Back from Hols!

Hello, I'm back! "Only" took me an extra week to get back into the swing of things, make cards and start blogging about them... And before I bore you with tales from our trip to the US, here are the cards I made yesterday and today:

This first one I made for the latest challenges at Cute Card Thursday, which was asking for cute images and wings, and at Daring Cardmakers, which was asking for a card with butterflies. Stamps are all Studio G, the spring one I got at Michaels during my trip (along with quite a few other bits and pieces, as you can well imagine :))

These two I made for my stock box and with the school craft fair in mind, where I will be having a stall together with a friend. The first one uses one of the lovely selection of images Andrea sent me. I coloured Edwin with watercolour pencils, the spotty paper is from Dovecraft, sentiment stamp is Studio G (again, my collection has grown considerably) and I cut a few Sizzix stars and doodled on them. It's simple, but I quite like it.

I'm chuffed with the second one, as I've been after this particular Magnolia stamp for quite a while, and when I saw it was in stock at Funky Kits, I just had to have it!!! So here is Brunte, Tilda's horse, again watercoloured, with spotty Dovecraft paper for the background, some pink cardstock, a Prima flower, gems and ribbon from stock and the same Studio G sentiment stamp as above. I'm really pleased with this one, and I can already think of a few horse-daft girls to give it to!

Well, we had a very nice holiday in the US over Easter! Even a selection of nasty colds and stomach bugs that affected pretty much everybody in the family couldn't spoil it for us, we just kept going as best we could. We celebrated Easter with our friends in Pennsylvania, and had a wonderful time catching up. Eldest daughter was delighted to be reunited with her good friend! We had trips to:

Gettysburg

Amish Country (Lancaster, PA)

Washington, DC, complete with cherry blossom

Cleveland, OH - John Carroll University, where I spent my freshman year

I hadn't been to Cleveland for 16 years nearly, so it was great to catch up with old friends! I really enjoyed it, and even my family said they had quite a nice time ;-) We were lucky with the weather, there was very little rain, and most days were bright and dry, although chilly at times.

Of course, quite a bit of time was spent shopping, the kids got some clothes and I treated myself to some lovely stash. Some things were just amazingly cheap, compared to here, and I was amazed to see that even Walmart had a decent craft section, with lots of big name items at very reasonable prices. I've not taken any pictures of my stash, but no doubt you will see it cropping up in future creations :)

Now that we're home the kids are back at school and it took us pretty much all week to get back into our normal rhythm. Jetlag affected us all, the girls were very tired (the little one threatened to nod off at nursery!), and I have had very early nights all week, but I'm still not fully recovered. Cold #3 isn't helping, I suppose... I have taken it easy this week, and didn't even have any inclination to craft, so I guess the cards above show I'm getting back to normal. So I shall post this now and have a blog-hop tomorrow to comment on all your lovely creations. Until then, thanks for looking!