PCs from Far Away Places

Two postcards so far this week.  One from the Czech Republic featuring some of the sites of the city of Olomouc.  St. Wenceslas Cathedral is on the right, two views of the town's Upper Square at the bottom, and a view of the Church of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary in the upper left.

The postage that traveled with this card was equally interesting.  This stamp commemorates the 600th anniversary of the astronomical clock in Prague.  You can read more about this amazing clock here.














The peaceful scene depicted below arrived from the Netherlands.
Thankfully, the message on the back is written in English.  I have not a clue what the sentiment on the front says! 

Scenes from the Weekend

A new floor went in, at long last.  There is still a section near the sink and appliances that needs to be replaced, but that will wait until the cabinetry is finished.  Speaking of cabinetry--the first 3 cabinets are visible here.  Pat made these himself from maple lumber that he purchased from a friend-of-a-friend who is in the flooring business.  Please ignore the ugly green counter top.  It is due to be replaced after the rest of the cabinets are built.

Babies and mallets?  hmmmm...


















The boys love shadowing their Dad when he's working with tools.

There was lots of baking.  Muffin recipe here.

Holly baked this cake using Alton Brown's recipe.  It was so, so good. 












Once the kids were in bed, Pat and I assembled the baskets.  I got the idea for the tags from this site. 

The girls got silly socks.  The boys each got a water pistol and a plush finger puppet something like this.  Everyone got a new spring-themed tumbler, filled with layers of candy separated by muffin tin liners.  Each basket had a fluffy baby chick on top. 







I thought we'd just do without the egg-dying this year, but that was not to be the case.  Instead, we waited until after Easter brunch to color the eggs.  Better late than never, I guess.  (Depending on who you ask!)

Thankfully, Aunt Nancy was on hand to supervise this part of the day.  The method we used allows only one person to work at a time, which is probably a very good thing.

Little hands are prone to big messes.  Thankfully, the dye stayed where it was meant to be.

Inspecting the results, almost finished.

This little guy was not involved in any way other than watching from his nearby perch.  Doesn't he look tough with his short-short hair?  My baby!  Where has he gone?















Brunch!  The waffle irons were fired up soon after we arrived home from Mass.

What you don't see are the coconut eggs, the cake, the waffles or the whipped topping.  I was too busy eating to take photos.

Why don't I make deviled eggs more often?  They are so, so yummy.

We were all stuffed to the gills afterward, and retired to the living room to watch Inception (again), and last week's episode of The Amazing Race on DVR.  The little kids watched The Incredibles on the laptop in the room next-door.

Later we met with friends for Sunday outdoor rosary at a nearby church.

It was the perfect ending to a wonderful weekend!

Happy Easter!

by Laurel

Why Didn't I Think of That?

Check out this link for Chocolate Coated Peeps.
...swoon.

A Wedding

I can't wait for this one!  Look at the invitation--designed and drawn by my nephew, the groom.  He's headed for the Big Time, I'm sure of it.  His bride-to-be is lovely and pursuing her own path to greatness, too.

I understand the bluberries (she grew up on a blueberry farm), the origami crane (his Asian roots) and the infinity symbol, but I'm going to have to ask about the significance of the snail.  Interesting, and beautiful!

Liam will be given the honor of being the ring-bearer.  He is stuck like glue to Churu, whenever he visits.  It promises to be a wonderful, memorable day for all.

Congratulations to the happy couple!

Sneak Peek--Pineapple Fish PC

I decided to venture over to the Illustrator's neck of the swap-bot community.    The challenge for this swap was to research a fish, then draw it.  I chose pineapple fish because it was something I'd never heard of before.

I haven't drawn much beyond cartoons in a long time, so this was a fun exercise.  I still need to figure out the setting and color everything in, but the basic drawing is done.  Updated:  the finished postcard is below.  The colors look better in real life than the scanner shows, but even so, the thing has no depth.  I will send it off, hoping that my recipient appreciates the effort.

 

 

Note to Self

When finished with your morning couch to 5K routine, it is best to just go ahead and use that ice dispenser in the door.  Your idea of opening the ice compartment to retrieve the ice more quietly so as not to wake sleeping babies? 

Will fail. 

You will drop a dozen ice cubes, which will clatter noisily to the floor, scatter themselves to every remote corner, and then require clean up.

On the bright side--I started week 4 today!  and I'm still alive!  ...and!  ...and!  I didn't have to run outside, which is a veryveryvery good thing because it snowed all morning.  Snowed!  Not just a little snow, either--we got at least 2 inches which I now have to go shovel off of our manymany steps or the mail carrier will leave a note that she couldn't deliver my packages due to unsafe steps.  Which they are, even when not snow-covered.  deep breath


Happy Monday!

More Swaps

Here are some of the swaps I sent out this week.

Flying Pigs PC--this went to a postcrosser in Australia who said she liked "unusual scenes".  I think this qualifies.

I stamped in black and colored with Prismacolors, my usual MO.  I liked this one so much I made extras.

 The title for this swap is "At the Heart of the Zentangle ATC".
We were instructed to include a heart somewhere in the 'tangle.  I'm really loving making these zentangles, but not feeling very confident about the results yet. 

 "Book / Library ATC"
I think the background text is in Italian, but I'm not sure.  This was a quick one.

 "Things that Go Bump in the Night"
For this swap, we send three ATCs to one partner.  I had fun reacquainting myself with embossing powder.  The skeleton is embossed in "sea foam" and the cat in black.  The eyeball was stamped on glossy cardstock, cut out and glued in place.

 Here the spider web is embossed in gold, and the card has a gold thread from which dangles a gigantic black spider.  Shudder.

My favorite of the three.  "Eyes in the Mist"...booga booga!
The background was sponged in midnight blue and eggplant.  These eyes are so creepy!  The house is a rubber stamp that was made from a carving done by a friend from many years ago.  She started a stamp business named "Karv'd" back in the 90s.  She was a great inspiration to me--always doing something with stamping or quilting, or combining the two.  Whenever I use one of the stamps she designed, I regret that I didn't do a better job of keeping in touch.

At Long Last

Greetings, Internet.  I bet you thought I'd forgotten about you.  Well...I did.  Sort of!
Just been too busy to ever post.  In a year.  Wow.  Lots happened in that time, the best of which is that the baby weaned.  Now I have a little more time to do fun stuff.  Bloggable stuff, even.

The girls and I have instituted "Stamping Tuesdays" and even drew up a list of themes for each week.  We are all loving it.  We are limiting our canvas to postcard size.

I've discovered swap-bot, also.  It's been so much fun to get something other than junk mail and bills in the mailbox!

Here are my submissions for a few recent swaps:

 This was an ATC swap themed "Moms are Special".  That's me (ha ha) with my five kids represented as hearts attached to gold string.

"Spring" ATC
You can't tell, but the fairy's wings are shimmery, thanks to Sparkling H2O's paint.  The background was sponged with a Nerf ball.

Zentangles ATC
I'm very new to this form of drawing, so this one was a challenge for me.  Zentangles are traditionally drawn on 3" x 3" squares, but for this swap we had to make them ATC-sized (2-1/2 x 3-1/2).

 Frog ATC
Did you know that April is National Frog Month?  Me neither!  A frog-loving swapper came up with this theme.
The frogs are dancing to something by Beethoven, if you're curious :D

 ...and another Frog ATC.  This one has a background of torn newspaper. 

 Beginner ATC Swap
This was more work than it might appear.  The music stamp was repeated five times.  I didn't do a great job of lining it up exactly.  When I see this I think how easy it would be to do in PhotoShop.

 Spring ATC
I have a "thing" for chickies!  You can't tell from the photo, but the lower pane includes chicks cut from yellow cardstock and glued to the original image (stamped on white).

The upper pane has the same image stamped onto tracing paper and glued to the ATC. 

 Colors of the Caribbean ATC (make 2)
Painted background, stamped shell with painty dots.  Images cut from magazines and other papery stuff.

 2 of 2
The background was cut from a paint manufacturer's pamphlet.   The words were cut from some scrapbooking paper, and the shell and turtles were stamped.

This was another spring-themed ATC.  We had to use at least one bunny.  When you're assigned a partner on swap-bot, you're given a link to their profile.  Sometimes I can tailor a project to a specific person, as in this one.  My partner's profile listed "vintage images" as a favorite.  This bunny stamp was made from a vintage Easter post card.  The pussy willows on the lower portion are from a paint chip sample.