Fabulous Friday Fun, Warm Wishes & a blog hop tomorrow

Brrrrr! It's cold out! Here in Alaska, we're having a proper cold snap with temps at night dipping to almost -40, and the highs during the day up to a balmy -15! I sure am glad to be in my snuggy craft room on a night like this!


I finally got around to playing with the Warm Wishes {ippity} set released earlier this month. What a fun set! I decided to do some embossing, and I really like how my card came out.

stamps: {ippity} set Warm Wishes; cardstock: Bazzill; dsp: DCWV; embossing powder: Zing!; gem: stash

I tried a medallion after reading this post at Moxie Fab World. One tip I didn't see on any of the tutorials I dug up to make this:

make sure your strip of paper is at least 8 times longer than it is wide

My first medallion wouldn't join at the ends because I didn't know that. So avoid the headache and lost paper/time/sanity/whatever and measure first. You'll be glad you did.  =)

I also entered this card in the CPS challenge for this week.


Oh, and remember that there's an {ippity} blog hop tomorrow! Come hop, comment and get a chance to win an {ippity} set! It will run through Thanksgiving, so join us - it'll be fun!

Thanks for stopping by!

PS ~ Do you love {ippity} stamps? Check out my {ippity} page!

Stuck? Try the Doodle Dragon challenge!

It's time for another Doodle Dragon Studio Challenge! This time, we want to see your Easter-themed cards! Don't have a Doodle Dragon digi? Dustin has a bunch of them free - head over to his blog to pick up one of them!

Here's my card for this challenge. What a cutie! I laughed out loud when I saw him the first time, and he STILL makes me giggle!

supplies ~ cardstock: Georgia Pacific (white) and Martha Stewart (blue), dsp: Bo Bunny Calypso,  flowers: Bride's, buttons: stash, image: Doodle Dragon Studios

I know the colors aren't really traditional spring colors, but I have waaaaay too many scraps in my scrap tray, and I am sick of seeing snow on the ground (that's right - here in Interior Alaska, we won't see the ground for another few weeks!) and really wanted to do something bright and fun. I used this week's sketch over at Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge, too.

Make sure you link up your card using a Doodle Dragon image to the challenge blog before the deadline; all the deets are there with more inspiration for you. Have a great Sunday!

H{ippity} Hop on the shortest day of the year

Welcome back to another H{ippity} Hop! Did you know today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year? Here in the interior of Alaska, this is a big day because today we only have about 3 1/2 hours of daylight. Within a couple of weeks, however, we'll be gaining an hour of daylight every week - what a dramatic change! We even have a carnival today to celebrate the lengthening of days!

I know, you're probably thinking: Yuck! All that dark! But one thing we also have lots of this time of year is SNOW, and it reflects whatever light there is, keep it from being so dark. So, on this short day, I decided to celebrate the SNOW!

I CASEd this card from Nichole Heady's blog. I created a background with the snowflake stamp from the Kissmas & Mistletoe set, then stamped the snowman in white. I ran my Aleene's 2in1 Glue around the edge and added glitter (click the photo to enlarge if you can't see the sparkle). The snowdrifts were cut from vellum, and I used StazOn jet black to stamp the sentiment. I used Glue Dots vellum adhesive to attach the vellum - can't see it can you? LOVE that stuff!

supplies ~ kraft: Bazzill, vellum: Strathmore, blue cs: stash, image & sentiment: {ippity} Kissmas & Mistletoe

I also entered this card in the Simon Says Challenge to make a Christmas card and the Kaboodle Doodles challenge to make a "sparkling winter" card.

Want this set? I have several in stock, ready to ship. Just click here to order this or any other {ippity} kit. PLUS, if you leave a comment here and place an order today, you can take off $5 from your purchase price! I hope you enjoyed your H{ippity} Hop! Come again soon for more fun!

New four-legged neighbors?

I just had to pop in to share a few pics of a moose family that came and spent the night at our house a couple of weeks ago. They started out just munching on leaves and the remains of wild flowers at about 4 pm, but I guess momma felt safe enough to plop down and spend the night. By the time we were up at around 6 am the next day, the family had moved on.





This same little family came back today to do some more munching, but this time they kept moving. Sure was a thrill for us, though, to see them back!

Meet Lex!

Okay, this post is definitely NOT card-related, so if you came to see a card, I'm a afraid you'll be disappointed. After living pet-less for the last 12 years (another reason I hate apartment life), I finally convinced my hubby to let me have a cat. And here he is - meet Lex!



We adopted him on Thursday from our local pet shelter after his previous owner decided to give him up. What a sweetheart! He loves to be pet, and a lap is his favorite place to crash. We're still getting to know each other, but he stole my heart the first time I met him.

Keep your eyes open for my Whimsy card on Monday - it's in honor of our newest family member! =D

A visitor!

Boy, do I have a treat for you today! We had a visitor who decided to meander over to our house and linger for a while. He started out across the road from us, sauntered onto our property, then had a little siesta next to one of the trees downhill & behind him in these pictures. Once he got up, he came right up to the house, but something spooked him because he jogged around our house and went uphill from where we live. I got several shots of him, but only a few were really good ones.



This moose is obviously a bull since he's sprouting antlers. If you look closely, you can see the velvet on his single antler. From what I understand, the velvet has lots of blood vessels & nerves in it and supplies the antlers with nutrients to grow. In about April or May, the antlers will be done growing and the velvet will dry up, causing it to fall off. One other tidbit, antlers are bone and shed every year. Horns, on the other hand, are bone with a keratin sheath (like your fingernails) and are never shed. Betcha didn't know that! If you'd like to know more, go here.

Have a wonderful day! I'll be back with a card (I hope) tomorrow. I have just one more to go to finish the March Viva La Verve challenge! Ta ta for now!

A treat despite bad judgement

So, Bill and I are sick with bad colds. You think we'd be staying home where it's warm instead of going out into the -25F cold-as-all-get-out weather? Oh, noooooooooo! We get it into our heads that we absolutely MUST do a trash run (we live out of town & have to haul our own trash), go to the post office and drop off recyclables at Wal-Mart. We might as well get lunch, too, as long as we're out. Even though we're miserable. And it's cold. And just going downstairs seems like a huge effort. Let alone coming back up.

We got all the trash and recyclables loaded into the car, and off we go. I'm thinkin' to myself I hope this is fast because I just wanna go home and curl up in bed. Suddenly Bill says, "Moose!" I'm in lalaland, so I don't see it right away but the car ahead of us has come to a complete stop. The moose had obviously just crossed the road and was standing in our lane looking at us like WE'RE the idiots hogging the road. Something must have spooked him because he lopes off the road into someone's yard. Every other car goes on their merry way, but I tell Bill to stop once we get within view of the moose - I wanted a picture (the only camera I had was the one on my phone, but maybe it would work).

I roll down the window to get the picture, but the camera won't zoom in close enough to make the moose bigger than a dot. Meanwhile, the moose looks directly at our car. Now, that's not a good thing, folks. What goes on in a moose's head is utterly unfathomable. He might just be checkin' us out, or maybe he's thinking about running over to stomp the dickins out of us. Bill decides not to take chances, so we drive away (the photo is one from Google images since I didn't get my own pic). FYI - up here, if you hit a moose with anything less than a monster truck or semi, chances are your car will be totalled and the moose will walk away.

By the time we dump the trash and get some lunch, we're both feeling worse than when we started. I ask Bill, "Do you think I can twist you're arm into going straight home? The recyclables can wait." He doesn't argue...he's more miserable than I am. Once home, he immediately collapses in a chair with the quilt and conks out.

But at least I got to see a moose!

On the shortest day of the year...

So, if you've read any of my posts or seen my profile you know that I live in one of the farthest northern places in the USA. Fairbanks is less than 200 miles from the Arctic Circle. And today, the shortest day of the year, we had only 3 hours and 42 minutes of daylight. Funny thing - this far north, the sun doesn't rise in the east and set in the west. It rises in the southeast, follows the horizon instead of going directly overhead, and sets in the southwest. The only way for us to get enough vitamin D in the winter is to take vitamins or sit near a "happy light", or full-spectrum light (SAD - or Seasonal Affective Disorder - is extremely common here).

Since today is the winter solstice, it is technically the first day of winter. But Fairbanksans have been calling it "winter" since the beginning of October. If my memory serves me correctly, snow flew on Friday, October 3 and stuck around for good. Yes, the kiddies in Fairbanks go Trick-or-Treating in their snow boots and winter coats every year! The good news is that every day will get longer. Sometime in February, I will finally be going to work and coming home again with a little daylight instead of complete dark!



I live about 10 miles northeast of Fairbanks. Because there are fewer people and less traffic, we tend to see more wildlife and in greater variety than in town. At the end of summer, we saw a family of 5 quail in our backyard. They had been wandering in our area for a few days, and then they wandered into our yard (well, I guess yard isn't the right word - we live in a very wooded area and don't have a lawn. It's just trees and ground cover for the majority of our property). I had never seen a live quail before, so it was a treat to see a whole family!

And you must always be prepared to welcome 4-legged guests, like our neighbors did a few days ago. The moose just camped right outside their front door! We sat and watched for a few minutes, and it looked as though it hadn't moved for quite a while, and it wasn't GOING to move for a while! I bet the kids at their house were going nuts! The scene reminded me of the children's book, If You Give A Moose A Muffin by Laura Joffe Numeroff. That moose was hangin' around for something, but who knows what? Moose are unfathomably stubborn and one of the most unpredictable creatures on earth. You never know WHAT will happen when you meet a moose!

Well, I think that's it for tonight. Sorry there aren't any pics of my creations. School let out on Friday afternoon, so the last couple of days I've been relaxing and running errands. I'll get back to creating some more stuff to share tomorrow. Happy Winter Solstice!

Edited to add: Make sure you go over to SheetLoad Shortcuts for their FROSTy giveaway!

pictures courtesy of Google Images