2nd Stop on our Safari - Tarangire National Park!

Tarangire, a set on Flickr.

Hi all! The second stop on our safari was Tarangire National Park and it was absolutely amazing! After we landed, we were greeted by our guide, Alex, who took us on our first game drive on the way to our 2nd lodge - the Tarangire Treetops. Not only were the accomodations to die for, but as soon as we left the airstrip, we saw lots of amazing animals, too! I was so fascinated by the beautiful birds from the start, then we saw a parade of elephants and a leapard in a tree! It was truly incredible. I learned that when you go on safari, you want to keep an eye out for the Big 5 - Elephant, Buffalo, Leopard, Lion, and Rhino. I'm so happy to report that we saw ALL of them on our trip! In Tarangire, we saw two of the Big 5 - we saw tons of elephants and lucked out by seeing a leopard in a tree during the first half hr of our game drive! {We were told later that leopards are typically hard to spot, since they are usually alone, unless they're mating or have cubs}. Overall, we were delighted to see so many animals - it was always a treat to learn about new ones, too! My animal repertoire has definitely increased since this trip. Hope you enjoy these pictures. In the next week or so, I'll try and recap a few of our favorite new animals that we discovered on the trip!

Good night for now! The last two destinations to come soon....

Pictures from Arusha - our first stop on our Africa Safari

Arusha, a set on Flickr.

Hi all! I've spent many hoursthis weekend reviewing and finally uploading my photos from our trip to Africa. I literally sifted through thousands of photos to come up with four segments. The first of which starts here... Our first stop was in Arusha, Tanzania, where we stayed at the Arusha Coffee Lodge on our first night. We met our lodge hosts, Martin and Traci {sorry, we didn't get a picture of Traci though!} and our lovely tour coordinator, Caudence. We got in late on Saturday night, May 7th, and then toured a coffee plantation the next morning. Hope you enjoy!

animal inspired {THANK YOU}

Hi blog friends!  Good morning and happy Saturday to you.  It feels good to be able to catch my breath this morning!  I even had time to assemble my first animal inspired card from our trip to Tanzania, Africa.  It really was such an amazing experience.  Looking through our pictures brings a smile to my face each time.  The animals, the people, the scenery were all so incredible!  I'm sure you will continue to hear that from me for the next few weeks...so much to share!  Well, let's get started, shall we?  My card was inspired by all the beautiful elephants we saw on the trip.  For this card, I used the cute elephant stamp from the Animal Stories stamp set.  And, how cool is this - it's on sale this month for National Scrapbooking month!  You can check out the details on my Demonstrator Website.  {BTW - select stamp sets are 30% off til the end of the month!}  Wanna see my full card?  Here it is:

I had fun creating the background - can you guess what I used?  It's the Tasteful Trim die!  I used the large wavy ric rac and what I did was ran the piece twice through, and aligned the die slightly off set by 1/4" to make a narrower width of the ric rac pattern.  Then I alternated the resulting pieces - narrower and wider - and placed it on a diagonal to create the background.   Then I just trimmed the excess off and viola!  A fun new animal-ish pattern!  I am also into this Basic Gray and Daffodil Delight color scheme.  Just love this combo. Here's the recipe for you:

{Elephant Thanks}

*Stamp Sets: Animal Stories, Curly Cute

*Cardstock:  Basic Gray, Daffodil Delight, Whisper White

*Inks: Basic Gray Classic Ink, Basic Gray and Daffodil Delight Markers

*Accessories: Daffodil Delight Satin Ribbon and Pom Pom ribbon, Neutrals Buttons, Linen Thread, Tasteful Trim Bigz XL die, Scallop Squares Duo Bigz Die

Hope you like the card!  Now, I'll share one of the many inspirational photos we have {we literally took hundreds of photos of these gorgeous animals -no joke!}.  I'm hoping to put together a slideshow of the trip that I'll be posting on the blog, so you'll definitely see more....hopefully soon.  For now, here's a cute baby and momma pic we snapped from the Tarangire National Park for you.  Isn't it so sweet?

Have a fantastic day!  Bye for now!