Are you tired of raking leaves?

We live in the Midwest in an nice well established neighborhood with lots of trees.  11 months out of the year, that is a very good thing....but this time of year it means we are raking LOTS of leaves!  My house is at the bottom of a hill  at a 3 way "T" intersection so quite often we find leaves in our yard which don't even match any of our own trees...just one of the unavoidable joys of living at the end of the street in beautiful O'Fallon, IL.  Maybe I am just noticing it more now that our 3 boys are all grown up and I can't make them go rake the leaves?

Since we have raked the yard several times already this year, it may seem odd that I picked this particular card with images of  falling leaves for one of my November stamp club  projects but it was fun looking at the colors of the fallen leaves in my front yard and using them as ideas for coloring these great leaves.  I snitched this card hook, line and sinker from my friend Connie Babbert's blog...she is one of those talented people who seems to come up with ideas and makes it look effortless.  I am merely a good copycat but the end result is the same...a beautiful card done with the Autumn Splendor stamp set and a sentiment from Grateful Greetings.  I also used the Sanded stamp tone on tone with Pumpkin Pie ink to give a little interest to the background. The leaves were stamped with bleach (yep, plain old Chlorox laundry bleach...just make sure it's fresh!) then colored with Stampin' Pastels (chalks) for a nice soft look on a dark background.  Thanks Connie, for inspiring this CASE...not only did I use it for stamp club but I made up a few extras and sent them out to family members for my Thanksgiving card this year.

And now, for those who think I was exaggerating about the leaves....here are a few photos of our early Nov leave raking adventures!  The handsome gentleman in the photos is my charming husband who doubles as the yard /cabana boy on occasion.  The day we took these pictures the yard was full of leaves and by the end it was  lookin' good...we had a brisk wind come up overnight and by the next day you couldn't tell we had done a thing!  lol!