More is More

Yes!  He finally called and 20 years ago today I was positively giddy over our 2nd First Date last night. 

For those of you have hung in over the past two weeks – thanks – it’s been fun to have you along for the ride.  For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ll want to start with my post on March 11th and read in order from there.  Last night we celebrated the 20th Anniversary of our 2nd First Date (we’ve always called it that since our first date was a double date and a blind date – it was the 2nd date that was really the start of everything.)  Last night wasn’t quite as poetic as the celebration of our 20th Blind Date-iversary two weeks ago since Curt is just getting over the flu and the restaurant we originally ate in recently closed.  Despite all that it was a special evening to reminisce and laugh a lot and realize how lucky and how glad I am that he did finally call!

And this time I was interested – very interested.  I wasn’t going on this date without a new outfit.  1989.  Remember shopping at The Limited?  Oh how I loved The Limited!  Black leggings, black mock turtle neck and a teal jacket with shoulder pads (the same color as the top I wore last night).  I was a skin-and-bones size 8.  My best friend Ruth lent me silver jewelry.  Long red hair curled with hot rollers – Caruso steam rollers to be exact! Uh-huh….I was pretty hot if I do say so myslef.  LOL!

On that night 20 years ago he picked me up and we drove down to Long Beach Marina along Ocean Blvd in his brand new red convertible Chrysler LeBaron.  He gave me a cute little blue stuffed animal that his friends’ son had won in a machine in a pizza parlor and had told Curt to give to me.  (Apparantly his friends were excited about the date too – LOL)  I thought that was so sweet and so cute!  The restaurant we were going to was Simon & Seafort’s, so I named the little guy Simon.  I still have him…somewhere.  I desperately searched for him yesterday to take him to dinner last night (goofy I know) and almost had a melt-down when I couldn’t find him.  I found lots of other stuff in the process, but not Simon.  I know he’s here somewhere!

That night when we got to restaurant and pulled in the parking structure, Curt took the ticket from the little machine and promptly lost it into the dashboard of his car.  No kidding – gone.  We never found it in all the years we owned that car and that night he had to just pay the maximum. The restaurant was across the water from the Queen Mary with a gorgeous view of the harbor. 

Curt always gives me a hard time about the fact that I reached over and took food off his plate without asking.  He thought it was weird.  I just tell him that I wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t like him so much!  LOL!  It was a habit I had…er…have.  Last night we went to another seafood restaurant in that same area with a view of the Queen Mary as you see in this photo.

That night after dinner we headed over to the Queen Mary to hang out in the Observation Lounge and listen to a 1940’s group called The Goils.  We walked around the ship and looked in the windows of all the closed up shops.  In one window I pointed out a beautiful glass rose which Curt later went back to the Queen Mary (during the Long Beach Grand Prix when all the streest are blocked no less) and bought to give me at my house warming party just a week or two later.  That night it was already dark when we got to the beach area, but last night we were able to enjoy the incredible sunset.

We had our first kiss that night and really we were a couple from that evening forward.  Marcia and Bill (who fixed us up) later told us they knew we would never break up because we are both a couple of “clip-on bears” (remember those little clip-on bears?  All my friends called me that because I was such a hugger!) AND because we were both people who got broken up with, but rarely did the breaking up (sad, huh?)  So they figured we’d be stuck with each other.  *snort*

Seeing each other was a little tough since Curt worked regular engineer day hours and I worked crazy dance studio night hours, but we managed.  We spent all of our weekend time together and Curt would usually stay up waaaaay late one night a week to see me after work – as in I rushed out and got home by 10:30 pm when he was normally asleep before 10.

Two years after we met, on Good Friday we got engaged.  I had helped to pick out the ring (you don’t think I’m the type to leave that to chance, do you?) so I knew the question was coming soon.  He wanted to plan some big romantic event, but I got impatient…very very impatient (hey I was 29!) and kind of forced his hand…wanting to show off my ring at a gathering we were having at my house after church service that night.  We got married in November.  I can honestly say that 1991 was the best year of my life!

I’m so thankful for a man who loves me so much, who has stuck with me through the good, the bad and the ugly (and there’s been plenty of all 3) and who still makes me laugh every single day!  If you haven’t guessed – he’s a keeper!

***I love you Sweetheart and I’m confident that the next 20 years will be even better than the last 20 years!!***

-Jami

PS  All that being said…no…he will NEVER live down not calling me for those first 10 days!  LOL!!!

It’s such a sad day at our house.  Last night our little Love Bird, Parsley, passed away.  She was over 15 years old (well over the life expectancy of a Love Bird).  It’s hit us both pretty hard – harder than we thought it would actually.  We could see this coming yesterday and we held her most of the afternoon and evening.

Here is a photo taken Easter ’08 – she’s sitting in Curt’s shirt pocket.

We got her back in ’93 from a neighbor who was a kindergarten teacher.  She had been given a pair of love birds for her classroom and they had a clutch of chicks.  We had only had Beaker (our Red Fronted Macaw) for about 6 months at that point and weren’t in the market for another bird, but we thought she would be good companionship for my great-aunt who lived alone.  Our plan was to keep Parsley for 3 months till Christmas and during that time Curt would work on getting her hand-tamed since she was a parent raised bird.  Well, Curt has an incredible way with birds – they pretty much all love him and Parsley was no exception.  She fell in love with Curt immediately and really wanted no one else.  We did give her to my aunt that Christmas, but Parsley bit her on about the 3rd or 4th day and my aunt who was in her 70’s was done with her.  She then went to live with my parents where she unfortunately continued to enforce her reputation as a biter.  She needed someone to work with her.  So she made her way back to our house.  And she really was a very good little girl.

She always loved Curt and was happy to be back with him and over time she came to love me too.  She loved to sit on the couch with either of us and although she would not allow us to pet her, she did like for Curt to cover her with his whole hand.  She was also very much in love with R.B. our HUGE Green Wing Macaw.  His play tree is just behind the couch and she would often want to climb to the back of the couch to get to him. In fact last night when she was so weak she could barely stand at one point she got really squirmy and started to try to climb from Curt’s chest to the back of the couch.  At first we could figure out what she was doing and then we realized she wanted to be closer to R.B. – so Curt took her over and held her next to him.  R.B. never quite understood how a bird could be so small and we were always careful not to let Parsley too close to him.  

She didn’t talk like our big birds, but she always whistled at bedtime (something my Dad taught her when she lived with them) and she had the sweetest little chirp.

Here are a couple of photos of her Christmas ’07 when she was *helping me* wrap gifts.

She was a good little bird and we will miss her a lot!

  I had planned to stamp the monthly DDA Challenge last night to post this morning, but I just had no heart for stamping yesterday.  I’m sure you understand.

-Jami

I hope you had a truly wonderful Christmas!  Ours was great and we are exhausted!  Today is our beloved Annual Pajama Day – the day where we eat a huge breakfast and read and watch movies all day and never get out of our PJ’s – so this is just a super quick post to share the card I made for Taylor’s sketch this week.  (In fact I’m typing this up Thursday night as I do not expect to be awake yet when this post goes live!) If you’d like to play along click here to hop over to Taylor’s blog for all the details on TECC48.

Both my Mom and my uncle have birthdays the week after Christmas and we usually do their gifts on Christmas Eve while we’re all together, so I needed  birthday cards for both of them.  Taylor’s sketch was just the jumping off point I needed for my uncle’s card.  I had already wrapped my uncle’s gift in this geometric patterned wrapping paper and I thought it would be fun to make his card to match by using some of the paper instead of dp.  The image is by Elzybells and I colored it with Copic markers. Cardstock colors are Baja, Chocolate and Kiwi.  The chocolate strip was run through my cuttlebug and the button is a Stampin’ Up! clear button with paper adhered to it with Crystal Effects and some red hemp tied in a knot.  I wanted to keep the embellishments to a minimum since this needed to remain masculine.

You can click the thumbnails to see them larger to see the cards and gifts together:

 Since Taylor’s sketch worked so well for my uncle’s card I decided to use this week’s SCS Sketch Challenge for my mom’s card.  Her gift was wrapped in this fun floral paper so I decided to use it on the card as well. 

Stamps are SU Wild About You and Cute Converse plus an oval from Memory Box.  I used Versamagic Chalk inks.  Cardstock colors are Cool Caribbean, Real Red,  Black.  Ribbon is from my stash and 3 black Kaiser Craft pearls finish off the card.

Oh and just so you know – I had absolutely no intention of posting both of these cards today.  I had this post all typed up and ready to go when I suddenly realized I had posted the WRONG SKETCH CARD…D’OH!…did I mention that I’m completely exhausted?  Anyway rather than start from scratch I just added the correct card for Taylor’s sketch.

Let’s see what the rest of the Cupcake Crew has cooked up:

Have a fabulous Friday – thanks for stopping by.

Just a very quick late night post to say “Howdy y’all” from Texas.  🙂

I’ll have more to share later – so much fun here – but I couldn’t wait to share a couple of photos from today.  We spent the day with Megan (Curt’s cousin) and her hubby Gary at their farm in Weatherford.  Chickens, horses, miniature horses, ducks, dogs, canaries and a Lorikeet – this city-girl was in heaven.  Even better than all that is that Megan is a professional photographer (see www.meganparks.com ) and she offered to take our portraits on the farm.  It was cold and very windy today, so after taking great care to pick out outfits for our pictures we ended up wearing Megan and Gary’s coats in most of the shots.  LOL!

Megan was super sweet to very quickly pick out a couple of her favorite shots and give them to me with minimal editing so I could share here right away.  Here I am with Drifter, an adorable miniature stallion wearing a bejeweled bridle.  I had so much fun with him for these shots.

And here’s one of Curt and me. 

Megan is a wonderfully talented photographer and so great to work with.  Wow – maybe it was just the *diva* in me coming out, but I loved the photo shoot.  Curt could hardly believe that prissy-me just plopped down in the field wherever Meg told me to!  (Oh, and she’s an awesome cook too!)  If you’re in the DFW area and would like to schedule a photo shoot I can highly recommend her!!!

Bedtime for me – way past actually.  Thanks for stopping by.  I’ll have more soon.

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!

Just a quick post before I venture out to finish up the last minute errands and grocery shopping.  Curt and I have been wrapping presents all morning and our sweet little Love Bird Parsley has been helping.

Parsley is 14 years old which is a little old lady for sure for a Love Bird, but she acts no different than she did as a youngster really.  She loves to bite and shred paper and had a ball helping Curt with the wrapping.

She certainly doesn’t get as much press as the big birds, Macaws Beaker and R.B., but we do love her!

While I’m here I’ll also share this jumbo binder clip I made awhile back.  When I saw this idea on SCS I just had to try it.  This was one of the ideas I had for everyone in my office before I decided to make the Reindeer Food.  These would make great holders for a photo or a special card, or as placecards at dinner.  The really do need the ribbon tied tight around the top to keep the clips tight enough to hold something.  I’m thinking I might make a variation for Valentine’s Day.  Easy peasy quick project.

I hope you are enjoying this weekend before Christmas.  I fear there are more things to do  on my list than I can actually accomplish, but we’ll see.  Breathe in..breathe out…remain calm…focus on the Reason for the Season…exude joy…that’s the ideal…continue to pray for calm and focus…

Merry Christmas!!!  🙂  Thanks for stopping by amid the holiday rush!