lunch with friends

Yesterday was our annual Valentine luncheon at Leslie's house who
is the hostess with the most-est as the saying goes.  Her table-scapes is always spot on and creative! If you look over to the left at the photo you can see the table in all it's glory along with one of our beauties...that's Muriel. We

had beef and barley soup that was absolutely delicious!  in the
middle of the table was a delectable array of cheeses, breads, fruit and veggies to munch on along with the soup.  Over on the kitchen island were all kinds of deserts for after we finished that delicious soup.  There were mini brownies, cookies --- my favorite the

oatmeal raisin cookies!!!!!!  yummy!  even homemade marshmallows covered in coconut or heath bar candies but the main
desert was a fabulous lemon mousse.....Oh my! was that good!  everyone in our little group knows I'm not a chocolate person so the lemon desert was perfect in my opinion!!!  I have such good friends!   And of course, we are stampers so we had a card swap along with some handmade favors filled with candies and more.  The card swaps with all our extra goodies were in these beautiful red bags so we could bring everything home in style.  Over to the left is Roberta showing off a little card that our friend Petti made that was attached to a bag of candies....unfortunately she couldn't attend our get together because of family sickness.  she was missed.  Now over to the right is Brenda showing her full sheet she created using Dina Wakely techniques.....she cut up one of her sheets to make her card swap so we all could have a piece of her art.  All in all a terrific get together with friends to enjoy each other's company and lots of good food.

More on Valentines

At our luncheon we even had raspberry in our glass...now that is
elegant.  If you know me I'm not a big chocolate person...in fact if it's chocolate I can leave it but....if it's lemon I'm in!  look at that tray of lemon treats....YUM!  they were very good to eat!
Next up are a few more of our swaps I didn't show in last week's post here .  Muriel made a fun honey-pop card.  Brenda created a card with her own free hand cloud and umbrella.  Petti did a wonderful pop-up card using a SU die and also a popper from the envelope maker.  Susan is a terrific sewer so she made puffed hearts.

Hope you enjoy this look at our swaps this year at our luncheon get together with my friends.

Ranger sale and more

Yesterday my friend and I went to Ranger warehouse sale.  we ended up standing in line outside with other Ranger fans waiting to get inside the warehouse to buy all goodies.  you can see mine captured in the picture.  Going to the sale was fun but more fun happened when we went around in circles with all the one way roads there and ended up stopping at a white castle to have my first white castle hamburger.  yum!  they are so cute and small that you could eat a dozen but I only had one.  After that we found the highway and we were back on our way home....about half way there we decided we needed something sweet to eat so we went to Arthur Ave. in the Bronx, NY!  another first for me.  Leslie knows her way around there so found a parking space and walked all around that neighborhood stopping at a bakery for a cannoli and a cup of tea then onto a shop for fresh pasta and ravioli, fresh cheese and homemade hot sausage.  Wish I had my camera or phone to take a couple of pictures but that was the one thing I didn't bring on our day trip.  Anyway it was a good day which finished off at home enjoying the fresh cheese filled ravioli!  thanks to Ranger for having the sale and excuse for the start of the day out and a BIG THANK YOU to my friend, Leslie for driving and showing me my first taste of Arthur Ave.  Oh yeah, did I mention that right around the corner a couple of blocks away is the Bronx Zoo which I have been to a number of times although not recently .... who knew that so close was such a place full of so many good things to eat!

Happy Birthday!

I was asked over to my friend Leslie's house under the impression to just have a sandwich and visit..............well..............that was not the case.  Her and three more friends threw me a lovely birthday party!  We had a delicious quiche loraine and a green salad with all the

trimming and if that wasn't enough out came Leslie with a lemon cake with strawberries on the side!  two of my favorites!  they know I'm not a chocolate person at all...I can take it or leave it and most of the time I leave the

chocolate....so over the years it's been a joke that whenever there is chocolate something there is a little something without it for me.  I have good friends.  After the wonderful lunch we sat around for awhile looking at beautiful cards that Petti brought to show us and a few I brought.  Lunch and stamping show & tell with friends then I got home and my husband took me out to Scribner's for a seafood dinner.  Scribner's in our little city is the place to go if you want seafood...it's tucked away ....off the beaten path down by Woodmont beach.  All in all a good day and night!  Thank you, my friends and husband! 
***photos by Petti***

Happy Valentines Day!

Today is Valentines Day!  today will be spent quietly at home with my best friend, my husband but I wanted to tell you about yesterday.

Let me set the scene: it's February 13, 2012 an ordinary day except for these ladies who drove to the house on the hill in upstate New York for a quiet luncheon.  The table was set with fine china, grandma's silverware by our hostess, Petti.  The day started with everyone greeting each other and filling the red swap bags with cards and goodies and oh what treats were in those bags.  Next it's sitting around the living room with a little show and tell from our hostess petti and another called brenda.  As the day goes on we have a delicious lunch of chicken crepes with chocolate mouse and yummy cookies that our hostess stamped and gave a cookie stamping demo.  As the day goes on with all the exciting tales and cameras snapping away we have to say goodbye to a lovely time gone by.

Tags with friends

Yesterday Leslie and I went over to our friend Roberta's house to make tags....and boy did we!  I happened on this quick and easy technique where you cut pattern paper into thirds then tape/glue to tags well, we took this technique one step further and die cut tags from cardstock and pattern paper so they were the same size.  Next take three pattern paper tags together and cut into thirds......now you have the makings for three tags at once.  Arrange the pattern pieces out into three tags then tape to cardstock tags and when you are done

 you have three background tags in no time.  The fun thing is you can just use these as tags or make them into tag cards by scoring about 3/4" down from the top of the back tag then tape decorated tag to the scored section only of the back tag. 

When I finish my tags I will show better pics.  Another fun thing to do is to stamp an image on top of the pattern paper tags.  This is something Roberta loves to do...check out her tags and you can see the stamped bird under the Sizzix alterations bird cage with bird die.  Just know that these tags are not finished.  We got carried away taping pattern papers to the tags and by the time we notice the time it was 4:00 p.m.!  A good day.