Giving of Thanks, Days 2 & 3

Howdy, Folks!

I have two for ya today, as I wasn't able to post something up here yesterday. So, let's get started!

Day #2:
Today I am thankful for Facebook. In all seriousness. Thank you, Facebook, for existing. Facebook has allowed me to get/stay in touch with people from my past, get vital updates about things that are happening to those I love, and be generally better connected with the world. I am grateful that I can pop over to FB and see who's up to what, and that makes me happy.

Day #3:
Today I am thankful for the nice people of the world. There are plenty of nice people, but today I think about those who are always willing to lend a hand and go out of their way to do something above and beyond. Some examples: our mortgage processor at work who is working to get us updates even while driving to Portland for a funeral, my darling husband who has made dinner every night this week so I can focus on my upcoming craft fair. There are many more to list here, but I am making an effort to keep these short and sweet. Thanks, nice people of the world, for being even nicer than most, to help make this a good place to be!

Giving of Thanks

Welcome to November. What happened to the other 10 months of this past year?

I've never really been the type to get mushy at Thanksgiving, but I have had many reminders lately of how lucky and fortunate I am about various things and aspects of my life. So why not dedicate my month to sharing a few of those things with you. I am going to try, every day, to blog about one thing that I am thankful for. I'll keep it short and parsimonious, and where applicable, will accompany a little story about why or what prompted this.
So, on with day #1.

Today I am thankful for my good health. I take for granted the fact that my legs are straight and strong and that I can not only walk, but run, bicycle, and dance. I can run around the house chasing the kitties, go for a hike up a mountain, or barrel down one using the force of my two legs on bike pedals. My heart pumps and my lungs heave, and everything functions as it should, making it possible to do the things I love.

A dear friend of mine found herself in a situation this past week where her body did not function as it should. As a result, she is in the hospital undergoing treatment. It was an exciting moment for her when she realized that she could move her foot, when she hadn't been able to do so for several days. This friend is a fellow dancer and shopper, and I know that her legs are crucial to allowing her to do the things that she loves. It's a shock to think about her in her current state and realize that it could have happened to anyone, at any time.

Today I think about my legs, and my health, and dedicate this post to Alissa in hopes that she continues to improve and grow stronger in the coming weeks.

Make it Monday #33 - Frosted Images

Hidey-ho, folks! Just popping in for a quickie today to show you my take on this week's Make It Monday challenge from the gals over at PapertreyInk. To make frosted images, Lisa taught to stamp your image first in a colored ink, then quickly stamping on top of that with white ink, and using your finger or a sponge dauber to blend the colors together giving it a foggy look.

My image didn't want to blend very well; perhaps my dark blue ink dried too quickly. I wasn't able to get a lot of the color to rub out, so I stuck my finger back, in the white and tried to blend it a little better. You can see that it definitely looks frosted, but not very well fogged.

I added some large crystal glitter for a winter wonderland look, and voila!

It's a bit tough to see the dark blue layer of the card base when photographed against the blue walls of my kitchen!

And a close up:

Cheers!

PTI Make It Monday #30: Colored Pencils

As chance should have it, no work on Monday! So instead, I had the chance to hang out in my craft room with the kitties all morning making cards. *Sigh*


I decided to participate in this week's Make It Monday challenge: colored pencils. I am usually quite averse to anything that requires coloring (or hand cutting), but decided to give it a go anyway.


Here's Nichole's blurb about the challenge:


"Everybody is crazy over Copic markers, but we're kickin' it old school today with a video on colored pencils. Let Jennifer show you how inexpensive, blendable, and impressive projects can be using this coloring medium."


And here's my card. Note: I used the colored pencils on a colored card stock base, so I had some of the melon berry color peeking through. I used a combination of three colors; pink, coral and maroon to get my rose effect. What do you think?

Kellogg, ID Biking Adventures

And now, some fun videos from my Darling Husband.

The first is a time-lapse video of our trail ride from Black Rock to Harrison to the bridge over Lake Coeur d'Alene and then back to harrison. Be sure to play this in 720 HD for the full effect. Such a beautiful ride!

This is a video of me falling down, in high resulution.

Cheers!

Shannon eats dirt mountain biking @ Silver Mountain

New Cards

Hi-ya! Here are a few of the cards that I've been working on this week. Some are same-old, same-old, some are a new style Let me know what ya think!

Playing with chocolate brown and Hawaiian shores colors together.

Hawaiian Shores & Royal Velvet

Leafy Vines die! "It's a RAINBOW!" - For Mom

New damask designed patterned paper run through the sewing machine for a quilt-like look.

Without the stitching. 

Simple.

The patterned paper on this is left-overs from Misty's Birthday Calendar. I covered the binder with this and coordinating yellow satin ribbon at the seams. Looked amazing. 

The picture here was the inspiration for Papertrey Ink's Blog Hop this past week. While I didn't finish my card in time to enter it into the blog hop itself, I still really liked the card that I came up with. I used both the colors & the window as inspiration for my design. I have orange, white, kraft, aqua and light green. Whaddya think?