Espaliered?

I always have a green apple on my desk (with the best of intentions of making it my afternoon snack, but chocolate always wins) and the other day a co-worker walked by and showed me her green apple from her espaliered apple tree. Of course I had to Google the definition:

Espalier, the art of cultivating a tree on a flat surface, is an ideal way of growing fruit trees in small spaces. You can espalier on walls, fences or even on freestanding structures. A freestanding espalier can be placed to divide the garden or can form a backdrop to the vegetable garden. Apples and pears are ideal for espalier but you can also espalier figs, cherries, apricots, plums, almonds and citrus.

They're so fun and beautiful! So, now I'm adding an espaliered apple tree to my list of plants to have in my dream garden. Just in case you want to know, here's the rest of the list (I make lists. I know, I'm lame, but how else will I remember? Or look back and laugh?):
Orange Poppies, Green or White Hydrangea, Bright Green & Purple Sweet Potato Vine, Naked Ladies, Irises (preferably dark purple, yellow or white), Lilies, Peonies, Mums, Tomatoes, Peppers, Asparagus, Spinach, Lettuce, Red Potatoes, Onions, Cucumbers, Strawberries, Basil, Parsley, Dill Weed, Oregano, Rosemary

All that glitters...

Look at the beautiful display one of my co-workers in procurement blessed upon me... lots of jars of glitter... all sorts of glitter from iridescent snowflakes to green and blue mermaid scales (that's what we've lovingly named the department favorite) to beautiful unique colors in micro glitter. The collection is too captivating not to display. It's attracted many co-workers (apparently they're all distracted by sparkly things) to my office and made many of them jealous of my shiny gifts.

All of this gloriousness is because I used glitter on my last big project, the Keepsakes Wall in Hallmark Gold Crown stores... so here's the shameless plug to go check it out when it debuts in October. I can't promise all of the captivating colors shown here, but it's exciting nonetheless.

015 | Wallpaper Wednesday

Last week I attended a "Chat with Jack," Hallmark's new Retail President, which was very impressive, but the following quote stood out as really interesting to me. He was speaking on his past experiences and how "sometimes in life you catch a headwind, sometimes you catch a tailwind." I thought this was an interesting perspective to keep in mind, that sometimes no matter how hard you work or try, it's still up to chance or the way the wind happens to be blowing...

ATC: Winter Wonderland

I recently volunteered to co-lead the ATC group at Hallmark, so I've had ATC on the brain lately. Trying to think of new theme ideas and how to publicize the events to get more participants. As I've been working on the project, I've uncovered some older cards that I never posted here.

With it warming up outside (and finally starting to feel like summer), I thought it was appropriate to post one of my favorites themes, Winter Wonderland, for a cool break from the heat! I love the cool winter blues and whites and drew from that as my color inspiration. I contrasted the cool blue with warm and fuzzy felt, where I cut out silhouettes of some fun winter characters and objects.

Look for more ATC cards to come!

014 | Wallpaper Wednesday

Another quote from Sean Adam's visit to Hallmark...