I am back from vacation; we had a wonderful week even though we faced severe storms and flooding almost every day. I will be sharing more when I begin a new travel series on Wednesday. I hope to visit your blogs soon and return the love you all have graciously left on my blog in my absence, but as you are all probably aware, when one is away from home for a while, there is so much to be done when you return...especially if you have a garden. There are so many tomatoes that need to be picked, and I had to toss at least a dozen cucumbers because they had gotten so big on the vine!
In the meantime, I want to get back to a regular blogging schedule, starting with a craft post. Below is a card I made for my daughter and son-in-laws birthdays which are just a couple of weeks apart. This card was a labor of love as the stitching took forever, but I love the way it turned out. The frame is just breath-taking to me.
To make this card I used Spellbinder's Stitched Ladybug die set (It's on clearance right now, so if you want it I'd scoop it up right now as it's half price!). I cut all the pieces out using different shades of card stock, then I did the stitching and assembled everything together. I used white floss for the frame, ladybug head, and dots and red floss for the wings. I didn't do anything creative with this card but just followed the example given on the back of the die card set.
For the background, I used a "Meandering Floral" embossing folder (no longer available) and dry embossed a beautiful shade of green cardstock.
The hardest part of doing a card with die cuts is cutting all the different shades of cardstock, stitching, and then piecing them all together. Once that part is done, it's basically just creating a layout on your card front that you like.
I love ladybugs and I love how this card turned out, it's as "Cute as a Bug".
Settled into my lounge chair with a cold glass of water, I have the best seat in the house to watch my four grandchildren conquer the water at a local pool. At two, four, seven, and nine, they are a blur of non-stop motion, from the toddler collecting water with his toys in the kiddie area, to the older two bravely jumping off the diving board. From my chair under a beach umbrella, the view is perfect: a front row seat to their laughter, their growing confidence, and the sweetest memories of summer.
When my grandchildren were visiting last June, one of our activities was visiting a local pool. We always want to get the kids as much swim time as we can, so we try to plan a swim day during their visits. The pools in my daughter's town are usually quite pricey, whereas in my neck of the woods, they are quite affordable. We chose a smaller pool in a small town rather than go to a larger pool in a bigger city because the boys were at work and one was sick at home with food poisoning😞. We felt it would be too difficult for my daughter and I to keep an eye on all four kids, especially with me being a non-swimmer.
My biggest challenge of the day other than keeping track of them all, was to make sure they didn't lose their goggles. The three oldest insist of wearing water goggles, but they also tend to lose them a lot and mom gets tired of buying new ones all the time. I came to the rescue multiple times when a little one would come running to me screaming "I can't find my goggles". I usually found them laying on the ground or at the edge of the pool.😁. I don't remember having goggles as a kid, but they do look pretty cool in them, don't they?
Baby Lazarus seemed to have no interest in going into the water this day, which surprised me as he usually loves the slide. He would only go in the water if someone held him, so I did get wet - once - 😄. He did enjoy filling up his toys with water, except one time he decided to walk over to the deep end and reach over for some water, after all the water in the deep pool was far more interesting than the water in the shallow pool 😆. Thankfully, I saw him from my lounge chair just in time, and screamed for my daughter to grab him before he fell in; that's why the good lord gave us mom's such great lungs.
Alethea and Atticus are good strong swimmers already, and Elisha is catching up fast, but he still wears a life vest to stay safe.
This pool is fairly new, and one of the updates they made was to add this climbing wall. I think it's a great idea.
Here is a video of my grandson Atticus climbing the wall.
We always celebrate the grandchildren's birthdays all at once during the summer, even though they were born at different times of the year. It's just easier that way, plus there are all these holidays during the other birth months that just make it confusing for the kids. Baby Lazarus was born near Mother's Day and Elisha was born in the fall, near Halloween whereas Atticus and Alethea were summer babies. So by doing one big birthday party everyone gets a gift so no one feels left out and the moms get their gifts on Mother's Day, and then all the kids get fall gift bags around Halloween.
We had a simple meal of hot dogs, brats, and potatoes on the back screen porch.
The kids, and adults enjoyed playing basketball while I set everything up.
After dinner we opened gifts. I couldn't believe how excited they were to open presents. All week long they kept asking "When are we going to open our presents?" because they found my hiding spot, those little stinkers 😄! I was a little worried they were going to be disappointed because I didn't feel I bought them much as the older they get the more expensive their presents get plus, they already have everything, so it gets harder and harder to find gifts they don't already own.
In all the excitement, I forgot to get a photo of them holding their cards, but here is one of Alethea attempting to read my cursive on her card.
Lazarus was a hoot! He always had this pained expression on his face over gift as he examined it closely, followed by "Open It!"
The kids love costumes and Atticus and Alethea both requested costumes. Alethea asked for this brown cape. I use to sew all my kid's costumes, but now with my grandchildren, I just buy them. It's easier to buy things now with the Internet. In the olden days, if the store didn't have it, you had to make it yourself. Now I just type it in the search box and wa la! There it is!
Elisha got a Spider Man remote control car which he loved.
And Atticus' favorite gift was his Captain America costume. He was so excited to get this gift!
My son gave Lazarus this adorable dinosaur plushie, and then he gave the older kids whoopee cushions...which they went crazy for until Atticus broke his by jumping on it too hard which ended the evening in tears. Oh the highs and lows of the gift openings!
A little bit later, the tears of the broken whoopee cushion were gone with a slice of a brownie and ice cream.
I think Grandpa enjoyed the brownies and ice cream as much as the kids, what do you think?
And finally, just a couple of other photos of our summer week with the grandchildren. One of the activities we enjoyed was painting this giant poster of outer space. I purchased three giant posters and so far we completed two. One we used gel crayons on, and it got very messy, so this one we decided to try paint. The next time we come over, we will try using markers on the third one...I will have to make sure to buy lots of cheap washable markers beforehand as I know it will take a lot of ink to cover something this big! When we are all done, I will show ya'll all three posters, with the grandkids, at once.
And this photo is just too cute not to share. Lazarus loved eating Grandpa Todd's yogurt cups! I couldn't believe he ate this entire yogurt all by himself. He loves blueberries too!
Next week I will be on a summer vacation/anniversary trip. It is supposed to rain EVERY SINGLE DAY of our vacation except one, so that will be a bummer. Oh well, we will make the best of it. You can plan the best trips, but you can never control the weather. I hope we just get a break in the rain some of the time and it's not constant all day every day. I won't be scheduling anymore posts until I return, and then I will be starting a new travel series.
Many, many years ago my daughter gave me some dried flowers she purchased from somewhere and then she gave them to me because she thought I could use them on a card. Well those flowers sat in my craft room unused for years until I discovered them while cleaning out my craft room. My winter project this year was to clean out and reorganize my craft room. It was a huge undertaking and I still plan on doing a blog post about it. I donated truck loads of supplies I never used. When I came across the flowers, I felt bad that I never used the flowers given to me, so I decided to finally make that card with them.
Unfortunately, the flowers were so old by now they were very fragile; but I did my best trying to keep the blooms for disintegrating as I worked with them. To make my card I carefully glued the flowers to a white card panel, then to keep them from disintegrating further, I sprayed them with a fixative.
The flower panel looked very vintage to me, so I decided a vintage style card would look best with the dried flowers. I used designer paper that reminded me of old wall paper; it is from DCWV "Tres Chic". Then I added some lace and ribbon and put gold gems in the corners of the flower panel. the sentiment is a sticker.
Creating this card made me think that I should really press my own flowers from my garden. I have some Bachelor Buttons that would be perfect for drying. But if I do that, hopefully they won't sit for years before I finally use them 😀.
