New cards and old friends!

    I am happy to continue to be feeling better and also love being back in my craft room.   I have a few cards to share today and I have to admit that I am having a hard time finding my Mojo?  

    All three of today's cards were inspired by new challenges and the first card I completed is this Winter Themed card that was created for this week's Color Combo Challenge over at The Outlawz Group.  The inspiratoin for this week was to create a card, using the colors shown below, along with some type of water element. 

 

My very first thought was to make a beach or ocean scene card, but I then decided I wanted to do something different and went with a Winter Theme, making my water actually turn to Ice and Snow!!   My image is one of my favorite's from Bugaboo.

    I also incorporated my card to work out for the new Copic Coloring Challenge over at the Color Me Creative Classroom, where the challenge was 'Winged Things', and for me it's this cute skating bird that is my little winged thing.

    My next two card were created today for three new challenges and my first card was created with two challenges in mind.  The first is today's new Wacky Wednesday Challenge that Bugaboo hosts at CDAC and also at PCP.   Our challenge this week was to created a Birthday Card for a female, that included the color red and bling! 

    I also used this SKETCH (shown below), from today's challenge over at The Outlawz, as my inspiraton for the card design.  When it was all done, this is the card I made for all the challenges:

   And my last card today was inspired by today's Midweek Throwdown Challenge that is hosted every Wednesday over at OWH's Stars and Stamps Blog.   The challenge for today is to create Any Hero cards with a Thanksgiving theme.   

  Once I dug out my box looking for Fall Themes and colors, I realized that it's time to start thinking about making more cards in a Fall theme and also for Halloween and I found lots of cute things in my stash.  I'm not ready to say goodby to Summer, as far as weather goes, but I do think I'm ready to move on my cardmaking.  

   Oh...and my other big news is that I found a long lost friend this past week through Facebook.   I knew these friends from back in the early 80's and met them when I was working for a local Trucking Company.   I first met Frank, the Hubby, who was a cross-country truck driver.  He has been hauling for us for a couple of years and was a very sweet guy.  During the time, we both married and then he would travel with his wife, Karen and we all became good friends.   Whenever, they would be in town we would get together and gou out for Dinner and eventually they even would come as stay with us at our apartment.    We always looking forward to seeing them, even though it was often only 6 or 7 times each year.   I am not exactly sure how or why we lost touch, I guess it must have been because I eventually left that company and also ended up divorced from my first hubby.   I did remember that they had a baby girl shortly before we lost touch and I have thought about them on and off for years.   Well, after my former boss died (a few weeks ago), I started thinking about people I had met through that company and it made me think about Frank and Karen and that's when I thought about using the Internet and/or Facebook to try and find them.  I knew they had lived in Ohio, but really had no clue, if they still did or anything else about them.    After a few hours, I quickly found Karen on Facebook and sent her a message and friend request.  She did not receive it right away and then at first did not recognize my name.    She's new to Facebook and doesn't use it often.  I had a wonderful surprise late last week, when she found my friend request and wrote me back.  She had also wondered what we were up to and I wrote her again.   I was excited to be in touch and then today, I received a surprise phone call from Frank.   It was so fun to talk to him again -- he sounded exactly the same and we laughed about things form the past.   As it turns out, we both have children almost the same age and they had been back here once or twice after we lost touch, but did not know how to find me.  I'm so excited that we are now going to catch up again and hopefully get together at some time.  Frank no longer drives cross country, he now owns his own company and Karen is in the appraisal business.  They have two girls, where I have two boys and two of our kids are only born a month a part.  

    It's funny how after all these years, we both recognized each other's voice and remembered lots of things we had done when they would come and stay.  Ironically, I can hardly believe how much I had remembered, considering some days I cant' remember what I did last week.   It was really a joy to catch up and I'm looking forward to getting to know more about their girls and all that we've missed in this time.   It just goes to show that the Internet and Facebook really are so helpful in bringing people back into your life and I was thrilled to find two dear friends!    That's been my first real experience of finding old friends online and it's really been a joy to talk to them again. 

   Hope you all have a wonderful week and for every one along the East Coast....let's all HOPE that Hurricane Irene moves more East and keeps all of us on the coast safe and away for harm.  As of now, it sounds like we will have very heavy rains and winds and it could hit Southern Massachusetts, maybe even at a Category 2 Storm!   That would be huge for this area so I'm praying the course changes and the she will move further off the coast and keep us ALL safe.