Snowblowing our driveway

Wanted to add a couple of winter scenes for Kris.....my pen pal! She loves the snow, as do I. I know that sounds crazy coming from a person who grew up in the desert but I always wanted to live where it snowed! This is from a storm we got in November 2002. The picture on the left I like because of the tree hanging down in the middle and the other picture is of the house. I took this picture from the street I believe.... I love all the trees we have in the front that allow the privacy!

Concert on the Waterfront...

Went to a concert the other night featuring the USAF Rock band from Washington DC. They were really awesome!! It was down on the waterfront in Burlington. Aren't these pictures great? It was a little cool that night, about 60, and breezy but it was beautiful!

Haven't posted for a few days....

But a lot has been going on....Can't tell you the whole story now since it's about 11 at night, but I will give you a little and then tell you the rest tomorrow. Quit my job on Friday after chasing my paycheck around town while my boss drove all over the place telling me to meet her at a specific location and then leaving before I got there! I turned around on the highway 4 times before I finally met up with her. Quit right on the spot! (With Jared on the phone listening to me!)
So I am starting my own business! I got business cards made up and printed yesterday and I am designing my brochure now. I am just about done and all I have to do is get it printed. I already have some good leads on jobs so I am really excited!
Other than that we have other things going on....school is starting next week, Lauren started soccer today..how cute and last night we moved furniture around, which is always fun. Makes us feel like we moved! LOL. We took couches from the basement and swapped them with the ones in the living room. Several times I thought the couch was going to come down the stairs and squash me! We did minor damage while moving them around but nothing that cant' be fixed or just overlooked! LOL. Little dings here and there on some walls and doors. After a while we didnt' care, we just wanted it done!
So anyway, that's been my last few days. Will tell you the rest of the story tomorrow.... Goodnight!

Finally a fishy card!

Finally made a card with my fishy set! I love how it turned out! I put the blue cardstock through my Cuttlebug to get the cool embossed circles. I love how it feels! This card took some time but it was worth the frustration in the end. I used watercolor pencils to color the jellyfish and then used my dove blender to blend all the colors together. I also used watercolor pencils around the edges and blended it. Then I put in 4 brads. I cut 1 inch strips of green to lay under the blue and tore the edges. Then I poked 4 holes and threaded coordinating ribbon through and tied knots. Had to use my son's finger to tie the knots! LOL. The tag is tied on using a piece of fiber. I've never been able to make a cute boy's birthday card but I think this one would do! Too bad I don't know any boys who are having a birthday soon!

I love pink and brown...

Here are some cards that I was able to make last week or so! I love this color combination! I used all Stampin Up colors. On this first card, I used my Cuttlebug die cuts to cut out the flowers and butterflies. I also cut out the scalloped circles with my CB. I used three different colors when I cut them out. I stamped the flowers first on vanilla cardstock, inked the edges and then mounted it to pink cardstock. I then pieced together all the flowers and butterflies and adhered them to the card front. The flowers on the scalloped circles have micro beads in the centers. The butterfly wings are folded up to add dimension. The pink scalloped circle is on pop dots and then adhered to the cocoa scalloped circle. I stamped the same flowers on the the cocoa cardstock, tore the bottom edge, inked it and adhered it to the pink card front. I love how this one turned out.

This next card, was easy. The flower stamp is fron Hero Arts and it comes in a set of three. The stems are phrases, this one is "thinking of you." I inked just the stem part in cocoa ink and then the flower part in pink ink and stamped the flowers in a row on vanilla card stock. The bottom edge is torn and inked. Then adhered to two shades of pink card stock and then mounted to the card front. I used coordinating ribbon to go around the card and then tied some knots with other colored ribbon. Quick and easy! Love that!




This card took a little longer to do....again using all the same colors of paper and ink. The small sqaure on the bottom right corner is popped up from the card and is a shaker. I used a tiny piece of memory glass and foam tape and micro beads, which are hard to see but they are in the right corner at the bottom. I used my Cuttlebug again for this one to cut out the scallop square in the center. Another fun card but it did take me a while.

Wicked storms yesterday...

Yesterday the weather was unbelievable! I was driving home from work along some back country roads and all of a sudden, I look ahead and I see this hazy area about 10 car lengths in front of me. I had no clue what it was...sort of looked like fog or smoke and it went from the sky to the ground. Actually it looked like steam rising from the road. The cars in front of me were slowing down and I kept thinking, "what is that?" When I got close enough I realized that it was rain and when I reached that area, which took all of 10 seconds really, it was like a blanket of water coming down, like sheets of rain instead of drops. It was so bizarre.....the rain wasn't like sprinkles that slowly turned to hard rain, it went from dry to down pour! The cars in front of me immediately slowed WAY down and as if the cars in front of me disappeared, I could no longer see anything ahead! Then the wind picked up and here came the hail......huge hail the size of large marbles just pelting the van. My wipers couldn't go fast enough! I tried to call a friend and she didn't pick up so I left a message and I had to yell in order to hear myself; the hail was hitting so hard and fast. People were pulling over to the side of the road to wait it out because literally you could see nothing; no dotted lines, no lanes, no cars, no houses, nothing.....in broad daylight! It was the freakiest thing ever! Trees were coming down in the middle of the road! I finally made it through that patch of rain and then the rest of the ride home was constantly interrupted by road crews chopping trees up that were in the middle of the street and fire trucks were everywhere trying to clean up and take care of downed power lines. The rain was off and on but it looked like a tornado came through which is very strange for Vermont! The picture is of a house less than a mile from me that is surrounded by trees, much like our house. There are several trees on top of this house around the perimeter of the house. It's hard to tell what you are looking at but it's the only picture I have right now. I came home to no power. It was still daylight so I gathered all the candles I could find. Thank God I was a PartyLite rep! LOL. Since we have a well and not town water, our pump (run by electricity) wasn't working so we couldn't use the sinks or toilets! Our phone was down too so we had to use our cell phones. We were told it could be two days before we got power back so we decided to go get ice and empty our refrigerators. But before that, we cooked dinner on the grill, chunky soup in a big pot! LOL. After dinner and it was getting pretty dark, Katie and I left in search of ice. Our closests stores were closed so we had to go to another town which wasn't hit by the storm and got tons of ice and a second cooler. We drove home and just as we got out of the van and opened up the back door to get the ice chest out, the power came back on! 10:00 at night and we drove to get all this ice and ended up not needing it! LOL. So we all went to bed! Today our phone didn't start working until late this afternoon. My friend came over and she took me into her neighborhood where this house is. It's simply amazing to see trees that are 50+ years old toppled over like twigs! Tomorrow I am going to take a little drive and see what other people are dealing with. We were incredibly lucky and had no damage to our house. Our house is surrounded by trees as well, that are just as big as the ones in the picture so it's quite scary to think that it could have been us! We were very lucky!

Been a while...

Boy, it's been awhile since I last posted! I have been so busy with work and home that I haven't had time for much of anything! I did manage to make some cards about a week or so ago! And I took some more pics for my pen pal, Kris!

This bridge is in Stowe on the mountain road. There are so many bridges in Vermont and this is one of the pretty ones!

Off to the river...

We all took a ride to the river today! We took Jazz with us; figured he'd have fun. So we loaded up in the van and was gone for 7 hours! We collected rocks for our table project, and the kids swam in the river. Jazz even laid down in the water close to the edge to cool off. At one point, he walked straight in and wasn't expecting the floor of the river to dip down and he ended up having to swim cuz he couldn't touch the bottom anymore. He turned around and faced us and the look in his eyes was hilarious! He was panicked! We were all laughing; poor guy! We all had a good time though. Here's some pictures...