What's your favorite trip/vacation??????

The new challenge is up at http://whatisyourfavething.blogspot.com/ so come on over and check out who won the Seasons challenge and the great layouts done by the DT for the new challenge, which is What's your favorite trip or vacation?
I did the above layout about our first sailboat trip to the Bahamas back in early August - I did layouts for all the challenges up to this one back then as I was concerned that if we had a hurricane, I would not be able to get them done. So when I went back this past week to photograph this one, I wasn't thrilled with it so I did another layout

of a trip to San Francisco when Brian was a child. I used a sketch idea from the latest Bad Girls project and I actually sewed the fabric squares on like a quilt. However, this layout didn't excite me either but now it was crunch time so I sent in the Bahamas one.

Do you even feel like that about your layouts - that something is missing or there is something too much or somehow it's missing the point or.......... lately I seem to be going through a stage where either something works right away or it just won't seem to come together. I have 3 layouts piled on my side table in varying stages of completion but I just can't seem to finish any of them. Somehow I think my style is evolving and I am in the middle of the transition not sure which direction to take. The same seems to be true of my painting - I have been learning so much in my watercolor class, a totally different way to paint than I have been doing, and I am trying to distil and translate what I want to do in my work.

This layout I did for the 2 challenge for The Paper Cut - how you feel about the Twilight books or if you are not a Twiler, then something about you. I suppose you could take this layout either way. The photo is one that Marit did some arty stuff to back in the early summer (thanks Marit) and I printed it on a colored paper so it looks sort of vintage - I wanted it to blend with the cool background paper (this is paper from an old Somerset magazine - I love how they always have papers in the magazine - unfortunately they are so expensive that usually I just look at them at Booksamillion and drool. I scored a few older copies at the thrift store. Yay!!!!)

Hope you have a great weekend - wish I could be in Phoenix with Julie, Deana, and Sarah - what fun!!!!!!! I have to work today and tomorrow but I plan to do some painting also, a little reading, and start a new knitting project - I pulled out my 2 plastic boxes of yarn and my old pattern books - I think the rhythmic and meditative feel of knitting will be good for my creative psyche.

Thanks for reading and ttfn

Prima picks

Just a heads up - go check out http://prima.typepad.com/prima/2009/10/prima-product-picks.html - Prima is giving some gorgeous stuff away!!!!!!! I look at the photo collage and I am so inspired by the colors.

A Little Randomness on this glorious day

Good morning on this glorious Sunday morning. Since the weather changed to fall/winter mode, Florida is a great place to live. Yesterday when I talking to my son on the phone, he remarked how alive he felt and how much he looked forward to the cooler weather - his word for the 6 months of summer was "brutal." As you can see from the above photo, I snipped the rose bud this morning and brought it into the house - so beautiful and I can see it every time I walk through the living room.
Sunday is always a quiet but busy time for me - Dan always plays golf and I am alone in the house usually doing laundry, putting the roast in the crockpot, having a cup of tea, just living. I was raised going to church and Sunday school; and during my adult life, I have gone through periods of attending church and not. After returning to the US in 2001, I began attending a church and really looked forward every week to going - I felt so inspired and peaceful after the service, and the pastor was just so inspirational. Then he was moved to another church and the new pastor was much more hellfire and brimstone, and I left church feeling unsettled and even unhappy. I decided to quit going and to find God myself, and I think it was a good decision. I smell God in the fresh laundry drying on the clothesline in the sun, I feel God in the bread dough that I am kneading, I taste God in my tea and cinnamon toast. Anyway, I hope you are having a glorious day or night no matter when or where that you are reading this.

I have had a lovely birthday week, and the reason it was a week is because I admit to being a little paranoid about putting out information on the web so I have listed my birthdate as different dates and/or years on different sites - close but........ Anyway, it's been fun receiving greetings for several days AND yesterday I received in the mail a beautiful postcard of a painting by Dutch artist Marjan van Zeyl called The Pink House, and some fun Dutch scrapping supplies and paint brushes from Marit, a friend from SIS and Harlee-Quinnz. Thanks Marit, it was so fun to open the happy mail!!!!!

Yesterday Tara Anderson had a little blog celebration on her blog the Pink House, where she asked some fun questions and had a couple of challenges. The above photo is a 4 inch square piece of art - the background is actually a photo of my watercolor palette from yesterday afternoon - I loved how the colors had run together and mixed so I snapped a pic. The Bouchon card is from a fantastic French restaurant in downtown Asheville. Absolutely divine food!!!!!

Another challenge was to create a tag, and this is mine. I started with a piece of Prima packaging, added a Target tag, some fabric, ribbon, buttons, and metal frames. It's sort of a baby boy theme as that's what the packaging says - softly boy buttons - so I will save it for a shower present or use it on a layout with a baby pic of Brian. I began to get some ideas for Christmas tags but I have a couple of DT assignments to finish first and some painting to finish for my class on Wednesday so the tags will have to wait a few days.

For my birthday this past week, Dan and I went to my favorite Mexican restaurant and then afterwards he took me to TJ Maxx for a little shopping spree - I got some new towels for my bathroom, some fancy teas, and a few other little things. My house is done in pales - whites and creams - and I change the accent pieces for the seasons. Both bathrooms are done in white and cream - white towels in mine and cream in Dan's, but my new towels are the most delicious shade of pale aqua, and they have stylized embroidered flowers in espresso, caramel, and white near the bottom - so luscious and beautiful. I put out bottles in the bathroom that are in those shades and the room looks totally redone. Happy happy happy! It's so funny and synchronitic that http://www.shopevalicious.com/ just had a posting on Friday about aqua.

And before I close, I have a little favor to ask - please vote for Jenneke's layout on http://lotuspaperie.blogspot.com/ . She is a fabulous scrapper and is on the TAAFOMFT design team (speaking of, get us your layouts on your fav time of year - we have received such fabulous layouts but we want to see yours too!!!) A couple of months ago, she and I were finalists the same month and I was fortunate enough to win so this time it's her turn - she so totally deserves it - her layouts are always so alive, so colorful and filled with fun and unique elements.

Well, this is a pretty long post and I need to check on the laundry. Have a fabulous week filled with beauty and creativity!

Join me for a little walk around my yard

This past weekend the weather broke here and we were able to turn off the air conditioner (our electricity bills will plummet! Yay!!!!!) and open up our house. Today is a quiet day - Dan had jury duty this morning (he is one of those people that gets called up every couple of years while I have only been called up once - and at the time we were in Trinidad so I didn't get the notice until after the jury was due) and I am cleaning house and ridding out. I want you to know that I actually filed every single one of the layouts that was piled up waiting to be filed. This was a major job!!!!!!!!! Fortunately I had picked up a couple of 12x12 3ring binders at the thrift store so I had enough binders even to create a These are a few of my favorite things binder and a Harlee-Quinnz binder. I can't tell you how happy I am to have the layouts put away!!!! While I was working with layouts, I also did something that probably would make some people crazy: I actually ripped apart a bunch of old layouts that I didn't really like or that I had made specifically for a challenge and the LO didn't mean anything to me - I saved the photos, alphas, and any embellishments for future use and in some cases, I even saved the paper.
I just had lunch on the lanai and was noticing how fragrant the rosemary in our yard was so I was inspired to walk around the yard taking a few photos.
Roses are fairly difficult to grow in Florida as it is basically too hot for them but we have one small bush on the shady side of our house that has 6-8 blooms a year - in the cooler months. Today I saw that it had one bud.

Our key lime tree is loaded with limes - I usually use them to make key lime pound cakes - except they are not really pound cakes as they are very low fat and made with yogurt and vegetable oil. I might be persuaded to share the recipe - the cake was originally a lemon cake but I substituted key limes. Tonight we are having tilapia for dinner so I will slice a couple of limes for garnish.

This is a basil plant that has grown up wild - I had a vegetable and herb garden last year and this basil apparently came up from seeds from the old plant - actually there are about 8 basil plants - amazing!!!!

And here is the fragrant rosemary just outside the lanai. I just love the scent of rosemary.

This is a fancy hibiscus that is also just outside the lanai - notice the varigated leaves. We have a beautiful red double hibiscus just beside our front porch but it doesn't have any blooms right now. We also have gigantic allamanda bushes across the back of our yard and they have bloomed so much this summer they have literally fallen over from the weight of the flowers. We also have ixora blooming along the front of our house. We also have lots of azalea bushes and they are riotous with blooms from February to April.

I need to finish my cleaning so I can do some painting and scrapping.

Tomorrow I will be doing a posting on the Harlee Quinnz Designs blog http://www.harleequinnzdesigns.com/blog/ so come on over and check it out. Today Larissa has a posting on making a little paper doll from Harlee Quinnz ephemera and paper. My blog will be for a small wallhanging and instructions on how to make the velvet fabric flowers that I have been making for my layouts.

Hope you have a great day.

ttfn