Missing My Friend

So today's Learn Something New Every Day post made think about things that used to be part of my daily life but aren't anymore.  The absolutely first thing that came to mind is my friendship with Val.  We used to talk nearly every day.  Now we're lucky if we talk four or five times a year.  She's busy with school, work, family, church and her other friends. I understand that, but it doesn't mean that it hurts any less that I feel like I don't have a place in her life anymore.  So today's journal entry was about losing that close friendship we used to have and I made a page to go with it. 

I pulled out a collection pack that I bought at the sidewalk sale at Craft Warehouse this summer.  It's Crate Paper's Paper Heart Collection.  It's a pretty lovey-dovey set that I actually bought to scrapbook some of our wedding pictures with, but there's a couple of papers in there that I just love that are a bit more neural, like this background page, which I absolutely adore.

I love, love, love the sayings in the Echo Park collections.  They always just seem to be perfect.  The only problem was that the color of this saying was all wrong for my layout.  So I printed the print and cut design out from my Silhouette Studio, scanned it and opened it in Photoshop.  I then filled the text with colors that went with my layout and cut it out again.  The only problem was the white cardstock I had printed it on was too white.  So I used a little Old Paper Distress Ink to age it a little.  Now it was the absolute perfect embellishment. 

I added some Recollections pearls that were part of my stocking stuffers this year (thanks Mom!), some Prima and Imaginesce flowers and Darice bling.  The little tickets are from a border strip in the Crate Paper collection and the heart is from my new stamp set from Inkadinkado called Hearts.  I finished it off with some Thickers letters (my new obsession) and some rub on letters I found in my stash.  The top flower has an extra little eyelet tucked behind the gem because it's the pull tab for my hidden journalling. 

I had today off and used the day to try the smoker out by myself for the first time to smoke a couple of piece of pork that we had left over from buying meat at Costco.  Pretty dismal failure although Hubby saved the day when he got home.  But my attempt at dinner was much better.  I found a lovely crock pot recipe for Cashew Chicken on Pinterest posted by Six Sisters' Stuff.  I changed it up a little by doubling the sauce.  Then just a little before we were ready to eat, I dumped in a bag of frozen stir-fry veggies.  It was wonderful, although next time I think I'll triple the sauce.

Then we finally sliced the apple pie we made yesterday after canning apple pie filling from the apples we picked in the afternoon.  Yum!