bad to the bone!

In honor of el dia de los muertos (Day of the Dead), November 1st & 2nd, I gave my fellow Spanish teachers a gag gift of a skull toy. The bag and the card were pretty:

and used some Stampin' Up papers, stamp and ribbon. They were amused!

Stan & I went to a very nice Halloween party at S & H's house Friday night. We dressed up as a witch (me) and the ghost of a pirate (Stan). I would LOVE to show you a picture, but I am forbidden to share. (See me in person & I'll show them to you on my camera.....Hee, hee!) Thank you to S & H and P for a wonderful evening!

I had some time to create this weekend. Looking forward to some more tomorrow!

a perfect Thursday evening!

another strip pieced card...for my friend Jeri this time...happy birthday to you!
Jeri loves cats and has lots of them! She is an expert on all things CAT!

Ahhh, a perfect Thursday evening...sitting in my workshop....listening/watching the fighting Phillies and...CREATING!

Let's go!

que pasa, calabaza? nada, nada, limonada!

I love pumpkins! While orange is not my favorite color, it certainly does pop when you are doing something creative! Pumpkins make everything POP in the autumn months!





Here is a card I made last week and finished this weekend. Enjoy!

I am on a "strip-piecing" kick now. The card is much more vibrant in person.

Off to create some more!

a long time coming...& lots of pix

It's been a long time! I have been doing a lot of watching this:

hour after hour, day after day. The season is almost over! (Alas, no time to create when we are full in tennis season.) Jenni's doing brilliantly, having made all-stars and won the first level of all-stars, and winning 70% or more of her matches. She is a force on the team! Her nickname: THE HAMMER!

One very proud day, Stan and I went to her match after school, which she won, and then on to the academic award ceremony at the school, where she was recognized for her academic achievement. We were beyond proud to almost giddy! Who could ask for anything more?

I did have time to decorate the dining room table for fall:

Nothing fancy this time around. I also had time to make a card to send to Kelsi:

We went to North Jersey to see her rugby game last week. It was great! A beautiful fall day with a sparkling blue sky and plenty of warm sunshine and a fresh breeze. Lovely! Kelsi's team won, and she was a pivotal force on the team, scoring one "touchdown" (I forget what they are called), making tackle after tackle including a score-saving tackle, playing every minute with all of her heart. She is incredible! And strong! Her nickname: FRIDGE DINK!

Here she is after a hard-fought game:
And here are both of my beautiful girls: (October 9, 2008)

Aren't I blessed? Life is GREAT!

I have a couple of cards on the drawing board, so there will be a post later on this week!

Time to create!

are they really shooting the birdies? & cages

Stan & I went to Swedesboro/Woolwich Day yesterday. It was fun!

Here are some pictures of some civil war re-enactors who were demonstrating some of their wares.

Two little girls were next to me when these gentlemen were shooting their rifles. One girl yelled "are they really shooting the birdies?" It made me laugh! (They were shooting blanks, of course!)

I'm no photographer at all, but I love this picture. What a face this guy has! (in front of the Rulon House in Swedesboro)

Here is a picture of my mom's "cage" on her foot. I've been describing it (badly) for a couple of months. This is what it looks like in person:

My mom is so brave! And always optimistic! I admire so much how she makes the best of a difficult situation...and always with a smile! Only a few more weeks of the cage this way, and then she should get a shoe to put underneath it so that she can walk with it on. Then a few weeks like that, and the whole thing will come off. We're looking forward to her being hardware-less!

I hope to get to some creative stuff this week.

love american style x 49

...a tough week for all of us...first mom, then dad, in the hospital... Here they are reunited again after all the excitement...a love story forty-nine plus years in the making...
I haven't had a chance to do anything creative because of all of the family obligations, but here's an old scrapbook page from the summer---

Jen is so young in this picture. Look at that smile!

With creating on the back burner, go out and hug someone important!

new math

A new mathematical equation for you:

dominos + friends + food + beautiful house + live music = friendship + constant laughter + joy

Last night was wonderful. Thanks, S & P, for your incredible hospitality.

Thank you J & G & BB for your friendship and joie de vivre. Thank you, P, for the live music. Nice to meet you, D! It was wonderful to envelop you into this happy group!

Who knew dominos could be so much fun? Life is grand!

Time to create!

a log cabin sunday

Thanks to the amazing team of S&R for inviting me to their bonfire Friday night. You guys can do bonfire better than anyone! Your hospitality is always exceptional!


School starts in two days, so I'm finishing up my last few fun goals of the summer.

1. create a blog a



2. visit with friends like crazya



3. get my workshop organized so that other people can see it (here's to you G and M!)a



4. make lots of cards and scrapbook pagesa



5. print hard copy of all the pictures on CD'sa



6. get my sewing station up and running againa



7. work through my yoga CD and learn some new movesa



8. enter a card challenge on linea







Hmmmm, there were some other goals, too. I guess I didn't get those done!





Here's a card I made this week:

I'm still playing with the log cabin technique, but I stamped the strips with all SU images and then cut apart to use in the lob cabin.

Time to create!

domino delight!

Another great luncheon with my card- (errr, domino-) playing friends. Thanks to J for a great lunch and to S, BB and P for some competitive tiles.

(Ahhh, so sad, I will miss these Tuesdays so much when school starts again next week....boo hoo.... here's wishing you all a one-dot-three-dot piece...do you remember our lesson? Harmony!)

In my typical end of summer rush to clean up my workshop yesterday, I found a pack of scrapbooking frames that I bought at a scrapbooking yard sale for $1. There were at least 50 frames in the pack. They looked like this:

This is actually three pieces, an outside frame, an inside frame and the rectangle with the word on it by My Mind's Eye. I guess you would use the frames to go around pictures. Not me, though! In my use-everything, take it down to the basics and create way of thinking, I took the three frames apart, like this:

And then I cut them up into strips and played with putting the strips back together. Just like QUILTING!

Here are a couple of cards that I came up with after putting the strips back together...


...and...

And, of course, since I was piecing the paper together like a QUILT, I had to sew right onto the card! (I inked these pieces, too.)

Time to create!

a color challenge

I visit Kristine Werner's blog often to see what beautiful cards and scrapbook pages she is creating. She is an amazing artist!

Most weeks she has a color challenge. You have to use the colors that she has chosen from some current advertisement or magazine layout and interpret the colors in a card. Here are the colors this week:

This was a tough group of colors. Basic black, basic gray and white are so austere. This is only my second time working on a color challenge, and I will get better at this! Here is my card:

(Stampin' Up basic black, basic gray, whisper white, apricot appeal, SU stamp set Stitched Exotics, basic gray ink, clear embossing powder, brass embossing template, thickers stickers)

Go out and create!

domino delight

Played dominos all afternoon with my friends J, G, S, P and BB. We {used to} play penochle....now, with six of us, we have taken to dominos. And we are FIERCE about it! Who knew that dominos could be so fun?

Thanks to P and S for an amazing lunch and to everyone for the great camaraderie and competition. Hanging out with you all has been the highlight of my summer!

Here is another card I made for my mom, who is still recovering:

(Stampin' Up pale plum and perfect plum, prima flowers, SU fire brad,

the swirl is a Quickkutz die that I cut with my Cuttlebug)

Time to create!

spooky railroad bridge & romance

Sunday was a fine day!

Stan and I took J to her week-long TIGS camp in North Jersey near the Delaware Water Gap. We went the LONG way there, having headed up the NJ turnpike only to find that it was definitely the LONG {wrong} way to go. We made the best of it and arrived in plenty of time.

The way back was WONDERFUL. Just Stan and I. On an adventure. Like old times. We took the LONG way home, too, cruising a tiny little road along the Delaware River from the Delaware Water Gap down....sometimes it didn't even look like a road, but a driveway through someone's property...

It was wonderful to spend quiet together time this way. We didn't even listen to the radio, just talked and watched the river, the railroad tracks, the canals..at one point there was a railroad bridge that we road under, and even though the RR tracks had been abandoned years ago, there was an old, rusty train...lots of cars, including a caboose and a tender...on the tracks just sitting there, not moving. This was in a rather remote area, and it was kind of spooky...

Ahh, the adventures! We went again to Bull's Island, a state park and campground 10 miles south of Frenchtown and 7 miles north of Lambertville that we had camped with the girls several times. It is a WONDERFUL park and campground, with the Delaware River running on one side (complete with weir dam for swimming and entertainment) and the very beginning of the Delaware-Raritan Canal on the other side, and a walking-only, foot bridge over to Pennsylvania.

For us it is a rather romantic spot, and we walked around the campground {holding hands}, out to the point to watch the river and the boats and the people tubing...then around to the various sites that we have camped. It was great!

Here is a card I made last week with a very old Stampin' Up set lent by Ethel:

I used the stamp set to piece the image.

And here's a scrapbook page I have been working on:

The photo doesn't look very good in this picture of the scrapbook page, but in real life, the picture kind of jumps out at you on the page...

I stenciled this page quite a bit with paint and ink, there is a LOT of sewing, along the curvy lines on the left, around the photo especially, and I cut out the letters by hand. Here's to you, Mom and Dad! {Get well soon, Mom!}

Off for more adventures!

a little bit of this and a little bit of that

So much to do for all the areas of my life! And yet, creating something...anything...still drives it all...last night I was making decorations for my classroom. I also spent a couple of hours making cool tags to hang on the baskets in the closet in my classroom. Cool tags for pencils, red pens, bingo chips, highlighters, crayons, etc....baskets that I have always used to keep my supplies handy and organized. Now they will have cool, pretty, colorful tags hanging from them! I predict that every time I open the closet door to get something...I will smile!

Here are a couple of cards I made to send to my mom, who is recuperating from foot surgery (again). To make her ooh and ahhh,

This is a very elegant card (in my opinion) using all Stampin' Up materials perfect plum & pale plum cardstock and inks. The ribbon is Stampin' Up, too. The stamps are Stitched Exotics (background) and Fabulous Flowers (flower). Everything is clear embossed, which gives it a lovely, elegant, shine. (Thank you, Kristine Werner, for bringing me back to clear embossing powder...you inspired this card!) I used the NEW scalloped border punch (it's cool & easy...thank goodness no more corner rounder edges).

To make her smile,

I was just playing around with some miscellaneous products on my desk. This is miscellaneous silver cardstock that I cut out using a Scenic Route chipboard as a stencil, Stampin' Up's Tagger's Dozen word stamp, scalloped border punch, brilliant blue designer paper (now retired) and white organdy ribbon, and miscellaneous adhesive rhinestones.

{ I apologize for the picture not being very good. I am working on my picture-taking!}

This card makes me smile, and I think it will make my mom, too! (Love you, Mom!)

Time to create!

a terrific Tuesday!

What a great day! A little work in the morning and friends/lunch/games all afternoon! We met at Sandy's house today. S, J, G, P, BB and I had an amazing lunch then several hours of competitive dominos! Yes, dominos can be competitive and involve lots of strategy (especially when you're playing with P!)


(These are the days that I will recall in Jan. and Feb. when getting up and out of the house early is cold and and wet and sloshy, and being in school is so difficult.)


On another note, here is a card I made for my friend Lyn's birthday. She loves the beach more than any other place. Lyn, this one's for you!

(I love the balance of the three images. The flip flops are a diecut from a scrapbook store. I used my Cuttlebug to cut out the letters. The asterisk image is from an old Stampin' Up! stamp set in my collection. It says Happy Birthday inside.)

Make it a great day!

wind in my hair!

I went sailing yesterday with Stan and Wayne. It was glorious! The weather was spectacular...we had enough wind to keep us moving, sometimes briskly. It was lovely!

Here is a card I made last week. It's simple, quick and elegant. I've been experimenting with layers of inks...versamark, ink matching the cardstock, darker inks...

a whirlwind day!

What a day! Geri and I had a ball at the CK Convention. We each bought a couple of bags of goodies to use in our scrapbooking and card-making. Yeah! My goal was to buy a couple of Cuttlebug folders (I got one of the ones I've been looking for!), a refill of brown Stazon ink (couldn't find it) and to make as many make-it-take-its as possible to learn something new. I didn't learn anything new today, but I enjoyed it very much!





Then I've been reading the Stampin' Up! blogs about convention, and there is lots of news! Lots of new stamps, new punches, a new die cut machine in collaboration with Sizzix, exclusive dies for the die cut machine, and lots, lots more!





Today's photo is of my summer centerpiece for the dining room table. I love decorating my tables every couple of weeks and using a variety of materials that I find in nature or yard sales, make, buy at craft stores....definitely these centerpieces are always eclectic! Stan loves this one especially...because he loves his sailboat so much!

Life is certainly good!

scrapbooking too!

Today my friend Geri and I are going to the CK Scrapbook Convention

at the Valley Forge Convention Center in King of Prussia, PA. To celebrate, here is a scrapbook page that I've been working on.

This paper is BEAUTIFUL! I apologize, but I don't remember whose paper it is. I found it in a local scrapbook store. I cut the letters free-hand, the buttons are from my stash. The sunburst is from Quickkutz. This is my first ever Quickkutz piece, and I used my Cuttlebug to cut it.

I embossed the dots under the picture with my crop-a-dile, and then I inked over them.

Thanks for looking! Have a great day!

playing with my stuff again!

I've been watching the blogs about Stampin Up!'s new catalogue. To help me be patient waiting for the new stamps and accessories, I've been playing with my stuff. Off to play more!

Welcome to my blog!

Welcome to my blog! On this site I hope to show some of the beautiful cards and scrapbook pages that I am creating. Thanks for looking!