Almond Blossom Fairy and Weekly Menu Link

Hello!  Here's what I've been busy at in my stamp room for the past few days.  Not that this particular card took days, but arriving at this card did.  Heather got in some more flower fairy stamp sets. These are the famous Cicely Mary Barker flower fairies that I have always loved, and I have several now in my collection.  Heather asked me to do a class with them in March, so this will be one of the class projects for my class on Saturday, March 24th, in the afternoon (time to be confirmed).   The scanner hasn't quite done justice to the colours, unfortunately.  But then Sauron the Scanner and I have never been on particularly good terms. 

Thanks for stopping by!  I'm back to tidying up my stamp room and trying to figure out what to make for dinner.  Last night's effort was suffered in polite silence by my crew.  I found a recipe on line for salmon casserole with canned salmon, peas, peppers and eggs, sort of a crustless quiche idea.  This recipe was ideal because I had all the ingredients on hand and the exact amount of preparation time before dinner.  With this auspicious start, I knew that I had used up all my luck before dinner even started.  It was ok, they ate it (heavily bribed with the other half of their piece of cheese toast), remarking only that it was a dinner that didn't require chewing, only squishing through their teeth.  I don't have an exact quote as the daughter in question's memory is failing now that this is Going On The Blog.  Tonight I have less in the pantry than yesterday, and even less inspiration. Maybe we will have Pancake Day early!  Speaking of dinner, I did find a great website that does menu planning.  It's free, it includes recipes and it's nutritious, and the whole works.  It's put on by the government of Ontario and I would highly recommend it.  Had I been out shopping today, I would have the ingredients for numerous tasty meals.  Here's the link: Eat Right Ontario.  It's a bit wordy with a lot of links to get to a 40 page download (did I mention this was a government site? she said snidely), but it's top quality, full of great resources, and worth it in the end (did I mention I am a public servant? she said smugly). 

Thanks again for stopping by!

Bellarific Friday

Here's my card for Bellarific Friday this week at Stamping Bella.  This week's theme is "Anything Goes", so I turned to one of my favourite Bella images, this dandelion silhouette and my favourite Bella sentiment stamp "life is too short for beige".  Now I know this card contains no beige whatsoever, but in the name of design, I am using gray instead of beige.  Indeed I recently read the word "greige" in a design magazine.  (Even typing that word makes me cringe!  Ick. Beige meets grey meets terrible mash-up word of even yuckier colour.)    I have been starved for colour lately.  We are knee-deep in February in Ontario, which means the landscape is various shades of grey, sleet, sludge and slush.  the trees are grey, the sky is grey, the roads are grey, everything is grey, bleak and grey.  So grey that I had to put hyacinths on the grocery list, not to eat, but to bring some colour into the house.  My DH, God bless him, brought home gorgeous fuchsia ones.  Lovely!

Ok, so enough about the bleak outsides.  We decided to go shopping for a new duvet cover and check out the new Ikea.  They just built one here that is the biggest in Canada and is approximately the size of  Prince Edward Island.  Before you get to where you can buy anything, you walk through approximately 53 km of showrooms, all done up in Ikea style.  Guess what the Ikea style is.  Yep.  Grey.  Grey with pops of colour.  so there will be a living room with charcoal couch, pencil lead carpet, exhaust fume drapes and a lime throw cushion.  Or a kitchen pewter cupboards, steel appliances, graphite counter top and a chartreuse tea towel.  You get the picture.  Everything was grey.  It seems this year's fashion statement is Bunker Living or Prison Cell Mod.  Even the bed linen store was no better, with 85 duvet covers all in shades of charcoal, graphite and oyster.  Ultimately, we settled on a duvet cover that is white with solid botanical silhouettes in lime green, greeny-beige and grey.  So, we did get some grey (my brush with stylishness) but the overall effect is green and white.  (That and my husband vetoed the hot pink and purple stripes AND the fuchsia paisley.) 

So, being inspired by recent forays into the world of home decor (usually we decorate in contemporary Playmobil and children's art), I translated it into a card for Bellarific Friday.  The stamp is "solid funky dandelion" and as I looked on the website to find that out, I discovered a very similar sample card there, with bright green and black.  Maybe that was deep in my subconscious, I have no idea.  They say there's nothing new under the sun (well, people other than Hamlet say that, and we never do find out what Horatio thinks of that!).    Anywho, that's my card for Bellarific Friday.  Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies:  ink: charcoal and gray whale colorbox fluid chalk, kiwi kiss stampin' up, lettuce colorbox pigment ink.  Zing lime green embossing powder.  Naturals white, kiwi kiss paper and grey paper from Heather's.