Jazz Cat of the Week

I have some exciting news!! I just found out a couple days ago that I was selected as "Jazz Cat of the Week" in the Jazzy Paper Designs Inspirational Challenge #13 for this card. As Jazz Cat, I have the honor of serving as Guest Designer for the new Jazzy Paper Designs challenge, which is to be inspired by this awesome jazz album cover: Street of Dreams by Grant Green.
As soon as I saw those street signs on the album cover, I knew I had the perfect DP for this project!! And the arrows on the street signs reminded me of my fun Along for the Ride stamp set by Unity. With this card, I'm also playing along with this week's colourQ Challenge #52, which is to use this sketch and one of the past year's color challenges. I chose colourQ #17.

If you'd like to take a crack at this fun jazz album-inspired challenge, then be sure to visit the Jazzy Paper Designs blog for more on the prize and for details on entering.

So, the past few days we in eastern Massachusetts have been plagued by the remnants of Tropical Storm Nicole. We've had warm temperatures, high winds, high humidity, and lots of moisture--feeling very tropical, but not in a good way (especially with no sun). Yesterday morning, I was awakened by my dear hubby at 5:45 a.m. (I am normally up at this time for my daily date with our stationary cycle, but I hadn't been sleeping well or feeling well this week, so when my alarm went off at 5:30 I reset it for 30 minutes to catch up a bit more on my sleep.) He had tried to leave for work at his normal time (5:40) but found that the high winds overnight had toppled a dead tree across the end of our road, completely blocking it. The tree, about 14 inches in diameter, was too big for him to drive over and too heavy for him to move by himself, so he was stuck. Our street has only one outlet (yup, Bliss Road is a dead end!!), and the project he's on at work these days doesn't allow him to work from home. In order to beat the heavy Boston commuting traffic, his only option was to get help. That was me!! So I threw on some clothes while he gathered up some work gloves, a 2x4 for leverage, and our hand truck, and off we set into the pre-dawn blackness while violent winds swirled through tree tops above us. Luckily, it wasn't raining at the moment. While stumbling around looking for clothes, I hadn't registered his request that I bring a flashlight, so we worked in the faint light of a distant streetlamp and managed to raise up the tree trunk with our 2x4 lever just enough to wedge the handtruck underneath it. I maneuvered the handtruck under the middle of the trunk while DH hoisted one end, and together we managed to pivot the whole thing just off the edge of the road. Success!!

The winds blew and gusted hard most of the rest of the morning, with intermittent showers, until suddenly it stopped and and a steady rain started. And that was it!! The temperature started dropping and the tropical-ness of the system was over. At the end of the school day, my middle-schooler daughter and I put on our rain boots, grabbed our umbrellas, and walked in the thankfully straight-falling rain down to the elementary school to meet her brother after school. We had carried his rain boots along with us, and once he had changed out of his sneakers, the three of us enjoyed a leisurely walk home, wading through and stomping in every puddle we came across. And that's my little slice of bliss for today--the joy of sloshing through deep puddles while keeping your feet dry in bright rubber boots!!

Thanks for dropping by today!!

Card Recipe:
Stamps: Unity Along for the Ride
Paper: SU basic black CS, DCWV The Travel Stack DP, SU DP, The Paper Company CS
Ink: Palette noir black
Accessories: SU scallop border punch, CM oval cutting system, dimensionals, Prismacolor pencils, gunmetal eyelet brads