Happy Spring!

Wow, I can't believe it's been six months since I've written a blog post. I've just been busy and haven't had a whole lot to say. I haven't scrapbooked since December. My room is a mess and that's killing my desire to create. I finally quit my crappy retail job a week ago and so now I'll actually have the energy and time to do some long overdue things around here including getting my craft/scrapbook room back in order. My wonderful husband got me the big Kallax (formerly known as the Expedit) from Ikea that I've been lemming after for years as an early birthday gift. It's still in the boxes in the garage waiting to be put together. We need to tear down a big computer desk first. With his schedule, it probably won't get put together for at least another few weeks or so. But that's okay. I've waited this long. Once I get my room put back together, I will be sure to post some pictures.

I've picked back up my cross stitching after a long five year hiatus and have been mostly concentrating on that since the beginning of the year. I've even started stitching on linen this time around. So glad I didn't get rid of all my stitching stuff. I stitched this during all those snow days we had this past winter....

This is North Pole Express by Little House Needleworks stitched with the Classic Colorworks hand-dyed floss that it came with on 32 ct. opalescent Belfast linen. I absolutely love this fabric. It's so pretty.

I'm working on another LHN project called Little House Neighborhood. I started it a few years ago actually but only had the tree itself stitched. This one is being stitched on 28 ct. tea-dyed Monaco...

I have since stitched the crows, sheep, grass and started on the red house to the right of the tree and sheep....

This project has been temporarily put aside to work on a baby sampler for my soon-to-be-born nephew! I am so excited that I am going to be an aunt again this coming June! Woohoo! My brother Bruce and his wife, Kerri, are expecting their first child. B. and I went to the baby shower a little over a month ago on Saturday, March 21st, at their church....

Aren't these cupcakes the cutest?? They had a honey-bee theme at the shower since the baby's nursery will be decorated in a Vintage Pooh theme....

 So I am trying to get this baby sampler stitched up within the next month so all I'll have to do is add all the birth stats when he's born. At least that's the plan. This pattern is from a Stoney Creek book called "Snug As a Bug" that I've had in my stash for years.....

My progress so far...

I have several or more projects kitted up ready to go that I'm also looking forward to stitching. They are all either Little House Needleworks or Lizzie*Kate charts. And one Plum Street Sampler limited edition one. (a new favorite).  I'm so happy to finally have my stitching mojo back again after all this time.

I've also discovered needleminders as you can see in the photo above. Needleminders are all the rage it seems in the stitching world. How did I stitch for 20 years without one?? So of course, I placed my very first order ever on Etsy for a couple that I liked. I love my new needleminders  and they are very nice to have while stitching. I'm using the other one to hold my scissors. Works for me......

Like I said, this was my first time ordering anything from Etsy and I got it rather quickly. 

National Scrapbook Day will be this Saturday. I'll be able to participate maybe during the morning, but have plans for the rest of the day. We are going to a scholarship benefit where there will be lots of local bands playing. Really looking forward to it. NSD has become one of my favorite "holidays". I just love all the excitement, sales, online crops, etc. and seeing everyone's projects.

Here are some of the scrapbook pages I made this past fall since the last time I posted...

I did a 30 Days of Thankfulness layout back in November (well the actual scrapbooking wasn't until the beginning of December). I really enjoyed doing this and plan to do it again this year....

I also made this really cool jingle bells shadow box. The inspiration came from the Kerri Bradford website and the cut file for the vinyl wording is from her site as well....

This was actually easier to do than I expected. I don't have a Silhouette, but a very nice lady online cut the Jingle phrase out on some vinyl with her Silhouette and sent it to me along with some transfer paper. It is adhered to the inside of the glass since she made it so the sticky side was towards the front. I got the 8x8 shadow box from JoAnn's (50% off) and the jingle bells were 60% off. The background paper is DCWV scrapbook paper from my stash. It's actually quite glittery. This was a fun, quick Christmas decor project to make. 

And some other pages I made...

I used actual heart paper doilies that I sponged pink Momento ink over to get the cool background effect. This layout was made for a recipe challenge that I participated in online. My recipe was: pink - love - stencils and arrows. It was my first "recipe" challenge and I really had fun with it. 

I added a 6" x 12" page protector in between with all the selfies that B. took on Halloween. I love doing this when I have a bunch of photos and don't want to leave anything out...

We have been getting back out on the local trails biking and walking. I haven't ridden a bike in years and still feel a bit awkward, but with new bike shorts and gloves, it makes it a little easier. 

My husband and B. have been riding their bikes more than several times this spring so far. I've only ridden once or walked a few times while they went riding. Anything to get a little much-needed exercise. And now that I'm no longer working that dreadful retail job, I'll be able to go with them whereas before I was rarely home in the evenings or during the weekends. 

This Friday, we will be making pepperoni rolls all day long for the school band in the cafeteria from 12:30-8:00. My husband and I signed up to help for the entire day. We are the only ones who signed up for an entire day and not just a couple hours (mind you, they will be making them all day Saturday too), but we are huge supporters of the band and love helping them as much as we can. I worked the concession stand during a few of the home games this past fall and really enjoyed that as well. They have a hard time getting the parents to help. So we try to do what we can and really enjoy being involved with the band boosters. They have 6,100 pepperoni rolls to make, so they need all the help they can get this year. 

Well that's it I think. I'm looking forward to warmer days ahead, the new baby, time spent with family and just enjoying my blessings which I am very thankful for. 

'til next time...

Celebrating My Birthday & Happy Mother's Day!

My mom and stepdad returned from Florida about two weeks ago. They spend about half the year down there, leaving in October and coming back up here in late April/May. My birthday was this past week and my mom wanted to come down here to see me, but since my stepdad is having heart problems and his sister was still in the hospital after just having open heart surgery (two weeks ago this coming Tuesday), we felt it would be better to go up there to see them.

My stepdad's heart is only working at 20% capacity now, (it was at 40-50% a year ago), and the doctors say the main artery to his heart is the size of a thumb tack. He has calcium build-up like his sister. So it evidently runs in his family. He's 76 and his sister is 70. He's been having problems with breathing too. He just had a heart catheterization done on Friday (two days ago) and they are putting him on some new medicine that's supposed to hopefully help him. My understanding is they will see how he's doing in six months and if the medicine isn't helping, he'll need to have a valve replaced which will require a team of surgeons and finding a doctor who will do the surgery. The only area around here that has doctors who will do the surgery is either up in Cleveland or Pittsburgh. He doesn't want to go to either and would prefer to have it done down in Florida. So we are praying that the medicine works for him.

He had triple-bypass surgery 20 years ago and they say they usually only last about 10 years. You may remember me mentioning on here a couple of summers ago that he had started having problems and had to have a pace maker put in. I just hope and pray that this medicine works for him and that he won't have to have major heart surgery done.

We celebrated my 45th birthday up at my mom and stepdad's house last Sunday. My brother, Bruce's, birthday is the day before mine - he turned 33 and his wife, Kerri's birthday is a few days after mine and she also turned 33. So we celebrated all our birthdays together. Plus I gave my mom her Mother's Day gift early this year. My brother, Gary, and his wife, Julia, and the twins came up from Columbus which was really nice. It was the first time we had all gotten together since almost a year ago....

My husband had gotten me a birthday cake to take up and my mom had already gotten a cake with all three of our names on it. So we had lots of cake to celebrate with. lol! Plus my mom and me had decided beforehand that we would just get pizza and my husband and I paid for half of that. We got it from a place called Cocca's Pizza and it was really good. Pictured above are me, my brother, Bruce, our sister-in-law, Julia (my texting buddy - lol!), and Bruce's wife, Kerri.

My husband gave me some birthday money to spend and since it was still National Scrapbook Day weekend last week, I got a bunch of downloadable sketches from Scrapbook Generation on sale 20% off. It had been a really long time since I had gotten any downloads from them and so I had some catching up to do. lol! I got 22 downloads which was about 83 sketches worth. Then I had gotten a $5 loyalty coupon in my e-mail and was able to get the summer bundle for only $3!  I use their sketches a lot of the time and so I am a happy camper now. This is how I've basically been storing my SG sketches....

Although, since I got all those new sketches last week, I have since moved the ones with 1-6 pictures into their own binder since this big binder was getting full. But you get the idea.

I also got some new dies I've been wanting for like a year from Cheery Lynn Designs. I got the French Pastry doily die (which I absolutely love love love) and the adaptor plate for the Big Shot last week. They just arrived on Friday...

 And then I used the birthday money from my mother-in-law to get the English Tea Party Doily die and one of the flourishes dies this week. I'm so excited to finally have some doily dies to use in my papercrafting projects.

B. and I were busy most of the week preparing for cheerleading tryouts. The parents' meeting was Tuesday evening, and then Wednesday the girls learned sideline cheers for two hours that evening, Thursday they learned a dance routine (2 hours),  and Friday was tryouts (5-1/2 hours). B. practiced as much as she could which was hard because we didn't get home until almost 7:00 in the evening and of course she had school during the day. She was doing really good with the long cheer and we were told that would be the one she would have to do by herself. It turned out that it was the shorter cheer that they did by themselves, and the longer cheer and the dance routine was done with the other three girls she was trying out with (they went in groups of four). The dance routine was really hard and they only got to learn and practice that the night before tryouts.

I had gotten her the mandatory red shorts and plain white shirt that was required to try out with. She already had white sneakers from the beginning of the school year that she had hardly worn except for gym class mostly. I just had to clean them up and get new laces for them. I went online and learned how to make a cheerleading bow for her and went out and got all the stuff to make it with. It turned out pretty good, I think. I used 3" wide grosgrain ribbon cut 30" long for the main part of the bow and 5/8" wide ribbon for the center, a ziptie holds it together, and I made it so it would clip into her hair....

These bow pics were taken the day before tryouts. I had gotten B. out of school 1/2 hour early so she would have time to get a shower, eat, get her hair curled (by me) and get ready and practice a little bit beforehand, plus get her out to the tryouts. We did all that within about two hours. A lot of other girls got picked up early for the same reasons.

B. was all excited as were her friends. She had said earlier in the week that cheering is something she's been wanting to do since 4th grade. I dropped her off at the school building that was having the tryouts a little bit before 4:00 p.m. on Friday since they had to meet in the cafeteria first at that time. Tryouts started at 4:30 and so I came back around 6 p.m. and I saw B. through the cafeteria window. She said she hadn't gone up yet. It was almost 6:30 by this time. All the parents had to wait outside since no one was allowed in the building. The girls came outside after they were done trying out to wait for the results. Then we had to wait until ALL the girls tried out - even the ones for high school. Which made for a V-E-R-Y lonnngg evening, especially with no restrooms around. :-/

They didn't post the results for the junior high until after 9:30 p.m. and then they said the high school girls wouldn't know if they made it until an hour after that. :-o  B. was soooo upset when she finally found out she didn't make it. :( :(  This was the very first time she had ever tried out for cheering or for anything really, and I think she was especially upset because she was so patient during all those hours that we waited for the results. She was only trying out for the basketball cheering since we didn't want it to interfere with her being in band. But they only pick very few girls. As her mom, it was heartbreaking to see her so upset and disappointed because she tried so hard and was soooo excited and had had a lot of fun this week at the mini-cheerleading camp. I told her that I'm really so very proud of her for trying and that she needs to know that there are a lot of other girls who are also disappointed & upset because not everyone made it either. And that disappointment is a part of life, unfortunately. Sometimes things don't work out the way you want them to. :(

She got a lot of support from our family and from her friends who she texts with, so I think that helped her to feel better. My husband told her how he tried out for basketball and for some other things and never made it. So he just stuck with playing drums in the band. And how he was the only one in the neighborhood who didn't make it for basketball but how everyone always ended up practicing at his house. Go figure. 

Anyway... there's always next year if she decides to try again. Our niece has been a cheerleader for the past two years in junior high and she tried out for junior varsity for next year in high school (9th grade) and she didn't make it either. It was tough this year. They had to learn a lot in such a short time. But at least they got to have the experience, right?

The month of May means getting back out there in the yard, re-mulching the flower beds and planting flowers. Lowe's has an awesome sale on mulch going on right now during their "spring black friday sale" which ends today - $2 for a 2 cu. ft. bag. My husband took Monday off and we went out and got 35 bags of mulch which is equal to about 2-1/2 yards worth. It filled up the whole back of the truck. lol! Boy that was a lot of weight. But, thankfully, we don't live real far from there.

I went out Friday morning to pay off the mulch we had bought and ended up getting a bunch of flowers to plant as soon as the ground dries up enough. I think it's just as dangerous to send me into a garden center this time of year as it would be for me to go to a craft store or scrapbook store. lol! We have huge flowerbeds in the front of our house, plus we always have planters on the deck out back and the patio below. I had that whole cart pretty much filled up. Plus my sister-in-law, K. gave me some zinnias she got out in Amish country (Sugarcreek) last week with my mother-in-law for cheap. We didn't do much with our yard last year and I really missed it. So this year we are going to have a pretty yard again. I love playing in the dirt and watering the flowers every evening in the summer. I'm one of those people who actually enjoys doing yardwork. I love being outside when the weather is nice.

Last but not least, I leave you with my scrapbook layout from this past week:

I made the little circle flowers with punches. The papers are the Snapshot collection from Bella Blvd. And the flourishes were made with a QuicKutz die.

Well, that's all for now. I wish you all a Happy Mother's Day!  My brother-in-law made reservations for this afternoon at 2:30 out at a place called Mill Creek Inn. You have to make reservations because they can only seat so many people. My husband and I have never been there before, but we hear it's looks like a house. Maybe it is someone's house for all we know. lol!

I'm hoping the ground is dried up enough when we get back so I can start getting all those flowers planted out front later on today....

Til next time...

My new iPad Mini, Die Storage, etc.

Happy Friday! :)

It's a gorgeous, sunny day out there today. When I picked B. up from school this afternoon, she was excited that the bags of canned and boxed goods that I brought in to her school this morning helped her class to win first place out of the entire school during their canned food drive. Apparently, when I cleaned my pantry out last year, her class got first place because of it (which meant an ice cream party for them). I had absolutely no idea at all because B. never told me until the other day when she came home saying that her class and teacher were asking her to please ask her mom (me) to bring canned goods in because I helped them to win last year. I'm like "really??" I know it sounds really strange considering there are over 30 kids in B.'s class. But for some reason, not many brought cans in this year like last year. But I kind of understand why. Apparently, B.'s teacher last year, Mrs. M.,  didn't let them have the party. Last year, the kids were supposed to have their ice cream party the Monday after winning first place in the canned foods drive. Mrs. M.,  kept telling the kids "no we don't have time" everytime one of them would ask when they could have their party. Then one day - four weeks later - one of the little girls in B.'s class asked the teacher if they could please have the party after recess when they would have time, and Mrs. M. told them "I threw the ice cream away because it was expired." Can you believe that?? The kids were soooo disappointed. :(   Needless to say, that teacher was not one of our favorites. To top things off, she's young with an attitude. I can't handle attitude. She's no longer an elementary school teacher because the district moved her to the high school meaning that, unfortunately, we will more than likely have to deal with her again in the future. Maybe she'll be better by then. We can only hope. Luckily, B. has a much nicer teacher this year - Mrs. B.

Not wanting to disappoint, I cleaned out my pantry cupboards last night. Which was long overdue anyway. Of course, I'm thinking more about the local food pantry that it was all going to and less about some ice cream party. A lot of people have lost jobs in our area and I want to help in whatever small way that I can. It doesn't look like that much canned and boxed goods is even gone from the cupboards because there's still plenty left in there. And I've got some space to put stuff which was much needed anyway. I'm more than happy to help. And happy that I made a whole classroom of kids happy too. When they announced on the loud speaker this afternoon at the end of the school day that Mrs. B.'s class won first place in the canned foods drive, the teacher gave B. a big hug and the whole class gave her a group hug. Now I can't help but think who I can make happy when I finally get to cleaning out my walk-in closet here soon. lol! It does feel good to give. Especially during this time of year.

Last night my husband came in from work and handed me a purple gift bag with pink tissue paper in it. He said it was my early anniversary gift and that I would understand why I was getting it early once I opened it. I was completely surprised because I certainly wasn't expecting anything. I was already looking forward to our upcoming (long overdue) date night for our anniversary and was more than happy about that. Inside the bag, was a very nice anniversary card (*sniff*). And further down in the bag, under all the tissue paper was a white box. I picked it up and couldn't believe what I was holding in my hands.... the new iPad mini. wow.

I don't keep up with all that techy stuff so I didn't even realize they had come out with a mini. I love the size of it and how it's better on my eyes than the iPod and iPhone (Although I love my iPod and iPhone). But this larger 7.9" screen is so much nicer...

B. will be getting my iPod because hers needs a new power button and battery. Someday, we may get it fixed, but she can have mine and it will save us the cost of getting hers fixed for now.

I've also come up with a fabulous new way to store my thin dies like Spellbinders, QuicKutz, LifeStyle Crafts etc....

I saw a video about these storage boxes and magnet sheets on YouTube. JoAnn's got them in, so I was happy to find them locally. I got the box and extra packages of magnet sheets 40% off earlier this week. I love this storage method and it will keep my dies from getting bent or lost while keeping them nicely organized. Although, I don't have many sets at this point...

The magnet sheets are magnetized only on the white side. The other side (black) is not. Which is fine with me because I think it's better that way....

Other than that, I have been on an OPI nail polish kick this past week, adding some new colors to my ever growing stash. My three favorite brands (so far) are OPI, Nicole by OPI, and Sally Hansen Salon Manicure. I tried out a different, non-conventional color today - teal. Not my usual color. But I really like this shade of teal. Not too light and perfect for fall and winter. I like the darker colors but only tend to wear them in the fall and winter months...

This is "Ski Teal We Drop" from their Swiss collection and I think it would look nice while wearing black or gray perhaps...

The more I look at it, the more it grows on me. I've also started wearing the Poshe top coat. I really like it so far and it doesn't have any of the harmful chemicals in it like another popular top coat, Seche Vite, does (toluene, formaldehyde, or DBP - which all cause either cancer or birth defects). Poshe comes in a package that looks like this...

At first,  I really wanted the Seche Vite because a lot of people rave about it - that is until I found out about the nasty chemicals in it. So I'm really glad I found the Poshe at CVS. I stopped in Sally's Beauty Supply for the first time ever the other day and saw they sell the Poshe cheaper than CVS does, but I already had my bottle of it from CVS. Oh well. Those are the only two places that sell it around here. And even the Seche Vite was hard to find - Sally's is the only place that sells it in this area.

While I was in Sally's, the woman working there was telling another lady and myself that we're supposed to be getting an IHOP and a Buffalo Wild Wings. Hopefully, the rumors are true since we need more restaurants in our area. They're already in the process of building a Lone Star Steakhouse and we're getting a T.J. Maxx (finally - yes!).


Well, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend ahead. The weather's supposed to be nice.

'til next time...