More is More

First I want to wish a HAPPY BIRTHDAY to friends Julia and Chantel who are both celebrating birthdays today!!!

I am just loving the Whipper Snapper Birdies designed by Dirty Dozen Alumni Anna Wight!  You all know what a bird person I am anyway and these are just the CUTEST!  The first one is the same image that Anna has in her blog banner and I made this card for the Color Challenge on SCS this week.  The funny thing I actually thought I had already posted this card here, but I guess I just got it in my SCS gallery. That’s what happenes when I do all this stuff late at night. *eye roll*

The Color Challenge was Kraft Cardstock with Real Red and Basic Black – a really great combo I think!  The birdie was stamped in Palette Hybrid Noir Black ink on Confetti White CS and watercolored with markers scribbled on a CD and an aquapainter.  Sentiment was done with Karen Foster Snap Stamps.  Then I sponged Caramel ink around the edges.  This image was a little too big for my oval punches so I used my Coluzzzle and scallop scissors.  Background was achieved with Aida Cloth in Close to Cocoa and then Soft Swirls in Real Red Craft.  I love double backgrounds – afterall More is More!  Added some ribbon from Jacksonbelle Embellishments and a big red flower rhinestone.

 This next card was for the Ways to Use it Challenge to use uninked rubber.

I started this card with some paper from a Basic Grey 6×6 pad Phoebe from eclectic Paperie. First I chose the pattern at the bottom.  There’s a tiny bit of blue in the pattern so I decided to pull that out for the bird and was happy to find the coordinating solid blue in the pad as well.  The bird was stamped on Confetti White CS and watercolored with Watercolor Crayons.  I scribbled various crayons on a scrap of Confetti to see which colors matched the Phoebe paper best.  In some cases I was quite surprised – for example Garden Green was the best match for the leaves and the for the bird I ended up using a combo of Tempting Turquoise and Not Quite Navy.  I don’t think I had ever used my NQN crayon before, but now I really like it!  The image was cut out using my Coluzzle and the NQN mat was distressed with my SU paper distresser.  I sponged on some Pretty in Pink and doodled with a NQN marker.  The sentiment from Curvy Verses was placed using a Stamp-a-majig (not sure how I ever lived without that thing!). The ric rac is yummy felt and came from Walmart (thanks Pixie!).  The main image is popped up on thick foam tape.  Some brads, primas, stickles and rhinestones finish it off.

Thanks so much for stopping by!  In case I don’t get to post tomorrow – Happy easter!  He is Risen!

WooHoo!!! Check it out – Curt helped me make my very own banner today – TWICE! Yes, I said TWICE! It was quite the interesting process since we recently got Photoshop 5.0 and neither of us knew much about it yet. I was planning to have a banner made professionally and I was showing some to Curt this morning (and commenting how my friend Andee had made her own with some digi scrap stuff) and he asked if I wanted him to help me make a “temporary” one. 5 hours later we were almost done…almost! And then it happened…the electricity went out ever so briefly. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! Do you think we had saved along the way? Of course not! I was crestfallen and ready to give up, but Curt convinced me it would be so much faster the second time around! And of course he was right. It only took about an hour or so the second time. So now I have my very own homemade banner. Pretty cool huh? I’m grinning from ear to ear! Let me know what you think. I might be tweaking it some more – we’ll see.

I have also added Feedblitz subscription service – so please feel free to subscribe if you’d like to get an e-mail whenever I update. Thanks so much for reading. Hope you’re having a great weekend.

I guess the saying for today is…If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!!!

What a fun afternoon we had! Curt and I decided to visit Rancho Los Alamitos. It’s only 10 minutes from our house and Curt had never been there before and I hadn’t been since high school. What amazing history is there! We got to tour the ranch house that was partially built in approximately 1800. We had a fantastic docent and there were only 4 of us on the tour. That is unheard of at any attraction in Southern California. We did see two other small tours going on while we were there. I’ve never seen so few people at a historical site. It was the perfect warm weather to walk through the old gardens and tour the house and barns. There were chickens and HUGE horses and other animals – being a city girl I love getting to see these animals close up like that!

On our way we stopped at our favorite little sandwich place and picked up lunch to eat outdoors there under a Brazillian Pepper tree. I love picnics…even if it’s just a quick sandwich

We learned some wonderful little tidbits of California history, for example how palm trees ended up here in our desert climate. Right around 1920 the Mayors of all the cities up and down the coast decided they needed to change the “Wild West” image of Southern California and came up with the idea of bringing in Date Palms from (I think it was) the Bahamas (or somewhere like that) to transform the area into a “tropical paradise”. I’ve always known the palms weren’t native, but never knew where they came from or why.

The front yard of the house has 2 of the hugest trees I’ve ever seen they are Moreton Fig Trees – I’m standing in front of one for scale. If you live in SoCal and appreciate history I would encourage to take an afternoon to visit Rancho Los Alamitos. It’s free and no reservation is required. The tour might be a bit boring for kids – take them when they are having a special event like California Ranch Day June 10th – but we found the whole experience fascinating!

I’m having touble getting the hyperlink to work so here’s the website if you’d like to check it out:
https://www.rancholosalamitos.com/

I went in the bathroom tonight to take a shower and when I moved the hamper a little lizard scurried out!  Boy did that FREAK ME OUT!  I screamed like crazy and Curt was up and running.  I’m not generally afraid of lizards really, but in the bathroom?  Freak out!  I still can’t figure out how he got in there!!!  Curt caught him and named him Roger *roll eyes* before I made him take him out to the backyard and leave him in a flower bed!

So there are two things in life you can’t avoid…I guess taxes aren’t so bad compared with the other one, huh?  Today was my day to get everything prepped to send to our tax accountant.  It was a dreaded day and almost as bad as I had anticipated.  Last year was a very rough year for my family and for a good part of it I barely kept my Stampin’ Up! Club going.  I would get the order placed and throw the forms in a pile somewhere (or actually multiple piles in multiple places).  Same with receipts and such.  I never printed any reports or tracked anything!  Yikes!  My tax lady is very thorogh and wants everything broken down into very specific categories.  I finally finished everything a little after 10pm tonight and BONUS…I didn’t even cry this year!  Seriously – tax time is one thing that makes me think about giving up being a Stampin’ Up! Demo.  But then when  I see the amount of stamping supplies I was able to get without spending any money…well, I decide to hang in awhile longer. *wink*

Wishing you a breezy prep and a BIG ol’ refund!!!! 🙂

There are times when things just get to you, KWIM?  You know they shouldn’t – logically speaking – but they do anyway.  Last night was one of those times for me.  My feelings were hurt and it was just a really rough evening.  But it is in those times that friendships really have a chance to shine.  I got several supportive phone calls as well as  private messages over at SplitCoastStampers.  And this morning I woke up to even more support from my “computer friends”.   I know it’s hard for some people to understand how I could have “real friends” through the internet, but wow…I could go on and on about the friendships I have been blessed with.

Anyway, I went to work feeling a lot better and determined not to focus on the negative when there are so many wonderful friends to focus on.  Boy was I shocked when a man walked into our office this afternoon with one of the most beautiful (and very “me” ) bouquets I have ever seen.  I could hardly wait to open that little envelope to read the card…and it said “Hugs from your friends”.  Ummmm….WOW!  I still haven’t figured out exactly which friend(s) sent the flowers, although I have some suspicions.  And I really haven’t figured out how they knew my address at work (but that’s a whole other issue – LOL).  So…anybody wanna ‘fess up?  Thank You Thank You for such a wonderful surprise!  I was/am truly BLOWN AWAY!!!  And of course I’d love to know who you are!

What can you do today…even some very small thing…to make someone smile, make someone feel loved, make someone feel a little better about something…what unexpected thing can you do today to let someone know you are so glad to be their friend?

I always feel just a little behind the curve on new trends, but here I am finally starting to Blog!  Being a tech-tard (©JulieHRR) I am a little intimidated, but excited all the same.  Join me on my adventures through stamping, papercrafting and life!