Skunks, free to a good home

Sigh.  I almost tripped over four baby skunks the other night in my back yard.  They were about the size of an 8 week old kitten (if you didn't count the tail), and playing and wrestling and frolicking in the grass.  I guess no one told them they are supposed to be nocturnal.  I just about stepped on one again at 10:30 this morning!  I haven't seen Mom yet, but the kidlets are digging up my flower beds and eating food scraps I put in the compost bin.  It must be like a restaurant to them.  

My cats treat them with respect, and the skunks themselves don't seem to pay much attention to anybody.  So although it's not a good thing, I suppose I just have to watch my step around the garden unless I want to go to the laborious and stinky process of trapping and relocating every skunk.  :-(     They sure are cute, though.

Magenta Rubber Stamps

I started stamping about 8 years ago, a year or so after I started scrapbooking.   A lady in Sherwood Park who ran a small store out of her basement taught me the basics.  I will never forget learning about the wonders of heat embossing!  I still think that technique is magic!  The first rubber stamps I ever bought were from Magenta and they are still one of my favourite companies.  Love their designs!  After learning how to rubber stamp,  I took the Magenta rubber stamp catalogue home and went through it over and over again, trying to pare down my 'want' list to a manageable size.   I bought a lot of stamps that I still use today.  I appreciate the fact that their rubber stamp designs are not retired.  You can still buy the same timeless designs today that I bought years ago.

Over the years, rubber stamp stores in my area have pretty much disappeared and it became harder and harder to find Magenta stamps.  To my delight, I just discovered the Magenta online store!  You can browse through their entire catalogue and order any of their designs wood mounted or on cling foam, which reduces cost and required storage space.  So go have a look, I had hours of fun browsing through all the designs before deciding which new stamps I should treat myself to.  If you like cats, the Cat of the Month designs are just gorgeous!

A New Tool

I'm kind of a scrapbook tool junkie.  If you consider carefully and buy a good tool that you can use for many, many projects, I figure that's a good investment.  Mentally divide the number of layouts you might use the tool for by the cost of the tool and decide if that's acceptable to you.  If you buy an expensive electronic die cutting machine and use it a dozen times, not so good.  But if you buy a $30 paper trimmer and use it for hundreds of layouts, well, that's money well spent. 

I love the look of labels on scrapbook layouts.   My friend Kim Gowdy recently went shopping at Staples and came out with a new labeller, the Brother P-touch Scrapbook Labeller.   It's on sale for around $35 bucks this week, not too bad for an electronic labelling system, and includes a couple kinds of acid-free tape and the 6 AAA batteries it needs to work.  It does 9 type styles in five different sizes, and you can buy different widths and colors of tape to put into it.  And as you can see from the photo, it's PINK!    ;-)

Kim used it on this layout - doesn't it look great?  She used some gold on black label tape, and the labels are the perfect journalling touch on the layout, where the picture really does say it all.  Makes me crave a nice hot cup.   ;-)  Anyway, if you need a new labeller, have a look for this scrapbooking model.  I think it has lots of potential.

oh, and speaking of Nikki Sivils

Make sure you head to the Canadian Scrapbooker website and enter the monthly trivia contest.  The prize package this month is a bunch of fun Nikki Sivils products!  It's easy to enter, and if you don't enter, you can't win!  :-)

Nikki Sivils sneak peek

Nikki Sivils put a sneak of their summer CHA release on her blog earlier this week and it is yummy!!!   Love the colours and patterns!   Looks perfect for many summer photos.  It is just a happy kind of paper and I can't wait to see it in real life!!

Barbecued Lemongrass Beef

I tried a recipe from an old magazine today and it turned out pretty well!  So I want to post it to my blog for safekeeping (I am forever losing scraps of papers and pages torn from magazines ;-)).  The kids liked it because it is meat on a stick.  I liked it because it was quick, easy and reasonably healthy.  I had some top sirloin steak that I sliced thinly and put in the marinade before I went to work.  At supper time, I just threaded the beef onto skewers and delegated the barbequing to my husband.  I burn almost everything on the barbeque because I am always trying to multi-task.  And every time I turn my back on the barbeque, something bursts into flame.  :-(

Anyway, try serving with rice or rice vermicelli, some shredded carrot or cucumber, that sort of thing. I supposed you could roll it up in rice paper wrappers or something but that seemed like too much work on a school night.

Barbecued Lemongrass Beef

2 stalks lemongrass (I bought these at superstore for about 60 cents)
1 tbsp. sugar
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp. fish sauce (you can also buy at superstore or in the ethnic aisle of most supermarkets)
2 tsp. sesame oil
1 lb sirloin steak

Trim off ends and outer leaves of lemongrass stalks.  Smash stalks with side of knife;  finely chop light colored part only.  Combine lemongrass, sugar, garlic, fish sauce and sesame oil.  Trim fat off beef and cut into 1/8 inch strips.  Add to marinate, stir to coat and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Thread onto skewers and bbq over medium high heat for about 5 minutes until done.

Rodeo!

We went to the Tofield Rodeo this weekend and I had a great time!  I haven't liked rodeos for many years, but they are starting to grow on me.  This rodeo was wonderful for our family because it was small scale and you were very close to the action - there were bleachers set up around the outdoor arena with four or five rows of seats.  It was lovely to sit outside and feel the wind in your hair and the sun on your face (sun being kinda rare for the last few weeks hereabouts) and watch bareback riding and calf roping.  At intermission, we went into the concessions and had french fries and giant freezies. :-)  There were some great photo opportunities - I've posted a few below.   I think I took a few hundred photographs and most of them were good.  I have no idea what I'm going to do with this many rodeo pictures, but I had fun taking them!

Steer Wrestling - this was a tough event

more steer wrestling

Calf roping - I felt sorry for the little guys, but after they were untied, they popped up and trotted off, seemingly all recovered from their adventure

Barrel Racing - fast and furious!

Bull Riding - the final event.  Miraculously, nobody was seriously hurt.  Tough to watch when the cowboy falls off and those hooves come crashing down.

Fifty Years

My parents were married fifty years this month.  Five decades, half a century.   An amazing accomplishment!  I contacted my MLA's office about the anniversary and eventually received congratulatory certificates from the Governor General Michelle Jean, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and MLA Iris Evans to present to my mom and dad at a celebration dinner at a local restaurant.  They were just tickled.  

At the last minute, I decided that I should put together a mini-album for the event, so I scanned some 35mm slides from their wedding day and put together a small book.  It turned out beautifully.  I used a BoBunny 6x6 chipboard binder and K and Co special occasion papers, and it was the perfect opportunity for me to use all sorts of odds and ends and work with some border punches I had purchased but not yet used.   The flourish on the cover is from Technique Tuesday - I just covered it with versamark and a couple of coats of gold embossing powder.

I left several blank journalling areas to fill in the details of names and places.

I left the last page blank - we passed it around the restaurant, and those at the dinner signed their names and wrote in best wishes.  I plan on putting a photo of the 50th anniversary dinner on the very last page, and because this album is a binder format, it will be easy to add more 6x6 pages for more anniversary pictures and such.