20 minutes ... tick tok ...

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American friends and bloggy friends ... enjoy your meal, your company, your day off and your black friday, celebrate with great gusto!!!

Here in Canada we have already celebrated our Thanksgiving, it falls in October for us ... each year I have a great many things that I am thankful for ... especially life, health, family & friends.

Today, on the eve of the American Thanksgiving I am thankful for 20 minutes ... you got it ... 20 minutes!

gotta love first responders and all of their shiny equipment

This morning I went downtown to meet up with some gal pals to do lunch and shopping at a German Christmas Market .... I was looking forward to seeing pretty German glass ornaments ... taking in the aromas and tastes of Gingerbread, Sausage and Mulled wine ... and starting the festive season off with a bang ...

Where there is smoke .... (there was a fireball but i wasn't able to photo it)

first responders on hand for blocks ... my two friends hanging out across the street

Oh it did start with a bang ... 20 minutes before the gates opened a propane tank blew ... hurling flames into the sky, billowing smoke every where ... surrounding  us ....  quickly the sounds of alarms and fires engines, police cars, ambulances rang through the air .... lights flashing, roadblocks being set up ... so here I am ... with my friends, on the street .... all of us so thankful for 20 minutes ... if it had happened any later and happy shoppers where filling the area who knows what devastation there might have been.  And always thankful for first responders ... the men & women who have dedicated their lives to the safety and wellbeing of the rest of us.

We decide to head for cover and warm up with a tasty coffee .... Mona Lisa came out to play!

and throwing caution to the wind, we decided that a decadent chocolate fondue was in order ....

MLM is loving her individual Mink chocolate

Thank you ... to whoever is taking note ... out in the cosmos... thank you for the 20 minutes ... I feel positively blessed.

Izzy & Sue and that wad of tinfoil looking sculpture

Me & Izzy!!!

This post is brought to you by Extreme Gratitude and dear sweet Jenny Matlock and her fabulous Alphabe-Thursday meme.  Check it out for other "thankful" entries.

Igloos ...

an igloo ... taken from wikipedia

yes,  I said Igloos .... so what is an igloos you ask and why would i write about them???  well there is this kind of standard running joke that a lot of tourists to Canada expect to see Igloos .... cuz, well ... i think it's because our tourism kinda promotes specific images which give visitors the wrong impression of what and who Canada is ...  Here's what else seem to be on every tourist site or brochure ... Moose, Beavers, Royal Canadian Mounted Police in their red uniforms ... totem poles, and kids playing ice hockey on frozen ponds all year long ...

RCMP this Remembrance Day

and then let's snap back to reality ... the last time i saw a Beaver it was on "Billy the Exterminator" and the beaver he was relocating was in Louisiana ... kinda cool ... and yes we do have them, but they aren't damning up every river ... and hey other parts of the world have them too!

I have never seen a moose up close and personal ... they would be a lot more north than were i am ... but deer, i have seen deer,  but not walking the streets ... it's not like you would visit here, leave your hotel and see a moose crossing the street.  Our RCMP do wear those fine red uniforms ... (I love the boots!)  but only for dress occasions, parades that kinda thing.

Surprisingly most of us live within a couple hours drive from the USA border, and the weather is very very similar to the northern USA  ...  so no year round frozen lakes or igloos ... those you have to go way north to Canada's Central Arctic or Greenland ...

and an igloo ... it's a snow house ... a house made of snow ... sometimes it's a real house ... sometimes it's a small temporary shelter used by hunters ...

So speaking of houses ... ahem .... Mona Lisa Mae is still waiting for her's to be built ... when will i find the time?

Mona Lisa Mae is growing weary of sleeping in a pocket in my purse ... i really do have to make that house.

Well this not so fine post is brought to you by the letter I and our fabulous Jenny Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday Meme ... we do love the Jenny ... and her other participants as well ...  check them out for some fab, cool, interesting I posts ...

cards in 10 ....

... 10 minutes that is ...  Check out the Inspired Scrapper for my post on winter themed cards ... and there is a bonus ... all of the cards can be made in 10 minutes ... easy peasy simple cards  ... here are a few of them!

So quick, So easy and So darn wintery ...

Peace, Love & Paper!
~Jo

H is for Happy Heart, Hayley, Honey & Home ....

Hayley dressed for work on Halloween day

and i do have a Happy Heart ... i have an amazing daughter Hayley, and a cute little dog named Honey ... and we live in a tiny little Home ... but even tiny little homes are larger than large when  filled with love & happiness ... and that's really all i have to say about H ... it's all good ... it will always be good because of the love ...

Honey, playing Hide n seek in the left over Halloween Candy.

As always, this post is brought to you by the fabulous Jenny Matlock and her Alphabe-Thursday meme ... the best meme around ...

Mona Lisa on Halloween ... I carved a wee little pumpkins just for her ... she says she wants her own little house to sleep in at night so stay tuned!

Peace, Love & Paper


~ Jo

Blythe ... the giveaway

be still my beating heart ... I have wanted a Blythe doll since forever ... and dear sweet Melinda of Melindas fabric fancies  told me about a Blythe giveaway ... so here i am blogging about in hopes to win a Blythe of my very own ... oh my fingers are crossed so hard right now ...
here she is ... the beautiful Blythe up for grabs ...  courtesy of Melly Kay and featured on BlytheLife.com
isnt she just  gorgeous!

okay, crossing my fingers so hard that they are bleeding ...

Today ...

over at the Inspired Scrapper ... I posted this layout for the "Using Imperfect Photos Challenge" ... go on and take a look at the challenge ... there are also wonderful layouts by Susan Tutt and Erica Perkins.

This is the first layout i have enjoyed making in a few weeks ... my last two projects, a mini album and a card, just didn't turn out the way i wanted so i have been in a bit of a scrapping funk, but more on that another day ... well maybe another day.

This layout was pure play ... i used very old patterned paper ... and random older bits like Heidi Swapp clear stars, Bazzill chipboard stars and an Imaginisce brad.   I also used some new bits like the Tim Holtz word and button, the Maya Road star pin and the vintage images from Crafty Secrets.  I even used a broken bling bracelet.

I used some of the Claudine Helmuth stick backed canvas to create a second background ... i sprayed it with a purple, pink and grey glimmer mist and let it dry.  after it dried i ran through the big shot with embossing plates ... then i ran an ink pad over the embossed areas and ended up with something all my own ... this also served a dual purpose as there was a Pegasus on the patterned paper that just wasn't quite right for the theme and i needed to cover it up.

The chipboard stars were fun to make.  I ran the stars through the same embossing plate, then i inked them with gold, and heat embossed them with a iridescent powder.

i also used a bit of tulle behind the photo just to give the layout a little bit of a hazy/diffused area.  I changed the colour of the title letters using .....  and finally i coloured the chipboard gears with two shades of the glimmer glam ... it was fun to just play with techniques and relax ... especially after my recent scrapping disasters.

So peeps, haul out a bad photo, go visit The Inspired Scrapper, and give yourself time to play with techniques this weekend.


Peace, Love & Paper ~ Jo

in the garden ...

In my garden there is a large place for sentiment.  My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams.  The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful.  ~Abram L. Urban

I love this clematis ...

My own gardens were quite neglected this year ... everything grew ... everything was watered & fed, but nothing new was planted ...   my little patch of garden in the front is in the full sun, but it is really just a strip of perennials ... which i plan to change up next year ... and my little bit of garden in the back is full shade ... again, perennials ... shade grass, ferns, hostas, a giant helabore, and in the one corner that gets a bit of sun, a rhubarb plant.  The rhubarb plant has been in the family now for 4 generations ... starting with the MacKenzie's in Victoria ... with cuttings given to children as they married and moved into homes of their own ...  It's kind of cool to have a cutting of a cutting of a cutting of a cutting ... I wonder how many other family members still have a cutting of this plant  ... i'm guessing not many.

my helabore ... so hard to get a good photo as the flowers face downward 

I love to visit gardens ... be they tiny, large or completely accidental!

I found this teeny tiny accidental garden growing in the cracks in the pavement on the side of the road

Mona Lisa is high above the city ... at the top of the Queen Elizabeth Park Gardens.  These gardens are gorgeous and were once a basalt quarry .... The Blodel Floral Conservatory sits atop of the park.

Mona Lisa hiding in a silver palm inside the conservatory ...

pretty flowers ...

more pretty flowers ...

And here is a small garden ... this one is in Steveston, BC which is a small historic fishing village ...

Mona Lisa Mae found a little friend to play with in the garden

and I love this blue chair that was just sitting at the edge of the garden ... totally random and cool!

Okay my patient peeps ... nuff about the Garden stuff ... this post has been brought to you by the letter G and the wonderful Jenny Matlock and her abfab Alphabe-Thursday meme.  make sure you check it out to see what the other participants wrote about.

Peace, Love & Paper
~Jo