For Your New Nest....

Hello again,
It is once again raining in Seattle....though nice weather is supposedly on its way for Friday and next week....it may even hit 80 degrees which is warm for Seattle.  I will be excited if it really is sunny and will definitely be outdoors to enjoy it with my little one.

Because of the rain we are inside this afternoon and I decided to play with a new Paper Sweeties stamp set that I recently won via a challenge.  It is called "Sending Springtime".  A big thank you to Debbie of Paper Sweeties for the prize!  I love my new stamps!  I am linking this up to The Shabby Tea Room Week #172 - Summer Breeze Challenge once again.  Here is the inspiration photo:

This week Starr is our creative host and she has chosen the theme of 'Summer Breeze' along with this beautiful photo for inspiration and Starr asks that we create a card or project inspired by the COLORS IN THE PHOTO AND ADD A FABRIC ELEMENT!

My fabric element is the lace piece at the top of the card.  This photo also gives you  a little peek at the inside of the card....I stamped the birdhouse in pink and added a white scalloped mat.  I made this card to have on hand for when new neighbors move into our neighborhood.  I love the sentiment!

Thanks for taking a look at my card.

If you are interested I am also going to share some photos of my house/garden on this post for a friend who wanted to see some photos of the clematis etc. that I grow in my yard.  Please feel free to skip to the end if you want. :)

I live in a 1920's charmer that I bought when it was practically falling down while I was still single and in my early 30's.  The house is very similar to the one that my Grandparents owned and means the world to me.

There was nothing here but dandelions when I bought it and EVERYTHING needed to be fixed inside and out!!!  The day that I painted the front of the house at least 20 people stopped by to thank me for buying it and fixing it up as apparently it had been the "eyesore" of the neighborhood for many, many years.  I have learned a lot since I purchased it 16 years ago and when I married my sweet Stuart in the year 2000 he moved from his property to mine and joined me in working on it. 

If you asked me what my favorite hobbies are I would say gardening and paper crafting, with hiking in the mountains as a close third - especially if it involves a waterfall of which there are MANY in Washington State.  I spend time in my garden everyday even if it is just for a few minutes and the kids in the neighborhood are in and out of my house all day long in the summer and throughout the year which means the chairs in the front and back yards get a lot of use!  So fun to have lovely neighbors!      

 The picture below is the front of my little saltbox house...and the garden that I have cultivated over the years...it is all perennials and comes back each year with no help from me!  I love that!!!  This photo was taken in May before some of the roses bloomed but it shows the clematis vines in bloom:

This is a Nelly Moser Clematis - one of my favorites!  I don't have a close-up of the other one and cannot remember the name of it either! :)

Here is the view as you walk into our backyard....

I added these sap buckets to the fence about 8 years ago and plant annuals in them each year.  This photo was taken just after filling them this year and the flowers inside of them are now at least 3x this size and trail down the fence beautifully! 

Another clematis....

One of my newer "Knock-out" roses...they bloom and bloom and bloom and need little maintenance unlike the majority of my hybrid teas which were not in bloom yet when I took this photo.

Love this rose - it was a gift from a friend when I bought my house.  I  would have to look at the tag to tell you its name though.  I love that it is usually one of the first to bloom each year!

One of my many shade tolerant perennials...these flowers open up in the morning and fall off in the evening and new ones bloom the next day.  Isn't God miraculous in his creations!

Well that is it for this post....I didn't want to post too many photos though I have more LOL!  If you are still here - thanks for bearing with me on this long and picture-filled post!  And if you are curious if I grow any food - yes I do....blueberries and raspberries and a few veggies and herbs too.
Hugs,
:) Jill