What Does It Say About Me...

What does it say about me that I'm really amused that the "Knitters Without Borders" button on my blog overlaps the border of the page?

Bad Puns 'R Us, I guess.

Hurrah! Hurrah!

They won!  The marching band won their division and the overall competition!  Another State Championship!!  (I'm just a little proud of them.)

Actually, I'm a LOT proud of them.  They spent yesterday, from 6:15am until 2 am traveling to and competing at another band event out of state.  (Where they also did very well.)  And one bunch of kids did not make it home until 6:15 this morning because their bus broke down (thankfully not my son).  That's 24 full hours of marching band for those poor kids.  Who got maybe 5 hours of sleep and then went back to rehearsal and then competition.

The parents in the stands decided that the band director must have given them Red Bull.  It's the only rational explanation.

Hurrah for them!

Blog Redesign!

Yes, it seemed the Summer theme was getting a little... out of season.  And since I didn't have any good fall leaves pictures for the header, you get the marching band!  It is marching band season, after all.  JC is the 2nd sousaphone from the right.

Wish them (the band) luck this weekend - they have a big regional competition out of state on Saturday, and then the NJ State Band Championships are Sunday.  Oh, and it happens to be Homecoming today, so they are playing a pep rally during school and of course the game tonight.

All marching band, all the time!  At least for another 3 weeks.

10-10-10 on 10-10-10, part 1

I've mentioned before that my stamping friends like to swap cards - specifically, cards that we make that night at a shoebox swap.  Our group, however, likes to call it a 10-10-10.  This name originated with an event I ran when I was a Stampin' Up demonstrator.  I designed 10 cards, that were to take 10 minutes or less, and charged everyone $10 each to attend.  It was fun, although way more work for me designing all the cards, and I got a lot of flak about cards that took longer than 10 minutes (hey, I tried!). 

So we don't do it that way anymore - everyone designs one card.  Much better.  But we still call it that, and Ruth very cleverly offered to host a 10-10-10 on 10-10-10.  There were 10 of us there, although we did 11 cards (Cathie couldn't attend but sent hers).



This is my card.  My goal was to use a stamp set that I hadn't used before.  I love these little birds, but sometimes it's hard to build a card around a small image.  This technique would work with a variety of small stamps.  Not very seasonal, but I liked it.




Ruth went monochromatic again, and did it very nicely.  The fuzzy stuff is Mulberry paper, and it adds lovely texture.  And I think this is a great use of the funky paper clip.




Nancy designed this card.  It is very elegant and would make a smashing Christmas card.  It's hard to see, but the deer is embossed with tinsel, so it has a lot of glitter.  The gold layers are sparkly, too.




Sharon came up with this lovely, simple card.  It's the sort of card that stands very well on its own, or is easy to bling up a bit.  Again, a good use of an odd-shaped stamp that can be hard to build a card around.



This is Susan's card.  She kept apologizing for how simple it is, but we all loved it.  This is the sort of Christmas card that you can think about making for 50 people without having a nervous breakdown!

Blogger is insisting that's enough pictures for one post, so I'll break this up into 2.  Stay tuned!

10-10-10 on 10-10-10, part 2

Ok, if I do this right, I publish this first so part 1 is at the top of the page.  Yes, I know, it's taken me years to get so sneaky.  Onward to the cards!

Grace went for Halloween, a holiday I rarely make cards for, but I always love the Halloween stamps.  She had us stamp wonderful spooky clouds in the upper right corner that totally don't show up in the scan.  Try to imagine all that stark white with shades of grey.  Totally Halloween.



Shona's card also didn't scan well.  The central tree image is done as a resist, then cut into the 4 pieces and popped up on foam tape.  Great in person, not so great on a scanner.  The sentiment is actually stamped behind the rust layer, with a window punched and torn out to show it.  Very fun.




If there's anyone who thinks outside the shoebox, it's Cathie.  She couldn't come, but sent this charming bookmark - we all said, "hey, I never thought of doing something besides a card!"  It's slightly out of focus because of the button.  But aren't the fibers great?!




I think Janet got the award for the most oohs and aahs.  The trees, grass, hills and leaves are all stamped seperately (not each individual leaf, it was a grouping and a rainbow pad).  This card works for any occasion, including the bane of our existence - men's birthdays.



Sue came up with this one.  She said she had to dust off her stamp pads, she hadn't used them in so long, but the card is great.  More mulberry paper, behind the map image.



Last, but certainly not least, Linda also thought outside the box.  This is a black and white version of a picture she took.  We colorized it with distressing ink for a very very cool effect.



Where Does the Time Go??!!

I have new cards, and a book, and marching band, and who knows what else to blog about - but I haven't had time to sit down and actually put a post together!

Maybe tomorrow?  Or sometime?

Rachel's Lament

(sung to the tune of the Toys'R'Us jingle)

I don't wanna get up
It's too dark and too cold.
It's too soon to turn the heat on, that's what I have been told.

It's 6 a.m. and much too dark,
I don't care what the weather is.

I don't wanna get up
It's too dark and too cold
Gonna stay in bed 'til the day's old.

Recovery

As I may have mentioned before, my church holds a consignment sale of kids clothing and stuff twice a year.  As I'm sure I've mentioned at least once, I run the sale.

The sale was this weekend.

I'm exhausted.

But it was a good sale, or at least, better than the one before.  We don't know the total net, yet - we have to pay the consignors first, which involves counting all the cards.  One for each item sold, and labeled with which consignor brought the item.  The church keeps 30% of the sale price.  We also take a small fee for advertising if you sell enough.  So that counts towards the church total.  And we do get some items donated so the church keeps 100% of that.

As you can see, figuring out how much we made is a little complicated.  Fortunately, that's not my job.  Somebody else has a complicated computer database all configured to calculate everything, so I am happy to offload.

All the consignors seemed happy at the end, and we got everything picked up, donated, cleaned up, etc.

Are we going to do it again in the spring?  Don't ask me that yet, my feet still hurt.