For Jimmy's dad

via Instagram http://ift.tt/1NrPwju

Double Slider Card

Last week was my turn to teach a project to my stamp club. I got the idea from Stamps to Die For. She even has a great video tutorial.

Just pull the little tab and the secret panels will pull up to reveal a hidden message. Cute and surprisingly simple to make.

12.11 Trending: _____mageddon

So we had a little rain today. Everyone's been a little flipped out about the whole thing. It's sort of ridiculous. I know there's been a lot of flooding and a lot of trees have come down, and we had significant power outages, but the labels people have been giving our storm make it seem like the world was coming to an end. If I hear insert "bad weather related adjective-mageddon" anymore, my head just might explode (but not literally, haha).

Luckily, in our bubble world, living in a modern high rise, we didn't see any adverse affects of the weather. Both of us stayed home and got a lot done.
I spent some time working on my Christmas cards. I still have 15 more to design and make. Then write them out...so on and so forth.

Saturday is the Yuen's Annual Christmas Cookie Party. Unfortunately, I won't be able to go, but Jimmy will. So I made my chocolate toffee bars so he doesn't show up empty handed.

Since I never stepped out of the building lest I melt in the pouring rain, and since it's Throwback Thursday, here's a photo I took of a tree at Macy's in Union Square a few days ago:
So it's technically not the tree of the day, but I still wanted to share a tree photo.

Here's another Throwback Thursday photo. Because why not!
Maui, Dec 1998.

12.2: CTOTD

What does CTOTD stand for?
Well, I noticed that I've been posting a lot of Christmas trees on my instagram account, so I decided on the title "CTOD: Christmas Tree Of the Day". Which made me wonder if I can take a snapshot of a different Christmas tree every day till the 25th? Challenge accepted!

Today's tree was spotted on my way to the Habitat office. It's in the courtyard of the office building where I take my guitar lessons.

In other Daily December news, I started my Christmas cards...
Who can resist that little smile?

Putting together a bunch of little Rudolphs.

Not exactly sure where I'm going with these yet...

Marching On

Saying goodbye to the 3rd month of 2014...how quickly it flew by! Here are a few snapshots of my March...
Gandhi Statue at the Ferry Building.

Taxi and bike turning onto Market Street.

My brother-in-law works here.

Sunset on March 15th. Too cold for me to dip my toes in. Jimmy's braver than me.

Same day as above, only about an hour before. The fog lifted just in time for sunset.

A different day, the setting sun glowing on Alcatraz.

That apartment building fire was the opposite side of the ballpark from us but we could see the black smoke from our living room window. We drove by the devastation one Saturday afternoon.

Today, the last day of the month. Cold, windy, stormy. Raining sideways, umbrellas barely made a difference.

Paula Cole was in Berkeley on the 27th and we saw her at an awesome venue called Freight and Salvage. We had front row seats. No photos allowed during the performance, but I got one of her afterwards signing cd's.

Practicing barre chords. They are hard but I love them for some reason. I think because they are challenging. Although every part of learning the guitar is challenging. And rewarding. And that half gold dinosaur makes me laugh. Who would buy that??

Yes guitar is taking up most of my creative energy right now. But I still managed to do a decent bit of paper crafting too.



Our drive to the hideaway was gorgeous last weekend. A beautiful sunny spring day where our normally golden brown hills were fresh green.



California poppies.

A new friend...shy at first...

but as curious about us as we were about her.

Then just a day and a half later, we had just a little bit of snow on the ground.


"The March wind roars
Like a lion in the sky,
And makes us shiver
As he passes by.
When winds are soft,
And the days are warm and clear,
Just like a gentle lamb,
Then spring is here."
- Author Unknown

11.13 It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like

A bunch of cards I made at Cranberry Hill Mercantile today:

11.12.13 From My Dad to My Mom

My best guess is that he gave this to her in 1969 or 1970. I may have a lot of my own momentos, but I don't have very many of my parents to each other so I cherish the few I have.

11.8 Getting Christmas Card Ideas

A few projects my friend Elizabeth's showed us how to make yesterday:

Time to start thinking about my own Christmas card designs.

11.4 Crafting Friends

Tonight was my night to teach a project to my crafting friends. I showed them my version of the Layered Window Frame that I got inspiration from here. It's a fun little dimensional card that folds up flat and fits into a standard envelope to mail to your nearest and dearest. 9 of us got together on this beautiful crisp fall night to craft, chat about our hobby and talk about what we've been doing the past month since we've seen each other last.

Happy Halloween!

Boo! Are you scared? I am, but because it's already the end of the month. October flew by! I'm sure it did for just about everyone else out there, amiright?

Well, since I only had 1 post this month, I'll do a quick rewind on my most memorable events this month...
I met Barbie Doll in 1994 when I worked at the mall selling rubber stamps. She moved near Tahoe a few years later, but even after almost 20 years, we still keep in touch even though the miles separate us. She came to SF with her daughter and grandkids for a quick day trip. They were suppose to go to Alcatraz, but it was the 1st day of the Government shutdown. But San Francisco has a gazillion other things to do, so they we not deterred.

The following weekend, we spent an afternoon w/ our besties the Bowens. Miss A had a concert in the park...

and Prince W had a soccer game. He even got to play goalie. Jimmy, who is an ice hockey goalie, was pretty impressed!

A few days later, Niece Nikki, who is a high school senior, drove up with her best friend to shadow Jimmy at work. They had a school project where they had to follow someone at a job they were interested in pursuing.

And just this weekend, I drove down to Southern California with my MIL and SIL to celebrate the upcoming arrival of my grand-niece! Two of my other sister-in-laws were there to celebrate, too. Love these little family reunions, especially when we're celebrating such special moments.

And of course, I did a lot of crafting this month.
I couldn't resist creating this silly little card.
You have seen the video this is referencing, haven't you? If not, please enjoy yourself and watch below.

3 Cards on Thursday

Elizabeth had her stamp club get together this morning. She always designs the prettiest cards.

the joy of being an aunt. the 'joy' of being a homeowner.

It's a good year to be an aunt!

The 2nd oldest niece got married last weekend.
I made this card for her and her beloved earlier this month. Her husband's last name is very similar to ours. She joked about hyphenating her name. That's not at all awkward, lol!

Jimmy and I got this letter today from youngest Retzlaff nephew.
(click to make the photo larger)
How about that?? Can't wait till they all come up for our annual Camp Retz. The kids will finally get the loft all to themselves. Probably more important to their parents because they won't have to share a room with them. Ha!

Note from nephew...segues to finally being able to use the loft...segues to...another cabin remodel video. LOL. Yes, I'm on a video kick. So is Jimmy, he's putting them together, I'm putting them up to share.

This is a yucky part of the remodel. In order to get the deck approved for permits, we had to have our leach field completely redone. A major annoyance. It seemed to us that the old leach field was fine, but the type/style is no longer allowed, so whenever anyone rebuilds, they have to have their's redone. Anyhoo...Jimmy set up a webcam in one of our windows to take a snapshot every 5 minutes. Here's another time lapse video of the work the man did on Monday. It's short, about a minute. The first 20 seconds just shows the sun rising, which is totally cool to us, but you can skip to 20 seconds in to watch the guy start working. If that even interests you at all. We like being able to see what's going on especially since we can't be there in person to watch.
(didn't put music to this one. really. what music would be appropriate for something related to a septic system?).

On the Table

I never make Easter cards. But I didn't make Valentine's Day cards this year, so instead I'm sending out a handful of Easter ones instead.

On another note...a friend posted this photo on Facebook. It turned my stomach and cracked me up at the same time. So I had to steal it from her, but she stole it form someone else.
There are just so many things wrong with this. I guarantee this will never ever be on my table.

On the Table Monday

After spending some time at that Scrapbook Expo on Thursday, I've been on a bit of a creative streak. Here are a couple of things I've made in the past day or so.
I drew my inspiration from this card that I had pinned onto Pinterest 40 weeks ago. I still like their card better, I think the solid colors work better for a chevron pattern, but I'm satisfied with my version. I'll just have to make another card with solid colored paper.

I'm going to try to include a photo with the tools I used to create the card, kinda like how I try to include a photo of the ingredients (à la pioneer woman) whenever I share a recipe.
Aside from the paper, I used 3 different sized scallop punches to make the flower. The diamond punch for the cheverons - I punched 40 of them and glued them on individually. The swirls and birds embossing folder, embossed in my Cuttlebug (see below), a black ink pad and stamps from CTMH.

This whimsical little bunny card is inspired by Karen Burniston's pop'n cut dies from Sizzix.

When the card is opened up, it has a pop-up image in the center. I just added a little sentiment, but any image could be glued onto it.

I needed my Cuttlebug to use the pop'n cut die (it's below the ink pad) and the base tray to use the die. I also used 2 oval dies (1 regular, 1 scalloped) for the front image, and the bracket square die for a layered piece on the pop up. Most of the stamps were from Penny Black colored with alcohol ink markers. The sentiment is from CTMH.