A Gift for A Pond Jumper

Anam, a great scrapbooker and all around crafter, is back off to the UK very shortly after several rounds with Canadian customs. She will be sorely missed but really will not be far, at least not from our thoughts. The internet is a wonderful thing. Some of Anam's crafting buddies got together and made layouts for her to remember our families and with a note to say how much she's meant to us. As she has never met David (or Murphy and Onyx), I thought I would put a picture of Jill and I. I chose one of us laughing as Anam is always up for a good laugh and may even be more sarcastic than me. I do hope that dry sense of humour will translate in email and blog posts from across the pond. Here's my LO for a great gal...

Also, Juli and little Ellie (with hubby in tow) stopped by the store today. She is soooo sweet! I can't wait to get one of those adorable bundles of my own. Oh wait! I guess I could wait until I had a steady job. Nuts...

Stitch in My Side... (shoulder, really)

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming swimming... stitch a sweater, sew a button, stitching, stitching... holding it together and in the meantime making cute sweaters even cuter. I bought this cute cardi from Old Navy the other day whilst shopping with mon mere. Loved it just as it was but I was really in the crafy mood so we went and bought "Grandma's Bag of Buttons" from Michaels and some embroidery thread and I went to town. I still want to add some more craziness but here's what I have so far...

I wore it to school and the several STUDENTS complimented me, so it MUST be okay. Ha!

Also, what is with my cartoon face. Honestly. Who has a nose and eyes the size of mine. Drop an anvil on my head and run me off a cliff. That's all folks!

Cookie-Cutter Cuteness

Recently, my dearest K2 invited me over to "whack-a-stack". Slightly frightened but oddly curious I accepted. I arrived at her house at 6:30 and was not done "whacking my stack" until 10:30. But I wasn't alone! Wonderful company, easy instructions and cooki-cutter cards were just what I needed for a nice evening out. Generally speaking, I'm the kind of crafter who just slaps stuff together and hopes for the best, complains when it doesn't work, takes it all apart and tries again (see second picture). It was nice to have limited options and work within a framework, rather than creating my own. I think I need to use sketches more for this reason alone. I wasn't going to post them because they were not completely, originally mine but then I thought: "I should post just to post". I find I am at a point in my life where I am just doing things to prove I'm still breathing...

Two interesting things I noticed (or re-noticed) during this class:

1) I like to jam everything into one corner. This makes card makers uncomfortable. They like to fill the whole card and kept telling me the card needed "something on the other side". Fooey! Just mash it all together I say!

2) I like to play off of a theme. Our teacher REALLY liked the embossed butterfly die and we used it on so many cards that I just started putting them on every card for the heck of it. I even used one for the flame of my candle. Nonsensical? Always!