Back to the Garden

With hopes of a bountiful crop, we have put in a garden. The tiny lettuce seeds have sprouted and almost look like lettuce...but not yet ready to be a salad.

There are little bitty squash, with the blossom just getting ready to open.

The tomato plants have small yellow blooms with a promise of bushels of red ripe tomatoes.

I'm trying to remember if I still have canning jars in the attic to process our harvest.

The melon seeds...watermelon and cantaloupe, at this point they look a like, are just now getting started.

We're not calling it a recession garden...

it's a "Hope Garden"

Faerie Zine Bunny ATCs

I received two wonderful Easter ATCs from my partners for the Faerie Zine Bunny/Easter ATC Swap. Rachel Christy sent me sweet "Little Bunny", great color, sparkles, buttons and lace.
My other partner Gina Smith's ATC is framed in beautiful pink Dresden trim encircling a bunny wearing a crown. Both are too cute.

I was invited to join another Easter ATC trade by Sandy, a local designer, she hangs out at Mystic Paper too. So once again I broke out the glitter, glue and flowers and designed another card. This time the call was for six ATCs. I'll post them when I'm finished...

Stinking Cute Designs

I turned my Mystic Paper Design Team projects in to Kim, she pronounced them "Stinking Cute"! This is a very good thing from the ladies at Mystic. In fact it was my second official stinking cute (the first one was from Jennifer a while back), so I was felling pretty stinking good.

I decided to design two 12x12 layouts. My kit had included 4 sheets of the new Paper Loft heritage patterned paper. The colors were wonderful and perfect for layouts using old family photos. As an added bonus the papers are double sided.

The first lay out is of my great-grandmother Frances and her children, including my grandmother Mabel as a young girl.
I wanted to do something different with the ribbon. After placing it this way then that, I ended up rusching it.

The second lay out has poems that my Grandmother had written to my mother, as a child, for her birthday. I added some photos of my mom as a young girl.

I had just enough patterned paper and ribbon left to make a card. I used a picture from an old postcard and blinged it up with some blue rhinestones.

Design Team Captain, Sheri was up to her knees in Girl Scout cookies and still managed to get her projects done and turned in before me...she also sold out of all the cookies! Lindsey did some wonderful layouts. One with photos taken at the Zoo...now who doesn't enjoy the giraffes? Yasu has a fun layout using pictures of her scrapbook buddies.

Click on over to each of theses three talented ladies blogs to see what they have been up to.

Friendship Badge

Sheri at Little Black Scrap Cat left me a nice surprise on her blog. It's a Friend Badge.Thank you so much Sheri for thinking of me.

Of course guidelines come with the badge:

"These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these kind writers."
When you pass the award along please include these guidelines. I am to choose eight friends to share this with.So, here we go. I'm going to pass this Friend Badge on to the following people. Please check out their blogs and see what you think!!

I'm going to pass the badge along to just 4 friends...because Sheri and I share some of the same friends and she has already passed the badge along to them. This way they won't get it twice and then have to come up with 16 friends to pass it along to...wait a minute...we are getting in to way too much math here!

I'm passing the badge along to these very talented artist in honor of their great blogs I enjoy reading...

Lisa at House of Hullabaloo

Becky at whymsicalmusings

Val at Flippinpest

Sandy at Her Vintage Stage

Ya know there is alway one person that has to change the rules.

Decorating for Spring

Spring has come to Arizona. Over the last two weeks we have had temperatures in the high 80s to the low 60s. It may take until next month to make up it's mind, and then it will just stay hot. The fragrance from the blooming orange blossom fills the backyard. The garden centers are full of weekend gardeners taking advantage of the beautiful weather.

In honor of spring I have exchanged the Shiny Brite ornaments in the terrarium for eggs .

Tucson Sister used to be Utah Sister. While living in Sutherland Utah, she raised chickens that laid wonderful brown, tan, blue and light green eggs.

I was lucky enough to have her hollow out the eggs (which she scrambled and made into breakfast burritos) and bring them to me.

So the eggs are my official Spring decorations.

Bunnies, Chicks and ATCs

A while back I was invited by Lisa Kettell to join her Flickr group, "Faerie Zine". Very talented artist using all kinds of different mediums. Lisa put a call out for a Bunny/Easter ATC swap. If you don't know what the heck an ATC is...
"ATCs are works of art in miniature, traded among individuals or groups like traditional trading cards (like Baseball cards). The only rule in creating them is that they must measure 2.5"x3.5" (the size of a playing card).

Using any medium or any style."

Mystic Paper has an ATC swap every month...go to their Blog, scroll down a bit and you will find their "Swaps and Trade" link on the right hand side of the page.

But I digress...

I signed up for the Faerie Zine Bunny/Easter swap and was partnered with 2 other participants. We were to make two different ATC, and mail one to each person. I have emailed back and forth with my partners exchanging mailing addresses and sharing the excitement of the exchange.

This is the Official "Faerie Zine Bunny/Easter ATC " banner.

The first card I made was a Bunny and butterfly one...

the second card is a Easter Chick...

We have until the 15th of March...my plan it to get them in the mail by the end of the week. Maybe I'll send them along with an Easter card.