This is two posts in one day for me, an unheard of occasion. I have been honored by Colleen with the
Colleen's blog is http://onesmileliftsaspirit.blogspot.com/ and she is a terrific blogger and cardmaker.  Thank you Colleen.

These are the questions she asked.

1. Tell me your favorite three stamp companies.

2. Do you enter challenges?  If so, what are your favorites?

3. How long have you been making cards?

4. What is something you cannot live without in your craft arsenal?

5. What is your style of card making?  (CAS, layered, shabby chic, etc)

6. If you could visit one place in the world (and money was NOT an issue) where would it be?

7. What do you do with all the cards you make?

1. My favorite companies are Simon Says Stamp, Ellen Hutson and Lawn Fawn.
2 I've only done two challenges. One was last year and I don't remember which one it was. The      second one was for Crafthayzelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge, but I couldn't upload my card.
3. I have only seriously been making cards for several years and only at Stampin Up stamp camp. I've been buying supplies for many years but didn't know what to do with them.
4. I can't live without my T ruler and grid mat. I can't get things straight on my cards even with those.
5. My cardmaking is layered. That's how I learned, but after seeing cards on blogs I am trying to stretch my skills and branch out more.
6. I would love to go to Jerusalem and see the Holy City.
7. I send my cards because I usually make them for someone for a purpose. I do however have cards I've made at stamp camp in boxes and sometimes I will mail one if I'm in a bind with no time to stamp.

Now I am nominating seven people for this award. We can visit their blogs and learn about them.

http://carolinacardsbymaryh.blogspot.com/
http://cathyscardspot.blogspot.com/
http://cards4ubylouise.blogspot.com/
http://alacards.blogspot.com/
http://mylittlesliceofbliss.blogspot.com/
http://kardsbykadie.blogspot.com/
http://kopykat-holly.blogspot.com/

My questions are:

1.  Do you scrapbook as well as make cards?
2.  Are you a daytime or nighttime stamper?
3.  Do you listen to music or have the TV on when you stamp?
4.  Are you a stay at home stamper or do you join others at a local place and stamp?
5.  Where do you shop for supplies (online, brick and mortar store or other)?
6.  Are most of your friends stampers?
7.  Do you craft with others in your family?

Copy and paste the Leibster Award on your blog.

Here are the rules for the nomination:

1. Be sure to thank the blog that nominated you and be sure to link back to their blog.
2. Answer the 11 questions that the blogger asked you.
3. Nominate 11 of your favorite blogs with under 500 followers and ask your own 11 questions.
4. Make sure to let each blogger know about your Liebster Blog nomination on their blog (leave a comment and link back to your Liebster Blog post).

If you need to know what this Liebster Award is all about you can go HERE and read all about it....

 

My nominations are ladies that I admire and whose blogs I read. They are so talented and I hope you will visit them and say hello.

  

I'm feeling better today. I think I was just tired yesterday and couldn't get warm. I am tired of this though as I think everyone is. My thoughts are with all the people in California in the path of the heavy rains they are predicting. I hope "they" are wrong and it doesn't happen. Today I have a birthday card to share that I received. I don't think anyone will be offended by it. I couldn't get it to photograph well. I always have a glare on it. Maybe because it is on shiny paper. It cracked me up though.  The front says "I mithed your birthday".  Be kind to one another.

 

The cold is getting to me. I never feel like the house is warm enough and I hate to go outside. Just letting Molly in and out is hard. It is 3 above right now and Sunday they are predicting another 6 possible inches of snow. Possible because it could be freezing rain and sleet. The wind is just blowing and making it so cold. Oh my, I'm not ready for this.

 Saturday and Sunday the Heirloom Rubber Stamp Show is here in town. My SIL and I go every year. Last year there weren't as many vendors as in years past. I don't know if it is the economy or if people are losing interest. With the stores closing and the vendor shows becoming not as good, I am ordering most of my supplies and stamps online. Since I still had my Faith in Nature stamp set out I made this quick card for no reason. I can always stamp a sentiment inside.  Be kind to one another and be warm wherever you are.

 

I hope your weekend was a happy one. We had a great time Saturday with our family. I went to see my granddaughter skate in roller derby in the morning. Hubby didn't go because it's in a huge warehouse with concrete floors and it's very cold in there. She did great and got to be a jammer. That's where you start at the back and try to get through while the other team tries to keep you from getting through. It's very fast paced and both teams have jammers at the same time. She did so well. Not much to her so she's able to kind of slither through. Saturday afternoon we went to grandsons basketball game on the north side of town, Our other son and his family came to the game, then we all went out to dinner to celebrate Daughter in laws birthday. I made her card off of a card I saw on http://mycraftyplace281.blogspot.com/ blog. It was so perfect for DIL because she meditates. So all in all Saturday was fun. It was a lot for hubby. He was up late (for him) and slept for 12 hours, from 8 pm to 8 am. I can't remember him ever sleeping until 8 am! Sunday was a rest up day. The subzero temps are coming back this week, so I don't intend to be out and about too much. Be kind to one another.

 

Happily no tornado. Lots of hard rain and strong winds tho.  I was so thrilled when I read Darnells blog http://www.djkardkreations.com/ the other day. She mentioned using our pattern paper on our cards. It would be the whole background. I was so thrilled as I have so much trouble combining two papers together. Then she discovered a challenge to use the paper called http://craftyhazelnutspatternedpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/craftyhazelnuts-patterned-paper.html. I had just mad a card using patterned paper for the first time. I wanted to show the tree branches as the focal point. But I did add a stamped image. I hope that is okay for this challenge. I'm going to enter it and see if it's okay. My goal for 2014 was to do some challenges. So far I have entered none, so that makes 52 days in a row I've missed. Today is the day! Hope you will visit crafty hazel's and play along. Be kind to one another.

 

It was just one of those nights when you can't sleep. I watched the Olympics until it was over last night, then read for a while.  I'm reading King and Maxwell and it's really exciting so I have a hard time putting it down at night. Then I couldn't fall asleep. My feet were cold. Tossed and turned and slept off and on. At 4:44 lightning lit up the bedroom. Really loud thunder, three more strikes and it was over. Then heavy rain that lasted five minutes. Very strange but with all the snow we don't want a lot of heavy rain quickly. It did rain hard for a few minutes at 8:30 and stopped. That's been it so far but we'll see what the rest of the day brings. I can't ever remember being so obsessed about the weather. This year has been exceptional. We had those tracks again right outside our fence line. The rain has made them much lighter but I'm showing them to you. First picture is of the tracks and the second picture shows them coming from the forest behind our house. It's really pretty when the leaves change but so stark in winter. You really have to look close to see the tracks but it is alarming to have them so close. We think it is the coyote that's making those tracks. The geese started screaming last night about 3 and I think the coyote must have gotten one. There is a real coyote problem here and they are killing small dogs and cats around here. I take Molly out at night on her leash before I let her go in the yard. Gives me a chance to check and make sure it's safe.

I have to tell you what a wonderful day yesterday was. In the library and at the grocery store we all were so cheerful and talked to one another. Everyone was so happy to see the sun and it was nice and warm. The drearies do affect people's attitude. My last picture today shows the pool we are starting to get from thawing. I'll be swimming before the day is over!

Be kind to one another.

We have a day of sunshine but a very cold wind blowing. Tomorrow is predicted to have thunderstorms and a tornado warning! That's what you get when it warms up in Indiana. Today is a running day. We need food again! Food, clean clothes and money. Just our regular routine. Cleaned house yesterday and our son stopped by for lunch. That was a nice surprise. He tries to drop in when he has appointments on our side of town.  So I'd better get busy, fix lunch and get going.  This card was for our next door neighbor who turned 83 yesterday. He is the nicest man and so good with plants and his yard. Our grass is taken care of as well as snow removal but he cuts his own grass and sometimes shovels the snow! Be kind to one another.

 

I'm trying to find my swim suit but it's put away for winter. It is raining and since all this snow will be melting and warming up I figure we will be able to swim in the backyard! We are also supposed to get freezing rain and then 1-3 inches of more snow! The little bit of snow we expected Friday turned out to be 5 1/2". This is just too much.

We had a nice weekend. Grandson had a basketball game and he played really well, as did the whole team. Then dropped in to the customer appreciation day with my SU demo. Sunday was a good day to watch the Olympics.  We did a couple of errands, ate dinner out and back home. Today it is just staying in because of the weather. I feel like such a wimp when I see all those athletes skiing, snowboarding, ice skating and all the audience watching in the snow in Russia. Why can't I just adjust to this cold. My feet have been cold since November! Today's card is one I made a long time ago. I needed a sympathy card so I pulled this out of my stash to send. Seems like I have sent more sympathy cards in the past year than ever and already needed two this year.  Be kind to one another.

 

This didn't photograph well. (Maybe it's me). Cream cardstock and green mat. The flower is embossed in white and sponged around it with green, then mounted on black cardstock.

 

I'd have been here sooner but I had to do laundry. I hate when those household things take over my stamping and blogging time. I think the plan should be - wear your clothes everyday until they fall apart, then get something else out of the closet, wear it till it falls apart and so on until closet is empty. No laundry to do and then you get to get a whole new wardrobe.

Please say hello to a new follower of mine - another Brenda whose craft space is amazing. Her blog is http://friendscraftinwithfriends.blogspot.com/. I kept seeing her name on blogs and I'm happy to "meet" her.

I had not finished my card yesterday with my new embossing folder. It is going to a neighbor so I don't have to mail it. I decided it needed something else so I added a top border. Maybe it's too much but it's glued down now. I think she'll like it. It is her first V day without her hubby so I just wanted to give her a little something.

Hope everyone in the path of this current snow and ice storm stay in and stay safe. Good grief will this end soon! We are looking at more snow this weekend since it is warming up but I don't think it will be a lot. My oldest grandson is coming home for the weekend. I don't know how these college students do it walking to class in these below zero temps. Maybe it doesn't bother them like it does older folks like me.

Went to grandson's basketball game last night and got home around 7:45. Hubby goes to bed at 6:30 every night so he was in a hurry to get ready for bed. This is how he came in to say goodnight. When he takes things off they come off inside out and then he puts them on like that. It cracked me up and I said we have to have a picture of this! Notice the pocket liners on the outside.

 

We are above zero today with tomorrow being 25 and Friday going up to 35. Who hoo. It's funny how your mind set gets. In October we're thinking "Oh my gosh, we are getting two inches of snow, darn it that's too much". Now we think "Oh thank goodness we're only getting two inches of snow".
It is still cold at zero or a little above. Hope all of you expecting ice and snow are safe and warm.

On my first card today I got to use an embossing folder by Darcie that Emily of http://mylittlesliceofbliss.blogspot.com/ sent me as blog candy. It is so sweet with lots of different hearts. My second card is with a stamp set from Lawn Fawn and I saw a card made like this but I'm not sure if it was on their blog or by one of the design team.

These last two pictures are tracks from this morning. In the first picture you can see footprints outside of the fence coming around and by the side of the fence. In the second picture, which isn't good, shows the footprints right up against the fence. These are pretty big prints so we think maybe deer prints. To the right of our property is a field with lots of trees where the deer live. There is a coyote that just strolls through the common area beyond our fence in the daylight and those tracks are a little farther from the fence.

 

Thanks to all of you wonderful ladies that posted. It makes me so happy to hear from you. I took computer to the store today and it worked fine there. "Ben" my computer guy was there and walked me through stuff and said he thought it was my system. Called Comcast when I got home (seems like the 400th time!) and they sent me to support. com. There is a charge for that but he ran a bunch of stuff and said there were no virus's (?) and he did remove something. Said it was fine and I wouldn't have any more trouble. I'm posting here that if I can't comment, don't give up on me. Maybe it will be better tomorrow. Today I was able to do some comments but not others.

Please don't think I'm complaining about hubby. He was diagnosed in August of 2007 with dementia. We have been working with this for a long time and we are so fortunate that he is still as good as he is. I find when I laugh, he will laugh. That's always my first thing to do. If you could see some of the ways he comes out of the bedroom looking like you would crack up.  The best one was tan shorts inside out with the long white pockets flapping on the outside. I told him he could fly if he ran fast enough. The funny thing is he always had such a quick temper and now is so docile. He thanks me everyday for taking care of him and says how much he loves me and couldn't do this without me. That warms my heart so much because someday he may not know me. He has slowed down so much and it is so hard to see him try to do things that are so easy. Some things he just can't do. I put his movies in the dvd player and he is happy to watch the same ones over and over. I have ordered most of the seasons of Walker, Texas Ranger. This is his favorite and he has about seven movies he likes too. That has been a blessing this winter since he can't go out. We are getting along just fine. He loves that I have a hobby and it keeps me home and sure makes me happy. This is the most insidious disease. It just eats away his thoughts, judgment and personality.

That's why we went to the Veterans to get him in the system in case we need help down the road. I will be working on that next.  One crisis at a time!

Todays card is from stamp camp. Very simple and easy and fast. Also, sending you a picture of Molly. She is such a comfort to me and she makes hubby laugh with her antics. She lays on the loveseat in my craft room and snores while I'm in there. This is her helping me stamp. Be kind to one another.

 

We did have a nice day yesterday and today even though we had to go to the funeral home. The grandkids were here and we had a good visit. Then we saw the whole family at the funeral home.

I called IT today and they went through my computer and said I have Trojan on my IP and have had it since I got my first computer here at this address. I don't know what to believe because I didn't have trouble until January. They said it came from Taiwan and I would have to have a new IP. I'm not sure I even know what that is or who to call or what to do. That is what is corrupting everything. I'll worry about it tomorrow.

I knew our visit to the Veterans was too good to be true. They helped us fill out a form to send to Missouri for our DD214. In six weeks we got a letter saying they could not help, didn't have enough information so they sent it to Langley, VA. Saturday we got a letter from PA saying fill out this form and send it in with your DD214. If you don't have one, you can get it from MO. Oh dear. I can see where this is going. I don't think I have the energy to deal with one more thing right now. Hubby is slowly getting worse. I didn't think I would be able to get him ready today. He didn't want to change out of his sweats and put on nice clothes. Finally he did but shirt was on backwards and shoes on wrong feet. Sometimes he gets mad if I make him change things. He wants to know what difference it makes. I try to let him do things for himself if possible. It makes him feel bad if I have to help. Sometimes he will laugh with me and he'll come in when he's dressed and look at me and say "this is wrong, isn't it" and we laugh. If we are home I don't care. I do try to pick my battles that really matter. He did enjoy the grandkids here and kept saying how much fun that was. It's been hard to get him out because he is so sensitive to hot and cold and he is freezing right now.   They are predicting 17 below for Monday and Tuesday. This is so depressing.

I'm glad you're still here after all that. This first card is the last make and take from Archiver's we did. They will be closed at the end of this week. Hardly anything is left in the store. I did have a chance to say goodbye to my favorite gals. We cried and I hate it for them since they are losing their jobs.  The second card is one I made for my oldest granddaughter. Be kind to one another.

 

All I wanted to do was start a blog, share a few cards I made and visit new friends. It sounds so simple, fun and easy. I love the new friends, love visiting blogs and being inspired by all of you great stampers out there and it's always nice to get comments and email. Since I got my new laptop, the computer issues have continued. I'll be the first to admit I'm not the brightest chip in the disc when it comes to computers. Windows 8 is easy to learn as far as moving around. This window that keeps jumping around is making me nuts. I just typed this sentence and it jumped to a different screen and when I came back this sentence wasn't there any more. Why? I keep losing my internet connection . I can load the comment page, type on it and then it leaves. Where does it go? Some blogs won't load at all. Mostly I get the message that Internet Explorer can't display the page. Why not, it used to. "Ben" loaded google chrome on to run yahoo. I called Comcast today (again) and he said use only the router and not the modem that they connected. That will fix all your problems. As soon as we got off the phone I started to go to some of my blogs and IE could not display the page. I play boggle online and keep losing my connection. That has never happened before and I've been playing that a long time. Could it be the laptop? I'm so discouraged that I've taken a break. That's where I've been. I have made some cards and I will take pictures tomorrow and post some of them. We have to visit the funeral home tomorrow for the father of one of our son's closest friend that he grew up with. On the up side, the Olympic games have started and I love watching them. I would like to make paragraphs for you but enter won't take me to the next line.  Be kind to one another.

Just a quick post today to see if I can add a picture. It is the first time we will be able to go to our grandsons basketball game because of the weather, so we are getting ready to go. May have freezing rain and snow later today. I'm showing you my newest tools of the trade - my fancy new mouse and my old fashion can opener. Be kind to one another.

Oh my gosh, I did it!! I meant to turn the picture sideways but you get the idea. I'm getting there slowly but I'm pleased so far with this new computer. It still won't let me comment on some blogs and I don't know why. I think I will go ahead and have the tech guy come Monday since there are still things not working.