My New Camera

Tom surprised me with a Nikon D40X with a 18-135 lens for Christmas. I've been taking a few pics of the cats and I can't believe how awesome the pictures are turning out. Here's just a couple I took yesterday.
Can't wait for all these darn clouds to go away so I can go outside and experiment. I have not done anything to these photos - straight out of the camera.

I can't believe the vibrancy of Mr. Orange.


I know both of these would have been over exposed with my other camera because I was so close to Hailey and the flash is usually so bright, but they are fine.

Snuggle Buddies

I looked in the cat's room the other day, and there they were snuggling together in their perch. Not sure how they both almost fit in there, but they seemed to be comfy.

Let It Snow

We didn't get near as much snow as the weather men were hoping for, but still a nice coating. Took Hailey out to "play" on the deck and mostly so I could get some photos to scrap. Saffron didn't want anything to do with going out in the snow.

Caardvarks/Page Maps Challenge Day 6 and 7

The last sketches for the Caardvarks/Becky Fleck challenges. I really had fun with these this week.

Day 6



Day 7

Caardvarks/Page Maps Challenge Day 5

Here's the sketch:


and my card:

Caardvarks/Page Maps Challenge Days 2 and 3

Day 2



Day 3

Caardvarks/Page Maps Challenge

Caardvarks blog is having a weeklong challenge with Becky Fleck CardMaps. Each day will be a different sketch. Here's 2 cards for day 1.

Memories from the Attic

I am very excited to have been chosen to be a design team member at Memories from the Attic. Come on over and check it out - there is a kit club plus Jeri has a lot of fun stuff in the store. There's also a message board with lots of friendly people, so come over and join us.

We're also having an online crop this weekend, December 7-9 Our theme for December: SKETCHES! Don't you just love being inspired by sketches and twisting them around to make them your own? Our "Sketchin til Christmas" crop will give you awesome ideas to complete our challenges and crop with a friendly community! Lucy Chesna aka Scrapperqueen will be providing the sketches for the crop.

The crop will begin on Friday, December 7 at 8 PM EST with the debut of the first challenge! The crop will continue through to Sunday, December 9. All layouts must be completed and uploaded by Monday, December 10 12 noon EST.

Prizes will be given away for each challenge and if you are a serious scrappaholic and complete all of the challenges, you will earn the title of "Attic DIVA" winning the grand prize of a Daisy D's Christmas album with Christmas embellishments, valued at $30 from the Memories from the Attic store!

Stop on by and sign up for this awesome crop! You won't want to miss it!

We're Back

and thank goodness. I've had enough traveling for a while. We were in Las Vegas a few days and Tom was at some CLE. I've been to Las Vegas too much the last few years. I don't think we'll be going back soon. But, the gambling gods were nice to me - I won $380. Saturday we drove up to Valley of Fire. Have talked about going there before, but never made it.



Then we went to Austin for a couple of days and spent the day yesterday in San Antonio. Here we are in front of the Alamo.

Weekend Crop at The Nook

The Nook had a weekend crop this past weekend and I spent about 9 hours in my room on Saturday creating. Here are some of my favorites from the weekend.

Guest Designer at Caardvarks

I was so excited when Jen asked me to be a guest designer for Caardvarks. This is a great card challenge blog and the design team members are some amazing card makers. This week's challenge is to hand stitch on your card front. Here are my cards that I made for the challenge.

Hailey

Hailey does not like anyone in her yard or walking down the sidewalk in front of the house. She is very territorial. Even chases the geese off the grass. There is a cat who lives across the street that comes over to "visit" sometimes and this really gets her mad. She was making this horrible gutteral growling sound and I came to see what got into her. You can see the glowing eyes and silhouette of the other cat on the deck.

Los Cabos

We're back from a week in Los Cabos as Las Ventanas. It was our friend Gary's 60th birthday party celebration. Boy was it hot . . . and HUMID. Probably the hottest and stickiest it's ever been when I was there. While Las Ventanas was a beautiful resort, it was a bit snobby for me and it was amazing what they charged for food and drinks. I guess I'm just an Espie girl. My sister and BIL have a place there and it is still my favorite. Here's a few pics of our week.

The resort pool:



Rob, Cory, Tom


Me and Tom at the resort entrance


Part of the gang at Damiana's in San Jose for lunch


Gary's birthday dinner on the beach

2 Jills October Kit

is filled with Fancy Pants yumminess. These are my favorites that I made with the kit



and these are a few pages from a name badge holder mini album

Caardvarks challenge - A Card to Die For

The latest Caardvarks challenge is to use a die cut. I used a MME "adore" diecut and used pop dots to adhere it to the card. It's a little hard to tell, even in the detail, but I then coated the diecut and flowers with a little MM glitter glaze.

My First Print Publication

I was very excited to get my copy of PC Holiday Cards & More Volume 2 in the mail yesterday . It contains my very first ever print publication item - a holiday tag. It's the "Joy" tag in the picture below. You can click on the picture to make it larger.