JAMSquared

Author Archives: Jennifer

You & Me: Today, Tomorrow, Forever

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James and I recently celebrated our seventh anniversary. And to think, if we had gotten married on February 29th like James had jokingly suggested, we wouldn’t have celebrated this year.  We didn’t really do anything on our anniversary, but we did recently go to San Francisco so I think that counts. He picked out a roller-coaster of love card for me. Cards are the one thing I require for special dates.

This is the card I made James. I used blue and gray, since James is a fan of blue and black. I used the Mojo Monday Sketch 180 that came out on our anniversary. I already had the image colored and the sentiment printed out, so I put it together during Jessica’s nap that day.

I’m entering this card in a few challenges:

Anniversary Card for James

Stamps: Meljen’s Designs Bunny Love; Ginger’s House You (sentiment)
Cardstock: Stampin’ Up Whisper White, Pacific Point, Basic Gray
Designer Paper: Stampin’ Up Walk in the Park
Ink: Dell printer, Stampin’ Up Pacific Point (edges of sentiment)
Embellishments: blue brads, silver sheer ribbon
Tools: Stampin’ Up Scallop Trim Border punch, markers; Marvy heart punch

Thanks for stopping by.

Texas Independence Day on Texas Tuesday

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Howdy Ya’ll! Welcome to another round of Texas Tuesday. Today, we’re celebrating tomorrow. And tomorrow is… Yep, you guessed it. Texas Independence Day. 175 years ago, our forefathers (well, not mine, since they didn’t arrive in Texas until the 1850s) declared independence from Mexico. And the defeat of the Alamo occurred just four days later. Initially my plan for this card was to include a photo of the Alamo, but my photo archives only include a photo of me, my Mom and my parent’s foreign exchange student in front of the Alamo in 2002. I didn’t really want people in the photo, or at least not prominent people. So I browsed the web for the Alamo. I came across a number of great options, most from Clipart Etc. I narrowed it down to two choices and you’ll probably see the second choice in a later card. I had wanted to use my little cowboy with the Texas flag, but alas I loaned it to a friend and so don’t have it in my possession right now. Instead, I created a sentiment using a font called bleeding cowboys.

Happy Texas Independence Day!

Stamps: Clipart Etc Alamo-54983; Deadbeat Designs small Texas
Cardstock: Stampin’ Up Very Vanilla, Real Red, Pacific Point
Ink: Dell printer; Stampin’ Up Real Red
Tools: Stampin’ Up ticket punch

Don’t forget to check out the rest of the Texas Tuesday posse (links in my sidebar —->). You might see some more Texas Independence Day cards.

Thanks for stopping by.

Frog Kisses

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This sweet little frog is a Tiddly Inks image and I was perusing their challenge blog one day and a design team member had layered the little frog and it really inspired me. I added him to Jen del Muro’s February Sketch for You to Try. You might see some projects with the same little frog in the not so distant future as I had printed out a number of the frogs because I wasn’t sure if I would get the layering right the first go around.

Frog Kisses

Frog Close-up

Stamps: Tiddly Inks Prince Charming; Stampabilities Fun Alpha Lower
Cardstock: Stampin’ Up Whisper White, Wild Wasabi, Certainly Celery, Basic Black
Designer Paper: Stampin’ Up Paper Prints Certainly Celery; DCWV All-Occasion Ultimate Stack
Ink: Dell printer; Stazon Jet Black
Embellishments: white gel pen (on eyes); Stampin’ Up black grosgrain ribbon; gold Stickles
Tools: Nesties circle; paper snips

Thanks for stopping by.

Bay Area Trip – Day 2 – Friday, February 11th

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Warning: I’m sharing 49 of the 309 photos I snapped for the day. Make sure you click on a picture if you want to view it bigger.

California Academy of Sciences

We took the bus from our hotel to Golden Gate Park, home to among other things the California Academy of Sciences. As a large urban park, it is similar to NYC’s Central Park  although at 1,017 acres, it is 20% larger than Central Park. The area between the California Academy of Sciences and the de Young Musuem is called the Music Concourse. One of the first things that caught our eyes were these weird looking trees. I’ve since found out these are normal trees pruned in a method called pollarding, which promotes a dense head of foliage and branches. This practice is performed to maintain trees at a predetermined height. It would be interesting to see the trees in the summer with foliage. They probably don’t look so alien then.

James and Pollarded Tree

California Academy of Sciences

Spreckels Temple of Music, aka the Bandshell

de Young

The first exhibit we experienced was “Rainforests of the World.” This is the exhibit we probably spent the most time perusing. It was really neat.

Strawberry Poison Dart Frogs

The base of the rain forest dome was “flooded.” Some of the fish were quite large, perhaps as big as a human adult. After ascending the walkway that circled the dome, you took the elevator to the lower level of the museum. After exiting the elevator,  you could watch the fish swim over your head. Note the people seen in the left of the next photo. They weren’t swimming with the fish.

Rain Forest Floor Fish Tank

Parrot

I really enjoyed taking photos of the butterflies, so you will see a number of the different types found in the dome. I’m not sure if there were more Isabella Longwings or if they were just camera hogs, but they were the subjects of probably half of my butterfly photos.

Isabella Longwing

Isabella Longwing

Golden Mantella

Giant Owl

Sapho Longwing

Isabella Longwing

Female Purple Honeycreeper and Paradise Tanager

The aquarium filled the entire lower level of the museum.

Upside-down Jellyfish

Philippine Coral Reef

James and I remember frequently seeing relatives of this little guy on our trip to Tahiti. Although our favorite on that trip was the Picasso Triggerfish.

Palette Surgeonfish, aka Dory fish

We ate lunch in the museum cafeteria. The selection and quality was very good. Afterward, we went to the “Islands of Evolution” exhibit.

Madagascar Plated Lizard

Then we wandered up to the observation deck of the living roof. They shaped the roof like San Francisco, with seven hills. I think a living roof is such a fabulous concept. Just think, if you have ancestors who lived in dugouts, they were early pioneers of living roofs.

Living Roof

Powdery Dudleya

Living Roof

Back inside, you can look up through the glass ceiling of the Piazza to see the living roof.

Piazza Ceiling

The museum also has a planetarium (passes are distributed on a first come first served basis), but we picked the one day it happened to be closed for maintenance. So we headed back downstairs to the aquarium for a chat with a diver in the Philippine Coral Reef.

Diver Show

After leaving the California Academy of Sciences, we strolled through a small portion of Golden Gate Park enjoying the scenery.

Roses

Cherry Blossoms

Can you tell you're in the most densely populated city in California?

Golden Gate Bridge

From Fulton St., we hopped on a bus to drive up Park Presidio Blvd. to the Golden Gate Bridge.

James with Cable Section

Golden Gate Bridge

Golden Gate Bridge

James and Jennifer

Golden Gate Bridge

San Francisco Skyline

On Bridge Deck

James and the Golden Gate Bridge

Jennifer and the Golden Gate Bridge

Poppies

Flower with Bridge in Background

Palace of Fine Arts

From the bridge, we took a short bus ride to the Palace of Fine Arts. This was even more amazing during the daytime.

Dome of Palace of Fine Arts

Arches

Decorative Detail

Palace Lagoon

You can really see how massive a structure it is, by this next picture of James relaxing on a bench in front of the domed part of the structure.

James

Gallivanting Goose

James and the Palace of Fine Arts

Jennifer and the Palace of Fine Arts

Houses as Far as the Eye Can See

Evening

From the Palace of Fine Arts, we took another bus to Ghirardelli Square. We checked out the beach of Aquatic Park, a small lagoon located just north of Ghirardelli Square nearly encircled by two piers with a small opening out to the bay. Apparently, people swim here year-round since it is free from sea craft, but we didn’t see any swimmers while we were there and I don’t think I would want to swim there in February.

Aquatic Park

Sunset Over the Bay

We then walked over to Scoma’s on Pier 47 for a delectable dinner. We didn’t order an appetizer, but the sourdough bread served prior to receiving our entrees was extremely tasty. James ate Seafood Canneloni and thought of it like Italian enchiladas. I ate Grilled Pacific Red Snapper with garlic lemon butter that James even said was good (and he’s not the biggest fish person). Afterward, we wandered the shops for a bit to work up an appetite for dessert. We headed back to Ghirardelli Square to share an ice cream sundae at the lower of the two Ghirardelli shops in the square. Did you know that Ghirardelli first opened shop in 1852?

Ghirardelli Square

If you missed Day 1 of our trip, go here and here for an Alcatraz cell door video. Stay tuned for days 3 and 4.