Some roses for you...

Here's some beauties from a trip to the rose garden. Enjoy!

Some flowers...

Yes, I know, you come here for cards not random photographs. I pinky promise swear I'm going to start making and posting cards again regularly... really... I'm getting closer and closer!! In the mean time I thought I'd show you some flowers. Because flowers make me happy.


Springtime in central Texas is a very good thing. But next post WILL be a CARD!

A Big Ol' Texas Hug!

This is the card I made for this past weekend's shoebox swap up in Dallas. I figured a Texas-y event needed a Texas-y card! In case you haven't heard me ramble on about them before, the flower on the card is called a bluebonnet, and it's our state flower. We adore them. They bloom in the spring and are wildflowers, lining our roads and filling our fields. Ok, maybe the showing hasn't been *that* great lately thanks to our ongoing drought, but I did enjoy the ones we did have this past spring. Actually, did I ever show you our photos we did in the bluebonnets this year? Hmm... perhaps I'll have to post them down below for anyone who's interested (I can already hear the massive yawn coming from my readers! (All three of them!)). :-) Anyway, back to the card. Of course I completely stressed about this card. I have such a hard time figuring out cards for swaps!! The card is supposed to be made in no more than ten minutes. TEN MINUTES. The card I brought to the Austin swap last fall ended up being a little bit of a bottleneck. So this time I was determined to keep it simple. And I think I made it a bit TOO simple!! Especially when I got to the swap and realized people still did super duper complicated cards, but the kicker was that they PRESTAMPED or PRESTITCHED or PRE did whatever was needed. The amount of pre-work some of the ladies must have done, WOW. I am still in awe. So next time I'll know. And maybe I'll even start planning my card more than a couple nights before the event so I have time for all that prep work...!! But I hope the ladies at the swap liked my super simple Texas hug. If you want to check out some of the other cards I was lucky enough to make, there's a gallery for them on Splitcoast here. (not everyone has uploaded as I type this, though) Thanks for stopping by today and happy stamping!!

• Stamps: Deadbeat Designs
• Paper: Brocade Blue, Always Artichoke, Kraft, DP from My Mind's Eye
• Ink: Brocade Blue, Always Artichoke, Chocolate Chip
• Accessories: Ribbon from Hobby Lobby

And now, as promised (or threatened!), here are my favorites from the bluebonnet photos we did in April. It was a really windy day, and getting the kids to actually pose was pretty close to impossible. But some of the more candid shots are my favorites anyway!I just love this last one of Courtney because her dress was so fluffy and cute in the wind! And wow, it was only about two months ago, but she looks so little here! *sigh* My babies are growing up too fast!! Anyway - the bluebonnets are long gone now, but I know they'll be back next spring and I'll be happy to see them pop up once again when they are ready! But I don't want to think about how old Carter and Courtney will look then...! :-)

We're back!

Hi all! We're back home from our wonderful vacation to sunny southern California!! Thanks for all of the wonderful, sweet comments you left while I was away - it was indeed very nice coming back to such an overloaded inbox!! I don't have any new cards to show you just yet, but if you're at all interested, I'm posting some of our vacation picts on our family blog. Here's the post about Day 1.

I hope to be back here soon with something creative!!! :-)

October Roses

We went on a fun little outing this morning to the Zilker Botanical Garden here in Austin. They are currently hosting an exhibit called "DinoLand" - life size dinosaur replicas nestled in among the plants in the garden. Most certainly Carter's idea of a good time! I had a pleasant surprise at the garden - many of the roses still had blooms on them! Shows how much I know about Austin gardening, I didn't realize we still get roses this late into the fall!! So I went a little snap happy with the camera, and thought I'd share a few of them here, as well as a sorta neat photo of a butterfly. Enjoy! :-)

Flower Friday!

I haven't been stamping anything other than swap-fodder, and none of that has been flower themed, so you're getting a photo from my yard today! My purple coneflower (aka echinacea) is blooming like mad right now. Perhaps you've heard about all the rain we've had in central Texas lately? Thankfully I haven't been impacted by any flooding, but my garden doesn't know what to make of all this moisture! I try to plant all Texas native, low water type of plants. They've never had this much to drink in June before!! The weeds are happy too - my garden is a complete weedy disaster right now, and I haven't had any time to get out there and work on it! We're having people over for a July 4th cookout next week, so my goal is have a slightly less embarrassing yard by then...! The bees are happy too - these coneflowers are absolutely covered with bees! Somewhere there's a hive with some nice echinacea scented honey!

Well I finished my ATC swaps, finally!! I'll post them later this weekend. I had to overnight them so they'll be there by Monday. I am feeling a bit sick about how much this darn swap has cost me - all that money I paid on postage that I would much rather have spent in the new SU catalog!! But I didn't want to break my commitment. Hopefully it will teach me a lesson about not procrastinating!! So I got home from FedEx feeling really bummed (it was also a VERY difficult day with my son, who didn't want to eat lunch, nap or do much of anything other than have mommy hold him!), checked my email and found that I had won a category in the demonstrator swap I joined!!! The Zoofari card I posted a couple days ago won "workshop wow"!!! WOW is right! I am so excited, I've never won anything based on my stamping before!!!! And my wonderful upline Kathy Rocco (my upline's upline's upline's upline, actually!) is giving me a $30 SU gift certificate!!!! So that makes up for my shipping fiasco. :-)

I am completely exhausted - I plan to curl up with my catalog for a bit (still haven't REALLY looked through it!) and go to sleep early tonight! I am still horrifically behind on reading all my favorite blogs, and it's completely bumming me out! I really hope to get back in the swing of things this weekend, I miss being up to date on what all of you in blogland are up to! :-) I also have received some AWESOME raks & blog candy in the mail recently - I need to get my act together and give shout-outs on those too!! And hopefully I'll even be able to stamp a little this weekend...without any deadlines looming! And I hope you can too!! Have a nice weekend! :-)

Flower Friday!

Oh how I love orchids!! I've tried to grow them in pots, but I always end up killing them. I have two gorgeous orchid pots in my livingroom right now, but they are both FAKE! That's the only way I can have an orchid! But back in the summer of 2002, I spent 10 weeks over in Malaysia for work. From the orchid perspective, it was pure HEAVEN! Orchids LOVE the high humidity climate of Malaysia. These photos were taken at the Orchid Gardens in Kuala Lumpur. Yes, orchid GARDENS!! So many different colorful orchids to look at. I LOVED it! They had a little market there where you could buy orchids for next to nothing (in US dollars!) so since I was stuck there for so long, I bought a few to brighten up my hotel room! I gave them to one of my friends at the factory when my assignment was over and it was time to come home. I sure wish I knew how to grow an orchid here! And by the way, has anyone ever seen an orchid stamp? I would love to have one - if you know of one, let me know what company makes it so maybe I can track one down for myself! :-)

And if you're thinking "wow she has been to a lot of places" - it's very true, I have. I feel very fortunate to have done all the traveling I've done, both for work & pleasure - all before having my son. I think our world traveling days are over for a while! But now I want to spend family vacation time seeing more of the US and Canada, there are MANY wonderful places we've never been on this continent! Thanks for stopping by & have a great weekend!

Flower (and Butterfly!) Friday

Back in the spring we took an afternoon drive out to Wildseed Farms, just outside of Fredericksburg, TX. They grow & sell wildflower seeds, so the spring is filled with gorgeous fields of blooming color! We had hoped to see a field of bluebonnets, but we were a little too early for them - instead we were awed by the butterflies! Since our last visit they had built a Butterfly Haus which was just filled with these beauties! These are a few of my favorite photos from our visit. It's kind of easy to get nice butterfly photos when they can't fly too far...! Enjoy!

Flower Friday!

I'm not sure if I'll get any new stamping done today - I just put Carter down to nap, but I have some things I better get done around the house, so I must resist the urge to play! And I'm trying to make Friday nights my scrapbooking time rather than cardmaking. Tonight I'll continue to work on my Ireland trip, which I haven't touched since the scrap retreat a couple weekends ago. So - for Flower Friday, I thought I'd share some gorgeous roses I snapped during that trip! These were at Powerscourt Gardens, which is a bit south of Dublin. It's sort of Ireland's mini version of Versailles - a beautiful mansion with amazing grounds filled with fountains and flowering gardens. And of course Ireland is not lacking in the rain department, so the gardens are just stunning. The sort of gardens I long to have (and the kind Leslie actually grows in her own yard!!). ;-) (hmm, maybe I should start posting flower-related travelogues on Fridays, I certainly take a lot of flower photos when we travel - more than my husband thinks are necessary!) And I may still stamp some flowers yet today - I'd really like to try today's SCS challenge - and it includes using a flower stamp! But I also really want to scrapbook... *sigh* So many fun things to do with paper, so little time!! :-) But alas, for now I better just head to the kitchen and do lunch dishes, then start some laundry. Have a great weekend!!

Flower Friday!

I've decided to do a new weekly feature on this little blog - Flower Friday! Every Friday I'm going to try to post either a flower from my garden, a flower from somebody else's garden, or a flowery card! A couple things inspired me to do this - looking at Leslie's AMAZING garden today on her blog, and also snapping this photo tonight of my newly blooming passion vine! The vine itself is in sorry shape (see post below with the rose photo - too much neglect in my yard the past couple of years!), but despite that the sweet little vine produced this amazing flower, and is on the verge of just bursting with blooms - this particular flower opened yesterday, and there are many more buds about to open. If it is covered with blooms sometime soon I'll try to snap another photo (perhaps next Friday?). :-) My little garden is still pretty sad, but it's coming along, slowly but surely! Joel also surprised me this week with a new umbrella table and chairs for the yard, so this evening after putting Carter to bed we were sitting out there enjoying the cool May evening (I did a little gardening this afternoon and it was REALLY hot and humid! Ugh, here comes summer!) and the songs of my Purple Martens - Joel with his Newcastle, and me with my Fine Gardening Color Combination issue, trying to figure out what to plant next. In one corner I have a Victoria blue sage and a white jasmine vine already blooming - I'm thinking it needs some yellow or orange to compliment... but hmm... not sure what to plant! Maybe some daylilies? Anyway... hope you all enjoy my Flower Fridays. I better get this posted and hit my stamp room - still a little more organizing to do, plus I'm doing an ALL DAY SCRAPBOOKING RETREAT tomorrow, yippee!! And I need to get things organized & ready for that. It's from 9am-9pm: twelve whole hours of toddler-free, uninterrupted scrapbooking! I cannot wait! I plan to finally do our trip to Ireland from fall of 2005. Yes, I am VERY behind on my scrapbooking (also still have to do Switzerland/Austria, China, Hawaii, and I haven't really even started anything for Carter yet, and boy do I take lots and lots of photos of my sweetie!). So - hopefully I can crank out my Ireland book tomorrow. Happy National Scrapbooking Day, and enjoy your weekend! :-)

Farewell my bluebonnets!

Many of you that know me have seen this photo - but I love it and thought I'd post it anyway. This photo was taken about a month ago - I noticed today that these bluebonnets in my neighborhood are pretty much gone now - *sigh*. I always get so excited when I see the first bluebonnet pop up in March, it means spring is here - my favorite time of year in Texas! (in MI my favorite is fall, visiting the apple orchards!) And seeing the first bluebonnet always makes me think of my dear friend Christina, who helped nurture my love of bluebonnets & other Texas wildflowers when I first moved to Austin - I always have to send her a note to acknowledge the arrival! Now that they are fading away, it means summer will be here soon and the sweating will begin. *double sigh* (sorry if you're reading this with snow on the ground and you're rolling your eyes at me right about now...!)

No time for stamping this weekend, it was way too busy. My husband was gone for the weekend, camping with the boys, and my son was more clingy than usual - I think because a) he missed his daddy, b) he's getting his molars in, and c) he somehow knew that I had a lot I needed to get done and was determined not to allow that to happen! I made a birthday cake for his friend's first birthday party today, and Carter wanted nothing to do with me focusing on that rather than him! Luckily my sister came over and helped me out BIG TIME by playing with her nephew so I could finish the cake. We also discovered that an hour long bath not only makes a toddler a big ol' prune, but also makes him incredibly sleepy - he nearly fell asleep in his highchair eating lunch after his marathon bath! Anyway - hope to have something creative to share tomorrow night! Have a great week!!

Pretty Poppy

I made it to the nursery this morning to buy some plants, and snapped a few photos while I was there! (I usually have my camera with me when I'm watching Rachel, I send an email update with photos to her parents every afternoon) This nursery has gorgeous example gardens that I just luuuvvv, and today the poppies were glorious! So, I had to share. Hope to actually stamp some flowers tonight...!

A day in the garden

I don't have a new card to share with you tonight - I spent most of today doing yard work, and I'm actually too pooped to stamp! I really enjoyed it though - I love having a nice garden, and I haven't really done much in the yard over the last couple of years - not since becoming pregnant with my son, and he's 16 months now...! I've missed it! I just spent today pulling weeds, and made a quick trip up to the store before dinner to pick up a few bags of compost. Tomorrow morning I plan to take Carter and Rachel to my favorite nursery, to pick up a couple tomato and pepper plants, and maybe some basil - it will be fun for them, the nursery has a donkey, chickens, cats and a couple little water fountains - plenty of toddler entertainment! During naptime I'll hopefully work the compost into the soil and get the tomatoes in the ground!! Yippee! Today was the perfect day for gardening, too - overcast, and even very lightly sprinkling at times. For those of you who don't live in Texas, you may not fully understand why this is a nice day for gardening. Come down here and pull my weeds in the July heat - then you'll understand! :-) Despite my utter neglect, some of my plants have progressed nicely over the past couple years, most notably my rose! This photo is of one of the MANY blooms I have right now, with many more buds about to open. So pretty, and they smell wonderful too. The only thing I didn't enjoy about gardening today was uncovering four different fire ant mounds! Argh!! I've lived in Texas for almost 12 years now, and I'm still not used to the nasty creepy crawlies we have down here! I've tolerated fire ants & even scorpions (we had several in our house when we first built, but haven't had one in years) - but I've vowed that if I ever find a tarantula in my house, that's it, I'm packing up and moving north!! :-) Luckily, none so far - saw one in the neighborhood once and that was close enough for me!! Ok enough bug talk, I'm getting goosebumps! Back to my happy gardening thoughts... :-) I'm so excited to be back in the yard planting things! And all of this focus on flowers is inspiring me - you'll probably see some flowery cards on here soon. Have a good week!!