Little Sable Point

Sharing another lighthouse today that we went to the following day in Michigan. Greg and I both loved that they didn't paint this one that it is the original brick, I was listening to the lady giving a little info before people would go up into the tower, (no I did not climb to the top of this one) and she mentioned why it wasn't painted but I forget now :(  I do remember her mentioning that the dunes came to be after the Chicago fire. They needed a lot of timber to rebuild and they cut down many trees in that area for it, once the trees were taken away the dunes formed since there was nothing to keep the sand from moving around.

I tried in the picture to give an idea of how tall this is, just beautiful detail on it too.

Do you see the birds perching up above the window.

Thanks so much for stopping by, I will have a card to share next time :)

Connie

Well traveled

This card was sent out on a Tuesday and postmarked that day also, then it came back to me on Thursday, with no reason as why it was returned.  I was heading over to the next city over to do some shopping the next day so I took it over to their post office and she looked it over and said she couldn't see why it shouldn't have gone out so she said she would send it again for me, and it did that time make it to my niece in law so all worked out well.

Using more of my coloring calendar images, colored with markers.  The strip of paper was in with the package already and I just felt it needed a little something extra so I laid a piece of double stick tape against that piece and sprinkled on some of my gold glass glitter. Added some shimmer with my wink of stella pen but was hard to pick up on camera.

Coloring for calm calendar 2017- colored w/markers
Lilybee designs - Head over heels paper
Recollections - glass glitter, vintage gold
Paper smooches - Happy birthday sentiment stamp
wink of stella - clear glitter on wings

Thanks for taking the time to stop by today,

Connie

Snowman and Ludington at Sunset

I have one more card for the challenge that Lori is having, you can find it HERE.

I used a background that I had made previously in my stash that I thought could make for an interesting winter background, but it had been done on glossy paper and I found trying to color on such paper isn't all that easy, or I used the wrong markers. I embossed the snowman and trees with Iridescent Ice embossing powder.

I have liked the cards I have seen using colors other than traditional so I went with purple theme on this one, added a little bit of faux snow.  I tried stamping the trees to make them look like there were some in front and some in back but once I colored them I think it all just blended together.

Hunkdory cardmaking collection, snowman and tree stamps, colored with markers
ART-C - cardstock
Spellbinders - Romantic Rectangles and A2 matting basics B dies
Stampin up- enamel dots
Flower soft - Polar white for Faux snow

I didn't manage to get as many cards done that I wanted to this month but everyone is one less I have to try to do closer to Christmas :)

I am finally finishing up the day we had, this is continuing from Wednesdays post below.  Since the evening before the fog and then rain rolled in so we couldn't see a sunset over the water, as tired as we were, we decided to head back down to the pier and see if we could get some good pics. 

Well as we were arriving the boat was headed back toward Wisconsin, so we jumped out of the van and snapped away.  You can see in this first picture how they have a nice place to sit and watch the boat coming and going, they all were donated by people and each one has a saying on it, and who they dedicated it too, I wish I would have taken pictures of some of them, but I didn't.

I think it is even prettier seeing the glow of the sun setting on the side of the ship.

I wish the sun had set right behind the lighthouse but it was more to the right of the house so I couldn't get a good picture of both.

I kept walking down until I could line the sunset up with these rocks coming out, the people you see out farther are walking to the lighthouse.

I don't know if you can get it from the pictures but this sunset was bright and I had a hard time lining up the horizon because looking through the view finder was blinding, but it was another gorgeous end to the day.  I had to take a moment before we left to get just one more picture of the lighthouse.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by today and letting me share my pictures of our trip along with a card :)

Hope you enjoy a fun and creative weekend.

Connie

Visions of Sugarplum challenge

Lori has a challenge running right now to make Christmas or winter cards, you can find out all the details HERE on her blog.  When you stop by her blog check out her post after that one too, she did some really cute projects on that one too.  She is always sharing great projects.

Today I used a Hunkydory kit I bought at the bookstore last year and never did get around to using.
First up I gave a try at making another shaker card, oh my goodness they just don't seem to get any easier for me I always seem to have trouble putting these together, not sure why.  I used a stamp of a village and snowflakes from the kit, colored with markers, and added some snow and glitter pieces for my shaker bits. The snow globe was a die from the set also.

Hunkydory - cardmaking collection, stamps and dies
Spellbinders - circles to make frame on globe
Epoxy sentiment sticker

Next I used more stamps from the set, this set has parts of snowmen, right down to different facial expressions you can put on them and different size arms, so you can make little snowmen too.  I stamped these all out, colored them with markers and then cut them all out individually to put together these snowmen.

Hunkdory cardmaking collection- stamps colored w/markers
My Mind's eye - O' Christmas tree papers
Spellbinders - Labels eight
ART -C - Cardstock
Hot off the press - 4 Lacey Rectangle frames dies
Enamel accents - black for eyes and coal buttons

I am working on another I hope to share next time before the challenge is up :)

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by,

Connie

Manistee

This is what we did after we had lunch, continuing from my post on July 19.  I felt much better after we had lunch and I was able to sit for awhile. We decided to drive up to Manistee and see that lighthouse up there. It was a slow walk out so I took many pics along the way.

The pier does do a bit of a curve there.

This next picture is from the other side looking back towards shore.

After we left here we heading into town and found an ice cream shop and had some ice cream before heading back to Ludington and the state park to explore what we hadn't seen earlier in the day.

They have a dam in the park and we walked along the boardwalk going over the dam so we could get to the other side and get some pictures of it below, they have a nice walk along the river there.

As we were walking back up the steps to go back to the car I saw all the texture and moss in the wall and thought oh that might be a cool background for something.  If you would like to use it in one of your creations you can, I would just appreciate it if you would give me credit and link it to my blog if you share on line.  I was going to make a card with it before posting this to show you how I used it but haven't gotten around to that yet.

The next picture gives you an idea of the walkway along the river.

As my hubby was driving out of the park I yelled STOP!! and since my window was already down I was able to capture this deer having her evening meal. She was just that close too, no zoom needed for this picture.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by today,

Connie

Color Challenge

My favorite things has a color challenge and I just loved the color combo they had, thought it would be pretty for some flowers,  I don't have any of their flower stamps so I went for some from a cardmaking magazine again.

You can find out all about the challenge HERE.  You have until the 24th to play along.
The colors to use are -- Pineapple, Orange Zest, Poppy and Blu Raspberry.

I know this is unusual for me not to use paper but I decided to use a stencil on the background instead.

Quick Cards made easy -- Thank you gift set stamps, colored w/markers
Penny Black - Sprinkle and Smiles sentiment stamp
Spellbinders - Squares and Captivating Squares dies
Hero Arts - Floral Tile stencil
Distress ink - worn lipstick

Hope all those effected by all this extreme heat is taking it easy and staying safe.
Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by,

Connie

Big Sable Point Lighthouse

The next morning we started off for the state park where the next lighthouse my hubby has been wanting to go to is located. The only way out to the lighthouse is either walking or riding a bike, we saw both, we walked it. It is 1.8 miles one way, now I usually do a mile and half when I go for my walks so this was going to be a challenge for me, doubling the amount I am use to,  thankfully we had a cool morning to walk.  I didn't take much pictures along the way I wanted to get there, but I did stop and take a few once the lighthouse was in site.

You can see in the first pic that there is a bit of water on the path there, I should have taken a picture but there were many places that we had to walk along the edges because it was flooded over.

The dunes were quite high, we only saw two kids on them, everyone else stuck to the path.

The excitement is building, not only because we are seeing more of the lighthouse but I had to go to the bathroom and was getting quite tired, hoping they had some benches when we got there.

This one had a very big house attached to it.
The sign to tell about it.

I was trying to capture just how tall this light was.

There was a bench right at this break wall so I sat and took some pictures of the waves coming over.

Time to head back taking the last pic of the house.

There were a few of these ponds off to the side of the path, there was also a bench not to far down either that I took another break at.  I was pretty wiped out after this walk, by the time you count the walk from the parking lot it was a total of 4 miles.  By the end of the day when I was going to be that night my fitbit read 18,995 steps, and my body could feel everyone of them.

Thanks so much for stopping by.

Connie

Birds and Cats

First to share the birds, these printed die cuts from Tim Holtz have a bit of a glare to them so it was hard getting a great picture but I love how they look in person, this is one of the bigger pieces there is also the same image in a smaller size but I decided to fill the whole frame with this one. The flowers off to the side on the frame is also from the same pack, I love them for accenting!

Tim Holtz - Layers, Botanical Pieces
Hero Arts - Wood frame die
Stamps of Life - Minis4circles sentiment stamp

Now on to the cats, as some of you know we had a dog and two cats and they all passed away a few years ago, at first I had a very hard time with it, then as time went on I started thinking that I would like another furbaby, but as often as we like to go out we decided that getting another dog would be hard since they need to be taken out and such, so we decided if we were to get another pet it would have to be a cat, then we decided we would like a kitten again, and watch it grow, we wanted to adopt from a shelter and there just wasn't any kittens until this past Saturday, we were headed into Office depot to get my hubby another mouse for his computer, his old one wasn't working anymore. We saw a sign outside of Petco that the Bond County human society was adopting animals there, so we went in to see what they had and oh my this little guy just stole our hearts, so loving and calm.  Well I think the calm part was so that we would adopt him, because oh my is he a handful at times, but oh so loving and so likes to cuddle up to take his naps, which I love :) He was worth the wait as we have been looking since last December, hubby wanted to surprise me with one for Christmas, but no luck.

I would like to introduce you to our new furbaby Opie. He is thought to be around 11 weeks old.

 We bought him a few toys and look at what he likes to play with, the string to the blinds.

Thanks for stopping by today,

Connie