Bad Girls Kits

I mentioned here than I recently have purchased some monthly scrapbooking kits from Bad Girls and love them!


With the June kit called Malibu Pop Shop, I created this layout which features Brittany playing badminton. I love the bright colours!



Bad Girls is having a month long anniversary celebration so do check them out.

Border Punched Card

Hey cardmakers, don't you just love the new Fiskars and Martha Stewart border punches?

I do and here's a card using my newest MS border punch. This card was inspired by this sketch at Triple The Scraps.

Pico De Gallo

If you don't like fresh tomatoes, you may want to stop reading this post( and yes you know who you are).

But if you do like fresh tomatoes then this is the recipe for you! Steve and I both love Pico De Gallo. I experimented with a couple of recipes this weekend and we preferred this one. I think you'll like it too!

8-10 roma tomatoes(I used 4 large beefsteak tomatoes)

1/2 to 1 red onion

1 jalapeno pepper

2 cloves garlic

juice of one lime

1 T olive oil

4 T chopped fresh cilantro(or more to taste, we like cilantro so I used a bit more)

1 tsp. coarse dalt

1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper

Seed and dice the tomatoes.Finely chop onion, pepper and garlic. Then add the remaining ingredients, mix well. Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours but is even better the next day. Serve with tortillas. Makes a fairly large bowl full.

This Little Piggy Went To Market

in the rain!

But its strawberry season and I wanted some fresh Ontario strawberries and it really didn't rain that much. We got strawberrries, blueberries, cherries, asparagus, broccoli, steak, cheese curds, pierogies, mushrooms and more. What a list of items!

And I took a few pictures too.


Here's some pretty flowers










And yummy fruit









Steve and Brianne checking out the blueberries.


Now this is sausage!

Cards, Cards, Cards

I'm on vacation for the next two weeks and hope to participate in lots of card making challenges!

Tonight I got the creative juices flowing by making this simple card(inspired by one I saw on someone's blog):

Then I created this card based on Triple the Sketch # 13:

And finally the DCM dare is to make a Christmas card, so I combined that dare with the Papertake sketch:

I hope you like them!

Moving Day

No it wasn't my moving day but my parents!

Mom had everything well organized and had hired movers so we needed to help with moving a few extra things that couldn't go in the big truck and cleaning as the rooms were cleared out.

Here's the empty living room:

Once we got to the new place, we got the kitchen partially set up and the bedrooms and living room partially organized.

And the new living room!

After all that work, we had a yummy pizza dinner followed by strawberry sundaes from Twins. Twins is a cute retro ice cream parlour, on another visit I'll take some pictures to share.

Some more garden pics

I couldn't resist adding a couple more pics of the climbing rose at the front.

I thought this was a neat pic, the raindrops really show up on this giant blue hosta.


I've always liked how this elderberry bush hangs over our walk at the side of the house.

Bird Bath Planter

With the threat of the West Nile virus we no longer let our bird bath be a bird bath. Instead I plant flowers in it. This year we moved it to the shade in front of our blue spruce trees and I planted it with bright pink impatiens. With all the rain, they are doing very well and it makes a great splash of colour in front of the trees. The hostas are coming along as well.

Freshly Cut Peonies

We have 3 peonies on the shady side of our house that I don't always get to appreciate because of where they are. So I decided to cut cut some blooms and bring them inside. And post them on my blog so we can all appreciate them.












I cut them just after a rain and in a couple of pictures you can still see the raindrops on them.

Queen & Co Card

This card is my entry for a contest at Queen & Co. It uses 4 different Queen & Co felts as well as Queen & Co brads. We'll see what they think!

Happy Birthday Wishes

to my sister Sherry!

Scrapbooking Friends

Yesterday we had a fun scrapbooking friends get-together at Kathryn's. Scrapbooking was not on the agenda but we did share lots of laughs, drinks and food!

Saturday Morning Walk for ALS

This morning Steve and Brianne participated in the ALS walk with Rob and his girls in honour of their Dad. Unfortunately Brittany was not yet feeling well so she and I weren't able to be there. My friend Ann organized the walk and had over 300 attend, an excellent turn-out for the first one. And the walk raised over $37,000.

Rob with the girls, from left Melanie, Nicky, Becky and Brianne



Steve and the girls


Thanks to everyone who sponsored us!