Star by Beloved Keepsakes

If you've been reading my blog over the last year or so, you know that I am honored to be a member of Chris Durnan's design team. Chris generously gave us a Star ornament from Beloved Keepsakes for Christmas this year. If you haven't seen Lori's stars, you need to check them out. They are amazing! You can find her here. I sent Lori pictures of sweet Annabelle and this is what she made. I bawled when I opened it. Stephen couldn't believe how beautiful it was. I think I saw a tear or two in his eyes too, but he wouldn't admit to it. I knew what to expect, sort of, but honestly, pictures do not even begin to do these ornaments justice.

So thank you to Chris for a fabulous Christmas present and thank you to Lori for making such a fabulous ornament.

storm pics

So I thought I'd post a few pics of the ice storm that hit January 28th. The first three were taken in our front yard. The entire front yard was covered with sticks and limbs.

The next two are of the cedar trees that lost big limbs. You can only see about half of the cedar limbs in these pics. One big branch was still hanging from one of the trees. I didn't want to get too far out in the yard for fear of more limbs falling on me.

Then the next two pics are of the limb that fell on the garage.

Stephen and I didn't get any sleep that night after about 2am. When the power went out, the limbs started falling. It was such a creepy sound, hearing massive limbs break, a really loud pop, like a gun shot, then a swoosh as it fell thru the remaining tree branches, and then a hard thump when it hit the ground. We lost count of how many times we got up that morning to be sure none of the limbs fell on the house or the truck. We never dreamed one had landed on the garage. Thank goodness the garage is made of petrified wood.

And finally, there's a picture of the top that twisted out of one of the trees last Wednesday during the high wind storm we had. You can barely see the edge of the two stacks of branches that Stephen had already moved out of the driveway.

We've had several customers come in to the office this week that are quick to inform us that according to the Farmer's Almanac, we're getting an even bigger storm next week. Apparently the FA predicted the storm of the 28th. I guess we'll see what happens next week.

Valentine's Day - with Chris's swirly heart

I made Stephen's Valentine's Day card with the swirly heart designed by Chris. I matted it with a piece of pink cardstock. The stamp is a Club Scrap stamp. And I thought I'd make a matching gift bag too. As always, you can find Chris and her fabulous files here.

Pretty low key Valentine's Day here. Stephen had to work. We had dropped by bike off Friday after work to be serviced, so when he got home, he drove me over to the shop to pick it up. Then we decided to walk over to our favorite restaurant. Reason number one to live in town: water still runs (if only a trickle) when the power is out. Number two: the power gets turned back on quicker. Number three: we're within walking distance of our favorite restaurant AND the theater.

I still need to post my storm damage pics. I've also got one from the wind storm we had THIS week. The entire top twisted out of a tree and landed in the middle of our driveway. What a mess. Please send spring soon! And no more storms!

Just a Note card

How about a card? I used Chris's Music Mesh file (found here) to make this Just a Note card. I matted the mesh on a piece of white card stock and layered that over the stamped Just a Note phrase on a beige card. Wouldn't these make a neat gift set? Make up a dozen of these, tie them with a ribbon, easy gift!

layout using Chris Durnan's January Sketch files from her forum

Have your checked out Chris's forum lately? There are some fabulous challenges going on over there. This layout uses her files for the January Sketch challenge. Mine is late, because we were hit with an ice storm that knocked out our power. Things are finally back to normal, so here's the layout.

And this is a picture of a card I made for a card challenge from Chris's forum. I used Chris's tree files (found here: http://www.visualdesignsbychris.com/store/product.php?productid=16258&cat=0&page=1) and a thanks word from one of her freebies from her blog.

I'll post some pictures of our yard from the ice storm. We're still cleaning up debris and probably will be for some time. At least we only had some damage to our garage and a lot of food spoilage.