It's never what you expect

Okay, I’ll admit it. I have a mild obsession with pattern paper. Well, more than mild, but honestly, there are so many pretty papers on the market and they are premiered twice a year and released more often than that. I can’t help myself. Yet, I’m trying.

After CHA (Craft and Hobby Association) show in January, I dogged the Two Peas website scanning all the new releases and putting favorites into my wish list. What I really wanted though were the October Afternoon papers so last week when they finally came in, I ordered. Apparently, I’m not the only one who fell in love with these designs. They are hot, hot products.

But before the October Afternoon stuff arrived, I’d piled up quite a stack of papers in my wish list. So to keep my little addiction under control, I limited my paper purchases to half my order total. That meant I was buying mostly the ones I craved the most. The rest of the order had to be embellishments, tools, stamps, anything but paper!

Funny thing is much as I love the paper I received this week, I think my favorite things from the order are in that other half – embellishments.

Here are my favorites and why:

KI Memories Enchanting Epoxy brads: I selected these because I thought they would compliment the Sweet Pea paper pack I’d bought a couple months ago from Stampin’ Up! And they do – in both design and color. The colors are a little lighter than SU! but they do work. I’d highly recommend these brads if you have that paper pack from the Winter mini.

October Afternoon Mini Market stickers: In Kristina Pick’s videos, Kristina (founder of Two Peas) got me interested in small stickers. There are lots of times I want to spell out “The” “And” and other small words along with my die cut or chipboard titles. I love the ledger background of these stickers. They could be used with anything!

Pink Paislee cork buttons: Honestly, these aren’t really buttons. I picked them because they were different and that was part of the point of making myself not buy so much pattern paper – to get some cool, unique stuff to play with. What I like most about these is the back of the package gives you suggestions on how to use them and embellish them further. Putting instructions or ideas on the back of a package is just good business. Why doesn’t everyone do that?

The backdrop for the photo above is one of the individual papers I purchased from My Mind's Eye Little Robot series.  I also got the paper with the gear images and have started cutting it up.  This is another thing I'd recommend for an SU! collection.  This line goes beautifully with several SU! colors like Not Quite Navy, Tangerine Tango, Kiwi Kiss and Going Gray.  Oops, I forgot, I wasn't going to talk about paper, was I?

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The Tulip Tree

Happy Easter!  On Friday, I was refilling the bird feeder when I saw how beautiful our tulip tree was and went back inside for a camera.  Funny, a couple of years ago I was ready to pull it up. 

We've used the same nursery for our shrubbery since we first built our home.  When we started, they asked us to bring along a simple drawing of the property and tell us what direction the sun came up.  They also wanted to know what kind of plants we liked.  Lenny only wanted plants that bloomed.  Evergreen shrubs aren't his thing.  Well, we did just a few of those so the house wouldn't be completely bare in winter but mostly, if it grows at our house it blooms sometime during the year.  It was a few years into the project before we got to the end of the retaining walls and selected the camellia in the background of the photo for the front corner.  I can't remember the name but it blooms three colors on one plant!  It is now probably 12 feet tall and utterly gorgeous this time of year.  (That reminds me I need to go cut some flowers to bring inside.)

For the back corner, the nursery owner recommended a tulip tree.  "It has big pink blossums every spring," he says.  That sounded fine to us; everything else he suggested looked and grew just great.  What he didn't say was that you get the bloom early before the leaves.  After the leaves it is just a regular tree.  There are other trees like it - a dogwood for example flowers before the leaves come out.  But for some reason, I've always found this tulip an ugly tree.  The blossoms look so empty on the sprawling limbs all alone.  We ought to trim it up, but I keep thinking we will just rip it up instead.  That is until this spring, it really is full and beautiful even without leaves. 

I'm not sure if there is a moral to this story.  Maybe the tree is trying to teach me patience.  Many people think I could use some.  I keep telling my husband - who has the patience of 12 saints - that patience is NOT a virtue.  But maybe the tulip tree is proving me wrong. 

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