Free Vintage Christmas Image, A Special Birthday Celebration and Wonderful Christmas Cards

Hi All,
I hope everyone is doing just great! Are you all ready for Halloween? The grandkids are giddy with excitement. Our weather is suppose to be a high of 62 and a low of 40, almost perfect for Trick or Treating. I can't wait to see them all dressed up!

I love it when I see completed projects using my Vintage Images and today I'd like to share a couple. The first one is from Linda, a grandmother who was celebrating the first birthday of her twin granddaughters. It was a really special event for her because the babies were born premature and they had quite a struggle. Here's their story in Linda's own words...

"Yes these twins are quite special in that they were born 3 months prematurely and remained in hospital for that time. One weighed 1.7 oz and the other 2.4oz. They are doing well and although it takes about 2 years for them to completely catch up with other babies, they are on their way. They have their actual birthdays, but preemies are also referred by their corrected age ( until 2), as to when they should have been born, so they are now 10 months (7 months corrected). Happily, I am planning this party for their first birthday in October. "

Here's what Linda made....

"We had a wonderful party for our twin preemie granddaughters who turned one and I wanted to show you how we used your fabulous vintage cards. They were a huge hit especially since our party was mainly the older friends and relatives who actually remembered these. I was able to find adorable dresses for the girls that had a similar vintage imprint on them.

The first image was the email invite I used though I changed the info on this, (as well as the girls' hair colour ;-), the second is a banner I made with your images (which btw, printed beautifully on the watercolour paper I use). Next up is a detail of the banner (hard to get in close as it was at an angle) and then a detail of one image I used on a treat box from the candy station we had.

Hope you enjoy seeing these and thank you so much again. These vintage images really helped make the party fun to plan."

I love how she did the mirrored image of the girls on the invite, very creative and very appropriate! Great job Grandma! You've created some great memories and wonderful mementos of their 1st Birthday!

I try to get out there and cruise around bloggy land at least once a week, sometimes I'm successful in getting this accomplished and sometimes I'm not. But I'm always pleasantly pleased when I happen to run across a post using my images. It's almost like getting a box of chocolates (and oh how I love chocolates!). This week I received two boxes of chocolates and I'd like to share them with you. So please take a few moments and visit Julia Moss' blog posts Celtic Girl and Snow Pair . She has created two magnificent Christmas cards using PeggyLovesVintage images. The first image, Celtic Girl, is located on the Christmas Volume 11 CD . The second image, Snow Pair is located on the the Snowmen Volume 1 CD and in the Snowmen 2 Cut Out .

Have you started your Christmas projects yet? I haven't but I'm trying to get in the mode. I'm hoping to start on one of mine tonight. I guess, I'm procrastinating a little bit because it's an activity that is new to me and I guess I'm a little leery about starting it. But tonight's the night! I'm going to do it! lol

If you haven't started yet, maybe this image will help to spur you along. I just love her Candy Cane striped skirt. Make sure you double click on her before you do the save.



Have a safe and fun Halloween and a week full of smiles!

Peggy

Contest Winner, Covered Bridge Festival and Free Vintage Santa Image

Hi Everyone!
I hope your week has been going great! First off I'd like to publish the winner of the contest. I had such fun reading all the entries and want to thank each and every one who shared their spider stories and wished me a Happy Birthday. I've had a week full of goose bumps and although it was really hard to decide I finally settled upon Curt from Carmel who wrote:


"Hey There! I hope you have a very happy birthday! Here's my spider story. . .
my father loved to squirrel hunt and he would take us out with him when
I was a teenager to "teach" us how to hunt. Well, he would insist that
we get into the woods before daybreak. As we would be walking in the
gloom of the woods, you would walk right into these giant spider webs
(the kind where the spider lays in the center)and you would have to
wait to feel the spider crawling on you to figure out where it was.
Some of them were huge, and they would end up on your face, neck or
in your hair. I still get creeped out thinking about those spiders on me!
LOL Best, Curt"

I have a major aversion to walking into spider webs and each time I read his story I shook and shivered more! So Curt, please select the CD of your choice from HERE and EMAIL me your snail mail info and I'll get it off to you.

Now if you've been following me for a while you know that I often like to offer booby prizes to participants and this little contest is no different. So..

sucor
Rhonda Emery
Sharon aka Sharrabhug

Please select two cut outs of your choice from HERE and EMAIL me with your selection.

I'd like to give special mention to Sharon Caudle, DeeDee and The Memory Keeper. Sherri, oh my gosh the moving cacti gave me the creeps. I can't imagine having that Sci Fi horror in my house. DeeDee, even though your story didn't give me goose bumps you had me laughing for a good 5 minutes thinking about your hubby and his tidy whities. Thanks for sharing! Memory Keeper, every time I get in my freezer I see those creepy crawlies hanging around...thanks for sharing your nightmare.. lol

Now on to other things, this last weekend we attended the Parke County Indiana, Covered Bridge Festival. This is annual event for my family and we all, well most of us anyway, really enjoy spending the day out in the crisp autumn air and searching for bargains and hard to find items. It's about a 3 hour drive for us so we start out early.

We always stop at the Ernie Pyle Memorial Park which is just on the other side of the Indiana border near a town called Dana. Ernie was a WW II correspondent who was published in 300 different papers. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944 and died while in combat. His stories were about the out-of-the-way places he visited and the people who lived there.

We encounter our first covered bridge at this little park. The kids always enjoy romping through the leaves and expending some of their energy and being little investigators. This is Kaiden's first year where he really remembers and understands what's going on. He was totally enthralled with the bridge.



Usually, there's a little stream that runs under the bridge, but this year it was dry. So part of the fun was being able to actually climb down and check out the bottom of the bridge.



This was his third trip through..or maybe it was his fourth. He had the most fun running through the bridge, then down to the stream and up the other side.



But we had to get on the road, we had about another hour of drive time before we reached our destination. There's 30 different covered bridges throughout the county. And during the festival, there are tons of flea markets, craft sales, garage sales and vendors scattered throughout the area.

We usually head to Mansfield which is one of the biggest sites. The last time we checked, they claimed over 5,000 different vendors. It was a glorious day and it was the next to last day of the festival so it was packed with tons of people. This is a pic of the row we had just completed. It's kind of hard to see but there are plenty of heads bobbing up and down the row.



There's so much to look at and choose from that it's really hard to decide what to buy. I thought these little Snowmen were just the cutest. Maybe I'll try to make something like these, if I can find the parts.



This vendor has been here for several years and I keep thinking that one of these days I'll make one of these. I think they're just the cutest and would be perfect for the grandkid's bedrooms. Just in case you can't tell, they're little individual chalk boards that have been decorated around the edges.



At the end of the day we were exhausted and our carts were full of purchases as you can see here. But we had a great time and spent lots of money. Some of my best buys included some potpourri from the vendor in the picture below. It smelled so good and had some cute teeny tiny pumpkins mixed in. I thought it would be great for Thanksgiving. One of my other great buys was a set of 1000 count sheets for 15.00.



I know this is a really long post but I thought I'd share another image with you. This is from the Saint Clair collection. I love the Santa in this image and thought he would be great in a collage. So as usual, make sure you double click on it so you can save him at the max size.



Have a great week, plumb full of smiles!
Peggy

Spider Contest and Kittens Oh My! Free Vintage Image

Hi Everyone,

Wow, I can't believe another week has gone by already? Time just seems to whiz by and I try and look back on what I've accomplished and I kind of go huh where did it go? lol I'm sure I accomplished something; didn't I? Well in all truth, I have been procrastinating a bit and finding that I have to force myself to get busy and work on card clean up. I've been trying to finish up a new Wedding CD which I am kind of excited about. It has lots and lots of brides but the cards have a lot of flocking on them and it seems like it is taking forever to get them cleaned up. But anyway....
I'll keep plodding along and eventually it will get finished!

The nights are really getting pretty chilly. How about where you live? We live in a kind of country setting. Not to long ago, our area used to be pretty empty, full of fields and woods. But it has slowly built up and the fields are gone and the woods are off limits. It still kind of has the country setting, all the houses having at least 2 acre plots with most of them having more. So, we still see quite a few little creatures that roam the area.

I always approach this time of year with a little bit of caution, why you ask? Well, the creatures in my area are trying to get ready for winter and are looking for some nice abode to take up residence and hopefully make their winter survivable. I guess you could say they're looking for their Florida. lol Once in while, they somehow decide that my house is Florida. So sometimes, I'm lucky enough to find a bird that has worked its way down the fireplace chimney or we glimpse a mouse as it steals some of the dog's food and scampers off to its cozy little nest. I haven't been lucky enough to find a snake yet and hopefully I never will. But, the thing that causes me the most distress are the wolf spiders!

Are you familiar with these scary little creatures? And I really shouldn't be calling them little creatures because they can get quite big. And talk about fast! Those little buggers can move at the speed of lightening! They just give me the willies! Anyway, at this time of year, I'm always watching out for them. We usually wind up with at least two that are monster sized plus others that are not quite grown but still scary.

How big can they get you ask? Well I'm not an expert on them, but I can tell you this little story. Several years back we were at the in-laws and it was just a little after dark. I happened to look at their front porch stoop and noticed what I thought was a mouse standing in front of their door. So being the good d-i-l, I went over to scare it away before it found its way into the house. OMGosh, it was the biggest wolf spider I had ever seen! Needless to say... I didn't scare it away, quite the opposite in fact, he/she had me running the other way yelling for my DH as I ran. I haven't found anything near that big in my house but there have been some that are pretty big. And to this day, I still run and holler for DH. lol

Here's a couple of spider facts that I've heard that really gives me the willies. Number 1 you're never more than six feet away from a spider and Number 2 on average every human eats at least one spider a year. YUCK!

So, why spend so much time on such a scary write up on something you dislike so much, you ask? Well I thought we might have a little fun, considering it's Halloween and all. I want to hear your scariest, ugliest spider story. Tell me in a comment and the story that gives me the most goose bumps will win a CD of your choice. Anyone can enter and if you don't have a blogger id be sure and include your email id so that I can contact you if you win. Have your entry in by Tuesday October 19 at midnight CST.

Now what's the opposite of a huge scary spider? How about a sweet little kitty. Today's kitty is from the Saint Clair 1946-57 collection and she originally started out as a get well card. I've removed the sentiment so you can use her for whatever kind of project you'd like. As always, make sure you double click on her before you save her so that you get her at full size.



Have a great week, plumb full of smiles and free from spiders!
Peggy

Weenie Roast 2010

Hi Everybody!
Wow, what a busy week! My daughter (Tara) and her husband (Chris) had their annual Weenie Roast last Saturday and boy was it a blast! The day started out as windy and rainy but by the afternoon the sun peaked out and it turned into a beautiful day! God provided us with a beautiful sunset to start our party. After the sun went down, the weather turned crisp and quite chilly. It couldn't have been any better - perfect for a bonfire and roasting weenies!



This year we expected about 180 to 200 people to attend so we had a lot of prep work in order to make it a success. The primary menu included weenies, chili, brownies carmel apples and smores. As usual, it was my job to make the chili, carmel apples and brownies. Tara was responsible for the hot dogs and smores.. lol

The chili is always a big hit. This year we expanded to three roasters of chili and 240 hot dogs. We started cooking the chili on Friday night and by Saturday night it was absolutely perfect. Jordan and Kaiden helped make the brownies and of course they couldn't resist sampling the batter to make sure it passed inspection. I know it's probably not a good thing to do, but we just couldn't resist!



A huge thank you goes out to Phil, Terra and Whitey for helping to supply the wood for the bonfire. Phil made a special trip on Friday to bring out one load and Whitey brought a second load on Saturday. That was a huge help and greatly appreciated!


Phil and Terra, sorry Whitey but somehow I didn't get a pic of you. The fire sure was enjoyed by everyone! It seemed to grow bigger and bigger as the night went on and the temperature dropped. The wood was greatly appreciated by all!




This year the band was a group called Royal Pain. They were awesome and everyone seemed to enjoy them. There was a lot of singing along and dancing going on throughout the evening! I tired to do a couple of videos of the band but alas, I sure won't get any Oscars for my film footage so I think I'll save you from the torture.





The kids all seemed to be having a great time. They really enjoyed the toys, the trampoline, the sand box, and the swing sets. And of course, the glow sticks were a huge success as well.






So I think everyone had a good time, or at least they look liked they were having fun.








By the end of evening, everyone and I mean everyone was exhausted but very content.



So that's it on Weenie Roast 2010. We went through all three roasters of chili - except for about one bowl full. All the hot dogs were gone except for about 10. The brownies and carmel apples were finished off early and two kegs of beer were drained down to their very last drop. A successful party if I do say so myself.


Have a great week, plumb full of smiles!
Peggy