Brave Girl's Club

I've been following Melody Ross's blog for a long time.
Melody was the founder and creator of Chatterbox line of papers and embellishments that were the rage when I first started my papercrafting.
She continues to amaze me with her new venture, "Brave Girl's Club". After some devastating life changes she had to go through, she emerges from the scrap heap victorious and full of wisdom, insight and soul baring pain that we can all relate to.

http://bravegirlsclub.com/archives/2715

If you can't, you need to...

It's a cat's life!

Mama cat seems to be enjoying her new bed on my sewing desk. She kept laying on my fabric and clothes

and it was driving me nuts because of the cat hair, so I got her a bed, which took her a couple weeks to even try to use! Cats.............

And then there is George. He has claimed my fabric scrap basket as his own. First my printer, now my scrap basket. I replaced my fabric scraps with a washable towel.

Then there is Linky dink. He loves our couch.
Wow, that's a "leave me alone" look if I've ever seen one! Excuse me!

And the lump under my blankets???

Why yes, that is one of my spoiled rotten lovable dogs, Miss Peanut. Whatever happened to my "I'll never have a dog in my bed", much less "I don't want dogs in the house!". I guess that has fallen by the wayside along with my spotless house, girlish figure and natural hair color. Good grief!

                                

Unlike them, I will be a busy little bee today, creating cards and prepping paper for my classes tomorrow. These are the stamps and paper that made the cut. I still need to decide on which stamp I won't be using. It will depend on the cards that I like the best!

Will post finished cards later, not sure how much later, but later.......

To all of my 3 followers out there, have a wonderful and blessed Sunday, and a safe President's Day.
I will be busy teaching my classes!      

Valentines prep for Florists!

O my goodness! Next time you get a flower arrangement, know that a lot of time went into that masterpiece.
I've been working at Fiori Floral for the last couple days to help prep flowers for the upcoming Valentine's Day and we still have a lot to do! Boxes upon boxes of flowers to process.

This is one of the MANY boxes of roses that I helped to prep. The flowers are wrapped in corrugated cardboard to protect them in transit. On top of that, is a layer of protective plastic and they are bundled together in groups with rubber bands.

You start by taking one of the bundles out of the box, removing the rubber bands from the stems, the protective plastic and then start stripping the leaves from the stems up to the corrugated cardboard which stays on the protect the flowers while processing.

Stripping the leaves off is easy if the roses don't have thorns, but these did! I started off doing it by with bare hands the first day because using the glove was so awkward, but figured out how to use the glove the second day! Trust me!
(It takes some people longer, ok?..........)

Not a great picture, but this shows what the flowers look like packed up in the protective cardboard. After each flower is given a clean cut (underwater to prevent air bubbles that will damage the flower), they are dipped in a product to help keep them fresh and put in floral buckets and off to the cooler they go until the floral designer uses them in their beautiful arrangements!
I believe I am proccessing Hydrangeas today..... gorgeous!

 

These are some of the Fiori creations ready to be delivered to some very lucky individuals!

Cat Lover

 I am so fortunate to have grandkids that are animal lovers like me!

 This is a good thing since we have such an array of furry friends that live here!

Daemyan with Buddy and Peanut. Buddy hates having his picture taken, so he's hiding his face!

Spoiled brat Peanut, but she's so darn cute!

Prince and Harry Potter are 2 of our 5 barn cats. They do their job very well

Dayla and Harmon

                                                      

Mel

                                                                        

Link

I'll need to find pictures of the rest of the crew!

                                                                           

Quilt for Dayla!

Since Dayla's birthday is in July, I thought I'd start her quilt now, so that it would be quilted and the binding would be done by the time her birthday rolls around. Our shop(grannyshouseonline.com) has an Accucut  machine so I thought I'd do something simple and use the machine to do squares.

Not as easy as I thought!

Quilters use a felt wall to put their cut fabric pieces on so that they can create their pattern. This picture shows my cut squares in the pattern that I had originally thought I'd use...that is until I thought about having to line up the corners of the squares. Unless my quarter inch seam is spot on, it will affect the whole pattern.

So I decided to stagger the squares to make it a little more forgiving.

Still not foolproof............I don't have all the rows sewn together yet because some ended up kind of  "off" so I need to rip out my seams and try again.
I guess instead of wanting to be a wannabee quilter I should stick to cards and scrap booking. :)
Actually, Dayla will love this with all it's imperfections. What I've been told is that the Amish always include a piece to their quilt that is not perfect to remind them of who the only Perfect One is. 

I love the Amish!

Card Inspiration

Valentine is in the air and I have been busy dreaming up card displays for the store.

I took this picture of  Dayla's t-shirt last year thinking it would make great card inspiration!
Unfortunately, I never did anything, but I have the perfect stamp now, and ideas are floating around in my head!

The card below was inspired by a t-shirt I bought Dayla for her first birthday.

I wish I would have taken a picture of the shirt, as this was several years back.

I believe my niece was the recipient of this card for her last birthday.

Well, off to play with paper!