Final posting for Stampin’ UP! Tea House Wedding Shower:

The morning arrived and to bless our gathering the power went out at 7 a.m.! (It didn’t return until 1:30 p.m.) You can only imagine my angst.  We really didn’t miss a beat though, thanks to the artful help of my niece Jessica and good friend Renee’ who prepared the food.

They used the pancake griddle on the gas cook stove to toast the crostini and warm the quiches under a tent of tinfoil.  That was the only two items that needed finishing up that morning.

Our guests enjoyed:  Baby Shrimp topped cucumber rounds, Caprese Skewers with Fresh Basil,  Mini Bacon & Crimini Mushroom Quiche, Ham Salad on Crostini, Mascarpone stuffed strawberries, Granny Pritchard’s Lemon Bars with Raspberry Puree, Cheesecake & Blueberry Shots, Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies with Chocolate Ganache.  Suffice it to say that no one left hungry!

Guests were greeted with fresh flowers, lovely tea sets, and Stampin’ UP! Tea Shoppe favor bags.

The Favor bags were fun to put together.  They included 2 Tazo Rest Herbal Infusion Tea bags.  A scrumptious tea blend of lemon balm, Rose petals, Honeybush, orange peel, lemon myrtle, lavender, that brews up the most heavenly calming cup of tea.  Two Godiva Chocolate Truffles, and a sweet little Stampin’ UP! Beau Chateau Designer Series Paper notebook for your purse.

I know this is getting quite lengthy, so I will end with a thank you for letting me share the happiness of this wonderful event with you.  I hope it will inspire you to consider the possibilities of entertaining and allowing the wonderful Stampin’ UP! products to help make your event a success!

Almost forgot…here is our sweet bride with the mother of the groom on the left, me, and her mom Beth on the right.

Thanks for stopping by, have a wonderful week!

Katherine

This weekend’s guests at My Bluebonnet Cottage found a plate of these lovelies waiting for them at check-in!

I had a couple Scallop envelopes leftover, from last month’s basket of similar ones with a Valentine Theme for my DH’s team of fantastic ladies , so I got busy this morning and cranked out these Ghiradelli  Chocolate Truffles Treats for the group of quilters who are cozily tucked in for the weekend.

Exclusive Stampin’ UP! products used in this project are:

Big Shot Scallop Die, Big Shot Textured Impressions Embossing Folders Perfect Polka Dots

Stamp Set: Tiny Tags

Embellishments:  Jewelry Tag Punch, Linen Thread, Brilliant Blue 1/4″ Grosgrain Ribbon (Retired)

The next time you need some quick treats for a party, Sunday School class, or office co-workers these cute little dressed-up envelopes are just the answer!

Thanks for stopping by,

Katheirne

A little bit of Stampin’ UP! Designer Series Paper such as the Newsprint pattern shown here goes a long way.  A few stamped images, some distressing, a scalloped edge, a tag, and a few snips of ribbon to finish the project off!

All supplies are by Stampin’ UP!:

Speciatly Designer Series Paper, First Edition IBC pg 181; #121878

Basic Black Card Stock, IBC pg 180; #121045

Mini Vintage Tags, IBC pg 198; #118763

1/8″ Taffeta Ribbon in Basic Black, IBC pg 195; #119261

3/8″ Taffeta Ribbon in Whisper White, IBC 195; # 109070

Color Spritzer Tool, IBC pg 203; #107066

Stampin’ Write Marker in Basic Black, IBC pg 180; # 100082

Tiny Tags Stamp Set, IBC pg 136; #118091

(Retired) Watercolor Trio Stamp Set, #120084

Heat Embossing with Stampin’ Emboss Powder in White, IBC pg 201; # 109132

With Stampin’ UP! Creative Altered Journals are a fun gift for anyone, I hope you remember how quick and easy they are next time you’re on the spot for a gift!

so much as a lovely Sweet Spring Banner created with exclusive elements by Stampin’ UP!

Using the Stampin’ UP! Big Shot makes this a quick easy project even a twelve year old could do.  Here’s a list of the supplies I used for this project:

Big Shot Dies:  Beautiful Butterflies; Top Note; and Serif Essentials Alphabet; Square Lattice Embossing Folder

Card Stock: Crumb Cake; Lovely Lilac (retired); and Whisper White

Stamp Set: Elements of Style pg 133 2010-2011 Idea Book and Catalog

Stampin’ UP! Classic Ink:  Regal Rose, Pink Pirouette, Soft Suede, and Old Olive

Embellishments:  5/8″ Pretty in Pink Satin Ribbon, Rhinestone Brads in Circle Fire, Designer Buttons Neutral, Stitched Felt Sweet Pea (retired)

The layering of  embellishments really helps to give this Sweet Spring Banner pizzazz and style!

The large butterfly sitting on the “S” note is not only highlighted by the beautiful hand colored stamp image,  it has two layered felt elements from the Sweet Pea felt set.

The smaller butterfly hanging from the corner of the “I” note topped off with a white pearl button and a pink rhinestone brad.

The Pretty in Pink bow on the “G” note was accented with a white pearl button and a felt element, again from the retired Sweet Pea felt set.

The Faux Burlap texture on the top notes and hanging them from a bit of twine all come together to give this Sweet Spring Banner just a touch of Shabby Chic flare without being overpowering.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this project, it was so easy to put together and honestly was completed in just under half an hour!  I just love playing with my Stampin UP! Big Shot, it really does make your creativity soar!  If you don’t have one, give me a call and we can fix that right away!

Thanks for stopping by, hope you’ve enjoyed the time here…Katherine

I’m in the midst of a huge project for my sweet hubby that involves sending little tokens of appreciation to his referral  offices staffs, and so I couldn’t resist taking a few of the “extras” and share them with this weekend’s guests over at My Bluebonnet Cottage!

What would a night of paper crafting and scrapbooking be without CHOCOLATE?  They are quick and easy to put together using the Birthday Bakery Level 1 Hostess Stamp Set from the 2010-2011 IBC, page 10.  It’s a fabulous 5 piece stamp set that should be on everyone’s must have list!

Other products used in this quick project are: Stampin’ UP! Whisper White and Real Red Card Stock;  Stampin’ UP! Classic Ink in Real Red; Stampin’ UP! Large and Extra Large Tag Punch; and Stampin’ UP! Silver Cord.

As a Level 1 Hostess reward it is easy to achieve, all you need to do is host a  Stampin’ UP! Workshop with sales of $150, and it’s yours…PLUS $15 of other great FREE merchandise from any of the current catalogs.  Workshops are a fun way to get together with your friends and sample a lot of the great Stampin’ UP! products, plus everyone gets to take home two paper crafting items that they have made themselves.  It’s so easy!   If you’ve ever thought of hostessing a  workshop there’s no better time than now,   give me a call or drop me a note and we’ll put your date on the calendar!

Thanks for stopping by today, may you be richly blessed!

Katherine

Several years back on one of our last deer hunting adventures out in Coleman TX , on our deer lease, our son’s Addison & Colin dug up this old jar in an ancient dilapidated pile of what used to be a shed or barn structure.  It has an art-deco flare to it with three arches on either side and was miraculously intact and uncracked.  We stuck it into one of the storage compartments on our travel trailer and there it has remained until re-discovered the other day.

I was excited to find it because I had picked up a bag of various wooden spools last summer, on one of my ventures to an antique store in nearby Valley Mills, TX., while looking for odds and ends for My Bluebonnet Cottage.

The jar would be just the right container to showcase my spools.  After soaking it in some hot soapy water I was able to coax the lid off and clean the inside.  The spools looked just great and had found a home!

But, something was missing, it needed a little extra pizazz to really make it work.  So I added a lovely Shabby Chic Tag created with the Stampin’ UP! Charming Stamp Set.

I picked up color accents from the pale turquoise spool of thread.

Elements used are:  Bermuda Bay 1/2″ Polka-Dot Grosgrain Ribbon, Stampin’ UP! Linen Thread, Rhinestone Brads in Circle Ice Turquoise, Dazzling Diamonds, Stampin’ Dimensionals for depth, Whisper White card stock, Soft Suede Classic Pad, Stampin’ Write Markers in Always Artichoke and Cameo Coral.  All images are from the Charming Stamp Set featured in the 2010 Occassions Mini Catalog. (See link in side bar for catalog ordering 24-7)

I hope you are inspired by this lovely project.  Home decor items don’t have to be time consuming or expensive to pull together.  A little creativity goes a long way.

Thanks again for stopping by and I hope you’re having a great week!

Katherine

Thursday morning our sweet Colin woke up with a ginormous index finger and knuckle on his right hand that looked like it belonged to someone else. We had been carefully monitoring a spider bite that he’d gotten Sunday while trekking in the woods at a friends house, but it was now clear that it was going ‘postal’ on him (berserk, out-of-control). The first words out of the doctor’s mouth was ‘he really needs to be in the hospital’! I nearly fell out of my chair. He could tell, from the look on my face, that I hadn’t fully comprehended the gravity of the situation prior to that moment. He explained all the things that can happen with an infected hand and then called my attention to the faint red streak beginning to creep up the back of Colin’s hand. After several moments of deliberation and more discussion, he felt that we were clearly on the leading edge of events, and perhaps if he lanced it, allowing it to drain, and began a vigorous course of oral antibiotics that maybe we’d be able to stay ahead of the infection. Sounded fine with me.

After bringing Larry (darling hubby) up to date (he was in Bastrop ninety minutes away at a conference), hubby instructed me to find out what the doctor would want given at the hospital and he could take care of that. Hit the infection with a tri-fecta of drainage, oral and IV antibiotics, ought to be a home-run! So, Thursday evening when Dad got home we administered the first course and by Friday morning there was improvement on the appearance and size of the swollen index knuckle and the back of his hand. Looking good! We administered the second round and kept Colin’s activity to a minimum for the day.

Before Larry even arrived at work Friday morning, there had been some sort of horrible accident on the highway a block from his office and all power had been knocked out for a considerable area. Computers were down, and everything in the Londonderry Centre’ of course was dead as well. Delaying the start of his very busy half-day of work before leaving Waco for yet another conference in New Orleans. I HAD planned on accompanying him (to celebrate our 29th Wedding Anniversary on the 24th) but with Colin’s hand issues I wasn’t about to leave town. An infection like that can always decide to be stubborn and take a turn for the worse and one of us needed to be available should anything else be required). When power was restored everything came back on line and the office was humming along nicely . . .EXCEPT for his phone system. It was DOA.

We actually have been negotiating a new phone system for about the last 30 days and had already made some decisions on how to proceed in a ‘worse-case-scenario’ event, and VOILA!!! Thanks to a crack IT team and a quick run to Wal-Mart by mid-morning phone capability had been restored temporarily and we’d only actually been without official communication for about 90 minutes, during which time the answering service simply routed phone calls to the staff personal cell phones. By the end-of-the-day the old system had been dismantled and removed and the new system had been installed. Isn’t digital technology wonderful…sometimes?!

Larry was pretty emotionally drained at this point but headed out for his meeting, courageously, anyway. His flight out of Waco had a not unexpected, brief delay because of all the rain in and around the central Texas area, but no problem! Then there was delay, Delay DELAY! And finally getting out, having missed his connecting flight in Houston he was put on stand-by on the LAST flight out of Houston to New Orleans scheduled to leave at 9:15pm on a rainy Friday evening, and itself delayed.

Stand-by means just that…you stand-by and watch your LAST CHANCE FLIGHT OUT-OF-TOWN leave…WITHOUT YOU!!! I’m not really clear on what actually transpired between he and the ticket agent, but he was unable to secure a seat on any flights into New Orleans that would get him there before late in the afternoon Saturday AND he was unable to return to Waco on anything prior to a flight leaving at 5:50PM late Saturday. Somehow he managed to drag himself to an unknown hotel near the airport and was last heard of going to bed, uttering “Don’t call me…I’ll call you!”

We are not accustomed to our lives being filled with so many extraordinary mishaps in such a brief span of time. It seems that between November 1st and now there has been a domino effect going on and it is beginning to take wear us thin. A dear friend of mine has cautioned me from asking the quintessential question of ‘What next’…which I most assuredly intend to take to heart. Perhaps that will put a stop to all of the havoc that has encompassed us lately, who can say? I simply know, that in spite of all this, and through all of this, our dear LORD is sovereign. He has been here, in our midst, walking beside us, lifting us up, helping us cope with even the slightest frustration, anxiety, and concern. He cares about what happens to HIS children even as we care for ours. HE is faithful and TRUE and loves us unconditionally. Praise God!

Blessings on your weekend, remember that after the rain comes the rainbow…stay dry!

Katherine

By late Saturday afternoon I figured there wasn’t anything else that could happen right? I mean, the frozen water pipe was just fine, the thermostat had been re-programmed and was behaving, so off I go with hubby for a bit of a night out, Baylor Men’s Basketball against Oklahoma, followed by ‘The Blind Side’ which we hadn’t yet seen.

You know, I was ALMOST home free…until half way through the movie, my phone rings…”Katherine…do you have any flashlights out here, the power’s gone off and we only have a small one and the battery isn’t very good since it’s pretty dim?” Oh, yeah…”and it’s really dark out here!” I was completely mortified at this point and nearly speechless. It simply was staggering that something else was actually going wrong!

I went back to my seat, grabbed hubby, and called the power company quickly only to be told that, yes they were inundated with calls from all over that area of the county and they were addressing these emergencies by calling in additional crews and such, but all that to say they could not predict when my power would be restored if at all tonight (Saturday) GREAT NEWS! I’m like…”Are you serious?” It’s like going to be in the ‘teens’!

My wonderful hubby that he is, suggested we run across the highway and secure a couple of rooms at the LaQuinta for the ladies. I then instructed the gals to head in for the night…they were wanting to run over to McGregor and stay there, but that area was also supposed to have been hit by the power outages and I didn’t want to chance them driving all the way over there to a hotel with no power either…besides it was now 9:15, I had two rooms for them at the LaQuinta which would be much nicer anyway..so they came on into Waco. I got my automated call back from the Electrical Co-Op about 11:45pm that the power had been restored. Thanks!

About 8:30, Sunday morning, I checked with the ladies before heading to church and they planned on returning out to the Cottage and scrapping some more that afternoon before heading home. I was very thankful that they were so understanding about this onslaught of mishaps. This has not at all been my experience in the nine months that My Bluebonnet Cottage has been open for guests, and I offered them a return weekend on the house! Off to church we go….

So, we’re sitting there enjoying pastor’s sermon and, yeah…you guessed it…my phone rang (in silent mode of course)…”Katherine, I just wanted you to know that when we got back to the Cottage, it was 96 degrees in here!” No way!…yeah WAY!! I give… I’m done…what else is there? They AGAIN reprogrammed the thermostat and actually turned on the A/C for a while to cool it off. They did stay I think most of the afternoon and scrapped before heading home.

The ladies said that in spite of the mishaps they did have a good time scrapbooking and are planning to take my offer of a return visit. So, I guess all will end well…eventually!

I do hope your weekend was less eventful than mine, and I am very happy that the week has been much better. Of course the return of more normal temperatures is very helpful. Try as we might, Central Texas is not a good place to be in when the temperatures dip so low, for such an extended period of time. We’re just not equipped for such a prolonged hard freeze. But like everything…this too shall PASS!

Have a GREAT week!
Blessings to you and yours!
Katherine

Friday mid-day my guests arrive and as we are going through the cottage it was discovered that there was no water!? I was sure I had paid the bill so a cut-off was out of the question, (although I did drive out to verify that the meter was indeed OK). But, upon further inspection I discovered there is about a 12 inch piece of pipe behind the cottage that USED to be enclosed in the underpinning and apparently when the new underpinning was installed back in February of ’09 the gentleman who provided that work for me apparently did not see the need to enclose the pipe, therefore allowing it to FREEZE during the 13 degree temperatures we had Thursday night. A quick call to my trusty plumber and five minutes after his arrival he had it cleared and the water began flowing nicely. He secured the exposed pipe for me with that wonderful gray Styrofoam Pipe Insulation and all was well. Even so, he advised to allow a stream to flow inside the cottage during this current extreme cold spell. (So much for GLOBAL WARMING eh?!)

Oh yeah, did I mention the flat tire I had on my vehicle in between? Yeah! truly a BLACK FRIDAY if ever there was one, but it was not over….. Mercedes-Benz has this cute little ‘inflatable spare’ for some of their vehicles…mine, with it’s own SPECIAL lug nuts…! The repairman had never put a spare on a Mercedes before, and could barely figure out how to get the thing out of the trunk of the car. (Is this really happening to me?!) I nearly froze while reading him the directions on how to change and inflate the spare. What a three-ring circus! He had to take my tire to the dealer for repair and I could have it switched out the next morning. What a privilege!

Saturday mid-day I’m at the dealer waiting for my tire make-over and my cell phone message alert beeps in about half a dozen messages….from Friday evening. You see, the stone on the exterior of our home being anywhere from 6-8 inches thick over the 6″ studs sometimes prevents cell phone reception indoors, and when you go outside, whenever that is, your phone gets ‘caught up’. Mine did, finally, and amidst the messages was one from the cottage guests…apparently upon returning from Friday evening Dinner-out-on-the-town they entered the Cottage to a blazing 86 degrees! Thankfully through their resourcefulness (aren’t all scrappers resourceful?!) they Googled the thermostat over the internet and found the owners manual and re-set the thermostat AGAIN.

Ahhhh, but that was not the end of it …..wait till you hear about Saturday night!

The weekend was not a TOTAL LOSS though, BAYLOR Men’s Basketball tromped Oklahoma!! Woo Hoo!, GO BEARS!! Men’s Basketball is going to be GREAT this year!

I’ll let you know about the rest of the weekend next time, till then, SMILE!

Blessings to you!
Katherine

Humming…literally, thanks to WINDSTREAM! After a couple of miscues with the installer, I finally connected with the nice gentleman who was going to do the installation and everything went smoothly. The installation of the internet connection is complete. YEAH!!

Now when you book your stay for My Bluebonnet Cottage you will be able to access the web for all those inspirational sights that scrappers just love to browse.

We’ve had two wonderful groups of gals there this month who were just singing our praises. (The largest even squeezed in NINE ladies and have figured out where to put a tenth gal next time!)

The workroom is fabulously lit for these cloudy overcast days, giving you plenty of light for your color choices and coordination…no need to worry, it’s always sunny inside!

I’m already getting calls for 2010, so if your thinking of getting together with your friends for some scrapping keep me in mind. As soon as you get your preferred dates together, give me a call and I’ll save a spot for you.