Happy Travels Card

Thanks for visiting from the Card a Day Blog! Our theme is travel, so I made a quick card with my Silhouette using 5 files (one of them a free one this week!). I digitally colored them in the Studio program, and set the outside edge only to cut. What I am hoping is that my pictures show the dimensions of the card. I used thick foam tape and glue sticks to make the clouds fold over each other.  If you like stamping, the cloud border would be ideal to stamp a favorite travel saying too!

Card dimensions: 1/4 top fold (4 1/4 “ x 5 1/2 “)

Silhouette files (use what you have on hand for inspiration):

• Sun (sorry, the program doesn’t give me more information, I think it is from Silhouette though)
• Airplane Side View (design #43179)
• Arrows from the free shapes this week!
• Loni Leah Happy Travels (design #42468)
• Cloud Border (design #2320)

The great thing about doing print and cuts like this is that you can co-ordinate the colors in the card, and print and cut out a neat card using just one sheet of paper, instead of having to dig out several pieces of paper to cut out each piece of the card separately…. such a time saver and money saver! Love it!

Visit the Card a Day Blog tomorrow for more travel card inspiration from Lucy Kelleher!

What a great day! Catching dinner!

Cody and I had a great treat today! My friends Lena and Charlie took me fishing in the Lower Campbell Lake.  I have lived in this area for well over 20 years, and have never been on the Lower Campbell lake. We had a grand time! I caught the first trout, and Lena caught the second one just about 30 seconds after I landed mine.  Then I got a great surprise… I got to take both fish home! I didn’t take any pictures of them being caught, but will show you how I cooked them later on in this post.

Just had to show you a picture of how Cody enjoyed the ride… he loved sitting on Lena’s lap most of the time:

Tonight I had the makings of a fine dinner… 1 potato, several brown mushrooms, a piece of onion, and two beautiful trout! It was a simple to prepare, quick dinner… on the table in under 30 minutes!

Cubed the potatoes and sliced the mushrooms, sprayed them with pam and sprinkled them with CattleBoyz Smokey Southwest Seasoning (spicy, with chipotle peppers in it). The onion I had was an “end”, so I sliced it towards the end, but not through, kind of like when you are making blooming onions. I held the end open, sprayed with Pam and sprinkled with seasoning too. Put all that into a hot and greased grill pan and into the preheated BBQ, and lowered the temperature to low, while I prepared the trout.  For the trout, I simply sprayed a piece of foil with Pam, and sprinkled the trout inside and out with Clubhouse Lemon & Herbs Seasoning. Rolled the foil around the fish and crimped the ends. I cooked the fish on the top rack of the BBQ at the same time as the potatoes. Both ended up being cooked to perfection at the same time. I would definitely do this again! The spiciness of the vegetables balanced the buttery (as in melt in your mouth texture) of the fresh trout. Yummy!

With a little (LOTS of) help from my friends!

Since my husband died last December, my zest for gardening has waned. I did do the front yard, but in the process totally neglected the back yard. It became so weedy that I hated to even go back there. It was almost beyond hope, and I needed to focus on my week off to get it done. With lots of help from my friends, a date was set for a garden work party.

Before the party, I spent a full day clearing out the junk from my husband’s shed.  I borrowed a trailer from friends to put stuff into… and then made a dump run.

I did find some satisfaction with the progress I made, but it will be a while before it is exactly the way I want it.

Before and after:

I got a huge chuckle out of some of the stuff my husband set aside for “just in case”.  There was a neatly rolled piece of window screen material, about 10 inches long by 15 inches wide, neatly rolled up, and secured with green painters tape…  There was also a neatly folded piece of plastic…wait until you see the labels Needless to say those two items made my day, and brought back some fond memories of my man.

Now more on the garden part of this post.

I really hate to show you the before pictures, but you need to see them to appreciate how much we accomplished in such a short time… The majority of the work (really, the foundation of weeding and redoing the pathway) took us 4 hours, including lunch! The rest I have worked on over two days (resetting the cement slabs under the pergola, planting the uprooted strawberries, and finishing off the blue chip gravel and putting in bark mulch).  Not bad eh! 

Truly I really could not have done it without my friends!

Before:

After:

 

The garden path before the garden work party.

During the party (we had 8 people show up, which effectively filled the yard with activity!

 

The garden path after the work party!

 

There is still work to do, but it is at the point that it is a pleasure to be in my back yard again.

I know that I can’t thank my friends enough for lending a hand and giving me the impetus to get going on an overwhelming prospect! I’m starting to love my back yard again!

Home Card

This week’s theme at the Card a Day Blog is New (home, job, school, etc).  I chose to do a new home card.

I’m working on my home (major back yard work --- well, major to me!), so I needed to do a fast card.  If you’ve been following my card posts, you know that fast to me usually involves doing a print and cut with my Silhouette.  I chose some monogram letters at the Silhouette Store from Samantha Walker, a bracket frame from Kolette Hall, and a print and cut label from Silhouette…

I resized the monogram letters and digitally colored them to match the green in the label… then  set them to no cut. Spaced them on the screen to be able to fit in the label afterwards. It is definitely easier to show you what my screen looked like in the design stage

Then I found a piece of bazzil cardstock in pale green that didn’t overwhelm the other colors in the card. Rounded the corners of the card with my large corner punch, and simply glued or taped everything on.  I used simple coloring pencils to make faux “brads”… could have done about anything (as you can see by the buttons, I was toying with them too LOL)

Hope you are enjoying your summer! I’ll be posting at the end of the week about my back yard projects…. its going to envolve a work party

Just remember I love You! Monochome Card

 

Thanks for visiting from the Card a Day Blog!

This week’s challenge is MONOCHROME…To tell you the truth, I had a brain block when facing this challenge.  I don’t think I’ve ever made a monochrome colored card. Looking through my stash, I had a choice to go with blues, reds, or browns. Then I saw the “cork” paper (made with real cork!), and I had to go with browns! My idea was to have a faux cork board with a heart note pinned to it with a button “pin”. Just a simple 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 inch top fold card, but cute nonetheless! I hope you like it, and take up the challenge at the CADB!

Oh, the decisions! Let’s see, I used beige cardstock for the base, a star velum, flocked paper (tie along the top of the cork board), rich brown handmade paper that I tore a heart out of, assorted brown buttons for “pins”, and a slip of linen paper that I cut out to fit the brown heart, and printed “I love YOU” on with a sakura glaze pen.

 

 

Now I won’t be as afraid to try doing monochrome colored cards in the future too! It was a great way to use those brown buttons from my button bin too!

Enjoy - This is the Good Stuff Card

 

I wanted to make a card for my step-son and daughter-in-law, and I think it just fits into the new theme for the Card a Day Blog, don’t you?!

The card dimensions are 6 inches wide by 5 inches tall. I made some print and cuts by digitally coloring and or combining these cut files from Silhouette (I used the offset tool to cut them out with a little white border).

• sailboat by Hero Arts design # 10817
• summer borders by Miss Kate Cuttables design #42855
• phrase: enjoy by Silhouette design #10024
• toy airplane by PPbN Designs design #39528

Here’s what my studio screen looked like before I cut it out

I had fun using a couple of different thicknesses of glue dots/tape, and allowed the tail trails of the plane to “bounce” upwards naturally.

All in all, I think its an over all good masculine card for almost any occasion