A Great Day for Tennis

What a wonderful day for tennis today!  Blue sky, dry, sunny, warm...
We played Glenlake which is about 20-25 minutes from my house...not too bad of a drive. (The good thing about playing away is that we don't have to provide food!)  I played with my long time tennis partner, Linda and we had a really great match.  We started off down a break but came back and won the first set 6-4.  The two girls we played were quite good...very consistent with a wide variety of shots.  But today was one of those days that all of our shots landed in!  We just couldn't make a mistake!  It was so wonderful to play in the ZONE for once!!!  We just really lucked out with some of the shots...we painted lines as they say.  Very fun!  Anyway, we bageled them in the second set which for the non tennis followers means we beat them 6-0 (0 looks like a bagel, right???)!  Even when we were up 5-0 and I was serving for the match I had this feeling that if we gave them an inch they'd be right back in the match.  I think they were befuddled by us! No other word for it!
It was just so much fun...Linda played sooooo well.  Crisp volleys, deep ground strokes, fabulous overheads!  She closed off the net like a pro!  It was so much fun!!!
Our opponents were very nice and good sports and complimented us on our level of play.  Our team ended up taking 4 of 5 matches today so it was a great day for us!
Winning is always fun...if you lose but you play well or get beat by better players that's ok...what's awful is when you self destruct and beat yourself! HAHA! But not today...We were great.
Autographs available upon request. :)

Box of Blossoms!

I love taking cardmaking and scrapbooking classes!  It's always fun to learn new techniques and have the opportunity to work with new tools.

I took a very good class at Archiver's on Wednesday...taught by Jennifer. 
Here is a photo of Jennifer and me.  She's the tall one. I'm the not so tall one...
She was organized and very patient with all of us.  She's from Scottsdale, Arizona...
We like to learn these tidbits from our teachers...

The name of the class was "Box of Blossoms"....I learned we would make a cute little box out of corrugated cardboard or chipboard and would also learn a few new techniques on flower making.

One of my favorite things when getting to class is getting to see the class kit and all the cute papers and items we'd be using to make our projects.  Here you can see what was at each seat:

One item that came in the class kit was this cute 6x6 inch paper pad called Mabel by Stella and Rose by My Mind's Eye.  There are two things I absolutely loved about it...FIRST, the papers are double sided which are hard to find in paper pads and  SECONDLY these are the actual prints shrunk down from the larger 12x12 paper pads.  These little 6 inch pads are absolutely wonderful for smaller crafts....like card making! 

I thought it was so cute that I bought the Hazel Collection,too.  Archiver's sells these for $6.99 a pad but Amazon sells all of the Stella and Rose  6x6 paper pads for $5.99 a pad.

We started the class by cutting our chipboard into pieces for a box. 



And we had enough chipboard left over to make another box. 

We then tore off some of the outer layer of the chipboard to make it look grungy and distressed.  I love this!

I love grunge!

We punched holes in all four corners as the box would be assembled using tulle.

We created a liner for our box by cutting a piece of cardstock and scoring it like this and gluing our chipboard pieces to it:

The assembled box...but not completed in terms of decorating... looked like this after it was tied with the tulle:

Needs lots of embellishing but what a cute idea, huh?
And here is a picture of me hard at work...

I look relaxed and without a care in the world.  All is right when I have scissors, paper and adhesive near me!

We learned 3 great flower techniques and I will post those later...one technique was with torn paper, one with punched circles and one with tulle.  Very fun and oh so cute!

Stampin' Up

When I first started scrapbooking I stayed far away from rubber stamps! I thought they were just too messy to deal with...didn't like all that ink and generally I made a huge mess whenever I did try to do any stamping!  A friend dragged me kicking and screaming to a Stampin' Up party about 10 years ago and yes, I'll confess, "My name is Susan and I'm addicted to stamping!"  I love stamps...wood mounted, clear acrylic, rubber cling...you name it and I have it! 
I recently sold several wood mounted Stampin' Up sets in a consignment sale.  I had mostly wood mounted Stampin' Up sets and they do tend to take up a lot of room.  There are some ways you can remove the stamps from the wood mounts and turn them into cling stamps but that just seemed to be way too much trouble for moi.  So out with the old and in with the new!
I came across this card I made some time ago and kept in my "collection" (I have a hard time parting with cards so I generally make more than one so that I can keep a version for myself!).

I loved this card when I made it...It was made with an old set I had that is most likely retired as I couldn't find it in the current Stampin' Up catalog.  I just stamped the images with various colored inks and cut out them out with nice small detail scissors...my favorites are EK Success EKCB01 Cutter Bee Precision-Cut Scissors. Adhered the images to  navy blue cardstock and tied a little raffia on it for a little extra interest.  I love this card but would probably put some of the flowers on Scotch 1/2" Mounting Tape to pop them up and add a little more dimension.
I had forgotten about this card but saw it in my stash yesterday and thought...gee, I'd like to make a few more of these!
Well, guess what???  I sold that set in a consignment sale! I must have seen it and thought "I'll never use it again!" Ah me.....
If you happen to have this set...HANG ONTO IT!!!  It's a cutie!

A Cherished Card

I also love to receive handmade cards from friends and family.  There is just something special about knowing someone took the time to make a card for you.  I received this card on my birthday 9 years ago from my good friend Jenna.  She was 8 years old at the time and she made this beautiful card by herself!

Her mother, Holly, a friend who also is a scrapbooker and cardmaker, showed her how to do it and left her to herself.  Jenna made this wonderful card with chalks and Tsukineko VersaMark Watermark Stamp Pad resist ink.  I was so touched to receive this from her and it has been hanging in my crafting room since then! 
Jenna is now a senior in high school...and will be graduating next month and off to college in the fall!  She has grown to be a beautiful young woman and I know she will be doing all kinds of wonderful things with her life.  I am just glad that I've known her since she was just a little girl!

Cute Spring Idea!

I had another tennis match today (bad outcome...not even gonna talk about it!) and our opponents hosted with some nice food! (The home team always provides food and sometimes it's good and sometimes you play a team of non-cook!) Today there was a very cute presentation of some mini cupcakes.

The woman who made them had a Cricut but I was unable to ask her what cartridge she used. There are many cartridges out there with nice flower images such as 3 Birds on Parade, Accent Essentials, Forever Young, and Walk in My Garden to name a few. They were simply cut out at about 2 inches and glued to little lollipop sticks and placed in the mini cupcake. So cute and springlike! I think they would be cute to do with the little bunny face from Doodlecharms

or Create a Critter:

 How wonderful your Easter table would look!  Simple, easy and CUTE!

A Little Mojo Has Returned...

Today was one of those days a card came together rather quickly for me!  Here's the finished product:

I used We R Memory Makers printed papers (all with an Easter theme), Coredinations cardstock and for the card base I used some plain old smooth white cardstock.  I stamped a couple of butterflies (Unity Stamps) on printed paper, cut them out and adhered them with foam tape so they'd stand up a bit and look like they are ready to fly off the paper!  The Happy Easter sentiment is a Close To My Heart stamp.I used some mini pompom trim I had picked up at Archiver's which I thought was oh-so-cute and reminds me of bunny tails!  The scalloped circles were punched with Fiskars punches. To add a little sparkle to the butterflies and the sentiment I used a Gelly Roll Glaze pen.  Too bad it doesn't show up well in the picture...

And that is it! Simple but cute, I think!

A Woo Hoo Sort of Day!

I arrived at the tennis courts today for the big match and as luck would have it one of my opponents was younger than either of my children!!!  I hate playing youth....they hit too hard! Wah, wah, wah! And when I met up with my partner, Tressa, she started off by telling me that when she lifted her Golden Retriever (WHAT WAS SHE THINKING???) into her vehicle she sort of threw out her back.  Oh great...I have a gimpy knee and she has a weak back! And we are playing someone bigger, taller, stronger and MUCH YOUNGER!
But luck was on our side today...and we also played really well and AGE (ok, Tressa is young but I'm a grandmother for goodness sakes!) and EXPERIENCE were victorious once again!  WE WON!!!  6-4, 6-3.  And to make matters even better I realized I had played and lost to those same ladies last year.  So what a great day! 
So, here's a picture of Tressa and me....

And the 3 fingers up do NOT refer to having played 3 sets (we won in straight sets) or having drunk 3 margaritas (we only each had one, I swear) but are really "W's" for WINNERS!  Her hand is one way...I think that's a bad gesture in some foreign country, Tressa!...and mine is the other but really we were showing a "W" for WINNUHS!!!

We have something like 16 people on our team...and only 10 play each week.  You'd think we'd never run out of people.  BUT NOOOOO...12 of our people deserted us today...it is spring break here and there was a mass exodus of my teammates to the beach, Disney...and someone even decided to WORK today! So we were down to 4 regular team members.  But our captain was very creative and industrious and she added some people to play today and we ended up winning 3 of the 5 matches so we TOOK THE DAY!  Very exciting for us.

Here is our captain, Marcie (on the right) and her partner, Vickie.  They also won AND PLAYED IN THE TOP POSITION!  They ROCKED!!!

I don't know why they are holding up empty mugs.  There had been magaritas in those, as well, trust me....  Not only can they win at tennis but they can also drink margaritas for lunch.  We ARE a versatile team!  So many skills....

Fun day with fun ladies!  I just totally heart my team....