From this window - June 19, 2012

I went 'on walkabout' early this morning.  Temp is already 81 and it's not even 9:00 a.m. yet.  Gonna be a hot one again today but I've watered the pots, checked for Japanese Beetles (only found a few), pulled weeds in the annual bed (lots of Zinnias and Cosmos blooming), peeked into the new wren nest in the back bed (seven eggs so far - that had to hurt), ate some warm black raspberries from the way back bed (the critters don't leave us many), cleaned up the mess on the deck from the wren deconstructing his nest there, fed the birds, cleaned and refilled the bird baths and came in to cook jerk chicken for lunch for movie day.  That made me tired just typing it.

As I sit here working I'm occasionally watching the bluebirds on the nest box outside the craft room.  While I haven't seen any nesting material go in the box, there is plenty of interest from both the male and the female so I'm hopeful we'll have a nest and eggs soon.  Since we are leaving on vacation about August 6th, we won't see these guys fledge; they'll be gone by the time we get back.

I had such fun with the last step card that I created another one.  This paper was a lighter weight than my last card and would not stay scrunched up; it wanted to keep trying to lay flat.  So, I used my Crop-o-dile to punch a hole in all the layers, added eyelets to the front and back pieces, ran some ribbon through and knotted it.  The tree was downloaded from the MTC library and I love the way it turned out (whoever created this file, I thank you much).  I cut the tree trunk out of Kraft paper and then wiped it with Memento Rich Cocoa.  I cut an extra layer of leaves and layered it on top, wiped with VersaMagic Hint of Pesto.  The giraffe was a Sizzix die cut out of My Mind's Eye paper and stamped with a Papertrey word stamp.  Grass was also an old Sizzix die rubbed with VersaMagic Hint of Pesto.  The green paper was Best Occasions and it's got a linen pattern in it, the blue paper was Recollections from Michaels.  The bottom of the first section was cut with an EK Success border punch and the green paper was added to the back.  The sentiment is also from Papertrey.  All in all, I'm very pleased with this card.

Till next time, I hope the weather is beautiful where you are and all the flowers smell marvelous.