More is More

It’s time once again for the Bible Verse Challenge – well…it’s actually a day late.  Thanks for your patience this month.  You can read Challenge details on SCS by clicking here – we’d love to have you join us any time.  The idea is to make a card or page each month featuring a different Bible verse for memorization and meditation/prayer so that at the end of the year you have a completed project either for yourself or for a gift.  I am making 5″ x 3 3/8″ journaling cards to fit into a Provo Craft mini top-loading tin.

Here’s my card for this month.

The verses I chose this month are Colossians 2:6-8

6  So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, 7  rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

 8  See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

Our worship pastor, Joe Jacobson, preached a message on this portion of scripture (and the following verses) last Sunday.  In my sermon notes I wrote: 

• everything you have learned of Jesus – live in this way – checking ourselves daily against God’s Word. 
• rooted, built up, established – God is doing this for us. Look to God and thank Him with overflowing gratitude
• be convinced ONLY of God’s Word.  Satan does not use the obvious – he uses the subtle – the little things to try to drag us away from walking in the Word.

It’s so easy, I think, to get caught up in the ideas of the world – deceptive philosophy.  So easy to accept ideas (and even sin) that are just flat wrong just because our society has accepted them as the *norm*.  These verses are such an important reminder to me to constantly be checking everything against God’s Word!

 The idea of being *rooted* immediately brought to mind a strong tree and I was thrilled to discover that this image from Lovely as a Tree would fit perfectly on my card.  I stamped the tree directly on the River Rock panel and watercolored it with watercolor crayons.  Then I cut around it with a fingertip craft knife purchased from Taylored Expressions.  It was a lot easier for me to control than a regular craft knife.  I also masked the tree with eclipse tape and stamped the Weathered Background with Close to Cocoa ink.  Then I just slipped in my verse which was printed on vellum with my computer from www.Biblegateway.com .  The tree was then completely covered with Crystal Effects, which doesn’t really show in the photo but looks very cool in person.  I added photo corners and brads and the tab and ribbons.

I’m anxious to see what verses and projects the other Scripture Chicks have chosen/created this month.  Let’s go check them out!

Lori

Taylor

Angel

Nancy

If you are participating be sure to use keyword BVC08 when you upload to the SCS gallery and be sure to check later in the week to see what everyone has uploaded this month – click here.

Thanks for stopping by.

WooHoo!

The new season of Ice Road Truckers starts tomorrow night!

We arrived home last night from a wonderful trip up the coast to Santa Barbara – one of our all-time favorite vacation destinations.  On this trip we saw parrots, ostriches, emus, miniature horses, squirrels, dolphins, turtles and lots and lots of dogs!  And we never even made it over to the zoo!

We left home Tuesday morning and stayed three nights at the fabulous Cheshire Cat B&B.  This was our 5th or 6th time staying at the Cheshire Cat and our first opportunity to meet the gracious owners Jack and Christine.  I can’t recommend this B&B highly enough.  Whether you’re an avid B&B fan or have never given one a try, you’ll love the Cheshire Cat if you have a chance to stay there!  This trip we chose the Tweedledee room and I think it might just be my favorite yet.

On our way to SB we like to stop in Summerland for lunch at the Summerland Beach Cafe (and lucky us –   it was Burger Madness Tuesday!) and at The Menagerie (parrot store and sanctuary).  There are so many birds being cared for at The Menagerie and they do such a teriffic job.  One particular bird captured our hearts this time – a Moluccan Cockatoo named Doodles.  Doodles had been plucking his feathers to the point of mutilating his own chest (Cockatoos are known for doing this).  He was abandoned at the SB Zoo with a note on his cage that said “Please help me.  Doodles”  The staff at the Menagerie keeps him in a little kevlar lined t-shirt (peach to match his feathers) so he cannot continue to hurt himself and he is doing well.  We asked to take him out and hold him and we even went back on our way home to cuddle him some more. He’s such a sweetie!  You can see that he has torn holes in the t-shirt and is needing a new one, but he can’t get through the kevlar to his chest.  (click on any thumbnail below to see it larger.)

Somehow our intention of going wine tasting on Wednesday ended up being more of a zoological adventure – LOL – starting with Ostrich Land where we fed ostriches and emus.

They tell you to hold the feeding pan with both hands so the ostriches don’t take it away from you.  Ummm…yeah…those huge birds are kinda scary!  Oh and it was super windy too…I felt like I was getting beat up by the wind at that point.  From there we went to the miniature horse ranch.  We had been there before – such a beautiful place and so fun to see the amazing little horses.  There were LOTS of babies (foals?) this time.  Here’s one who was a little unhappy because they took his momma to be groomed, so Curt was trying to comfort her. 

We stopped along the highway at a Vista Point to take a few pictures of the coastline and we were very fortunate to see some dolphins frolicking.  Unfortunately I only had my small camera with me so we weren’t able to get any good pics of them.  It’s funny, although I’ve never really been a *beach person* I cannot imagine living anywhere where I didn’t have access to the coastline.  There’s just something so soothing about it….something comforting in the fact that I can get to the *edge* and look out.

The next day we had lunch right on the pier at The Harbor Restaurant.  I was brave and tried a Lobster Monte Cristo.  Oh my heavens was that ever yummy!  It was so wonderful to sit a table right by a window and look out at the ocean and the marina.

I also wanted to get up to the beautiful rose gardens situated right across the street from the old Santa Barbara Mission.

We packed a lot of stuff in this trip and believe it or not we actually spent a fair amount of time just relaxing with books and magazines too.  Although the Cheshire Cat does have free wi-fi, there was some unknown glitch and for most of the trip we had no internet connection or e-mail despite traveling with two laptops.  Honestly it was a blessing to be *unplugged* for awhile.  It may take me a couple of days to get back in the swing of things.

Thanks for stopping by!

I didn’t think I’d get to play Taylor’s Challenge this week as we were getting ready for a little vacation (I’ll share more about that later), but when I saw the sketch I just HAD to make time to get a card done.  I need to make this post quick so please hop over to Taylor’s blog to get all the challenge details, find out how you can play along and what you could win, and to get links to all the Cupcake Girls’ samples!

There’s actually no stamping *GASP* on this card, but I love it anyway.

Card size is 3.25″ x 6.5″ to fit in a SU open ended envie. Card base is Pretty in Pink with a layer of Chocolate Chip and the bold elegant designer paper is by One Heart One Mind.  The sentiment and the focal image are rub-ons from the SU set Eastern Elegance.  There’s a ton of bling on this card – all Kaiser Crafts light pink self stick rhinestones.  You get a ton of each size in a pack so I didn’t feel bad using a bunch on this card.  I also used rub-ons to decorate the inside of the card.  This was a pretty quick card.  I’m loving this layout and hoping to get a chance to do more with it in a few days.

Happy Friday and thanks for stopping by!

Last Friday night I got to attend part of a sweet 16 party – scroll down a couple of posts for the photos.  Deanna is such a sweetheart – I wanted to put together a little gift basket for her.  When I got her photos developed I put them in a little album for her and I also made up a card kit for her to make thank you cards or just note cards with.  I included these two samples in the kit.

These are very simple easily reproducible (is that even a word?) cards.  I cut all the pieces for her and gave her some ribbon and a stamp set as well and she can change them up any way she’d like.  I packaged the card kit in a Stampin’ Up! plastic clamshell stamp storage box – I forgot to take a photo of the completed kit – and put that along with the stamp set and the photo album in a cute pink tin I had picked up at Easter time in the Target Dollar Spot.

I needed to make her birthday card in a bit of a hurry so I made this *scrappy* card with Junkitz designer paper and primas.

Just a quick, fun, bright card!  I hope you’re having a great week.  Remember the Divine Design Bible Verse Challenge is coming up this weekend on the 8th.  Get your verse ready to upload!  Thanks for stopping by.

Thank you to everyone who took time to leave a message on my last post to my BIL Craig.  He was really touched by everything you said and in case you haven’t seen it, he responded in the comments section as well – please take a peek.  He set me straight on a few details (I got my info from Curt *wink*).  Oh and Craig…while we’re setting the record straight….there’s NO “e” in my name! 

ETA:  I just got word that Craig did indeed WIN Best of Show!!!  Congrats Craigo!!!!!!!!!!!

I promised to share the card I made for the bridal shower on Saturday.  I had originally planned to make the bride a cupcake tin similar to the one I made my friend Brenda for Christmas, but when it came right down to it I just wasn’t feelin’ it on Friday.  So in the end I let myself off the hook and decided to just go to Hallmark and buy a gift bag (because none of the dozens in my closet were *quite right* ).  I looked momentarily at the matching enclosure cards and quickly put them down knowing I would suffer a brain aneurism if I gave a store bought card.  The bag I chose was beautiful and the idea for the matching card came to mind immediately.  The bag was a heavy vellum with white flowers/vines all over it and a white ribbon band and sparkly heart.  The wedding colors are turquoise and navy, so I bought some turquoise tissue for the bag knowing it would show through the vellum nicely.  Here’s the gift and card together. 

The shower theme was to fill the bride’s pantry.  I found that out AFTER I had purchased part of the gift so I made it work.  Inside the bag is a Pampered Chef cupcake decorating set (originally intended for the tin), the Cake Doctor Cookbook (my all time favorite) and the Cupcake Doctor Cookbook, and two cake mixes.

Here’s a close up of the card.

I used glossy white for the cardbase.  Vellum is layered over the base.  On the vellum I stamped the Petals background in white craft ink and heat embossed with irridescent ice ep.  The heart from Always was embossed the same way on glossy white and cut out and mounted on the vellum.  Between the vellum and the glossy I adhered a small piece of designer paper.  The finishing touches are some white organdy ribbon and some generic Michael’s dew drops.  I cut off the bottom of the front of the card with scallop scissors and adhered the dew drops along the bottom of the inside of the card.  It was a little hard to photograph since it didn’t want to stay closed.

My friend Lisa was one of the shower hostesses and she wrote a beautiful devotional for the bride.  I don’t think I’ve ever cried at a bridal shower before, but there wasn’t a dry eye in the house by the time she finished.  Please click here if you’d like to read an encouraging word about marriage – a wonderful reminder to those of us who’ve been married for awhile as well!  Leave Lisa a comment on her blog and let her know I sent you.

ETA:  I apologize to those of you who had trouble with the link I posted.  My friend had purged some stuff off her blog and the link I had was no good.  I did ask her to re-post and the link should now be active!  I’ve had a lot of requests for this.  Enjoy!

Thanks for stopping by.

Last night we attended an art show where Curt’s brother Craig was selected to represent Cal State Fullerton with his watercolor entitled “Georgia on My Mind”.  We were so proud of him!  He just recently finished his very first watercolor class.  We always knew he had artistsic talent, but wow…take a look….

 Click the thumbnail to see it larger.   The painting is a portrait of Georgia O’Keefe done in watercolor.  And to top it off Craig also designed and made the frame!  Pretty cool, huh?

 It’s a large piece.  Here’s a family photo to give you a size perspective.

On the left are Craig (my Brother-in-law), Lill (my Sister-in-Law) and Britta (my niece).  On the right are Uncle Jack (Curt’s dad’s brother) and me and Curt. In the middle is Georgia!  They had ballots for Best of Show and of course we all voted for Craig.  We honestly all thought his really was the best piece in the show after looking at all the entries.  I’m anxious to hear who won.  If you’d like to leave a comment here for Craig about what you think of his piece, please do.  I know he’d be tickled to hear from my stamping (and non-stamping) friends.  🙂

Before the show we had a yummy dinner with friends Dave & Dana and Mark & Liz who also attended the show with us.  We went to Belmont Brewing Company and sat outside next to the outdoor fireplace with an awesome view of the beach and harbor.  Great food, great company, the best view…what else can you ask for?

After church today, I’m looking forward to lunch with some special friends.  It’s a jam-packed weekend – all good stuff.  Hope you are enjoying your weekend as well – thanks much for spending a few minutes of it with me!