Meeting Online Friends is. . . . .

. . . . . .THE BEST!

I had such a fun day today! I met up with some online, blogging, Flickr friends at the Mall of America! We had lunch, and then did some shopping together at Archiver's.

It's always so nice to see Linda and Anne! Here we are - the three of us - in Archiver's, of course! :)



But the really exciting part of the day, was that we were all lucky enough to meet another online friend, Judy Jung! Here she is! (Please note the rack of Hero Arts goodies next to us.)



It was such a joy to meet her! She was exactly how I had envisioned in my head. So very kind and fun - we all laughed a lot today! She brought each one of us a lovely gift and card. She is up here in Minnesota, visiting her darling daughter, Kathy, and she came along with Judy too. What a sweet gal she is! It was as if we'd all known each other for a very long time. LOVE THAT!

Here's a photo of Judy and her sweet daughter.



We had lunch first. I think we could have talked and talked for hours!



Here's another one of all five of us.



And one more, leaving Archiver's with our bags of goodies! I'm happy to report, I was not the one who spent the most money this time! :)


Hope you enjoyed the photos of our fun day! We tried to convince Judy to come back in September for Scrapfest. Fingers and toes crossed! Would REALLY LOVE to see you again, Judy! The time went by too quickly today!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and thanks for stopping by! :)

Lily Pad Challenge - Patterned Paper!

Hi there!

Over at Lily Pad Cards, there is a new challenge and we are to use patterned paper on our cards. It's sponsored by Simon Says Stamp, and you could win a $25.00 gift certificate!

I have always been one to struggle with using patterned paper on my cards, so I was a little nervous for this one. I decided to use just a bit of some cute, polka dotted paper from Jillybean Soup. Here's my card.



I added a small strip of the paper to the edges of my green panel, which was stamped with the Hero Arts True Friends background stamp. I die cut the branch twice; once with a dark green patterned paper left over from Christmas, and again with just white. I offset the two branches before adhering them together to create a shadow effect. A circle punch of the dotted paper was adhered to a die cut doily, then stamped with the sentiment before adding it to the card. See? Patterned paper is fun to use on cards, and I enjoyed the challenge!

So, head on over to Lily Pad Cards and play along. You can read all the details and see the amazing cards the other DT members created!

I'm going to the Mall of America on Saturday to have lunch with my two buddies, Anne and Linda, and we are also meeting Judy Jung!! She's here visiting her daughter and I can't wait to meet her!

Thanks for coming by and have a fabulous weekend! :)

We Have A Winner!!

Good morning everyone!

I's an exciting day! The day I choose a winner of my giveaway! I went to random.org and figured out how to use the random generator to pick a winner. There were 143 comments. The generator chose comment number 99. I just wish I could figure out how to show it to you here on my post. I tried several times, different ways, but I can't get it to work! So, Hopefully you can trust me that it is correct!

Comment number 99 is Karen, who said this:

Karen said...

Wow Barb, 200 followers, goes to show how far your kindness reaches. Congrats on hosting such a great blog and for all the wonderful inspiration you give! And what a wonderful giveaway...so very generous. And I can't wait to hear your exciting news!!! Have a great week, Hugs my friend!

Big congrats to you, Karen! Woo, hoo! I'll be sending you a message to get your address.

Thanks to all of you for the sweet comments and for all my new followers! (up past 250 already!) So happy to have you!

I'm feeling better and have the day off from work today. It's snowing and miserable outside too, so I'm hoping to get some crafty time in.

Hope you all have a great week, and congrats again to Karen! :)