A trip to Verona and Friday Fences

Contributing to the Friday Fences blog hop today and taking you to Verona!  This picture was from the trip I took with the school a number of years back already!  Wow, where does the time fly.  Sure would like to go back to Italy and see more of that country.  Between our family we have been blessed to make a few trips to Europe......Darrell's been twice, Kaleb has been once, Ben has been twice and I have been once.....Darrell and I have not travelled together though!!  So I think that should be on the to do list!!

Enjoy your week end everyone and to all my US blogger friends have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Linking to :

Friday Fences

Tic Tac Snow Tablescape

I found some blue dishes at the Dollar Store  (1.50 per bowl, plate, dessert plate and coffee mug)   and have had fun setting a couple of tables with them.  I wanted something for a winter table setting that would go nicely with my silver chargers.  Here's what I came up with!

These little white plates were a door prize that I won at a country Christmas evening quite a number of years ago.  When I use these pretty little plates, I always think of my friends who did the door prizes that evening, they now live in Germany.

The pretty lamp was a gift for my birthday!  

The snowflakes are from the Dollar Store and the Tic Tac Snow board was made by one of my favorite artisans when we operated That Country Place Gift shop.

Hope you are all enjoying some cups of hot chocolate with the cooler weather and getting your homes already for Christmas!  The next month will fly by and before we know it the calendar will be saying 2014!

Linking to :

Amaze me Monday

Tablescape Thursday

Let's Dish

Love of Family and Home

From the Farm

Quiet Sunday and a winner!

We have a winner for the packet of handmade cards.....Diane of  Lavender Dreamer is lucky #8.  I will be sending off some snail mail to her this week!  

Leaving you with a picture of a church in Oyen, AB  It is closed now, but I remember being in the little town for a hockey game.  The bright blue sky on a crisp winter day is my memory of this photo.

We are having "soup Sunday" at our house today.  Neices, nephews, our kids and Darrell's brother and his wife will total 16.  So thankful that we have family close by to share a meal after church today.

Have a great day!

Friday Fences - Buckets in a row

Just a quick post for Friday Fences today.  This is from my friends flower bed area.  Lots of wild flowers and wonderful aged boards make up this rustic fence.  Perfect for hanging some ole buckets on!

Have a great week end, and be sure to stop by Friday Fences !

Friday Fences

Farmgirl Friday

Organizing your clear rubber stamps for scrapbooking....and a giveaway!

Hi everyone!  Woke up to some snow on the ground here in Southern Alberta today....brrr.
I have been busy getting the last of my scrapbooking space organized.  We moved over a year ago and the room got refreshed fairly quick, and things just got put in the cupboards and the drawers.  ( you can see the before and after of this wee space here.)   Now that I have had some time to work on some scrapbook pages I have enjoyed "re organizing" the little space so that I can actually find things!!

I thought I would share a solution I came up with for storing my clear stamps better.  I like the magnetic clip on the metal bulletin board idea, and will keep just my clear letter stamps on the board now. I found that if the stamps were used a lot, they would not stick to the clear sheet that they come on.  The sides were open on the plastic card, and things would tend  to fall out the side as well.

Will stay with this system for my letters and see how that goes.

I have been on line a fair bit looking for storage solutions and I think I came up with something that will work for me.  I purchased DVD cases ($1.25 at the Dollar Store) and cut a piece of cardstock to adhere the stamp collection page onto.

I liked that the DVD case has the plastic cover where you can slip the piece of cardstock into.  Easy to see what you have in your collection.

Then I just used the left side of the open DVD case to put the stamps onto.  They may still move around a bit, but atleast you have everything contained in one place and won't lose some of the little pieces.

The next thing I have been doing some research on is the Spellbinders "Nestabilities" that you can use in different embossing/cutting machines.  Make use of the sales that Michaels have and that will help bring the cost down a little bit on them.  You could really get carried away that is for sure, so sales will help keep the cost down!  I have the Cuddlebug and want to start using it more.  I think these basic shapes will be the perfect solution to making all those perfect cuts for matting and layering cards and scrapbook pages.

The "dies" for the Nestabilities are metal, so to hold them in place I purchased magnetic photo sleeves and adhered that to the DVD case.  The Nestabilitie pieces then just stick to the magnetic and stay in place and organized too.  Be sure to shop at the Dollar Store for storage solutions, the magnetic sleeves ( 2/pkg) were $1.25 as well.

Then I just put all the DVD cases in a storage container that I already had and they are all in one spot and easy to flip through.  How about you,,,,do you have some good storage solutions for your craft of choice!

Now, if you have stayed with me to the end of the post,,,,I will tell you about the GIVEAWAY that I want to do.  I have a favorite number and the person who ends up posting a comment on that number will receive a set of homemade cards from me!  What a perfect way to try out my new Nestabilities!!  So, hope you will join in the fun and I will reveal the winner on Sunday, November 18th.

Have a great day everyone! 

Amaze Me Monday

Home Sweet Home

Tweak it Tuesday

Sweet n Simple Friday

Farmgirl Friday

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Photo Challenge - Textures

Time for another photo challenge over at Donna's.  Hope you will check out some of the other posts on this fun blog hop.

My first picture is pretty simple,,,just an "M" leaned up against the corrals.  I like to edit in Picmonkey, I wish it had more textures to choose from.  I usually end up using papryus or the weave textures.  I really bumped up the saturation and like how the reds came out in the wood.

Before

After

This next shot is one of my favorites that I took of KnJ for their engagement pictures.  It is a little bit blurry,but I still like it alot.  We were inside the Roundhouse building which is such a cool old building.  Thankfully, their is finally a historical society in Hanna that is going to save the Roundhouse!!  I also used the sunlight feature in the left corner of the after photo as well as the papryus texture with the saturation bumped up again.

Before:

After:

This last shot is one of the lights that is hanging in the Roundhouse.  Another one of my favorites and has enough rough texture without even editing it.  I used smudge and paint texture on this photo.

Before:

After:

Here are a couple other shots of the Roundhouse photo shoot.  We even took the couch!  Lots of pigeons and disrepair!  It is a historical site though as it was used for servicing trains back in the day.  The turn table is one of the only ones left in Canada I think.  One lady in Hanna has worked so hard to purchase it through a historical society, so I hope that it will be restored!  Makes for some great pictures for Ben's grad as well.

Linking to :

Photo Challenge

Before n After Small Space Scrapbook Room

Since I am kind of on a roll with scrapbooking, and I have some time off of work, I am ready to get some photos posted of my scrapbook room!

This is just a small room in the basement and it was one of the first that we renovated when we moved into our house just over a year ago.

BEFORE

This room was being used as an office.  Big oversized furniture pretty much filled it up!

This is a shot from the main room in the basement, crazy cables for internet hung in the weirdiest of places and a shelf on the back wall was pretty much it.

Add some color, a new, inexpensive storage solution, and new flooring and you get a pretty good space to scrapbook in!

AFTER

The light is terrible in this room, so don't mind the terrible pictures!

Darrell rescued this drafting table from the discard pile at work. $25  I wanted an "island" type of work space that I could walk around and this was a good solution.  All the other items in the room I already had and it was fun to have empty walls to decide what to put where.

Darrell put up a piece of metal that I could use as a bulletin board for clips with magnets on them to hold my stamps, easy to see and get at.  I still have more ribbon and would like to come up with a better solution for it.  Anyone have some good ribbon storage ideas, please share  :)

I already had bins and drawers for paper, stickers, etc. but wanted to have them hidden behind doors.  The easiest solution for that was a trip to JYSK where we found these storage cupboards on sale.  2 of them filled the one wall perfectly!  They are not the best in sturdy construction, but will fit the bill just fine in this room.  Plus it was a quick easy solution that didn't require us building something from scratch and i was able to get this room unpacked and organized in no time.

Not sure if I will keep the bench on this wall.  It takes up a bit too much floor space and the one cupboard door is a little crowded when trying to open.  I do like the collage of pictures on that blank wall though.  

There you have it!  One small scrapbook room!  This is my second small space room that I have done for my scrappin collection.  You can view my wee room under the stairwell at our previous house here.

One more time,,,the Before n After

I am off to a card making class today, so hope to gain some good tips.  Then I guess I better come and spend some time in my little room and put all I have leant to good use!

Have a great day!

To see the DINING ROOM reno click here

To see the FAMILY ROOM reno click here

Linking to:

Simple N Sweet Fridays

Inspire me Please

Farmgirl Friday

From the Farm

Here's what I got done this past week end!

On Saturday, my friend and I went to a scrapbook retreat day!  It was awesome and I got some more pages done for Ben's hockey albumn.  Just a few more pages to go and his minor hockey years are in the memory book!  I am a little tired of seeing black, yellow, and white.  I really wanted to get this albumn done and I have been working on it for a few years.  Sticking with just the team colors was a huge help in staying focused.

Ben's last year of hockey saw the Colts taking home the provincial gold!  It was a great way to end his hockey years in our small home town, on home ice, where this team of boys had huge support!  I posted about that victory back in 2011 here.

It was a nice treat to be the "scrapbooker" on Saturday and have someone else make us lunch and supper!  When we were running the BnB and I would host a week end for ladies to come and scrap, it was a lot of work!  You can read about one such week end here.

 Do you have any "card making" tricks?  I did some research on the Nestabilities dies and decided to treat myself and purchase them at Michaels.  They haappened to be 30% off as well!!  Bonus!  The dies can be used in my Cuddlebug and I hope that it will speed up some of the matting and cutting I do when making cards.

I got this set of cards done and used the Nestabilities on the larger card with the scalloped oval in the middle.  I think they will work great and now I just have to get into a groove where I can produce them a little quicker!

How about you,,,,do you scrapbook, have a favorite hobby?  My little scrapbook room in this house was the first room to get paint and new flooring.  I will work on getting a post done for that this week as I have a week off!!!  Yeahhh,,,had to take my holidays before the year is up.  Not going anywhere, so will maybe get lots of scrappin done!!  Have a great day everyone, and thanks for stopping by the country.

Linking up to :

Amaze me Monday
Inspire me Please
Sweet and Simple 
Farmgirl Friday