Forgotten Samples

   I was going through my stamped work from the last couple of years and found some things that I hadn't posted yet. I had made a few tags, an altered Bingo card, and flowers, so here they are:

    This was made from Coredinations cardstock, which has a different color core so you can sand it to shade it. I sanded the edges, but I didn't sand it enough so the shading doesn't show up much. The leaves were die cut from an envelope that I received in the mail. This is one time when I love getting junk mail! (I'll post this flower again once I decide what to put in the center, lol!)

 

I like making tags with distress inks, and I love these Wendy Vecchi butterfly stamps.

 

Doing the altered bingo cards was great fun! I wish the butterfly showed up better, I colored it with Ranger's Adirondack alcohol inks, and I love the way it turned out.

 

 I don't know what I am going to do with all the tags I have made, but it sure is fun!

Tammy and I made some paste paper several years ago, and it had just been sitting here. So when I saw the directions for making your own washi paper, I knew this was the perfect thing to try it with. I like how it turned out! You just lay pieces of double-stick tape down on the paper and cut it out. Now these are tapes, and washi tape is all the rage now.

Hopefully, I will be making a lot of samples in the near future to add!

Blessings,
Janis

Finally! A New Sample!

   After a long hiatus from stamping I finally sat down today and actually did a project, start to finish. I don't usually finish something in one day, it usually has to sit a few days while I decide what to add, but this one just flowed. It isn't something that a lot of people can relate to, but if there are any Tim Holtz fans reading this, you might like it. So here it is: Ta Da!

Isn't that crazy?

 Blessings,

Janis

Life Is Sacred

   We must, absolutely must begin to propagate the idea, once held in this country but gone now, that life, ALL human life, is sacred and precious. Teach this to your children please! We live in a country that once had a government that could be described as "rule by law", but I think we have lost that because the principal of the sacredness of life is gone.

Lunch and A Book Review

   I had put out a notice on facebook that the 'ladies" were going to have lunch at Jester's today, but I didn't know if anyone was going to make it so I told Andy that maybe he and I could have lunch with Beth and my mother, and Lorie if she made it. Daphene is sick so they couldn't come, but the rest of us, including Lorie, made it. It was so much fun, and the food was great as usual. The others usually get the pimento cheese sandwich, which doesn't have anything to do with pimentos as it is made with cheddar and cream cheese-yum!, but I have never had this, so today was the day to try it. I got the white bean and chicken chili and a pimento cheese sandwich, and it was all absolutely delicious. I can't recommend it highly enough! The older I get, the more I need to get together with people and just talk and laugh and relax, we don't do enough of that anymore. We really missed Cynthia, especially since we had to put 5 people at a table for four, and if she had been there we could have gotten another table, LOL!
  

   When I went out to breakfast Friday I saw that they were having a yard sale down the street, so when I got back I checked it out. There wasn't much left, but I did find two books, one of which was the first novel written by a woman when she was 85. It was Out To Pasture by Effie Leland Wilder, and I bought it because the woman having the yard sale said that she had gotten to know her, and she told me a few things about her that I really don't remember at this point! Anyway, I just finished it, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is about a woman in a retirement home who decides to write a diary about what is going on each day in the home. I laughed and laughed all the way through it, and am looking forward to reading the four books that she wrote after this one.
   One of the situations in the book is that she sits in the library from time to time and can't help hearing two of the men talking out on the terrace. This is one of the times that she eavesdrops on them:
   "...I was glad when I listened to my two 'merry men' conversing and heard Paul give a chuckle.
   "What's funny?" asked Curtis.
   "I was thinkin' of two fellow I heard about-Joe and Ed-eatin' breakfast in a cafe. Ed noticed something funny about Joe's ear. He said, "Joe, did you know you've got a suppository in your left ear?'
   "I have?' replied Joe. 'A suppository?' and he pulled it out and looked at it hard and said, 'Ed, I'm glad you saw this thing! Now I know where my hearin' aid is!"
   It was a delightful book!
Blessings,
Janis

My thoughts after watching Monumental

   I have just seen the film Monumental, and would like to give my opinion of some parts of it. I like the film, especially the first half, but there were some things that disturbed me about the conclusions that were drawn. The Pilgrims were incredibly strong, character-filled people who stayed here even though almost half of them had died. They fought against incredible odds to get out of England, and then to get to America. The hardships they suffered are past imagining. I don't believe that they could have done that if they had not had a deep, intimate relationship with the Lord. I do not think that they did it because of their vision, I can't believe that they could have done what they did for a vision; the Lord had to give them strength to endure.
   At one point in the movie, when Kirk Cameron was at Harvard, the man he was talking to said that a nation must be built on God's law. This is what I take issue with. I think that most Christians in  America believe that the problem with our country today is that God's law is no longer being proclaimed and followed, and that the answer is to go back to the law. This is the conclusion that they seemed to be promoting in the film, but a lack of God's law is not the problem. The problem is a lack of a knowledge of Jesus and his truth. (Yes, I do not capitalize the pronouns. If you will look at your King James Version you will see that they didn't either.) Jesus fulfilled the law, and it no longer applies to us. We have the fulfillment of the law living in us in union with us (I Cor. 6:17), and God has written His law on our hearts, in the person of Jesus. We must not mingle law with grace, law with Jesus. Paul wrote two letters to correct that heresy, but the church today does it all the time. If you will search the scriptures, reading Hebrews and Galatians particularly, you will find that mixing the two is one of the worst things you can do. If we could live by the law, we wouldn't need Jesus. You can have one or the other, but not both! So the problem is not a lack of God's law in this country, the problem is a lack of people who know Jesus intimately, who understand that they are living in union with him, and who seek to introduce others to him. The only answer to the problems in this country is Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! It is all about him, not about the law, not about morality, not about imposing God's law on unsaved people. It is just about Jesus.
   If people know the truth about Jesus and have a deep intimate relationship with him, and they are resting and trusting in him and cooperating with him as he lives his life through them, then we do not have to  concern ourselves with politics beyond our duties as citizens. God will take care of us one way or another. Maybe it will be prosperity, maybe it will be persecution, but we are just being distracted if we spend our time wringing our hands over the state of the nation and the people and try to use law and civil action to fix things. The answer is this: love people and introduce them to Jesus, and teach your children to do the same. Watchman Nee, who wrote one of the greatest Christian books this world has ever seen, The Normal Christian Life, spent 17 years in a Chinese prison. God did not save him from that, he had to go through it. Bringing America back to its heyday of prosperity and freedom may not be his will for us, but I am not going to concern myself with that and work myself to death to try to prevent our losing what we have left and to bring back what we once had. I will do my duty as a citizen, and if God leads me to do more, I hope that I will cooperate with him. I certainly intend to, but I don't think that saving our bacon in America is on his agenda. I think his agenda is what it always was, introducing more and more people to Jesus so that he can express his life through them.

Lunch With Friends

   A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with my mother, daughter, and three friends, two actually because one had to leave before we ate, at Jester's on Castle Street. I love that place! They have the best food, and it is good for you. The desserts aren't so good for you, but they are wonderful, especially the brownie, which I passed on this time. Major miracle! The guy comes in and goes over all the desserts that they have, and it's the highlight of the lunch, lol. We had him take some pictures of us before we left, from left to right we have Beth, my mother, me, Lorie, and Cynthia in front.

I have absolutely no idea what we were looking at here, but it must have been good! We had such a good time that day; times like this make life wonderful.
Blessings,
Janis

Catching Up

   I have been very had about posting, and I have pictures from as far back as Christmas that I haven't put on here, so here goes.
   First, I didn't do much stamping this year, but I did manage to make a few cards. Not that I sent any! I came down with something a few weeks before Christmas, so I didn't get much done this year.
   This is something that I started Christmas before last,  and finally finished the next Christmas. I covered a piece of cardboard with foil and ran it through the Big Kick with an embossing folder. It worked really, really well. My glue pen wouldn't work so I had a time putting glitter on the snowflakes. I love the Martha Stewart icicle punch that I used at the bottom. Be sure to click on each picture to enlarge it.

 I used a bag that I have been saving for a long time for the heart on this one.

I love the Martha Stewart gingerbread boy punch that I used here.

The first tag was made with a piece of corrugated cardboard. Pulling off some of the covering and exposing some of the inside is very popular now. It makes a nice tag. I wish I had some of Tanmy's to put on here. Hers were great! You can't really see the next tag because of the glare, but it was a Tim Holtz style plaid made with alcohol inks, I think. The last three were done with the Stampin' Up! ornament punch, which I call
"the turnip", LOL. The snowflakes came from the SU! snowflake die. Love that thing!

And lastly, this is our tree from 2010. I don't think I have ever seen gifts arranged more artistically. Beth did it, of course, and she did a great job.

I thought the washer and dryer in the background were a nice touch! Very festive!
   Well, that's it for Christmas. Next blog will have pictures from lunch at Jester's with friends.
Blessings,
Janis