Start of Summer

I've been soooo looking forward to the start of summer this year. With only three weeks left of school and the pool opening I really can't wait and have been counting down the days until I have a lot more time to do the stuff I love instead of the stuff I have to do. Enter stage left, stuff I love:





Taking pictures of the girls outside in the late golden sunshine









Going to the Farmer's Market and out for brunch









Spending time with my silly Husband and sweet girls, and maybe even going on a fun trip or two. Happy Memorial Day to you and yours!

I Win!!

So I've won two challenges at Studio Calico in the past couple of weeks and I've been feeling like I totally rock as a scrapbooker. I'm like, totally waiting for someone to come beg me to be on their design team cause I'm so flipping sweet. Then I realize, as I'm going through old posts on the message board, that the weekly challenge winners are--wait for it...wait for it...randomly selected. Dude. That was a reality check. Anyhoo, I've been busy again in my folding table clad craft studio nonetheless, and I've put together some apparently sweet layouts worthy of random winning! Rockin'!











This is a scraplift from the ever-talented and super awesome Susan Wienroth



















See?? I have been busy. My house is a pig sty, but my layouts are plentiful. So, no new other than scrapbook crafts to show off quite yet, but I will say that I spent all.flipping.day on Saturday spray painting, so there will (hopefully) be a very cool new project to show off soon. Till then, I gotta go work on some winning randomly chosen weekly challenges.

Doilies: The New Buntings

So you'll see a common theme this post throughout my scrapbook layouts and a super awesome project I did recently:Doilies. I may now love doilies as much as I love buntings. Shocking, I know! Scrapbookery first. Let me just preface this by saying that if you aren't a scrapbooker, you are missing out. Its like a little 12x12 piece of arty goodness, topped off by pictures and little bits of journaling. So creative, so fun and really, anything goes.









































Did you see some doilies?? Huh? Huh? I bet you did! Now, this next project was time consuming, but so worth it. I recently asked my mother-in-law if she had any extra doilies laying around that I could use for a project. I was totally unprepared for the sheer awesomeness that she pulled from a closet shelf. There were a million doilies, all made by Husband's grandmothers and great aunt. All shapes and sizes and so amazingly crafted. Really, if there had been craft blogs back then they would have put my blog posts to shame. Luckily, my super generous mother in law allowed me to take a million doilies and make this awesome runner for our dining room table.





I laid out the doilies for like three hours before I finally decided on a pattern and shape. I made sure that they each overlapped and that it was semi-shapely. Next I used cream colored embroidery floss to tie the doilies together by carefully threading the floss through existing holes in each doily. I wanted to make sure that I didn't alter the doilies in any way, as they are keepsakes that I'm sure my daughters will cherish one day. I love how it turned out. I'm sure it wouldn't be nearly as awesome if the doilies weren't so kick-ass.

Scrappy Goodness

So I finally got Husband to agree to let me take over our guest room/office as a craft room. I guess he was getting sick of our dining room looking like a paper, glue and picture cyclone. A couple of weeks ago we went to a nearby town and visited with this awesome guy who makes furniture from reclaimed Michigan barn wood. We chose some wood and are waiting for him to prep the boards for us so Husband can build my very own craft table. Until then I'm using a folding table from Costco, but what ev, I was still able to make these lovely little pieces over the past few weeks.















Stay tuned this week for some Easter craft goodness!

Luck of the Irish

This weekend I did some crazy St. Patrick's Day crafting, in the attempt to force spring to come to this winter tundra that is my home. In all fairness, we've had hardly any snow this year, but considering its March and still freezing cold, I've really had enough with winter. Anyhoo, in honor of the green holiday I made a rag wreath and two (wait for it, wait for it...) buntings! My friends, who shall remain nameless, have been totally dogging me for being obsessed with buntings, but you know what? I am obsessed with buntings cause they are frakking sweet. So there. Here's the first one, which I pseudo copied from a pin I pinned on Pinterest (that's a lot of pin). I cut one inch strips of green cardstock and stapled them together to form a shamrock.



Then I further destroyed my paperback copy of Harry Potter and made some hearts for each side of the shamrock.



I used a tiny hole punch and punched holes in the tops of the hearts and shamrock, then threaded some jute cording through the holes to hang.





For my second bunting, I cut shamrocks out of stiffened felt, adhered them to more HP book pages, added some buttons, and stapled each flag to thicker jute cording.





Finally, for the wreath (which I also copied from Pinterest) I cut 1" by 6" fabric strips and tied a million of them onto a metal coat hanger which I formed into a circle and taped together with duct tape. All the cutting and tying took for flipping ever, but I like the end result.





I've also been on a scrapbook frenzy lately and was able to rock out four different layouts on Saturday morning while the littles watched tv and Husband slept in.








Yes, that is really him...he was signing wine bottles at our local grocery store. He wasn't allowed to take pictures but he made an exception for Lil and my friends' littles. Too funny! These layouts were mostly made with Studio Calico's Daydream Believer kit. I know you wont believe it, but I made something else this weekend, too. Unfortunately I finished it after dark so you'll have to wait until next time to see pics!