My Wild Irish Rose

I've posted before how much I LOVE sketches... there is nothing like a great sketch to get your creativity flowing :). I was surfing some blogs early, early, this morning and found a new sketch blog (to me, anyway). I loved the sketch they posted for this week and I immediately put together the card below in my head when I saw the sketch. Took me less than ten minutes to make this card- love that! Back to the blog I found... it's Freshly Made Sketches. You should pop on over there and check out the sketches and all the gorgeous cards overflowing the posts :). You will not be disappointed! For this week, here is the sketch...

I made this rose a few days ago, but I just wasn't happy with anything I did with it, soooo, when I saw the sketch, it took me seconds to visualize the card below :D. After I made the rose, I had the song, "My Wild Irish Rose," stuck in my head for hours, so what else was I gonna do with it, other than make a St. Patrick's Day card with it? Not the traditional colors for St. Patrick's  Day, but hey, I'm Irish, I can get away with it don't ya' think? ;-)

 Inside the card is a lovely Irish Blessing matted on Daffodil Yellow card stock. I added another little four leaf clover for a bit of extra luck ;-) in the lower right corner.

 Here is a close up of the rose....

Thanks for stopping by today, have a GREAT day!!!

Blessings!

Barb

Supplies:

Whisper White, Daffodil Yellow, Old Olive, Marina Mist card stock

Tangerine Tango, Chocolate Chip Classic Stampin' Ink, Daffodil Delight Stampin' Write marker

Beau Chateau Designer Series Paper

Finial Press, Square Lattice embossing folders

Scallop Trim border punch and various non Stampin' Up! punches

Forgot to Post!

I took a couple of photos and flat forgot to post them! I guess it will take me a bit to get used to posting to my blog again :). I made another Thank You card for my daughter's coach, Mark, to let him know how much WE appreciated his calls to our daughter while we were at the Meet in Maryland. Guy cards are just not my thing... I'm not very good at masculine themes, but it's the thought that counts, right? So here's the card that I made for Mark from my husband and I :)....

I used one of the new sets in the Occasions mini, 'Just My Type', and I used retired Stampin' Up! paper. I also used retired ribbon. I made a gift card holder for the gift card that we got for Mark. Mark's favorite color is red and I totally should have made the card in red too, but I made the two cards on different days so it didn't even cross my mind until after the fact. Both cards are really simplistic, but both were filled with so much gratitude and appreciation for Mark, as our daughter's coach and as a person that we are blessed to count among our friends.

I'm working on a couple of ideas in my head so they should be coming out in paper this week :D. Soooo, I will see you soon! Have a GREAT day!!!!

Blessings!

Barb

Thank You Card

I made a thank you card yesterday for my daughter's main coach, Mark. Mark is the coach who spends the most time with her. He gives her three lessons a week, plus works with her during regular practice hours. He is not only a great coach, but he has become a great friend as well. Mark was not able to go to the Maryland Meet, so this was the first Meet our daughter has ever had to compete in without him. She had two of her four coaches there, but Mark is the coach that she is closest to. It was pretty scary for her to go to a Meet without Mark! Mark gave her a great encouraging talk before we left, but he really went above and beyond the call of duty once we got to the Meet. He got up earlier than east coast time (we live in a different time zone) to call her on her cell phone at 5:30 a.m. ET to encourage her and give her some last minute coaching advice. They  talked for about ten minutes. Remember that she was really sick? She told Mark that she was feeling bad that first phone call. As mentioned in my post yesterday, she did her first event beautifully and won first place. She called Mark to let  him know that she got first and he said, "See, you did it"! I posted yesterday that she got sicker as the morning wore on and she had to scratch the rest of her events for this Meet. But Mark called us three times on Meet Day One to check on her to see how she was feeling. We didn't know how she would feel on Meet Day Two- if she would be able to compete or not. So Mark called again at 5:30 a.m. ET on Meet Day Two to check up on her and to encourage her if she was competing. He called to check on her again later that day because I told him she was too sick to compete still. It turns out, that several of our club's skaters had the same thing that our daughter came down with at the Meet while we were gone! We are going to pick up a gift card for Mark today as a little blessing for him because he really blessed us by going beyond normal coaching duties, but in the meantime, here's the card I made for him :)...

 

 I used some Delta Ceramcoat white paint to dobber the clouds onto Bashful Blue card stock. When the clouds were dry I added some Dazzling Details for a little bit of sparkle.

I made three faux brads for the card front in Daffodil Yellow. It's easy to make faux brads! Just punch out as many circles as you need with a 1/4" circle punch, place them on some thick fun foam, and with a soft circular motion, press the end of a stylus into the center and work your way out to the edges until your circle has a slight cup shape. Then add a glue dot to the center and place it where you need it.

I left the inside of the card blank so my daughter could write her own thank you note to Mark :). I stamped the clouds and added another kite to the lower right corner. I like to add a little something to the inside of my cards just to give them that little bit of extra punch. Have a GREAT day!

Blessings!

Barb

Supplies:

Stamps: Send Me Soaring, Silhouette Sentiments

Paper: Bashful Blue, Whisper White, Old Olive, Daffodil Delight, Pacific Point, retired DSP

Classic Stampin' Ink: Daffodil Delight, Soft Suede, Island Indigo, Bashful Blue, Lucky Limeade, Pumpkin Pie

Other: Delta Ceramcoat white paint, 1/4" circle punch, glue dots, Dazzling Details glitter glue, Lucky Limeade bakers twine, Snowburst embossing folder

We're Back!

Big Meet out of the way now :). We left for Maryland a few days ago so our daughter could compete on the east coast. She was perfectly fine on the way there and pretty much at the official practice on Friday evening. We were sitting near the door that was open so they could bring in boxes of food to their snack bar and she started getting cold. She put on her National's jacket and we put a blanket over her. We ALWAYS have blankets with us because you never know how cold it will be at a rink! After her practice was over, we went to dinner and back to the hotel to sleep. 

We have to get up at 3:00 a.m. on Meet days to get ready and skaters have to be ON the floor at 5:00 a.m. sharp. During the night she developed a fever (I'm guessing around 102) and a sore throat. She wanted to compete anyway since we had driven so far and since this Meet was kind of a big deal and because she works hard at training. By the time we had rollers in her hair she was feeling sick to her stomach and the vomiting began :(. She was chilling too, but she was still determined to compete. So we took her to the rink with the stipulation that if she didn't feel better we would come back to the hotel. We got to the rink and she did the morning warm up. The morning warm up starts between 5:00 a.m. and 5:15 a.m., depending on the rink. This gives all the skaters time to work on the official warm up and judging circles. This is important for them to get a feel for the floor because every floor has its own little nuances. She made it through the morning warm up. We covered her up with blankets while we waited for her first event to come up. By this time she is feeling really achy. Her first event came up at 6:00 a.m. All the skaters in the event get to roll around the judging circles for a few minutes. Their coaches watch them and make corrections as needed. When the first warm up time is up all the skaters in that event get on line and wait their turn. Three skaters are sent to the warm up circles at a time while the others in line wait. The warm up circles give the coaches another opportunity to correct anything that needs to be corrected with the skater. Once the skater leaves the warm up circles, the coaches aren't allowed to talk to them until they come off the judging circles. Her warm up looked good. She was in the second set of three skaters to warm up, and the second skater from that warm up to go to the judging circles. She looked good on the judging circles. After she was done with her first event, she went out to the van to lay down, covered with four blankets, van locked up tight, so she could rest. Her second event wasn't until 9:10 a.m. so there was plenty of time for her to rest. 

About a half hour later, the first, second, and third place winners were announced for her first event and our daughter had won first place :). I went out to the van to let her know. She thought she did terrible because she felt so sick and she didn't expect to place. She did tell me later that even though she was so sick that she did most of the circles on auto pilot. This is why so much practice pays off! The skaters make it look easy to do figures, but there is a LOT to think about. They have to think about the edge they are on, keeping the line of the circle between the center of  the right and left side of their wheels, making sure they maintain correct body and foot position, keeping the foot in the air stationary, passing the leg at the right time after they change feet for the next edge onto the next circle, the speed they are traveling around the circles, and several other things. She was happy that she got first place after she thought she didn't do so great on her figures (but she did- it just didn't feel like it to her) and she came back into the rink to wait for her next event. 

Next event up. She did the first warm up, got on line to wait for her turn on the warm up circles. She was toward the end on this line though, almost last. I zoomed in on her with my video camera so I could see her face, since she was on the far side of the floor. I could tell she was really feeling bad. Five minutes or so later, my husband and I watched our daughter skate to her coaches and she was wobbly as she got to them. Coach Lisa took her hands as she talked to them and then Coach John and Lisa helped her over to the wall and sat her down on the floor. When she got to them she told them she was going pass out, hence, sitting her against the wall. She sat on the floor for a minute and then down she went. She was laying on the floor! Coach John was really worried about her and he told her he was scratching her event. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to not go running out on that floor to my daughter?!! When she was finally able to get up she skated straight to the bathroom because her stomach was upset again. I was in there with her and Lisa brought her some 7Up to help calm her stomach. Our daughter was hoping that a few minutes in the bathroom would ease her stomach and the light headed feeling. Lisa came in and asked her if she needed to scratch. With lots of tears, she said "yes, I need to scratch" :'(. It's demanding on the body of a skater under normal circumstances to do what they do. Yet, our daughter, who was sicker than she let us know, went out there and gave it everything she had to do her second event. Her body just didn't want to cooperate with her. We packed her up and took her back to the hotel, called our Dr. back home and told him what was going on with her. He suspected that she had strep throat (his suspicion proved correct) and he called in a prescription for her where we were at for penicillin. She had to scratch the rest of her events for this Meet. She had fever that spiked between 100 when it was low, but mostly stayed between 101 - 101.7 for two nights and two days. She stayed in the hotel bed for those two days. She was too achy and sick to move. We had another adult member of the skate team who traveled with us, so my husband made sure she got to the rink to do her events and back to the hotel for her two days of events, while I stayed with our daughter. We decided to drive through on the trip home, the three of us adults taking turns doing the driving. Our daughter slept for 14 hours straight, waking up only long enough to take her medicine during the trip home. Her fever finally broke during that 14 hours of sleep. The last leg of the trip she was awake for, but she had lost her voice. I am happy to report that even though she still has a cough, she is not achy, not sick to her stomach anymore, and she is on the mend. We are so proud of our daughter for her tenacity in going out there and competing in the face of being so sick. She is one tough little skater girl.

Yesterday afternoon my order from Stampin' Up! arrived, so after a LOT of sleep yesterday, I plan to go back to my scrap room and play with some new toys :D. See you soon!

Blessings!

Barb

Thank You!

Thank you to those who left comments asking about me :). I needed a little break from stamping to focus on some other things. I've been busy with my daughter and her skating, among other things. She went to her first Meet this month since Nationals five months ago and the Meet season is now underway! For not competing for five months, she did well at the first Meet of 2012. She got three 1st place medals, a 2nd place, and a 3rd place out of six events. She would have gotten 2nd place in her first event, but unfortunately, she dropped her foot and that is a big deduction in points. It happens though, to every skater. Actually, there were a lot of dropped foots among skaters that day! It must have been contagious! Given the fact that she would have gotten 2nd place without the dropped foot and the fact that she had just learned those particular figures (hard figures requiring hard turns) a month ago... that's pretty darn impressive! I think she was happy with how she did :)

Among the other things I've been doing, I've been concentrating on my photography more. My goal is to become a professional photographer, so I've been reading lots of books and studying. My sweet husband got me a studio set up complete with lights, backdrop stand, and several backdrops for Christmas so that I don't have to rely on outdoor lighting to take photos. It's really nice to have access to perfect light whenever you need it!

My lap top hard drive crashed big time and it was just a year old. It crashed so badly there was no way to recover the hard drive. I don't even want to tell you how much stuff I lost with that crash :(. I lost really great photos of my daughter and our little granddaughter. I was just sick over all that I lost. I normally back up my photos to an external hard drive, but these didn't get backed up right away. LESSON LEARNED! Now when I download photos to my lap top I back them up immediately. Fortunately, the best of the photos that I lost of my daughter are on a memory card in a digital photo frame that my daughter gave her grandpa for Christmas, so I'll be able to retrieve those :).

My daughter, husband, and I started seeing a strength trainer three weeks ago. My husband and I need to get into shape :), and our daughter will benefit in her skating. We are also working on eating healthier :).

We've just been really busy with life otherwise :). We have a pretty big Meet soon and after that Meet, I'm hoping to get back to blogging again. My thoughts are starting to drift back toward stamping and scrapping. I placed my first demo order since December this afternoon, so I'll have some new stuff to play with in a few days!