Guess where I am?

Recognize it? 

I'm out of town attending a seminar at Disney's Contemporary Hotel.  I can just feel the pity pouring out of all of you.......

See you when I get back!

Just Magnolia # 2

This weeks challenge at Just Magnolia was to make a card using Pink and Green and a Magolia image.  Pink being one of my favorite colors, that wasn't too much of a stretch for me and it gave me the chance to use my favorite Basic Grey "Sultry" collection. Good times!!  So much of a good time in fact, that I made two cards!  See...... 

I didn't realize the light was so bad on these pictures until I uploaded them.   I don't know what happened.  Not being at all camera savvy, I always leave the setting on automatic which usually gives me decent results, but not so much this time.  Even editing with Picasa didn't really help....

Silver Wedding

It is quite mind boggling to me that I am old enough to have friends who are old enough to have been married for 25 years, but I do. They are not my mothers friends, they are mine! My sister was their bridesmaid, so it cannot be denied. I hope they like this card - a perfect excuse to use these darling Hanglar and Stanglar images, although I probably should have made the keys silver instead of gold! Didn't think about that until right now as I was posting this - dang it! Oh well, too late now!

Check this out......

.......... doing a little blurfing before bed and lookee what I found. This is what I call Blog Candy, people - and on top of that, her blog is eye candy too with lots of fabby cards. I do like to check out what the European girls are doing and I just found another to add to my list of faves. You can find Miss Debbie here . Enjoy all that calorie free goodness!

Lost Weekend

.......ever had one of those weekends where nothing goes quite as you plan it? That's exactly the kind of weekend I am experiencing. I won't share all the excrutiating details, but it involves a home improvement project which was "easy to install" which has involved several trips to Home Depot, consumed all day and culminated in DH and I having a slight disagreement and if all that wasn't enough, said project centered around the AC unit which is now, not working. Yes folks, Florida at the end of April with no AC. It could be worse, it could be Florida at the end of July with no AC, but needless to say, my enthusiasm for creating went by the wayside.......
One of the (few) highspots of the weekend was the movie I watched last night "Slumdog Millionaire" Highly deserving of an Oscar IMHO. If you haven't seen it, I do recommend it - one word of warning though, I did find it built up slowly so stick with it, because it is completely worth it!

Just Magnolia

Do you like Magnolia images? Have you checked out the new challenge blog "Just Magnolia"?

I have a nice little collection of Magnolia images so I plan to play along on a regular basis so each of them will get a little more ink time.
I'm enjoying the sketch challenges. They really make me think about the layout of a card and how it will all come together.
I'm generally a bit hap hazard when it comes to card making -I color the image before I choose the paper and then wonder why I can't get things to look as thought they match. I don't plan the embellishments either, and then get frustrated because I don't have the right colors. How much easier it is if you do a bit of forward planning.... which applies to many things, I suppose. So there you have it, not only a card, but a deep philisophical thought for the day!

April Vintage Stamp

This little guy is one of the images in TAC's Vintage Stamp Of the Month for April sent to me by my friend and upline Chris Franco. 

I think he would be just perfect for a Mother's Day card from a little boy and made the card with that in mind. 

Anyone who knows me knows my cards usually have lots of layers and embellishments.  Do you think this counts as Clean and Simple?  We had a Clean and Simple challenge for Oceans 11, the blogging group I am part of, which I never did. 

Do yourself a favor and check out their blogs (all linked to the right) - we have a very talented bunch of crafters in there.

How about this ladies - would it count??

Lost In Austen

Stamping and such isn't all I do. I also love to read and very much enjoy movies of all kinds (other than gratuitous violence, not so much for those types of movies) I recently found Netflix,something which I'm sure every other movie lover on the planet found forever ago. Something else I will confess is that I am a very accomplished procrastinator....... and this disease seeps into all parts of my life. I don't just put off nasty things, I even put off things I might enjoy. Like joining Netflix. Which leads me neatly back to my original subject of a movie I had never heard of which Netflix suggested for me, that I LOVED. I lost 3 hours of my life to this movie last Friday night and don't regret a second of it. If you like Jane Austen, even a little bit, you will love Lost In Austen. And you didn't even have to join Netflix to get the recommendation......... you're welcome!

Blogger ate my post....

..... I had a nice long post all done with pretty pictures and flyers all embedded and now it's gone and I can't get it to come back.

I have retyped the text but I can't get the pretty Angel Company flyers to come back up so I am giving up in disgust.

All the details on the wonderful promotions can be found here , including the Grab Bags, the April Promotion and the very cute Stamps Of The Month, but the biggest news of all ( I think) is that the 2009 discontinued list is out - and all the stamps on it are 25% off! I would link to it on the The Angel Company website, but I can't find it there - so, if anyone reading this would like a copy, please just shoot me an e-mail and I will happily send you a copy. There are tons and tons of stamps on it which makes me very excited about the new catalog but first, I must see which of the retiring stamps I need - because you know there will be some.....

Once Upon A Time

........there was a princess who lived in a castle in the clouds. Another sheet of DP from the Once Upon A Time stack which sat neglected and unloved in my paper stash until this weekend when this idea popped in to my head. I fiddled with the layour for much longer than you would believe, given that there are only two stamped images and one embellishment on there but I quite like how it came out.

And I know just the little princess to send it to.

The colored image is from Magnolia and the sentiments are from The Angel Company's "Yield To The Princess" set.
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Sugar Bowl Challenge # 8

I hope you all had a fabulous Easter. Mine rushed by in a blur of trying to catch up with my life after being sick for two weeks, but I did carve out some time to do a little stamping...

Here are my cards for the latest challenge over on the Sugar Bowl.

For some weird reason, I can't get Blogger to load these in the order I want... this top card was actually made last, and takes a few more liberties with the actual sketch provided than the bottom card, but I had such a good time creating my first card that I went ahead and did another.

I have already confessed my love for Basic Grey paper and the "Sultry" collection, but Scarlet's Letter was where it all really began for me. I love those papers so much that I have framed a couple of them (really, honestly) I like the grungy gorjussness of it and feel it goes perfectly with my Gorjuss Girl.

"Wish" uses paper from my all time favorite Angel Company collection (sadly discontinued) called Khamalat, as well as some from the DCWV Once Upon A Time stack, which I bought sight unseen because I was sure I would love it. Not so much, actually......b ut I like it in this card - and it inspired another which I will post later this week.

(I know, I can feel your excitement from here - hard to contain yourselves, eh?)

Both cards feature stamps from Sugar Nellie , a company dear to my heart, both because they are Scottish and because they have some of the coolest rubber images around (IMHO)

Spring Flowers

Because of this nasty sinus infection I've picked up (again!!) I haven't stamped in forever but I made this a couple of weeks ago, while in the grips of the Hanglar and Stanglar fever and I didn't post it. Wasn't that lucky?

The paper is Basic Grey "Sultry" collection which is one of my all time favorite BG paper. I actually had to buy two of the 6 x 6 pads to allow myself to use one. Sad, I know, but what can I tell you..... I bet there are some of you reading this who know just what I mean

I am hoping next week will bring me some more oomph so I can get back to stamping. To make it worse, my Funky Kits order came in (yip, doing great with the whole "not buying any new stuff thing") so I have new rubbah waiting to be inked.

Things learned about blogging....

I have been, and still am, an avid blog reader. I discovered the blogging community on SCS a couple of years ago and started adding my favorites to my computer bookmarks. And from the links of the blogs themselves, I found more blogs which also got added as favorites. Then I found google reader which allowed me to catagorize and keep up with them all with ease, so I added more and more. They are as varied as my interests which are legion! Stamping blogs, cooking blogs, scrapbooking, digital scrapbooking, gardening, crafty, books and some which really defy description and just fit in to the 'other" category. Google reader rocks! But it does make me very lazy about commenting, because I have to actually leave it, load the actual blog and make the comment which I don't take time to do very often.

Now that I blog myself I get why people like comments.... and I do make an effort to do it more, so I am wondering -is there a way to leave comments through google reader that I just don't know about? Any suggestions much appreciated!

I have too many things I want to do and not enough time to do them all in!!! And yet, I keep blurfing and finding more great blogs....