Cute Rats, Rescue Cats, and a Craftsy Giveaway!

I began this post last week and somehow got distracted, so I may need to update things a little. Bear with me.

The photo, below is of the gift box I made for Second Chance Pet Adoptions' silent auction. When I got their call for auction items, I knew I wanted to make them something special because they are the rescue that adopted Toulouse to us. Note the many orange kitties representing in this box. Had to give mad props to the ginger cats! :)

Speaking of cats, here's a pic of Weezee, our other kitty. She hates Toulouse, and pretty much any of her fellow felines, but she loves humans. She's the welcoming committee at our house, rushing to the door whenever anyone arrives. She's hard to get a decent picture of because a) black furred animals are more challenging to photograph since their features often disappear in a two dimentional image and b) she is very persnickety about when she will and will not tolerate being photographed.

While I'm showing off my babies, here are my most recent acquisitions, Vince and Howard. Or actually, I should say Howard and Vince, since that's Howard on the left. I adopted them from Carolina Pet Rescue and now that they are neutered, they can be introduced to Wendy. Well...they can as soon as her persistent mites are gone--a leftover from her life as a stray.

Where have I been? San Francisco! This visit we went to Top of the Mark, made a dent in their 100 Martini menu and watched the city disappear.

Here we are! That's Sandy, Carolyn, Darcy and me! Oh yeah, and the fog creeping in behind us.

I've got another giveaway! It's a copy of Crafty Superstar for those of you with Etsy dreams and craft sale intentions. It's not brand spanking new since I read it once, but it's darn close. Besides, it's FREE if you leave a comment and you're picked randomly from all the other commenters.

Some stuff for one of my pen pals and the Mousey Punch Winner.

I'm actually in San Francisco at the moment, but I felt bad about being late with announcing the winner of the Martha Stewart Mouse Border Punch, so I thought I'd better take a moment to make the announcement. And the winner is...

Laura! (Rosegarden) Fiskateer 5939!

Hooray! Please send me your mailing address, Laura, so I can send your punch as soon as I'm home again. :)

I didn't want to post without a photo, so here's a pic of some goodies I'm sending one of my pen pals. I'm a letter writing maniac who loves swapping ATC's, cards, inchies and whatnot, because I love making all of those kinds of little treasures. The thing on the left is a bookmark based on one I saw in an old issue of the Stampin' Up demonstrator magazine my lovely friend Teresa passed on to me because she rules.

I ended up changing the colors, the stamps, the punches, the embellishments, but the basic sketch is the same. It folds over the top of the page you're reading. I'm pleased with how it turned out and might make some more. My favorite part are the little clear buttons lined up down the side. It's neat that the buttons, stamps, and punches all layer on top of each other. The one problem I encountered was deciding which adhesive to use, especially when it came to attaching the clear button. I used a wet glue to attach the punched paper part to the background and a clear mini glue dot to glue the clear button to the punch. If you do it a different way, please leave a comment and let me know about it. I didn't want to use glue dots on both because I was afraid it would be thick and wobbly. I was concerned that clear wet glue would dry with streaks on the clear buttons. Solutions?

The other item pictured is an ATC. I recently picked up this stamp because it was both very inexpected and looked like myself and my cat, Toulouse! Awww! I wanted to use some Flower Soft after poking around the Flower Soft/Stamps of Life blog hop, so I made wee little dandelion puffs. I know dandelion puffs aren't pink, but for the sake of my ATC, let's pretend they are.