Salutations!

It's Virtual Stamp Weekend over at Splitcoast, so in order to get my mind off my upcoming surgery on Monday morning, I decided to participate in a few of the challenges. This one was posted last night. The theme this month is books. I've always been an avid reader and seem to always have a book that I'm in the middle of. Sometimes it takes me forever to get through them because my interest comes in spurts. I won't be able to put it down for a few nights in a row, then I won't touch it for a month, and then I'll pick it back up and finish it in a few nights.

The first challenge I completed is called "The Story of Chicken Little." When I first read that, I thought the challenge would be making a card with a chicken on it. Boy, was I wrong. The title and theme was chosen because Chicken Little was the hostess' favorite book as a child. The challenge was actually to find inspiration from your favorite childhood storybook and make a card representing that story. I had to think about this one because I don't know if I necessarily had a favorite storybook in childhood, but I do know I've always like the story "Charlotte's Web," so I decided to use that for my inspiration.

Charlotte: Salutations.
Wilbur: Salu-what?
Charlotte: Salutations.
Wilbur: What are they? And where are you?
Charlotte: Salutations is my fancy way of saying hello.

This card was VERY hard to photograph, as it's a window card with the web stamped with Staz-On ink on acetate. It was hard to photograph without picking up some glare. Notice Charlotte in the lower right-hand corner. There is a strip across the bottom of the inside that says, "That's my fancy way of saying hello!!"

I'm Losing My Mind

I just spent the last 20 minutes looking for pictures on my computer of a thank you card that I made the other day. I came to the conclusion I must have not saved the file. Then I realized I never uploaded the picture off my camera. Duh.

This is using one of mom's stamp sets that I borrowed. I was looking around on Splitcoast for ideas and ran across this color combo and really like it. It's Rose Red and Blue Bayou. The inspiration card can be seen here.

Dr. Snuffaluffagus?

At work all of the new residents start in July. This year they're all from other contries including Germany, Poland, India, Bulgaria, etc. There is one named Dr. Grover. This really bothers me because whenever I hear someone say her name, all I can think about is the Sesame Street character, who just happens to be one of my favorite characters. I don't know why...he just always has been.
Anyway, apparently Dr. Grover isn't very good at dictating. I'm not sure where she's from, but her accent is very thick. I told one of the girls today that at least her name is easy to spell. We could have ended up with Dr. Snuffaluffagus.

Puppy Play Date

Remember Abby's puppy friend Dakota...her partner in crime when it comes to stealing cherry tomatoes out of the garden?


Well, Dakota's not so little anymore! Jill brought the "kids" over for a play date Sunday afternoon. Of course, there wasn't too much playing going on because it was a little too warm out. We positioned our chairs in the shade of the fence so we could visit while the dogs played, but they pretty much tried to crawl right under the chairs and take up our little patch of shade. I did manage to snap a few pictures along the way. Here's Dakota now...

They grow up so fast.

Look at that face...isn't she a stinker? From what I hear, Abby taught her well...
she's still stealing tomatoes, but she's stealing them from the neighbors!

Here's Marco...Dakota's little brother. He's not so little either.
His coloring is more like Abby's, where Dakota is a lot lighter.

The poor little guy's eyelashes are inverted, so he always has tears wetting his face.
In addition, Marco's health isn't too good. He has liver problems,
and they really can't say how long he'll be with us. It breaks my heart.
He is just just a big bundle of sweetness.

I wasn't able to get any pictures of the three of them together because Abby is somewhat of a dog snob. She played a little at first, but then grew tired of it and then either went off and laid by herself in the shade or spent her time trying to get Jill's attention. She's been like that ever since she was a puppy. She's all about the humans...and the food. Two of her favorite things.

Daisy Surprise

I just adore these little hedgehog stamps by Penny Black. Here's one I just picked up this past weekend.


Sketch by Vervegirl on SCS.

What A "Greyt" Day

Saturday we took a trip up to Burlington, Wisconsin, so mom could pick out her new baby...a retried racing greyhound. We had an appointment at the kennel for 11:30 a.m., and when we arrived around 11:15 we were surprised at the number of people there. We met with the lady mom talked to on the phone, and she handed us off to another lady who took us back to see the dogs. I have never seen so many greyhounds in one place before. All of them were in cages unless they were being walked by volunteers or prospective adoptive parents. Apparently that particular kennel is home to a couple of adoption organizations, so the lady pointed out which ones were available through Greyhounds Only. We walked around looking at the dogs and read the information. Mom walked in with the idea in her head that she was going to get a young (under 3) female. There was one female on the website that she was interested in named Liz. She was told on the phone, however, that Liz is a bit standoffish...basically a snob. We looked at a few different dogs. There weren't too many females available, so we asked to see a nice looking boy named Brian. Weird name for a dog. Anyway, Brian was a little too rambunctious for mom, so we kept looking. We were looking at a pretty girl named Freedom, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted a handsome boy across the room. I wondered over to see him and read his tag. It said his name is Sheldon and he is easy going, mellow, and walks well on a leash. It also said he loves to snuggle. My kind of guy! I called mom over to take a look at him. We asked if we could walk him and the lady laughed because she knew mom had originally wanted a girl but that people always leave with the opposite of what they had in mind. All it took was for mom to walk Sheldon and he had himself a home.




He needs to put on a few pounds and get some shine back in his coat, but all that will take is a good diet. Hopefully the hair will grow back on his rear. Bailey's hind quarters looked the same when she came to live with mom too. It was from turning around in too small of a cage for years.

While we were getting to know Sheldon, one of the volunteers was walking Liz, so we asked if mom could walk her too. She took off in one direction with Liz and we took Sheldon a different way, as we had to keep him from the girls. Liz had already been spayed, but Sheldon isn't getting fixed until next week. Here is a good picture I took of Liz. She really is a beautiful little lady...and she wasn't snobby at all...just quiet...like me!


If mom thought she could afford two of them, I'm sure she would have taken Liz too. Heck...if I didn't have to be gone all day at work, I think I would have taken Liz!

So, anyway...the papers are signed. Sheldon goes for his surgery on the 12th then goes back to the kennel to recover. He'll then go to a foster family for a week so he can learn all about stuff like stairs and tile floors...and how not to walk through glass doors (all the stuff he was never exposed during life at the track). After that, his foster family will bring him to mom and they'll live happily ever after.

Is that a "greyt" story, or what?

Hot Stuff!!

Look at what one of Paul's friends/coworker gave him the other day. He grew them in his garden and gave us these and a bag of tomatoes.



Makes me sweat just looking at it. Sure is a pretty combination. I have no idea what we're going to do with all these. Any suggestions????

Here is another thing I did with mom's bounty of veggies...zucchini bread. I made a loaf for me to take to work and a loaf for Paul to take to work. Sure didn't last long. I'm going to try to make some more this weekend with Splenda for Paul to enjoy (not that he didn't sample these).

Another One

Here is another one of the RAKs I threw together the other night. As you can see from my previous card post, I stuck with the same stamp for my main image. I used markers to color in the image. To get the flowers to match the paper, I colored them first with Apricot Appeal by SU! and then went over them with Pretty In Pink. The sentiment is a rub-on. I'm not sure about the patterned paper, as all of that was from my scrap pile. I need to quit buying more paper and use up my scraps!

Mom's Bounty

Since I didn't have the time (or the energy) to get a garden planted this year, mom has been sharing her bounty with me. I haven't been over there lately without coming home with a huge bag of vegetables. I have to say I'm getting pretty darn good at making fried green tomatoes. As a matter of fact, Sunday night by dinner consisted of fried green tomatoes and mac & cheese...two of my favorite things! (I know...sounds weird.) As for Paul, well he just got the mac & cheese since he just can't get into the tomato thing. He doesn't know what he's missing.
Anyway, getting back to all the veggies, I spent some time preparing some green beans to enjoy through the winter. I hope I did it right because I'm usually not this resourceful. I would have preferred to vacuum seal them, but I'm out of bags and didn't feel like going out, so I just used plain old freezer bags and pressed out as much air as I could.


While I was in the kitchen, and since we didn't feel like going out, we tried a new recipe for dinner. BBQ chicken pizzas. I've made them before, but these were made using flatbread. We really like the BBQ chicken flatbread pizza from Granite City, so we thought we would try our hand at them. The crust is super duper thin...almost like a cracker. We actually didn't have a recipe but just decided to wing it. We found what we thought would work for the "crust" at the store. They're called Flatout Wraps. Turns out not only were they pretty tasty as the crust, but they're also very healthy. I poached some chicken and we used a Bull's Eye Sweet & Tangy BBQ sauce that Paul doctored up a little bit...much to my chagrin. He's always trying to doctor things up and I'm always trying to get him to go with the basics at first. Anyway, we chopped up the chicken and coated it in sauce. We spread a layer of BBQ sauce on the wrap and then topped it with the chicken, red onion, a mixture of mozzarella , provolone, and cheddar cheese, and fresh cilantro. Here's our finished creation. I have to say it tasted very similar to Granite City's.

Finally!

Okay, so I picked up my very own copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements tonight so I can start editing my photos again. While I can tell I'm really going to like this program, there is a lot (and I do mean A LOT) to learn. One reason I chose it is because it's one that a lot of people in the digiscrapping world use, so there are a lot of video tutorials! I spent some time playing around tonight creating just a basic watermark so I can start posting my cards again. Here is one of the RAKs I threw together last night.

I'm so glad tomorrow is Friday and I only work a half day so I can come home and play!

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Details:
Stamp: Main image is Stampin' Up. Sentiment is $1 stamp from Michaels.
Ink: Bashful Blue, Pretty In Pink, Regal Rose (SU!); black (TAC)
Paper: Cardstock - Close To Cocoa, Certainly Celery (SU!); Pattern - TAC
Accessories: SU! oval punch and photo corner punch, SU! blender pen, rhinestones