Greetings from Pittsburgh

Greetings from Pittsburgh! We arrived safely at about 1:45 AM Pittsburgh time. Coming into the city was beautiful at night. Scott lives just south of the Monongahela River, on a narrow street. His apartment is in an area that was residential many years ago, but his building was converted into a storage building. Last year it was renovated into an apartment, so everything is new. The ceiling is the old, original, dark exposed wooden beams. There is a large window/door across the north side of the apartment that leads to a big rooftop deck. When I took this picture, I was in the kitchen area of the room. The stairs on the left lead to the deck. His apartment is open and bright. I'm so glad we got to visit.

I decided to post a card that I sent to my sister for her birthday. This card uses the retired SU! set, Toucan of My Love. I love this litlle fishy. I also like the color combo of Green Galore and Taken with Teal. I think it makes a card bright and cheery. The silver bookplate frame is attached with a twisted length of DMC variegated pearl cotton.

I thought this card would be a nice bright addition to a snowy, cold day. It snowed all day here in Pittsburgh; a beautiful, fat-flaked snow. Hope you stay dry and warm. Have a great weekend!

Stamps: Toucan of My Love, Dotted, It's Your Birthday
Ink: Green Galore, Basic Black
Paper: Green Galore, Taken with Teal, WW
Extras: Prismacolor pencils, Winsor and Newton Sansodor Solvent, Square bookplate from Remember when, variegated pearl cotton floss from DMC

Hearts, Hubs, and More Hearts

Yesterday was the Heart Hop dance at school and my freshman went with two girls. Well, one was his date and the other girl wanted to come too. I'm glad they feel they can go as a group. They had a great time. Adam managed to rip his tie while dancing. Not exactly sure how that happened. The girl that would have asked Mark first was out of town this weekend and Mark decided he didn't want to hurt any other girls' feelings by saying yes to one and no to the others, so he decided not to go with anyone.


My poor hubby spent all of Saturday and a good portion of Sunday after church laying on the cold garage floor changing the brakes on the Astro. Normally this is a 2 hour job, but he was unable to get the hub off one of the rear drums. He was hammering, drilling, blow torching, banging, pounding, using penetrating oil. Everything he could think of. He finally got it off early this afternoon. He was frozen since the high was about 5 degrees today. I felt so bad for him.

And finally some more hearts. Here are the projects we made on Thursday at Enrichment Club.

The first project we made was the candy bar sleeve. I cut card stock to 5 1/2" x 6 1/4". With the 6 1/4" edge on the vertical, I scored it at 1" and 3 5/8". This allows for the seam to be off center and will make punching the notch much easier. Before assembling it, we wheeled it with the jumbo Adoring Hearts wheel in Pink Passion. The Pixie Pink tag is stamped with Be Mine from Have a Heart. We punched the tag and threaded both ends of the ribbon from behind and tied it in front. Before we put in the Hershey bar, we punched a notch with the 1 1/4" circle punch.

Our second project was a match book M&M holder. This used the frog image from the same Have a Heart set. We colored them with Prisma colored pencils and matted with Green Galore. The Pink Passion card stock was cut to 8 1/2" x 3 1/4". It is scored at 3/4", 4 5/8", and 4 7/8", and stamped with the little heart from Toucan of My Love. This holder uses the Fun size M&M packets. This gets stapled under the short fold and the other end gets tucked under the short fold like a matchbook.

The third project is a sour cream container. To begin we took a quarter sheet of card stock and stamped it in Pixie Pink with the Herringbone background stamp. Then we rolled it into a tube with the 4 1/4" edges overlapping. We pinched one edge and glued it shut. We added Hershey kisses and pinched and glued the other end closed, with this edge being perpendicular to the bottom edge. Then we punched a hole in the top edge. We stamped a tag with the tag from Happy Heart Day, threaded it onto a heart shaped paper clip that I found at Target a few years ago, and tied it onto the top edge with black gingham ribbon.