22 Years!

Happy Thursday everyone!

Today is the day, 22 years ago, that my hubby and I were married! I thought it would be fun to go down memory lane and show you a few photos from our wedding. It's so fun to look back and see what the fashion trends were back then! My dress was purchased by my amazingly generous, older sister Nancy! She's the best! Here are some of the photos from our special day, way back when.


My father was not alive, so both of my brothers walked me down the isle. I look so nervous, don't I? I do remember getting to the alter and whispering to the priest, "Can I do that again?"





These next two photos show how beautiful our church is. All my brothers and sisters were married here and all of our kids were baptized here too.






There are some amazing stained glass windows in our church. Gorgeous colors!






Here I am with my 3 sisters on the right and 3 best buddies on the left.




This one's my favorite! It was my mom's 16x20 framed photo of the two of us with my brothers and sisters. I now have this photo in my house and I love it.




Here's me and my mom. She looked so beautiful that night!




This one shows you the Star Gazer Lily bouquets that were on the alter.




Here's my new hubby and me, dancing at the reception. I remember my long train was a hook-on kind that I could take off. A fairly new idea for back then.




And here we are! All ready to start our life together!



It's been a wonderful 22 years! Dietz (nickname for Dietmar and pronounced, Deet-mar. . . .born in Germany) has been a loving husband, fabulous father to our two boys and even though there have been some rough times, we seem to always make it through. . . together! Here's a card I gave to him this morning, along with a box of his favorite golf balls.



And take a guess what he gave me. . . . .Yup! A gift card to Archiver's! Can't wait to go get some new goodies!

Thanks for sticking with me through this long post! Hope you enjoy your day! :)

Playing with Ink

The weekend sure went by fast! Can't believe it's Monday already! I'll be working my normal days for the next two weeks, then will have the first week of November off. I'm going to need it before all the craziness of the holidays starts in the flower department!

On Saturday I had some time to play with some techniques. I wanted to try and figure out how to get an embossed image and at the same time, achieve a bit of shading. I thought about the "second generation" stamping technique and realized that after stamping off the image once on scratch paper, I could add a bit more ink to just the edges of the stamp, before clear embossing it. No coloring, no blending, and it turned out pretty cool! I used the Decorative Ornament cling stamp from Hero Arts for these first two cards.


The sheer bows on this card started out white. I made some paint with the inks and water, then dragged the ribbon through the mixture, for a light "wash" of color.


Along with the same technique on the ornament, I also used the acrylic block technique on this next card, but with a twist. I wanted to make a frame, so I only inked around the outside edges of the block, before spraying it with water and stamping it onto the paper. Then I masked off the frame and stamped part of the Music Background in the middle.




I made one more card that I thought would be fun. I used the Hero Arts Have a Donut clear set. I've always thought the Christmasy cups they give you at Starbucks, during the holidays, are so cute! So I paper pieced the cup and decorated the donut with green and red swirls! Yum! The background was stamped with Hero Arts' Stunning Snowflakes.




Thanks for stopping by today! Hope everyone has a great start to the week! :)