Winter Memories

Well, it's not winter yet, but I just got this set from the Holiday Catalog, Winter Memories, and have made my sample cards with the set.  My favorite stamp in the set (and the reason I couldn't resist buying it) is the ice skates.  I've never gone ice skating in my life (and don't foresee that I ever will) but I love those skates. 

I cut the skates out separately and adhered them to the embossed oval that is popped up.  The white piece is also embossed with the Sizzix embossing folder.  

I actually didn't even realize the snowmen were in the set I was concentrating so much on the other 2 stamps.  I stamped the image with Early Espresso on the Naturals Ivory card stock.  I used Watercolor Crayons to lightly color in the image.  The red Core'dination card stock was embossed with the Woodgrain folder and sanded.  But then, I put the tape on the wrong side!  So not much of the sanding really shows through but I think it is just enough.  Plus when I took the picture of the card, I realized I had adhered the image upside down (!) but I was able to pull it off without doing any harm and turn it around.

This card was the hardest one for me for some reason.  I kept coloring it too dark when I used my markers.  So, I finally just used my ink pads and my blender pens and it worked much better.  The DSP is from the Festival of Prints found in the Holiday catalog.

Life is better with your girlfriends in it!  I had a great time yesterday visiting with my girlfriends.  Everyone needs to have good girlfriends.  It's funny about our relationship - over the years we've gotten together whenever we could but with me living in Texas for most of my married life, a lot of the times it would be a couple of years in between visits and then it would just be for a quick lunch visit when I came home to see my family.  But when we are together, it's like we are still back at ECU living across the hall from each other in Umstead Dorm.  I find myself telling these girls things I've never told anyone before and we cheer and comfort each other in our trials and tribulations of life.  Last night as we sat and reminisced over our glass(es) of wine, I remembered a meal we ate at a local restaurant when we were in college.  It was pizza steak and I have never found it again.  It was ground meat with cheese and sauce on the inside and a type of pizza sauce over the top.  They both remembered it too and said they could almost taste it.  Who knows ... it would probably not be as good now as we remember it!  Next we discovered that all three of us have recurring dreams that we are on campus but can't find our schedule to know where our class is or can't find the building that our class is in and we are frantic.  Jackie said sometimes in her dream she has missed the entire course and doesn't find it until it is time to take the final exam.  My friend Brenda is going through a lot of medical tests right now and Jackie and I are praying hard for her.  She has been having some debilitating chest pains and they have not pinpointed the problem yet.  My guess is anxiety pain but I am not a doctor.  Hopefully, she will be given some relief soon.  She drove back early this morning for a test on her gall bladder and said she had to pull over shortly after leaving Jackie's because she started having one of the chest pains.  The test she had today turned out negative as did the heart test and scope test she had last week.  Her doctor increased her blood pressure meds today and told her to stop drinking alcohol for a while.   Brenda is one of these people that takes on way too much - in her family life and her social life plus the fact that she is the most high strung person I know which doesn't help.