Valentines, A Memory Book and a Free Vintage Image

Hi Everybody!

Wow - spring is here! The robins are back, the spring showers have started - I'm so excited! It's going to be a very busy spring, we have Easter, taxes, 2 weddings, 3 birthdays and Mother's Day coming up! I can't wait - except for maybe the tax part.. lol

It's been a while since I've posted so I have quite a bit to share. I totally missed sharing Valentine's with you and I've almost missed Easter.. lol but today I'll try and catch up a bit.

First a funny story... some of you may recall, that my hubby and I are staying at my DMIL's. She has dementia - suspected Alzheimer's. After a terrible infection in her knee which left her wheel chair bound, she has been working very hard for the last year and half to get some standing and moving back. She has gone in for regular shots in her knees which have been very painful but she has been a real trooper in putting up with it. She has been working very hard on strengthening her legs and using them. Well, she has finally gotten to the point where she could stand for a few minutes, and we've been trying to work on taking a step or two... just enough to move from the wheelchair to a seat or her bed. She's making progress on this but it has been a very slow process. For a little more background, mom has what's called a high-low bed. That's a bed that has a motor on it which can be used to raise or lower the actual bed plus it has bars on both sides which prevent her from accidentally rolling out of bed. The bars span the length of the bed except for maybe a two foot area at the head and foot of the bed that is left open.

Well now, here's the funny story part... the other morning I went in to get mom out of bed and low and behold she was sitting in her wheelchair! You could have knocked me over with a feather! The bars were still up on her bed, she had her shoes on and had almost made it to the door when I found her. I was so amazed! I asked how she did it and she didn't know, acted like it was an everyday kind of thing and she let me know that she was ready for breakfast! How on earth she wiggled out of her bed and walked to her wheelchair, I'll never know. I guess all I can say is that the body and the mind are amazing things! This hasn't happened since and I truly hope that it doesn't, it scares me to death that she could have fallen and hit her head or broke a bone but I'm still amazed that she accomplished this great feat and I didn't even get to see it! It was a nice surprise but she's given herself away now, we need to push her a little harder because now we know she can do it. She's blown her cover! lol

Ok, since I missed Valentines with you, I'd like to backtrack just a little and share the Valentine cards I made for the grand kids. This year they got to go to Disney for 10 days and they didn't get back into town until Valentines Day. With their trip in mind, I decided that their cards would have a Disney flair - what would be better than a Princess and Peter Pan.

I had the Princess and Peter Pan images but I wanted a castle and a tree house for the backgrounds, so I went searching on the Internet and found a coloring page with a castle and a how to draw page with the tree house. I had some Disney scrap paper that had Captain Hook and his helper so I was ready to put it all together. I colored the castle and the tree house with my acrylic paints and blinged up the princess with lots and lots of Stickles, added some dimension and here's what I wound up with.








I had a lot of fun creating them and the kids really enjoyed them. Would you like to create your own Princess or Peter Pan cards? You can find the images in my ArtFire store, for Peter Pan, click here , for a pink princess, click here , for a blue princess, click here .

Can you hang out with me for a little longer? I think I've already told you that my youngest son is getting married in May, well I've been working on creating a memory book for him and his bride and I'll share that with you... no not all of it today, but over the next few posts. I've been working on it for the past month and presented it to his new bride at her shower yesterday, so now I can share without ruining the surprise. Here's the very first page in the their memory book.




I love this rose image, it's so life like and it lends itself very well for a dimensional image. I used three different layers for the rose itself and two for the leaves. I added some diamond Stickles to the highlighted areas of the rose and leaves and some gold Stickles to the border - my printer doesn't print the color gold it always turns out green. For additional bling, scroll work with a black flower was added at the corners - the bride has selected black and purple as her colors. I left a pocket behind the rose image and inserted a tag that can either be used for journaling or a photo. The tag has a charm that says "love", but in the picture it's turned around so you can't see it. I wanted the memory book to have lots of places to add photos or journaling, so between each page I added a pocket that has a two-sided insert. Both sides have room for additional photos or journaling. On the insert I attached 3 little black flowers and another charm that says "I Do" and some black ribbon . I really liked the way it turned out.



I appreciate your staying and hopefully reading to the end of this post... lol and I truly think you should receive a reward for your due diligence. So I thought I'd share my dimensional rose with you. I hope you create something awesome with it and if you're so inclined, email me a picture of your completed project or share the link if you post it, so I can see your awesome creation! The image is all set to print on a 8.5 x 11 sheet so that all the images will stay scaled correctly. Don't forget to click on the image before you save it.



Have a great week, plumb full of smiles!

Peggy

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Baby's 1st Year, Halloween and a Free Vintage Image

Hi Everyone!

Well, here it is the last official weekend of the summer. The kiddies are all back in school, the busyness of summer is winding down. It's been so hot and dry here, that I'm kind of looking forward to the fall weather. How about you?

Last post, I told you all about the Baby Shower for our dear sweet Candie. I had a blast playing a role in the creativeness of the shower. I must say that it really put babies on my mind. This week I watched a Barbara Walters show, I think it was called "Extreme Parenting". She told a story about a 59 year old woman who had the baby urge so bad that she did In Vitro and wound up giving birth to twins - after she turned 60! Oh My Gosh! That could be me! I can't image starting all over! I wish her the best of luck, but I'm so glad that it's her and not me. lol I decided I'd satisfy my baby urge in a much easier and different way.

I'm always getting new scrapbooks and I have so many cards that I've scanned that are just waiting for me to straighten them out and clean them up. So I decided I'd browse through them and look for some new baby images to share with everyone. So that's what I did. Whew! that's so much easier then having new twins. lol

Anyway, I complied some cards for Baby's First Year. The collection includes Baby's 1st Birthday, 1st Easter and 1st Christmas. At the moment, the collection is listed in my Art Fire store as single images.

Aren't those just the cutest? If you wish to see more - take a look by clicking HERE .

And coming soon to Art Fire will be some new Halloween images - hopefully they'll be listed sometime this week. But for now here's a sneak peek.

And just one more image for you. This one is a freebie... I thought she was such a cute kitten that I just had to share. lol Now make sure you click on her before you save her.

Have a great week, plumb full of smiles!

Peggy

Free Vintage Tall Ship Image and New Shop Announcement

Wow! Did you think I deserted you? I can't believe it's been that long since I've posted. What have I been up too? Well, it seems like I've been super busy but I can't remember hardly a thing that's taken up my time. Is that having a senior moment or it is just called life? lol

Well, let me see... what has happened....

Trevor's come home! We are so glad he arrived safely from Afghanistan. He's back to doing his normal activities and guess what? He proposed to his girlfriend and she accepted. We're all very excited about it! They're talking maybe a September wedding, but nothing definite yet.

We celebrated 6 birthdays... whew that's a lot in that short amount of time. We're still in the middle of a legal battle - I'm so tired of it, I just wish it would hurry and get over.

Our temperatures around here have been outrageous, like a lot of other poor souls in this great country of ours. I think we've been in or around the 100 degree mark for 2 weeks now. Thank God for air conditioning... lol And we're also in a drought... very little rain to relieve that temperature. But the tomatoes are doing just fine - can't wait for that first home grown tomato to ripen up and we're deep in the sweet corn season. Hubby just brought me about 200 lbs of corn to shuck and freeze... guess I'll be busy for a while.. lol

We had hardly any sour cherries this year and the berries were a little sparse, although we did get enough for Jordan, my granddaughter to make her first cherry and her first raspberry pie. She did a great job and the family really enjoyed them.

I'm very excited to announce that I have created a new store. I have wanted to offer individual images for quite a while now and felt that the fees associated with Etsy or ebay made this cost prohibitive. So I joined a new site - Art Fire. Have you heard of it? I'm a little slow on checking out these kinds of things, so you may have already visited it. lol But anyway, it is another great community very similar to Etsy. So if you have a moment, take a look at my new store by clicking here . I'll be adding more individual images as time permits, so be sure and visit it often.

Today I thought I'd share a tall boat image with you. It's been so hot here that just thinking about ocean breezes makes life a little more bearable. So as usual, make sure you click on the image before you save it.

Well, that's it for now, I promise it won't be so long before my next post.


Have a great week, plumb full of smiles!
Peggy

Free Vintage Valentine Image

Hi Everyone,
Burr! Is it cold! I guess I shouldn't complain because we've had a very easy winter so far. This past week, we celebrated my daughter's birthday and it seems like every year Mother Nature saves the best (NOT!) weather for her birthday. The biggest snow storm of the year always shows up right on or very near her birthday. Well this year, we got our storm again but it was only a light dusting. Yipee! I'm always a last minute present buyer and I didn't have to worry about trudging through the snow this year. What a relief!

Do you have your Valentines all finished? As usual, I'm rushing to finish mine. Are you in the same boat? If so, here's a cutie image that might help you out. Make sure you click on it before you save it.



I used this image to create my son's card. I had to get it mailed off to Afghanistan so it was my first Valentine for the year. I kind of like the way it turned out. I wish had used something other than red card stock as my base and it is kind of girly for a guy but what the hay! Valentine's is supposed to be mushy and gushy right? It has lots of layers and I made cupid and the heart and flowers dimensional. Then I added lots of hearts and sparkles - which of course doesn't really show in the pic.



It really is the same image even though the colors on the completed card look different. Maybe one of these days, I'll learn how to work the camera. lmbo

Well gotta rush, I have to get working on my other cards for Valentine's Day.

Have a great week, plumb full of smiles!
Peggy

Jester Thank You and Free Vintage Image

Hi Everyone
How's your January going? I can't believe we're in the middle of the month already! Time sure does fly. I had such high hopes for January. I was going to accomplish so MUCH! Lol I have been able to get a couple of the things on my list finished but still have way to much left for me to complete them all. I'll continue to plod along.

I thought I'd share an image this week. I've been thinking about starting on my Valentine's cards for the grandkids. So I've been reviewing what I have scanned and I ran across this little jester. I thought he was so cute. I needed to make a couple of thank you cards and the sentiment Jester to Thank You came to mind. How perfect! So here's my card.



I wanted him to be bright and cheery with a little whimsy. Do you think I accomplished that? He's definitely bright! lol There's lots of layers and I popped up the sentiment and the jester. I kind of like the results.

Now it's your turn. What can you create with this happy little fellow? I'd love to see the results! Just make sure you click on him before you save him.





Have a great week, plumb full of smiles!
Peggy

The Pumpkin Patch and Free Vintage Military Thanksgiving Image

Hi Everybody!

The weekend is here! Hip Hip Horrah! Not that weekends make a lot of difference to us, but I know there are a lot of you out there that really enjoy them because you don't have to work and boy do I remember those days! lol

So do you have any big plans for the weekend? There's not much planned here. I think it will be a lazy weekend, next week should prove to be quite full so we kind of want to save our energy.

Last weekend, we decided we'd attend a Pumpkin festival in a little town about an hour away from here. Arthur, Illinois is an Amish community. As we pass by their neat little houses, I stare with envy at their gardens. Each one of them was lush and beautiful even at this time of year. I've always wanted to be a good gardener, but never succeeded at it. I think I get inpatient and bored with it. I've always been in a fast paced world and being patient and watching a plant grow just doesn't work for me. So, I guess I'll continue to stare in disbelief and wonderment at their gardens.

The kids got a huge kick out of seeing the horse and buggies traveling down the highway. It was quite unusual for them and very interesting. I thought about taking a picture of one of the buggies but I've heard the Amish don't like that. I can understand their point of view. They're not an oddity just a people with a different type of life style. It would be kind of like someone taking pictures of me or you because we're wearing say a tie-died tee-shirt. I think I would be irrated after awhile.

The day was gorgeous although the wind did pick up in the afternoon and made it just a little bit chilly. Everyone had a good time, when we left, our little wagon was full of pumpkins and our belly's full of wonderful food.

My DH, DMIL and me - notice our little wagon is empty for now!
We had plenty of picture opportunities throughout the day. This is an ark filled with two of every kind of squash and pumpkin that is grown at the pumpkin patch.
DMIL with her cheesy grin that I so love. lol

Tara(my daughter) and DMIL in the paw paw van.

We had such a good time, that we're going to add this to our list of "Fall Must Do's" next year.

Last week, I added a couple of new Thanksgiving Cut Outs. Have you seen them? I think they turned out super cute! You can find them in the ebay shop here and the Etsy shop here . One of these days in the very near future, I'm going to have to spend an afternoon at home so I can get the web shop all updated with the new items... lol It's been really hard to gather enough free time together in order to spend the time at our house doing this.







Thanksgiving is coming up quick, especially for Military families whose soldiers are overseas. So here's a Thanksgiving card specially for them. Make sure you click on the image before you save it.




Have a great week, plumb full of smiles!
Peggy

Free Vintage Halloween Image and Blogging Sale

Hi Everyone,

Several new followers have joined recently and I always appreciate new followers. :)
So welcome and I hope that you visit often.

Taking care of business first:

Don't forget about the CD sale for my blogging friends, buy the two new volumes, Christmas Vol 14 and Collection of Cuties Vol 2, and get a free CD of your choice. Just include which CD you'd like to receive for free in the Paypal message area or email me by clicking here. You can find the volumes here for ebay or on Etsy here and here . The special sale will end on October 15th at midnight CST.

Whew, now with that finished....

How's your week going? Great, I hope. Our weather is absolutely gorgeous, sunny and in the 70's - absolutely perfect!

I love this time of year, the trees are just starting to change, all the craft, flea market and fall festivals are going on, caramel apples and cider are everywhere yum! It's my favorite time of year.

Halloween is just around the corner. I love seeing all the kids dressed up and trick or treating - what fun! If you've been following my blog for a while you know that I always lament on the small number of Halloween cards that I have - so few (sigh) not even enough to create a cut out for you. My whole collection of Halloween cards is up to 3. I keep thinking that one of these days I'll hit pay dirt! lol Until then, I'll share my little collection with you. Make sure you click on the free image before you save it.



You can find the other two Halloween images by clicking here and here.


Have a great week, plumb full of smiles!
Peggy

Trevor's Home and Free Thanksgiving Vintage Image

Hi Everyone!

I'd like to thank everyone for the sweet comments left on the tribute to Dad. You'll never know how much your comments lifted out spirits and helped us through a very tough time. Thank you so much!

Are you getting into the fall mode? I'm having a really hard time with it because it seems like summer hasn't even shown its head here. I guess that's because we were so busy that we really didn't get to participate in the normal summer activities. Cookouts and swimming and short trips and enjoying the grandkids during their summer break was almost totally absent from our schedule. :(

But a few good things did occur. :) We were able to squeeze in some time with my family. We were successful in getting DMIL out of the nursing home and the grandkids did get to spend the night a couple of times. As we get our schedule squared away and the estate moving along and the guardianship for DMIL finished, things should come back to somewhat normal.

My dear sweet Trevor is home on leave from Afghanistan for three whole weeks. And guess what? I haven't fixed him a good ole mom's home cooked meal yet and I asked him what he would like. Well you know what he said..... a turkey with all the fixin's. He said he won't be home for Thanksgiving and he would really like to have it early. So tomorrow night, we're having Thanksgiving. What a hoot! Have you ever tried to find a huge wompin turkey in September? Well, I think you can kind of forget it! I found 2 - 10 pounder's which are going to have to do. Guess that's pretty good... double the drumsticks.. lol But anyway, Turkey and dressing, baked beans, mashed taters and cranberries and apple salad with pumpkin pie and devil's food cake with homemade butter cream icing are all on the menu. Are you getting hungry yet? lol Anyway, I'll be very busy tomorrow with all the cooking. Thankfully it's cool outside so I won't die from over heating! lol

So in the spirit of our early Thanksgiving dinner, I thought I'd share a Thanksgiving image with you. This image is from the Provencher album. I think I've talked about it before. It's the album that was supposed to have Halloween images in it and all it had was one. But it did make up for that with tons of military images that I do intend to share with you in the near future. But for now, here's one of the cutest Thanksgiving images that I've seen. I hope you enjoy it and as always make sure you click on it before you save it.





Have a great week, plumb full of smiles!
Peggy

Free Vintage Image and Father's Day

Hi Everybody,
Happy Sunday to you! I hope you have had a great week!

Are you still working on your Father's Day Cards. I'd thought I'd share a little more about my Daddy. He loved sports, especially baseball, golfing, bowling and fishing. He was an avid Cardinal's fan and I can remember as a child sitting on the front porch and listening to Harry Carey announcing the Cardinal game on the radio. This was a regular event with our family, sometimes we just couldn't sit still but there was always Red Rover, Red Rover and Simon Says with Harry as background noise.

As a child, I don't remember Daddy doing a lot of fishing. This seemed to be something he took up later in life. But he thoroughly enjoyed it. He would take a yearly fishing trip with his buddies. They'd rent a house boat and spend a few days fishing, drinking beer and playing poker. Sounds like a perfect man holiday! lol Here he is on one of these trips.



In the spirit of Dad and his annual fishing trips, I thought I'd share a couple of fishing cards today. As always, make sure you click on the image before you save it.






Have a great week, plumb full of smiles!
Peggy

Free Vintage Image and Just a little blurb

Hi Everyone,
How's your week been? Great I hope. It's been a little easier around here. DFIL is out of the hospital for now. The poor guy was getting so depressed because they kept promising him in two days, in two days, and the two days didn't ever seen to come. Last Friday, they told him two more days and he said enough and that he was going home, so we packed up his stuff and brought him home. It's a little scary for us, as his primary care givers, it's a lot of responsibility. But we're learning and handling the situation as best we can. He is so much happier and believe it or not he is getting stronger every day. I'm sure your prayers have played a major role in his improvements and I/we appreciate everyone of them. So a big thank you to you and some super tight hugs to go along with the thanks.

I'm slowly getting set up so I can keep the shops running while at the in-laws. They're not really in the technological era... lol but I'm handling everything, maybe just a little slower... lol... but it seems to be working out. Thanks again for all the patience during this time.

It's been sunny and beautiful around here, so today I thought I'd share a pretty set of daisy's with you. Remember to click on the image before you save it!



Have a great week, plumb full of smiles!
Peggy

A Small Challenge, New Cut Outs and a Free Vintage Image

Hi Everyone,
How's everyone doing? DFIL is still in the hospital and things around here are still absolutely crazy. I apologize for not visiting all my blogging friends and for not keeping up with everyone. I really appreciate your patience and hope that you'll bear with me during this time.

Do you believe in fate? You know the kind where you stumble onto something just by chance? I do, it seems like sometimes there's just not an explanation for why something occurred and how you happened upon it but somehow the outcome always seems to be better than expected. For example, a while back as I working with my ebay store, I ran across a posting for a vintage scrapbook. Now, hopefully you all know that I love vintage scrapbooks... lol But anyway, I wasn't really shopping for a scrapbook, ebay just presented me with the listing. The description caught my eye because it said the scrapbook had Halloween cards in it. I'm always watching out for Halloween cards because they are few and far between in the scrapbooks. Anyway, I won the bid and anxiously waited for it to arrive.

I was super delighted when it did arrive because it was huge, just chock full of cards. So I devoured each and every page, just hunting for those Halloween cards. As I turned each page, I quickly noticed that there were tons of vintage military cards, every other page seemed to have one, Birthday, Easter, Christmas, St. Patrick's Day, Thanksgiving, Valentines.... you name it there was a military card for it. As my mouth continued to drool, I'm thinking wow, there has to be some great Halloween cards here and I continued to check out each and every card...

Well to make a long story short, way in the very back of the scrapbook, I found one little Halloween card. It's really hard to say I'm disappointed, because now I have all these great military cards that I can use to create some great stuff for Trevor while he's deployed but I sure didn't expand my Halloween collection by much... lol

So what do you think..... was fate playing a role? I sure think so!

Anyway, now I have tons of military cards that I'll be able to share with you as soon as I have time to get them scanned and cleaned up a bit. I'll probably create some cut outs, it's so much faster to only have to get six or seven images finished and listed than it is to get a few hundred done... lol

Have you seen the three new cut outs that I listed just a while back. I had a buyer who was looking for some "new" images so I was able to squeeze in three new cut outs in the Cutie line. They're available in all the stores.










You can find them by clicking here for web shop or Etsy store or the ebay store

Now, for some other fun stuff.... As I was searching my "new" military scrapbook, I ran across this card. Isn't it just a hoot!!!!! And, no, I didn't Photo Shop it, it's the real thing!!! lol



I haven't had any challenges for a while and I was thinking that this would be a good card to have a little fun with. So, the challenge is to come up with a really great sentiment for this card. You don't have to make a card or anything, just come up with a sentiment and it doesn't have to be Christmas related. Post your sentiment in the comments area by May 12 at midnight CST and make sure I have a way to contact you. The best sentiment will receive their choice of any 5 Cut Out sets or 1 CD. So get your thinking caps on and see what you can come up with.

Trev's birthday is in July so I'm thinking about his Birthday card. I've got to get in the habit of thinking of holidays early for him because God only knows how long it will take mail to get to him. So in the spirit of that, I thought I'd share one of the new military birthday cards. So as usual, make sure you click on it before you save it so you can get it at the full size.






Have a great week, plumb full of smiles!
Peggy