Choose happiness for this weekend

Choose happiness!  That's how I started out this weekend.  I headed up to our camper in Wisconsin for a weekend of stamping.  It was going to be just my husband and I, no kids, no grandkids, and nothing buy quiet solitude and a basket full of stamping supplies. 

Well, it started to rain as I left home, just a sprinkle, but it got heavier as I drove the hour to the campgrounds, and by the time I got up there the campground was like it was flooded over.  I never saw so much standing water.  My husband said it was so noisy from the heavy rain he had to turn off the TV, because he could not hear it.  So, the rain slowed down and stopped shortly after I arrived, and I couldn't wait to get my stamping supplies in and get creative.  I worked all evening on a card, that just was not coming together the way I envisioned, and I finally stopped without completing assembly and said maybe I would feel better about it tomorrow.  Then came the phone call from my son at home saying our basement had flooded.  It evidently rained so heavy the water came in through the foundation.  This has never happened in the 35 years since we built the house.  So, we drove home, spent half the night cleaning up, getting things out of harms way as best we could, and spent half the day trying to get people out to help rescue us.  Once we had things under control, we put our son in charge, and headed back up to our retreat.  We had a few hours to relax before we packed up and came home again to work on the basement in earnest.  I managed to get some stamping done, needing to get 6 cards made for a swap this week, so that's what I have to share today.

I needed some great inspiration after my burnout day, so I turned to my card challenges for help.  Pals Paper Arts  Challenge #253 had a fun layout, and I took my Playful colors from Colour Me! Challenge #73, only I had no Lost Lagoon, so I used Coastal Cabana.  Aren't those fun Playful colors?  I also used a print from Bohemian DSP, giving you a sneak peek at what is to come from the new SU catalog this week.   I think the sentiment "Choose Happiness" is very appropriate for a birthday, so I'll share this at Seize the Birthday Challenge where this week "Anything Goes".   I hope you enjoy my card, and I hope I get some time for stamping more this week, but with the cleanup ahead of us, it's not looking good.  Even though we had so much water in the basement, I have many things to be thankful for.  One, my craft room is upstairs, and my stamps and paper are okay.  LOL!  Second, I believe in storing things in plastic tote bins, and I had so many things that were protected from water damage because of that.  The majority of the water was in my sewing room, that has become a storage room since I quit sewing a few years ago because of eye problems.  So far, there was nothing valuable lost their.  We spent the day taking everything out of the rooms down stairs and taking it to the garage, and we had to rip out all the wet carpeting.  House smells like a wet dog, but we can stand it.  The good news is ...we are in for a basement remodel.  Yeah!   Not :(

You have a great week. 

Mary Alice

PS.  I have to share a little bit of the beauty that did surround me this weekend in the woods.  All the spring flowers, the lilies of the valley, the trillium, the ladyslippers that I seldom get to see, because I don't usually come up so early in the spring to see them.  These photos were taken a week ago, before the big rain.