Stampin' Up! Oh Hello

Thought I'd share a card I made this week.  I've been so exhausted, so my creativity stays in bed I think.  I decided to randomly pull a couple sets off my Stampin' Up! shelf to play with, so I did make a couple cards. Nothing exciting, but I tried.  I used the Color Coach for a color combo of Pear Pizzazz, Smoky Slate, and Pool Party.  The layer of gray is actually the Hardwood background stamp.  Hopefully a trip to the doctor will clear up what's going on with me.  I picked up some liquid iron supplements at the store today just in case I'm anemic again.  That's and vitamin D deficient was the culprit last time.

Jason has been working all weekend putting together one of those large outdoor wooden playsets for Laila.  It will be her birthday present from us and my family.  Today was day three and he's still not finished. He did get the swings and slides ready, so she can play for now.  He'll have to wait until he's off again to work on the roof of it. What a project.  She loves it though.

I'm off to do some laundry and maybe have a coffee.  There's a new podcast episode I wanted to listen to, so relaxing to that and a coffee sounds like the perfect way to end a weekend.

Have a great week!

Freshly Made Sketches 288

Back with a new card.  I treated myself to a new sunflower stamp last week and wanted to use it.  It was so fun to color!  I used it for this week's new sketch at Freshly Made Sketches.  My card deviates from it some, but it was closer to begin with.  The yellow polka dot paper was on crooked so I tore the original apart and redid it.  I somehow ended up shifting the image more towards the middle, so...  Jen M., our hostess, says I'm forgiven, so I went ahead and posted it.

It's been a long day, so I'm headed to bed.  I hope everyone is having a wonderful week.  Laila and I have had a few nature walks, so we've enjoyed the outdoors.  The snakes not so much, but the rest was fun.  :) 

Freshly Made Sketches 287

I woke up early one day over the weekend and thought I'd try to play along with my friends at Freshly Made Sketches.  For some reason they keep me on the team roster even though I spend all my time on the bench.  :)  Jen T had a fun sketch that immediately made me think of this cute set from Simon Says Stamp.  It came together and I love the result.  :) Yay!

I'm off to have my coffee and see how much of A Handmaid's Tale I can watch before Laila wakes up.  I hate that Hulu only releases one episode at a time, but I do love Wednesdays now.  :) 

Greeting Farm Magical Friends

Happy May! I can't believe I haven't posted at all this month.  It looks like this drought of creativity is going to last for a while.  I don't know what to do about it, so I'm just not pressuring myself and waiting see what happens.  We did have a birthday party on Saturday, so I made a card for that.  The birthday girl is a very girly girl who loves unicorns, so I hope she liked it.  :) 

We are still raising caterpillars and releasing butterflies.  We had two pretty ladies eclose today.  They were perfect and flew off to their next destination.  It always amazing to hold one and see the beauty of them in your hand.  I hate to think that they only live 6 weeks, but I hope we are helping to keep the population going.  A very small percentage of eggs (estimates are around 5%) survive outside to become butterflies, so we are giving them a better chance than they'd have out there.  Wasps are bad this year, so any caterpillars that aren't found and brought inside are killed by those.  :(  I know the circle of life and all that, but it still makes me sad.  

Anyway...  

Have a great week! 

Stampin' Up! Dragonfly Dreams

Believe it or not, I got some crafty stuff done today!  I was so excited to make a card and do a little watercoloring.  I colored this dragonfly last night and wanted to use him for the current sketch at Fab Friday.  The pink background was done with distress inks and the dragonfly colored with Copics.   Dragonflies are so neat.  We have one that visits the garden every now and then.

It's been a weird day here. We were supposed to have rain all day, but not a drop as of 9pm tonight.  They kept moving back the start, so now it's more of a midnight storm.  I'm glad I went ahead and watered my garden.  Jason swears we live in a bubble that keeps our neighborhood dry, so we shall see if we get anything tonight. 

These guys have kept me busy this weekend.  They are almost ready to pupate, but are eating like teenage boys!  One of them managed to escape while I was feeding them on Friday and now we have a chrysalis hanging from Laila's playroom curtains.  I have to climb up and move it to an enclosure tomorrow.  Silly thing.  It's definitely been a busy process this spring.  We have a wide range of forms, from egg to almost ready to eclose.  It's never boring! 

We've also enjoyed watching these guys!  They haven't been by in a few days, so I switched out to homemade nectar today. I had used some I bought at Lowe's and they seem to have left after that.  Hopefully they come back as we love them.  

Watercolor Deer

Here's another watercolor card I managed to put together.  I'm so behind on birthday cards.  This is going to be a month late, but I hope my dad still likes it.  My mom's birthday is coming up, so I'm hoping to just bundle a gift card for a dinner date and both their cards in one package.  Maybe I can be better for Mother's and Father's Days.  :)   Pretty simple card, green watercolors, deer cut out from Cameo, and a sentiment from Stampin' Up!

On Monday, eight of our butterflies eclosed from their chrylasides.  It was so exciting to see that process and release them.  We had one late one come out yesterday and we released her as well.  Laila loved the whole process. Now we are waiting on six more to eclose next week and we have a lot of caterpillars eating us out of house and home.  :)

Shining Watercolor

Still alive!  lol  The weather has continued to be amazing, so I've been outside instead of stamping.  I'm also in a bit of a slump creativity wise, so gardening has been my choice of hobbies for April.  I have so many books and seed catalogs now.  I feel like I'm back in school with all this learning and studying.  Anyway, I did decided to try and make something. I have a board on Pinterest with card ideas that I like and browsed that to get some ideas.  I loved this card by Penny, so it became my inspiration.  I want to learn to watercolor so bad, but man it's hard!  I did try though. :)

We are caterpillar crazy at this point.  We have 11 chrysalides and a lot of caterpillars. We are going to need a lot of milkweed this spring!  lol  I just had more seeds germinate, so hopefully we can grow more instead of running to the nursery in a panic to have enough to feed them.  I can't wait to release our first butterflies this week.  This beautiful lady below left us quite a few eggs last week and we apparently had another visitor this week as I've found more eggs in the garden.  It's been a good project for us this spring.  Who doesn't love helping the Monarchs?

That's about it.  Gardening and Weight Watchers... maybe I can fit a bit more stamping in there.  :)  (Down 9 pounds so far by the way!)

I'm off to check the garden and go for a walk.  Have a wonderful Sunday!

Taylored Expressions Birthday Grumplings

I couldn't get a good picture of this one, but I thought I'd post it anyway.  I love these grumpy guys. I have a few friends who they are just perfect for. :)  I wanted to use more than one of them, so I tried to come up with a layout/plan to do that.  I think it works okay.  Too many sequins, but I wanted it to look like a party.  A grumpy critter party.

So here's one reason why I haven't been posting much lately.  I haven't been stamping much because I've been working on the garden.  I added more plants and have been babying these caterpillars!  I decided to raise them inside this year so that more could make it through the stages successfully.  Right now I have about 8 that are this size, 1 small little guy, and three eggs.  I have three containers with them and have to keep them in fresh leaves. Man do they poop a lot!  Clean, clean, clean! It's been amazing to watch though.  Tonight we sat outside and watched a lot of different butterflies, bees, and birds visit the garden.  Our weather has been perfect for it.  I'm going to be sad when summer starts and it gets hot and gross.

 My other time consuming thing is Weight Watchers.  I decided to start back almost two weeks ago.  It's been a lot of work with grocery shopping, meal planning, cooking, and walking, but I feel great.  I haven't taken any depression or anxiety meds in a few weeks.  I don't know that I won't ever need them, but it's been nice to feel okay without them for a bit.  I am glad they worked and helped me get to the point where I can try to start taking better care of myself. Five pounds down so far!

Laila and I have also been busy going plant shopping, going to parks, and just hanging out. So that's what is going on with me.  I'll be back to stamping more once I get a better routine going.  :)