Cicadas are here.

Here are the dreaded pests! After a 13 year period of living underground, the crazy things are out in full force. We have them everywhere! Yes, they are on the house, on the garage, on the irises, on the tall pieces of grass, on the trees, on the ground, on the tires!!!!

Every night, Barry has knocked them off the house and then the next morning there seems to be even more! I mowed and it seemed like that brought them out even more. They say if we get rain (as they're predicting for Thursday & Friday) that we'll have even more coming out. Yuck!

Need any extra nuitrition? You're welcome to come by our place and pick up a handful. There's gobs of them around the base of the trees in our yard. The decomposing bodies smell just wonderful, let me tell you.

Another Set of Cards

This card turned out so well! It's for my boss' birthday on Thursday. He's in the Navy and I used the Navy anchor as my guide, but instead of USA, I put his initials. Inside I wrote "Happy Birthday!" It's a 5"x7" card.

Here's a simple card that I did up on the regular 4"x6". I used 4 papers with hot pink & black as my main theme colors. I cut out the heart and wrote "thinking of you". I added my friend's initial.

It's my good friend's birthday Friday. I made up this card using a design that I've used before. I used six papers and added a piece of pink organdy ribbon. I also put a vellum flower sticker on one of the squares. Inside I wrote Happy Birthday.

This final card is for my sister's birthday. I used all sorts of light pink papers. The little cream paper has the word celebrate on it and its definition. I added a piece of pink organdy ribbon and a white M.

Walking Program

So, have you tried to track how many steps you walk in a day? My office is trying to have everybody individually walk 100 miles by July 9. In order to get people to walk, we got pedometers from our insurance company so that people could wear them and keep track of their mileage. I had a couple days last week where in just the work day hours I had walked over 3 miles!

Today, I just had 2 miles, but it was good to keep track and see what I was walking.

Rolls

I found this recipe in the Sunday coupons a few weeks ago and thought I'd give it a whirl. It took about 1 1/2 hours to make them and as you can see...

They turned out wonderfully! They're no Sister Schuberts, but they were yummy!

Saturday Adventure

I had seen that Bank of America was providing free admission to museums the first weekend in the month. We decided to take advantage of this and go to the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum. This was an awesomed deal because each adult ticket was $19.99. We saved $40!

The neat thing that was all throughout the museum is those songs that went gold or platinum. Here Barry's listening to one of the songs.

This was a "record" that was on the floor.

Here's one of the walls that has records on it. There were so many records that there would be no way to count them all. It was pretty awesome.

I'll show some more of our trip later in the week.

Mother's Day card

Here's the card that I made for my mom. I used a template that I had already, but altered it to fit with the papers that I had. The base paper is sort of an orange color that matches the flowery paper. I split up the flowery paper and put a piece of brown paper in the middle. The bottom blue paper has sparkles all in it. I used some blue organdy ribbon across the middle and added a flower, die cut flower, and a pink brad. The inside is just simple, "Happy Mothers Day."

Several Cards

These cards are of varying sizes from large to small. The motorcycle birthday card is 5"x7", the thank you card is 4"x6", and the bottom birthday card is about 2 1/2" x 4" big.

This card is for my friend at work. He loves riding motorcycles. I found the motorcycle stickers (half off at Hobby Lobby!) and got the motorcycle paper at a scrapbooking store. I decided to use the Harley-Davidson symbol to make the Happy Birthday part. I left the inside blank so that the person who's using it can write their own message.
Back in the fall, I received a gift of a beautiful tie-dyed dress from Nigeria. It was sent with one of the men from my office who had been doing some work there. I had been wanting to do something special to say thanks and got my chance! This man is going back again to Nigeria on Monday and is going to take the card with him. This card has 5 papers. I used bubble letters to spell out thanks and then wrote the name of the family in calligraphy. Inside I wrote Acts 20:35, "It is more blessed to give."

This last card is so small, but has a bunch of stuff on it. I used 7 different papers and some blue organdy ribbon. Inside it says Happy Birthday. It's for a co-worker who has her birthday Friday.