It's Beautiful and I'm Back!

It's Monday evening and I'm excited to report that the project is completed and what once was lavender is now a soothing sage green (mist frost by Valspar paint at Lowe's, to be exact). I always enjoy reorganizing my things, and so it was fun putting the room back together. Because of where the window is and the need to protect the card stock from sun damage, certain things had to go certain places. Those of you who have seen other "before" pictures of this space will notice that things aren't drastically different. I did, however, purge some alterable items I'd been holding onto for almost a year, and decided to put my stamp sets on the shelves in the closet. Not sure if that's going to be the best thing, so I'm holding on to my old 7-drawer unit until I settle in more.

I was able to get back to crafting this afternoon, after we returned from a hike in Dawson Forest. (It was a pretty day, and not too hot for our trek. The dogs even came along, and we checked everyone for ticks (found 2 on Carly) afterwards.)

Our old neighbor, Jonathan Sytsma, is graduating high school this week. His school's colors are red, black, white and silver. This color combination is wonderful to work with! I only have 3 alphabets and 1 set of numbers, so I used my Headline Alphabet and Numbers for this card. The "U" rectangle is popped up on dimensionals to hold the front flap closed.
When it's open, you can see "2008", also embossed with silver EP--love that stuff! The interior greetings of "celebrate", "good for", "bless", "happy for", and "love" all coordinate with the "U" as the retired set All About U. Jonathan's name was done with the also retired Rough Edges Alphabet.

I wish we were going to be in town for Jonathan's graduation. We saw him when we were home last, and he gave me a big bear hug. He's at least 6" taller than I am now, although it's hard to believe he's 18. We moved in next door when he was 1 year old, so we watched him grow up and were part of his family's lives for all those years. He's off to Calvin College, his parents and grandparents' alma mater, to major in engineering so that he can follow in his father's footsteps and be a surveyor and civil engineer. We wish him the best!