Gettin' Crafty

I never have less than three or four projects percolating at one time.  That's just me.  One such project has been on my mind for a couple of years.  My Aunt Bev showed me a darling Christmas tag she though I could reproduce for her, since I am the artsy one in the family.  I took the tag and tucked it away.  I finally decided I needed that project off my mind.

Here is what she wanted me to replicate:

Very pretty.  These were some of my better attempts at the tree using watercolors:

Kind of got there, but I didn't feel like I could do that for many tags.  I turned to Storybook Creator 4.0, my digital scrapbooking software.  Here are two different results:

I'm happy.  Now to buy some good paper to print them on--I have some, but it is in storage.  Everything feels as though it is in storage right now.

Weekend Roundup

Friday:  We ran in a 13.1 relay on base.  We each ran a mile.  I actually got my time down to 9:30--I usually run about a 12 minute mile, so this was a huge accomplishment for me!

Saturday: One marathon of a day. It began with sleeping in. :) Then I ran and we got ready for our day. We had lunch at IKEA--a rather inexpensive and great lunch. After all of that, we headed to Clearwater to the "Festival of Trees" held at their rec center. It was darling. Each tree was decorated with a different theme--they were then auctioned off by Sunday to raise funds for various organizations. The most clever, in my opinion, was game themed. The mom and daughter team had made garland out of SCRABBLE pieces, made stars out of decks of cards or TRIVIA cards, and had filled clear glass balls with the houses from MONOPOLY and TRIVIA.

 There was also a great tree dedicated to Mardi Gras that I thought was wonderful!

 From there we stopped by the Hixon park, which is right next to the Tampa Art Museum.  It has this great installation of pinwheels made out of license plates, which are attached to bases in the shapes of states.  It's done by Michael Kallish and it's just great.

From Clearwater we headed back to Tampa for the Auto Show, which was located just down the street from us.  I've never spent five hours at an auto show.  It was enlightening and humbling because I had no idea what a brand new Lexus or BMW cost and now I do...and now I know I will probably never own one.  :)

The end of the night was lovely.  We had dinner at Columbia Cafe and walked back home.  This is a view from the bridge that takes us over to our "island".  It was a gorgeous night.

Sunday:  Church and rest  :)

Christmas Card Love

I was thrilled when Creative Memories brought back the folded 7x5 and 5x7 cards.  I love Christmas cards and I'm becoming one of "those"  people that tries to out-do herself every year.  I won't lie, I was pretty proud of this year's card.  The front is an image from the Biloxi "green".  I just love how this is so unique to where we are living right now.  I wish I could send cards to everyone I know, but even with my discount, I had to keep the numbers lower than I'd like.  Maybe some Valentine's cards for those I couldn't send Christmas cards to this year.  Hmmm...

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Iowa Winter