HOME FROM HOSPITAL

Daughter home after surgery...doing well...taking lots of icy cold stuff. Thank God...it,s over. No more tonsils.

Earthquake, mini album, and the ATC's I recieved at my 1st monthly meetup this past Saturday!

I was in such shock when I heard about the earthquake today on the EAST coast...I felt tears coming!!! It made all my troubles feel small. It is an amazing thing how you can be feeling such strain and anxieties from everyday matters, and then when something really terrible happens (by terrible, I mean a disaster of any kind)...it just puts things into perspective really quickly!!!

The hurricane threat is looking less and less here...thank God. I keep praying it moves further out to the ocean and never hits the U.S. coast. Looks like the Bahamas will be hit though, sadly. As far as I know right now, we are still on track for my daughters surgery on Thursday. One more day of work, and I will be off 4 days...good thing too...sounds like it may be a little rainy, and windy. We shall see.

I wanted to show you the three ATC's I got at the ATC, inchies and altered book meetup last Saturday. I had only made one, but the lady I gave mine to, gave me one of hers, and the other two gals who had made some, also gave me one of theirs. I will not give their names out, as of yet...but if I get permission next meeting, I will. These are the three I received:

This sandcastle was made out of sandpaper! Cool!

Ship in a bottle tossing on ocean waves! Love it!

The creator of this one took a photo of her own feet at the beach...sweet!!! Don't you love the fancy cut edge on this one...looks like waves washing onto shore to me! PLUS, a real tiny shell in the corner! Brilliant!
You can see I was lazy and took the pics with the ATC's in the pocket protector!

I can also show you the book we are working on.



So far all I have is the folded 6x9 manilla mailing envelopes we got hinged together in preparation to add the back and front covers. It will have a house shaped cover and I am thinking maybe I will make it into a haunted Halloweeeeeen book. I went ahead and bought these cute stickers just in case!


These envelopes will be covered back and front with scrapbooking paper...I am thinking maybe it is scrapbook cardstock weight paper. I still need to find out.

Speaking of that...you have got to see this video of a book I can only dream about ever making! This thing is awesome! Check it out!! The fence and gate binding it are just fantastic!



Everyone be safe wherever in the world you are!
Love, Julile

Hurricanes Suck!

Dear Lord,
Please take this hurricane out into the Atlantic and not get anywhere near it's projected path (over us). Daughter needs to have her tonsillectomy on Thursday, as planned. My vegetable garden is thriving, and is begging not to have to be all moved indoors...especially the pole beans who are already climbing up the fence and trellis. I am already crying over the thoughts of Irene who is heading right for us!
Love, Julie
ATC was made by me back in 2008.

My new baby!

Hello everyone on Thursday evening!
It has been a busy week, and I am still washing clothes, gosh darn it, at midnight...the fun never ends. A few days ago I rescued this pretty little AF at Lowes! I would say 75% of the African Violets they had there, had dried up to nothing! This one was begging me to save it! The color of the flower is actually much darker, and very beautiful! I wanted to get one that had a frilly edge, but then this color just stuck out so much for me, I had to get it! I used to grow them all the time in my kitchen window, but then needed a change so gave them up for something else...probably when my succulent addiction started!!!

Is anyone out there a stamp collector? I got my stamp collection out tonight just to look through it. I collect used world stamps, and I decided many years ago that I would mainly collect beautiful stamps of my choosing...called TOPICAL stamps, there are so many featuring animals, plants, mushrooms, etc...your hearts desire really! Anyway, with the advent of Ebay, you can really find more or less many of these and I think I want to have a few goals in mind when choosing my stamps. I would like to get at least 1 stamp from each of the countries I have pages for, and I would like to concentrate on stamps that might have meaning to me. For example I have many nurse, dog, cat, plants, flowers, mushrooms, insects, reptiles, birds, Harry Potter, chihuahua, U.S. Army tanks, and famous people stamps. I believe the one stamp I came across tonight that seems very special to me is an Abraham Lincoln. Then I do enjoy getting big batches of all sorts of world stamps to sift through and find spots for in my book. I have a huge book that I made myself from a gigantic binder, with tons of countries (some of which I know not where they even are in the world), and also added blank pages in some countries because I have so many for that particular place. One example is in my U.S. stamps, I have so many LOVE stamps, and Christmas stamps, that I had to add extra pages just for those!!!
I am rambling on tonight about this, only because I had pulled it all out tonight to look for any extra water bird stamps that I might use for ATC's. Sometimes you get multiples...but I could not find any water birds. Poo. I did find about 10 blackbird stamps from Ireland that I did not realize I had. I think it is time for a blackbird ATC swap!!! LOL.
Well, anyway...this is what I have been up to tonight. Trying to keep up some sort of personal time, even with the grandkids here...once they get to sleep, I can have an hour or two to myself...if I can keep my eyes open!

Solitude At The Beach

I am going to be attending an ATC, inchie, and altered book meeting on this coming Saturday... I am supposed to make 10 ATC's, and 10 inchies...but guess what...I won't have time, so I decided to make just one for the lady who told me about the class. I will meet the others, and be an observer for this one, then start full fledged next time. The theme is BEACH. I think it turned out kinda cute... I had all the ingredients around. The water and sand part of the card are made from my homemade paper, as well as the sea shells on the bottom. The only part I don't like are the footprints. They are messed up. Oh well...I think, all in all, it's pretty cute. I really love that most of it came from recycled paper. That is awesome.
Sorry...am posting from my phone and can't figure out how to turn the photo...so look at it sideways, OK????? :)
UPDATE 8-18-11...lookie...I got the picture turned the right way once I could get on my gosh darn desktop!!! The only thing now is that I am seeing a mirror image of the real thing!!! Oh good grief...I give up! :)