50 Years

October 3rd will be my parents 50th wedding anniversary. These days, I think that's quite an accomplishment that is seen by only a few. The 4 of us "kids" are throwing them a big party with dinner and a band (dancing) with about 140 people coming. This party has been in the making for over a year now and has proven to be way more time consuming than I had originally imagined. The most difficult part of it, is that I live in Tallahassee, FL, my sister is in Fort Lauderdale FL, my brother is in Sacremento CA and, luckily my other brother is in the same town as my parents, Janesville WI, the location of the party. It's only 3 weeks away and I still have to "assemble" the slide show and put together the 3 1/2 hours of music for the time before the band starts, and numerous other small projects. I think it will all be worth it in the end, and I am really looking forward to seeing all the relatives and friends again (I haven't been "home" for 2 years).
Here is a picture of them from 1959 :)

Summer Guest

My family is soon to take on an adventure that we are completely new to. Recently my daughter was approached by a guest speaker in her Spanish 2 class about hosting a student in an English Language "school" this summer. We knew our lives we very busy now, but really wanted to explore this option. So, we filled out an application and had a home visit from the leader. Unfortunately, all the students had a host family and but we agreed to be put on a waiting list. She called a few nights ago saying that one of the other host families needed to drop their obligation and did we want to still host. Well, of course we did! Cristina, 14, will be comming on June 26th to stay with us for 3 weeks. She lives in Valladolid, Spain and sounds like a very socialable and fun girl. On her application she did not check that she likes the outdoors, camping or hiking, but we may take her out anyway on the weekends. We were planning to camp out on July 4th weekend at a State Park nearby, but we changed our plans to spend the weekend in a hotel in Valdosta and take her to Wild Adventures. We had to think long and hard about this decision but decided with the incredible heat of the Florida summer, that it would be best. The funny thing is that Melanie says to me "Can you promise me we won't take her letterboxing and show her how weird we are?"
WHAT?!?!?!

A Crisp Leaf

This card was one of my favorites once I finished them, but at the time I was designing and making them I was a mess. It was for turtlelove's "Jack O. Lantern and Friends" swap in the fall of '09.

I used UTTE (Ultra Thick Embossing Powder). Three times I smeared the embosssing ink on the paper and sprinkled the powder, then melt it between each application. After the third time, as soon as you take the heat gun away, you take your already inked stamp and mash it in the goo and let it sit to harden most of the way (about 10 seconds). Truthfully, I don't think I'd do it again for a swap that big, it was very time consumming and MESSY ( did the entire embossing process in an old 8x8 baking pan). I loved how the paper turned out, for that I took beige paper and used 4 different ink pads and smeared them all over in layers. The colors were much more intense when I did it, and the heat and UTTE really faded and blended the colors some.I have been wanting to try this for a long time and figured it was the perfect swap since I had a simple stamp (kind of imperative for this technique)

Which way is North?

We've begun our Spring Break trip a little further North from Tallahasee, spending the night in Columbia, South Carolina. Melanie and I went to see Celtic Thunder at the Township Auditorium. It was a pretty good concert. Not the huge stage shows like the concerts I went to as a youngster, but very fun. Melanie has been "into them" for a few months now, this part of the trip was her idea :) Tommorrow we head to Burlington, North Carolina where turtlelove is hosting a mini-meet for us. It will be very interesting meeting some people I only knew by computer interaction. I wish my cards were done, since I was terribly sick on Thursday, I didn't get a chance to finish a special set. Hopefully I'll wake up early and can work on them then. Well, better get some shut-eye, still have a 3 hour drive in the a.m, can't wait!!

A shameless plug ;)

The first LTC swap I hosted was titled "Uniquelly Antiqued", here was my card for the swap, titled "My Sled". I had realized when I carved my stamp of Black Beauty that I really liked carving from an illustrated image. It was easy to hide a "mistake", which I did here too. I distressed the edges (photo doesn't really show it), smeared ink along the edges, used glue and glitter for the snow and chalk for the sky. So far, out of all 50-something cards I've made, this is my favorite. The current antique swap is titled "Uniquelly Antiqued Again!" and am in need of a few more participants. Would you like to join? Due date was March 26th, but that can be negotiated :)

Wow, I have a blog!

I've created this blog to document some of my many adventures in life. I'm not much a writer, so hopefully I won't bore you to tears :)The last couple of years I have been mildly obsessed with Letterboxing and making Letterboxer Trading Cards (LTC's). This will hopefully be a way I can show people that ask "How'd you do that?", or I show a card that has a technique that someone else is struggling with.