Sparkle Wishes from Heather

My Baby turns 12!

2012-01-19T23:19:00.000-06:00

OK since I was going to post this 2 weeks ago and did not, I will go ahead and add this now!

MY BABY TURNED 12! My little Y2K Millenium baby is 12 years old. In one more year he will be a fledged teenager! I am WAY TOO YOUNG to have a teenager! Even worse, he already beginning to act like one sometimes. I would post a picture of my baby from his party, but alas, we had battery problems with the camera, so I used Cole's camera, but the card I used in it has mysteriously gone missing, which is code for, it is probably hiding on my craft desk and I cannot find it! But when I do find it, I will put them up.

We had a lot of fun, my boy has an awesome group of friends and we did his party with a Mission Impossible theme because we went to see MI at the theatre for his birthday. So in honor of that we had a Mission Impossible Hot Dog Bar.

As much as my boys loved the elaborate birthday parties I threw them as younger kids, the older they get the less elaborate they want them. I am hoping that this passes soon so that I can do another BIG BANG UP PARTY!

Here are some menus we had for the kids to make different dogs, and I sure wish I had pics to show you the HOT DOG BAR! I renamed all the items to secret agent names!

So Since I do not have party pics because I need to find that other card, I'll just show you his BOMB cake!

I cooked 2 cakes in a bowl, but I took it one step further, I made one batter Black and one batter Green , then I layered the cake batters into the bowl so it had a striped effect when you cut into it.

Here is top view of it after I cut the end off of it so I could level it on the cake board. the inside cut looks way cooler, but again it is on the missing party card!

So anyway here is the cake before it was done, obviously. Since I still had Pneumonia when I made this I did not want to fool with Fondant, so I iced it real smooth with some buttercream and bough black Spray paint for cakes and I was just going to spray it black and save me a lot of time, mess and nasty flavor of black food coloring. Well that was an epic fail, it only turned the cake purple and I was sinking fast with being tired. So I Improvised, and I will say that I paid a little more at Michael's for some Duff Brand food coloring, but it was so worth it! That stuff is amazing, it has no funny taste like wilton's and he has an awesome black, but I digress, so back to my problem at hand, a purple bomb! I got inventive and did not have any more icing so I mixed up some black food coloring with lemon juice and used a pastry brush and painted it black, and it worked like a charm! I also added a touch of silver glitter for cakes to the mixture which I think helped. If you looked closely you could see the brush marks, but ass Cole said, that made it look more authentic like brushed steel painted black :) I love that kid! I added some pipe cleaners for the fuse and VIOLA a bomb. If I had not been sick, I would have gone and gotten some sparklers and lit them when we sang but I was too tired, but I will say that cake was the BOMB! And a group of 12 year old boys agreed!

Craft Masters Competition

2012-01-19T22:40:00.001-06:00

WOW! So much has happened since I last posted!Ok, I did not go away, I was just so overwhelmed with what was happening in my life that I could not form the words to post! About 2 weeks ago, I got an e-mail from Michael's advertising for a new show they were doing called Craftmasters. It was a crafting type reality gameshow. They wanted a 30 second video submission for anyone who was interested. I deleted the e-mail and went and took a bubble bath. By the time I was out of the tub, I 2 Facebook messages and 3 forwarded e-mails from friends telling me I should try out. Ok, I thought, what the hey. They were only looking at the first 300 submissions to come in and the deadline was 2 days away. thinking I probably would not even make it into the top 300, I sent a text to my sister asking her if she would come over to film me. Well she had a stomach virus so would not be able to come over and I thought that was an omen I should not do it, but then Matt came home with a fancy video camera that night to film me. Took me a bit to get it 30 seconds and not 2 minutes long, but I described my new menu board and ended it with "There ain't nothing I can't craft" So here is the video I submitted I hope it shows up on here, I am a little computer illiterate:

So, thinking I was too late but still holding out a glimmer of hope I checked my e-mail relentlessly all day Thursday and friday, even though the deadline was Friday the 8th. Matt and I went out friday night and when we got home I logged on to check my e-mail, do my usual prowl of FB and Pinterest and then I was going to bed. I saw I had an e-mail from Michaels and before I read it I was sayin"Oh look, an e-mail from Michael's I bet they want me on...." and then I just stopped short because it REALLY WAS AN EMAIL SAYING I HAD BEEN ACCEPTED TO BE ON CRAFTMASTERS!

I can honestly say getting to do this show marked a few things off of my bucket list.

Now Fast Forward one week to this past Tuesday and that was the day of the competition. Now I cannot post all the pics, because you cannot know who the winner is until it airs, but I can tell you a bit about it and show you a few pics.

The premise is, there are 3 contestants. We are brought into a room and each given a box inside each box we are given the same items and a theme and we must be overly creative to do something with those items. we are also given a Gift Certificate and 10 minutes to come up with an idea and shop for other items to help us to complete our project.

Well our theme was OFF THE PAGE because most of us were paper crafters. inside our box was a plain shadowbox and 6 skeins of Yarn. We must use those items. We have about 2 minutes to formulate a plan and then they handed us each a $50 Gift Certificate, other groups got $100 and some got $30 it just depended on the theme. We then had 10 minutes to shop in Michaels to get anything else we might need to complete the project. My first thought when opening the box was "OH CRAP" I put in my write up I can't knit or crochet but can do anything else. But then I quickly formulated another plan. I had gone to scope out this Michael's the day before and saw some knobs I liked. I decided I was going to turn it into a jewelry display and possibly use the yarn to help be earring hangars.

So they set us up with a basket that has a camera on it plus my own camera man to follow me as I run through the store shopping, he kept encouraging me to talk so I did even though I felt silly. When they announced time is up, whatever was in my basket I got to keep if I had something in my hands I had to drop it. then we went to check out. I knew I had more than $50 worth of items n my basket, so I made sure to put up what I wanted first in case I ran out of money before I got to all my stuff and sure enough I was left with 5 items in my basket and I was not all that upset about that, but they made me refilm myself being sad about it :) I had $1.73 left on my card when done, one girl had $20 left on hers!

Then we headed off to the studio and walked into what I like to call a Craft room on Crack! We had every tool imaginable to us, including power drills ( which BTW led to me have a very blonde moment on the show, I won't go into detail about it here, you will just have to watch)we had toaster ovens, pasta machines, every color imaginable of Martha Stewart Glitter, paint, punches. Tons of ribbon, papers and adhesives!

That last table there was my workstation and I messed it up quiet well! They gave us 90 minutes on the clock and let us go at it!About 30 minutes into the competition they threw us a curveball. they told us to open up our tool chests because we had another element we had to add somehow to our craft. It just so happened it was another Michael's gift card and it was not in my pallet of colors!

You see that Butterfly? Well I cut that puppy down to be pretty small and made it an unobtrusive embellishment.

When time was up they let us explain our project then sent us away to do interviews while the judges deliberated.

Well, Win or lose, I cannot tell you, but I can say I had an absolutely FABULOUS time! Met some great women and got to hang out with Jo Pearson, the face of Michael's videos!

She is an absolute doll!And I might dare say, a WHOLE LOT like me!
I also ended up with another Gift card, all the left over supplies I did not use, my project and lifetime of memories! I am so glad I stepped out of my comfort zone and went for it! I have really grown as a crafter I can tell and am ready to get that ETSY store up and running and I might just start making my own crafting videos to put online! Here is my final project hanging.

The Boys New Chore Charts

2011-12-31T17:36:00.000-06:00

So with the New Year, comes some new responsibilities for the boys. We have tried different chore charts but they normally become forgotten, get messed up, or we need more spaces for chores than are allotted. So, being laid up left me alot of time to peruse the internet for a great chore chart that would fit our needs. Guess what there aren't any, but with a little ingenuity and ideas from several places I came up with one for us.

Now, first off, let me say, I think these are cute, but I was really wishing my boys were girls so I could have added some polka dots or flowers or even smaller so maybe I could have put a baseball or a dinosaur on them, BUT since they are TWEENS I could do nothing about that, but I did get some ribbon on it!

So I will explain how I made them and then explain how it works incase you want to make your own, OR I CAN MAKE IT FOR YOU! ESPECIALLY IF YOU WANT FLOWERS OR POLKA DOTS! LOL

I started with a $.96 cookie sheet from Walmart and a few cans of Krylon spray paint. I have mentioned that I am really into spray painting right now, haven't I???

Here is a hint when doing these, you may want to alot 2 days to the spray paint process, ALSO if you would rather, you can use the chalk board pray paint on this and just write your chores in chalk and not have to deal with the magnets, but I like the magnet idea. Paint your first coat, your main color all over cookie sheet, I did one red and one blue.

Then after it dried over night, I used painters tape to tape off the area that was to be painted black and then added press and seal to cover the rest from over spray.

then I added some white detail to the trays on the edges, wrote to do and done. Painted some chipboard letters and adhered them with E3000 glue.

the next step I probably could have done easier by going to buy some round disc and using my printer on clear labels, but I did not have those on hand and I couldn't leave, so I made chore buttons out of Sculpey, some magnets and a sharpie. I made a ton of different ones because sometimes I need them to mow the yard, but not every day. Here are a couple of pics of them done and the best is I can store the extra chore magnets on the back of the cookie sheet and trade them out!

I also made 6 days of the week buttons ( because Sunday is Jesus Day, according to Peyton, so no chores on that day) without magnets that I glued on and 6 Good job magnets.

The final part to the chore chart is the money jars. yet again, I could not add bows or flowers or polka dots, but I did match the ribbon to their chore charts, so take that!

So here is how it works:

Each day the boys will be giving 5-6 chores to do when they get home, one of them will be homework or reading. They also start each week with their full allowance in their jar. $1 for each year old they are. Once they have completed all of their chores, they move the magnet to the done side. If they have done their chores to our satisfaction, they will get a good job magnet under that day. If they decide to not do all their chores, or do a poor job of it, they do not get a magnet for that day and money will be deducted from their allowance jar, so Cole would loose $2 since he is 12 and Peyton will loose $1.50 since he is 9. With the allowance jars sitting out they can see that money stay the same or diminish. At the end of the week (Saturday) once all the chores are done they can get their money from the jar. I will refill the jars on Sunday night.

So what do you think? Is it ingenious or what?!?! The boys are excited about it right now, but we will see how they feel 2 weeks into it...LOL

Have a Happy and Blessed New Year!

Sparkle Wishes,
Heather

Cowboy Caviar Recipe

2011-12-31T17:02:00.000-06:00

So I kind of over did it yesterday, all by just going to Walmart. I thought I was doing better since having the Pneumonia, but about 10 minutes into my shopping trip I realized I was wrong, so I turned tail, waited 109 minutes to check out, headed home and gave Matt the rest of my grocery list. Tonight it a big night, it is Cole's ANNUAL Birthday party/ New Years Eve Party, he is turning 12, his last year as a non teenager. Where did my baby go??? Anyway we are having a Mission Impossible themed birthday party for him because we are going to see Mission Impossible tonight, but before then we will be having a hot dog bar. Pictures from the party will probably be up around 1:00 a.m as I am sure they will still be too loud for me to sleep. Anyway, I made some Cowboy Caviar, that probably only Matt and I will eat, but Oh well. I saw the recipe on Pinterest so of course I made it and it is super easy and YummY!

i should probably let Matt take pictures of my stuff, sine he is the professional, but I get to anxious and i do it myself so sorry if it does not look that appetizing. Here is the recipe in case you want to make it. I ti s really easy and would be great for you to take to a party.

2 cans of Mexi Corn
1 can of Rotel
2 C of shredded cheddar cheese
1 c of Mayo
1 c of Sour cream

Mix together and there you have it.

I think next time I will add a little chili powder and some fresh jalepeno, but all in all it was good, especially served with Fritos.

My new Menu Board!

2011-12-29T12:10:00.000-06:00

So saw this Weekly Calendar on Pinterest a few weeks ago. A lady had gone to Walmart, bought a $10 Frame, added some scrapbook paper inside the frames and writes on it with a dry erase marker. So I pinned it, thinking hmm.. I could make this better and Blingier, because, well, I do everything with more BLING! Fast forward to Christmas break and I sitting on my butt for hours on end with Pneumonia and nothing to do but watch movies and surf Pinterest. So one of the many early morning hours that my medicine woke me up I stumbled on Menu boards and decided sine I was working on redoing my kitchen little by little and I cannot afford the Giant knife and Fork from Pier One I would start trying to add those things to my kitchen as well as add a Menu Board. Now Being ADD means I am not the most organized person, well let me rephrase that, I am organized in my own Chaotic way; in fact my class laughs at me when I clean my desk up at school because they know I will not be able to find the next worksheet we will be working on, os I try to just keep my piles neat looking and confined to 2 areas so at least you can see wood on my desk top when tours come through. But I digress... I made this because I have been getting really good at planning our weekly meals, so I save money at the store, PLUS I am teaching my boys to cook and I make them each cook one meal a week, which means we get a lot of Sloppy Joes,Chicken and Dumplings, Hot Dogs and Pizza bites.

So anyway, I decided If I can't leave and I can't do housework, I must craft instead, so I set out his week with a few Pinterest inspired crafts. My first was to marbalize my fingernails, the next was to make a menu board. I snuck over to Walmart after a doctors appointment to find a frame to fit my needs, not intending to use this one, but I am standing there in a steroid daze, inspiration struck and I grabbed it then ran over to the flatware dept. , bought $ worth of forks, spoons, and Knives and then grabbed 2 $.96 cookie sheets for the chore charts I will be making later today.

I got it home, spray painted it black, it was an ugly brown color, ( did I mention I am addicted to spray painting crafts ever since I found the Krylon craft website?) Then I roughed up the edges to make it more Chic, or used looking. Sent Matt to Michael to buy me some scrapbook paper since I was not allowed to leave the house.

With a few sheets of scrapbook paper, some pearls, ribbon ( did I also mention that I am a ribbon whore? yes 97 spools and counting) and some hot glue and I have a brand new Menu Board! i am thinking about selling these on Etsy and at the store in Sangar for $25- $30. If you want one, let me know I can make it in any colors or style you want.

Sparkle Wishes,
Heather

A gift for a friend

2011-12-29T11:41:00.000-06:00

So my partner in crafty crimes, aka my sister April, and I needed to make a gift for one of our friends for her birthday. Ok, so we will be almost a month late in getting it to her, but I think she will be happy once she gets it.

With that being said, our friend just moved into a new place and know ing her roommate, we figured she needed something with style to add to her place. With it being right after Christmas, and April saving money to buy her house and me not having money because I spent it all on my kids for Christmas, we decided to refurbish an expensive mirror my parents had, with an idea I saw on the Krylon craft websites. OK did you know Krylon (yes the spray paint) had a craft website? Well I found it this fall and since October I think I have spray painted a few 100 crafts :) Ok, so back to the craft. Here is a picture of the mirror, pre refurbish:

See it is in great shape with the exception of the corners where the nice espresso color paint had chipped off. Not having paint in that color, I knew we would have to repaint. so I taped the mirror part all up. and took it to my now, spray painting table out back.
I sprayed it with one coat of Satin Black and let it dry, since it was already painted nice and I knew we were going to rough up the edges so it would look more Shabby Chic, that is all it needed. I sent April out for some knobs to add to it and some Vinyl.

we roughed up the edges with some sand paper, had Matt drill us 4 holes for us to add these great square ceramic knobs april got, and then added some vinyl quote that April got on Sale at Hobby Lobby, so that saved us time I did not have to cut any Vinyl with my Cricut. Here are the pictures. Now I do have a warning my husband is a photographer, and no he did not take these pictures, and no I have no talent in shooting pictures, besides do you know how hard it is to shoot a picture of a mirror?? Everything shows in it!

The final product

The Vinyl at the bottom of the frame

Live Laugh Love!

Sparkle Wishes, Heather

Homemade French Vanilla Coffee Creamer

2011-12-29T11:19:00.000-06:00

Hold the Phone people, Heather is posting again! I think I was inspired by watching Julie and Julia Last night. I am sure I won't post this often once school starts and I have crafting dry spells, but hey, I am here today. And speaking of which, you see that wonderful mug of Coffee above??? I am enjoying that mug right now as I type! I got a Kuerig for Christmas. Now I am not much of a coffee drinker, but I am a drinker of hot beverages such as tea and Hot chocolate and some coffee to go along with my creamer (tee hee) The problem with liking coffee with my creamer and my two boys liking coffee with their creamer is that we run out of creamer really fast. So this past Fall, I decided since I did not have anymore Starbucks gift cards and I could not find Pumpkin Spice creamer on the shelves at the Grocery store to make my own ( OK that will have to be another post without the pictures) but it turned out so good I began trying my hand at other syrups and creamer flavors. well a few days ago i stumbled upon a recipe for French Vanilla Creamer and decided to try it out today and I have to say Cole and Peyton Approved it, so it has to be good!

Here is what you will need:

14 oz. of Sweetened condensed Milk
14 Oz. Of milk (I used 2%)
2 Tsp. Vanilla
1 Mason jar or a bowl with a blender but Jar works best.

You pour all these into your jar.

The you Shake, Shake, Shake, Shake yo Booty! Till it is good and mixed up.

Now if you know me, you know I am not going to serve this out of a mason Jar, because that is not just pleasing to the eye. So, Since for some UNKNOWN reason, I have like 40,000 Salad dressing cruets, I just poured mine into one of those, corked it and put it in the fridge. this should be good for 2 weeks, if it last that long. ENJOY!

Sparkle Wishes,
Heather

Has it really been almost 2 years?

2011-12-29T00:47:00.000-06:00

Almost 2 years since I posted! Wow! Alot has happened during that time, and I could write this big long boring post about everything that has happened, but I won't, but I will try to to add a few highlights

Lets see, I have a new job at a wonderful new school, it is a private School for kids with Special and behavioral needs. I am going on my 2nd year there and I love it, no paperwork or ARDS just get to teach and help those kids that have gotten lost in the public schools. The best, part, I come home happy every day and my family loves that!

Then I began selling Stampin' Up products! I loved that and had tons of Stamping parties and made tons of cute stuff I never posted here,(but I intend to add them) But after a year and the economy being so bad, people quit being able to buy so many products and I was footing my stamping addiction by buying my quota, so I stopped selling it and now I buy from someone else. I have to say it is nice not having to stress once a month about what we were going to create at each party and prepare for it.

Matt and I now have one kid in Middle School and one in 4th grade! My boys are getting to be so big, I need my BABIES, but I do kind of like their independance now, except that comes with a lot of money for bikes, cell phones and I know soon, their own computers and then **GASP** a CAR!

Matt's Company has finally moved closer to home and he is getting a dream photography studio to go with it. he is also now diving into the world of Video filming and editing, which has been scary for him, but he has done an AMAZING job!

Let's see, My In laws moved back from Canada, My Brother and sister are back from California and my sister is buying a house, so now I have a crafting accomplice to get into trouble with.

I started selling my crafty stuff to a store in Lewisville, but they went belly up so now I am selling mainly hand painted wine glasses and few other crafty items to a store in Sangar.

My year has been good with the exception of a few minor(expenisive) repairs to both cars and I am ending the year with pneumonia, but I guess I can look at that as a good thing, because I am so tired of sitting around watching reruns, surfing Pinterest (,y new secret obsession), and reading I decided it was time to start my Blog again, possibly open an ETSY store and place it on Facebook. Well I know I am going to work on the blog, we will see about the other 2 :)

With all that being said, i have a ton of crafty items from the past 2 years I need to upload, but unlike last time, i will not be including all the instructions on how to do them, just message me if you want them and I will be happy to share, but my ADD brain could not handle all that organized writing everytime!

Here is a sneak preview of things you will see:

Oh yes, and since Pinterest is my new obssession feel free to pin anything you see, I want one of my crafts to show up some day on the popular page!

Until I post again, which might just happen next,

Sparkle Wishes,
Heather

Altered Canvas for a Special Teacher

2010-04-21T22:54:00.006-05:00

Being a teacher, I know how wonderful it feels to know that not just the students appreciate you, but that the parents appreciate you as well. Both of my boys have had the same 2nd grade teacher, and next to Cole's Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Cullen, by far, has been the best teachers they have had. 2nd grade was hard for both of them. 2nd Grade is when we realized that Cole had Dyslexia, and any other teacher would have kept telling me to let him wait it out another 6 weeks, that it was normal for my child to be as frustrated as Cole was with Spelling homework, and let me tell you, he was FRUSTRATED! But Mrs. Cullen REALY listened to me as a parent and helped Cole so much, and made what could have been a horrible year, one of Cole's best. We have hit a few snags this year as well with Peyton, his though, is more laziness than anything, although she has had his best interest at heart and suggested testing for dyslexia, because the precious boy cannot write a number in the correct direction if his life depended on it. Thankfully he tested above normal in everything, so I guess he will just always write his 2's and 5's backwards.

Anyway, I have jumped at the chance to do whatever I could to show Mrs. Cullen how much I appreciate what she has done not just for my boys, but all the 2nd graders she has ever taught! This year the class gift to her is a gardening theme and I had all the students in her class make fingerprint flowers. I then wrote their names as the stems, and added them to my altered canvas. I will also be including the final frame at the end with an inspirational quote. I hope that she likes it, I'm not 100% sure I like it, I mean sometimes I look at it and go Yes, I like it, then I look again and go, is it missing something or does it have too much and should I hang a ribbon from it so she can use that to hang it by???? Any feedback you want to give me would be appreciated, I have another week to fix it if I need to.

Well I am tired, so I am going to bed, but hope to see you again real soon!

Saturday's Stamp Club

2010-04-15T00:48:00.003-05:00

If you are still undecided about coming to Stamp Club on Saturday or just want a Sneek Peek at what we will be making......Then VIOLA! We are making a Post it Note Stand and a matching Birdie card!

Hope you like them! And I hope to see you Saturday!

Hugs, Heather

Last Set for tonight

2010-04-15T00:43:00.002-05:00

I have too many to upload tonight and I am sleepy this will be last set set before I do Stamp club post. I will definately try to upload more this weekend and take some new pics of some stuff I have made and post directions as well!

Here is another batch!

2010-04-15T00:40:00.002-05:00

This will teach me not to blog for 6 months! :)

POO!

2010-04-15T00:36:00.002-05:00

I guess it will only let me post 4 photos with each Blog Posting. I'm tired because I waited till 11 to get on tonight! But I am determined to get some of these photos up!

Ok! So it has been a LONG while...

2010-04-15T00:09:00.006-05:00

For those of you near me, know the road I have been traveling since September, and you know that road has been steep and rocky! I did finish my schooling in Applied Behavior Analysis, but it seems as if Satan has decided things were getting to comfy and happy for me and decided to try to block my path with a few, rather large obstacles. I am not around all of them yet, but I feel as if I am very close. I am so thankful to God for the love of my family, with out them I am not sure where I would be.

That being said, I have crafted a few things here and there and even started selling some of my items in a craft store in Lewisville, but ; like I said, Satan has been taking up much of my free time with some very tedious ordeals so I really have not made much and some of the stuff I have made, I did not take pics. I have a few pics of things I have made. Some of my Facebook friends have already seen these items, but I plan to take pictures of the items i have made now. This time I won't post much about the items just the pictures.

On another note... I am selling my items, making custom cards,announcements and invitations as well as signs, frames notebooks or anything you are interested in let me know the colors you want these items in. School is almost out and I hope to be opening a new chapter in my life so that maybe I will have more time to craft. I am also hoping I can start selling at some craft fairs in the Fall. I met a new friend in September that loves to craft and wants to help me mass produce items, hopefully after April we will be able to sit down, make a plan of attack and get to work. I also hope that since my beautiful sister has moved back she might want to join us, but I'm not sure she will. She is young and has a life outside of her house :)

I also have started a once a month Stamp club with a few ladies where we make crafts and stamp cards, this has been very theraputic for me as well as a boost to my ego! These ladies think I am so talented! I sure wish my 8th grade art teacher could hear them. She once told me at the end of the semester, that I really did not possess an eye for art and I should look towards other areas of studies. Ummmm... Do you think what she said stuck with me a little? I married an artist and have always worked my butt off at trying to make something good. I guess I am my own worst critic though, because I really don't think the stuff I make is all that good, well maybe one or two things I am proud of, but for the most part I am very critical of what I make, but at least I have fun trying.

Well I need to upload some photos, and make another post for Stamp club members to see what we are making Saturday and then I need to go to bed, I have school tomorrow and I heard 2 of my paras will be out, but that is another story and if you want to hear about that joy, give me a ring and we can go chat about it for a few hours:)

Thanks for looking and have a BLESSED Week.

SO Sassy

2009-08-07T18:51:00.002-05:00

OK one more card made with the Good friend set. I actually copied this card from another lady on Splitcoast Stampers. She used a couple of different colors, but basically it is the same layout. This is a very simple quick card, I have to remember this design when I need a bIrthday card and only have 5 minutes to make one, because this one definately took me MAYBE 10 minutes to make! Still cute!

OK I have a few more cards to upload but I have not taken the pics of them yet and I am going to try to make a few more tonight, and then I might be done until after school starts, I have stuff I really ned to be focusing my attentions on, like making cookies to send to my sister while she is in Cincinati. Speaking of cookies if you have some unique, non chocolate cookie recipes let me know, i don't want to send anything that will melt, so far I have come up with Lemon Melts, Green Tea Cookies, Milano Cookies, Marshmallows and my Key Lime Pie cookies. I will post pics and recipes if anyone is interested next week.

Another Fun card made with the Good friends Set.

2009-08-07T18:45:00.003-05:00

OK, sorry I took a couple of days to post a few more items, the boys came back from camp so I spent Wednesday with them and then yesterday we went to school to move my classroom ( which we did not finish) and then I had some lectures to do. I should be doing lectures now as well but I think I will make one more card then do lectures, they boys are at the GI Joe movie.

So I did not originally plan on this card looking like this, I just happen to lay down some paper on the card I was working on and got up to do something, when I got back to the desk I saw what it looked like and finished it that way. I wish you could see the ribbon better, it has these cute little green dragon flies on them.

I used the Good friend Stamp set, Certianly Celery, Brocade Blue and Bahama Breeze Inks and papers. Hope you like and thanks for looking.

A Little Blue Bird

2009-08-03T15:08:00.002-05:00

So I got this stamp set ( Stampin up's Good Friend)a month ago but have been too busy with school and what not to stamp, but the other night I sat down and made 3 cards with this set. her is Number one. He is a little blue bird. If I were a better photographer you would be able to tell that he was 3 dimensional. Anywho, I hope you enjoy. I have to go study for my test and go take it before Matt gets home.

Camp Cards

2009-08-02T22:00:00.005-05:00

Well, I have finally made a few more cards, I think I have my mojo back because I was actually getting to make something for me! The boys are leaving for camp tomorrow for 3 days and in the past when Matt has gone out of town I try to send him a card a day from me for him to read, so I thought I would do the same for the boy and include some scripture for them, especially Peyton who is extremely nervous to be away from us.

Card #1 is this one:

That tent is 3-d , I had so much fun figuring out how to fold that, but it is way cuter in real life. I used the Happy Camper Stamp set from SU

The inside scripture I included was Isiaha 43:5 Don't be afraid for I am with you and a note from Matt and I, I hope this helps Peyton with his fears.

Day Number 2:

This was done with a very old SU set called fishy friends, but I love it. The fish says Jesus Glubs You, because when fish talk they say Glub Glub! and the crab is holding a sign that says and so do I. I was going to type these out on the computer and make them look neat but Cole kept coming in and getting my computer, so I just wrote the words, too bad they would have been cuter if I could have printed them out. I wish this pic did the card justice because I made the Jelly fish irredescent with embossing powder and I used Crystal Effects on the fish and crab and to make the water bubbles, but I just don't photograph well.

The verse in this one is Proverbs 30:5 Every Word of God is True! I just wanted the boys to realize all those Bible stories and lessons they learn at camp and in Sunday school are all true stories and not just made up and how AMAZING our God is!.

Day 3 and their last day:

Are 2 different Spinner cards I made with another really old retired set of SU called Good Sport. In the Football card when you tilt the card the foot ball spins into the Goal posts and on the baseball card (Peyton's) when you tilt it the ball flies into the outfield. Again, Cole had my computer so I just hand wrote the sentiments on the front.

The verse on this one was:1 Corinthians 10:31 What ever yu do, do everything for the glory of God.

After I finished all these I then pulled out my new set that I have had for a month and made 3 more cards, but I will post those pics tomorrow! Enjoy!

My "Ice Cream" Cupcakes

2009-08-02T21:39:00.002-05:00

So I was surfing some food blogs looking for a good and easy Chocolate recipe that I could take to a couples house who just had a baby and I found the "Ice Cream" Cake. Ok I hate Ice cream and cake together because the ice cream melts and my cake becomes soggy and then I just cannot eat it, it is the same reason I can stomach Trifle, Blech! I almost skimmed past this entry when I say that the pic was a Cake, so I had to look further into it. It seems this is a pretty Easy Semi Homemade kind of cake and could really be jazzed up with different flavored cake batters and exotic Ice Cream flavors, but alas, I did not want to venture out on that limb when I was making them for someone else. BUT I am thinking next time to use Cookies and Cream ice cream and put an oreo in the bottom of the muffin cup for the ULTIMATE Oreo Brownie.

Anywho, I just used a simple Dark Chocolate cake mix and a pint of melted Dutch Chocolate Ice cream, and since I was delivering these, I did not want to ice them and have the icing messed up so I sifted powdered Sugar on top of the cupcake and then injected it with my icing so it would be cream filled.

Here is the recipe:

1 Cake mix (any flavor)
3 eggs
1 pint of melted ice cream ( I think raspberry would have also been good)
1 C. water

Mix all together and pour into muffin tins. Bake at 350 for 17 minutes. It makes 24 cupcakes.

Cream Cheese Icing

1 8oz. block of cream cheese (room temp)
1/2 c. butter (room temp)
2 C. of powdered sugar
Mix well....YUMMY!

My Labor of Love...Wine Cork Wreath...

2009-07-26T19:42:00.003-05:00

Well, it has taken me many years to save all these wine corks, but my quest began 14 years ago on our Honeymoon when Matt I visited Napa Valley, 4 of the corks on this wreath are from Bottles we bought in Napa and brought back. I saved the corks not knowing what I would be making with them, then about 5 years ago, the mailman delivered me a wine catalog that was suppose to go to another address ( which happens more times than I care to mention, I often wonder what I am missing out on in my mailbox) So I saw this wine cork corkboard and went OOOHHH I want to make one of those, then I Turned the page and saw this wreath, that sold for over $80, but it was kind of blah then I saw another one for over $100, but it was still BLAH, so I decided right then and there I could make one even better and I did, but let me tell you, it takes along time to keep the dream alive when you are saving wine corks from wine you drink. I did get a little bit of help from a few people, but mainly, most of them were from bottle Matt and I have shared and LIKED, there is not a cork from any bottle we did not like.

Another REALLY cool thing about this, that I absolutely love is that I am thrifty and I try to recycle anything I can for my craft purposes and this wreath, was one, I know this is gross, but was one someone was throwing it out and I took there stuff off of it, and the greenery, is greenery I bought 14 years ago right after Matt and I married to put on the curtains in our bedroom and they have been stored in a closet since we moved into our house and i stumbled ont hem when I was cleaning out my closet last week! And the grapes were a great stumble as well when we went to The Dollar Tree to buy some gag gifts for Matt and I saw these on the shelves and they looked exactly like the ones I was going to buy at Hobby Lobby for for $4 apiece and I got them at Dollar Tree for $1 a piece! What a deal!

Anyway, Thanks for looking and I would love any feedback you have for me!

Homemade PopTarts!

2009-07-24T11:34:00.003-05:00

Watch Out Kellog, you ain't got nothing on mama.

So poor Matt has felt really mistreated the past few mornings because I have been staying in bed and then getting up at 8:30 or 9:00 and making the boys nice breakfast's, such as Muffins, french toast etc. So I dragged my tired Booty out of bed this morning and made him homemade PopTarts, which he loves, but I think they taste like fruity cardboard and are gross. Good thing about these, I have made a convert out of my boys, the bad thing about these, I have made a convert out of my boys and now they will always want these, I need to see if I can freeze these so the boys can toast them on school mornings.

These are also VERY easy if you use a refrigerated pie crust.

Pie crust, refrigerated
Jam or Preserves
Glaze
Sparkling Sugar ( only if you want it to look like a pop tart)
Directions:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Unroll one of the pie crusts and square the edges. Cut into rectangles. Place 1 tsp of jam in the center of a rectangle and top with another piece of crust. Crimp all four edges. You can seal with a little melted butter if you want it to look more like a pop tart and not a fried pie. Repeat until all of the pie crust is used. I also took the rounded edges that I cut off and rolled them together to form more pop-tarts. They weren’t as “pretty” as the others but I did not waste anything.

Bake for about 7 – 8 minutes or until slightly brown. Once cool, pour glaze over and decorate with sugar.

To Make the Glaze:

1 cup powder sugar
milk to thin
Place powdered sugar in bowl. I find that a milk capful and half is usually enough to make the perfect glaze.

Lemon Mousse

2009-07-24T11:24:00.003-05:00

Here is another Easy recipe that Cole made last night, I actually go this in an E-mail from McCormicks and Cole made is all by himself, even made it look pretty in the glasses we served it in! although he would not let me garnish with a mint leaf or a rasberry to make it look smashing ! I have had a blast with the boys in the kitchen these past few days, teaching them tricks such as how to make real whipped cream, EVOO, Deglazing pans, and how to turn fresh garlic into a paste, no garlic was used in this recipe :) They are so proud of their creations and can't wait for Matt to come home at night to try them. Speaking of I need to go search the pantry and see what they can make tonight!

Here is McCormick's recipe, BTW I used Light Cream Cheese and it tasted just fine!

Makes 6 (1/2-cup) servings.
Prep Time: 10 minutes
4 ounces (1/2 package) cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar, divided
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon McCormick® Pure Lemon Extract
1 teaspoon McCormick® Pure Vanilla Extract
1. Beat cream cheese and 1/4 cup sugar in large bowl until smooth and creamy.

2. Beat heavy cream, remaining 1/4 cup sugar, lemon juice and extracts in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until stiff peaks form. Add 1/2 of the whipped cream mixture to cream cheese mixture; stir until well blended. Gently stir in remaining whipped cream mixture. Cover.

3. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Spoon or pipe into dessert dishes to serve. Garnish with lemon slices, fresh berries and mint leaves, if desired

Cole's Cheesy Biscuits...Better than Red Lobsters!

2009-07-24T11:11:00.004-05:00

Yes,I said it! Cole made Cheesy Biscuits better than Red Lobsters! and they were so yummy and did not come from a can, which is how my family prefers their biscuits, sad, but true.

So since I have been spending more time in the kitchen those boys have been right by my side wanting to cook as well.. I am so happy, they will be able to cook more than hot dogs and Mexican casserole for their wives and enjoy doing it, I'm not knocking Matt, don't get me wrong, he just does not care to be in the kitchen and besides he is much better behind a camera than I ever could be :)

Anywho, these Biscuits are super easy to make, even a 9 year old can make them!

1 pack buttermilk biscuit mix (I used Bisquick, about 1 1/2cups)
1 1/2cups shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup milk
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp oregano
3/4 tsp garlic salt1. Preheat oven to 400F. Spray cooking sheet with non-stick spray.

2. Put biscuit mix, cheese and milk in a bowl and mix well to form a sticky dough.

3. Using spoon, drop lumps of dough onto cookie sheets 1.5in apart. Bake for 10min.

4. In a bowl, melt butter and mix with oregano and garlic salt.

5. When the timer goes off, take them out and brush with butter mixture and bake 5min at 400F and another 5-6min at 350F.

6. Remove immediately and serve hot!

MMMMMMM.....Cinnaminamy Frenchalicious Muffins

2009-07-24T10:58:00.004-05:00

Muffins..yes, I may not be crafting but I was determined to try to make some muffins that were better than donuts, my all time favorite food. These were so simple to make and yes, they almost melted in my mouth. OKAY so they are not a plain glazed donut, but they are fewer calories, not by much, but hey every little bit helps. I am going to keep working on these recipes to try to make them lower in fat and calories, when I just get scared to exchange sugar for Splenda when baking, because if it is not good then I have wasted all the ingredients, but these were so easy and had so few ingredients this will be my perfect victim.

Here are the boys enjoying the muffins with a nice cup of Coffee!

We will call these: Cinnaminamy Frenchalicious Muffins, because well it makes them sound more extravagant! Anyways, eat them warm, they are so much better when they are warm! YUM!

1/3 c. butter, melted
1/2 c. sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 c. AP flour ( self rising flour works well also, then you do not need the salt or baking powder)
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 c. milk

Topping
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. butter, melted
1 tsp. cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a medium-large bowl, sift together all dry ingredients. Add wet ingredients and stir until combined, but still a bit lumpy. Don't overmix. Scoop batter into muffin tins that have sprayed with cooking spray. I got 10 muffins out of this batter. Bake for 20-25 muffins, or until they just start to turn a bit golden at the edges.

For the topping, mix sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Place melted butter in another small bowl. Dip the warm muffins in melted butter, then in cinnamon sugar.

I disappeared again!

2009-07-24T10:46:00.002-05:00

Yes, I did disappear again, and it is summer! This school thing is kicking my Butt. But I do know it will all be over in October, I have to just keep telling myself that and then hopefully I can get a job next school year helping out all these special needs kids, instead of tethered to one classroom or at least away from the principal I tend to clash with. SO some things I have been working on is helping my friend with raising money for her Susan G. Komen race for the Cure. I have been making her booby Cards and some collections cans like this one, although this is a crappy picture and not the best can I made. In between studying and doing this I think I lost my crafty Mojo this summer because I felt like I was ignoring my family so I would up taking a few weeks off from everything to give it all to my family, but the boys go to Children's camp on Aug 3rd so I plan to take a couple of days to use my new stamps and create for me before I go back to making Booby cards.

OH yes, I did sign up to sell Stamping Up stuff, but not for a profit really just so I can get my supplies in a timely manner if if I make a few extra bucks from people then OK, I am planning to do a Christmas card swap and maybe just a crafty get together, that way if people want to buy they can but there is no pressure , I am so not the salesperson, I hate being pressured, thus I do not pressure myself.

On another note, I always love to cook, but since the craftiness has taken a break the cookingness has gotten larger and I have tried new techniques in the kitchen so maybe I will post a few of those and recipes. Enjoy!

Teacher Appreciation Gifts

2009-05-12T19:44:00.003-05:00

Time for another round of Teacher Appreciation gifts. Although Teacher Appreciation was last week, all the schools were out due to the Swine Flu, which is good because I spent the earlier part of last week Spring cleaning, not crafting, so on Wednesday when I decided to start crafting, i got the call that instead of getting the entire week off as earlier stated, we were having to go back on Thursday so I began these gifts but was too tired Thursday and Friday to finish them, as well as having to do my lectures as well, so I figured I would finish them this weekend, WELL that was also a bust since I threw my back out, so I drug myself to my craft room last night and finished them, well not everything, I wanted to do a couple of other things, but it hurts to sit, so I will just get by with these. The boys took them to school today and they said the teachers loved them. I hope so.

I had a bunch of the plain cardboard boxes i had gotten for free from FREECYCLE.ORG ( the best place in the world to get craft supplies, glassware to paint or frames to alter for FREE! The Matt can't complain that i was spending money on it,e specially if I turn around and sell it.) So anyway, I had these boxes lying around so I decopuaged them and then made coordinating accessories. I made altered binder clips in matching papers, if you wonder what to do with those you can use them to display a photo on you desk or hold notecards or whatever. Then I made bookmarks out of altering a paperclip, with some flowers cut out of papers and then I made a paper matchbook to display them in, what fun! These may be my new addiction next to making glass bead magnets, which I also made them. These are both so easy to do and you can make a bunch quicly, for instant gratification!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy. That is all I have for tonight, I have to get Peyton into bed and begin my lectures for this week, JOY!

BOOBIE CARDS!

2009-05-12T19:38:00.002-05:00

Well I have to say, these have been an instant success. I made a few of these to send to the women in my family and have since had several orders for these. In fact the thing I am most excited about is it looks like I will be making a bunch of these for the Breast Cancer Walk in the Fall as a fundraiser for them. I am very excited that my work can go for something so good! I plan on trying to make a few of these with bloomers as well as the thing panties, but I think testing those out might just have to wait until schools out because I promised Peyton I would finish the mural in his room first, pics will follow of course :)

Anyway I hope you enjoy!

Altered Canvas

2009-05-12T19:30:00.002-05:00

So my Sister in law had this altered canvas that she had done because she had seen them at Canton but did not want to pay a ton of money for it, she used some scrap book paper, ribbon and big wooden block letters to spell out Family, it was VERY cute. Then My sister went and did one too that was tres chic so I thought, I needed to do one and I had been trying to think of something cute or some way to put up the word CREATE in my brand new craft room and VIOLA! This is what I came up with. It is not perfect and I wish I had a bought a couple of sheets of the same paper to have more continuity to the sign, but hey, for a first timer it is not bad. I definately got the bug and want to do another and actually have an idea to alter a larger canvas and add a nice family photo to it and the word Family or some scripture about Family, if you have a good Scripture, let me know, I have not really looked yet. I plan to do it all in browns and print my family pic in Sepia tones. Not sure if I will use an existing picture I have or get Matt to take another one of us at the park soon.

Sorry if some of you have seen these on my Facebook, I won't publish all my things on Facebook, I will reserve a few for here only, it has just been easier since I was in school to post there because then I do not write a book :)

Hello! Have you missed me?!?!?

2009-05-12T19:16:00.003-05:00

Well just to fill you in on a few details as to why I have been MIA, is one I FINALLY FINISHED MY CRAFT ROOM! YEA! @ I went back to school and although I am doing it online, I just do not have as much time to craft anymore, so sad, but I have not stop crafting all together, I am still crafting, although It is doing more personal orders right now, but I have done some fun stuff. (WOW that is a big run on sentence, but I am not fixing it)
I might post 3 or 4 blogs tonight and try to do a few more this week to get you caught up on all that I have crafted.
BUT THE BIGGEST NEWS...I am hopefully going to be opening an online store this summer....I know I know I keep saying this but Erin and I bought the Domain name, www.sparklefairies.com and we want to craft a bunch of stuff for craft fairs this fall as well as sell online. I will keep you posted.
So anyway...HERE IT IS, my CRAFT ROOM, which I absolutely LOVE and thanks to Ray and Hope for helping get Matt off of his butt to finally finish it. It is nice for 2 reasons. 1 I have a place for everything and it is so much easier to keep it clean or to clean up after a BIG project and I can do my online classes in there instead of on my bed. The desk is an old door from Matt's work, to cover the holes where the hinges went I used ribbon to trim it in and then I used shoe organizer on the left. I loved the cubbies and never expected to fill them all right at once, but I did, I have a place for all my papers as you can see by the open cabinets, but I still need extra space for my stamps and I am thinking about a place where I can hang some rods to put my punches on and not to mention a way to put out all my 100's of yards of ribbon, but that sounds like a Summer break project :). Well enjoy and keep a look out for new things!

Save The Date Invitations

2008-12-28T18:18:00.003-06:00

SO my cousin is getting married this spring and I offered to make her Save The Date cards. This is the style she chose. Pretty simple, which is nice since I am making 250 of these before I go back to school next week. The colors are Navy cream and silver. Here is the card with out the Vellum on top so that you can see the print. On the Vellum I have embossed Once Upon A Time from the Ever After SU set and the swirls are from the Always SU set in Midnight Navy.

Christmas Trees

2008-12-23T18:13:00.002-06:00

I actually made these last year and had said I would make a million more, or redo these, but after my class made a ton for a craft sale I got burned out on them last year. Fast forward to January and Erin and I said we would make topiarys like these for all the seasons using round balls or other shapes, I have seen a bunch online I like, but did I do it??????Nope, so here you go! Christmas trees from last year revisted, well I guess they are new to you since I did not have my blog last year :) I am feeling crafty right now, even though I am sick, so I guess I am going to research some save the date cards, since I am making my cousins Save the dates cards for her wedding in June. I am very excited.

Blue bonnets revisted

2008-12-23T17:46:00.003-06:00

SO I made some bluebonnet glasses for my mom a few months back, it was my first attempt at bluebonnets, which takes a little practice to get the hang of getting the combinations of blue right so they actually look like bluebonnets. Unfortunately, they do not photograph well. Well they might photograph well if my photographer husband took the pics, but he is never around when I need them taken. But I digress, ohhh big word, tee hee, Anyway, several people have seen the bluebonnet glasses and asked for some, so I have now made 5 different sets of Bluebonnet glasses for people, but a friend of mine through Cub Scouts saw my blog and wanted some for her mother for Christmas, and she also wanted some bluebonnet dessert plates. I thought, sure no problem and well they weren't BUT I was painting on clear glass and snowmen are easy, you just have to realize you have to paint the details first. Easy enough, except on bluebonnets! You really need to get the blue on there and then add the highlights. SO needless to say, after 1 failed attempt, (Hey look dad, I learned after the first time not the 5th!) I realized I needed to paint a template and then model it on the plate. I have to say. I love the plates. I changed the design slightly from the glasses and added cute little white flowers in the grass, which do not photograph on a white backdrop OOPS!

Anyway, enjoy, I am really enjoying the painting right now, it is so sad I only seem to do it around Christmas, because no one wants my stuff except this time of the year.

Oh yes, I better add this...Mom, I know you saw this and you are going to want dessert plates as well to go with your glasses. I will get right on that so that you can have them hopefully for your birthday in February.

Purple because of LJ

2008-12-14T20:32:00.002-06:00

Many of you know I lost a dear friend last month by the name of LJ. Well, it did affect me deeply as I had known this man almost as long as I have known my parents! So after he died my mother asked me to make her some thank you cards for her to send out to those who had extended condolences to them. As I felt I had not grieved completely, I decided to make these all in variations of purple since LJ loved the color purple and called it his signature color. At first, I was like PURPLE......HMMMMM... not sure I could pull it off, but I went back through many cards I had done in the past and actually found several that it worked well on, see I could not do these in say orange or yellow, but I think they are perfect in Purple. Matt came up with a a saying and designed a back logo for me to put on all these cards,as I was not going to sign my name, it said: IT had Purple because of LJ and his birth and death year then it said, It is not what you gather in life, it is what you scatter. LJ scatter both love and happiness.

Hope you enjoy these, I think I have decided I might include a purple section in all the cards I do for craft shows from now on.

Vino

2008-12-03T19:42:00.003-06:00

SO matt's work is having an auction and I had plans to make lots of thing to auction off, but fortunately I have run out of time and can only make these and a cheesecake. Fortunately, you say? Yes fortunately I have sold quite a few things this season and have orders for others so I said paying crafts beats just for fun ones! LOL So this is the wine glass set I made for the auction, I even made the packaging. I took 2 Starbucks Frappacino carrying cases and duct taped them together and then covered with some cool wrapping paper I have. I then embellished it with some ribbon and made a cracked glass label"VINO" to go on the front. To finish off all my handmade painted items I have also made "CARE" tags stating that they should be treated as fine china and be hand washed. That is the Fleur Dis Li tag you see the pic of. Oh yes and I also beaded the stems of the glasses. The stem wraps are removable for cleaning and can be put back on or taken off permanently if needed. These are my OTHER grapes I have done, but I think I now like the smaller ones on the decanter.

OK, Now I must go do ARD paperwork and then work on a few more orders.

CHEERS!

Grape-a-licious Decanter

2008-12-03T19:28:00.002-06:00

Ok so here is the decanter I sold. I made this for a lady who is very particular about where she gets her Williams Sonoma Wine glasses and who only buys the best. So, needless to say I was very nervous when I took this on and I had to make sure it was perfect and I have to say I like these grapes the best out of any grapes I have ever painted. Ok, you may say how hard is it to paint grapes, but believe me, it is way easier to paint bad grapes than good grapes. I think these turned out very nice. To add a little more pizzaz I decided to also bead a cuff to go on it with crystal beads, I tried to bead a cluster of grapes and I looked all over online for directions on how to do that and I found 2 different ways on how to do this, but I think my hair may be too blonde or maybe I just need an instructional video on how to do this because I could make it to step 3 on both sets of instructions(that had visual diagrams I might add)but I never could get any further, so I gave up. It does not look too bad though. I wish I could have sent this to work with Matt for him to photograph but I had to deliver it too soon. I hope she likes it, I am sure I will find out soon enough, well after Christmas since it is a gift!

LET IT SNOWman...

2008-12-03T19:05:00.002-06:00

OK, so last year I made a ton of personalized glass plates with snowmen and Christmas these, I also made 14 sets of wine glasses in various holiday themes and just plain grape things. I made them for a craft sale at school. I sent them all to work with Matt, since he is a photographer, so he could take nice pictures of them. He took them and kept them in his car for a week and then brought them home having never took pictures of them! Well I just happened to snap pics with my iphone of a couple of the plates I made at school, so the quality of the picture is not real good. The one with the polka dotted border and the snowman holding the stars were just a couple of them. Fast forward to this year and a lady I worked with loved them so much she ordered one for her husband to give to his classroom paraproffessional and she chose the snow family since I had a pic of it on my phone, so I recreated it and I think I made it look better than the original. Unfortunately since these are clear plates I put them on white paper to photograph so you cannot see the snowflakes I had painted on the clear part. But Oh well. I think I really like painting snowmen, there are so many types of snowmen, just like real people. I also painted a wine decanter and beaded a cuff to go on it and a set of wine glasses. I have pictures of the decanter that I will post later and Matt took the wine glasses with the beaded stems to work to photograph, let's see if he does it this year. I painted the glasses for an auction they are having at his work and I told his coworker that she could not accept them until he took the pictures.....OH OH OH! Stop the presses! Matt just walked in with a disc with the pictures he took. OK well here these are, I 'm off to view these pics and then post them! Cheers!

Ho Ho Ho And Joy!

2008-12-01T00:38:00.003-06:00

Ok, So I have been working on a few Christmas items. Mom gave me these really cute frames that she got for free, well I know why, they were crappy, on one the leg that makes it stand up was broken and the other the little prongs that held the backing on were warped as well as the wood. I did a little magic on them and got them to work, but then I added too many embellishments that I could put the glass back in them. But I think they did turn out super cute. I found this new website called www.scrapnfonts.com and each month you can down load some free fonts for your computer, and someone on their team makes a page of sayings for that month, all laid put nicely for cards or gifts AND they have a gallery of things other people have made using the fonts and my newest addiction...DINGBATS! They are like stamped images, except you print them out on your computer, so my HO HO HO, the O's were made with the CK Ornaments dingbats, I did buy that font.

So...Anyway I wanted to make a few Christmas decorations, and I had these frames and I found some old scrapbook paper from last years Stampin' Up Christmas Bundle and and a few little embellishments and a snowflake I re-beaded 3 times to get it to fit exactly, you have these!

This weekend I have been working on wine glasses, a decanter and a plate, they are all drying while I try to figure out how to bead a cluster of grapes, I am about to give up on that one, no amount of directions I find is helping me out, I need a step by step video so they may go without grapes stem wraps. I should have pics soon to follow. Until then, enjoy the season and HO HO HO!

RELAX....Ahhhhhhhh

2008-11-25T13:49:00.003-06:00

SO I have had this stamp set forever, and it is retired, it is the Bubble Queen set, but I love bubble baths and am determined to host a Spa Party some day and use this set for the invites. SO I made this sign last Christmas to go in my bathroom, but never put it in there fro fear Matt would say NO WAY! He likes that I craft and can express myself but I can't clutter up the house too much with my stuff so I sell it or give it away. So I showed this black and red set to a few ladies, but no takers BUT I did have another lady say she wanted it but in Burgandy and Sage and Viola! I have the second one of these. IT is cute, the picture does not do it justice because it looks pink. SO I made a sale, but I still have the red and Black one up for grabs, someone better take it fast before I put it up in the bathroom the next time I get mad at Matt because he decided to play video games and not empty the dishwasher :)

Pottery

2008-11-20T20:56:00.003-06:00

Did I ever tell you I like to paint pottery too? I actually did this last year, but I am not sure I ever showed anybody, but I was thinking about taking the boys to Killin' Time to let them paint an ornament the day Santa comes to visit and painting a snowman platter myself and went, you know what, I bet some of you have not seen this platter, as I got it then put it away and forgot about it until about a month ago when I pulled it out to use it. I made it to put pasta on and I was so proud of my scrolling carvy type thingys in the paint on the green. I think I could get addicted to pottery and could get really good at it, but, alas, it is just WAAAAY too expensive to do more than just a couple of times a year but I would love to go and paint for people :) Oh well, Enjoy and I hope to have lots of Christmas stuff to show you soon!

Carte Postale

2008-11-19T22:52:00.003-06:00

WOW! SO much has happened since I was last on. Right after Halloween I had the flu which knocked me out of commission for a little over a week, then once I began feeling better a Very Dear Friend was killed in a car accident coming home from vacation in Florida, so I have spent the past 2 weekends at my Parents house, consoling and grieving with them and visiting with family. His funeral is this Friday so a long chapter in my life with this man who seemed like my Uncle, has been closed. I originally was not going to post these 2 cards, I liked them but they were made for 2 sad occassions, the second one I am posting I made for Cole's teacher who lost her brother a month ago, but I found it very fitting for my friend LJ as well, so I am posting these in his honor. BUT I must tell you the script on the second card I made all by myself in photoshop, I am so excited that I am branching out on my own and not constantly running to other places for inspiration, I am becoming inspired on my own! I also found this great site, so if you a re a scrapper or card maker, you need to visit. It is called www.scrapnfonts.com I orginally went to this site because I found it in a magazine and I got 3 free fonts from it, but I signed up and found out you can free fonts and ding bats each month. I though, I will NEVER buy from them when I can get them for free and even better they offer a monthly, really cute sayings page all done up in cute fonts and clip art that I could download for free to put in my cards. I have to say I have gotten all the free things, but did wind up buying a couple a of fonts and Christmas dingbat sets and have made some adorable CHRISTmas signs for auctions and crafts fairs, I will post pics probably after Thanksgiving since 2 of them are almost complete but NEED somethng, what that something is, I am not sure but I am sure it will come to me over the holidays, I feel my crafty mojo returning and I think if we pull out Christmas stuff early this weekend I might figure out what it is. Enjoy! ANd if you can remember LJ's Family and my family in your prayers, although it was a tragic event I feel that it might be a moving experience for my parents, especially my Dad. LJ was a great man, now it is time for my Dad to find out that he is a great man too.

Oh yes, if you want the script I used on the second card for anything, let me know I would be happy to send it to you in a .jpg file.

7th Annual Halloween Party

2008-11-02T19:22:00.005-06:00

SO I began this tradition 7 years ago, because I could not stand going to our churchs' Fall festival, there were too many people there, my boys had to wait in really long lines to play games they did not like and they really wanted to go Trick or Treating. SO I began this to invite the neighbors kids so we could keep a reign on how scary Halloween was and to emphasize the fun. I normally plan many games and activities, but unfortunately I came down with the flu this year an really wanted to cancel Halloween, but in the the true fashion of Martha Stewart, and to prevent a bunch of kids from being sad, the show went on, minus all the games except the pinata and the costume contest. Luckily for me, The boys love to make this their party, so they made most of the food with my direction, and Peyton set the table under my direction.

This is why they call me Ms. Martha, I could not just put regular candles out, I had to cover them with some papers I had so they fit the theme

COLE

PEYTON

ME , your ghost hostest with the mostests :)

The Boys acting out their costume

The dinner table and place settings courtesy of Peyton, the mug was for the Spider leg soup.

NEighbor girl in the clown costume

Peyton and Neighbor boy did this all on their own, this is King Arthur knighting him.
The kids had a blast and I crashed and have not moved from my bed except to go to the doctor on Saturday morning, Matt has cleaned up a little but I have lot to clean up later this week once I feel better. Hope you enjoy the pics.

Monster Cakes and Mummy Heads OH MY!

2008-11-01T20:21:00.003-05:00

So the boys have decided they really love helping prepare for their party and I hope they stay that way because it has been a huge help to me and gives them such a sense of accomplishment when everyone likes what they have done. SO this is the only dish I prepared for the party completely on my own and that was Mummy cakes and Monster heads made with real monster blood. Actually it was cupcakes that I made and instead of using the water called for in the recipe I used pineapple juice then the blood being Strawberry Jello that I put on after they had cooled, I poked holes in them and the jello went down and looked like blood drips in it. I usually put green cream filling in them, but in the past the little girls have gotten grossed out by the green cream, so I also normally do dirt graveyard cups but I cut way back on food this year since I normally make too much since they don't really want to eat, they just want to go trick or treating. Our menu this year was as follows:

Mummy Toes with Dragon Dipping Blood
Spider Soup with a side if crispy spider legs
Bat wings and Ghost chips with Alien dipping pus
Mummy cakes and Monster Heads with real monster blood
and to drink we had Witches potions and Vampire's blood.

I got hit with the flu this week ( one of the first cases in Denton county this year, I am honored), of course I did not know this until today so I was really run down and felt so bad last night I almost wanted to cancel Halloween, but in the honor of trying to be better than MARTHA, I held my party anyway, and after having done this for 7 years it went off without a hitch and I had done so much prep work ahead of time that not much had to be done yesterday. Another blog will follow later with pictures from the party.

Cute Post it Desk Sets using picture frames..

2008-10-26T20:48:00.002-05:00

SO Have I posted these yet? These are so simple yet so much fun to make. I have decided this is the best teacher gift and so inexpensive and fun to make. I just take a small acrylic picture frame put some scrap booking paper in it and I decided to put initials in them also to personalize it more. I add some doodads, borders or ribbon to the outside then add my post it notes to the front for a super cute little desk set. I made one for all the teachers in my dept to match the name signs I had made them. I will also be adding more glass bead magnets for an extra gift since we have white boards and magnets are so helpful.

Well I have one more order I got to fill, I will begin working on them this week and weekend, that will be a great way to unwind after the party friday night. SO far I am right on schedule, I made the punch and got it freezing today, I made the cupcakes and decided to do the Jello techniques with red jello so they will look like they have blood in them, you know the technique where you poke holes in the cupcake then pour the jello on top. anyway I made them and got them in the freezer also that way they will be super easy to ice on Thursday.

I am beginning to decorate up front, but I have cub scout meetings here Monday and Tuesday.

I have training Monday night and the boys again on Tuesday I hope I can keep them out all Tuesday night but I am not sure that will happen since it gets dark so early now and my firetruck backed out on me, so we will be pumpkin bowling and stop drop and rolling :) Well Matt is finished with the wii fit and it is my turn. I will be posting more pics this week as I decorate, but I must find my Halloween table runner I had it in September and I must have pulled it out of my boxes because I cannot find it and it and I am distraught over it, well not really, but it is bugging me. Good night and God Bless!

MUMMY!

2008-10-24T21:25:00.002-05:00

I am getting ready for our 6th annual Halloween party so I made this mummy cake for the boys cake walk at school Unfortunately, I forgot to take a pic of it before I took it to school. So Cole ran up and got a pic of it with my phone right before it was chosen. It's under cellophane and it wasn't the most intricate cake I have ever done, but the boys liked it. I found the greatest accessories for the cake, GUMMY EYE BALLS!

Anyway, the boys liked it so much we are adding Mummy cakes to our Halloween menu. OOOOHHH OHHHHH... You wanna hear our menu this year? I have decided to make this years party a sit down DInner party, I am going all out on the table with candlelabras and such. But here is the menu:

Mummy toes
Spider Soup
Witches fingers
Bat Wings and green pus
Ghostly green potions ( per Reagan's requests)
and Mummy and MOnster cakes ( these will be cupcakes)

I have begin food prep already, I have made the potions punch and have frozen it, I am making cupcakes this weekend and freezing them so they will ice better and I am taking half a day on Friday to finish the rest up. Shouldn't take too long, I will have everything decorated for it beginning on Wednesday after all the Cub Scout meetings this week. Keep a look out for stuff I make for it this week.

By the way beginning Next Saturday I am fulfilling a few card orders, wine glass orders and sign orders. If you want a cute Christmas sign, Recipe sign, maybe a "This House Believes" or a 3 framed JOY or Noel, or your last name, let me know, They are $20 and easier to do if I am putting out several of the same type or themes. I can even make an all occassions card set if needed.

OK, I am off to a bath and letting Matt get online for a few minutes. Goodnite!

Pumpkin Shirts!

2008-10-21T21:54:00.002-05:00

I wish I could take credit for this cute idea, but unfortunately I got it from Family Fun Magazine, it was their October Cover, but I think ours are cuter! We tied dyed our t-shirts and the boys designed their faces and I painted them on! What do you think?

Raingutter Regattas

2008-10-21T21:42:00.003-05:00

Here is Cole's I think it looks very 80's INXs Cd coverish

So the boys had to make Raingutter Regattas for Cubscouts to race. They had to sand and paint them for the race. PEyton won his first heat but lost the next 2 and Cole came close to winning both heats but unfortunately lost them both, but his boat was super cool. We did this on my birthday and if you want full details of the ORDEAL, and I mean ordeal, that took place on my birthday give me a call, buts lets just say this I think I need to organize the next regatta race so we can get out of there before 10 the next time! UGH!

Here is Peyton's Spider boat

My 2 cute Cub scouts and their Regattas

Shhhh.... It's a Surprise!

2008-10-21T21:36:00.003-05:00

Front of card...I'm not sure why it is turned upside down though :)

OK, I had to wait until after Dad's birthday to post pics of the invites I made him, I only had a few days to make them and I had an image in my mind of what I wanted. This was not it, but they turned out OK, I think I needed more bling and some gold paint on glitter on it some place but I ran out of time. But they still were cute. I am onto Halloween stuff now, papier Machier, pumpkins and shirts..OH my! Enjoy !

Backside of card.

Halloween Spinner Invites

2008-10-09T19:24:00.002-05:00

So I made the invites for the Boys halloween party, the pictures are not that good, but the center is cut out and the ghost, bat and spider are hanging on clear plastic cording and spin. They are not as cute as I expected but I think it is because I wound up not liking the paper I used on the front. Oh well, Enjoy!

Cowgirl time

2008-10-06T20:24:00.002-05:00

I made another sale, this one was just a little one though since Peyton's class bought it for their teachers birthday I just asked for what it cost me to make. BUt I took my cowboy kid stamp and made my cowboy a cowgirl since they are the Hawk Mavericks. I embelished her hat with rhinestoned and attached an old bandana to hang it up with. I am quite pleased and think I am getting better at these and they are taking me less time to do. I also finished the boys Halloween invites, but I will try to post them tomorrow so I can keep you coming back for more. Right now I am off to do another order, this time for a surprise birthday party. I am using Vintage Pin up girl art and I am not sure exactly how I am going to lay it out, if I cannot come up with something on my own I might take them to Amy tomorrow at work, she loves that vintage stuff and does such good stuff with it. I took my laptop to show her the images I found yesterday but she was out sick. If you are surfing by tonight, I hope you feel better.

It's beginning to feel a little Spooky in here!

2008-09-29T21:37:00.002-05:00

OK October is just a few days away and although I have had Fall decorations out for a month I am sneaking out a few of my Halloween ones, well not actually sneaking them out, I am crafting them out! I wish the Trick or Treat Garland was a better picture but it is small and long and what you cannot tell is that those letters are super Sparkley and I spent a long time making them Sparkly! I think I need to add some Orange Gingham Fabric tied into a bow at the ends, but that is at School in my fabric scraps box so I will have to grab it tomorrow and make me 2 bows to go on it. I also made this BOO sign last year! THey are so fun!I am thinking of making a Welcome Fall Pennant Banner also, Bt I may be to ambitious for this year as I need to make invites for the boys 6th ANNUAL Halloween party, Luckily I only have to make 3 invites, I just got 7 orders from 2 different people for the Name signs I make and 2 desk sets orders from another lady. I MUST GET MY ETSY SHOP UP! I want to put in a few CHristmas cards I made and offer these things also for Teacher or Friend gifts.

Saturday is National Make a card day and I would make cards but the boys are so excited to make a Bat pinata for the Halloween party and get a big branch to spray paint black to make our Halloween tree AND they have to paint their Raingutter Regatas, So I think I will craft a few nights this week and make my card(s) on Sunday after Church while the boys are playing. SOunds like a packed weekend to most but sounds like a well spent weekend with my boys, we might even get Matt back on his bike again for a family bike ride, since he felt so good after going on an hour long ride with Cole's Scout Troop tonight and he played Golf on Saturday with some new people we met at Southmont Baptist. OK I am going to clean my craft room now so that I can get in there and play this week!

Oh YAY! Fall

2008-09-22T22:37:00.005-05:00

TODAY is the first day of Fall! I love the fall and everything about it. In fact today, my class' journal entry was what is your favorite season and why and I made a list of why I love the Fall. I love the cooler weather, the changin leaves, Pumpkins, Halloween, my birthday, Thanksgiving, Pumpkins, ghosties, Orange colors the warm feeling I get, Horror movies with cole with the sound turned down, great memories from the Fall growing up, Halloween costumes, baking and again PUMPKINS!

I bought a Halloween mag this weekend and this guy had this collage on his page. If you have a some free time he has tons of cute crafty stuff and a totally adorable Trick or treat banner I am going to tweak and make my own this year, His name is Matthew Mead Just click on his name and it will take you to his website. I feel a crafty weekend coming on soon to get ready for our 6th annual ( can you believe it, 6 years) Cole and Peyton Halloween Party. The boys get so into having this party they have already started telling me what food to make and what to name it, we will have Frankenstein toes, Bat heads and no grave Yard dirt this year, they want Buggy cupcakes or something equally squeamish! I am so excited they love this time of the year I am sure it is only a few more years before they mention having a haunted house, I am sure Papa will start putting a bug in their ear soon. This year we are moving from Toddler/pre-K party to a more sophisticated party as Cole says. We are having a sit down dinner instead of a buffet and more games after we trick or treat since Halloween is on Friday.

Well I am off to bed, I am taking my class to Ci Ci's to work tomorrow so I need to be well rested!

Berry Blissful Sunny Muffins

2008-09-17T22:34:00.003-05:00

SO this weekend, as I was preparing for Cub scouts and and enjoying the rainy Saturday, thanks to Hurricane Ike, I decided it was time to bake, because that is the best way to spend a rainy day. I had been craving muffins, so I found a batter Basic for muffins and then went rummaging through my cabinets for something to add to it. I could not find anything there, but my freezer held lots of goodies. I had about a 1/2 cup of sliced strawberries, I had gotten earlier that summer, I found Blueberries I had bought to make cobbler with but only used half of and a couple of old bananas sitting on my counter top and some granola in my pantry rounded it out. I call them my Berry Blissful Sunny Muffins and Peyton called them little bites of Heaven! I think he ate half of them! The pictures do not do them justice, since all you can see are the blueberries, but they were YUM! Here is the recipe.

1/2-1 cup strawberries, chopped
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (if you substitute self rising flour you can omit the baking soda and salt)
Pinch ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
1 ripe banana, mashed
2 large eggs
1/4 cup canola oil
1 lemon, zested
1/2 pint blueberries
1 cup granola

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large bowl, whisk together the mashed banana, eggs, oil, 1 cup sugar, strawberries, and lemon zest.

Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until combined. Do not over mix. Fold in blueberries and granola.

Scoop batter evenly into muffin cups. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of muffin comes out clean, about 30 minutes.

Nerd Scouts...Er... I mean Cub Scouts

2008-09-14T22:35:00.003-05:00

Well here we are in our Cub scout uniforms. Actually the boys look super cute in theirs but Peyton said that ll the adults in the uniforms looked like nerds. I have to agree, i do look nerdy so they are calling me their Nerd Scout leader. Cole has his first Den meeting Monday night and, I, the woman who said she would not take on any more this year, volunteered to be Peyton's Den leader. Not we are not Den mothers anymore, the Boys Scouts do not have those we are Den leaders. I am still not sure what we are doing Tuesday night, but I am going to Cole's meeting and I am sure I will just do what they do until we get it figured out. They gave us a plan to follow but my Co Leader who was never in boy scouts either is clueless also. I think w e will do fine once we get going and I get back into the swing of working with little kids again. The only thing I dislike about this year is when they are a Tiger cub, like Peyton, one of their parents must attend the meetings with them and there is nothing I hate worse than having my house full of parents while I am trying to have fun with the kids, I feel like they must be entertained or they distract the kids or even worse they could be worse than teachers and talk during the entire meeting. I am going to have to set ground rules down for the kids and the parents. OH YEAH and get this, for the meeting on Tuesday, they had in the cub Scout manual for us to make Scrapbooks the first meeting! How great is that for me! I know I have the craft portions of the meetings down pat! :)

On a positive note, Peyton's principal''s son will be in our Den, I am hoping if I can build a good relationship with her, I might be able to find a way into Denton ISD this next year. It is hard to get into Denton Schools because they like to hire their student teachers and subs and rely heavily on refferals from other Denton Teachers.

If I am not too busy this week I will post more stuff, I got a new stamp set and made a couple of new cards.

An Ode to Cafe Du Monde

2008-09-01T21:04:00.008-05:00

I hope that at this moment Cafe DuMonde in New Orleans still stands after Hurricane Gustave has hit, I think damage to NEw Orleans was minor but I am not sure yet, but I have made and Homage to all that is NEw Orleans Greatness today; I made home made Beignets. If JD can claim his cajun heritage, so can I! Actually I have been saying for the past few years, that I was going to make Beignets and Hot cocoa for breakfast "Next Weekend" Well guess what?!?! Next weekend finally came and I made Beignets, and Uh...THEY WERE AWESOME!

The best part about this, is I finally used the dough hook on my Kitchen Aid Mixer, OMG! I might just have to make bread, it was so easy to do! Here they are after they pull away from the sides of the bowl. THen all I had to do was to take them out, roll them out and cut them into small rectangles. BTW. I did not cook all of these, I did not even cook half of these I need to find a way to half this recipe.

Here they are frying up, they cook so fast that I needed Cole to help finish making the cocoa so I did not burn these.

I did put a lot of powdered sugar on them, but only Matt made the huge mess I had to clean up!

Well here is the recipe I used and I have added the few tweaks to it, to make it more my recipe, I think next time I might try another zest like lemon or lime and maybe make a lemon glaze to go on a few of them, YUM!

*****Oh Yeah I forgot the MOST important thing I learned from this entire experience.... YOU MUST ALWAYS CRACK YOUR EGGS ONE AT A TIME INTO ANOTHER BOWL BEFORE CRACKING THEM INTO YOUR OTHER INGREDIENTS OR YOU TOO COULD LOOSE 2 PACKETS OF YEAST AND 4 EGGS! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I did not crack but one rotten egg out of my new carton of eggs, I had 2 rotten eggs in my batch, luckily I had another carton of eggs in my fridge to go, although I bought both cartons at the same time UGH!*****

Ingredients:

1 envelope active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup evaporated milk
7 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup shortening, softened
2 TBS. Vanilla
1 TBS. of orange zest
oil for deep frying ( I used Canola)
LOTS of powdered sugar

Preparation:

In large bowl, sprinkle yeast over the warm water; stir to dissolve and let stand for 5 minutes. Add sugar, salt, beaten eggs, and evaporated milk. Whisk or use electric mixer to blend thoroughly. Add 4 cups of the flour; beat until smooth. Add shortening; gradually blend in remaining flour. Cover with plastic wrap and chill at least 4 hours or overnight. Roll out on floured board to 1/8-inch thickness. Cut into 2 1/2 to 3-inch squares. Deep fry at 360° for 2 to 3 minutes until lightly browned on both sides. Drain on paper towels and sprinkle generously with powdered sugar.

Back To School

2008-08-30T11:41:00.002-05:00

So we all went back to school this week and BOY what a week it was. I don't think teaching has ever exhausted me as much as this week did. Each night I looked forward to 8:30 when Cole would go to bed so that I could go to bed! Even the boys were worn out, On 2 separate days a neighbor friend came over to ask to play and they were too tired to go out and play and they were both out like a light 5 minutes after going to bed. By the end of the week we had a little more energy but we were ready for Family Pizza and Movie night by Friday. We watched The Goonies, the boys loved it and went to bed at 9 with no complaints! Normally Friday nights I get the, AWWW c'mon it is the weekend we don't have school, nope not last night.

Cole and Peyton both love their teachers,which is good, Peyton had 3 of his best friends in class with him, which is kind of scary since he is a chatterbox, but I am sure his teacher has already found out since on his 3rd day of school he got a note home for not following directions and not listening. He swears he could not hear his teacher, and he thought he was staying where he was supposed to, so I am not sure what it was but he was good the next day. I am thinking about getting his hearing checked though, one of the things that was associated with that Branchial Cleft Cyst he had as a baby was 70% chance of hearing loss later in life, not significant hearing loss but some hearing loss, and I have been wondering with his slight lisp and the other issues he has had with his ears in the past if maybe he does have a slight hearing loss or if he will outgrow these things. IF hearing is fine I am going to call and see if they can have a speech therapist evaluate him at school t o see if he can get services through Denton to correct his lisp. I kind of don't want to do this, because he is my baby and it is so sweet when he says ZZZZANK YOU! But I also don't want him to get to 5th grade saying it.

Cole of course, is my model student, and was named so in his class this week. He takes after his aunt, he loves to brown nose the teacher and he is such a good kid, he always makes me proud. HE is really enjoying 3rd grade so far. HE was really worried about homework, but after a few days of hearing from the teachers he has he thinks he can handle it just fine.

They are both loving ESD and told me I could wait until 5:15 or even 6 to come and get them because they are having so much fun, but then again they did not have homework this week, so we will see when they start making them do their homework before they can play :)

Now onto my school week, well schedules are still not worked out, they gave us a new system called Zangle, which screwed everything up as to how we have always done stuff and lo and behold appearantly we have always been doing t wrong and no one higher up has ever told us we were doing it wrong, so it has been a night mare, the new teacher even came in on Friday and said if they had still had her old position open back in Canada, she would have turned in her resignation and gone back to it. She has had a lot of bad things happen since she took this job and she is wondering if maybe this was not the move for them to make. She has poor circulation so they decided to move to Texas to get out of the cold of Canada and moved in with some friends in Gainesville, whihc was only suppose to be for a few weeks, but they found they could not buy a house here because they have no american credit, only canadian, so no one will loan them money and they own their 2 houses outright in Canada and MOntanna. Mom has said she can do it, but they decided to sell their house in Canada first so they can pay cash for a house here, or only finance a small amount. And according to her houses sell within weeks in Canada, but hers has sat on the market for 3 weeks and no sale. Ok I really do not know Canadian Real Estate but this sounds a little extreme to think a house will sell that quickly unless you are in a hot market, but whatever. She is still driving in daily from Gainseville, a 1 1/2 hour drive one way, she wound up enrolling her daughter in Gainseville schools until they can get a place here, she bought a brand new Infinity the week before school and it has had electrical problems from the first week and it has been in the shop for over a week now and she has not gotten home before 9 most days. Yeah I think I would want to quit too.
Now my days have been hectic I have not had a conference period all week, I am already dealing with paraprofessional issues, and fights happening, but I am nipping this early on so we are not in the principal's office once a week, and I am not sure I am liking how we are doing our new teaching. I like the fact we are meeting as a large group, but it feels frantic, unorganized and I don't think we are reaching all the kids I proposed on Friday that maybe we do 2 group activities a day and then split up into smaller groups so we are going to try that next week. I think that may work but I am sure there will be a few more tweaks along the road before we get it running smoothly.

SO anyway, it is the weekend and I laid in bed until 10:30 today watching cooking shows, and I got up to do laundry only to realize I had enough soap to do one load and that load is almost done so I need to run to the store and buy some more. We plan on lying around today, I am going to make up the next 2 weeks menu and go shopping for groceries tonight, and I was given some Hawaiian Falls tickets by my classroom aide yesterday, which are expensive, but her son worked there, so I surprised the boys with and we will go Sunday after church. No crafting for me this weekend, well maybe a couple of Starbucks Frappacino boxes turned into a pencil box crafts fro Colettes room, but other than that I will be relaxing and working on the ARD paperwork for my new student who came over from the Jr. High without any! Have a great week, and hopefully I won't be too tired to post some new pics.

Good Bye Summer!

2008-08-24T19:35:00.007-05:00

Good Bye Summer

I am so sad to see you go. I really THOUGHT I was ready for school to start, but now that I MUST go back tomorrow and face my my new and old students I am not so sure. I am sad to see my baby boy start first grade and I see my 2 boys get older and taller each day, and I want my 2 toddler boys back that climb into my lap and "nuggle" with me. I am going to miss sleeping in each morning and napping during "Yes Dear" at 2:30. I miss going to the water park, or planning a picnic and staying up until midnight.

I am scared of having another bad school year like I had last year! It was horrible because of an aide we had, but I am paranoid that the teacher she worked under might pull me into all the drama she is experiencing. I am worrier by nature so of course I have worried about, what if I am trying to be set up to fail, or even worse yet, just plain screwing up on my own. I work very hard and try to do EVERYTHING by the book, but already this first week is stressful for the simple fact one of my new students has no paper work and I must test and write goals for this student by FRIDAY!

Now is the time I need GOD rooting for me more than anything and I am feeling so scared he is too busy with other problems to look at my paltry worries, I mean there is a war going on and people loosing their loved ones. I know that is not the case and that is Satan playing with my emotions, well that and it I am hormonal right now. Any prayers that any readers could offer for me in the next few days would be appreciated. I do not want to fail!

I know this was not really a crafty post, but it does have photographs my hubby took in it, well all but one, I took the cool shell shot.

I hope that everyone has a blessed week and think of my boys as they go back to school on Tuesday, they are not ready either, but for different reasons from me, they just want to stay home and play video games all day long while I am at work :)

You Love me! You Really LOVE me! Thank You!

2008-08-21T21:32:00.002-05:00

NO really, not the 2 people who read this, well I guess you do love me you are family. Anyway, my inservice presentation went well today. I had been working on my inservice for about a month now and gave my presentation today, and it ended with my group saying that was the most useful information they had gotten at all the sessions. I was giving a brief overview of TAKS-ALT to the new teachers, and well you know me, I don't teach by standing up and preaching I try to get down and personal and making it more conversational, and besides I gave them all several lessons they could start the school year with, so hey what new teacher wouldn't like some lesson ideas they do not have to come up with, that is why we are teachers, we never come up with ideas on our own, we steal them from other teachers :)

Anyway, Hopefully this weekend I will try to start my Etsy Store and I am going to post these as a set to sell,and another set I made. This is a Thank You set using STamping Up sets, and of course I am not in my craft room right now so I forget the name to the set or the exact colors, but hey I do know the cute patterned paper came from a scrap pack from Walmart! :)

You have a great day, I am relieved my presentation is over and I can now go to bed at a decent hour and sleep real good. I have hardly spoken for a whole week as I was preparing for school and my big inservice presentation and Matt had to keep sushing me because he said I was in rare form and would not shut up.

I actually have to go make a card for my new aide in school she has done the work of 4 men in 3 days in my class.

WONDERFUL!

2008-08-20T01:14:00.002-05:00

Oh I wish everything was wonderful. I just wish the first day of school would get here so I could sleep and relax again! In the meantime, enjoy my "WONDERFUL" card. This was just a simple card made with SU Pick a Petal Stamp set. I like this set, I just never can make anything with it I really like. This one is not too bad, it is very clean and crisp, which is nice for a change! Anyway I may not be back on again until after school starts next week, btu then again I might be on all weekend, you'll never know unless you check it out! But probably not since the weekend before school starts is always a big weekend for me and my boys, I pamper them big time for the end of summer and then end it by going on a special date with each of them alone. It's out Mother SON time! I just hope they always allow me to continue with this tradition, I love it!

Texas BlueBonnets

2008-08-17T19:14:00.003-05:00

So here they are, it only took me 4 months to finish these, I think I finish things faster during the school year because I set my mind to it knowing my time is precious, but in the summer I find too many things to distract me like, turning Peyton's old Buzz Lightyear bedroom into a Medieval Castle room, it is painted and that was a feat in itself! Note to self, NEVER EVER EVER paint a ceiling Dark Blue and plan to change it later! UGH! But it is done and he can sleep in there now, we are working on a coat of arms and canopy, but funds need to replenish first! I hate having ot be a responsible adult that pays bills instead of playing with my money!

Anywho, here are the pics of the Texas Bluebonnet Tea Glasses I painted for Mom and Dad's 39th anniversary, which is on August 23. I made her a set of 6 glasses and I am going to paint her a matching pitcher too, but that will probably be for Thanksgiving, school starts next week and I may be a little busy for a while. They turned out quite well I modeled them after an actual picture of bluebonnets Matt had taken. But I find that each glass and each bluebonnet is very different, I found new ways to paint them each time I sat down to paint, but they look good.

Hope you enjoy!

Happy Birthday!

2008-08-16T20:20:00.002-05:00

I do not know why I have NEVER tried this technique before! It seems so basic, stamping on patterned paper. I just happen to have to some cute scraps, in fact a whole box full of cute scraps I can not only make magnets for my white board with, but now I can make some super cute cards with on those stamps I have that I have in the past grown bored with because I don't want to color them. I actually made 2 Happy Birthday ones, but I shut down iphoto and forgot to get that pic, and my computer is running real slow I need to reformat my hard drive, so for tonight this is all I am posting.

OH OH OH, I finally also finished my moms glasses, I have to download those pics and post them, plus JD and April were in town for the week I will post some other pics later.

On another note I am going to bite the bullet and open and Etsy store. I am going to put some card sets up and see what bites I get, if any, and I am also going to post some of Matt's photographs, he has so many industrial and nature pics, I think we could actually sell stuff, I hope maybe we could make enough money to buy Christmas gifts for Matt's family as I have already started buying for the boys, and if we were to do well with his pics, maybe it could just buy new carpet for the house, but I seriously doubt that would happen, but even if I made $20, I would be happy. I will let you know when I get my store up, ti might be a week or so.

Anyway I do not have the recipe for the card for those of you who might want to copy it. If you need to know stamps or paper just message me and I will get it for you!

Giggles,
Heather

Everything...

2008-08-12T11:06:00.002-05:00

Ok I made a bunch of cards a few weeks ago with the thought being that I would post one a day until I had time to make more. Guess what? I did not do it. In fact I hardly got on my computer to check e-mail. I am not ready to come back to the real world and go to work. Oh well, I am working on a presentation for school, well I am suppose to be working on a presentation for school, but instead I am posting a pic of one of my cards I made. I plan on finishing my moms bluebonnet glasses today so I should have pics of those up soon.

THis is from my always stamp set except this time I did not use the bird I love so much I used the hearts, and although Matt says I have been using brown too much I just could not resist using it again. I also used my cuttle bug to emboss the background. Unfortunately I am away from my craft room so I cannot get the color of paper I used as it has been a few weeks since I created and I just don't remember the exact colors. Oh well Enjoy!

Always Special

2008-07-22T22:54:00.003-05:00

I might just be on a roll. I love this bird So I made another one and used a few embellishments from my pretties kit. Very simple to make yet pretty. I am making a bunch of cards for my grandmother to have to hand out. I think all her Blue haired lovelies will love this :)

I used Certainly Celery and PIxie Pink Papers and inks. and My Cuttle bug Embossing folder to emboss Background.

Inspired by a dress Part II

2008-07-22T21:17:00.002-05:00

Ok, so I made this card before we left on vacation. Like I said it is inspired by a dress I saw at Ross and have seen a couple of ladies wearing to church. It is super cute, Black and White baroque pattern, tied up under the breast, princess style with a Hot Pink Bow. SO the first time I made it, I did not measure the weaving part of the ribbon and the ribbon I used was just too small for the card and it was still missing something.

SO I decided to remake it. I got some thicker sheer Ribbon this time, in Turquoise and Hot pink, and I decided to emboss the flowers on here to add a little pizzaz. I did the turquoise in a pearly wedding embossing powder, and the pink in a silver EP, I like them both, but for a more subtle approach I think I like the pearly embossing powder best.

SU Supplies used:
Paper- Basic Black, Whisper White, Tempting Turquoise, Pixie Pink
Ink- Black
Embossing- Silver and Wedding
Ribbon-$1 Bin at Walmart
Embellishments and whatnots- Sparkle Brads, Oval Punches
Stamps- Baroque Motifs

For the Classroom

2008-07-21T21:39:00.003-05:00

I have started working on things for my classroom. Erin and I wanted to make one of these last year for out doors but never got around to it. SO Friday night she and her hubby came over and we created name frames for next yea. You Can't tell much about the paper in the background, but it is a Brocade pattern which I am really into lately. I tried to use school Colors black and gold, which I did but they are so muted, it just looks like muted classy colors. Oh well. I like it and it is VERY simple compared to what I normally do! I bought the papers at Joannes. total cost for the whole project, about $4!

Trying to create again

2008-07-21T20:32:00.002-05:00

Having taken a few months of of creating, I loose my momentum in creating. I made another card, this one I am not as pleased with, it is missing something I might stamp the background with something, that may be what it needs. Not sure but I took a break to paint more glasses, I am almost finished with them so I will post those when I am done, after 5 of the same design I think i finally have the hang of painting a fairly nice Bluebonnet ! But that is another post :)

Getting my crafty Mojo back!

2008-07-16T22:39:00.002-05:00

My hubby says I am in a color rut and I need to snap out of the Black and white, pink and brown, and black and blue, and blue and brown phase. So I logged on today and saw this on recent uploads and got so excited because I have had this set since Jan and have only used it once. Since I had just used it once and the petals I used the first time were polka dotted I changed mine to the paisley one and then pulled out my paisely stamp from Cowboy kid and made a background, and I opted to use Wild Wasabi with my groovy guava since my dh thinks I do too many monochromatic things :)

I was so inspired I am working on another card now and have another in mind for another set. Keep your eyes open for more goodies!

Peyton is 6!

2008-07-16T22:14:00.004-05:00

So my Baby Boy turned 6 on July 3rd and we were at the beach for his birthday with all of Matt's family, so there were 28 people there. He was worried that he would not get a party for his birthday since he was gone and the vacation started out a little stinky for him since his older brother came down with the Chicken pox the first week we were gone and he got a lot of attention and a lot of small gifts because he could not go outside to the ocean and the beach. I surprised him and ordered a cake for him in town at a local bakery, which BTW, was gross, but it looked cute. And everyone came and we had hot dogs and root beer floats and cake, BUT he got no presents, everybody gave him money to buy himself something and he ended up raking in $150 dollars, BUT we were 2 hours from the nearest Lego set or Walmart and he was bummed again. Since we have returned he has bought himself a few lego sets and is still trying to decide what else he wants, but really missed not getting real presents.

So we are having a spur of the moment Backyard Camp out birthday party for him and inviting a few of the neighbor kids. So of course I whipped up a few birthday invites for the occasion using the waterfall technique. They turned Out pretty cute, but I think they are missing something... Oh well, they already went out and I am sure 6 year old will not critique my card :) Another thing, I thought we were out of the chicken pox woods, being that it has been 12 days since Cole was contagiuous, but we are not and the past 2 days he has been a little lethargic and carrying bags under his eyes, and today he developed sniffles and a low grade fever. I Pray that is is just a little summer cold, but I feel it might be Chicken Pox, seeing as that is one of the symptoms. He will be devastated if I have to cancel his party. I checked him over tonight before he got in the shower...so far so good.

SO think of me Saturday night as I am telling goofy ghost stories to a bunch of boys outside in the backyard, roasting Hot Dogs and makin' S'mores. Pray that they will sleep outside by themselves or that Daddy will buck up and go out and sleep with them and leave me to the bed :)

Baby announcements

2008-07-16T17:52:00.002-05:00

SO a friend of mine I met on a mommy board many years ago, just had a baby and asked me to design her some birth announcements. I printed the inside with all the pertinent info and added a cute baby pick of him. She chose this design, after I gave her 20 to choose from because it was different from the norm. I was so happy, I love breaking away! I did these before we left on vacation;which, BTW did I tell you that Cole got chicken pox on, the first week we were there, any way I did these and sent them off the day before we left and the day I got to Florida I got a message that I had misspelled their last name! SO she sent them back and I had to cut the cover off and reprint them 8) Oh well, they are done, I will send them back off again to her tomorrow!

Turquoise

2008-07-16T16:30:00.002-05:00

So I have never really worn turquoise, and for a long time I did not like it, but with in the past few years the color and the stones have grown on me. I was sure I would not ever have anything I could wear it with but now I am finding you can wear it with almost anything. MY SIL and her mother introduced me to this beading website, SedonnaStones.com, where we can get real stones and more of them for less than what I am paying at Hobby stores, or at beading shops so I am have been browsing it and plan to buy more turquoise i need matching earrings and I might just bead a few more things to go with clothes from next year, a year ago, I would buy an outfit then go out and buy beads to match it so now I am sure I will buy and outfit and get online and buy beads to match it :)

TFL

Back From Vacation

2008-07-16T16:06:00.004-05:00

Well things were hectic before I left for vacation. DId not have much time to get much crafting done, so that meant 2 weeks at the beach, I was going to get some type of crafting done :) I worked on a paper bag scrap book while we were there I scrap the previous days pictures at night while everyone else sat around and played cards with my SIL or we beaded jeweley. I really only did one piece of jewelry but Started a few others I lacked a few beads to finishing them.

Every vacation we always buy a photo frame to put a pic of us in and a Christmas ornament. Well last year I bought a cute frame but then would up making my own. Last year in Pensacola, the beaches were covered in GREAT Sea shells, and I saw this BEautiful White sea shell frame for sale in a boutique there, they wanted over $50 for it so I set out to find all white shells and make mine once I got home. I did a great job and love it, it sits on my desk at school, I included a pic of it here. Well this year I went prepared with a glue gun and frames, but I went a different route this year and the pics do not do the frames justice, but the beach was littered with darker shells, not near as nice as last years, BUT I fell in love with the textures and the artfullness of broken shells and odd things that came out of the ocean. I went for darker colors so they would match our bedroom, dark grey shells and browns then I added the neat textured looking items I had found.. They don't look as good in pics as they do in RL, I have pics waiting pick up a t Walmart I forgot to pick them up yesterday. Well, I am back now, 2 weeks was a long time to be away, I have made Peyton's B-day invites, and started to work on painting my moms bluebonnet glasses in between studying for the GRE, cleaning out bedrooms and getting ready to go back to school as well as entertain the kids all day long :)

My Pimp Labor For Love

2008-06-17T23:08:00.005-05:00

Notice I did not say Labor of Love??? My idea of fun is not gluing over 450 crystals on to a glass. ;) So this is Matt's Pimp cup for work. See his company is going green which means they were going to quit supplying the company styrofoam cups for their water or drinks there and bought everyone a travel mug with the company name on it. So Matt and a few of his cohorts got together and decided to really amp up their mugs and then it turned onto how gaudy it could get and the next thing I know my hubby is acknowledging my crafty pursuits and asked me to make him a PIMP Chalice to use at work, the more jewels the better. So of course I said yes and set out to find a chalise to use, well after searching High and low for one an not wanting to spend $20 on a cup I would alter, I decided to just use this acrylic cup from Target. Well then I thought, I will find strands of rhinestones to use that I could glue on, well I was wrong you cannot find those and I know I just saw them someplace recently, i knew they were not cheap but that was ok. I went to every craft and fabric store in a 50 mile radius and could not find them, so I settled on 5 (150 count) plastic crystal beads that I painstakingly glued on one by one with a pair of tweezers and you know what if you turn the cup before they dry, they slide off! And the big jewels are even worse, the cup can be sitting still(actually laying on it's side to help prevent slippage) and next thing you know that big jewel is halfway down the side of the glass, what I thought might take a couple of hours wound up taking about a month, it might have taken less time but school was ending and My aide quit and I was either swamped when I came home at night or tired. I bought 3 other cups because I am suppose to make them for all the guys with "KRUNK" names on them, we will see. Matt takes it to work tomorrow.

Wish the pics were better but how do you photograph a glass??? I know, I know, I am married to a photographer but he was already in bed and besides, sometimes he complains when I ask for his help, I guess it is because he does it all day and I had already asked him to do manual labor today twice! If you know my hubby, you know that is more than he does in a week :) Buthey, things have to be done before we leave for vacation ;)

Have a good evening, I am going to go make some paper bag scrapbooks to take with me, Matt's 15 year old cousin will be in Florida with us and she loves to craft, she would be the daughter I would have if I had had one :) She is so much fin and she thinks I am cool !?!?

MawMaw's Rolls

2008-06-16T16:17:00.003-05:00

SO Matt's Grandmother passed away earlier this year and although I only met her a few times, everytime we got together we were like old friends. Maw Maw used to make the most amazing yeast rolls, I have her recipe and am getting closer to replicating them but Matt says I am not there yet and she is the one who taught me how to make them. Maw Maw Developed Alzheimers about 5 years ago after Grandad passed away and it was sad to see her go because we lost her long before she actually died. She was a God Fearing woman who raised 4 boys 2 who went into the ministry. and she will be missed. In honor of her, I took an old recipe card that she wrote her roll recipe on and made a memorial to her for my inlaws for Father's and Mothers Day since they live in Canada and we never get to see them, when we go to the beach next week with them we are giving it to them. I made a color copie of the aged recipe and used the last picture we had made with her about 3 years ago, so my boys are little in it. My MIL kitchen is painted in Pumpkin so I did the background in pumpkin and got a real pretty paisley paper in varying shades of green to go with it. I also added scripture at the top, John 6:51 I am the living bread which came down from Heaven; if any man eat of this bread he shall have everlasting life. Matt says it does not really apply to mawmaw, but her bread could be the rolls and she raised my FIL to love the Lord with all his heart and has spent his life spreading the Gospel of Jesus, so in a way it is fitting.

Thanks for looking, keep an eye out for a few more things I am crafting away on!They are almost done!

Inspired by a dress

2008-06-14T16:22:00.004-05:00

So, Peyton and I were out looking for me a sundress yesterday and having no luck, but we went into TJ MAXX and they had the cutest dress, It was a black and white swirly pattern more black than white looked just like the background I used for the card and it was a baby doll style dress and right under the chest area they had laced a Hot Pink bow. It was absolutely adorable, but not what I was looking for and I did not want to take the time to try it on with a sleepy 5 year old who has been sick for a week. But it stuck in my head so as I was going to sleep last night I started envisioning it as a card, so first thing after my boys made their Fathers Day cards ( I will post tomorrow). It was so simple I made it in like 20 minutes. Matt says I have been using too much brown and I need to move on to my new color patterns for a while so I am looking brighter, although I am doing baby announcements for a friend in Brown and Blue, I will post those as soon as I have stats. Anyway, heres to a bright and sunny Summer!

I used Baroque Motifs
Basic Black ink
Whisper white and Black cards stock
Regal Rose Ribbon
Glam stone brads in pink

I need to work on my threading and punching skills but I was thinking about making this again with turquoise too.

Altered my First Journal

2008-05-24T21:21:00.002-05:00

I have been meaning to alter this Dollar store journal for a while, but a lady at work asked me to do this for another teacher who is leaving. although this teacher hates me and I have caught her saying horrible things about me to other people, God really convicted me an told me I needed to do this. Took me a while to do it, because I could not put my heart into it and I still think I could have done better But I was tired every night I worked on it.

The first pic is the front cover of the journal, the second is the inside of the front of the journal, the third is the inside back of the journal and the last one is of the back. Out of all these I like the back the least, it iooked better in my head than it did on paper :)

I used the embrace life stamp set, with SU watercolor pencils, Simply Celery ink, Pretty in Pink ink, Crystal effects with Dazzling diamonds sprinkled over it to make the flowers shimmery and the cuttle bug to emboss the Pretty in Pink paper, I also used SU cream card stock, not sure of the colors name off the top of my head, and certainly celery ribbon on inside, I forgot before I put the inside paper on to add ribbon on edge so we could tie book closes but Oh well.

Teacher Appreciation Gifts

2008-05-24T21:01:00.002-05:00

So Teacher Appreciation was a couple of weeks ago and between my 2 boys they had 6 teachers they wanted stuff for and it is not for just one day, appearantly for Elem. teachers you do something every day, well I was sick that weekend so they got nothing on Monday so I did 4 days, One day I did the waterfall cards,the next I got some cute bowls and packed them a sweet and healthy snack of grapes, Then one day I covered these 39 cent boxes I got at Walmart with Scrap book paper and made them a bunch of glass magnets for them to use on their white board and finally the last day I made a post it not holder that matched the box. IF you have not made one of these, they are super simple and fun to make, all it is, is a 50 cent acrylic picture frame turned upside down, with scrapbook paper inside, I put the teachers initials in it and made matching pens, this one is mine though and I had no more pink post its, but I like green on it. I put rick rack on the outside of the frame. You could get super fancy with it like glue some pima flowers on the outside, but I like the simplicity of this one probably because the paper is busy.

Mother's Day!

2008-05-24T20:50:00.003-05:00

Just wanted to post a few pics of Chef Peyton fixing my Mothers day Meal. He wants to follow in his uncles footsteps and be a chef and he did a darn good job all by himself. I was woken up on Mothers day with Breakfast in bed, cereal and coffee. I got sonic for lunch, some flowers out of my flower bed up front ( I tried to grin and bear that one, since I had just planted all those flowers and almost all of them made it back in to sit in my vase) then Peyton made me a meal of Pizza Sticks, Rotini with sauce and a cookie Pizza and seriously I only helped him with about 10 percent of it, He sis the rest. Here are pics of it. BTW, the cookie Pizza he iced added sprinkles and we was to just add a few chocolate chips but I left the room so he could decorate it and I came back to it and on top of having half a can of icing on it and sprinkles, he got a WHOLE bag of Chocolate and peanut butter chips! It was actually very good, You just could not eat but a tiny piece!

Waterfall Card

2008-05-24T20:24:00.003-05:00

I pulled an Old stamp set out, Fishy Friends to create a new Waterfall card for Teacher Appreciation week for my kids teachers and I am fixing to use this again, I just got an order for 3 dozen birth announcements with this set, Iw ill be creating tonight to see what I come up with, that along with the 2 glasses sets I got orders for, I should be busy until mid June! :) Luckily only the baby announcements will need to be done soon as she is measuring big and only has 23 days left they expect her to have her baby sooner, She is soo lucky, the miracle of birth is just so amazing :)

Anyway I used the fishy Friends set, but I only got one good pic, of it closed unfortunately I took the picsof the folds while I was half asleep and did not go back to check and see if I could see them or not. I used just some old cardstock I had lying around, not SU stuff but did use the markers an watercolor pencils and of course I used clear EP with my simply circles set to do the water drops. The card was cuter in RL. Well enjoy.

NO....I did not drop off the face of the Earth :)

2008-05-24T20:05:00.003-05:00

Things have not slowed down for me for a few weeks, but that doesn't mean I have not fit in a few days of crafting :) I wil try to catch up on a few posts over the next few days. On top of being busy at school trying to get through to the end of the year, I am studying fro my GRE to get into graduate school and studying for my CDL Lisences so I can drive a school bus for my class next year so we can go out during the week. OK Sorry had to take a break.... I was just acting out a song from GREASE for the boys...Peyton was rolling :) Anywho, let me show you what took up the past 2 weekends, shopping for new bedroom furniture and cleaning out and redoing my bedroom, I finally got the spare mattress out of myliving room Tuesday night, Itold Matt he had to move it so the maid could vacumme when she came!

Thank You

2008-04-23T20:37:00.002-05:00

Well it is Support Staff appreciation week at School. I whipped this card out pretty fast last night for our Diagnosticians' clerk to thank her for all the work she does with our paperwork when we give it to her. I would love to claim that this design was all mine, but I can honestly say that this design belongs 99% to: momtocnjn from Splitcoast Stampers. Why 99%? Because hers was plain but I added Wonderful on the side of mine to make it more of a Thank you card and I varied the colors of my card ever so slightly to match the ink I had sitting out, I was too lazy to get up and walk 5 steps to my armoire to get out the rest of my inks :) Hey, it was 10 at night when I remembered to do this!

I used Brocade Blue Ink and papers, Chocolate chip and whisper white papers and my new Always stamp set, I love this Bird!

Girly Girl

2008-04-23T20:19:00.003-05:00

I am a Girly Girl. I love pink polka dots, which is what I wanted to name my crafting company until I came up with Sparkle Wishes, but I love Pink polka dots, anything pink, frilly and frou Frou, funny thing is when I designed my craft room and painted it , I did it all in Tiffany Blue and white with Chocolate accents, I may love pink but I could bring myself to paint one whole room in my house pink, unless it had been for a baby girl :) SO anyways, I planned a Girly Girl card swap at work with 8 ladies, we are all required to make 8 Girly Girl cards to swap that way we should have some cute cards on hand to give away when needed or keep and display. Well I made mine and it is VERY plain for me, I normally over embellish and have doodads and fluff and lots of ribbon. Well I guess the dress swap was still so fresh in my mind and how much time I spent on that and how little time I spent with my boys, that I went a total 180 for me and went plain and simple. It is really cute, just VERY simple for me. I have seen one of the other cards and it is SOOOOO Cool and the competitive side in me really wanted to do something just as cool, but, alas, with the help of God working on helping me get these incredible competitive urges under control, he allowed my practical side to come out and it only took me 2 nights, that's right 2 nights, not days or weeks to do all 8 cards!

For those who might want to case the card, I made the pink polka dotted background with the circle stamp from Simply circles, I embossed in clear and the other in embossing tinsel, the background is way cuter IRL. The card stock was pretty in pink, whisper white and chocolate chip.

The purse was done in Chocolate chip ink and embossed. I did one of the purses with a beaded handle, and it is cute, but not that cute, kind of cute but then again kind of ugly, so I chose not to do the others that way and leave them plain. And I just tied it up with a cute big brown ribbon. I almost did this set in pink, black and white but I am really on this brown kick, but like al my other color kicks, like my aqua and black kick, my pink and green kick, my red and black kick, this one seems to be on its way out, I am feeling more of a Brown and blue or black and blue kick coming on :)

Okay, I have rambled on aimlessly now for a while, I see 40 people have visited my site, if you are one of them will just just say HI, I sent this link to a few, but only know of one who looks, BTW AMY don't look at this one until the swap is over :)

My Mommy Side

2008-04-20T14:12:00.004-05:00

The Mommy in me is coming out today. We Went To Scarborough Faire Yesterday, that is a renaissance fair and we just had the best time wandering around and of course the boys had to buy some new weapons, COle went fr the wooden Sword and shield and PEyton went for the bow and arrows and I have to say, I think he is a natural, unlike Cole who finds every sport he does pretty easy and for the most part is fairly good at it with practice, Peyton is not, but he picked up that bow and arrow and he is already shooting bulls eyes 1 out of 5 times! I guess he gets his talent from his grandmother who used to do archery. But I am a mother I might think more out of him than he really is but I was telling Matt we needed to get him onto so archery classes pronto because he was going to go to the olympics with this! Tee Hee. Ok I am going to see if I can upload a second photo with out it being cut off, of Cole with his Sword and shield.

2008-04-18T01:13:00.002-05:00

Tommorow is my Paraprofessionals last day, he has decided to go back to laying professional Arena Football.

And since I had so much fun making the other spinner card, last night, I decided to make another one. I chose the colors because that is what his team colors are. Pretty straight forward and simple but it sure is cute watching that foot ball go into the goal posts! I plan on having all 3 Life Skills classes sign it for him.

Items used: Good Sport Stamps set

Chocolate Chip ink

Creamy Caramel ink

Bronze embossing

Papers: Basic Black

Sand

Real Red

Hope you enjoy, I am thinking these might make good B-day cards for my boys to take to parties, so I might need to make some Dallas Cowboys ones.

With Sympathy

2008-04-17T23:34:00.003-05:00

So, my paraprofessional, from last school years mother died on April 2nd. She moved to a new school year this year, so none of us at her old school knew about it until yesterday when we got our districts flashpoint in our e-mail yesterday. We are a little late, but I made a sympathy card anyway and decided since it has been a few weeks, to make it a little brighter in colors instead of so dark. I think the sentiment says it all anyway. Hope it is not too bright. I plan on taking it to school in the morning to have everyone to sign it. I love this set, Always, I just got it and I love that bird and I really see this bird on slate blue paper inked in black with black accents. I have an idea floating around in my head, so maybe I will make it this weekend.

I used the stamp set, Always. Red embossing on the bird and the heart and sentiment, I used versa mark on the background and stamped the branched, and I used my CB to emboss the strip acroos the top. Had I known I was going to versa mark the background ( this was an afterthought, because it lacked something) I might not have embossed that strip. My paper colors were: really Red, Barely Banana, and bashful blue. Anyway, hope you enjoy!

Spinner card

2008-04-16T22:52:00.004-05:00

SO I made this spinner card for Stamp club to make tomorrow also. If you have no idea what a spinner card is, well then let me tell you! When you tilt the card the butterfly goes spinning its way across the flowers and looks like he is flitting around!

I really did not take a whole lot of time on this, as I realized the stamp set with the flowers I wanted to use, was on loan to someone, so then I went to wanting to do a beach spinner with the spinner being a beach ball, but that one is out on loan too!

So I mixed my favorite set, Simply Said, with my new, never been used set, Merci. DOesn't look too bad together, and that butterfly is darn cute all glittered up and spinning! I did watercolor the blue sky, if you were wondering, might I suggest if you do this, to make sure you have watercolor paper, as I had to work very hard to uncrinkle it to use it :).

Enjoy!

Glass bead magnets

2008-04-16T22:39:00.003-05:00

Ok, this is not a real fancy picture, Matt did not take it or set it up. I have Stamp Club tomorrow and I am always looking for some crafty things for us to do with our stamping supplies. So I walked into our Dept. Heads room on monday and she had these cute magnets stuck to her desk. I asked her if she had made them, she said no I bought them. I took one look at them and just knew I had to make them and they can't be that hard! SO Off to Michaels I went after school, I bought some heavy duty round magnets, glass beads in the floral aisle and some Aileen's clear Tacky Glue and a circle punch. I started out by punching small pics out of a magazine, glued it onto the magnet then glued that to the bead...if you do this, the rhyme they teach you kindergarden works best..a dot, a dot, a dot will do, any more that that is TOO much glue.

Word for the wise if you use a magazine pic, mount it on cardstock first, you can see the black magnet behind the pic if it is light and it looks silly. I thin printed off my initial to put on there, it looked so cute until the ink started to run, then it became a mess. SO here I just punched out some old scrap paper I liked and VIOLA! Tres Cute. Now once the magnet is on the fridge, you cannot see the ugly black magnet, but I added ribbon around the edges of mine anyway to cover the ugly up! :)

My recent creations

2008-04-16T18:33:00.004-05:00

OK I am going to attempt to add pics to this blog, I want to add all that I have created in the past, but who would look at that but me, so I will start new and only add stuff I create from now on.Oh and I have so many things I want to create right now, I just don't have all the time, but hey, only 35 more days of school (not counting the weekends) so watch out this summer!

The first I am going to show you is a tag I made for a tag swap with some crafty ladies at school, I would love to tell you mine was the best, but it was not, there were some fabulous tags made. and I really stepped out of my creation comfort zone, I did not model it after any thing I had ever seen, we were suppose to take one of our favorite quotes and put it on a tag. The quote I chose was:"Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here, we might as well dance."

I did two techniques on the card,the first was a faux leather background and the the french script has the cracked glass technique, that was my first time doing the cracked glass, took alot of clear embossing powder but I really like how it turned out.

The next one, was a dress swap the ladies and I did. Knowing me I really wanted to do something frilly and princess ish and of course pink, but I kept coming back to being Kitschy, so I chose the 50's housewife dress, complete with the rules for being the good little wife back then, they are funny I will post those rules when I find them later. My dress was 3-d, I made everything down to the hanger it is on and the pearl necklace. That was a fun one to come up with. Hope you all enjoy. I am creating a spinner card tonight for tomorrows stamp club demo and I have been making glass button magnets so hopefully I will download some more goodies tomorrow! Enjoy!

Hmmmmm....

2008-04-04T22:56:00.000-05:00

OK, I keep saying I am going to create a creativity blogger to display my artsy side. I am computer savvy in that I can turn one on, use word, photoshop and naything on a mac, I can update my Facebook page, which I think is hard and I can update my MYSPACE page, I can steal templates and hijack pictures off the internet for my use. I can access Itunes, download info, order info etc, but that would be the extent of my internet savvy. I don't like the backgrounds I chose here I will have to find a way to replace the background with something more fitting for me, something...PINK!

Anyway if I stay with this, you wil see all facets of my creativity, some people think I am good, but I think I might be average or below average in my crafty pursuits. I have always wanted to be an artist, but failed miserable all through Jr. High and High school, so I married an exceptionally talented artist, OMG he is unbelievable what he can do in 5 minutes with a pencil would take me all day to do, what he can do on a computer in 10 minutes would take me 3 days to do, and what he can do with a camera, I could never do. I do like rubber stamping and make tons of cards and I have begun branching out ot other paper crafts and using frames and other media, I am stepping out of my trying to copy the work I like phase to actually creating my own, this started last year when I decided I wanted to paint a martini set for my sisters birthday. I then got several orders for martini sets, which moved to wine glasses and over Christmas it was Christmas plates. They were so much fun to do but I am taking a break from that until school is out and then I plan on making tons of stuff to try to sell on Etsy and if that does not work I will set up at a craft fair. People say I could sell my stuff, but I really find that hard to believe! I mean I would not pay for it, but then I know I could create it. So we will see if people buy my stuff. I have sold glassware and a few framed art work and most recently I sold a set of 2 hand painted wine glasses for $60 I was floored...I did not think they were that amazing, unfortunately I did not get pics of them but I have pics of a few others. when I figure all this out, I will post them.

Well, for now, that is all Iw ill work on figuring this out.

Sparkle Wishes,

Heather