Roses in Winter

 Who doesn't love roses for the birthday in the winter :) My girlfriend did :)

I used some decoupage sheets I bought, they call them 3D layers, the flowers look so real, so pretty, I couldn't pass them up. They have 3 layers to each flower.

• Hearty Crafts - Pastel Flowers Easy 3D toppers
• BasicGrey - Porcelain Papers
• Spellbinders - Lacey Ovals die
• Gina Marie Stamps - Birthday words sentiment stamp
• Memory Box - Stitched Rectangle Layers die
• Stampin up - Large Jewels

Hope you all our East are not too badly stormed in, my daughter always walks her dog every day and she said there was no way she was going out in that stuff so it must have been  pretty bad.

Thanks so much for stopping by today,

Connie

Winter drive

 Hi all, I finally went through all the pictures, it was hard to pick which ones to share but here they are.  We drove along the Mississippi, looking for Eagles, yes we saw a couple but they were too far away to get pictures.  Then the Mississippi and the Illinois rivers split and we drive the rest of the way along the Illinois river.  

Before heading up to the snow covered trees we went down to the docks at Pere Marquette and checked out the birds that hang out down there.  I have not looked up what kind of birds these are, we have to stay far away because they are all very nervous and fly away by any sudden noises or movement.

This first one was sitting on the dock, I was able to get a few pictures of him before he was scared by some people walking up and talking loud, then the poor thing tried to land and it is ice and he did a little dive.

This next one was even farther away, and he didn't stay around long either.

After they were gone we went up to the park, to take the drive up the mountain and they had a closed sign, we think it is because there are some very steep hills and it is windy with no guards, if you slip you are going down the mountain.  So we went out and started driving back when hubby remembered a back way to get into the park so we took the back roads and finally found the back entrance and that was not closed so we headed in and were not disappointed we found our snow covered trees :)

I just love the sun shining through the trees.

We were coming around a bend in the road and this is the first thing we saw, this snowman so happy to see us :)

The sun was starting to set so we thought we better make our way back down the hill, hubby stopped in the middle of the road so I took this picture out the front windshield.

We made it down to Grafton Illinois by the time the sun was glowing on the river so we stopped and got these pictures of the sunset.

I like how this last one shows the bit of ice that was along the shore, breaking up but still glistening in the sunset.

I hope you enjoyed our little drive we took, it was great to get out and drive along the river again!

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

Connie

Deer Christmas

 I bought three kits at the end of last year that were on sale at the Stamp store over in Missouri, I think they were all past year kits but they were new to me and who am I to pass up a sale :)

I only had to add a couple things to all the cards to make them complete. The papers with them came in the kit, it also has stickers so I added the deer to it and on this first one all I added to the card topper from my stash was gems to the tree.

• Echo Park paper co. - Christmas collection kit
• Pizzazz Aplenty - 3mm gems

To this one I added the pine branches and the flower to mimic those in the picture, I tried my best not to cover the sentiment they had on there.

• Echo Park paper co. - Christmas collection kit
• Impression Obsession - Pine Branch dies
• Tim Holtz - Large Funky Festive

The snowman was already on this piece, all I had to add was the sentiment from the sticker pack that came with it, a strip of leftover paper, ribbon and snowflake diecuts.

• Echo Park - Reflections Christmas, by Lori Whitlock
• Crafter's Companion - Frosty Christmas dies ( snowflakes )
• Ribbon

On this card the corners and the Santa were stickers from the pack, all I added were gems to this card topper.

• Echo Park - Reflections Christmas, by Lori Whitlock
• Darice - Red Gems

Well I was going to share my winter pictures with the Christmas cards when I finished them but I ended up having a lot that I wanted to share so I will share them tomorrow.  It is lightly snowing right now, so pretty!

Thanks so much for stopping by,

Connie

Teen Boy

 Yes I was in need of a teen boy birthday card for my great nephew.  When I saw Memory Box Alphabet Challenge I thought that would be somewhere to start.  I have a couple of their alphabet die set but I settled on this one, thought it seemed good for a birthday card.  

I tried fitting Celebrate on here but it just didn't look right no matter how I did it so I went with Happy Day instead.  The set has backing circle dies with it so I added some lighter circles behind the letters so that the sentiment would pop better against the dark background colors.

• Memory Box - Contour Typewriter Keys dies
• Recollections - Awesome Boy papers
• Nuvo - Pale gold crystal drops

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

Connie

Birthday Bear

 I have a card to share with you using one of the cute die cuts I won off of Darlene and Diane's Double D Challenge blog, now I think they are up to seven challenge Blogs out there, Diane sent me this adorable Bear with sign and I love him.  This one went to my great nephew but I see using him for adult cards too.

I used my sponge daubers to apply the ink to my kraft card stock that I cut him out with.

Pattern paper for the sky and grass.

• Cottage Cutz - Bear & Sign die, sponged ink with dauber
• Frantic Stamper - Oregon Fir die, colored with inks
• PoppyStamps - Stitched Landscape die

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

Connie