Home Sweet Home

Hi peeps.... I am bacckkk!!! :) How are you all doing? I had a wonderful vacation with hubby, sightseeing around Seattle and Vancouver.

Let's do some quick recap of what happened while I am gone. First of all, by now you would have known that I only made it to Gallery Idol Top 5 and Belinda Chang Langner won the competition. Big congrats to Belinda!! You rock, girl! I am so happy for her! I've been her blog follower for almost a year now and she's also one of my HA Flickr gal.

Of course, I am not gonna lie, I was bummed that I didn't win. I put so much love and works on the final card. And I was so hoping to have the chance of having my works get published. It's one of my goal for this year. But my family, friends, & blog followers are amazing. I received many words of encouragement. That totally made my day (beside the fact that I got to make snowman in July that same day, read about that below!). Reading those encouragement words (one was actually from one of  the Paper Craft editor) actually made me cry as I was so touched by everyone's support.

Big hearty THANK YOU to all of you who supported and voted for me during the whole competition. I did my best, that's what matter and I love you all for your kindness & supports. And the good news is since I didn't win, I can play again next year! Yay for more playing time! :) And to honor all  the ladies with whom I shared this experience please check their blogs. I have them listed under my Creative Links tab. They're fabulous!! Many of the girls have become my friends and that is something that I will always treasure. I am looking forward to keeping in touch with them & hopefully meet them all one of this day.
To celebrate this fun, amazing journey, here's a recap of all my cards for Gallery Idol.

Now, recap of my vacation. While in Seattle, we visited the Pike Market, home of the flying fish. I love the fresh market. And they have tons of beautiful flowers. I was telling hubby, I am not one asking for flowers for birthday or anything, but if the flowers are that gorgeous and that cheap, I would ask for it all the time. And, beside the flowers, first thing I saw at the market that made me say, oh... wow... is this display (sorry for bad pic, but it's  the only one I have for this):

Sweetness... Lots of yummy sweetness.

You should see my eyes just sparkle as soon as we saw that. Hubby had to pull me away from there. LOL, what can I say... I love great dessert, even for breakfast. We took the hop on, hop off bus for the rest of the day. The next day, we took the train to Vancouver and spent a couple days there. Of course, I timed it that we visited during Canada Day. So, lots of activities there. We visited Granville Island & Canada Place on our 1st day. They lighted the Olympic cauldron just for Canada Day, so bonus for us. Second day, we went to Stanley Park, the aquarium (we're big aquarium fans), Capilano Suspension Bridge (this was so much fun), and Grouse Mountain (awesome, awesome views).

I love Vancouver. Love the atmosphere & the energy there. It's like a melting pot. In one day we heard at least 8 different languages.  At Grouse Mountain we went all the way to the top. Once we get to  the top we took the ski lift and went up even higher. There's plenty of snow on the ground, so our nerdiness (is that a word??) came out & we made snowman. Only small one since we didn't have any glove. some people passed by and our only explanation was we're from Texas. They laughed and thought it was cool. Grated, it's not a fancy snowman and I could only find super skinny twig for the nose. Peeps, here's our snowman in July.

Phew... still so much things to tell. But, I don't want to bore you out with my personal stuff. Long story short, our vacation was amazing. I asked hubby if we can move there. LOL.  I think next year, our aim is to go for Alaska tour. Okay peeps, I have hundreds of emails to go  through, DT works to be done, blogs to check, I better go and do some works. Hugs to you all, Vera.