Hey Everyone,

Well after a long break I’m back ready for a new year…but before I get started on 2010, I should finish the wrap up from 2009.

As many of you know, I finished last year by having a holiday with my family to Bali. This trip was actually a present for my middle son Tristan as a reward for completing Grade 12. He was very happy to be finished school and even gave up Schoolies on the Gold Coast for a trip to Bali. We took the whole family and also Jareds Girlfriend Shannon came along with us. The entire trip was fantastic, but a highlight for Dave and Myself was that we were celebrating our 20th Wedding anniversary whilst we were in Bali and decided to re-new our wedding vows, with a Sunset Beachside service. Here are a couple of photos…

firstly a family shot,

  Left to right – Jayden , Jared, Nicki (me), Dave, and Tristan.

And then whilst the photographer was taking some other shots my Darling Dave was down writing a message in the sand….If you can’t read it, it says Dave loves Nicki XXX – isn’t he the best hubby in the world???!!!!

It was truly one of the most romantic things we have ever done. And, having the boys with us was just fantastic. Each of them played a part in our wedding. Jared escorted me down the aisle, Tristan gave the most amazing and emotional speech and Jayden was our ring bearer, and Shannon was my bridesmaid. It was wonderful, I still get misty eyed just thinking about it…..

But then of course, it was back to reality and Christmas and New Years both celebrated with friends and family and it was fantastic to spend all of this time together. Of course I wasn’t just sitting around eating and drinking, and sleeping….I actually spent a little bit of time stamping and heaps of time planning.

I was hoping to be able to announce the location of our retreat this year, but I am just waiting to hear back about some final details, so keep an eye out. Meanwhile, tech classes are back from the 9th of Feb at the the same time as last year.

And PMS days  and nights will resume shortly after this, I will update my calendar and include a full list just as soon as I have the retreat info available.

But now for some stamping, I have seen these beautiful paper flowers being created and wanted to give them a shot, so I grabbed all of my circle punches, punched out heaps of DSP cirlces, roughed up the edges with the SU distressing tool, crunched them up and then layered them into flowers. I love the shabby chic look of them. Here are a couple of samples I came up with the other day.

These two both have a kraft base card, then I have used some very vanilla for stamping onto and the Haiku DSP.

The stamp sets are – leaves from Petal Pizzazz, greeting from Curvy Verses, Thank you from Short and Sweet.

Here is a close up of the flower….

 I hope this makes it a little easier to understand.

Finally, here is another flower card using the Raspberry Tart DSP….

This one also uses the Build-a- brad for the centre of the flower. I have used the Autumn flair, level 2 hostess set for the leaves behind my flower and the Happy Everything set for my greeting. Jayden is taking this one to school for his new teacher on Wednesday as he is not only starting a new grade but also at a new school, so he wanted to say hello to his teacher with a card, aahhh….

Ok, so that should be enough for one post, I’ll be back soon with some more cards, I made 10 new cards yesterday so I’ve got plenty to share with you.

till then, happy stampin’,