Just in case...

you were wondering where I've been....

I've decided to take some time off blogging for various reasons, but mostly because I needed to devote more time elsewhere in my life. I am happy to report that the time spent elsewhere has been time well worth spending and is paying off in big time rewards for my family and myself. I'm sure I will be back, but I don't think it will happen before Summer's end. There are seasons in life, a time for every purpose under heaven, and this season of not blogging has been a very good decision for me.

Just wanted to update you if you still visit my blog every now and again, and to thank you for still coming! If you add your email to the updates on the right sidebar, you will be notified when I start blogging again. I just didn't want you to keep coming back for the rest of the summer and not finding anything newly posted. Thanks so much for visiting my blog, even when I haven't been!

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!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a wonderfully blessed day yesterday! I have been busy in the kitchen for the last three days, so have not been able to stamp. Hoping to fix that today :).

Blessings!
Barb

The Other Part of My Life :)

No card today :). I am using today to study my other favorite thing to do... photography. My husband is so sweet. He knew that I wanted a good camera that I can really play with, so he got me a Canon EOS 7D :D. Can I say that I LOVE my camera?!!!!

In the world of paper crafting blogging, we rarely find out about the other sides of our favorite bloggers, so I just wanted to give you a little peek into my other world today, while I study things to do with photography :). I will be back tomorrow with a card or a project, but for now, here are a few shots from two very recent photo shoots that I did with two of my favorite subjects :). I'm just an amateur for now, but I hope to change that someday :)....

Don't you just love little kids walking barefoot?

They dressed up as Princesses for this shoot

Isn't she a little cutie?!

I don't edit my photos. My goal is to learn to take pictures without having to edit them. Uh huh, I have PS and I love it, but for now, I'm trying to learn photography, so I'm staying pure, lol! My daughter also dabbles in photography, and yeah, she uses my camera. Maybe I'll post some of her photos sometime- it's eerie how she will go out and photograph the exact same things I was thinking about and from the exact same vantage points I was thinking about. We are so connected that we often, and I do mean often, say the exact same thing at the exact same time. Or we will be thinking something and say it out loud and the other of us will say "I was just thinking that!" It's actually pretty cool :). Hope you don't mind me pursuing my other passion today! See you tomorrow!!!

Blessings!
Barb

Here I Am...

Wow, I didn't realize I had been gone from my blog for such a long time until Christene mentioned it in class last week. I've actually got a couple of projects to post, can you believe it?! The batteries died in my camera, so I'm charging them, so I can get some photos tomorrow morning, so I can finally post! :-)

In the meantime, Nationals was an AWESOME experience!!!!!!!!!!! We all had such a great time. My daughter did well for her very first Nationals and we are so proud of her. The photos below were taken by Clay Lomneth and Greg Blobaum, professional photographers at Nationals. They are really awesome as photographers and as people... we had a great time hanging out with them for ten days :-). Let me know if you ever need a great photographer and I'll send you right to them! ;-)

Loop Figures

Creative Solo

Creative Solo

Creative Solo

Aren't these photos amazing? We have a whole bunch more that they took, but it would take a long time for you to look at all of them, lol! I'm working on a scrapbook for my daughter with these photos and LOTS of other photos that I took. So far I have 40 pages and I'm not even half way done yet :-D. She did her Creative Solo to the song 'New World' by Toby Mac. If you are familiar with the Narnia movies, you will know that this song was in one of those movies. Her dress is based on one of Lucy's in the movies. One little girl at Nationals totally loved the Narnia movies and asked our daughter for her autograph... too sweet! (Yep, got a photo of that) ;-).

We had the whole month off from skating after Nationals was over and believe me when I say that after Nationals, you NEED the rest! Training starts up again soon, we are back to homeschooling for the year, and our schedule is starting to look like a regular schedule again- yay! 

I had no mojo (we were crazy busy with skating), but I think it might be coming back a little bit. I haven't touched paper or ink since before Regionals and it was really nice to spend some time working in my stamp room yesterday and today. On that note, I'll get my first project posted tomorrow morning. Thanks so much to all of you who have stuck it out and still check my blog to see if I've actually been here yet (waving hi to Christene!)... :-D

See ya' in the morning!

Blessings!

Barb

Updating...

I got the housework and the laundry caught up and then it was off to the last Meet of the year before Regionals and Nationals. It was a long Meet- 5 a.m. - 7:30 p.m. on Saturday and then 5 a.m. - 8:30 p.m. on Sunday. Regionals is next month and then Nationals is in July- then we get a small rest and then training starts up again for the new skate year, which starts in September. The first Meet of the new skate year will be in October when it all starts all over again :-).

I do have a card to post, but we just got back about an hour ago, I put everything away, and I have laundry from the trip washing. After that is dry, folded, and put away, I am going to rest! I will get it posted tomorrow and then I hope to have a couple of days to stamp. Did I mention that I REALLY miss stamping???!!!!

Happy Memorial Day weekend and thanks to all of you who left such nice comments about being here when I get back :-).

Blessings!
Barb

Catching Up...

We are back from Chicago, but with all the business of sewing and hauling back and forth to the rink for practices, my housework got really behind :(. I spent a few days trying to get rest since I only got a total of 12 hours of sleep in four days while we were away. That was six hours of sleep the first night we got to our hotel and then six hours on another night during the Meet weekend, but I have no remembrance of what night that actually was. I so needed to catch up on some rest because I had not been sleeping well during my sewing stint either. Now that I am relatively working back on normal capacity, I have to tackle my housework that got ditched while I was sewing. This week I have been trying to get caught up on laundry and housework in between home schooling and practice times at the rink. I will be back to posting soon though! Thank you for your continued patience and support- you are all appreciated more than words can say.

In the mean while, since so many of you asked to see her dresses, here are a couple of photos during Figures. This dress in Royal Blue velvet is the one I had to make THREE times! That is three times starting from scratch. Not a fun time, but my daughter and her coach loved it so it was worth it :-). We found a lovely necklace with matching earrings to go with her dress. The necklace and the earrings have royal blue center stones surrounded by crystals- very pretty!

The bodice comes around in a curve and then the rest of the bodice and one of the sleeves is Royal Blue mesh. In this last photo, she is standing next to the referee waiting to enter the circles for figures for judging. The rhinestones on her Figures dress consist of three different colors of Swarovski rhinestones- Crystal AB, Jonquil AB, and Aqua AB. I didn't get a photo of the back of her dress, but the back comes down to a V and the Crystal AB's follow the neckline down the back. There ya' have it... the dress... and my little skater girl :-D. Have a great day everyone!!!

Blessings!

Barb

Sewing Update

I'm still at it :-(. I'm expecting a delivery of Royal Blue velvet today along with Royal Blue mesh. Why you ask? Because I botched the first two that I sewed- long story- and I had to order more fabric from New York and do two day air delivery. As soon as that gets here today, hopefully, it will be this morning rather than late this afternoon, I have to cut out the dress pieces and start sewing. My daughter's Figures dress is the Royal Blue one and I have to have it completely sewn by the end of today. Tomorrow I have to glue hundreds of Swarovski rhinestones on it- one by one. I ran to Hobby Lobby yesterday and  purchased two more bottles of Gem Tack glue by Beacon (used for gluing on the rhinestones). I was paranoid about running out of glue right in the middle of stoning the dresses (sigh- yep, it's getting to me). On a positive note, I just finished gluing on the last rhinestone on her Creative Solo dress about 20 minutes ago. I just have to wait for the glue to finish drying and then I can hang that dress to let the glue cure for 24 hours. Then it goes into the garment cover to protect it. In case you are wondering how many stones I hand glued onto her Creative Solo dress, the final count is over 1,100. Uh huh, you read that correctly... over one thousand rhinestones on one dress. It adds quite a bit of heft to the weight of the dress, which is funny because the stones by themselves aren't all that heavy. I'm not sure yet how many stones will end up on the Figures dress, but at least 3 gross will. I'll let you know the final count when I finish it :-).

I've gotten several comments asking for pictures of the dresses. That is so sweet of you all to ask :-). I promised my daughter that her new dresses will remain under wrap until she debuts them at her next Meet, but I will post photos after that. I even have a nifty dress form sized to my daughter that I can put them on for photos :-D. Let me tell you that the dress form I purchased was a great investment! Who knew? It has been indispensable during the sewing process for fitting, figuring out how much elastic, etc. How did I sew all this time without one, lol?! All right, I've got to run and do some housework before the fabric gets here. The place is a wreck! There are pattern pieces and fabric and elastic and rulers and tons of other sewing stuff all over my dining room table. I can hardly see the tablecloth underneath it all! It won't be long now before I'm back. I cannot wait to get my hands on ink, card stock, and stamps again!!!!!! Have a great day and a great week everyone!!! Thanks for your patience while I'm sewing!

Hugs and Blessings!
Barb

I Have Not Abandoned My Blog :-)

I know I have been absent a bit and I will probably miss a few more days of posting throughout the month. I ran into problems with the skate dresses and have to start all over again, boo hoo hoo! These are very important dresses and they have to be done in a time frame- which is getting shorter- so some things have to hit the wayside and the blog is one of them :-(. I have a couple of cards that I will be posting this week that my gals did on Monday evening and maybe, just maybe, I will get some time to do a little bit of stamping while I am waiting for the fabric to be delivered. Yep, I had to order more fabric... (sigh) don't ask :-).

Thanks so much everyone for being so patient while I am sewing skate dresses. These are competition skate dresses so you can imagine how much my daughter is depending on me :-). A few prayers here and there that there won't be anymore snags along the way would be so appreciated!!!! Hope you are all having wonderful and warm weather where you are!

Blessings!
Barb

This is Why...

 Ok, I did get back into my scrap room and I did get some things made, BUT I have not had time to take photos and this is why....

This little cutie is Lila and she is the newest member of our family. She is our youngest daughter's Chihuahua puppy. We picked her out on Saturday, but we couldn't bring her home because she wasn't eating enough puppy food. We were going to visit her on Tuesday, but the breeder said she could go home. Of course, it didn't take my daughter five minutes to get ready and we were heading out the door to pick her up, lol! We had most everything we needed for the puppy already, but because we weren't expecting her to come home so soon, we had to go shopping after we picked her up. The only things we had to get was puppy food, a crate, and a pink puppy purse. Yes, we have been reduced to purchasing a pink puppy purse :-D. 

Today was our long practice day at the rink. Lila went to the rink with us yesterday and met everyone and today she was right at home; to the point that she napped and not a sound at the rink bothered her enough to wake her. Tomorrow is our day off (yeah, for days off!), so I will get back to my scrap room and get some photos and post em'. Have a wonderful evening!

PS-  As I have been typing this post, my daughter has been teaching Lila to 'fetch'. Too funny! Her favorite toy so far is a little pink tennis ball. She LOVES the thing! My daughter tosses it and Lila goes to get it and brings it back. She does slip past my daughter every once in a while to chew on her ball, but mostly she has been having fun bringing it back to her.

Blessings!

Barb

MIA

I've been missing in action from my scrapping room, but with good reason. One of my older daughters fell on Monday morning from a slip on ice and broke her ankle and leg. The three major bones that hold your foot to your leg- she broke all three of them. On Tuesday she had surgery to put in plates and screws to repair the bones. Needless to say, we have spent a great deal of time in the hospital for the last two days. She is not going to be able to put any weight on her newly repaired bones for a while so they have time to heal. She has a minimum of eight weeks of recovery time ahead of her. She is staying here with us and will go back home as soon as she feels up to it. I am so thankful that she lives only 15 minutes away and that I was able to get to her and take her to the hospital in a short amount of time. I will be taking care of my daughter and making sure that my skater girl gets to practice, so I may or may not get time to post much. I know I am very tired after two days of the hospital and not getting much sleep between the 33 hours she actually broke her bones to the time they were repaired. What is it about waiting in hospitals that makes one so weary? All you do is basically sit around and wait. I am up now at 2:19 a.m. to make sure she gets her pain medication in a few minutes when she is supposed to take it. After the pain that I saw my baby in for those 33 hours I do not want to let her get behind in pain medication. I am very thankful that she is feeling much better after her surgery. There is nothing that tears at a mother's heart more than not being able to fix something that hurts our children. Your prayers for her complete and speedy recovery will be greatly appreciated!! I hope you will stick with me while I am taking care of my daughter and my grandson and check back. I'm sure I will need to take a creative break :D. Wishing you all a wonderfully blessed day!

Blessings!
Barb

Just Got Back...

from Chicago, that is :D. My daughter had a Meet this weekend. It was a loooong weekend for us, so I'm taking a day to rest. She did very well at the Meet! Meets are a lot of fun, but they are exhausting too, especially the very long drives and especially 'one' day Meets. I think I like two day Meets better! Hope to add some posts this week! Have a great day everyone!!!

Blessings!
Barb

Need a few days....

I intended to post a photo of a card that I made last week. Yesterday was not a good day and today it was even worse. Our little kitty Lucky died last night. My daughter found him when he just a few days old abandoned by his mother. We raised him on a bottle. He was such a sweet kitty and so funny. He was such a character. When he was little he would steal stuff out of my friend Donna's purse when she visited us. Of course, he didn't just take things out of Donna's purse- it was any purse he could find. He did finally outgrow that. I took these photos of him just this summer. I'm glad I have such great photos of him. He actually allowed me to do a photo shoot of him. Normally, he wouldn't sit still long enough, but on this particular day, he didn't mind. 

I cannot even express to you the depth of the grief we feel over the loss of our dear, sweet kitty. He was a part of our family in the truest sense of the word. He died peacefullly, but he was only three years old. He left a deep, deep imprint on our lives and in our hearts that will never leave. We will love him forever and miss him always. 

Sweet Lucky Boy, thank you for letting us be your family and thank you for so many happy and wonderful memories. I hope that somehow you know how much we love you and how much we miss you now. 

I may not post for a few days. I hope you understand.

Barb

:-(

I have a project to post today, but I didn't have time to take a photo this morning because my hubby invited me out to eat with him :-). Now I am at the rink blogging from my new laptop while my daughter is doing public skate. We are here early today because the skate team is doing a performance at the end of the public session and then, she has regular practice. We will be here a total of six hours today- yeah for the laptop!!!! I will get a photo tonight or tomorrow morning and get it posted, so please check back :-). Talk to you soon!

Blessings!
Barb

White Christmas

Did I ever mention that I LOVE winter at our house when it snows? We were blessed to have a lovely white Christmas this year! The day after Christmas I went out with my camera to capture some of the beauty before it all melts away. The shot below is from our west pasture. The trees all over the farm were covered with beautiful white snow crystals, making it all look like a winter wonderland. You can get completely lost in the beauty of it all. 

My hubby decided to take a vacation this week and he hardly ever takes a vacation. What a nice surprise for us- we get to spend lots of time with him! I did work on one little project yesterday, so just have to finish it up and I can post it ;-). I'm really working on it Kim, lol! 

Hugs and Blessings!

Barb

Update

OK, I didn't get to my stamp room yesterday- I was worn out from Christmas! I decided to just sit around and do nothing.. well, actually, I spent the day watching movies with my hubby and our daughter :-). Today, I have cleaning to do- I just didn't have it in me to do the cleaning from Christmas day yesterday (gasp!), so I have to do it today. Hopefully, I will get it done rather quickly and then I have to clean my stamp room. You do not want to see my stamp room, it looks like a tornado hit it! I will be posting this week though- I do deserve some days to just stamp after all the work of the holidays right? :-)

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!! See you soon!

Blessings!
Barb   PS- I got a laptop from my hubby for Christmas and I had no idea that my blog looked so funky! It looks completely different on my desktop monitor- probably because it's square. Hopefully, I can fix that when I change to my winter layout :-)

Merry Christmas!!

I will be missing from my blog for a few days. My daughter and I are sick- again :-(. Apparently, we caught this from her coach- who is also sick- again. He was sick a couple of weeks ago and so were we. He thought he was over it and we thought we were over it. My daughter and I started off with scratchy throats last night and this morning- ick- sick! Another reason I will be missing from my blog is because I have soooooo much to do in the next three days. I don't even want to look at my to do list at this point, although mentally, that big list keeps playing over and over in my mind. Hopefully, I get it all done. I will be doing it whether I feel icky or not, so I hope I feel better tomorrow! In the meantime, I wanted to take a minute to thank all of you for visiting my blog this year. I have appreciated your visits so very much and all of your comments have made my day each time :-). I have also appreciated your patience when I have been so busy I haven't had time to see the walls of my stamping room, let alone keep my blog updated. So, for all of you, I am posting a Christmas card that I made just for my blog visitors. I wish each and every one of you the most blessed, joyous, and most memorable Christmas of all. 

I will see you after Christmas!!! I plan to LOCK MYSELF in my stamping room the day after Christmas for the whole day, so I should have some stuff to post next week! Merry Christmas my friends!!!

Hugs and Blessings to you!

Barb

Pretty Eggs

I do have some posts scheduled already for next week. I'm really working on getting back to blogging :). I don't usually post on the weekends so I can spend that time creating, well, I used to spend that time creating until my daughter started competitive skating :D, but I wanted to show you my cool eggs, lol! We have some chickens that lay colored eggs. The shells right now are pink and a really pretty shade of green. There's a regular brown egg in my photo just for the sake of comparison. The green egg looks kind of gray in the photo, but it really is the prettiest shade of green in person. It's kind of fun gathering the eggs everyday now :D.

Have a wonderful, wonderful weekend everyone and I will see you on Monday!!

Blessings!

Barb

Happy Thanksgiving

Before I get going on all the preparations I have to do today for our family dinner, I wanted to jump on here real quick to wish everyone a very happy and blessed Thanksgiving!!! I also want to express my gratitude and thanks to all of our military members- and to my son in law, John, who serves in the armed forces and to my daughter's dear friend Michael- thank you for protecting our freedoms and our nation. John is back in the U.S. after serving in Iraq and Michael is currently deployed. Love and deep appreciation to you both!

Enjoy your day today everyone!!!

Blessings!

Barb

Hope to be Back Soon!

October was a really busy month for us!!! My daughter was given a beautiful horse (Shiloh- see post below for a photo of him) and they have become the best of friends. She works with him everyday on his training and he is doing well. He is very eager to please once he knows what it is you want him to do. And he is soooooo sweet in personality! I don't believe I've ever known a horse as sweet as Shiloh. He is a very social boy, loves to visit with anyone, and when his training is done for the day, he follows my daughter around like a big puppy. If she stops, he stops. If she walks, he walks. That is a good thing because that means he has accepted her as the herd leader :).

Then she had the first Meet of the new skate year (starts in September) and I had to sew a skate dress for her specifically for the Glide Waltz and the Tango- both done on skates :). I hand glued on just over 300 rhinestones on that puppy! Whenever it gets close to a Meet, there is a lot more hours of practice, so most of my month went to helping with Shiloh and getting ready for the Meet on October 22-24. After we got back from the Meet, both my daughter and I got sick. I got sick three hours after she did and we were sick for an entire week. We both just started feeling better on Monday.

I wanted to share some photos I took of Shiloh on the morning of our first frost. When I went out that morning to let the chickens out for the day, there was a thick blanket of frost on the ground- it almost looked like snow. I have a couple of frost photos at the end of my post, but here is Shiloh resting his head on a wood post. Lol! He cracked me up! Silly boy, he just rested his head on the post and looked out at the pasture for a few minutes.

Shiloh is a gentle boy and he is starting to get used to being around our kitties. He wasn't too sure he liked them at first, but I think he has decided they aren't so bad. Our kitty, Lucky, thinks Shiloh should be petting him (rolling eyes ).

And here is what happens after you spend a few minutes talking to Shiloh and rubbing his head and neck.... he stands at the back fence for a looooong time waiting for you to come back and visit with him more.

How pitiful is this?!! He waited at the back fence like this for 30 minutes! I felt so bad for not going back out, but I had to get stuff done!

All right, here are a couple of the photos I took that morning before visiting with Shiloh, of our first frost. The frost is like little needles, but you really can't tell that unless you get up CLOSE.

Who knew frost was so stinkin' cool?!!! Not me! Today is our busy day. It's our long day at the rink, so maybe I can get some projects done to post on my poor neglected blog while I'm there. I should be able to get back soon though! Have a wonderful day today!!!

Blessings!

Barb