happy new year!

I could get used to this!

hey, I could get used to this life of leisure!

we just celebrated Christmas at our house. my brother and niece came up and my brother-in-law came over. we supped on Italian-seasoned turkey breast tenderloin with red potatoes and broccoli, and my brother brought up some yummy cupcakes for dessert. nice day was had by all. our 2 pups played together well in the back yard.

I worked my last day this past Friday, December 21, 2018 and I'm now on holiday 'til the 31st, my official retirement date!

we have no special travel plans but do have some joint honey-do lists to prep the house for some planned updates. we recently did update phase I where we replaced our 8' sliding glass door leading to our back yard, and the front entry / storm doors. the slider door replacement was born of necessity as it opened fine but was becoming increasingly harder to shut. we knew we had some water damage and had a builder recommended to me by my coworker Joe check it out. he ended up saying he could replace the front door at the same time if I liked (as I'd mentioned it was a future project waiting to happen), so we got both done at the same time. and THEN, he included 2 color painting and had to replace some trim, and I mentioned that I'd been planning to beef up the trim to more Craftsman style, and AGAIN he said we might as well do it while he had to replace some ... so the project just kept growing. he ended up painting the great room and entry hall and replaced the door trim on 3 doors (front, slider, and our bedroom entry). we'd had all vanilla white walls but splurged on color on the walls - using Sherwin-Williams' zero voc egg shell in 7527 Nantucket Dune and Benjamin Moore's semi gloss in SW7012 creamy white. it looks t'riffic! next mini project - install garage outdoor lighting and replace the rest ... but that's a story for another day!

happy new baby!

Hi there! It's been ages since I posted a card here ... I've lately only been making them for occasions and then generally forget to post (shame on me) but I'm back! This one's to a baby shower a few friends and I are heading to on Saturday so to be on the safe side I'm scheduling this to post then!

Brit's the daughter of a friend of mine at work. She worked in our Payroll department while going to Kettering University and her "Payroll Moms" (kim1 and kim2) adopted her too! Anywho, she's expecting her first born. A couple friends and I went in on a group gift and the inspiration piece for today's card is the super cute bag my buddy Pat picked up to stuff our smaller items into. I couldn't find my stamp set with the cute giraffe so I ended up using the bag and the only stamps used were the sentiments I used on the inside/front/back of the card. I PhotoShop'd the sentiment off that was on the bag, cleaned up some of the extraneous stuff (ribbons and wrinkles), then picked out the new sentiments, and voilà! Easy peasy concept, but it still took me a few hours... sigh... guess it's been longer than I thought since I'd stamped!

The inspiration piece:

stamps: SU's Made with Love, Stampendous' Hand-Stamped Arc (LOVE this stamp and like to use it on the back bottom of my cards... it's a rainbow-shaped arc that reads, "(heart)(heart) Hand stamped for you from my (heart)(heart)"; paper: Neenah solar white, CTMH's pewter ink