Happy Halloween 2010

My favorite holiday of the year! I am not sure if I like scary, but I sure think it is fun to dress up and be someone else for a day! I also love the weather and the relaxing feeling of this time of year. Just makes me smile! I made costumes for the family this year, was fun to get it all done a little early. Except for my hubby, as we are getting his done today before we head out to a friends(shout out to Julia) for a Halloween celebration!!! So here is a sneak peek of my costume and some photos of my son's too.

This is a photo of Bender, a work in progress. We were still adding the final touches to the costume but I wanted to make sure to get some photographs of it while we were making it. Now I just wish I would have taken more as the costume evolved. I don't have the photos we took of the finished costume on my camera, because we took some with my hubby's iphone and he has not uploaded them to me yet. Will post more when I get them!

I gotta get myself motivated, cause I gotta leave in the next 2 1/2 hours and I am not even dressed yet! Spent too much time this morning surfing the net!

Filling my time with Jewelry

So this will be another quick post from me, but it will be photo heavy. I have been trying my hand at bottle cap necklaces and are loving the results. Some are better than others but I just wanted to try it out and get an idea of how to make them then I will start getting more detailed. I found that using glossy accents is great to seal the image but sometimes it leaves air bubbles, so another product that was sitting in my scrap closet is 3d crystal lacquer. I must have got it from a stamp show in the area and never used it. Well it works perfectly, no air bubbles, dries quickly, crystal clear. Think I will use this from this point forward when making the necklaces. I also am experimenting with photoshop elements to make images...I thought about purchasing them but realized I could easily make my own and set forth doing that. Unfortunately I don't all that much time to play around so the only images I have created are the ones for my daughters matching sorority necklaces, seen the first image below. The others are a combination of scrapbook paper, rubons, or stickers.

Gotta go, this post ended up longer than I thought it would be!

I have no time for blogging!

Apparently I have been so busy that I have neglected my little blog for a month...sorry but October has been busy with so much going on, activitities, parties, etc. I will get back to a regular schedule soon...I promise! Here is a little photo of the card I made for October's monthly card swap. Below the card is a photo of some really cool flowers I made...the month's theme was to make handmade flowers. Both of these are from Marion Smith. She has youtube videos showing how to do the techniques. They were both fun to do , but the glitter ones were super messy! Be back soon!

My first baby themed card!

So excited about this card! I made this card for my monthly card swap group. It is baby themed this month, in honor of one of the ladies that is expecting. We were throwing a surprise shower for her this month and wanted all the cards to go along with the theme. Of course the shower is no longer a surprise because she wanted to dropout due to it being so close to her due date and we had to convince her to stay another month! Anyway my card was an inspiration from one of Julia's cards, she made a card with 6 squares of book paper that she chalked. When I saw her card I immediately thought quilt, so using that idea I made smaller squares of pattern paper, used my sewing machine to stitch around the squares, added the lace and the little animal button (all cards have different animals). Using my cricut I cut the squares, the ovals, and the title. I just loved the oh baby! My card is a little larger than an A2 size so I decided to make the envelope to match, took me watching a few videos on youtube to figure out the envelope I liked the best. In the end the envelope is really easy to make and made me decide that in the future I will probably make envelopes to match my cards. Just adds that something extra!

I am on vacation this week with no big plans, kind of nice having a break! I of course will be planning some crafty time, look for some blog updates! I hope to get a few posts in this week, since I have been a slacker for a while!

I got my crafty on!

So I have been busy doing crafts the past few weeks and really have not even thought about posting to my blog, sorry that I neglect it so much...just not really as committed to it as I thought I would be. I am finding that I have so much more free time now that my daughter is away at college. It is amazing how just one kid leaving the house frees up so much time. Of course since she is only about 40 minutes away she visits often, I think I have seen her at least 1 day out of the weekend the last 3 weeks. One time she didn't come home but I had a hair show about 10 minutes from her dorm so I went to visit. Another time she came home to go to a high school football game, she quickly realized that it was different going to a game after you graduate. Maybe she will finally get that high school is really overrated!!!! Once you have been there and done that there is no sense in going back!

Here is a project that I made for my daughter for her dorm room. I really enjoyed cutting all the ribbon and flowers out and then layering them on this wreath.

I bought a wire wreath from Hobby Lobby in the floral department, measuring 12 inches. I used my cricut to cut the flowers, cutting several different layers and using different pattern papers. The ribbons were cut at 7 inches and tied them around the outside and inside wire rings, leaving the center 2 empty so that I could layer the flowers on. After assembling the layers of flowers I went through my brad and button stash and found some matching ones to add more depth to the flowers. Glued it all on, added a ribbon to hang it, called it done. Really am pleased with how it turned out. The finished piece measures about 17 inches. The best part was my daughters reaction to it when I brought it to her. She was so excited...I have been planning to make small gifts for her on occasion this school year. I know she will like them and it is a great and easy way to decorate her dorm room.

She is off to College!

It is official! Our daughter left on Friday for college. It was move in day, we spent 17 hours carrying boxes, unpacking, organizing, shopping, and decorating her dorm room. It was so much fun to watch her get all excited about all the stuff. I know she is going to be so happy there. We did go back on Sunday to take another load of things she forgot, but that was to be expected! I also decided I would make some cute little signs for her and her suite mates. So here are the pictures of them. The first 2 photos are of the same sign. I made it for their bathroom door so that if someone is in there you won't have to knock to find out, just look at the sign! They now want a Welcome sign for their front door. It is never ending!

So it is going to be a little strange at my house with only one child home, but I know that in a few weeks we will be use to it. My hubby is missing her just a bit, I thought I would be the one that missed her. Don't get me wrong, I do miss her but more than anything I am so excited for her...it is a new adventure, one that I didn't get to continue so I am sure that is why I am more excited. It is funny to watch my hubby, he is kind of like a lost puppy dog and he is spending more time with me. Miranda was always his movie buddy, now Devon will have to become that!

Today I am meeting a friend to scrapbook! I am so happy, I need to take more days to do this because it is such a relaxing hobby for me! Unfortunately I don't have time every day to do it, plus since I don't have a designated craft room it makes it hard to get all of it out and then at the end of the day clean it all up. Maybe now that Miranda is gone I might think about making her room into a craft space!!! No can't do that, she will come home for visits!!! We just gotta move to a bigger house!! That won't be happening anytime soon!

Hopefully now that school is in for my son and my daughter is off to college things will settle down in my life. I already feel like the craziness is coming to an end. Hoping for good days ahead! I certainly need them!

Can't believe it has been a month!

Wow time sure does fly! I can't believe I have not been blogging for an entire month. It was not for lack of wanting to but as always life gets in the way. Since being sick and trying to recuperate I just didn't have the time to sit down and type all about my recovery and getting back to my normal routine. Of course that is exactly what happened. Just been working and getting the kids ready for school. You know having a college student to get ready to move is like moving yourself, so much stuff to go through, pack up, more stuff to buy. It is insane! Miranda will officially move in on Friday. I am so excited for her and she can't be more thrilled. I know that we will miss her, but more than anything this is such an exciting time in her life, a new chapter. The one thing that still shocks me is how fast the time has gone by, just yesterday she was a baby and now she is an adult! I am not that old!!!

Even though I have not been blogging I have managed to be creative, actually I took a trip to the mountains while I was on bed rest, I figured I could do bed rest there just as well. So while there I got to scrapbook just a few pages. I am making progress on a book for Miranda, it is memories of her high school years. I have 2 years almost completed and 2 more to go...this is going to end up being a 4 book album, because there are just too many pages in the books to do just 1. So far I am up to 32 pages and still have about 6 more to go for the first 2 years. I put the pages in a book this morning and it was busting at the seams, guess I need to pick up a few more books...wish I would have done that earlier in the year because what I used was on clearance and I can't get the same albums anymore...maybe I will just use some I have laying around even if they don't match. Something to think about for another day!

I will leave you with a few of the pages that I have done over the last month. Also I promise that I will be a better blogger this month!

I have more to share but I will save those for another day!