tennis + dave brethauer + a birthday card

Tony and I decided to try playing tennis again today. It's been quite a while since we've hit the courts, and part of that was probably because I sucked so bad for a while there. Ha! Of course, the wonderful husband he is, he would never never say that but I know when I stink at a sport. I think I was almost 20 pounds heavier back then, too, so of course, I was probably a lot slower on my feet. What-ev.

After driving around in search of an empty court, we ended up at our old stompin' ground: Bunker Hill Community College. What's nice about these courts is that they are tucked away from the main road so most people probably don't even know that they're there. They were kind of beat up for a couple of years but it looks like they recently replaced the nets and they look nice now.

Turns out that we didn't suck as much as we had anticipated sucking. LOL I'm still quite out of shape though and had to stop for a couple of rests as my heart beat a gazillion times a second. Our tennis balls are quite old though, so they don't have much bounce to them anymore. Or so, that's what we'll blame part of our suckiness on for now anyway [wink, wink]. But we've decided to a) get me a new racket (mine is very old, strung quite loosely, and the grip is shedding - gross!), b) buy some new tennis balls, and c) get me some new sneakers that don't make my baby toes so sore (<-- I decided this last one just now) before we hit the courts again next weekend.

Tony and I both used to play avidly when we were younger. Did you know I was on the varsity tennis team in high school? Well if you saw me running around today you definitely would not have thought that - ha ha ha!

Renee and I took a colored pencils class taught by one of the owners of Memory Box Co., Dave Brethauer, at Ink About It in Westford, MA yesterday. He taught us some pretty neat blending techniques to use with colored pencils and we worked on pieces for five different cards. I liked this one with the fall leaves the best because we used three different colors and it really showed the blending technique the most.

On a side note, I've been awaiting my recent order of Stampin' Up! goods from Liz to arrive so that I could try this idea that I've had brewing in my head. I used the jumbo rolling "happy happy birthday" stamp and "wild wasabi" cardstock and ink pad from Stampin' Up! to make this card. I used the little cupcake stamp from A Muse and then punched them out with a circle punch. Anyway, it has been such a long time since I've created a card so I thought I'd post it here.

Later that night, Tony and I had a nice dinner at Coda in the South End. Read about it here. Hope everyone had a nice weekend!