Pictures from My Yard

Tonight is the last round of the current stamp camp and we are already in the planning stages of the next two. We've got the dates and we are working out all the details. If anyone lives near Shelby Twp, MI and would like to come to one of our stamp camps leave me a comment and I will forward you the announcements and details.

Here are some pictures I took in my yard last Friday while the kids were riding bikes.

I have the most beautiful day lilies. There is a man who lives not too far from me that has gardens full of them and he does botany stuff and comes up with new ones all the time. I would love to get more from him but they are kind of expensive and my front yard has these, and my back yard is pretty over grown so I need to take out stuff before I can put more in.






This is a weed in my yard. Isn't it pretty?














This is lichen or whatever you call it growing on my tree. Exciting, huh? I was playing with my camera.

My 100th blog post!

And I just noticed that my blog is over a year old. Oops! Hadn't really paid attention to that.

Here is another tin. Ok last one for a little bit. I was on a tin kick. This tin I made for my convention buddy who is in Denver right now having a great time I am sure. One of these days I will get to go again. In the meantime I have to settle for regional seminars.

Her tin contained a pack of the new Theater Ribbon Originals. Oh they looked yummy! And I need to get myself some of those.

Changing it up!

Decided to change things up a little today. What do you think?

I also swore I had something to show you saved on my computer, but I can't find it... Hmmm.
I guess I will share these pics from our camping trip over the 4th of July. My oldest learned how to ride without her training wheels and these were some of the pictures I took during the training sessions.
Daddy helping Carter on the bike.














Maddie and Carter in their helmets.
The big push off...














Maddie coming down the hill and running over her brother who is standing next to me and I am too busy trying to take the picture that I don't see what is about to happen.

Finally!

...it has happened to me, right in front of my face, my something something can describe it.




Just kidding. I started typing and then that song popped into my head.





Any way...I am finally posting something. I have a few things I could post and just don't know which one to pick...Umm let's go with the stamp camp items I mentioned before. Last night was round two of the camp and these were my projects.



The first was a one sheet box - you can find a tutorial by Beate Johns on SCS under resources or I can just give you the link... Here

I used Baroque Motifs. They did three boxes. One in Purely Pomagranate, one in Wild Wasabi, and one in Blue Bayou. Some had a tone on tone background and some had the white as you can see here. Also did some different things with the main image. I like to change up some minor details and give them options at the camp.

The next project was a Gate Fold card. Beate also did a tutorial for this on her blog. Hers is square and mine is regular card size 5.5 x 4.25. To do that you score at 2.75 inches from each end of the 11 X 4.25 piece of cardstock. The colors on this are Certainly Celery, So Saffron and Cameo Coral.

I used Zoofari. We did some with the markers and some with the pastels and blender pens. I like the look of the pastels and blender pens better and went back and added some shadows/dirt to this one and my other samples after I took the picture. I'll have to post and updated version next week when I get my samples back so you can see the difference.

I'm back and have been running ever since!

We came home on Sunday and then had to get back to work on Monday. Spent Monday night trying to catch up on laundry and put the camping stuff away and then Tuesday night had to run to the grocery store and wash all the kids and prep for the stamp camp we had last night.

The stamp camp went pretty good. It was the 1st of 3 sessions of the Fabulous Folds camp. My upline and I do them together. I do 2 different cards/projects (usually they make 3 of the same design) and she does 2. So they have a total of 12 items when they leave. We usually have 3 sessions because she can only fit so many people in the stamping area at once and the demand is high enough that we fill up 3 nights of the same camp (mostly her customers - I have 1). Is this all making sense? The fee for the camp varies depending on the projects. Usually around $18-$24. The more expensive camps we have done were for the tins and the alphabet one we did with name frames and such, I think. I'm bad at the $ end of it. My upline usually figures out the pricing and I say ok sounds good to me.

So my projects were a gate fold card and a one sheet box. And my upline took on the triangle tri-fold and the magic slider card. We try to balance each other out. So her projects were more challenging and mine relatively simple. I don't have any pictures yet as I was switching cards and hadn't made my boxes until midnight the night before the 1st camp! I might be able to snap some pics tonight....

The 1st order of duty today is to buy my son a new bike. He had inherited a 12 inch bike from his cousin and was really getting into riding it instead of the trike because his big sister kind of learned to ride with out training wheels this past weekend. And also he got pulled over by the cops on his trike in the campground. The officer put on his lights and told Carter he needed to slow down, he was going too fast. Carter's response was "I can't go dat fast on my bike". So I think he was ready for a bigger bike. Anyway... while I was stamping last night the kids were home with dad and riding bikes. My sister in law had put the bike together with the front wheel on backwards so my dear husband told Carter he needed to fix it. He proceeded to take the bike apart and couldn't get it back together so Carter is rather upset with him right now.

Oh yeah - I got tagged twice in the last week or so. 1st by Emily W. Her site is on my list over to the right of Blogs I Like to Browse. And the second was from Robin. I have to add her to my list still. I recently came across her blog... I met her at a stampin' get together near Lansing a few months ago. She is a really sweet, funny and talented gal. At any rate I'm supposed to tell you 7 things, tag 7 others, etc. I'll tell you 7 things, but this time I am feeling lazy and don't want to tag anyone, besides it seems that most people have been tagged already recently. Let's see...what didn't I tell you a couple months ago when I was tagged.

1. My favorite accessory is ribbon. I want to buy ALL of the new ribbon in the SU catalog.
2. I don't know that I have a favorite SU color. I like quite a few of them and I go through different combos quite often. The last card I made uses Certainly Celery, Cameo Coral, and So Saffron.
3. I placed a small order from the new catalog yesterday and wasn't able to pick a stamp set from my wish list to add to the order so I didn't get one. I figured I would wait until I could put in a bigger order and just get them all at once. I'm bad.
4. Continuation of #3... I think I may get a different stamp set that I didn't even have on my list. I liked it, but I am trying to be more selective so it wasn't list worthy. I see that a lot of other people have gotten it/are getting it and now I want it too. Priceless.
5. What did I get on my small order? Well, I had to get more cardstock for the stamp camp, because I misfigured and wasted a bunch trying to get my original card plan to work out. But the exciting stuff was the pomegranate double stitched ribbon, kraft taffeta ribbon, bashful blue grosgrain, and the scallop circle punch. I also got the Theater Ribbon Originals, but they are a gift for my convention buddy who really likes green. And she is in the Army, you think she would be sick of it!
6. I have a box of contraband stamps (non-SU) most of which have never been inked. I had to have them... I have a couple of SU stamps that haven't been inked, but I am getting better about that. I force myself to use them for camps.
7. Some of the stamp sets on my wish list are: Simple Snowman, Big on Christmas, Wonderful Favorites, and Sanded.

Sorry It Took Me so Long!

Here is my altered tin ensemble. You can click on the pic to make it bigger and see it in all its glory! This is going to a pal from a yahoo group I am in. I hope she likes it. I did the tin and matching post-it note holder, pin, notepad and pen, paper clip things, little tin with magents, and a picture frame all with the petals & paisley papers. I'm also throwing in some stuff for her to alter and some envelopes.

Well I've got to go finish packing for our annual 4th of July trip. Happy 4th to everyone out there!