Working with a smile :)

Today was a busy, productive day.
We (when I say we, I don't mean me) dug some holes for the posts for our gate we are putting up at our driveway.
If our friendly neighbour didn't have this machine to dig the holes we (by we I don't mean me) would still be digging them by hand.















 We had two dug, Wayne's dad had to get 4 dug.
After these were done it was time to work on my display for beside the other side of the gate.
In order to get the look I wanted we had to go and collect some rocks....lots of rocks.
Wayne had told the girls that they didn't have to come with us.
I was like are you crazy, 10 hands will make the work go faster then just our 4.
Plus I think they wanted to help out anyway.
You can tell just look at their happy faces :)
Actually we had to go back for a second load. Yes Ashley you were right and your dad was wrong, teehee.















After the rock picking and placing it was time to cool off in the lake.
A dragonfly first landed on Ashley's shoulder then her hand.
We like dragonflies, they eat the mosquitoes :)
We also had a visit from our other neighbour Sonja as we were swimming. When I say we, I don't mean me ;)

















 Onto My Day:
After my walk last night, Kristy and I decided to go for a quad ride. Some silly people parked thier trailer, 2 trucks, 4 wheeler and pitched 2 tents on the trail.
And I mean right on the quad trail. I was coming down the hill and then oops there are people there.
I thought it was an odd place to stay on the pipeline, like get a campsite already.
This lake has camps on it, it is not a place to come and pitch your trailer. Weird.
















We were pretty busy today.
I did finish my journal....but only for 2009 :(
I realized last night as I was celebrating my accomplishment of finishing off that year, that the rest of the years are in a different book.
Can you believe it!!!!!!
It will not get the best of me though. I will finish this/these books by the end of the summer.

I hope you all had a creative Saturday :)

Tracy :)

Set up shop

Another beautiful day out at our cottage.
It is pretty hot, but the breeze is strong enough to keep it from being to hot, and also keeping the bugs away :)
I have set up shop in the (what we call the guest camp) trailer.
I usually take over the kitchen table in the cottage, but I have to clean up before each meal. So this works out perfectly. Except I miss everyone and keep going into the cottage to see what everyone is up to.

As you can see it was so nice out that the girls went swimming. Wayne was in the lake as well.
It has to be pretty darn hot for me to get in the water..I'm a summer baby and prefer my lakes warm ;)

Onto My Day:
I went for my walk earlier last night and the bugs didn't get me :)
The sauna was full of mosquitoes last night, so Wayne used our hand held bug zappers to get rid of them.
Well this morning it was even worse. Wayne just sprayed some Raid in there and left. He said he had to hose their little corpse's off the floor there were so many of them.
We checked out the screen door and noticed that the top part of the screen had come loose of its rubber seal. We didn't notice this earlier as the glass part of the door touches it. So I fixed the screen and Wayne added extra weather stripping to the bottom of the door.  Hope that keeps those little buggers out.
By the time we finished that, it was to late to go for my walk. I like to go early in the morning when it is cooler out.

It has been a pretty relaxing day today.
Ashley is coming up tonight, can't wait to see her. I am always so nervous when she is on the highway.

Hope you all had a creative Friday :)

Tracy :)

A really long weekend

It is a beautiful day here today.
I am over the moon happy at the rest of my week.
On our way to camp, yup that is where we are :)  I had to bring something other then my Camp Journal to work on......yes I brought my camp journal as well.
I also brought some stamps and my Copics to play with, if the weather turns nasty.
As you can see my Copics are safely tucked in between my feet.

 When we got here last night and unpacked, I wanted to go for my walk. I clocked it and it is actually a 3 mile walk.
I have been told that I am a speed walker....but it all depends on how fast the music is that I am listening to ;)
Well on my last 2 rounds of my walk the mosquitoes found me and decided I would make a good snack.
You know they never bugged me before. I think they knew that there wasn't any nutritional value in my blood. But now that I am on vitamins and iron they realize I got some good stuff in my...thanks to my doctors for that, lol.















We have spent a lot of time on these today.
Wayne and the girls followed me on my morning walk (another 3 mile jaunt). They love to drive.
Then later on Wayne and I went on our own.
As much as it saddens me that my girls are not little girls anymore, I do love that Wayne and I can just jump on these and go without worrying or getting someone to watch them.













Onto My Day:
Lots of walking and lots of riding :)
Heather and I are at the hotel right now using the internet.
I will tell you using their internet sure helps me appreciate the speed of ours at home.
It has taken 45 minutes to post this.
But I am sooooo grateful that they allow us to use theirs :)

Hope you all have had a creative Thursday :)
I haven't been creative today (unless you consider putting the dock in being creative). But it is just to gorgeous outside to stay in the cottage.

Tracy :)

Whats on my Desk

Just thought I would play along with Whats on Your Work Desk Wednesday.
Yes this looks pretty bad I know.
Even more so since I have been making my cards and colouring in the living room lately, gasp.

Here is a little closer look, yup I need to clean this place up. Even my chair has stuff on it, lol.















To see other creative desks like mine go to Julia's blog she has them all linked up over there :)

Onto my Day:
Today was a rushed stressed day.
You know those days when you have 50 things to do and a short time to do them in. Well that was my day.
But I did calm down a bit to enjoy a nice lunch with my friend Debbie.
Nothing like a friend to calm you down, until I drop her back off at work and start over again ;)

I hope you all had a creative Wednesday :)
If you missed my card from yesterday go and check her out:)
I may be away from the internet for a few days. So may not be able to visit you all, but I can check my blog from hubby's phone, just not comment :(

Tracy :)

Puddles of Love

I put the image that I coloured yesterday on a card today :)
Isn't she purdy?
I love these Gorjuss girl stamps.

 Here is a closer look at the image.
I coloured her with my copics. I also drew in the puddles.
If you want to know the colours I used, go to yesterday's post Puddle Jumper for the deets.

Here is the inside of the card.
Shocked I didn't use a recipe/index card for the inside?  I know.
I was gifted this pack of journal cards.

Onto My Day:
Went shopping with Heather and Kristy today.
I stopped in my LSS. She was affected by the flood, and has been closed because of it. She opened just for today, so her customers could stock up on supplies. Thankfully she did, as I am on my last roll of tape for my tape gun. We had a nice chat about what she has been going though the last few weeks. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy...not that I have any enemies ;)

I hope you all had a creative Tuesday :)

Tracy :)

Puddle jumper

I had a bit of a chance to colour tonight.
I coloured one of my new gorjuss girl stamps :)
I wish I would have used a lighter colour on the umbrella though. It looks a bit vibrant for the rest of the image.
I drew in and coloured the rain puddles.
If I am lucky I will put this cutie on a card tomorrow :)

Here are the Copic colours I used to colour her up.
The ciao marker is C1.
I am trying to share the colours I use, as some of you have been asking me to.
I usually like to put them back in their place as soon as I finish using a colour, so this is hard to get used to putting them to the side when I am done with it.

Onto My Day:
My Ashley is back from her trip :)
I made her a special supper and we enjoyed listening to her relive her trip.
I don't know how you parents handle your children living far away from you. I know it is something we all need to face, but damn it would be hard.

I was so looking forward to sleeping in this morning.
Can you believe I was awake at 6:00am! I never wake up that early, and if I do, I never have any trouble falling back to sleep.
But this morning I was awake before my hubby. That's just crazy.
Mind you I didn't get out of bed. I kept trying to get back to sleep.
I finally fell back asleep, then heard my phone get a text. I never keep my phone with me, but it was in my purse, which just happened to be in the bedroom.
After I fell back asleep, our cat Rose thought it was time to wake everyone up for school.
So I had to remind her that we were on summer vacation and to go back to sleep.
After a little persuading she did go back to Heather's room.

I am still on my not drinking pop (coke) on the weekdays, and only one or two during the weekends.
I had 2 on Sunday and am wondering if the caffeine had a delayed reaction, and that is why I had trouble sleeping. Because believe me, I can sleep like its no ones business ;)

Hope you all had a creative Monday :)

Tracy :)

Rocky I am not

Looks like I'm running here doesn't it ;)

Actually I am just jogging down from the highway, teehee.
I wanted hubby to take an action shot of my jumping up and down like Rocky. This was the first walk of the year down the pipeline for me.
As you can see he failed, and here he is the photographer....guess he needed his big boy camera, lol.
Does this photo put the Rocky music in your head?  Nahhh didn't think so ;)

 Here is where I walk every morning when I am at camp. It is down the pipeline. Not sure of the exact distance, but I think it is almost 2 miles.
I do a longer walk in the evening.

This is the view behind me.
Can you see my scouts in the distance.
Wayne doesn't really like me walking this alone as there are bears, wolf and he swears he saw a cougar last year.
I am not scared, maybe it has something to do with me growing up in the country, or maybe because I am not to bright, lol.
Either way he likes to drive back and forth as I walk. He also carries my water for me :) 

This year we have Kristy riding along as well :)
She will pull up beside me and tell me she saw a couple of turtles or pick flowers for me. She is such a sweetie.

 I bought some bedding plants last Friday, but didn't have time to plant them.
So when we got home from camp today, I went out and did some planting.

Now that I see them in the flower box (that I made by the way) it doesn't look very full.
I may have to add some more tomorrow. I only planted 1/2 a tray so far.

Onto My Day:
Wayne and I went to Canadian Tire to pick up a few things for camp. I also ran into the mall to grab a couple of pairs of capri-like sweats. Like the ones I am wearing in the photo above. That pair were one of the girls pairs, and not sure if they want to share them with me all summer.

I did do a post earlier today on my camp journal. I gave a little closer look into it. So go and check it out if your interested.

Hope you all had a creative Sunday :)

Tracy :)

A Peek into my Journal

I have been talking so much about my Camp Journal, I thought I should share a bit more about it.
If you know me, then you know I love to journal. I have been journaling on and off since grade 6...soooo that would be about......to big of a math problem to figure out....lets just say a real long time.
So when we purchased our cottage in 2007, I wanted to have journal dedicated to the time we spend up there.
I started with a note book. Well actually it was a child's "fun time doodle pad". You know the ones with no lines, it has different colour papers in it.
I had always planned on upgrading to a grown up book. But again if you know me then you know I am the worlds best procrastinator.
I picked up this journal from Chapters quite a few years ago and have been slowly transferring my journal into this.

The right part of the binding is a magnetic closure. I am thinking that when I am done with it, it may not close, as it is getting to that point soon.

Now lets open the pages to see what its all about.
My child's version never had photos.
But I wanted to add some pictures...my inner scrapbooker just had to come out and play.
I also added some stamping around the photos. I am trying to keep this simple.
Not sure if you can tell, but yes that is me sleeping in front of the fire pit. It was the last fire of the year and I was waiting for the last ember to die... I love my fires, teehee.

Here are some flowers that I had picked and pressed. I then laminated them to preserve them in the book. I know from turning the pages the flowers will get brittle and fall apart. So I laminated them.
I have also added some stamping or stickers that have to do with nature in here as well.















I have been know to pick up treasures along my many walks I take, here is a feather I found on one of them.
I remember that I had saw markings of a scuffle in the dirt around this feather..I think the fox won.
Again I laminated this.
I have some things that I haven't laminated but for the most part they are.





















Now on to the crappy part of the journal process. Remember I thought I had everything for this weekend. Well for the most part I did.
But found out that Wayne's external hard drive was missing some photos. Of course the ones I needed. To make matter worse, his computer that holds them has crashed. It crashed so hard that it can't be fixed :(

I also forgot my trimmer again.
Seriously, this journal is fighting me every step of the way.
So I improvised. Remember the other week I used the straight edge and the wonky wooden ruler.
Well I got rid of the wooden ruler and used the flat back part of this saw, and I think that brown thing is a template for a door plate.
Actually it worked real good.















Onto My Day:
Wayne and I checked around the buildings on our property and he got rid of 8 wasp nests.
This is a tiny one on the corner of the cottage. I have never seen one with a peak like that on it before.
We had also seen 2 huge nests at the top of the garage. But they were at the back, way up high and we don't think anyone will be back there, so we are going to leave those ones.

I went for many walks. I mean like many miles. It felt good to be back to my long walks again.
I may have over done it a bit as I had a huge blister on my heel. Funny as it was on the bottom of my heel. But I kept on truckin'
Later that night we had a downpour of rain. There was even some hail in there as well.
It didn't last long though.
Not sure if you can tell from this photo, but the rain is just bouncing off the lake.
This photo is looking from the living room window...what you thought I went outside for this picture, teehee.

I hope you all had a creative Saturday :)
Actually I did. I hit some bumps but I did get quite a bit done.

Tracy :)

The beauty of Nature

Another quick Friday post.
Yup we are heading off to camp soon.
Yup I am bringing my camp journal again.
This time I have packed my external hard drive,
Wayne's external hard drive,
photo printer, extra camp journal (as I plan to fill this one up).
And my cords to my laptop!!!!
Note to self...remember the laptop!!!

This is the camp journal box. Looks innocent enough doesn't it.

Onto my Day:
I did some book work. Tried to make some business calls, but everyone was off until Monday.
Did 2 loads of laundry and hung them out to dry as it was beautiful out.
Until about 1/2 hour after I had hung them out to dry.
I was doing some book work, looked out the window and thought, "oh its raining." Count 2 seconds "OH Sh1t its raining!!!"
Ran outside to take the laundry down. Half the sky was black, the other blue...humm which half should I trust.
You know if I would have left it out, we would have had a storm. So I brought it in.
I put together a make shift line downstairs, re-hung the laundry. Come back up stairs beautiful skies.

So after I put the second load on the outside line, we leave to pick out Heather's long awaited laptop.
It only took 5 visits to the store in the last couple of weeks for her to decide. That girl is very picky on her stuff.
As we are running around we look out to the distance and what do we see lightening and rain towards our area of town. Well nothing I could do, the laundry is going to be soaked by the time I get there.
Funny thing was, it didn't rain near my house and the laundry (well 1 load) was dry by the time I got home.

Hope you had a creative Friday :)

Tracy :)

Isn't she Gorjuss

I finally coloured up my one Gorjuss girls stamps.
My friend Phillane gifted me this cute little girl, Rose.
I don't think I am 100% happy with the card. But I do love this little girl and how I coloured her up.

I coloured her with my Copics and then paper pieced her dress and her boots.
There are a few things I wanted to do with this image and this card.
There is always the next time :)

And the inside of the card.
I love this grungy look to this card, both on the inside and the outside.

Onto My Day:
It seems like forever since I have posted ;)
Well yesterday, Heather and I did spend the day together, but it just didn't turn out as planned.
We did check out the bookstore, then went for lunch. Then I got a call from Kristy if I could bring her something to her school. So we did.
Then went to the mall. I found the things I wanted, Heather had a bit more trouble and actually didn't get a couple of things from her list.
Picked Kristy up from school, then we all went back to the mall as she needed dress pants for her new job at Safeway :)

Now today:
My dryer died last night and I needed to do a sh1t ton of towels....family of 5=lots of towels.
So I washed about 5+ loads today and hung them on the line. This is the first time I had used the line (we have 2) this year, and they were both weathered and more or less fell apart. So I rigged them up on the fence and wrapped them around things. I did get the laundry done (even though the towels almost hung to the ground). I even had some hanging on the gazebo.
I tell you it looked like a bargain basement laundry shop in my back yard, lol.
We had beautiful sun, then dark menacing clouds today.
Well at least it waited until the last load to have a down pour. I did have second thoughts and was just going to leave the laundry outside, then realized it would be too much work in the long run. so I ran outside and I got soaked grabbing the laundry. Then hung it on the backs of all the chairs in the house.

Today was Kristy's last day of school :)
Every year since I can remember, I have taken my girls out for ice-cream on their last day of school.
I don't know how many times Kristy reminded me this morning that we had to go for ice-cream, lol.

Hope you all had a creative Thursday :)

Tracy :)

A Canadian Girl at Heart

Redonkulous Design Team Day :)

Here is my card for my Design Team. 

I love this image...how can I not, I love being a Canadian :)

This image is called Welcome Home Soldier. She also comes in an American theme as well :)

See how considerate us Canadians are, we even thought of our neighbours, teehee.

 I coloured her in with my Copic markers.
Red tends to bleed in the copics, ask me how I know this ;)
I had coloured the tiny maple leaf on her shirt, then coloured the grey for the rest of her shirt.
Well guess what, it looked like I washed her shirt in hot water and the grey turned pink, lol.
So I printed off another piece of her shirt, coloured it with grey first then used my Stampin' Up markers for the red maple leaf.
I really like the fine tips of my Stampin Up markers for the finer details.
I used the greys on her because I wanted the reds and white to really pop.

Here is the inside of my card.
I used the extra pieces of my background paper and adhered it to my....I know you know the answer.......recipe cards....very good ;)
Then I backed it all up with the red paper.
I had some really neat stickers from camp that I wanted to use on my card. But when I brought them home, I realized they were tattoos. I still tried them but they didn't seem to work very well.
We used to like to dress up and cover up with tattoos on Canada Day ;)

To see the other talented Design Team members just click on their names and the links will take you right to them.

Sharon

Kate

Kim

Onto My Day:
Because you know I am still in bed when this post goes up ;)
My day hasn't even started yet.
But Kristy has school all day tomorrow, Ashley is gone away on her trip, so I think Heather and I are going to spend the day together.
We both want to do a bit of shopping and then I will treat her for lunch :)

Hope you all have a creative Wednesday :)

Tracy :)

Manicure mix up

I was mistaken about the price of getting a manicure.
I just found out the manicure was $29.00 and $7.99 extra for the french. 
My Mother's Day GCard was for $56.00 and was told I needed to pay an extra $7.99 for a french manicure. So I figured that the manicure was the whole price of the gift card....well as it turned out a french manicure is an add on, so that is why I had to pay more.
I still have more to my package (about 3 packages left on my GC). I was confused, which isn't hard to do, lol.
Was I impressed with the manicure nah, I think I do pretty good on my own. I think it is the perfectionist in me, lol. I tried to hold back with my opinions.....for my daughters sake, lol. 
My Ashley is going away with her boyfriend to attend a wedding in Kingston.
She purchased this beautiful dress on the Internet.
It looks beautiful on her.
I spent  a good portion of the day getting all the wrinkles out of it.
Because it is so sheer I had to find some material to use as ironing cloths.
And then start with the lowest heat and then work my way up so not to singe it.
Wish she would have had time to try it on again so I could have taken a photo before she left.





















As you can see the back is open. As much as she liked the look of it, the back of her bra showed.
She saw on Pinterest how you could put together an extension for the back of your bra. So we purchased the materials and I sewed it together. It did work...kind of.
But it was bulky and you could still see part of it.















So I sewed up a panel of black material (see its good I keep all my scraps of fabric I use over the years, as well as paper, teehee).
I then hand stitched the panel to the inside of the backing.
Turned out great. Hides her bra and looks like it was made like this.















Onto My Day:
I stayed up real late working on my Design Team card. Then I emailed it out to the DT boss and turned off my laptop. Funny thing was I guess I shut down the laptop before it sent, as when I turned on my laptop this morning it said it was sending. So it was later then I thought, lol.

I went to visit Ashley at her new office today. She is so excited not only did she get a promotion she also has her own office now. I kept singing "Well your moving on upppp, to the top". teehee.

I spent the rest of my day doing book work.

Hope you all had a creative Tuesday :)
Thundering, lightening and pouring rain right now. More storm warnings around here right now. I even heard of tornado warnings...which is unheard of around here.

Tracy :)

Miss Forgetful...I missed a play date :(

Don't these look yummy? 
Guess what. They were, teehee.
Heather made these.
What they are, are Oreo cookies in chocolate :)
She used a chocolate mold that the cookies fit in and then melted some tasty chocolate in the mold, placed the cookie in it then more melted chocolate.
As you can see we got a bit excited and started to eat them before I remembered to take a photo.
Let me tell you these were Delicious.

Onto My Day:
I forgot I had a play date today :(
I was talking to my friend Myra, who has just started to collect stamps. She just told me she picked up a few Copics, but needs help with them.
So I told her to come over today and we will to play.
I totally forgot  :-0
In my defence, which I really do need one, we had this conversation early last week.
I was out most of the day doing some errands with Ashley as she is going away on a trip. Plus since I figured I was out, I picked up some bedding flowers, went to the bank and got some groceries.
When I realized I had forgot, it was well after 3:00 and too late.
I am just glad she didn't drive here, she phoned and when I didn't answer she realized I must have forgot.
When I talked to her I think I had apologized at least 30 times, I still feel so bad.

Tomorrow Ashley and I are going to use that gift card for a manicure that the girls bought me for Mother's Day. Ashley got herself one as well.
I am shocked at the price to get your nails done. I have never got them done before and for a french manicure it is over $55.00.   Is that the norm?
I have to add, these are my own nails not fake ones.
I can't justify spending that much money on getting this done.
I have a question.
What do you tip for getting your nails done?
Ashley and I have been discussing this and she told me to ask your blog friends they may know :)
So all my blog friends how much is a reasonable amount to tip for getting this done?

Hope you all had a creative Monday :)

Tracy :)

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to all the Dads out there.
Whether you have children of your own, or had a part in raising a child. I hope you all had a great day today.
Here is what our daughters bought Wayne for Father's Day.
You may think wow those girls out did themselves this year.

Which of course they always do.
But if you look closely it is a travel mug that looks remarkably like a real camera lens.
He was so impressed by the detail of it.

And you know my cake decorator Kristy, had to make him is Father's Day cake.
Wayne has always been a big fan of Scooby-Doo fan, another perfect choice for him.

Onto My Day:
Nothing much happened today. We just came home from camp. I had a nice nap on the way home....good thing Wayne was driving eh?
The girls asked Wayne what he wanted for his Father's Day dinner. He told them he wanted Chinese food. Well you know who was treating for that ;)
Funny thing is, I just asked for Taco Time for my Mother's Day dinner. I need to rethink that next year, teehee.

Hope you all had a creative Sunday :)
Our city has the pumps working for the sewers and now we have no limit on the water going down the drain, so this week I am going to focus on washing laundry and doing a major clean up.
Between all this, I am also hoping to get some creativity going as well :)

Tracy :)

Does anything go as planned ;)

We drove up to our cottage driveway and I was sad to see that our post had rotted and our sign was laying on the ground :(
Wayne knew this was going to happen, but thought he could have fixed it this weekend before its inevitable demise.

See how the water has receded. This is Kristy and her boyfriend, Blake, enjoying the view.
Kristy called me a stalker when she saw this photo as she didn't know I took it, teehee.

In the evening we had a thunder storm. So Wayne BBQ'd in the pouring rain. Luckily we put up this huge umbrella a couple weekends ago so he stayed dry.

Neat thing about this umbrella is that it has a solar panel on the top, so at night there are tiny lights that go on, it is so cool.
They aren't really bright, but you can still sit around and enjoy the outdoors :)

We had lost power for about 3 hours, but heard it was suppose to be off for a lot longer then that. So Wayne started up the generator so I could work on my camp journal (more about that in a bit) and so the fridge could stay cold.
But with a storm comes beautiful sky's.















Kristy and Blake enjoyed a few games of Jenga. I think Kristy ended up being the champion of the games.
It became a very intense set of games :)





















Hubby fixed my sign :)
But Kristy took the photo before he added the solar lights on either end and on the top :)
That made me happy that our sign was fixed.
Wayne and I put a lot of effort and love into making this sign when we first bought our camp.
He cut the wood and I did the decorative painting :)
I see the letters need to be touched up.





















Onto My Day:
Remember my big plans to work on my camp journal?
Well I had my list
Laptop-check
External hard drive-check
Photo printer-check
paper trimmer-check.
Well I forgot my plug in for the my laptop and it only had 25% power left.
Then found out my external hard drive didn't go back far enough. I should have brought Wayne's external hard drive.
So needless to say, I had a few choice works which consisted of "Seriously, You got to be frick'n kidding me!!!!"
But I did work on it and just left a lot of blanks where I am hoping to add photos that I think I took at the time, lol.

I hope you all had a better creative Saturday then I did :)

Tracy :)