Family Picnic 2010

Yesterday we went to the annual family picnic they hold at the nursing home where my Granny lives. Not everyone could make it this year, but there was Granny, my Mom, my Aunt Brenda and Uncle Mel, my hubby and myself. It was a beautiful day and we had a great visit with her. She is doing so well, we are so happy and thankful for that. She just had her 91st birthday this past April and she is still sharp as a tack and funny as always! We took her out for a stroll down the road and around the corner to see the new house that is being built. Her brother's house used to sit on that lot, and after he passed away and someone bought the property, the house burned down. So they tore the rest of the house down and they are building a brand new house on the lot. It's a big place and will look very different than Uncle George's old place. When we got back to the nursing home after our stroll we sat out in the shade for a bit and then we went in to listen to the entertainment. It was the same girl who sang last year and Granny didn't like her any better this year than she did last year! So she and I went and sat in her room and had a good visit. I was asked to make a card for a friend the other day. It was a last minute request for a get together she was going to for a 50th wedding anniversary. I made it the night I was watching Lee DeWyze get crowned as the next American Idol! It turned out pretty nice if I do say so myself! Chow for now Jacqui

Victoria Day Parade 2010

Last weekend we ventured down town to watch the Victoria Day Parade. The weather was beautiful for it (it was actually very hot - I'm glad I was not one of those people with the heavy black parade band outfits. My son was not planning on going with us...but a little bit of "come on Joel, it's something we always do as a family", soon changed his tune!This is one of the Shriner's dressed up like a clown. The Shriner's always have a good turn out at our parades.
Another couple of Shriner's cruising in their flower mobile!
Another clown! Look how colourful he is!
I think these fellas were Shriner's too...the up and coming new generation I think on their little choppers!
This is one of my daughters friends walking her miniature pony along the parade route.
Here is Rodney Stafford walking the parade route getting the news out about his second bike ride coming up this summer where he and his son will ride together in memory of Tori.

It was a pretty good parade again this year!
Chow for now
Jacqui

Christmas Stampin' All Year Long Challenge 52

This week over at the Christmas Stampin' All Year Long Challenge blog, we were challenged with a colour challenge. Our challenge was to use shades of chocolate and rose! Here is the card I came up with for this challenge! Chow for now, Jacqui

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today is my Dad's birthday! I made him this great card that I cased from Vicki Garrett and can you believe I forgot to take a picture of it? Oh well. I wanted to get it done so I could take it and hand deliver it, as we were going up to the new place and were planning to stop in to see Dad and Mom on the way home. My mom and Dad got married in 1980 and we moved from Strathroy to the farm. At the time, it was quite the change. We went from a family of 3 (my mom, my sister and I) living in a cute little rented house in Strathroy to a family of 4 living on a 350 acre farm!! It was a good move though! We gained two new incredible grand parents and a few years later a new little sister! (hey Courtney!); but the best part was, Dad is such an incredible man. He is strong and wise and honest and he makes my Mom happy and he has been such an incredible role model for me and now for my kids, that I just love him to pieces. He has a great sense of humor. He can always make me laugh.....and he has this great talent of making me "think" about things too! I love you lots. Happy Birthday! Here are a few pictures. This one is a picture of my Dad in high school. He has not changed that much at all. A little less hair on the top, but other than that he looks the same! This one was taken in 2006 at Christmas. This one was also taken at Christmas, I believe in 2007. This really is a greeting that means "Hi Jacqui how's it going!" Chow for now Jacqui

Christmas Stampin' All Year Long Challenge 51

This week over at Christmas Stampin' All Year Long, our challenge was to make a card using the Paper Piecing technique. I love doing this technique. It allows you to create images with lots and lots of colour and to coordinate it with your designer paper. I used the Figgy Pudding paper by Basic Grey for this card. The dress and the boots are paper pieced to match the background paper. I used an SU rub-on on the front of the card. I used little snowflake "bling" on top of the new little punch from SU. I also used Liquid Applique for texture on the coat and boots. I liked the way she turned out! Please join us for the challenges each week. They really are lots of fun. Chow for now, Jacqui

Immunity necklace????

Every once in a while the kid will come with us when we go out grocery shopping; yesterday was one of those days. It was only Joel, our 14 year old, that was home at the time so he decided to come with us. We headed to Wal-Mart cause there were a few things on sale that I needed to get. Recently our Wal-Mart has been changed to a super centre so they sell groceries too instead of just clothes and stuff. We just walked in the door and Joel started vibrating he was laughing so hard. You know how you get when you see something that just hits your funny bone - and it may not be that funny but if you have never seen it before or it's just that kind of a day it makes you laugh so hard. Well this was one of those days for Joel. He saw baby bananas. I'll admit I have never seen baby bananas either and they are kind of cute, but something just struck him as funny and he was laughing so hard. So we grabbed the baby bananas. When we got home he said they looked like an immunity necklace and he started strutting around the house like he was someone tribal. It was funny. As we were going through the check out, we looked over and saw these two young guys dressed up like the fellas from KISS. They looked awesome there make up and costumes were really really good. The big tall boots and everything. We have no idea why they were dressed like that....we didn't see a promotion for KISS or anything like that so who knows. After we got home, Joel said oh mom too bad we didn't have your camera we could have taken their picture and put them on the people of Wal-Mart website. Now....if you have not looked at this web site you really should - cause holy moly....there are some doozies on there! Where DO these people come from? Enjoy! chow for now Jacqui

Florida Wedding Card

I was asked to make a wedding card for a friend who is going to the wedding in Florida. I wanted to make one with palm trees and some sort of Florida-ish type stamps or papers. When we were driving up to Kingston a couple of weekends ago, I came across this great paper at one of the stores we stopped at. I love the colours in the paper and I knew it was the right stuff to make the card. I used Chocolate Chip as the base for the card. I then use the awesome paper for the next layer. I stamped the image on white and coloured it using the Copics. I then layered the image on a piece of Chocolate Chip paper and popped it up on the card using dimensionals. I found a "love" brad that I got from the dollar store ages ago and placed it in the upper left hand corner of the image. I then tied around the rainbow ribbon across the top. I didn't take a picture of it, but I put some designer paper on the inside and use a rub on that said "congratulations". Chow for now Jacqui

Christmas Stampin' All Year Long Challenge #50

The challenge at the Christmas Stampin' All Year Long Challenge Blog was to create a card using the following pieces.......Base: Kraft - 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 Mat: Red- 3 1/4 x 1 3/4 Any patterned paper: - 3 1/4 x 4.5 Ribbon or Fabric: White Buttons or Brads: Red I found this quite a challenge actually. You would think it would be easy with everything mapped out for you, but I struggled with it a bit. Hope you like it. Chow for now Jacqui

Never Apologize For Your Art!

A couple of weeks ago we made our yearly trip up to Kingston to my BFF's house for Victopia. I had the pleasure of travelling with my best girls. Kim, Donna and Tami. Donna and Kim surprised us all by making us presents! They made us these great bags using the scallop die and the Big shot. They also made us these great dolls! I took mine to work and he has a special little spot on my desk! Isn't he cool? Chow for now Jacqui

Ivory Wedding Card

For this wedding card I used Very Vanilla. I ran it through the Big shot with the floral embossing folder. I stamped the Fifth Avenue Floral flowers with versamark and then embossed them with black embossing powder. I then cut them out and popped them up on the card using Stampin' Dimensionals. I tied some ribbon around the layered piece. I used a rub on for the "Mr and Mrs" on the tag. The tag was from a sticker sheet I got a while back. I layered it with black and then popped it up on the card. It's quite simple but looked quite nice when I was done. Chow for now, Jacqui

Look what I won!!!!!

I participated in a blog hop over on Vicki Garrett's blog and I won!!!!! I won this great set from Our Craft Lounge. I love these sets. They are so much fun and they are great for making fun scenes. I was asked to make some more cards for my friends wedding. The wedding was this last weekend. I guess it was a great success! The girl I made this one for asked me to steer away from the wedding colours as she wanted the mother of the brides card to be special. I used a black base and some black and white designer paper from a paper pack I got a while ago. I used the set Ever After from Stampin' Up! The picture does not show it very well, but the black strip is embossed using the Cuttlebug embossing folder. Some white grosgrain ribbon is tied around the black strip with black organza ribbons tied onto the white. Chow for now, Jacqui

Happy Mother's Day Mom!

"A mother is someone who can take the place of everyone else, but no one in the world can take her place"
Happy Mother's Day Mom.
I love you very much, and am very proud and thankful that you are my Mom. I truly am blessed to have a wonderful Mom like you.


Some final words of wisdom....
If at first you don't succeed; do it the way your Mother told you to!
Jacqui

Busy Weekend

Well another busy weekend has come and gone. On Friday, right after work, I grabbed my friend Laurie and we headed off to Stouffville to see my little sister Courtney. She was participating in a variety show called Music Mania. This year was their 50 year anniversary of shows. We were a little stressed when we started out, worrying that we would not make it to the show on time, but we hopped on the 407 and made great time. We even had time to stop at the Mandarin for supper. I have only been there for a lunch meal before.....mental note to self....supper is WAAAAAY more expensive. Great food though. After our supper we headed off to the Stouffville District Secondary School for the performance. The show was scheduled to start at 7:30 and we walked into the school at 7:00. We got front row seats!!!! The show started and there were a few performances before Courtney realized I was there. I think she was surprised. I love to watch her perform. She is very talented and always does a great job. One of the first skits was called the "fan dance". I was crying I was laughing so hard. It started out as a black light show, so the only think you could see were the feathers on the fan! These fellas were great!
There were a wide variety of skits from the various years of past Music Mania shows. I think this one was called Brother Soul. This was from the Hairspray era. Near the end of the show, a few of the performers came out and sang a song about what they would be if they were not on stage. This was a very comical skit as well. Right from the female doctor pulling down the poor tennis players shorts to the male ballerina in the tutu - but we must not forget the flasher in the fish net stockings!!! It was a fabulous show and I am so glad I was able to see it. Courtney did a great job! She was the accompanist for the ENTIRE show.
Then on Saturday we got up and headed up to the new place to do some more painting. We were hoping to get it all done this weekend....well we didn't, but we got quite a bit done. I'm very thankful that Joe is a good painter. He's a natural....I can tape and fix the little nail holes....but he is a much better painter than me!
The yellow colour we got for the kitchen - I LOVE IT. I think it looks great. We have to put the trip back up in the kitchen, and finish a second coat on the bottom side of the berm thingy (part of the wall that juts out above the cupboards) and then the kitchen will be done!
We got Joel's room done - he taped off a wavy design around his room and then we painted it white. It looks kind of cool! We got one of Jade's black walls painted too! We just need to get the paint for the rest of her walls....she is still deciding on what colour. We also got one coat of paint on the family room. It will need another coat for sure. The room was orange/rust so one coat of beige will not cut it - 2 or maybe 3 coats will be needed.
All in all we made pretty good progress.
And look at these little guys!!!!!
Chow for now
Jacqui