Sixth Day of Christmas

Happy New Year's Eve! WOW another year bites the dust. For my family wasn't a good year again, we had just celebrated a year of losing our mom and youngest sister when my dad passed away at age 85. He had been wishing to join them for a year so he went home to them on February 18 a bittersweet day.

Three days prior of his passing, my foster mom also passed away at age 95, February 15.

to add to our loses our favorite brother-in-law, Steve, passed away at age 73 on June 15th

There were other loses in with family and friends or family of friends but people that affected us directly were as they were someone we knew or got along at one time or another were

my cousin Ivette in September 24 age 58,                           stamping friend Rosemary 

                                                                                                     October 2nd age 83, 

             

the ex of a cousin, Mario in October 31 age 69,            my SU demonstrator Barbara 

                                                                                                      November 11

  

A couple friends had new grandchildren so after all these loses at least were some new babies not as many but at least not just loses. 

Bret celebrated his 62nd birthday and his retirement after 28.5 years at Port of Seattle this summer. 

We celebrated his retirement and our 28th anniversary driving partly to Mexico to clear my parents house, 59 years of accumulation not easy job but something that had to be done sooner rather than later. We spent 3 weeks working non stop on the house except for our anniversary day that we took off to go to Teotihuacan sightseeing with one of my cousins and afterwards we had dinner with her family. 

 

We also were able to see friends we hadn't seen in over 20 years give or take. We stayed with my nephew which we hadn't seen since 2013 as well as my brother which this year he was blessed enough to turn 60 in October!!

On the way back from Mexico we spent some time with my relatives in Texas that I hadn't seen probably since my last trip there before my move to Acapulco in late 1990 and on our way home we stopped in San Antonio to visit my niece that is going to college there

  

we also got to see friends along the way in AZ and UT, it was easy making stops as we were driving with our 5th wheel our home away from home. Was a long but fun trip except for the work in Mexico and not being able to have our cat Reva with us but still was nice to see everyone.

As part of my 58th birthday celebration in November we visited my adopted family that now live at an assisted living not far from here, they don't go anywhere but it's a nice place and their apartment seem nice and they have each other plus they do have company all the time.

Now for the card, if you are not interested in catching up on my personal life. This was from a class by Altenew educator Pam Boedeker backgrounds with cover dies. For this first card, I actually used an stencil to emboss as well as colored, she had done a similar card with a cover die by Altenew that has the building so I thought it was a nice way of using my stencil to duplicate her card, the embossing is very settle should have used another shim with my city scene stencil oh well next time, the inks are distress ink black soot, crisp dye inks ultraviolet, azurite and lagoon then because I don't do splatter instead used one of the stamps from gorgeous grunge stamp set by SU with Hero hues unicorn pigment ink then stamped the Santa sled by Stampa Rosa with VersaFine Clair nocturne several time to get it pretty dark 

this other card I made was blending the background and then adding the outline die. For my card started by adding crisp dye ink magenta and ultraviolet until I was happy, leaving the center on the light side then die cut pillar candle trio by MB with gold paper then decided to add some ferns from through the window die set by Altenew and since I did purple used enchanted garden enamel dots also by Altenew as berries