Roses

I love the climbing rose bush in my backyard! The ROSE has always been my favorite flower. And even though our rose bush is terribly overgrown, I love it. The only bad thing is the roses don't last very long and then we just have the green leaves for the rest of the summer. I decided I had better take pictures before they are completely dead and gone!

I love summer! I love to be able to sit out on my back deck at night and listen to the birds, enjoy the fresh air, and see my roses!

A couple of days ago, Steven found a dragonfly on our front sidewalk not moving. He picked it up with a stick, which it managed to cling to. It was barely alive. We had to take some photos of it because the wings were so pretty. I took the first photo and Steven took the other one with his really good camera.

Stamp Club Card

I actually finished 10 of these cards a few weeks ago for Stamp Club which is tomorrow morning. I did them early before I started tending an extra baby since I didn't know how much time I would have to stamp!

I'm starting to figure out watching two little babies at the same time! It hasn't been too bad. Thank goodness for the swing-- I would never survive without it!!!

Baby Duty

Today is my first day to watch TWO grandbabies! Cason is now six months old and Logan is about 7 weeks old. This morning they ate at different times and both slept a lot. This is Cason's dad's day to come home early so I only have Logan until 5:00. I should survive today! We'll see how the longer day tomorrow is! I love these little guys lots! Hopefully we'll get a good routine down taking care of both of them. Robert keeps reminding me that I wanted to do this! When they get a little older they'll have lots of fun together-- we just need to survive til then!!

Stampscapes Inchie ATC

Well, since I had my mind on inchies, I decided to see if I could get some good little scenes out of my Stampscapes stamps and put them on an artist trading card. It's amazing that you can find a nice little 1" scene in these big stamps. The background is a glossy black cardstock. So fun!

Inchie ATC's

I decided to participate in an ATC challenge with the Inchie by Inch blog for the first time. The challenge this week is "bling". Inchies are 1" squares decorated in any way you want. I have put 6 inchies on each of these two artist trading cards. You wouldn't think you could get much on a 1" square, but you really can! These are very fun to make!

Interactive Artist Trading Cards

These are the Artist Trading Cards that we will be making in my class in a couple of weeks.

The first two are interactive. One has a wheel to be able to change the dress colors, and the other has a pull tab to see the owl peek out from the tree stump. These are so fun to make! The third card has an embossed velum overlay. The fourth card is double embossed and colored direct to paper. The last card is made with the Spellbinders die cuts. These dies are absolutely beautiful and I'm having so much fun using them. I wish I had discovered them sooner!

So many fun things to make and so little time!

Nancy Drew

When I was in Jr. High School my friend Susan and I read lots and lots of Nancy Drew books. We loved them and traded them back and forth. I loved mystery stories and still do. I loved trying to figure out "who done it" and how the story would end. I enjoyed reading about the small town that Nancy and her friends, George and Bess, lived in. I could be sure that nothing TOO drastic or gory or scary would happen. And everyone always lived "happily ever after". I still have a few of my old books, but wish I had saved them all. Every once in a while I look in thrift stores to see if I can find any more old ones, but they are hard to find.

My two daughters love Nancy Drew, too. But they like to play the computer games, which are pretty amazing. You can travel from room to room and building to building, clicking on things to open to try to find all the clues to the newest mystery. They are both very hooked on the games and are always excited when a new one comes out. They trade them back and forth, too!

Nancy Drew has been around for a very long time and she never even ages! She always gets updated to the present and still always solves the mysteries!