Homemade for the Holidays

Hi everyone! Yup, still alive and kicking. I managed to get all 40 of my handmade xmas cards done plus 20 for my mom. I do have a pic of my mom's which I will post but sadly I was in such a rush to get mine mailed I totally forgot to take a pic. I think I may still have one that is unassembled which I hopefully will get put together because since I have been making cards I do like to keep a chronicle of my cards through the years.

Since I don't have a card I thought I'd share some other homemade stuff that I've been up too over the last week or two, please forgive the nasty pictures because I took them with my phone.

First up these super delish mini tourtiere turnovers. It is a Kraft Canada recipe so it guarantees to be easy....It was a teeny bit time consuming because you have to make and cut the pastry but OH MY, the outcome is SO WORTH THE EFFORT! and if you have a food processor, the pastry will work up really quick and easy. If you are gonna make them....do a double batch because I think the portions are off and I only got 17 or 18 and not the 24 the recipe quotes....AND, they won't last!

 

My next homemade for the holidays are gifts I made for my mom and sister in law....nightgowns. Not just any old nightgown, these are made out of combed cotton batiste which is a DREAM to sleep in and with my little touches of heirloom stiches not only are they comfortable, but a little special too! Almost decadent in a Downton Abbey sort of way. FYI, I have had the pattern for years which is a long discontinued Kwik Sew. 

 

bodice detail

 

hem detail

Lastly, today is Christmas Eve and I typically host my side of the family with a traditional turkey dinner. However, plans changed this year which left my day open so I decided to revive an old Christmas Eve tradition from my childhood. I grew up Polish Catholic and eating meat was a no no on Friday, but ESPECIALLY on Good Friday and Christmas Eve. So every year on Christmas eve we would head over to Baba's where she was busy all day making pierogies. All kinds of them! Potato with white cheddar, yellow cheddar or cottage cheese.Veggie ones with sauerkraut and desert ones with prunes or cherries. And then there was the extra dough that she would just roll thin and boil up for my brother and I.

 

I don't have the stamina that my darling Baba had so I just stuck with two varieties. Potato with yellow cheddar and onion and potato with dry cottage cheese. And I did sort of cheat and made the dough in the kitchen aid stand mixer with the dough hook. This is the fruit of my labour...cheddar cheese on the left, cottage cheese on the right. And in keeping with tradition, all dripping in browned butter.

 

 

 

Finally I want to show you my most fav give that I am giving this year, yet the least expensive. It really doesn't have to be extravagant, and at Christmas I love to share and give some of my favourite things. This year it is a Japanese Salux bath cloth that my BFF Jenny hooked me on to. If you love a loofa, this is loofa feel good times ten! I have very dry itchy skin and bathing myself with this cloth feels euphoric! Ya i'm weird! But I love me a good bath cloth. I paired that up with some handmade soaps that are made by the wife of a guy I work with. These soaps are DIVINE....yes DIVINE! Right now she is just selling them locally but hopefully soon she will have an ETSY store which I will share as soon as it is up. In this gift pack there is also a bath bomb also made by her. Seriously, what girl would NOT love to get this as a gift!

 

 

 

That is it for my homemade holiday edition this year!

 

I wish you all the best this Christmas season and peace and love in the new year.

 

Linda.

 

It has been a while

But I AM alive and well and enjoying my free time. I started on the bedroom reno during a week vacation and got some much needed painting of trim done in the hallway. Do you know HOW MUCH I dislike painting trim. I've got the grasscloth all ready to hang on the focal bedroom wall but then I got sick with a HORRIBLE sinus infection, then came down with a wicked cold that progressed into a mild case of bronchitis. I blame this all on the new found germs that I come in contact with since our office relocated to the mall downtown.

Anyhooo....that along with a major patch job under the bedroom window has put my wallpaper hanging on hold for a bit.

In the meantime hubby and I took a trip to California in September, YES, to follow our guy Dave Matthews and his band. We flew into LA, drove to San Diego and spent a couple nights there to take in the sights of Coronado Island and tour an aircraft carrier. That was WAY COOL! I thought ya, ya...it's a military ship...but so not JUST a military ship....more like a floating city....WAY COOL! We saw Dave in San Diego and the next day we drove back to LA for concert #2. Enroute to our hotel we detoured so I could plant my feet on Rodeo Dr. in Beverly Hills and make a pitt stop at Tiffany's. Then we drove through Hollywood, ate a coney at Pink's and drove down the walk of fame. Concert #2 behind us, the next day we flew to San Francisco for #3. With the concerts done we settled down to spend a few days in San Francisco. It was a busy three days taking in a couple wine tours in Napa, a tour to Muir woods, Sausalito, and Alcatraz and a 5 hour bike tour of some of the city sights. Josh, our bike tour guide only had us bike up two hills so it was doable!

The last two days of our trip was spent in a rented convertible Mustang driving the Pacific Coast Hwy 1 back to LA and our flight home. I was a little freaked at first thinking we would be driving south with cliffs out of my passenger window but I survived and the view was spectacular. I think I could definitely be a west coast girl!!!!!!

When we got home, I spent the next 3 weekends SMASH booking some of my fav photo's and spots we visited....I thought I'd share some with you here....

Graffiti in Clarion Alley....I was in awe of the artwork here!

Rutherford Hill and Mondavi wineries...can you see my happy face there!
Just look at all those barrels of wine!

Our 2012 tour calendar and some pics from the summer.
YES, we stood on the grassy knoll and had our pic taken on the field
of the Dallas Cowboys stadium.

Rodeo Drive and Hollywood



Dave has taken us to some pretty amazing places.

Finally I'll leave you with a some of my fav pics of the coast and our trip.

Muir Woods redwood forest

Alcatraz

That's me, walking the halls of the prison.

Before I go, you might be wondering if I've been colouring...well, I haven't, until this past week when I decided to get my gears going for Christmas so stay around and I'll have something to show you soon!

 

'till next time, Linda!

up UP and AWAY!

Last night I decided to put my girl through the ropes...we BOTH need the exercise...and the ropes for us is a long walk. If you don't know who my girl is, that would be my beloved West Highland Terrier Bessie and her pic is on my side bar. Isn't she just like the cutest girl EVER!

This is one of our first long endurance walks since her second knee surgery back in February. We have done many short walks and lots of sprints (she LOVES to sprint and fetch...that is how she messed up her knees) but no marathons. But last night we were gonna start our marathon training and for us a marathon used to be an hour. With her short (15-20min) walks and sprint 'training' I thought I'd put her to the 1/2 hour test. She was all guns and roses for the first 20 mins and then slowed right down. When we got home after 30 mins she was pretty much 'spent' (as my kids would say). And I have to remember she IS getting older and turned 9 this spring but I'm determined to get her back in tip top shape because she is a happy healthy dog with a lot of years left in her (not to mention TWO new knees!). We are gonna take it slow and steady and hopefully by September we will be back to our hour long walks 2-3 times a week again. So up UP and AWAY we go!

I kinda think that Bessie and I are like Stamping Bella's Ramona and her Teddy taking off on an adventure to exciting new places. New neighborhoods to scout out while keeping tabs on the old familiar ones to see what has changed.

As always I started out on bella's BESTEST paper but I coloured this one primarily with prismacolor pencils and gamsol. However, I did start with a base of some very light shades of copics because I am partial to the rich base of colour I get with them.

After taking the picture I thought ...shoot! ....I forgot the glitter, so just try to imagine this one with glittered clouds okay...because that is where the glitter will go. The one thing that made this card come together so nicely was the fab sketches I had to choose from and that was all the sketch challenges that Stamping Bella has sponsored since the beginning of the year.

Next week our challenge is INK UP THE GIRLS....come on! How freaking easy is that...I can pretty much predict that an Uptown Girl will be in my future!

'till next time...later....Linda

Happy Birthday to ME!

YUP...today is my birthday and I am not at all afraid to say that I am a whopping 53 years old....you know what that means...one year closer to retirement. My g'friend dreaded turning 49 this year and I say...hey it's all good! Another birthday is just a good excuse to get myself something I don't really need. This year I think it is going to be that Singer 160th anniversary sewing machine that Paula talked about here. She sent me a pic and over the weekend I slipped in front of my hubby and said in my sweetest voice....don't you think I need one of these for my birthday? When you throw in the 'B' word how can he possibly say no...not that he ever would...but it just makes the 'game' more fun.

Speaking of the weekend, we were back on 'tour' with Dave Matthews and on the way home we realized we drove around the entire shore line of Lake Erie! We started in Chatham and drove east to Toronto. Dave played to the crowd there for sure belting out all of the fan favourites. Then we headed east crossing into the US in Buffalo, NY en route to Cayahoga Falls, Ohio. A very different crowd there, much older and the set list was very eclectic and so different than the night before. Blossom Music Center is a beautiful venue tucked away in a heavily wooded area. It really is a peaceful place and if I were ever temped to park my butt on the grass somewhere, that would certainly be the place I would do it. From there we headed back to Chatham by way of Detroit! An entire loop of Lake Erie!

In honour of my birthday, it is only fitting that I colour up a birthday card! This is Stamping Bella's Ramona loves cake. Me and cake, not so much...if I'm gonna indulge I'd much rather eat an entire bag of potato chips or some really good keilbasa...yes, I am more salty than sweet.

At the risk of repeating myself, she was stamped on bella's BESTEST paper and coloured with copic markers, topped up with some prismacolor pencils. To make that cake extra yummy, I added some 'icing' with liquid applique. Don't forget about our masculine challenge this week and be sure to keep checking out the sneak peeks over at bloggabella.

As I always do, I'll leave you with a couple pics from the weekend....

Dave rocks Toronto

inside Blossom Music Center - LOVE it...reminds me of an old wooden rollercoaster

Blossom, view from the lawn.

And that's it! For the non-Dave fans...I'll be giving you a break because we don't have another 'date' until he plays DTE in July.

Bench Buddies

Have you been enjoying the little sneak peeks that are going on over at Bloggabella? Well how 'bout you see something done up in colour! This is Belinda and Bernadette, the Bench Buddies!

I am not kidding when I say that one on the left reminds me SO much of my friend Colleen. If you have been around for a while, you might know her as my Vegas partner in crime. And when you're sitting next to her it won't be long before one arm is wrapped around your neck and the other is holding out her camera to snap a picture. Just to prove my point...and you can see she is much better at posing for these shots than I am!

Back to the card, as always I stamped it on bella's BESTEST paper and coloured these gals up with copic markers...a LOT of markers... Then I used pencil for the tufts of grass and shading around the image. You can't really see in the picture, but Colleen loves bling so I added some black spica pen to her belt. Finally some ultra fine flower soft added a bit of texture and colour to the grass.

We all know how Emily likes to surprise us so I'm not exactly sure WHEN these will be available, but you can be sure that once she starts revealing those sneak peeks it won't be long.

On the road again

No card today so if you are here for that you might want to come back in a couple days. However, if you are even remotely interested in my non-crafting adventures you can stick around because this is a TOTAL NON-CRAFTY post.
 

You might recall last week I was taking a hiatus from my blog and that is because hubby and I were 'on tour' with one of our mutual fav bands Dave Matthews. We do have musical interests aside from Dave that don't really cross paths but this is one artist that we both enjoy so we take advantage of it and venture off to cities we might not otherwise visit.

This trip took us to Houston, Dallas, Atlanta and Charlotte NC. Hubby spends a good deal of time working in Houston but this concert was in an area called the Woodlands which is a distance from his office in a beautiful tree lined neighborhood with an outdoor mall...there was even a Tiffany's there which sadly I didn't get to.

 

The first night i met my cousin Vinney, okay, so he is not my cousin but his name is Vinney and we had the best time sitting with him. I will never forget his face and throwing his arms up in the air hugging us when Dave played one of of the crowd favorites. 

While Vinney was younger than us we did meet another couple sitting near us who were more our age and they were from just outside of New Orleans.  He is an engineer by trade but plays drums in a band as a side hobby....obviously Carter is his guy and he never took his binoculars off of him.

 

The next day we head to Dallas for concert #2 and shock of shocks we sat behind the New Orleans couple and ran into cousin Vinney in the crowd.  See, despite what some of my friends might think, we are NOT the only people who 'follow' Dave from concert to concert.

Before heading to concert #3 in Atlanta we spent an extra day in Dallas to take in some sights. First on the list HAD to be the JFK Memorial in the old Texas book depository, the grassy knoll and the spot where JFK was assasinated. Ya, that is hubby standing on the 'x' where Kennedy took the second bullet to the head. I was just over 4yrs old when it happened and although I don't recall the events of the day I do vaguely remember the funeral. The thing that struck me most about the exhibit is how security has changed in the 48 years since his tragic death.

Our second tour of the day was at Cowboy Stadium. Cousin Vinney told me that Dallas was one rich city and if this stadium is any indication of that, he is bang on! This place makes Ford Field in Detroit look like a dump and I thought Ford Field was pretty nice. Of course, that is speaking from someone who does not like football at all...(and even after the tour, I still think that Ford Field is still pretty nice) For any of you Cowboy fans out there you might appreciate this pic of hubby taking the players walk out onto the field. He really liked this pic...must be a guy thing.

Me, I was more smitten with my lace scarf and swarovski studded belt that I purchased at Wild Bill's Western wear

Now we were off to Atlanta. Our flight was delayed due to weather and when we finally got there Hertz rented more cars than they had so another delay. When we finally got to our hotel we were tired and found a pub that we thought we be nice and quiet but it ended up being karaoke night! Free entertainment!

We didn't have much time there but did manage to get to the Georgia Aquarium. The huge aquarium was quite impressive, but overall I think I like the Shedd in Chicago better.

 Finally, I just can't leave without posting a couple of my fav concert pics....see ya in Toronto Dave!

Happy Mother's Day!

Well all you Mom's out there, what did you do today? Me, I putzed around in my yard, harvested more moss, put together a couple cards, cooked supper (yes, a mom's day never ends!) and tended to a nasty bite on the back of my leg behind my knee. I got bit by something yesterday which I think was a mosquito because it itched (but never hurt), and today it is swelling like crazy and it's hot and seeping at the bite mark. I still am pretty sure it was a mosquito because over the past two/three years I have been getting more and more sensitive to mosquito bites....I have several scars on my legs to prove it!

Nasty bugs aside, I want to show you the card I made for my Mom this year. She is a pie baker extraordinaire and when I saw this Karen Lockhart stamp last year I just knew that I had to make it for her.

I kept everything quite simple with no ribbons or bows, just a bit of glitter and the colour was carefully chosen to match her kitchen in warm gold tones. I even added some hand drawn brick to mimic the outside of their house.  All very personalized and I know she loved it! She even pots geraniums on her deck in the summer. Everything about this image just screams everything wonderful about my Mom.

In other 'family' related things...you remember I mentioned I bought iPhones for the family....well this is the card I got from my boys today....too funny! It made giving them those phones all worth it!

Finally, I may (or maybe not) have mentioned that I have been obsessed with moss lately. Well this is what I have been busy doing for the last three weekends...harvesting and transplanting moss! Taking it from the from the front of the house, which will get a makeover in the next few weeks, and moving it to the side of my house between the bricks in the sidewalk. Moss naturally grows there, however the gaps had gotten so large and the lack of soil between them made it impossible to grow moss. So I scraped out all the large pieces of mulch and stone between the bricks, filled it in with soil and transplanted moss bit by bit from the front of the house to the gaps between the bricks. In a short time, with a bit of water and some cool nights I should have a wonderful moss filled brick sidewalk!

Hoping all you ladies out there had as wonderful a Mother's Day as I did, doing the things that make you feel happy and fulfilled!

Gotta love Friday!

Especially when it is a BELLARIFIC FRIDAY!

Last weekend was a chic getaway in Chicago...me along with 6 current and former work gals. Those 3 'former' are lucky retirees and the other 4 of us are retiree-wannabe's. Although I'm sure when I am retired I will have to curb my shopping somewhat....3 pairs of shoes, a couple tops, a sweater, a skirt and a new Return to Tiffany bracelet tapped me out. Oh, not to mention some art supply goodies from Blick's.

With all that I was sure to leave money for food and there are certainly no lack of restaurants there. The best time had was at a fondue place..I think we should have skipped the entree and just eaten cheese appetizers and chocolate deserts...MANY a laugh had in there. We also went to the TOP and stayed in a penthouse condo on State and Grand...can you say GORJUS...it was AMAZING...the view at night was beyond breathtaking. Is it even possible to have too much fun?

Now that I'm back I've had a very busy week at home and work and need to get myself back into some type of normal routine. I did manage to get in just a bit of crafty time for this weeks Bellarific Friday.

This is DAHLIA flower head and I coloured it up with my new KOI WATERCOLOR BRUSH markers that I picked up at the Stamping Bella booth at scrapfest. If you are interested in what they are like, they are more like copics than say Tombows in that they are blendable on paper yet they are easier to blend than copics. Will I give up my copics...NEVER! Will I have fun with my new toys...DEFINITELY!

I'd also like to welcome a new Babe to the house, Katarina Menzies. I'm sure you know her because she has been around for a while and it seems I've been stalking her since the day I started stamping. I also LOVE that she dabbles in everything... tombows, reinkers, copics, pencils, you name and she's used it and churns out a MASTERPIECE! I'm soooooo thrilled to be on a team with her.

Next week is EASY PEASY! ....sew it, or faux it....hmmmm....since I usually sew, I just may try to faux it next week for a real challenge.

see ya soon....I have another image coloured up here and it will make it onto a card very soon!

Late Bellarific Friday...AGAIN!

Earlier in the week I thought I'd write my post Friday morning, because I didn't have to go to work! YAY! Then yesterday I woke up and thought it was Saturday....I didn't even bother to turn on the TV to watch the Today show because I thought it was Saturday. So I do my regular Saturday things and putz around the house and once it warmed up outside I spent the rest of the day cleaning up in the yard.

By the time I realized it was Friday I was immersed in trimming back an overgrown dogwood shrub and was too tired to do anything else. So early to bed and early to rise (I've been up since 6) and I have another whole day ahead of me. The agenda...

• coffee!
• a trip to the garden center
• plant some Heather
• mail cards to Emily (so PAULAbella doesn't take over Scrapfest)
• put some ribs on the smoker
• make a quick trip to Costco (maybe..or maybe hubby will go alone!)
• COLOUR!!!!

Before I get to that I DO have a card I made for yesterday, and I see that Emily was having some probs uploading pics to her blog so this is your FIRST viewing! I made this card for Baby B, aka Derek, aka Peanut, aka Spinky. We called him peanut as a baby because he (they) were 5wks preemie and Derek had that preemie body, big belly, skinny limbs etc. Then somehow, and I wish I could remember why, we started calling him Spinky/The Spink. I wish I would have written down how we came to that because there was a reason which I cannot remember for the life of me.

Derek loved dogs and in one of his school primers he wrote that he wanted to be a vet, but didn't want to work on poodles because he didn't like them. It had something to do with the way the groomed them with all those poodle puffs. Heeehee! So I thought an appropriate card for him would be Stamping Bella's Woofin' it up by Christy Croll.

I coloured it up with about 5 million copic markers, okay, not that many....but LOTS and took a stab at writing Bessie's name on there. She is our crazy West Highland White Terrier. The paper is from Kaiser Craft and the tickets were out of the same pack. On one of them I wrote the date of his birthday.

On the inside I again used some labels from the paper pack and paired it up with another one of my River City sentiments and the arrow from Stamping Bella's journal your art out GRUNGY SET..

Now for some Babe news. We have a new girl on the block, Natasha Kara...she is new to the blogging world and you REALLY MUST check out her blog HERE. She has a wonderful style, very Tim-ish, which I love and I CANNOT wait to see what else she has to share with us.

Next week our challenge is all about showers...APRIL SHOWERS....or baby showers, wedding showers, raindrops....whatever....use your imagination. Pick up a sketch out there if you are sketch challenged and play along.

Whew, that was long winded! See, that's what happens when I'm gone for a few days.

Happy Birthday Fella's

Our twin boys turn 22 today! YIKES....that makes me ancient...but on the other hand, I think it also makes me one year closer to retirement...so I'm totally okay with that! I'll slow down the clock when the clock is entirely mine and I no longer have to share it with a day job.

This is Baby A's card, otherwise know to the fam as Alex, or in his early months we called him Hootch because he was a BIG TIME drooler! For those who don't know, Hootch was a movie from the late 80j's or early 90's and one of the stars of the show was an oversize drooling dog...sorry Alex!

I pulled this image out of my pile of 'already stamped' stuff and I think it is an art impressions, but I can't be totally sure. Of course I coloured him with copics, but used LOTS of pencils for shading.

He looks kind of mean, but he really isn't, he is just old, and wise... and these are the words of wisdom he has to say...(sentiment compliments of River City Rubber works)

Pretty good advice for a university student, don't you think!

If you want to see Baby B's card, aka Derek, aka Peanut, aka Spinky, you'll have to come back Friday because I rolled that one into our Bellarific Friday sketch challenge this week! A girl just has to multitask sometimes!

Linda.

Birthday Cards Today

Hi everyone, today is my Mom's birthday and Dad celebrated his a couple days ago so I thought I'd share the birthday cards I made for them.

This set is called Sweet Violets from Flourishes. I bought it a while ago with Mom in mind and finally got to it. I coloured it with copics and pencils and paired it up with cosmo cricket paper. The frame for the flowers was created with a stamping up corner punch. I nice simple way to 'use up' empty corners. I know mom loves glitter, but this was so pretty on it's own I avoided the temptation.

Next up, Dad's card. We all know it is difficult to make those manly cards so if I can't find something to colour I turn to my stash of 'specialty papers'. These aren't your run of the mill scrapbook papers, many are either hand made, or have the look of hand made and of course my treasured Magenta Maruyama netting got on there. LOVE that stuff!

For this one I used peel off's and they look like nothing on the sheet when you buy them, but oh how exciting they become when you put them on paper because the combination of the polished and matte finish is something you can't get with regular heat embossing. (fyi...I used Cartiera Magnani 140lb cold pressed paper which surprisingly has a very fine texture for a cold pressed paper and takes to this technique very well).

Then I painted them in using a combination of tombow markers, sakura sparkle pens and US Artquest Stargazer's. FYI...all of these products were purchased at Pickle and with the exception of the magenta mesh I think they are all still around. Maybe we can get Kim to bring some of those FAB magenta papers back in stock {hint, hint}. Actually, I just popped over to their blog and OMG...such amazing things arriving that I think I'll have to swing by there this afternoon with my big wallet. I'm in need of some inspiration.

That's it for today, Happy Birthday Mom and Dad!
I'm off to get crafty.

New Beginnings

Last week after 27 years of going to work at the same office 5mins (and one street light) from my house, my department has been relocated to the Downtown Mall...all of the IS and IT departments from the Union Gas Head Office have been relocated to the mall, all 170 of us were moved over two weekends. It's strange and different, but not horrible...just VERY different. I feel like we have invaded their space.

No longer can i saunter into the cafeteria and ask one of the gals to make me a 'sunrise on an english muffin'. Or have one of Brandon's fab soups for lunch if I didn't want to go home...(at HO we always had AT LEAST 2 soup of the days to choose from and no matter what you chose it was guaranteed to be good). Now I have no impromptu sunrise sandwiches to enjoy and I have to drive through NO LESS than 5 street lights to get to the office.  My commute from my house to my desk has stretched from 6mins to between 10 and 13 mins....which probably doesn't seem like a lot to someone who lives in a big city, but for me, this has doubled my travel time. And since I go home for lunch most days that equates to approx 25mins out of my day where I could be doing other stuff.

What it boils down to is that it took me a lot of years to appreciate it, but now, I do like small town living. I LIKE not having to commute to work. If I want a day in 'the city' (Windsor, London, Toronto) I can do it, but if I just want to hunker down in my small city of Chatham I'm totally happy to do so.

Our boys are home this week from school because it is 'reading week' and the other night I didn't have dinner ready till 7pm...I told them it was because I now have to 'commute' to work so dinner will be later than what they were used to! They got a good chuckle out of that one, because having grown up in Chatham, they now attend schools in much larger cities and can appreciate the difference.

While I was thinking about these new beginnings I was admiring my new My Minds Eye paper while flipping through some of my newer Stamping Bella Stamps. When I came upon Jamie with that little butterfly on her finger I knew I had to do this one....from a caterpillar to butterfly it is like a new beginning.

I don't think I could ever give this card away. Actually, I think I'm gonna have to smashbook it along with some other special memorabilia that I just can't part with. Union Gas celebrated its 100 anniversary in 2011, hopefully my smashbook page with my memorabilia will be kept preserved through the generations and maybe displayed with pride on their 150th anniversary and forward!

This is crazy...and SO not like me, but there could be a moral here! Let's remember the past, but not dwell on it, and move forward and enjoy the future no matter how weird and strange it may seem at the moment..

Moving on to something comfortable, let's talk about next weeks Bellarific Friday...it's all about dots...POLKA DOTS! ....use polka dots somewhere...like ANYWHERE....in your card and upload your card to our SCS forum, and/or email to Emily to see it up in lights on her blog and be eligible to win some bella bucks! 

Next post I'll keep you up to date on my life 'at the mall' and I promise to be more upbeat and less sentimental about my last 27 years of a 6 min commute and less whiney about my new 13 minute commute and try to find the 'up side' of working downtown.. I know those upsides are there...I just gotta find them!

Linda.

It a Sunday morning coffee post

I haven't done one of these in a while. Sitting here with my coffee, watching the news, looking at the snow (ugh) in my backyard. It feels kinda comfortable.

Still nursing the princess here, she is scheduled for surgery on Tuesday. It's gonna be a long 6 weeks but by summer she will be good as new. If you missed my last post, the princess is Bessie our West Highland Terrier and she blew out the ACL in her right hind leg. The vet said with feisty little dogs like her, if they blow one (which she did back in 2009) they are very likely to blow the other.

On to other things, I have been anxious to colour up Stamping Bella's SHOPPERS united since I got it but with Christmas cards in full force it kept being pushed aside. But now that I've done it, I can't wait to colour up FRIENDS united because it was really fun to do. And I think I might even use the same layout because it works really well with this image. Whenever I have a busy image it can be daunting to decide what colours to use. That is when I look for a striped paper to pull my colour scheme from and this one is from Basic Grey hello luscious. A subtle background paper, a little peek of the stripes pulls everything together without being too busy. I love the look.

I used copics on this one with some added prismacolor pencils for shading. I also tried to keep my colouring and shading a little sketchy looking to compliment the image. It is okay for me to say I really LOVE this card!

Our first bellarific friday of the year was awesome, and last night I went and read some of the chatter in the forum. So fun to see everyone coming back there.

Now I've got soup to make for this week's lunches and hope to get a little messy with some Art Journalling this afternoon. It's been a while so it should be a nice break, I'm feeling something with a floral theme coming on. And Emily's AJ Monday theme this week is 'resolution'. I don't actually make resolutions so we'll see how that goes. But I do have an idea floating around and may pull out my quote books to look for something to go along with it.

That it for today, but i'll be back tomorrow with something exciting!

Oh, it's been a long day....

....of technical difficulties, both at work and at home. I called in three tickets to our support desk today, and I probably don't ever call one in a month! Then I couldn't upload to splitcoast because a) my password was messed up, and b) my picture was too large. I tried THREE TIMES to shrink it and finally got it there. So now I know what I need to do.

Then to top it off, I just got home from the Vet and my girl, Bessie, blew her knee out and needs surgery on Tuesday. Those darn squirrels! She took off after a squirrel, took a quick turn and that's the end of the story. She blew out her other knee back in 2009 and the Vet said that with feisty dogs like her, if they blow one, it is only a matter of time before they blow the other. So I've been carrying her around for the last two days because she is really having trouble walking. We've had a lot of couch-time bonding! But that's okay, that what mom's are for! hahahaaa! I know, only a pet owner can really relate to that.

With all of my trauma behind me, I can move on to business, the REAL reason why I am here, BELLARIFIC Friday and this week we had fab sketch from our bella-babe-a-sister Ebru. She is so multi talented and her sketches are right up there along with the best of them. I decided to take Stamping Bella's Uptown Girl Posh has a Present and crop her off with a spellbinders oval die so I could use her in the sketch.

Then I paired her up with some Basic Grey Out of print so I could put her in a hot pink dress created with a variety of copic RV's. I'll admit, I used a lot of pencils on her, especially for the prezzies, so I didn't keep track of the copics.

Next week, is all about fav's....pull out your FAVOURITE bella image and ink it up. And if you haven't heard our challenges have moved over to the Stamping Bella Forum on Splitcoast Stampers.

Here are the deets:

• this is the link in the forum to our Jan 20th challenge
• be sure to use the keyword BELLARIFFIC0212 as a keyword because Em will search by THAT keyword to pick a winner
• AND to make our gallery the bestest on SCS also add the keyword of StampingBella (one word) and when we want bella inspiration we can all just search on that keyword.

Whew! I think that's it for today. I do have another image coloured, something a little different! Hoping I have a chance to get it together tonight if I get a break from nursing my puppy girl!



Smashing Good Fun

Ya, I caved....I bought a smashbook. Emily has been carrying this line for a while now and told me I needed it. Well, I hedged, like I normally do but I ventured into Pickle a couple weeks ago and now Kim has them and I had a weak moment and caved. And I'm so glad I did. It is like scrapbooking for dummies. I have scrapbooked in the past but when I look at that blank page my mind goes as blank as the paper. This is different, it almost prompts you and that is what I think I needed. And of course, if I was gonna smash, I needed the little Fuji instax camera that Emily and Ebru went crazy for so I had a bit of Christmas day fun and created this page.

To explain "this is now", the opposite page says "that was then" so I'm gonna dig out some early xmas photo's to smash on that side. And what better way to compliment my mini instant pictures than to use Stamping Bella's grunge filmstrip die from the Journal your Art out set. I notice that she has called it set #1 and I'm hoping that means there will be more sets like it in the future.

As for the other things on the page, the trees are Tim Holtz, "this is now" are quickutz and christmas was stamped from a VERY old River City alphabet set that I've had for years. Like so long that alphabet dies were still just a dream in someone's mind.

While I haven't made any cards for the last couple weeks, I have kept crafty in other ways like decorating my house for the holidays

little Baby Jesus in his manger that was always one of my fav things as a kid and
 a few years ago my mom gave it to me. He used to go under our tree, but this year
I've got him on display on an end table

When I moved to Chatham, my mom thought I should have a little tree so she
bought me this one to put on a tabletop. I've had it for over 25 years and it has not
missed a Christmas yet. I do however have to get more ornaments for it though because
mice got to it this year. The quilt hanging on the wall was made by ME! Yup in my
quilting days I made this skinny santa quilted wall hanging. It hasn't surfaced for years
but I thought it  was time to bring it back out. I love skinny santa's.

I even decorated the light fixture hanging in our dining room. The glass
egg shaped ornaments I made a few years ago and this year I made the
round ones. They are decorated with a product called LuminArte which
is a thin glue like liquid you pour into the ornament and then add mica
like powders that stick to the glue. It is pretty cool and no matter what
you do, no two ornaments look the same.

This little tree is in my living room. Our other big tree is in the family room
and I don't really have room in here for a tree that large. And if you look to the
left, you'll see my little collection of Westie poo's! Love my puppy!

That's it for my decorating. I'm sure for some people, this is pretty slim but I don't like clutter so this is just enough to make it a little more festive around here.

Our regular Bellarific Friday's will start up again on Jan 13th and by popular demand we will be featuring a lot more sketches....like LOTS more. I hope Dana, our commander in chief, doesn't slap my wrist but I'm gonna give you a little Chrismas surprise and release our FIRST SKETCH OF THE YEAR! So no excuses, I'm sure you all got some new crafty stuff that you are dying to break into and I'm giving you two weeks to email your card to Emily! Go get inky!

I'll be back tomorrow with a little NON Christmas NON Winter project I completed over the holidays.