Good Golly Moses...

Be still my heart...how is it possible to have kids this beautiful???


Gracie on Father's Day:

Ava in an old-fashioned looking outfit that my mother-in-law bought on consignment for Gracie when she was a baby. It is devastatingly cute on Ava with those blue eyes of hers. :)

In other, home improvement-related news, this is what my husband decided to do at about 5:00 p.m. this past Saturday night. He is a bit motivated when it comes to projects such as these. As it stands now (a couple of hours after this picture was taken), they only have one more row of shingles and have to put the deck rails back on and they are done. My husband, his brother, and our neighbor/friend are all working on it in this picture...we have great friends and family who are willing to help with the manly projects! :)

We did have a metal/canvas canopy thing that we bought three or so years ago to put over the table, which we liked a lot, but for one flaw: We have gone through three of the canvas canopies in the time that we have owned the thing. The first time it ripped, we called the company up and they sent us TWO canvas tops for the cost of shipping only, both of which ripped last year in only mild wind. This year, the warranty is expired and we researched replacing the canopy with our own money, but the canvas alone is close to $100.00. We think that is a bit much for something that we KNOW is not going to last (as evidenced by the THREE prior tops that ripped). We researched a retractable awning to go over the deck, which we discovered is close to $1000.00. Whoa, baby. Then my hubby decided to price out building this roof, which is going to be less than $1000.00 and permanent and oh-so-nice looking. Our neighbors actually built a roof over their deck a couple of years ago (the blue house in the picture there, but not the same neighbor who is helping us build this roof) and the guy said that he priced it out to have it built and they quoted him $5000.00 minimum if there were no problems!! I am SO glad my husband is a handy guy, or we wouldn't be able to afford to do anything! :)

Anyway, just wanted to brag on DH (for those not in the know with internet abbreviations, that stands for Dear/Darling Husband) and show the progress of the lightning-fast addition to the house.

Random Pictures

Ava on Father's Day...need to find a good picture of Gracie to post. :)

A barrette I made for my sister's baby girl, who was born today. Her birthstone is pearl and the center stone is a real cultured pearl. The base is a mother-of-pearl medallion.

That's all for tonight. I am SO tired! :)

More Hair Barrettes

Here are some barrettes that I made for Gracie last night...the pumpkin flowers with apricot buttons are made with all Stampin' Up! supplies (except for the alligator clip, of course). :) The other embellishments were in my stash. I know that the brown/pink clips feature American Crafts ribbon and the pink felt flowers/buttons are Making Memories. The purple felt flowers were cut with my Sizzix machine and the rhinestone flowers were from Oriental Trading Co. Thanks for looking!

If you are interested in purchasing any barrettes, e-mail or post a comment and we can discuss details.

Some of the shower decor

We hosted the shower at my Grammy's house, because it is larger and has more parking than my house. I tied these balloons to the lamp post (and curled the "tails" to make it pretty):

I made this diaper wreath, which I got the idea for on 2Peas:

And I made these little onesies and flower decorations to hang from the chandelier over the food table:

Everything turned out really cute and I got a lot of compliments on the decor. Can't wait to meet my niece! :)

What I have been working on....

So, I finally hosted the baby shower for Andi (my younger sister, who is having her first baby in two weeks!!!!) She chose this bedding by Kidsline, called Pop Daisy:

I bought this scrapbook album from Target:

Found this poem on the internet:

And made the following pages for each of my niece's first 12 months:

Two new cards...

I made this card for my sister's baby shower, which is on Saturday. She chose the Pop Daisy bedding from Kidsline and it's in pinks and browns, so I thought this would be appropriate. :) I stamped the "BABY" stamp, which is actually a circle with flourishes, punched it out with a 1 1/4" circle punch and matted it with a 1 3/8" Chocolate Chip circle. Then I just used my scissors to cut the word baby out and added it to my card. The DS paper is a retired sheet from SU! The scallops are just circles that I punched out of cardstock and placed behind the panel.


I made this card today for a woman that my Mom works with. She sent some Crocs charms to Gracie because she had an MRI scan last week (which still showed no change--yeah!). I made this one out of scraps that were lying on my table and from some leftovers from the Stamp Camp. Pretty simple, as all of my cards are wont to be. :) Just a bunch of circle punches, the scallop circle punch, the "friend" rub-on, and the thank you stamp.


Thanks for looking! I would welcome any comments....feeling pretty lonely in here! :)

Bad pictures, but you get the drift....

For my stamp camp last Saturday, we made these the three projects using One of a Kind (the cards with the pink and orange flowers) as well as the Father's Day card using twill that I posted a couple of weeks ago and a 6 x 6 scrapbook page or a 3 x 6 card (using the same materials as the scrapbook page, so the guests could make whichever thing would be more useful to them). I didn't post the scrapbook page because my sample includes a picture of my godson and I don't really know how to blur out his face. I am not sure if his parents want his picture on the internet, so I just didn't post it. :)

I was proud of myself for this stamp camp because I did two things that I have never done before: I used ALL of the stamps out of the One of a Kind stamp set for the projects and I did a One (half) Sheet Wonder, which I have always wanted to do.

A One Sheet Wonder is where you stamp a piece of cardstock (or, in my case, a half of a piece of cardstock, measuring 8.5 x 5.5) randomly with whatever stamps you choose and then use that piece to make multiple different projects. We cut our piece into two 2" x 5.5 inch strips, used one of the 2" x 5.5 inch pieces for the bookmark, and then cut the second piece into 1.75" x 2" segments for use on the "for you" card. The third piece that was left over was cut into circle using the Coluzzle and adhered in the left-hand corner of the small 4.25 x 4.25 card, cutting off the excess.

The "Happy Day" card is one that I found in my card box that I never posted, mainly because it was mostly a case of this cute card by Lauren Meader: Happy, Happy Colors!

We made that card at a stamp camp last summer or fall I believe. I love stamp camps...they are so fun! :) All supplies SU! If you have any questions about any of the techniques or comments, I would love to hear them. Thanks for looking!

Ahhh, Gracie makes me laugh!

So I am trying to get some work done before 3:00 and Gracie asked me if I would punch out a flower for her to play with out of cardstock. I told her I would do it after I met my deadline and to go find something to play in the meantime. She continued asking and I again told her, "no, not right now" and she started crying. I told her that if she didn't stop crying she would have to go back to bed because that meant she was too tired to play, at which point she wailed, "but it's good for your sooouuuuullllll!" (to cry, that is).

She was a bit miffed that I cracked up and kept telling me that it wasn't funny, but I still think it is. By the way, she is going to be 4 in July. Melodramatic, much? :) For good measure, here is a pic of my little drama queen (with her little sister drama queen in training):



Back later with the cards from my stamp camp last week. :)

Here's the progress....

Well, here are some "progress" pictures of our work on the house. We plan to eventually put stone edging around the large tree that matches the edging on the smaller tree and, as I said on my last post, we are going to be adding the stone veneer under the two right-hand windows within the next month or so. I think that will make a big difference. :) The flower bed on the left looked better when we first planted/mulched because the phlox was blooming. I didn't know that phlox lost its flowers and only bloomed in the spring, so that kind of stinks, but oh well. I still think it looks better than it did. Obviously, the area around the small tree will look better when the grass grows back in. I didn't get the whole house in because the cars are parked in the driveway and I didn't want to have to blur out our license plates. What do you all think? I think it's much better. :)

Bad Blogger!

Okay, I am officially a bad blogger. It's been two weeks since I have posted a single thing to this darn thing. I am working on a scrappy project that I can't post yet, but will do so in the next couple of weeks. I can't even tell you what it is, in case a certain someone happens to read my blog this coming week (**coughcoughit'sagiftcough**) :)

We have also been doing some projects around the house...don't you love this time of year for that? We (well, DH) cut down two really scraggly pine trees bordering our driveway and planted a Bradford pear tree in the place of one of them. It's kind of amazing how much bigger our front yard looks now. He also dug out most of the plants that were in our front landscaping and relocated them to other spots in the backyard. We then chose new, smaller plants in their place and moved this planter bench thing that we have to the other side of the porch. We bought two pretty teak rocking chairs at Home Depot to replace some white plastic Adirondack chairs that were there previously and we plan to put some stone veneer underneath the two front windows on the right-hand side of the house in the coming month or so.

Later this fall we plan on replacing the gutters and bulking up the columns on the porch (we will make them square rather than rectangular and probably add some type of trim or crown molding at the top/bottom of the columns for visual interest).

If the weather is nice tomorrow, I will take some progress pictures of the house and post them. In the meantime, here are some "before" pictures: