Stampin! with Jaydee

Happy Friday.

It's another INSPO challenge across at FestiveFriday and it's another great day to celebrate - Friends Day!  This challenge inspired me to create a card for my bestie.  Pammie and I used to go for walks through the park when we were young kids and sometimes we were accompanied by her dad's dog, Trudy.  So, I used Hand in Hand from The Greetery and the Fir & Foliage stencils to create my card.  

Don't forget - you don't necessarily have to follow the theme - you just need to make a project featuring 3 of the words from our INSPO list.  Here's today's list:

For my card I used feminine, pink, sparkle and a friendship sentiment - I mean, who doesn't want to thank your bestie for always being there when you need them!  I know you can't see it - but I added some glimmer onto the wet cobblestones and the umbrella

Here's my card:

I hope you will join us and play along.  We would LOVE to see what YOU create.  As always, the design team have some fabulous inspiration for you:

Ann Schach

Beth McCullough

Sharon Hashimoto Burkert

Melanie Hungerford

Helen Jennings

Stephanie Lanzalotto

Melva Peters

Jaydee

Diane Evans 

Joanne James

On a personal note:

When I made this card, I could have had no idea that things would happen the week that I posted it that would make me realize how grateful I am to have grown up when I did.  Yes, bad things happened, and we were always told to be aware of strangers, especially those in cars offering us lifts or sweeties, but when we went to school, we felt safe behind the walls of our scholarly enclave and the only thing we had to fear was earning the wrath of one of our teachers and getting detention or the cane.  Never, ever, ever, would my parents have sent me off to school in the morning thinking about the fact that we might not come home because some crazy idiot decided to take out 19 children under the age of 10.

The events this week reminded me of how I felt after the Sandy Hook shooting.  Shattered, angry, and despondent.  But, I had hopes that people would have been shocked enough that we wouldn't let it happen again.  This week, I was beyond angry.  No family should ever have to feel the pain of losing their child, even more so in this unimaginable way.  But, it isn't unimaginable!  It's happened before, so unimaginable is no longer an adjective that we should use to describe what happened.  It's unforgivable!  The discussion around children being killed in their classroom by a boy who is not even old enough to have a drink, but is old enough to go out and buy assault rifles  - plural - not singular! is not a political discussion - it's a societal discussion.  My heart breaks for those families.  It breaks for the surviving children who witnessed this and will never be the same again.  My heart just breaks for those kids who will never reach their full potential, who will never go to prom, college, have children, be free to make the choices they want to make.  My heart just breaks.  period.  I look back on this card that I created, and how happy I felt creating it with my head full of wonderful memories, and the era of innocence that allowed Pammie and I to go wandering around the park, on our own, and I am so grateful that we could live the life of freedom and a time when kids could be kids without having their life brutally cut short by some deranged idiot. 

Tonight my thoughts and prayers are with the families of all those affected, the young children who lost their lives and the doctors and nurses who had to deal with their mortal remains.  May God grant them the solace they need to try to begin to deal with their loss.

Jaydee