33rd running of the Crim

Today marks the 33rd running of the Crim, aka The Crim Festival of Races, along the streets of greater Flint MI. There were already over 15,000 runners, walkers, and wheelers registered before race-day registration opened this morning, so I'm betting we'll break participation records this year. Temps have cooled since Thursday and they started festivities this morning at 56 degrees F when the wheelers started. This is my first year in probably 15 catching it on the tube as we woke up late this morning - but WJRT-TV12 had nice coverage and you can catch a repeat on Sunday at 11 a.m.

Boo!

Boo! Here's my first Halloween card of the year based on the CPS129 sketch. If you're in the Flint area and you think these crocheted ghosts are STINKIN' CUTE (as I do), you may be able to pick some up at CAM's "new to you" sidewalk sale this weekend. The store annually sets up tables for others to bring in scrapping-related gently used items for sale and I try to attend every year. Kendra's planning on being there this weekend but I consider myself lucky that I met her thru a common friend last weekend. She was delivering some crocheted items to her buddy and I picked up these cuties, some apples, and lots of plain white flowers that I think I'll dye as needed. But enough of that ... it's getting late and I've only started supper! Gotta run!

stamps: A Muse Artstamps' Spooky Night (inside sentiment); paper: Reminisce's Halloween collection self-adhesive diecut stickers, Paper Paradise's black and unknown maker's yellow-orange (or izzit orange-yellow?!) card stock; ink: StazOn's Jet Black; accessories: hand-made crocheted ghosts

fabulous friend

This card's heading to one of my lunch buddies whose Mom passed away this past week. It uses one of my favorite color combinations - purples and greens. I recently purchased a gently used retiring Curvy Verses and used the "I'm here for you always ... please know that I care" sentiment on the inside. The card was from Angie's August stamp camp so this'll be a short post as I don't know all the deets - only that they're all SU and we used Rich Razzleberry for the purple on the card. It's one of SU's most recent In Colors and I'm lovin' it!

it was 40 years ago today

No, NOT Sgt. Pepper ... do you realize it was forty years ago today that some 400,000 people camped out on the land of Max Yasgur's farm, in Bethel, N.Y., on Aug. 15-17, 1969, to celebrate three days of peace and music at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair?! How time flies when you're having fun, eh?!

There's a new Woodstock movie being released - I worked at a theater when the first one came out and probably saw most of it about 20 times! Back in the day of single screens, I had to return to the candy counter any time someone in the audience got up but otherwise could watch all the movies I liked. Yeah, I'm a movie-aholic, and interested in catching the new release!

doesn't this make you smile?

It doesn't matter what kind of mood I'm in; when I see this YouTube, it makes me smile, and I felt the need to smile this evening. Enjoy! Life is good!

blog candy alert

Bev of Bev's Crafts is offering some wowza blog candy in celebration of receiving 400K hits and if I don't win, I hope one of YOU does! Stop by before August 17, and good luck!

happy b'day Kathleen!

It's my buddy Kathleen's birthday and I "chair-ish" her friendship so made her this card based on the CPS127 and ssnotime99 sketch challenges. We've a small group that lunches together more often than not, and it'll be her pick of restaurants today - our treat, 'natch! One of my fav color combos is green and purple - this one's kiwi kiss and elegant eggplant and I paper pieced the chairs to add a "pop" factor.


stamps: PTI's on my couch, paper tray (inside sentiment); paper: SU's Kiwi Kiss Patterns Designer Series DP, Elegant Eggplant and Kraft card stocks; ink: Ranger's antique linen distress ink, SU's Kiwi Kiss and Elegant Eggplant; tools: SU's slit punch

it pays to do surveys

Back in May I received an e-mail from a marketing firm asking whether I'd be interested in participating in a product test for the scrapbooking industry. They only said that the product test would be interesting and exciting. If I agreed to participate, in the next few days I'd receive a package in the mail with instructions and the first product to test. After using the product for about a week, I'd receive an e-mail asking me to fill out an online survey about the product, which I was to complete by June 8th. I'd then receive another product in the mail to test, followed by another survey, to be completed by June 15th.

About a month after finishing the second survey, I received a link to a follow-up survey. After completing the third survey and returning all the test products, I received a package containing an incentive payment of $50 PLUS $50 in scrapbooking products pictured here! Sweet, eh?! Well, I'm curious, and they'd provided an e-mail address in their e-mail should I have any questions ... I wanted to know how they selected me to participate. They told me it was from my responding to a survey about adhesives.

The product test ended up being Tombow, and I just happened to be running out of my Tombow liquid glue, so it couldn't have come at a better time! And, I was just working on a stash of cards for the Cards For Heroes organization! Thanx, Tombow - call on me any time!

a Mary Engelbreit card

You've gotta love the DP colors and stickers used in today's make-'n-take project from Karen's, a LSS. I've been stopping there with a few friends every other weekend to complete a 2-page 6x6" monthly-themed scrapbook spread and 2 cards. Today we made an April scrapbook spread, a cute hedgehog card, and this card, my fav of today's projects. The stickers are Mary Engelbreit designs - I love her stuff, and picked up a sheet to make another card!

color palette generator

I use Photoshop's eyedropper tool to pick colors from scanned images - often when I don't have the right colors on hand I'll make my own card stock that way - but I happened to read a post this morning about DeGraeve.com's Color Palette Generator and realized I'd never posted a tip about it. Check out Ez's July 30th post for samples and directions. I keep DeGraeves' site bookmarked on my home's PC as they have lots of fun tools that you should definitely check out!

Here's the color palette generated from the picture I post on my blog, and yes, those glasses have been replaced - tho' I still really prefer big glasses! I've really gotta get around to updating my pic one of these days ...

It's simple to use - you just paste in the URL of a picture (so if you haven't already, you can upload to a free storage place like flickr or Snapfish), then hit the Color-Palette-ify! button, and voila! You receive both dull and vibrant lists of colors found in the picture, along with a hex representation of them - useful if you're working on a Web page. Isn't modern technology wonderful?!

beautiful bouncing baby boy

I'm planning ahead ... so please discount all those stories you may have heard about me being a procrastinator. One of my nieces is expecting a baby this winter and I'm going to be ready. I took a mini baby album class over the last two weekends with a few scrappin' buddies at one of my LSS, Karen's Creative Stamping, and here's the (almost) finished product ... AND I have a kit to make a "girl" version at my leisure. So, I tell ya, I'm READY! Bring that baby ON!

on speaking with authority ...

I'm playing catch-up on blurfing as I've been working way too much lately (deadlines, y'know?! sometimes work gets SO in the way of life in general) ... and spotted this spiel on Jessica Sprague's blog and wanted to be able to reference it again and again. Sometimes that's enough of a reason for a post, y'know?! So enjoy, folkes!

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

On a side note, I went golfing last night. My DH and I golf on my work-place's league. Not sayin' we're GOOD, or anything ... well, HE is! We played 18 holes, making up some of the rainouts we experienced at the start of the league. I don't know if any of you are in Michigan, but lately, you can pretty much say, "If it's Wednesday, it must be raining!" BEAUTIFUL day yesterday too - upper 70's, sunny, breezy ... and I hit some wowza shots, but still managed to hit enough lousey ones so my average isn't declining. I thought there was some unwritten rule that said the more often you played, the better scores you should shoot?!