Happy Fourth of July!!!

Hey there!  Hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend.  We certainly had a lot of fun.  Friday's highlights included a hike in the Eno River State Park in the morning, and swing dance lessons in the evening followed by dinner out one of our 'go to' local restaurants, Williams.

Saturday morning, we hit the local farmers market, where I bought some of the first fresh peaches of the season.

We got the house ready to have a few guests over for a midday cookout.  Of course, I can't decorate a house for a holiday without including a gathering of themed stitching!

We were having too much fun during the cookout for me to remember to bring out the camera, but I did think of it in time to grab this quick photo of the majority of our holiday gang (mom, dad, and little sis).

I also found time to do a floss toss for a new reproduction.  It's a small, cute little American sampler with a little house at the bottom.  I'm taking a break from my massive Solomon's Temple repro to get a start on this one because I'm super excited to see how it will look when the faded colors you can see on the back are brought forward to stitch the design elements on the front.  More pictures will follow eventually.

Well, that's all I thought to take pictures of.  Enjoy these lazy summer days!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  I hope those of you here in the States have had a pleasant day, and that you were blessed to find yourself surrounded by loved ones.  Here at the Patrick household, the dishes have been cleared, and the leftovers stored in the fridge.  Most of the menfolk are at the movies watching the new James Bond movie, while the women paid a visit to a dear friend who is in the hospital.

As I'm gearing up for my Black Friday shopping (no Thanksgiving shopping for me, thank you very much!), I just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone well, and to say that there was only one more mishap added to my Thanksgiving adventures.  I got up early this morning to start the turkey.  I pulled the neck and a bag of giblets out of the bird's chest cavity, stuffed it with celery and onion, and into the oven it went (with a little help from my man; no need to break another toe by dropping a big ol' bird on it).  It only took 45 minutes or so longer than I really thought it would take to cook (which was factored into prep time, so no biggie, we still only waited about 15 minutes for it to come out of the oven beyond the promised time for lunch).  BUT, I did leave the bag with the gizzard inside the turkey.  I didn't realize there would be two bags.  Oops.  But it didn't mess up the bird.  I'm happy to say that the turkey was quite moist, the broccoli casserole was creamy and tasty, the gingered potatoes had a pleasant warm undertone, and the red velvet cake was baked to perfection.  Yes, I am patting myself on the bag.  By the grace of God, my man and I were able to present a perfectly edible (okay, more than edible) meal on our first hosting occasion.

Okay, that's all for today.  Stay safe, everyone.  I'll be back with stitching updates before too long!

I finally scrapbooked!!!

After almost 6 months away from scrapbooking (well, except for the shopping part, I never really behind on the shopping part), I have finally gotten back it and gotten a few layouts done.  I used National Scrapbook Day to push me to 1- get the bonus room into some semblance of organization, and 2- get my scrap on!

On the organization front, a great deal of progress has been made, but there's a lot left to go.  I had more scrap and stitching product than I had storage space in the old apartment.  Now I have the room, but I am still in the process of acquiring the storage units that I need.  Hopefully, I'll have the room arranged completely to my liking by the end of the summer.

On the scrapping front, I have SEVEN layouts to share!!!  Yuppers, I am definitely back in the groove.  I am still working for the perfect place to take photos of my layouts.  There's plenty of light in my new room, but the layouts seem to come out way too dark.  I've tried to lighten them up to better capture their true appearance.

First up, and my favorite from the batch, is a layout about a trip Alton and I took to Death Valley back in 2009.

 I guess I like the color combination.  It was a great trip, which began with a girls' only visit to Las Vegas and ended with several days exploring the area with my honey.  Loved it!

This next layout is a quick, simple one showcasing a photo of my maternal grandparents and uncle working on the farm.  I'm not sure exactly when the photo was taken, but it's probably from the late 60's or early 70's.

 And finally, there are a few more layouts from my neverending Egyptian album.  When I last blogged about our vacation, we were spending our time in Aswan, and exploring Lake Nasser.  With these new layouts, we pick back up from the visit to Kitchener Island and head south in a small, motorized boat.  I think we sailed  about 25 miles from the border of Sudan, and maneuvered amidst the rocks and rapids of the first cataract on the river Nile.  The birdlife here was beautiful.

 At one point, we could see caravans of camels.  Some of them resting on the edge of the desert on the shore of the Nile, and others loaded up and walking along narrow desert trails.  It was surely something to see.  

 Our boat pulled up to the shore, and we had a few short minutes to walk on the yellow sands of the desert. A few of us dared to take our shoes off and wade into the Nile.  It was refreshingly cool, and amazingly clear and clean looking, especially considering the amount of trash we had seen floating on parts of the river earlier in our trip.

From there, we cruised on, and eventually docked at a small Nubian village.  We were greeted by several young girls trying to sell us wooden dolls.  I bought one because I thought they looked so cute.  We were taken to a local family's home where we had some tea, and then they brought out the Nile Crocodiles.  Apparently many Nubian villagers rescue the baby crocs from the river, keep them in their homes until they are larger  and better able to protect themselves in the wild.  It was really something to have the chance to hold one in my arms.  Yes, its little mouth was tied shut for my protection, but it was still awe inspiring.

It was getting later in the afternoon, and as we left the village, the camels were coming home for the night.  Have you ever seen a string of camels come swaying by on their way home for dinner?  They are very focused on their route, and don't pay too much attention to anything in their way.  Including tourists.  It made for some interesting moments.

So that's it for my new layouts.  Next post will either be some more honeymoon photos, or some stitching photos.  I'm not sure which yet.  I did finally pick up my wedding proofs this weekend.  There are only about 800 of them.  I don't know how I'm ever going to choose which ones to scrap, which to get bigger images of, etc etc.  Maybe my next post will be wedding photos.  Who knows.  Tee hee.  Til next time, happy crafting everyone!

No, I'm not dead

... but I have been under the weather for the past week and a half! Yup, got sick just in time for the weekend before last, and I haven't felt right ever since. But before it got too bad, I did manage to get several layouts finished. This first one was for a challenge to scrap your dreams over on the Two Peas website:

This photo is going to be the last page of my Rome album. I used a picture taken at the top of the Spanish Steps at sunset, and journaled about my longing to see new places. The patterned papers are resist papers from Pink Paislee, and I used some Glimmer Mist to add just a kiss of color to the page.
This next layout has tons of color. I made it for another challenge, this time to use red as the predominant color on a page. I think I got that covered! I used products from WebstersPages new Spring Market line. The picture is of me and my brother riding with our PaPa on his tractor. I thought it was just the coolest thing to get on that tractor when I was a little girl!

This next layout documents our visit to a carpet making factory on the outskirts of Cairo last fall. We visited here on our first full day in Egypt. I love, love, loved the gorgeous silk rugs that were on display there. Sadly, I could not afford one, but Alton did buy me a gorgeous handmade wool rug from the same factory as a birthday gift. I haven't put it on display yet, but I think the plan is to maybe stitch a bar of fabric across the back and use it as a wall hanging eventually.

I used papers from the Basic Grey "marrakech" line. I cut motifs out of one sheet and layered them around the photo of the young rug maker. I added blue bling and some sequined centers to the cutouts to finish off the look:

This last layout is about how much I loved the weathered texture on the buildings in Rome. I started with a plain sheet of cardstock, and then I inked and painted away. I was trying to recreate some of the look that I saw on the walls. I didn't quite catch it, and if I had to do it over, I wouldn't put the crackle paint over the top (too shiny). But I like the finished look. It's messy and distressed, and I had a lot of fun creating it.


Needless to say, I did not meet my stated goal of finishing my Rome album by last Thursday. Oh well, that's how it goes! I'm very close to getting the rest of it done, so the new goal is to finish the album by the end of this week. Tomorrow, I will share some pictures from my weekend visit to Williamsburg, Virginia.

Snow Day!

Greetings from frozen southern North Carolina. It's another day home from work due to the ice and snow. I know I'm going to be really, really sad when I do make it back to work and have to catch on everything, but I did have fun crafting and creating yesterday. I finished two layouts and got a little stitching done, too.

I started with this two page layout covering the beautiful artwork of the Vatican Museum:

While I was digging around for the papers for the museum layout, I ran across the photo I used in this next layout. It's a picture of me as a toddler. I took it from my parents' house a while back, intending to create a layout using WP Wonderfall line. Somehow, I never had time to get around to it, and the picture kind of got buried. So I drug it back out and finally got it scrapbooked. Here's the layout:

And a couple of detail photos:



I also spent part of the day working on another angel ornament. It's not a ton of progress.


I think I'm going to go back to "The North Wind" for any stitching I do today. Seems appropriate, somehow, given the frozen world outside my window. I also need to shovel my porch. It doesn't get any sun, so it'll never melt if I don't help it along. Sigh! I'm really not looking forward to the task. On the bright side, walking to work means that I won't have to scrape my car windows. Stay warm, stay safe, everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. I drove up to my parents' home in Greensboro on Wednesday evening. The whole family (except Cami who was tired from a 10 hour work day) met at the theatre to see the newest Harry Potter film. Loved it! I can't wait for the last film to come out, but at the same time, I'll be sad when the whole thing is over.
We celebrated Thanksgiving with the extended family. There are so many of us, we have dinner potluck style. Here's a small portion of the food everyone brought:

And here's some of the desserts we had:

And here's a few more images from the day, including my grandmother with several of her siblings:



I didn't really get any good pictures of everyone else at the gathering. I was too busy enjoying the food and catching up with the family!