Birthday Surprise and Artsy Blogger Links

Well, it is official; I am 58 years old and don't feel more than a day older than I did yesterday. I had a lovely surprise last evening. My daughter and her two girls came out for dinner. This is not that unusual. Sometimes she opens at work and gets home just before dinner and I think it is nice for her to come over and eat with us to avoid that stressful "it's dinner time and what the heck am I going to fix" time of day.

On this occasion, her 7 year old came rushing in and ushered me back to my art room and told me I couldn't come out until she came to get me. That is the moment when I knew this wasn't just the normal dinner visit. When she came to get me, I didn't notice anything different around the kitchen, so forgot about it. The hubster had fixed chicken and broccoli stir fry over rice with a lovely salad for dinner and we had a lovely dinner together. The 2 year old was asleep on the couch. She frequently falls asleep in the car, especially when she hasn't had an afternoon nap.

After dinner, 7 took me back to my art room again and told me to stay until she came for me. When she came to get me she asked me to close my eyes and she led me to the dining area. When I opened my eyes, 2 was on Mom's lap and there was a beautiful, unfrosted spice cake with two lit candles (a 5 and an 8) on it. I made a wish and blew them out while they sang "Happy Birthday". Spice cake is my favorite and I don't like frosting, so they also brought some frosting for themselves to add to their piece of cake.

Does it get any better than that??

A couple of days ago I received a birthday card from Liz Brooks, a woman in one of my Yahoo! groups that I'd like to share with you:

 

Isn't that lovely? I so appreciate the friends I've made online; they make my day many times in many ways.

I got up around 5:15 this morning to download some larger files during a time when it is not so busy and a time when downloads do not count toward my total allowed. While they were downloading I doodled on an ATC background that I had made earlier. It was a pink shade and I doodled with red. What do you think?

I really thought that red on pink would be impressive, but now I don't know. Is it a bit gaudy?

Here for your pleasure is a round up of some artsy bloggers you might want to visit:

Beading Arts
Cyndi is so happy that the third year of the Bead Journal Project has started. This year, she's making a bead embroidered bracelet for each month of the project.

 

Creative Dreamer
A tutorial to make your Valentine a fun little gift...

Gadabout Media
Valentine's Day means making heart motifs, so Chloe has found some funky and fun hearts to craft

Hankering for yarn
Noreen thought that designing a knitted bookmark for Valentine's day gifts would be a quick and easy process. Well! it turned out to be a real saga, but it was oh so worth it! The hearts and cables knitted bookmarks are just wonderful, and the pattern is now blissfully easy, since Noreen cracked the code on it. 

The Artful Crafter
How to use waterslide decals for decoupage under glass. Put your original designs anywhere with inkjet or laserjet decals.

Thank you so much for visiting my blog. I appreciate each and every one of you and value your time and encouragement.

xoxo