Birthday card with flowers on it

I really enjoyed making this! I got the idea for the flowers from this hat pattern, and went into my button stash and a jar of confetti for the rest. I printed the saying on my computer first, directly onto the card paper. I found the saying on the internet (thought it was appropriate for the person I made it for) and set it using my greeting card maker software.

Several people have asked me about the card stock I use. It’s this one by Avery (the label people). Their plainer cards come in boxes of 30, and with these, you only get 20 in a box, but the paper is really quite lovely and worth it.

I find that making cute little cards is the perfect antidote to the problem of big project monotony. Often I find that I can’t focus on a large project very well. This happens to me during times of stress, or when there’s a lot going on at work or something. With small projects like these i can feel like I’ve made something cute and it does usually involve yarn and it offers a sense of accomplishment–and the all-important break from the project that I can’t seem to concentrate on anyway.

Tonight we had a family pool party with my Mom and Tony, aunt and uncle, and cousins. It’s an almost annual event that includes a ton of wonderful picnic foods. I supplied the steak and hot dogs. Yes I said steak. We eat GOOD in my family. There was only a scrap small enough to give my cat a good snack later. It was a beautiful day, too… hot, but not humid at all, and breezy. This is rare for a Maryland summer and I’ve learned to take full advantage of days like this when they happen.

I did bring some knitting along but only knit about 8 stitches in total. The company was just too good.

it was a great day. Too bad it has to be over… sigh.

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Father's day card with knit heart

I have a long way to go in the “it doesn’t look like first grade art” department, huh? But, I hope he likes it. It has a knit heart, sparkly Mod Podge (because the plain mod podge wouldn’t do!) and carefully printed upon and then recklessly torn up paper. I still have to learn the art of effective yet not overkilled and messy gluing. (Is that a word? Gluing? It looks weird.) Any advice for an inexperienced card maker? I’d love to get better at this.

Of course, Tegan had to get into the middle of my photo shoot:

Tegan gets in on the photo shoot

And then my daughter spent 10 minutes digging the cat hair out of the card. Ick.

Today was a busy day. We had a party at my mom’s house, where I made homemade guacamole and lime fizzies. Both seemed to be well liked. I’m on a lime kick these days. I had never made lime fizzies before so I sort of “winged” it. Basically I squeezed about 5 limes into a measuring bowl, and then added enough sugar to make it syrup-y. Don’t ask me how much, but it was a lot. Then mint leaves and stirred it all around. Then poured about an inch or so of the lime/mint syrup into the glasses, over ice, and then filled the glasses with club soda and stirred. (The glasses were actually small plastic party cups, so for a tall glass, perhaps more lime syrup would be called for.) Yum! Someday I’ll post my guacamole recipe but I don’t know proportions for that, either. I’m a very seat-of-my-pants sort of cook.

Tomorrow is Father’s Day but we don’t really have any big plans. Some years are like that. We have lots of housework to do and grocery shopping. Maybe I’ll surprise John with a meatloaf. He’s pretty easy to please.

I miss my dad.

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