Fun Friday- Crafting

As I promised, here is the quilt that I made in March.

My wonderful aunts gave me the pattern and fabric Xmas 07. I messed up cutting it in April of 08 and actually cut enough shaped to do two blanket. But because of that mistake I didn't have enough to do the colorful border. I was lucky enough to find enough fabric colors that matched the original fabric to complete the blankets. The other blanket will be the REVERSE of this one (black stars with a colorful background). Was trying to make them for the girls birthday's but didn't make it. Here is the fabric for Keriana's backing...

We're still working on finding the right one for Cheyanne. But since I haven't even started the blocks, I am not in any rush to find the backing. But if anyone finds any cupcake fabric let me know!

The other thing I wanted to share with you today is my latest project. I have one hall .... the "hallway of love" that doesn't have anything on it and looks so plain. I found a poem and wanted to get it in the vinyl wall letter and put the kids yearly school photo's above it. However - upon talking with Joe- realised that the poem was long and the letters would be within kid reach. And Tristin LOVES to run his fingers along the walls. So I did these! They each have the poem AND I can take the pages and put them right into their scrapbooks - which I keep up about as well as I do this blog. I actually haven't had out my scrapbook stuff since we moved. I take lots of pictures, but I don't do the books. BAD JAMIE! Anyway, thought I would spread this creative spark along. ....

I gathered my supplies and took the kids outside.


I bought these cute frames from Target for $3 each. Cut my card stock to match my frame and marked on the card stock how far the frame came over so that I could get the hand prints to show.


I grabbed a 5x7 most recent school photo and cut it to fit the left over space.


Tried my "hand" at Calligraphy and was so crappy at it that I decided there was NO WAY I was going to attempt to write the poem on each of their pages. (NOTE: I've been told by many people that I should have been a Doctor or professional athlete to have penmanship as bad as I do.)


So I grabbed my husbands computer - and MY printer I just got for my birthday (Thanks MOM AND DAD! I loooooovvvvvveeeee it!) and printed out the poem in different colors and founts.

Pasted everything together and......

WWWWAAAAAHHHHHLLLLLAAAAAA! The finished projects....

Simple, easy and relatively cute. And it will be fun to see their hand prints grow! Wish I would have thought of this idea years ago!

Happy Friday!

My Biggest Accomplishment (Next to Child Birth, Marriage and home buying)

Whoever decided to turn on the summer heat is not my friend anymore. I am all for above 60 degree weather but this 90 degree stuff sucks!

I decided to share my most recent BIG . . . HUGE ... project with you first. Not saying that the inside of my house was not big - just not as noticeable because I didn't change wall colors. I didn't realize till I went to write this that I had not taken any pictures of the front of the house for the BEFORE foto. Shame on me. Actually I think it was because Joe got a "bee in his bonnet" one afternoon and by that night it was changed. So I found this "before" picture by using GOOGLE MAPS. And it is way old. As you can see we got a fence, took out the middle of the grass "thing" and you can't see the weed growth but you can use your imagination with the backyard photos.

So armed with our trusty tools.....

FRONT YARD BEFORE:

FRONT YARD AFTER:

THESE are my beautiful flowers in my front garden area. I am so proud that I finally am able to grow some flowers!

BACKYARD BEFORE:

BACKYARD AFTER:

.... and because I got soooooooo focused - I forgot the sunscreen....

My husband thinks I'm a total dweeb for sharing my sunburn blisters with you. Of course he doesn't understand the purpose of blogging either.

Anyway, I am so glad to have a place to enjoy my 70 degree mornings. Watching the birds .... when Max is too busy chewing tanbark to chase them away! ;)

Have a great Thursday!

So Sorry!!

Hello All!

I am sorry that I haven't been on for a bit. I have composed so many posts in my head it's hard to remember which one I wanted to start with. .... Anyway you are probably wondering whats been going on! Here's a recap.....

I am just going to highlight the past few months in this posting. I WILL write some further in depth posting WITH PICTURES(!) later on. Most of my big projects are done and my deadlines for the projects I have left are up in the air so I should be on more frequently...

In February we had Tristin & Joe's birthday's. And shortly after Joe's b-day he came home and said that he was up for a promotion. YEA! But if he got the promotion we would be moving. Kohl's was going to send him in April to Phoenix for interviews and then we would know within six months if we were moving. So we had to get the house in order. This of course meant painting. But me - always with good intentions but desperately ignorant of the TIME things take made projects bigger than what needed to be. I went around the house patching little dents in the walls and door frames. Painting base bored and ceilings and removing wallpaper borders. I need to remind you here that I tend to get bored easily so I had a different stage of the projects going in almost every room of the house until Joe came home and lectured me for an hour or so on how things should be done - and that if he was home everything would be run more efficiently. I promptly ceased all projects including laundry, meals and daily house keeping. But I was so pissed I didn't blog because I didn't want to bad mouth my husband... at least that publicly. So I just got engrossed into TV shows. He apologised a few days later. And so did I. Even though his logic made sense - it's just hard for me to stay in one room for a while. Anyway the majorly lived in and FINISHED portions of the house have newly cleaned and painted walls, ceiling, borders, window sills, windows and such. It feels pretty good. I also finished a blanket top.

When April arrived we had the girls b-days and found out that Joe's interviews had been pushed back to May. Fine but now I have the outside to weed. Joe made the mistake of saying the since I wanted a garden the yard should be my and only mine responsibility and that all he had to do around the house was mow and occasionally vacuum. HA! so we had a long battle of the wills on who could go the longest and ignore the weed growth. Needless to say I won - but gave in and helped. Until the backyard came up and then I did the majority. Ah well. It looks beautiful.

Boy! For a recap this is pretty long!

Anyway, Joe's interviews were again postponed and looks like they will happen sometime in October. Along with all birthday's celebrated but Myschiefs' (yes we DO celebrate dogs b-days at our house) Joe and I celebrated our 8 yr. anniversary, Tristin "graduated" Kindergarten and Keriana "graduated" pre-school. We had school fields trips, vacations, new hair styles, baseball games, lots of books read as well as the day to day cleaning, laundry and health hurtles.

I'd like to end with......
CURSE YOU HERSHEY'S PEANUT BUTTER EGGS!!!!!!!
Easter came and went along with my diet and weight loss. I can't help myself when I pass those cursed eggs! I need to find a good hypnotist because my will is lost when those things hit the shelves. And once you get started on the chocolate..... there's no turning back! ARGH!

I will leave you now with this picture I have taken sitting on my new patio set! YEA ME! Every new post will be of my - our - adventures over the past few months. Again sorry! I will try to do better at posting!