day of the 4th at our friend's parents house down in Calabash. The sad thing is - we never see these friends and they live 20 minutes away. We had to drive 7 hours to spend time together! That is just plain ol' silliness. Anyway, we had a wonderful cookout with LOTS of great food and there were 8 kids running around so all in all we had a fun time. We heading back to Myrtle in time to catch the fireworks on the beach and let me tell you, if you have never spent the 4th of July in Myrtle Beach there is nothing quite like it. I swear, every direction you turned your head there were amazing fireworks going off. The best part was, we just had to walk across the street and plop our behinds on the sand! No traffic, no parking!

Recipe for this card:
Paper: (SU!) Brilliant Blue, Very Vanilla
Ink: (SU!) Brilliant Blue, Real Red, (Brilliance) Graphite Black, (Ranger) Distress Ink Walnut Stain
Ribbon: SU!
Stamps: (My Sentiments Exactly) Pledge; (Inkadinkado) Burst
Others: (SU!) Dimensionals

Weathered Birthday Card

This paper screamed at me when I saw it at our LSS - which by the way is going out of business. How sad for our town! I know so many people who shop there regularly. Now all we have is Michaels and AC Moore - and let's face it, their paper selection is rather stinky!

Recipe for this card -
Paper - (SU!) Black and Very Vanilla ; (Making Memories) 5th Avenue - double sided
Stamps - (SU!) Weathered ; (Anna Griffin) Sentiment
Ribbon - SU!
Decorative Brad - Anna Griffin "Hannah Collection"

New Blog Banner 2

Well, this is my 2nd attempt at a blog banner. I finally got a version (an old version) of photoshop loaded on my computer and I have been having fun doodling around. The frog is from on old children's book - I found the book on the guttenburg press site - it is from the 1800's but I can't remember the specifics. Bad Librarian, Bad Librarian.

I have some new cards to post - but I am trying to take make my pictures look better. Not quite there yet! This is the original illustration...

Yee Haw I am back in the saddle!

I don't know when or how - but my computer is no longer blocking blogger! Maybe I can start posting again. I need to get some vacation photos up and posted. We had such a great time at the beach - and low and behold we didn't have to visit the emergency room once. I think that is a record for our family. To be fair, it was close! I actually had a palm frond (you know the sharp pointy kind) go directly into my ear canal while we were playing miniature golf. I thought I was going to cry right there it hurt so bad. But, I sucked it up and I don't think it actually punctured my ear drum - but I have tried to keep water out - just in case!

The boys had fun and I actually got a little bit of a tan - so all in all successful! We ended up leaving a day early though. Todd missed his dog SO bad. Hearing the he bit Melanie and she had to get stitches didn't help any. That visit from animal control was brutal! Fortunately everyone has recovered and Melanie still loves Zeb. Rotten Dog!

I have been decorating the powder room in the house - so I will post pics of that as well. I wanted the room to be a soft robin's egg blue and I was going to do trendy chocolate brown accents - but, it didn't work out so well. The paint color ended up being purple! So, I have had to go in a whole new direction. Once I get the shelves and artwork up I will take some photos! I also bought fabric for making curtains for the dining room. Busy, busy, busy! Too bad I have this day job that takes up all of my time!