But I digress.
We spent seven days at an amazing cabin with George's amazing family. It was an awesome vacation on Lake Vermilion full of kayaking and boating and laughing and eating and reading and NOT swimming in the frigid water, but alas, no stamping was done by me.
Somehow, I didn't miss a single day of posting on Simplicity despite pitifully intermittent WiFi access (go, me!) except for that weird thing that happened the first weekend when my post scheduled for Sunday somehow posted on Saturday. I know it was my fault, but I'll be danged if I have a clue what I did wrong.
Welcome to my world. Jimmy Buffett has a song about not having a clue which has the brilliant line "We're just recycled history machines, cave men in faded blue jeans." Actually, he has a bunch songs about not having a clue. It's a theme with his music, which I listened to for long stretches of being told how to drive by my husband. "Nibblin' on spongecake, watching the sun bake, all of those tourists covered with oil...."
Furthermore, I returned to find over 300 posts stacked up in my Google Reader account. Did you know you can mark as read all the posts in a particular file? My papercraft file had 281 posts, and with just two clicks of my mouse, they were ALL MARKED AS READ! It gave me the illusion that I really did something when all I did was avoid doing something.
So my apologies to anyone whose blog I read regularly and usually comment on that got marked as read without being, you know, read. It's my husband's family's fault for showing me such a good time. Blame them. Just know I love you and am getting back on track this week.
I hope.
Anyway, I have a card for you today. Remember when I used all those delightful butterfly die cuts that Angela sent me (if you don't remember, click here, and then come back). Well, once I made them all, I wondered if I could make a true one-layer version. To compensate for the lack of dimension, I used the polka-dot, two-step stamp from StampinUp's Flight of the Butterfly* set.
Not too shabby for one layer, is it?
*I wonder if there's a marketing person at SU who gets upset every time I use the SU name without the egregious exclamation point. It's the sort of thing that would have upset me when I was a marketing editor for a computer memory manufacturer. The computer industry has some stylistic quirks that I was paid to police in every data sheet, advertisement, powerpoint presentation, and brochure the company produced. You don't care about this, but I sure did. Just like some poor AR/OC editor at StampinUp. Whoever she is, I'm sorry.
Welcome back. Glad you had such a good time but, gee, if you went to Minnesota, surely you had to go through some part of Illinois. Just sayin'. :0) So glad you had a great vacation. Love your card. Hoping to CASE it today.
ReplyDeleteI hear you sister, on the masculine map reading front. The butterfly is truly beautiful (wish we had got that stamp set in Australia). I thought you had had your holiday and were back, the whole time you weren't there! (I think that's what I mean). Again, thanks for the night-time giggle.
ReplyDeleteYou know I will have to CASE your CAS card! Flight of the butterfly is one of my very fav sets! You showcased it beautifully!
ReplyDeleteI know you enjoyed your vacation...but so glad you're back! I did enjoy all the posts while you were on vaca though!!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful card...but then I'm SO not surprised!!
Have a great day!
Welcome back from vacation land. Aren't road trips grand?! Chuckled to myself when I read about yours. I too learned not too long ago about the 'mark all as read' tab! It's wonderful and I do not feel guilty when hitting it. Love your CAS cards. This one is cute!
ReplyDeleteWay to rock the stamp positioner on this one! And yes, the exclamation point is annoying and even my editing-oriented self can't bear to use it. I also wish all their names weren't so forcedly alliterative, too, but that's another story!
ReplyDeleteWV -- sessy: adj. for those lucky days when one feels both sexy and sassy!
I'm glad you had a great time in my state:) Very pretty card.
ReplyDeleteSESSY? That Angela's a riot too, and you provided enough laughs for the whole day, thank you very much! Please tell George our $500 Garmin, bought 3 years ago with those expensive maps, sits in the box unused because EVERY time we used it Customer Support had to reload it. We gave up and SHOULD have sent it back. When they work, they're fabulous, I've heard, but often they don't work. George is surely not alone.
ReplyDeleteThat butterfly is sooooooo cute. Normally I'm not a fan of fakery on butterflies, but those polka dots make that one look like a cute little girl butterfly just getting started.
Soooooo glad you had a fun vacation. Welcome back. I admire your ability to fix up your posts in advance so we didn't really know you were gone. You must be a computer-whiz in addition to all your other talents.
For Angela:
WV plutica. Proper noun. Pluto's little sister. :-)
Men....we have a Tom Tom, also new in box (well, used one time). Great card, Susan! Glad that you are back, and that you had a good time on your vacation :)
ReplyDeleteWelcome home. Glad you had seven fun days at the cabin. My condolences on the four days in the car. Mixed into your description, I could also hear the, "Are we there yet?" question being asked multiple times.
ReplyDeleteWith my mind, which seems to work efficiently part of the time, I assumed that you had pre-planned your postings to cover your vacation. Obviously, during the time when my mind wasn't working, I didn't take into account the posting of winners. Hmmm, were the contests fixed? That must be it. (Just kidding - truly.) Thank you for keeping us in mind while away from your crafting space.
Glad to hear that you had a lovely vacation....it is always good to get away for awhile.
ReplyDeleteYour dotty butterfly is awesome!!! Love your style.
Butterfly in polkadots? Uh ah.. simply gorgeous..
ReplyDeleteI'm a lovin this..... brilliant!.x
ReplyDeleteYour vacation sounds so awesome! The idea of a cabin in cool weather is so lovely that actually BEING there must have seemed a dream --- for those of us in Charleston, anyway, where it is HOT!!! The 2-step butterfly card is lovely. And where is that perfect sentiment from? I love the plain block letters. Soooo good to have you back, Susan, and we all appreciated so much that you didn't desert us while you were gone.
ReplyDeleteAngela, I feel sessy today!
ReplyDeleteNancy, hee, hee. Fixing drawings! No WAY! I love y'all too much for that. I had intermittent WiFi, so I was able to use Random Number Generator and post those quickly. Most of the other posts I had already set up and scheduled to post ahead of time. I tried to get everything done early in the morning so I wouldn't be one of "those people" more plugged in to electronics than interested in the people around them, LOL!
Sue, the sentiment is from Papertrey's Birthday Basics set.
Gorgeous card, Susan. I love the black and pink together - simply stunning. I love your footnote about the ! in SU ...I can't bring myself to use it either! I've just started a blog and realised I'll be writing Stampin' Up rather a lot - I can cope with the apostrophe but that's my limit!
ReplyDeleteWelcome back Susan - glad you enjoyed your vacation! I love this one layer beauty!
ReplyDeleteWelcome back! Glad your holiday was so enjoyable. My husb is probably my least favourite passenger! :P
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine you making a "shabby" olc in any sense of the word! This one is beautiful.
WV: sticalp -- a robbery on a mountain?
Hey, I love this cute card! I love the pink with the black polka dots...I'm a fan of the 50s!
ReplyDeletewww.pawwpadd-caseyspitterpatterchatter.blogspot.com
Bethann aka PawwPadd
My kind of card ..It is definately not shabby at all . Clean and crisp ..love it
ReplyDeleteMight have to make my version of it
It's beautiful! Your comments about Jimmy Buffet made me laugh (my husband is a huge fan!). Glad you could check something off your list... now if only you can manage to deal with the laundry? (That'd be my problem).
ReplyDeleteWelcome back! The woman who lives in our GPS is such a nag, but I use mine a lot for restaurants and other sites in the area when I travel. As for the husband thing, mine tells me how to drive too...most annoying. He's still a keeper, though!
ReplyDeleteLove all these butterfly cards! The pink with black dots really stands out! TFS!
ReplyDeletethis is soo lovely Susan. I think I can do case this by using a mask too!
ReplyDeleteA beautiful card. I love all your chattiness. I have scolded my husband enough times about commenting on my driving that he knows to just shut up...
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting while you were gone--loved not having to miss my daily "Simplicity"!
ReplyDeleteDon't know if your or my husband vs. GPS situation is worse--my dh really needs one, he travels for work, but will not get one. I guess he deeply believes that real men don't ask for or accept directions, even from a GPS!
On "helpful hints" when I'm driving, I finally made a rule. On a short trip, like the five minutes to church, on his third comment, I pull over and he drives. On a long drive, I give him five driving instructions, and then I pull over and he drives.
Just between us, though, I admit some of his "helpful hints" are helpful!
OMG this card is very cute! I love it!
ReplyDeleteI know I'm commenting a crazy amount of times -- that's what happens when I get behind and can't bring myself to push that "mark all as read" button. :) Besides, you've given me too much to comment on! We just got back from a little vacation, too, and I could swap Garmin stories with you... but what I really want to say is how your little comment about SU (!) at the end made me smile. I've often wondered the same thing, but just can't bring myself to put an ! behind the initials. Or the whole company name, for that matter. Clutters up the blog too much and looks silly in the middle of a sentence. I guess what I really wonder is why a company would put a punctuation endmark as part of their name anyway? I mean, why does it need to be Stampin' Up!? Are we screaming, excited, enthusiastic, or what? (hahaha) (Maybe your former editor self can shed some light on that...)
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