Allsorts Week 427 - Colors of Your Flag

Hello and thanks so much for visiting! I apologize for not being around your blogs much the last few weeks. I had a visit from overseas and we also got to spend some time on the beach (my birthday week) which was very much enjoyed.

This week Mervi is our host at Allsorts challenge and she wants to see the colors of our flags. 

I used a really old set by stampin up for my card (Toy Box). Stamped the little boat three times onto white card stock and colored using copic markers. The navy card stock was embossed using a stripes embossing folder also by SU. I added some red, white and blue twine and the little sentiment, which was cut out using one of Whimsy Stamps stiched tag dies. Matted onto red card then a white card front. I think this will make a cute little boy's birthday card.

As always we have a great prize to give away, and we'd love for you to come join us.

-------------------------------

And here some photos from vacation. We took a road trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I love going on road trips so I can see more of this beautiful country, but I might need a break after this year's. We ended up driving in horrendous storms through 3 states. It was so bad that many cars just completely stopped. My drivers felt pretty confident and kept going at a slower speed but I was scared to death!  It was soooo good when we finally left the storms behind us.

Although it was a beach vacation, I made sure we'd visit some other places too, because I am not one to enjoy a lazy vacation. I can't sit still LOL!

I love nature so of course we had to visit a garden and a state park. The photo above was taken at  Brookgreen Gardens.
I saw some spring pictures of this garden (thanks Amy!) and didn't think I was going to like it as much in summer, as not so much in in bloom, but it was absolutely gorgeous and I didn't want to leave!
The moss covered trees made everything look magical.

 The water lily pond was another favorite.

 
And I loved the Cypress Swamp area.

 We found plenty of these spiders underneath wooden structures and they made me want to run away :) But of course we couldn't resist looking at them. They are about as big as a hand and were just there in the wild under wooden beams. Nothing I've ever seen before! I looked them up at home - they are called Golden Silk Orb Weavers or Banana Spiders and luckily are not poisonous.

We also took a day trip to the city of Charleston, South Carolina. It was a super hot day but we were still able to enjoy the beautiful architecture. If I ever go back to Charleston, I need to stay at least two days so I can visit Magnolia Plantation and Gardens!

Most of our mornings and evenings were spent at the beach. We had an oceanfront room, so the walk to the beach was short.  We loved looking for seashells early in the mornings when most people where still asleep. I really wanted to take a boat trip to Shell Island, but I didn't realize you'd have to book in advance and we ended up not getting any tickets. I'm sure it would have been easier in the off season!


We visited a few other places in this area, but I don't want to bore you with too many photos.
A couple more though...this is not located in the Myrtle Beach area, it was a stop on our way home.

 Did you recognize this building?

 It's the resort that was used in the movie Dirty Dancing - the Kellermann's. It is located in Pembroke, Virginia. You have to drive up a pretty steep road to get to this resort. It is now a resort called the Mountain Lake Lodge. We spent a couple of hours just walking around. You can even book the cottage Baby and her family stayed in.

Above is a photo of the gazebo used in the movie ("find the man of your dreams" scene, where Baby ended up dancing with the old lady). The lake where the water scene took place used to be behind the gazebo but it is sadly dried up.

These apartments remind me of the staff quarters, but that part of the movie was actually filmed in North Carolina.
We have not actually spent the night here so I cannot say anything about the accommodations. We just went for a quick stop to see the movie site of my favorite movie :)

Hope I didn't bore you too much with the photos, and thank you again for visiting!
I'll be back again tomorrow with my Penny Black and More creation. 

Christmas In July and Some Vacation Photos

Yes, I know it's weird making Christmas cards when we have 90 degree weather, but I was checking out some challenges yesterday to help me get back to card making, and saw that Just For Fun Rubber Stamps is now having a monthly challenge. This month it's Christmas in July with a little bit of sparkle, and since I have a few of their gorgeous Christmas stamps, which I haven't used in a long time, I decided to play along.

It's my first time making a card in over a month. I have been taking a blogging break to spend some time with family and I am including some vacation photos below, if you'd like to see what I have been up to.

I colored the image above using copic markers on xpress it blending card. A nestabilies circle die was  used to cut it out and it was adhered onto the embossed background using pop-up tape. Embossing was done using an old cuttlebug embossing folder, and an old SU punch for the scalloped edge. I finished the card off by adding some sparkly gold cord and stamped the little sentiments from the Holiday Snippets set by Penny Black (available in my Etsy shop). The white polka dots on the red ribbon were done using a white Faber Castell pitt marker. 

 ---------------------------------------------------------------

Vacation time was fun, we took a 12 hour road trip to South Dakota to visit the sights in western South Dakota. It was a pretty boring drive through Iowa, Minnesota and most of South Dakota, drove through some stormy weather in Minnesota which was very scary but luckily we got out of it quickly. 

Our first stop was the Badlands National Park, which I had no clue even existed, but thanks to Pinterest I discovered this unique and beautiful National Park, and it was mainly the reason why I wanted to take this trip.

A few pictures below...

There were signs everywhere to watch out for rattle snakes. We didn't see any thankfully, but kept hearing them. But we did see some sort of big horn sheep up in these hills. There were also plenty of prairie dogs on the loop road.

The photo above was taken at the last trail we hiked before leaving the park. I loved how far you could see, such amazing scenery and it reminded me of western movies I have watched.

This is me somewhere at the end of a hiking trail. There are several hiking trails, we did a few easy ones but they were very enjoyable.

At the end of the easy trails, you could just keep on hiking (at your own risk).

 Some people hiked all the way up the mountains, we saw a couple of them slip but luckily they didn't fall off. Much of the mountains are covered in dry dirt and it can become slippery. Hiking shoes or cross trainers are a must.

 If you don't have time to hike, or are unable to,  you can also enjoy the views by simply driving on the Badlands Scenic Byway Loop road to enjoy the sights.

Next up we went to Custer State Park, which has some amazing rock formations.

We hiked around beautiful Sylvan Lake which is supposed to be an easy trail, but somewhere along the way we got lost and ended up having to do a little bit of climbing, but even my dad who is over 70 managed with a little help. 

Sylvan Lake below..

You can swim in this lake and you can rent boats. If you possibly can, bring a picnic lunch. We waited forever on our pizza at the gift shop area, only to receive a mostly unbaked pizza for lots of $$.

Me and my dad hiking somewhere by the lake where we got lost.

We took the needles highway to explore more of the park, which takes you up to where the needle's eye is. A little scary but you are rewarded with beautiful views all around.

Amazing rock formations everywhere...

We did find the needle's eye right underneath a tunnel.

And not only did we get to see the needle's eye, we were also greeted by these mountain goats inside the tunnel who did not want to let us by. I don't think they liked us being there. Some crazy people actually got out of their cars and got way too close to the animals inside a narrow tunnel. 

Wildlife loop was next up, where we got to see grazing buffalo, herds of antelope and deer, curious donkeys and lots of cute prairie dogs.

From the Wildlife Loop we took Iron Mountain Road to drive to Mount Rushmore. 

I have seen plenty of pictures of Mount Rushmore before, which made me believe it was smaller than it actually was. We only hiked about half way up (the easy part). I believe you can hike all the way up, but that's supposed to be really hard so we stopped under their noses. We didn't want to leave my dad behind just waiting on us.
The sun was going down and so this photo isn't the best.

Here is a better (zoomed in ) view with just the mountain.

Of course we had to go see Crazy Horse Memorial which is also really close to Custer State Park. There are many many years left before this mountain carving will be complete,

and one day it will look like the statue you see in the photo below.

While out west, we also drove into Wyoming to see the Devils Tower National Monument, which is really close to the SD border.

We took the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway and stopped a couple times to visit the city of Deadwood (which was recommended to us by a lady at a visitors center) and also to hike to Roughlock Falls.

I did not like Deadwood (too touristy and too much of a gambling town - really wish we had skipped it, luckily we only spent about an hour there), but the trail to Roughlock Falls was beautiful and easy, and loved the waterfall at the end of the trail. This area of the Black Hills was shown in the movie "Dances with Wolves" with Kevin Costner. It's been a really long time since I watched that movie, might have to plan a movie night soon :-)

Well, this post definitely is one of the longest I have ever done. I should have probably done a separate travel post, for each day of our trip, but I just don't travel enough and don't live in an interesting area, to keep doing travel posts.

Thanks so much for visiting and hope I didn't bore you too much with my vacation pictures :-)

It's been a while...

Happy August!!! I am back again blogging :-) I took the month of July off from blogging and card making to spend some time with family. 

First up is my card for this month's Penny Black and More challenge, with the theme of 

Summer Blooms.

I used the cute set Happy Days and sentiment set Sprinkles and Smiles, both from Penny Black. A pretty simple card, which I had actually finished before my little break. Colored copics and mounted onto designer paper and then some yellow card stock. Glitter and a butterfly was added for embellishments.

As always you can use any brand of rubber or clear stamps. And we have several wonderful prizes to give away. Simply click the link above to enter your card.

------------------------------------

If you'd like to read about how I spent part of last month, keep on reading, lots of photos are following :-)

We took a trip to Colorado, which I've been wanting to do ever since I read about Amy's travel adventures to Colorado. What a beautiful state! People living close to it are so lucky!

I don't do travel posts, but wanted to share a few photos with you :-) 

 Doesn't this photo look like a painting? It was just taken with my Panasonic Lumix camera, but I love how it turned out.

 This was taken somewhere on the trail to Alberta Falls. 

This is me trying to reach my crazy family, that decided to climb all the way up to the falls. 

Can you tell I had to use my whole body to get up there?

I made it :-)

   

 By no means a big water fall, but very pretty and gorgeous views all around. Perfect spot for a picnic.

From here we walked back down and took the trail to Bear Lake.

We also visited 3 other lakes, but the next day.

This is Nymph Lake, which was filled with water lilies.

Our view hiking up to Dream Lake.

 Dream Lake as seen walking down from Emerald Lake.

 

We continued up to Emerald Lake, this was the spot where it started to rain, but only for a few minutes, and luckily the thunder was only heard in the distance. 

Emerald Lake...the two people you see far in the distance on the rocks are my husband and daughter.

 We also decided to take Trail Ridge Road down to Grand Lake - I was scared to death as it started to snow while we were on it. This road is over 12000 ft above sea level, and completely open only for a few months a year. I can see why...it even snowed up here in July.

We had planned on driving to the Glenwood Springs/Aspen area the next day, but after reading that these lake trails were all considered easy, and the trail I wanted to do in Glenwood Springs was considered strenuous, I changed my mind about hiking up to Hanging Lake, which was my main reason for driving further west. The trails up to the lakes above were not very hard, but there were some steep drop offs on some parts, and being afraid of heights when looking down, especially when I see the kids walking in front of me, I did get scared on some parts. 

So instead we decided to head to the Colorado Springs area which was originally planned for later on our trip. 

We visited the Garden of the Gods here, 

and also drove further south to The Great Sand Dunes National Park.

I only walked up to one sand hill, but there were people walking all over the hills you see in the back. I wanted to hike further too, but we were surrounded by clouds and thunder in the distance, and it started to get windy. I read that it's pretty painful when a sand storm hits. Above is my husband running to get my daughter and brother to come back as they just kept walking.

 

 Just as we were leaving the Dunes we saw this beautiful rainbow. 

What an amazing time we spent in that beautiful state!! 

Huge thanks to Amy for all the informative travel posts she shared!!

If you are ever in this area, be sure to visit these places. The  Rocky Mountain National Park fee is only $20 per car, and good for a whole week, and you get to use their shuttle buses for free (which come in very handy because parking fills up quickly, even before 9am in Summer). Sand Dunes was $3 for each adult, free for kids, and the Garden of the Gods was completely free. 

Next time I hope to go back to Rocky Mountain National Park in Fall, wish it was this Fall, but it takes over 12 hours for us to get there. 

Thanks so much for stopping by! 

Enjoy your Sunday!!