Be Creative

Trimming the Tree

Congrats to McLady you're lucky comment was picked randomly by my daughter tonight. Shoot me an email with your address and i'll get your card off to you.

"You take all of the work out of the card business. I'd love to see more thank you and blank cards kits this year."

Here's photos of the girls trimming our tree. I cried a little when I saw Niguel reach right up to the top of the tree. I just kept picturing my toddler hanging all the ornaments on the bottom branch. I don't decorate every square inch of my house but I put alot of effort in to our tree. I treasure every one of my ornaments and theres a lot of them. We have a tradition of getting an ornament from each of out travels, like the little fish from the year we went to Mexico, we have lots of Christopher Radko "Muffy" bears, Ornaments in memory of Grandparents, I love spun glass, and I have 4 of the shell angels which the artist name escapes me at the moment, but by far the most treasured are the handmade ornaments from friends, family and my gir

Hope you have a fabulous weekend. I'm going to try to get some shopping done so I have some gifts to put under that tree.

Thinking of You

And Wondering how your weekend was? Did you do anything fun to celebrate the season?

Saturday we got down to business and got all the holiday decorations up. I'll have some photos later on in the week. Last year we really cleaned out a lot of decorations we don't use anymore and  organized the ones we had. Things to use and things to keep but there just isn't room for.  The organizing made all the difference. And I didn't even have a nervous breakdown putting the lights on the tree. They actually all worked. The girls were also alot more help this year. There were no fights over who got to hang which ornament. And Niguel could reach the top of the tree, but I missed those years when every ornament was hung on the bottom three branches. We also put out outdoor decorations (we've been slacking in this dept. the last few years), but it sure made the girls happy.

As for Sunday I'll paint you a picture... One girlie in pj's all day watching a Harry Potter marathon, one girlie playing outside all day with a friend, one hubby on the couch lounging and relaxing, and me in my craft room with the fireplace going. I got a TON accomplished.

Sure feels good to have had productive but relaxing weekend. So tell me, how was your weekend?
 

Christmas Is Coming

Oh, yes it is, like a run away train! I only have two gifts bought and wrapped and these are them.

I used some supplies from This Kit and a couple of scraps from my stash to make these projects.

First up a little square white box. I love square boxes and I had two that had a great texture so they didn't even require wrapping. Tied with some ribbon and made a little FaLaLaLaLa tag. Love the square buttons from the kit. The stories they could tell of how we found each other. That sounds like a button romance.

A Card... truth is I found that little oval polka dot paper in my brief case and I have no idea where in the world it came from, but I loved it. Now it's a card that will hold a gift card for a special friend.

While I was looking at the grocery adI spied these little green stir sticks on the Starbucks counter. (No my creative mind NEVER shuts off). I glued a Christmas tree to the front and back and then decorated with a button and glitter. They snuggled  perfectly in the box flap. All ready to give to a neighbor friend.

How are your Christmas preparations coming along?

Ants = Clean Linen Closet

Today was a holiday for the kids and hubby. I was planning (remember that word "planning") to unearth my craft room after the flurry of kit making. So there I was all content having a glass of ice tea and making my plan of attack when I heard this... "Mom there's ants in Dusty dog food again". And that was it for the "plan"... hubby cleaned up the dog food, called the pest control, and got the downstairs under control. I tried to escape upstairs with my ice tea but guess what more ants on my desk and in its neighbor the linen closet. GGGGrrrrrrrrr....

Well... the linen closet needed cleaning so out came everything!

Note this is what I want my linen closet to look like... This is Martha Stewart, not me. I don't have perfectly color coordinated linens and come on I have two kids so nothing will ever be folded this nicely for more than a millisecond.

But I did fill two more huge lawn bags of "stuff" for give away. Really we only are a family of four so I don't think we need that many linens.

I kept 8 good bath towels, 4 car wash towels, 12 hand towels (we go through these like crazy) 12 wash cloths, 1 set of flannel sheets for the girls and some misc. stuff for holidays. Its a pretty barren linen closet. Just like I like it... 1 more thing simplified. Yeah! Laundry room... you've seen what happened here today and you're next!

Now it's 7:46pm and  I have come to the conclusion that the craft room did not and is not going to get clean. Unless some fairy shows up in the middle of the night. And in addition to that I have wrote my most boring blog post ever... sorry. Hope you get done what you plan to today or at least you have some fun not doing what you planned.

Spring Cleaning in the Fall

What did you do this weekend? Well I spent 8 hours on Saturday cleaning Kylah's room. One small 12x12 room. I've been avoiding going in her room except to kiss her goodnight and I've been wanting to turn the lights off before I go in lately. I think I have a hoarder on my hands. I've done some pretty good clean outs this year already but none as aggressive as this one. Not one strand of carpet went unturned. Kylah loves to tape things, anything, if it sits still to long she'll tape it to something. We found dead bugs under her bed and an old band aid stuck to the underside of her bed (gross, I know!) I found at least 100 hairbands that have been transformed into horse bridles, rocks, pinecones, wires, a stack clothing tags in her jewelry box, a plastic iguana in a pink satin barbi dress, about 25 tupperware bowls (which explains why I have lots of lids but no bowls), a collection of "keep out signs", lots of erasers that have been ripped from their pencil mates in a monkey pencil pouch, the decapitated pencils had all been laid to rest in a box that I think she took from my laundry room, 15 gummie lizards each in their own snack size zip lock bag placed in her sock drawer. Most of the tons and tons of crap, I mean treasures was organized in a really weird sort of way. What really had me thinking was where she gets all this stuff? I thinkyou could work at it full time and not be able to accumulate this much stuff. But besides all the gross stuff and the unimaginable amount of stuff I learned alot about Kylah. Here's a few of my favorite items that I discovered in the cleaning. Kylah is becoming a talented clay artist.

These beauties were saved from the non stop vacuuming.

 

These wonderful treasures were saved from the three lawn bags and one big box of giveaway items.

And these beauties were saved from two lawn bags of trash.

And while I was doing all this Kylah was freezing plastic sea animals. Just to see what they would look like. Yep, thats a frozen shark!

Can't even tell you how much I am enjoying the results. I can actually go in the room and not have an anxiety attack or trip over a boobie trap of chinese jump ropes.

I'm enjoying it so much that next week I'm doing the same to Niguels room. Shes been served her 6 day notice that if she wants to keep it she better get it put away.

Look out house i'm on a roll!

Not exactly crafty

But I made it for dinner and it was oh, so delicious!

I got the recipe from Here. I make salad like this pretty often but it was the dressing that really caught my eye. Can't be much lower calorie than this and it tasted delicious!

I changed just a few things for personal taste. I used sun dried tomatoes since hubby and I don't much care for fresh. I used sweet onion instead of red. I added croutons because you can never eat to much bread and/or bread products IMHO! I also used steak instead of chicken because I had it left over from last night. There are a ton of great looking recipes on her site so check it out!

I didn't get to go looking into my stash of crafty goodies till about 7 pm but I can tell you I found something in there that still had a receipt from 2004. Good Gravy! It will be really hard to decide what's the oldest.

 It was a busy day, here's what I did instead of working in my craft room like I said I would. Someone asked me if I twittered... uh, no but here's my version .

I finished the May calendar for Timeless Treasures, I did my grocery shopping (with coupons), I went to Homegoods (found nothing except two huge pedestal cake stands that I loved but were out of my price range), I went to the mall (got a new pair of shorts, some candy for a project and made sure someone bought the cute puppy I really wanted last weekend, he went home with a nice girl and her mom), I got a great pedicure and an ok manicure, had lunch at one of my favorite Mexican places, Picked up my girls from school, spent to much time on the computer, folded laundry, helped with homework, made dinner, dropped off the calendar, supervised showers, watched some TV and snuggled and now after the girls are in bed I put in tomorrows load of laundry and I'm here blogging. Now i'm done and i'm off to bed! Goodnight! Have a good day tomorrow!

Mothers Day Idea

Mothers Day is fast approaching. Here's something I whipped up for my mom. It was so so easy. Shadow box frame from the clearance at Target. I matted photos on scraps of black cardstock and attached to the background that was already in the box. Die cut leaves and punched flowers from more cardstock scraps. Wrapped a piece of jute with brown floral tape ( you could totally use a twig from your yard) and attached it to the background. Attached the leaves and flowers and added rhinestones. Simple, cheap, and I think she'll love it! Hope you have a day filled with smiles!

Fresh

I'm so looking forward to spring coming on Friday! I've been filling the house with fresh flowers. They make everything seem more fresh and clean!

Here's the deal...

Sorry i've been away from blogging. Truth is i've been feeling pretty disconnected from my kids. No changes in any of our routines. They are just growing up and not needing me as much. I'm feeling left out. I don't get all the snuggling time and cuddling I used to. For gosh sakes Niguel is almost as tall as me and it is a pretty funny sight when she sits on my lap. So, i've been sneaking in lots of things to do that they have to spend time with me. So I haven't been blogging because I've been spending all my time trying to smother my girlies. My time has been well spent I assure you.

In crafting news I went on a major craft shopping spree! I got tons of new things for making cards. And the best part is that I did not spend one penny on any of it. Here's how I did it...and you can too! Call up BFF, ask if you can come raid her stash of stuff for some new goodies, offer for her to come raid your stash too, and then feel proud that you have more than you need between the both of you and you didn't spend any cashola on it! Check out what I got!

 

Go on now, go call a Friend and swap some supplies and BE CREATIVE!!!!!