Lucy, horses, & sheep O my!

Lucy has been staying with us for a week now, and she is settling into the routine and making herself at home.  She has HUGE amounts of energy, and just likes to be in the mix of everything all of the time.

 Today we stopped by the vet to get her spay sutures out (turns out there were none!), and it was really busy, so we took a walk around outside.  We were walking near the fields when she noticed the horses.  She barked a couple of times, and then a couple of them ran up to fence, scaring her, more barking.  Well then the bay stallion kept eyeing her and let out of low neigh that scared her even more.  I couldn't help it, it was hilarious!!

Later, this afternoon we took her out to see what she thought of herding sheep.  She was scared of them too, barking at them, but also chasing them :)  She exhausted herself running after the sheep today.  So she is interested, but not very confident about it.  Definite potential:)

Our dogs are accepting of Miss Lucy...well with Bailey it is more that she has accepted that she lives there for now, but she doesn't have to like it :)  Bay just wants to play ball and be around us,  she has no interest in playing with pups, never really has.  Lexi & Lucy play and wrestle @ high speed and all of the time!!  It is great!  Foster was completely in love with her the first day or so, and now it has simmered down to just plain like:)

It is amazing how adding one dog to the household can seem to take over everything!! lol

It has been a while!! I guess the big news here is that we are going to be fostering a very pretty 1yr old red/white border collie named Lucy starting this weekend.  She was surrendered to the Memphis Animal Shelter last week, and a local BC rescue, West TN Border Collie Rescue, pulled her out this week.  We offered to foster her, and here we are!!

We have been told that she hasn't had much if any training including being house broken.  Bright side to that is that we won't have to untrain anything :) lol!  We are really looking forward to helping out this pretty girl find a forever home!  

In other news, we are getting ready to start back to competing in agility starting February.  I nearly always take off  December & January :) Mike has been doing some competitions with Bailey (who just turned 11 yesterday! Happy Birthday Bay!) and doing really well!  

Just a short post for now...more to come about the pups, Lucy, and us :)

Awesome Motivation to use my Echo Park Stash!!!

I know that you have gone into your LSS and just fallen in love with a line of paper, gotten the paper, had a million ideas, but then....the paper never gets used because you are waiting for just the right project for this perfect paper. For me, that is what happened with Echo Park!! So now, in an effort to use my awesome Echo Park papers on some great projects, I am submitting some projects for their Fresh Faces monthly design call!

First, I created an 8.5 x 11 layout from their Sweet Summertime Collection. I had this great pic of my agility dogs, Foster & Lexi, that was just screaming for the happy colors of this collection!

So I cut down a piece of Flower Garden, using the gorgeous orange side. Next, I matted the photo on the blue side of Pinwheels, leaving 1/4" border around the photo. This collection has a great page of pinwheels, and I wanted to incorporate those on my page, so I cut a few out. I had laid the picture out on the page, and decided to add a pop of white and color by creating a banner out of Flower Garden and Whimsy Stripe, and color twine. I freehand cut some triangles out of both sheets. Lay the triangles down in a row, points down, on your non-stick craft sheet. Apply your adhesive in a thin line along the top of the triangle, and lay the twine on top, and press to adhere. Then, I added some Ranger Rock Candy stickles to the pinwheels (very hard to see in the photos)

and added them to the banner.

I really love the letter stickers from the Alpha Sticker sheet too. Cute, bright, and so easy to use and create a great title. I just eyeballed the layout of the stickers, starting with the border stickers. I lined those up with the edge of the page, and adhered one on top of the other. For the letters, I cut each one out of the sheet with the backing still on & arranged them above the borders with the pin wheel. Then I went back and adhered each one. The last bit was the great journaling card from the Journal Card Paper. I added an extra pinwheel with a pop up glue dot, added a cute heart sticker on top of that, and adhered it to the page with craft glue dots.

Next, I altered a wood picture frame with papers from the Walk in the Park Collection.

I painted the frame off white, so that the back and sides would be finished. Then, as orange is one of my go to colors of the moments, I covered the front of whole frame with Playground. I grabbed these 2 great patterned papers, the other side of Playground & the blue side of Blissful Days Border, trimmed and layered them over the top. I believe that they were scraps from some previous cuts I had done, so at the time they looked good, so I didn't measure them and just cut them the length of the frame. (I went back and they are 3.5" and 1 3/4" wide respectively, and cut the length of the frame.)Use an exacto knife to cut out the hole for the picture. I inked all of the edges with Ranger Vintage Photo Distress Ink. On the Blissful Days Border sheet, there were these great little flags. I decided to cut them out and make a banner with them using twine (same method as I described above on the layout), and adhered that in the corner. Last, but not least, I used Tim Holtz Large Rosette die and Mother Nature paper to make the Rosette flower. I adhered one of the great cutouts from the Element Card paper to it.

I had all of these scraps from the above projects, these cute little green cards, and these next 2 cards just came together.

For the Happy Birthday card, I just layered the 2 scraps from Playground (Walk in the Park), adhered the balloon sticker from a Walk in the Park Element Stickers, and cut out and adhered the sentiment from Element Card Paper with pop up glue dots. Simple and just too cute!! (I did no measuring or cutting on this one...so lucky! But the dimensions of the card are : 5.5" x 4.25", and the scraps: 3.5" x 5.5" & 1.75" x 5.5")

The same process for the Thank you card, except that I added the extra Rosette (Mother Nature paper) that I made for the picture frame, and didn't use. (Card dimensions: 5.5" x 4.25" and the paper ( Walk in the Park Blissful Days Border) is 2.25" x 5.5")

I think I may make a couple more and give the set as a gift :)

Thanks so much for stopping by!!! Please go check out Echo Park's brand new collections!!!

Supplies: All papers, stickers, or embellishments on these projects is either from Sweet Summertime or Walk in the Park Collections from Echo Park. Honeydew Twine from The Twinery. Tim Holtz Rosette Die, Ranger Vintage photo Distress Ink, Glossy Accents, Glue Dots - Craft and Pop Up, Antique White Acrylic Paint

So I Decided 1 Card Wasn't Enough....

1 card just wasn't going to cut it for the Moxie Fab Challenge, so here is my 2nd entry. Just a little Thank You card.

I used Hero Arts Thank You Cling Stamp to create this card. First I stamped it 3 times on to cream card stock. I also stamped it once on a piece of Memory Box paper. On the first image, I just cut out the center of the frame, and then colored the rest using Copic markers. On the second image I just colored the flowers as I did on the first image and cut them out. On the 3rd image, I colored the flowers but just cut out the center most part of each flower. On the image on the patterned paper I just cut out the center with the sentiment and colored the stem and leaves on that center piece with Copics.

Lastly, I adhered the 1st image to the cream card, then the center of the image, and lastly adhered the flowers with 3-D foam squares to give the card some depth.

Thanks for looking...again!!

Creating a Moxie Fab card for the Stamp It! Challenge

I haven't posted anything crafty in a long time, so here is a birthday card that I created for my Aunt's birthday this month!! It also fit the challenge theme on Moxie Fab World's Stamp It! Challenge which closes today:) For the challenge, stamping needs to be the predominant feature of the card.

I started with a Kraft card and stamped the background with embossing ink, and covered that in clear embossing powder. Heating that up created the background in the darker brown on the kraft.

Then I stamped the Hero Arts birthday stamp on 3 different Memory Box papers and cut them out. I mixed and matched and adhered them to the card using Glue Dots.

Lastly I finished the edge of the card with some navy blue ribbon.

Thanks for looking :)

Supplies: Kraft card, Hero Arts Birthday Gift & Flower Burst Card stamps, Ranger Embossing Ink & Clear Embossing Powder, Patterned Paper from Memory Box, Memento Tuxedo Black Ink, Glue Dots Craft Dots

June Vacation Part 2: Washington, DC Day 1

Last Sunday we left Roanoke and took the Skyline Drive up to DC!! So beautiful!!! We stopped a bunch of times at different overlooks. It made for a relaxing drive up to DC.

Monday was a crazy, non stop day! We started out in the Air & Space Museum for the morning. We flew a F-18 Simulator, looked at so many amazing exhibits, and saw the IMAX movie To Fly!

Next we headed over to the National Archives to see the original Bill of Rights, Constitution, and Declaration of Independence. It was really surprising to see how much all of the documents have faded!! Mike, Aunt Barbara, & I all went down to the research area, and got signed up to research in the archives. We didn't have a whole lot of time to look though....we will definitely be heading back there on our next trip to DC!

Then we all met up at the White House! I guess I always thought it would look bigger in person. Maybe if we weren't so far away! lol I think we will plan ahead next time and get the signed up to take an actual tour. ( You have to do it 4-6 months in advance) Apparently, the Obamas were entertaining, so you see the snipers on the roof, and this officer with the big gun cleverly hidden in a black bag. There is no way you could guess what was in the bag...no way at all!! (lol)

From there we headed over to the WWII memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. I really liked the Lincoln Memorial. I hated that they were renovating the Reflecting Pool:( Ugly!!! Then we all went and had dinner at Miewah's Chinese Restaurant, all 14 or so of us!

DC is just amazing! I can't believe I never made the trip before:)

June Vacation Part 1: The Wedding in Roanoke

So we left on Thursday to start our trip to Roanoke, VA for our niece, Lauren's, wedding to Daniel. We stopped in Knoxville for the night, and finished up the trip on Friday. The ride up through Tennessee and Virginia was beautiful!!! So Friday night we went to the rehearsal dinner at Sundara near Roanoke. It is a gorgeous bed 'n breakfast! The dinner was wonderful and it was great to meet Daniel's family. Dan's family went all out, and it was great!!

On Saturday, we squeezed in a drive down part of the Blue Ridge Parkway! Beautiful!! The weather was so nice, in the 70's and sunny! In June!! (I don't even think the lows in Memphis this time of year get near 70! lol) We saw Uncle Joe and Arlena, and Uncle Fred and Aunt Connie at a couple of the overlooks too!! Thanks to Uncle Joe for taking a couple of the pics too:)

Blue Ridge Parkway

Mike & I at our first overlook

Uncle Joe & Arlena at the 2nd Overlook on the Parkway

Best part of Saturday was of course the wedding!! It went so smoothly, the weather was perfect, and Lauren looked absolutely beautiful!! The reception was wonderful and the music by the quartet was wonderful!! So were the tunes later by Chelsea's boyfriend, Matt! Lots of dancing, and fun!! Highlights were the dance stylings of the groom, Dan, and our nephew, Owen!! The send off for the bride and groom was something I have not seen before, and I can't wait to see the photographer's pics...everyone had these huge sparklers as they came down and went out!! Scott & Peg looked so happy, and they did a wonderful job with the wedding!

Mike & Mom

Mike & I

Dan & Lauren

Dan & Lauren cutting the cake

Last event in Roanoke was the family breakfast on Sunday at The Roanoker. Nice, laid back, wonderful way to see everyone before we all headed out in different directions! And a Happy 23rd Birthday for Kristen too:)

For anyone that we missed before we left, it was wonderful to see you, and we will have to do it again soon!!!

Part 2...Washington, DC!! So excited!