Camping Trip, Card for Mom, and Pretty Paisley Giveaway!

Whew - I finally have time to post some of our camping photos. We only went for one night, but it was perfection! I managed to be packed and ready the very SECOND my man was finished school and the weather co-operated completely.

It took a matter of 1/2 hour to set up and prepare dinner. The lake was calm and the air soft. Sigh. Mr. begrudgingly poses for me before I turn my camera elsewhere.

Though this is not out in the wilderness, there's no actual town nearby either, just a small gathering of perhaps 10 houses or so, among orchards. The beach is gravelled and when we sat at night a group of about 8 deer 'crunched' their way between our site and the lakeshore.

I love this site with the tall ponderosa to shelter. I was sad I forgot my special camping rake. That's another blog post in itself I hope to share soon.

This lake is popular with fishermen and I wondered at these interesting eggs in the water? Any ideas?

The sun remained the next morning and we lingered until 10:30 - basking in the rays. I would have LOVED to have stayed another day but it did give us a taste of what summer will be like.

The drive home was scenic and gorgeous. The balsamroot flowers are in full glory - and here are some photos we took along the way.

Whole hillsides were 'buttered' with the blossoms!

A small bouquet of them in front of some 'hoo-doos' (the clay formations in the background) I'm fascinated by hoo-doos and will do another post on them someday too.

Payback time from my Mr - he makes me pose in the midst of the field...

But I think HE'S the pretty one here!

And so you can see why we got caught up. Truly an amazing sight. I could have stayed all day with my camera as my eye.

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And now, onto my latest card-making. I feel quite safe to show off my Mother's Day card I created for my Mother-in-Law as she is completely anti-computer. I used KimB's gorgeous Antoinette Kit, it was PERFECT for this project.

I love the way Kim's flowers 'pop out' so realistically - and I added a final, tactile element with this big green sunflower I had salvaged from another project.

I included two sentiments inside - on from son to Mom and one from me to Mom, a thank you from me for the blessing of her son in my life. I had to create my own envelope as this card was oversize.

Just click on this graphic to be taken to Kim's blog where she has instructions on how you can buy this AMAZING kit!

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And finally, a little present for you! This one is personal use only. Thank you goes to my dear friend VALINDA who helped me with this by giving me the idea to completely recreate it from the bottom up from an older version I'd made. I would NOT have thought of that, Valinda. No, not - really (we were arguing in a nice friendly "let me pay for lunch" kinda way, haha!) At any rate, it turned out so well that I've included both a full size 12 x 12 overlay as well as the element as a single. These have a silvery-metallic look! Enjoy - and I'd LOVE to see how you use these. Click on the graphic to download.