Wandering in my garden

Today I was trying to get some pictures of cards in natural light for my Stampin Up blog. So I trekked out into my garden. I was finally able to get a good picture, but while I was out there, I shot a few pictures of my garden.


The first is of Cheyenne's blueberry bush. We bought it a few years ago, and it took forever to get it into the ground. When we finally did, it looked barely more then a stick with a couple of leaves. Last year we were able to get a few blueberries. This year it looks like it may be more successful. Here is one little cluster of berries. We had it covered with bird netting to keep the birds off the berries, but as you can see, it has gotten too tall for that. These are above the netting. My Lilly. I bought these years ago from Gardens etc (or something like that) they were called Lilies for naturalization. Whatever that means. I don't know exactly what kind of lilies these are, but they sure are pretty! I have a nice little cluster of them in our backyard.

Wandering in my garden - part two

If you look closely you can see a little brown praying mantis. This little guy was hiding in my grass next to my pond. He is only about an inch long. And wasn't letting me get close enough to get a good picture of him. Ah my goldfish! They weren't being very cooperative today either. They were at the surface when I first walked to the pond, but dove so I couldn't get a good picture. I got these guys at a local pet shop. They were feeder goldfish when I bought them. 10 for $2! they were about an inch long when we first got them. Now most of them are over 6 inches long. They are now spending their third summer in the pond. This winter was the first that I left them outside, and they did pretty well.

Here is my Water Lilies. No blooms yet this summer. Last year I got the very first bloom. I saw it, and thought I'd wait for the sun to come out to get the picture, and the next day, it was gone. :( I will get a picture of it this year though!

My fountain. It's adjustable, but yo have to watch windy days, because the water likes to spray right out of the pond! I can't tell you how many times we have come out to less then a couple of inches left in the bottom!

You can barely see the orange that are the fish underneath!

Wandering in my flowers- part three

Part three of my flowers. I never have luck posting a lot of pictures all at once!

My Hydrangea. The first year it has this many blooms! This one is in the back yard.
My Mums. This one has been in our front flower bed for a number of years, and still looks pretty.

My Daisies. This is one of two plants of our Daisy plants in one of our front flower beds. (The other flowerbed is just sad) This one has been in a number of years as well. The other Daisy plant isn't doing so well. We have a couple of blooms.

Psst..wanna see something COOL???

Would you like to sneak a peek at the new colors Stampin Up will be offering in the new catalog??? Hop on over to my Stampin Up blog found here:

http://ginathorntonstampinup.blogspot.com/

The colors are pictured there!

Forgive the ugly rug! :(

My Ballerina

Here she is! I was able to snap a shot of her singing and dancing in her rehearsal for this year's recital. They danced to "If I could Talk to the Animals" for their ballet number. She also is taking tap. Sadly this may be her last year in Dance. She just doesn't seem as into it this year. She has said she doesn't want to do it anymore. But she is so good at the Recitals. She kept pointing to a mark on the floor during rehearsal and the Instructor was telling them to line up in the center. After they danced she said "Cheyenne are you Center?" She said yes, and the Instructor said "You were right I am sorry. You were in the right spot then." Last year the other girls wanted her to move over but she stayed right on her mark, and wouldn't budge. She was right on her mark again! The funny thing is, they do all of their rehearsals in the Dance Studio, and only one on stage. They don't go out onto the stage before their number, so how does she know where she is supposed to be??? I know they mark the stage, but apparently their were a number of marks on the stage.

I was on this SAME stage many moons ago. Their recital is in my old high school. I was in the Choir in High School.

I hope she continues with dance, but as I have said since the beginning I am not going to push her to do it. If she says she is done, she is. But oh how I would love her to be a Prima Ballerina!

EEKS Look what I found in my Craft Room...

LOL Yup it is my floor! I haven't seen it in weeks!!! I have been busy Unmounting some of my Retired Stampin Up sets, since I am running out of room to store them. David thinks I should get rid of them...Could you imagine the horror??? So I have been unmounting and putting them in CD cases to free up some space. I now have some empty drawers!!! Yeah me! I wonder how many more stamps I could get if I unmounted all of my Non-Stampin Up sets????????

INCHIES!!!!!!

OK so I jumped on the bandwagon for inchies. But I haven't gone crazy over them as of yet. I needed to make cards for December's Addicted to Cardmaking swap that I host on my favorite message board. And yes I did say December. I am a little bit ahead! Aren't you proud of me??? So I used the "Wild about you" stamp set from Stampin Up. And I stamped all of the cute little critters out. Then I grabbed my cutter and cut them all out to 1 x 1. I know what you are thinking. No I don't have a 1" punch. I have looked through all of my punches, and I have every size BUT 1"!!!! So that is now on my list of things to purchase!

Anyway.....I stamped and cut out the animals. Then I punched out a slew of the black Scallop squares using my SU Scalloped Square punch. (Perfect size for matting the 1" squares by the way!) Then I ran the brown through my embossing machine, tore the edges and put them all together.

A few things that I learned from this card.

1. It really is a pain to try to stamp out the images and then eyeballed it to cut the squares. That was a pain!!!! Get a punch if you are going to be making inchies!!!
2. If you are going to do a torn edge on something that you run through an embossing machine, do it AFTER you emboss. Unfortunately it doesn't give a nice torn edge look as if it wasn't embossed, but I ended up trying to line them up with the edge of the folder so the torn edge didn't have embossing, and that gave me lines, so I just ended up tearing them again!
3. I tend to make things more difficult then they need to be.

Second card for a teacher

This is the second set of cards we made for Cheyenne's teacher. We CASED the idea from my Upline Claire Lawrence. But Cheyenne wanted to make it "her own". She decided she didn't want as much of the red to show, and so we changed that. I think that it looks a little too white, but it is what she wanted, so I went ahead and let her express her creativity. We went a little crazy with all of the flowers! This uses the "Fifth Avenue Floral" set from Stampin' Up. We also used SU's Real Red and Pixie Pink Classic inks. All other supplies are non-Stampin' Up.

She is proud of the card, and that is all that matters right?

Cards for a Teacher

Cheyenne and I wanted to make something special for her Kindergarten teacher for such a great year. I had made cards like this before, but I guess I never took pictures of them. Anyway Cheyenne liked them and wanted to make them for her teacher. So I rolled out the image using my Stampin Up "So Swirly" Jumbo roller (which by the way is retiring in June! :( Sad about that!) Then we added the blue border, and added that to the red card. We didn't know what her teacher's favorite color was, but figured you couldn't go wrong with red white and blue! The close up shows the little beads that Cheyenne had the job of sticking on! Those little guys are tiny! There were two sizes, this one is the bigger of the two. She did a pretty good job with it though!

I am such a goofball!!!!

I always wondered why there was no Spell Check on the blogs. Duh, turns out there IS!!! Open your eyes Gina and see the little abc with the check mark? That is spell check! Sometimes my blindness for the obvious amazes me!!!!!!!

So for all of those other posts with misspelled words, please forgive me! I will be spell checking form here on out!

Thanks you and please forgive me!

WOW another award????

This must be my lucky month! I got another reward! My friend Crystal from: http://creationsofmyheart.blogspot.com/ sent it to me! I am super flattered by BOTH awards! Thank you so much! Now hopefully I am doing this right!
Thanks for sending me the award! I am SUPER glad that we met, and can chat about so much!!
Here is what I have to do:
1: Thank the person who gave me the award and link to their blog (check!)
2: List 10 honest things about myself:

1. I love creating! I wish I had more creative juices at times, but I do what I can!


2. I wish I had a higher tolerance sometimes. I get frustrated too often, and don't know a way to vent without blowing up.


3. I wish that I could provide a better living arrangement for my family. Mind you it is better then how I grew up, but I still wish I could do more.


4. I am absolutely addicted to Rubber Stamps! AND I would NEVER tell my husband that! I may have a few too many....no maybe not!!!!


5. The same goes for ribbons and patterned paper. I could probably go for many years on what I already have here in my home. LOL but I won't!!


6. I spend too much time on the computer, and not enough doing housework. But I heard that housework is bad for your health so....


7. More than a hand full of people have called me a Smart Ass. That offends a lot of people, but I am proud to say that I am one! Same goes for that word that rhymes with "Witch"!


8. I do not like the way I look. I haven't for more then half of my life. I would love to change, but lack the will power, and motivation. Surgery is too drastic, and too many horror stories about the after effects of medicines. Truth be told I like to eat. I am only going to live once, so I might as well enjoy the food while I am here. And so I guess I won't change...


9. I don't believe in Fairy Tales. I have never known anyone to love someone the way they do in the stories I heard growing up. Maybe there is love like that out there, but I haven't found it. Don't get me wrong, I love David, but there just is no Happily Ever After. Sorry.


10. I have very few friends outside of the Internet. I used to have friends, but I just got tired of the fakeness of some of them. Friends that thought I should turn my back on my family and take their side. Friends that got married, and/or moved away. There are times that I really miss my friends though. I miss cookouts, and hanging out, and going to the movies, or the mall, or just for rides in the car. I miss having them to talk to. I don't miss the petty stuff though. I wish I had someone around that I could call when the kids are driving me nuts! Or just to vent. It's tough not having someone to talk to.

And now that this has turned totally negative...on to the next step...

.
Then I also have to:
Put the award on my blog(check!)
Pick 7 people to give the award to:

1. Eileen at http://www.blondcrafter.blogspot.com/


2. Sue at http://dream67646.blogspot.com/


3. Albert at http://agoscraftomonium.blogspot.com/2008_11_09_archive.html


4. Terri at http://puggledaisy.blogspot.com/


5. Karel at http://karelj.blogspot.com/


6. Laurinda at http://lulus-creations.blogspot.com/


7. Diane at http://lostgrl16.blogspot.com/

Wow that was a lot harder than you would think! Picking only 7 blogs out of so many! That was harder then the being honest part!

Thanks again Crystal and to the recipients, enjoy! :)

Aw shucks - thanks Eileen!!!!

My good friend, Eileen, sent me little "award" for my blog. The first ever! I always see them on people's blogs, and I am very flattered that she has sent this one to me. Take a look at it over there on the side bar. I am going to add it here to....if I can!

Thanks again Eileen! :)