Country Roads Stamping

Happy Monday!

Well, as you read this, I am hopefully sitting in Disney World enjoying an all expense paid vacation from Stampin UP!  I had prepared several posts and I'm hoping to possibly include a few from Disney World with pictures so my grandsons can see me there.  they needed to be just a bit older to enjoy this trip. 

So today's post is the last  of the summer smooch promotion I will show until June because this stamp set and designer paper will not be available after today until June 1.  I copied this one from my friend Ann Mastaci (and I may have just butchered her name in the spelling) who lives in my 2nd favorite state - Hawaii.  I loved her card and nearly duplicated it:

The stamp set and the designer special are both from the Summer Smooches promotion.  Every card I make with this set is super simple but looks cute because it just looks like a summer card!  That's it for today but wait until you see what I have for Tuesday!  Have a great day!

Saturday with Steve

Well, again, I hesitate to post today's post - have argued with my husband over this but he insisted because this is Steve - what he does and what he enjoys. sigh.  You that know him have to know what is coming.  This past week turkey season came in - (oh yes, now you know where I'm headed) and may I just insert here that Steve LOVES retirement during turkey season because he knows if he can't go one day - he can go another - he doesn't have to ask off work!  My husband loves to turkey hunt and I can hear turkeys nearly every morning gobbling at daybreak.  If it thunders during the afternoon - I usually hear a turkey gobble then too. Kind of funny.  Anyway, he headed out and yep, he got a turkey.  Let me also add that we do not waste any meat - ever - we use it and cook it and it is much healthier than anything you could buy at the store.  So here he is proudly posing with his gobbler:

and even as I type this, we've already cooked some of the meat and he is eating it for his sandwiches - notice I said HE - not SHE.  I'm not much of a fan of most wild meats.  Certainly not the dark meat in a turkey, but he loves it so I fix it. 

Now you also need to know that you don't just walk into the woods and the turkeys "show up".  Nope - well, not usually anyway.  He sits in a blind:

Here he is peeking into it:

To all of us women, we'd simply call this a "tent" because that is basically what it is.  Then he watches out the windows and calls, making sounds like either hens or gobblers to entice the gobblers in.  He even has a decoy sit up in front of the blind:

and this is what it looks like to him inside the blind:

Now this is funny, at least to me - when we went up to take this blind down, because he got one turkey on Monday and another on Friday, so that is all he can get, so the blind came down, look what we saw running into the woods:

Two turkeys!  and they were both gobblers!  So I hurried and grabbed my camera before they got out of sight.  So see, there are still turkeys in the woods!  Then Friday afternoon he decided we needed to be eating some goodies from the garden:

So before I cleaned these obviously, he brought in radishes, onions and asparagus and fresh lettuce!  I suppose I should have got out the lettuce and placed it so the picture is more pleasing - oh well, the food was pleasing so just trust me on that!  Hope you have a great Saturday yourselves - I will be running in a race with my friend, Michele Pochick and we hope to have pictures of that for next week's Saturday with Steve - only it will be Kathy!!!

It's Friday

Whew - all the way to Friday and one last card featuring the Summer smooch paper - no more -

This one is pretty bright but most summer cards should look nice and bright and the greeting has been embossed with wild wasabi embossing powder and that particular word set is retiring from the catalog - which brings to our attention one more thing - I hope to feature a lot of cards next week that are on the retiring list.  I'll start off the week with my swap for Disney and then finish with retiring stamp sets the rest of the week.  Once they are gone - that's it!  Have a great week-end - at this point, not sure that I will have a Saturday with Steve post - we may actually have to take a couple of Saturdays off.  so have a good week-end. 

Summer Smooch Stencil

One more card with the summer smooch stencil.  Do you notice anything wrong with this card?  Curious as to how observant you are with this card.  Did not catch this until I got ready to take a picture of the card.

I once again stenciled the image using a sponge and daffodil delight with old olive inks.  Just did this on regular white cardstock.  Ran the sheet of designer paper throught the big shot with the lattice folder, to give it extra texture and added one of the fabric brads.  Can you see the mistake with the card? 

Mixed Bunch

Already to Wednesday - today I want to share another stamp set, with matching punch that is in the Occasions Mini - I have no clue if the stamp set or the matching punch will make it in the big catalog in June - so if this is something you like - you'd better get it quickly - note those fabric brads in the center of the flowers - yep you guessed it - Summer Smooch product and only available during April:

Have a great Wednesday!

Rues De Fleurs

Another set that will soon disappear is this set Rues De Fleurs - this is in the Occasions Mini and I am sad to say that I've used this very little.  It is one of those "fussy" stamps that are hard for me to use - so I just let them set while I try to think of things to do with it!!!  I kept this one simple and clean and added the daffodil seam binding, which is available in the Summer Smooch products and matches this designer paper, which is also available in the Occasions Mini which is called Attic Boutique.  This has the victorian feel to it. 

My favorite thing on this card - the brads - I just love the vintage brads, they are my favorite thing to use.  That's all today!

Snow? Seriously?

Well, as I type this, it is Sunday evening late and there is a forecast of 3 - 5 inches of snow forecasted here for Monday - really?!  It is April 23 for Pete's Sake!  So I'm really hoping that as you read this on Monday - there are no snowflakes falling from the sky, just rain.  However, with that thought in mind, if the forecasters are correct - it could get nasty here and bring down electric lines and ofcourse, that means no power here in the boonies - so I'm prepping most of the week so that I know I have posts ready and that probably won't make a lot of difference because people in this area won't have electric either!  So concentrating on one thing at a time - today's post!

Last week I received this card in the mail from my friend, Becky Evans from Virginia and then one week later I received another one, also featuring the Summer Smooches product - only it was using My Digital Studio - she knows I'm not much for MDS so she probably figured she'd try to convince me that I'd like one of the cards!  it is cute - I'll give her that much but I still like the layers and the "input" of our regular hand crafted cards.

So just a quick reminder - the sneak peek promotion of the Summer Smooches is only available until April 30 - the fabric brads and the stencil, which will be featured again this week here, are ONLY available during the month of April and then they are gone.  That's all for the day today - enjoy your day - irregardless of the weather. 

Saturday with Steve

So what do you know about Wall of Waters?  My husband kept talking about this and I figured he was talking about some water fall somewhere - well, not really, but I didn't know what it was.  Here's what it looks like:

These are actually plastic tubes that fit around a plant, and the tubes are filled with water - these serve as an "insulator" and keep the plants safe in cooler temperatures, meaning we can sit out plants earlier:

This is an "early girl" tomato plant that we have in the ground already.  Last year when Steve tried this, we had tomatoes by the 4th of July - that is the earliest ever for us.  So we are trying again this year.  I'll have to report in when we get our first tomato - this will stay on the plant until it is full grown.  He will take it down and then re-use this again next year.  Steve has all kinds of plants in his garden all ready - he is enjoying this retirement by planting, planting, planting!!  Remember a few Saturdays ago when I showed you the sweet potatoes?  Well, here's what they look like now with all their sprouts.

After we planted these, Steve attended some Master Gardener program and found out that a sweet potato only has ONE end that you can get to produce shoots - unlike a regular white potato - so he pulled the other ends out of the "dirt" and now all of our sweet potatoes are in the saw dust container.  He now has black plastic over a section of the garden to "warm" the soil so he can plant these in about two more weeks.  They like warm soil, so the black plastic will absorb more heat and make the soil warmer in that area.  Who knew?  We love sweet potatoes so hope this works - even tried sweet potato soup - and don't knock it until you try it - quite tasty. 

Then on the funny side - our wrens on the back porch flew this week - what an event - there were four of the little fellows and even though I'm not a wren, and don't really know this stuff, I believe she might have "jumped the gun" on these little guys - they just couldn't fly - they survived for at least two days - didn't hear any of them today so I don't know if they made it or not - they were all around the yard and we had to leave the garage door open one night because one of them decided to "hide" in the garage.  Here's the last one on the ground - he just flew out of the birdhouse on the porch and wondered where in the world he was supposed to go now?

He's a little fella!  Had to wait until he hopped out in the shade so you could actually see him - I went out and picked him up and moved him out with his other siblings because he just wasn't getting the whole idea of "flying"  He was a great hopper though.  I didn't want the dogs or the chickens to see him here by himself because I didn't know what any of them would do.  Here's hoping they all made it - once they leave our yard - can't help them anymore.  Watching now for the nuthatches as I can hear them - not sure if the bluebirds made it or not - those cold days might have hurt them.  That's all for today's Saturday with Steve - have a great day. 

Just one more - promise

Sorry - I just had to do one more summer smooch - once I got started with this stencil It was hard to stop!  I'm really said that this is not going to be available longer because I really like this.  Thanks for the comments yesterday - here's one more - thought it was going to be a reject because I used log cabin smooch to spritz over the stencil, but then after it dried, I liked it so layered it up and added the fabric brads - also available only this month.

I got too close to the card when I first sprayed but then it just looked like a primitive style card and yep - I liked the look.  Once again - the Summer Smooch designer paper too.  Love love love this stuff and I'm working on something for a class that is super cute using the designer paper- hope to get it done this week-end-so I can put pictures up of it.  Check back here Monday, I should have it up by then.  Have pictures ready for Saturday with Steve - hope to get those up and ready for tomorrow.  Whatever the case - have a great week-end. 

Another Summer Smooch stencil

I must first let those "early birds" know that it is difficult to get my husband off the new computer at night now.  He's in here watching all these bee videos that he has been waiting to view when the new computer arrived and listening to West Virginia sports spots - I hear more of Coach Huggins voice in this house than most anyone else!  So I am late with my post - simply because I gave up waiting and went upstairs to read.  He's out fishing today so I may have to finish up tomorrow's post real early!

So today - I tried the opposite image using the stencil and this feels a little busy but I don't know how else it would actually look anyway if you saw a bunch of flowers in a field:

I used a sponge dauber and a sponge to fill in the areas with color.  Then added the butterfly embosslit because with all this color - it needed butterflies.  I think I might try this again, just focusing on one area to stencil in.  I shifted the stencil just a little and then sponged in contrasting inks on a few of the images to give it a little pop. 

Then let me show you what my husband brought in yesterday:

I mentioned when my sister in law was in that I thought it was romantic and thoughtful if Steve brought me in flowers from our yard, as opposed to picking up something from the florist - so he obviously listened and brought me in some lilacs.  I'd much rather have these than any carnations or roses from the florist!  Ofcourse it is wreaking havoc with my allergies - but that's okay - I'll deal with that ;)  Have a great day.