Good Morning, Sunshine!

How about a little taste of spring this morning?

I LOVE this card! I adore the designer paper (Scenic Route). Of course, I adore anything orange, but when it's combined with lime green??? Divine. I know I'm probably one of the few people on the planet that thinks that way, but those two colors make me HAPPY, and who doesn't like happy? It just screams SPRING!

I wanted to try something different to keep up with all the amazing cards/projects being made out there in blogland. You know the ones I'm talking about....all the fancy folded cards and treat holders that no one but the really uber talented people would come up with (you know who I'm talking about, the Nichole Heady's and Beate's of this world). I want to be more like them!!!!!

In a half-hearted attempt at doing just that, I came up with this card, which, if I'm being honest, I think is super cute. And super easy! I know it's not nearly as fancy as some of the cards out there, but I've done my best. And that's good enough for me. I'll leave the fancy work to them:)!

It all started with three scalloped flowers I stamped from the So Many Scallops set by SU. I punched the centers out of the flowers (it says "Your So Sweet" inside the flower, but I didn't want to say that three times) and replaced it with a piece of the plaid designer paper. You can see what I mean by looking at the top flower on the card. See the plaid paper? I did the same with the middle and bottom flower, but eventually, covered up the plaid paper by adhering the other sentiments you see on the card. They are actually two different sentiments, from two different companies. The middle sentiment is actually PART of a sentiment. The full sentiment reads "Take Time to Laugh, it is the Music of the Soul" (by Stampabilities). I stamped out the sentiment onto a piece of white cardstock, and then using my 1-inch circle punch, positioned it over just the "Take Time To" part of it. I adhered it to the center of the flower using dimensional tape. The sentiment on the bottom flower comes from Papertrey's Mixed Messages set. I can't believe I was actually smart enough to combine the two sentiments to make an entirely NEW sentiment! I was on fire with this card:)!!!

The final touches on the card were the two ribbons, one orange organza and the other lime green polka dot organze. The other touch was the little orange and lime green butterfly I adhered on the top flower. Isn't it cute?

So much fun working with fun colors like these. I know these aren't colors for everyone. Using colors like orange and lime green (especially together) for some is akin to fingernails running down a chalkboard or scraping your teeth along the fork as you remove it from your mouth. For some, bright colors are that bad. But for me, I get energy from colors like this. I difinitely lean more toward the brights as opposed to the muted colors. I hope no one ran off screaming when they saw today's card! If you did, I hope you come back and give brights a try this week!

We've got Palm Sunday services at church today, and then an early BBQ with good friends. There's no school this week, it's Spring Break, so we don't have to be rushing home to get homework done before Monday rolls around. I can't eat after 830p tonight because I have to fast for 12 hours before I have some blood work done tomorrow morning. Remember my dr. appt last week with the new OB/GYN? He's running a gamut of tests to make sure the inner workings of my body are running correctly. I am hoping he tells me that my thyroid levels are all screwed and that explains my big weight gain over the past year. BUT, I'm fairly certain he's going to say the thyroid is ok and it's just the fact that I'm over 40 and female that's I've gained weight. It's at that point that I'm going to reach across the room and punch him in the nose because I hate hearing that weight gain is inevitable just because I'm a female and over 40. Anybody else out there with me? What curse do our men have just because they're male and over 40? I bet they never hear that!

I will be back tomorrow with a beautiful card I made to send to my SIL & BIL (my hubby's sister and her hubby), who received some very sad/scary/overwhelming news this past week. Suffice it to say, the Westerman family has been hard hit by tragedy this year. God must really think we're strong, because we keep getting dumped on, and He says He never gives us more than we can handle. We've had another hit to the solar plexis and are still reeling. But more on that tomorrow. If you can bear hearing more bad news from me, come back. If you can't, you might want to stay away. I don't want to be accused again by any annonymous commentors about being "too depressing and wallowing in my sorrows". Consider this your fair warning! LOL.

I just had to say that. I worry about sharing my feelings on my blog now for fear I'll be attacked again by someone who think my problems aren't nearly as bad as theirs. But then I tell myself, "hey, it's MY blog, I can't write what I want". But on the other hand, I know the depressing news all the time gets to be too much. So I am trying to weigh what I write more carefully, and word it more positively than I might have in the past. I don't know. It is what it is. We all know I wear my heart on my sleeve and that I don't hide my sadness well if I'm feeling it. Don't get me wrong. I am not a "sad" person by nature. Actually, I'm pretty happy most of the time! I just find it hard to put on a happy face for people when I'm not feeling happy. As I've said before, if something is causing me sadness in one part of my life, I can't pretend in all the other areas that everything is ok. If one part of my life is out of balance, it's all out of balance!

The good news is we WILL get through all of this heartache eventually. I know that. I don't think I've ever asked God "why me?" during all of this. I learned this year from a woman in my BSF group that the appropriate question should be "why NOT me?". She lost her 7 year old daughter this past summer, and that's what she says to herself. why NOT me? It puts a whole different perspective on self pity, doesn't it?