OMG, I just did that and I am on two pages. My old friends from school wouldn’t be able to say they weren’t able to get a hold of me! Try it out, see if you’re all over Google!

So, besides that, I wasn’t feeling too paper crafty this evening. So I decided to make a little ornament. I made this little guy based on Mel Goodsell’s template. This is my second reindeer actually. My first one was a Christmas present but I forgot to take a picture of it. If I remember correctly, the other one is cuter than this but my stitching skill is a bit better here. Who knows. I’m still confused in some areas, like what do you do when you run out of thread? How do you start again to get a clean and continuous looking stitching. Is that even possible? So despite my questions and that I think it’s just not done right, since I learned on my own from a YouTube video (see my first felt creation), I’m going to shut up and be happy with what I’ve got. Here it is:

For the stitching, I just used regular sewing thread. I don’t have access to anything else in this town — got to drive — so just have to use what I have. Orange is the color of the thread going around the reindeer. The mouth is suppose to be red but you can’t really tell. I didn’t use anything around his neck because unlike Mel’s, my scarf looked ridiculous

I like this little guy. It’s my fourth creation. Two owls and two reindeers. I want to try a little dolly or the pencil topper thing (guess who’s site I’m getting this idea from, ha!). I do love a lot of the items that in my Flickr favorites but many seems so hard. Maybe when I get better. Now, I did get some zig zag scissors for fabric, oh, what are they called now… so this weekend I can work on M’s bday stuff.

Sometimes during the Christmas 2006 break I lost the center of my engagement ring. We were going to replace it but we just never got to it until my wedding band fell off my finger last summer. I had no idea what happened. I remember talking about it while driving back from lunch with my co-worker, I remember looking at it even, and when I got in my car to drive home, it wasn’t on my finger. Ahhhh…. I loved that ring too. It was one of those eternity type rings.

We didn’t get into the ring replacement until we returned from our big trip overseas. My co-worker recommended me a jeweler in Independence, MO, and there I went. I liked this place, still do, because they do handmade work. So I talked to Kelly, gave him whatever diamond and gold that I have left, he drew me a design, I loved it, and off I went to look for a center. I was stuck on a cushion diamond. I love antique everything and I am in love with old style rings and the cushion cut is an old time cut that’s becoming popular again now. I did my research and of course I came to find out that I fell in love with the most difficult diamond to purchase. The cushion has no perfect specification unlike the round for example. You have to look at a cushion and you either like it or you don’t. There are all sorts of different ratios and even the perfect cut and polish doesn’t always mean a great looking cushion. Of course I couldn’t find any locally. They all had to bring one in and all had some sort of policy if I don’t like the look of it even though it perfectly matches all the specs. After lurking around at pricescope.com, talked to a few stores, I finally found the cushion man. Mark from ERD in NY. Ha ha… yeah, I bought a diamond online. Because he had such great reviews, I trusted this guy to find me the perfect cushion within my specifications and that looks great. He found one of course (being in the diamond district has its advantages) and for what it is, I got a great deal on it, well at least a few hundred less than if I got it locally and shipping was included. I recommend him everybody at pricescope swears by him for cushions.

Kelly and Drenon was the one who build my ring. He was a bit skeptical about me buying my own center, ONLINE, but he was quite impressed with my cushion. After a couple wax, the first wax was not at all like how he drew it, he nailed it. Although it was a bit weird to look at a blue and orange (the color of the wax) I knew it was the ring. After a couple of weeks I picked it up and voila, my ring {::SMILES} Kelly did a great job I think. Not only did he create a great ring he patiently put up with me.

Coincidentally the ring was completed a few days before Christmas. So in a way it seems like it’s a Christmas present and almost to the year since when I lost the center. Hope he likes the card. I tried to make it kind of manly even though the paper does have flowers on it. I have nothing manly. The papers are new, I got them at Hobby Lobby, 5/$1, by Memory Keepers. The stamp is a Fiskars clear stamp. I was looking for something that has a diamond ring and this was the only one I could find. The “thank you” is from the Spring Solitudes set.

The rules of the game, thanks Becky {::SMILES}:
• Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
• Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog, we all want to know them.
• Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
• Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Ok, seven random things, huh… hmm….

1. I love to eat and I eat A LOT and try anything. I ate grasshoppers in Mexico. People who doesn’t know me can’t quite believe that I can eat more than a guy. My husband calls me a hog jaw. It’ll probably one day catch up to me. But for now, I am loving it. I love to do my crafty stuff but boy, I really love good food!

2. I have a size 2.75 ring finger. If it wasn’t for my knuckle, the jeweler would have resized my ring to 2.5. It’s still a bit loose. I called my insurance company to insure the ring. She had to ask three different ways what my ring size is. Ha!

3. I love going to school. I have my undergraduate in psychology and mass communications. The second major was where I learned my graphic design and Photoshop stuff. I thanked my graphic arts teacher for being so patient with me and for telling me that I might have some color and graphic arts talent. Then I went into computer engineering. Eeek… big mistake. After moving to Missouri I completed my program in Technology Education. I want to get my Ph.D. either in Educational Technology (that’s what I actually teach now) or psychology. This Spring’08 I am taking French and Database Design… just because.
4. I have monkey toes. I can grab things with my feet. Freaked my husband out the first time around. Ha, ha…

5. I’ve been around the world, east to west but never north to south. One day!

6. I can’t watch a scary movie. I always know when the scary part is about to happen. I looked away throughout the Saw movie. My friends and husband had to tell me what’s going on. I just can’t stand all the blood, guts, and scary looks on people’s faces.

7. I talked to my grandpa before and after he passed away, in my dreams.

That’s it! I will finish the rest tomorrow. I need to go to bed. Before I go, I want to share my scrapbook page. It’s not digital. It’s one of those moments when I was feeling quite inspire. Visit my Flickr site for four other views. I used stickers for the page. WOW! It’s been a while since I used stickers. They were pretty tho. Not sure the company but they’re still at WalMart.

Cont… Jan 8′08:

I tagged: Alana, Betsy, Tina, Guenevere, Kat, Kathleen H, Lori

Dedicated to my stamping and scrapping virtual sisters and of course anybody who took the time to visit {::smiles} This was taken from All & Sundry

It’s kind of long, so click the “Continue reading…” to read the whole deal.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before?

I had a Wendy’s hamburger and I started making felt dolls. The last was more fun but the first my husband made me because he was amazed that I’ve never had one.

Read the rest of this entry »

We had a great New Year celebration and I’m just getting tired. We had dinner and we did some baking. Made some fruit tarts. A Barefoot Contessa Strawberry Tarts that became a kiwi, blueberry, and blackberry tart. I’ll post some pictures if my friend emails me a copy. They’re not as nice as the picture on Foodnetwork but the taste was pretty good. The instructions were a bit confusing so we kind of improvised. Despite the little snags here and there, we had a great time and the dessert was something worth trying again.

This is my last night though to be up late doing arts and crafts. After tonight, it’s back to work and tomorrow, or I guess later today, I’d be cleaning so I wouldn’t be able to do anymore crafty stuff until later this weekend unless I get really lucky.

Before I start blabbing about my projects, I just want to say… I ordered some rectangle Nestabilities rectangle set. Whoohoo!!!! Lowest price and the shipping is reasonable too. Plus they sent me a 40% coupon for signing up as a VIP member. Can’t wait to get them. Hopefully everybody will be back at work tomorrow. I’ll definitely post earlier than this weekend if I get them in before then!

So, back to my projects… the first project I did was this card. I’ve had this card embossed the same time I embossed my other two cards (few days ago post) but just never got around to doing anything with it. I still have two sets of MFT stamps that I haven’t used and this is one of them, the How Sweet It Is set. I used the SU markers and water color pencil to color thing. I really like using the pencils better than the markers. It seems so much easier to control and blend. I’m so curious what the Copic markers can do. I found an Ebay store that sells the Ciao for $35. I might get one set and try them out.

Then I did a two page layout as part of my SCS 2008 scrapbook challenge. Now I just have 2 more to go to meet my goals and maybe a few more just to get the extra points if I have time. My budget is $35 for the 4 layouts and I’ve spent $5 and change. I’ve also only used a handful of what I purchased and downloaded for free so I don’t think I need to buy anymore unless I see something that’s a big must.

I’m not too happy with this left page. Seems like something is missing. I think I did peak at the last page and I need a few weeks break from scrapping. I’m like this with scrapbooking. I go in short spurts and that’s why I am either so slow or I just don’t do it as often as I want to. That’s why I’m hoping the challenges will help me since I seem to do better when I create something for a challenge.

Here are the material info for this layout:

Paper: Suzanne Walker Mint Mojito. This paper was bright green but I changed the color through the Hue/Saturation process and came up with this.
Photo corner and brad: I did it. If you want a copy, let me know. I’d save and post for you to download but it’s super late and I’m about ready to go to bed right now.
WordArt:
Tag: DSP
Font: Scrapvillage Kathleen and Cochin
All other elements from Weeds and Wild Flowers by Gina Huff — LOVE their stuff!

For the photo corner and brad, one day I’ll do a tutorial on that. It was really easy to do. For those familiar with Photoshop here’s the quick run down, create the photo corner shape, pick a color, give it some dust and texture, play with the settings, blend it, and once the corner is done, use the circle tool and make a copy, paste it on top of the photo corner, change it’s colors and blending options and you got some brads.

Goodnight! It’s 5:31 a.m.

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday and a great new year to come. Besides the death of my wonderful dog and beloved grandfather, 2007 has been a good year for our family. We couldn’t have asked from more and we feel very blessed. I hope that next year will be the same if not better.

Although I have no resolution, I do hope that my crafty side of me will flourish this coming year and that I’ll be able to share my creation with you on a regular basis. I know that the last part will be the hardest for me since I’ll have a lot of work load this next semester. I don’t talk about my work much but I do work full-time and a public university and I also teach 1-2 online classes each semester (my part-time job). This spring I have two courses that I’m in charge of and one of the course is new, so I’ll be quite busy this next month or two. I’m not sure why but I registered for two classes too, a French II course and database management (this one’s work related). The good news: they’re not taken for credit, just for fun. I am also planning a monthly Stampin’ Up! workshop at my home (well, we’ll see if it’ll end up a quarterly deal by April!) so that I can support my addiction to get together and stamp/scrapbook. On top of that I need to take care of my young family, so super, super busy. But I love my busy life and I wouldn’t change it one bit. Actually if I were less busy I’d be volunteering at my husband’s work or taking on a freelance web developing job or two, ha!

Have a great one everybody and I will post again in a few days. Hopefully with some scrapbook pages — that’s this week’s goal for me!

Not! But my Internet is sooooooo slow. So, until it gets better, I will not be posting this weekend. I had a hard time just logging in. We are SE of Kansas City and if you’re one who watches the news you probably know that from Tulsa on east, the mid-west got hit pretty good. Luckily we’re on the very tip of it so we did get the ice storm but it only lasted 6 or so hours for us and then it just rained. So no trees or power issues (good thing since we’re all electric here). We were ready for it but like all of you we’d like to avoid all the disaster as much as possible.

Anyway, things have been normal except the Internet. It was fine during the storm but later the next day it just got slower and slower and now it’s just trying very, very hard to even show any sign of high speedness. This is the second time it did this right after an ice storm. It’s so weird! I hate it since I live off this thing. I did get my grading done though so that my students can feel at ease and if any are graduating tomorrow, they can walk in confidence

The good news is that I’ll be off the computer this weekend and I’d be able to focus on making some hot cocoas for Emma’s teachers. I found a recipe from allrecipes.com and instead of a jar I’m just going to use plastic and decorate the tag really well. It’s my first try so if they turn out pretty I’ll take pictures I’m also going to try to make marshmallows. My coworker did it and they’re so yummy.

Well, that’s it for now. It’s snowing outside and we’re suppose to get a few great inches. Ahh…. making a snowman day. I’ll take pictures if we do get a load. It’s our pup’s first real snow too (I don’t think ice counts) so it’ll be fun. Have a great weekend!

It was a busy Saturday. This morning I volunteered at my church with their children’s arts Christmas program. Each year the talented ladies at our church prepare different craft tables for children 3-12. During this event these children are to go around to their favorite booths to make presents for their loved ones. Each year, for the last 4 or 5 years, I have been volunteering and this year it’s the first time that our daughter got to participate. She loved it of course and she made quite a bit of things. Pictures to come!

After the church event, I went to a friend’s house. She invited me to her home to work on any craft project. She’s a big time paper crafter, mostly scrapbooking I think, but she’ll really do anything {::smiles}. Anyway, I did these while I was at her place. I think I made a total of six cards. The two that I did, and I thought were different than my usual are the following:

Material: Dashing paper, real red, off white, brad, and ribbon
Ink: Black, red, chocolate chip (for the distressed look)

Prop: Very old telegraph machine
Tools: Tab punch, paper cutter, and Creative Memory circle cutting system

I could have used a coluzzle but I don’t have one so I used the CM instead. I got the circle idea somewhere, from an SCS member gallery/sample, but not sure where but after that I”ve seen a few cards like this here and there so thought I’d try too.

What I did first was cut a 5.5×4.25 paper, half a cardstock, then I used the smaller SM circle cutter and flushed it against the top, where the fold is. I used the blue, the biggest cutter, to cut the circle.

For the text, I just stamped it on my cardstock then I use the came circle cutting system and centered the text on it. I cut and I put the text on the card and matched the sides so that it’ll fit just right, on top of each other basically. I did the same for all the layers.

This was quit fun. I loved the different look and it still fits in a regular card size envelope {::happy}. I’ll write about the other projects that I did tomorrow. But if you want to just look, they’re on my Flickr gallery. Just click on the little images on the right. I did that tree — it was fun!

Well, I did a craft show at my work (I work for a university) Tuesday. How was sales? As expected. I wasn’t there to sell anything really, I was just there to mostly meet people, show them my work, and if I sell some, then great. If not, that’s ok too. So, I did just that… I talked to a lot of people.

It’s amazing, with technology, you hardly ever know who you’re working with anymore. I work with a lot of people, and I do software training too, but most of the time I communicate via email. Even when I’m developing a website, we’d either just meet once, or not meet at all and just work over the phone and email. So this fair was for me, and mostly them, to know who I am and what I love to do on my spare time. It’s also nice to be able to show them my work in person so that if ever they want to come to my workshop or host one, they know my style and that they’re going to end up with something decently nice.

I have no pictures of the craft fair but I do have pictures of our 2nd cousin’s daughter. I took them over Thanksgiving break and this is the first time that I worked with somebody other than my husband and daughter. She was really fun to work with and at 6 years of age, she’s eager and willing to do whatever I asked her to do. The only difficult part with her was that she likes to look straight into the camera and smile really big. Super cute but I am more into the natural poses and the posed and look into the camera deal isn’t my thing. But I did get some good shots, and yes, she was looking straight at me both time but she wasn’t expecting me to push the trigger - ha ha… sneaky sneaky

If any of you are pro photographers, can you suggest an inexpensive light reflector and/or flash so that I can have better lighting. I am thinking of a reflector but I’ve heard and seen people use those flash that bounces off something on top of it. Thanks!

I hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Ours was quite nice: fun and relaxing with the family.

Now our favorite holiday is coming up, Christmas. It’s not all about the presents but it’s all about the atmosphere and that during this time, we somehow think less of us and more of others that we love. This year we decided to buy less but do more and even our little girl was on the same wave length as us. Here’s what we asked Emma, she’ll be 4 in February:

Mom: What do you want from Santa, Emma?
Emma: A pink sleeping bag, a pink cash register, and a pink laptop
M: Is that it?
E: Yes, I need to share with the other kids
M: That’s nice Emma, it’s nice for you to share and not want everything
E: Uh uh
M: What do you want from mom and dad?
E: I want mommy and daddy to buy something for another little girl that has no toys

Ok, how can you beat that? We’ve asked her over and over again the last few weeks and it’s the same answer. Now ever year, ever since I had my first real job actually, I have a habit of picking a child off the angel tree. One year I didn’t because my work decided to adopt a family and I took responsibility for the gift of one of the child, but besides that, it’s a habit I’ve always had. This year was different though, Emma was really into picking out the little tag, asking me who the child was and what he/she wanted, and deciding on one. So this year we’re going to shop together for a nice package for this 18-mo-old that we picked out.

We’ve done all sort of different things throughout the year to help others. We don’t do yard sales, we’d donate our clothes and toys to either the church or the Big Brothers Big Sisters. Even Emma will go through her toys and clothes and she’ll put a bag together herself. The same with furniture, we’d take them to the Salvation Army. We donate dry goods to the local food pantry and help the United Way or Children’s Miracle Network. This year we found some other ways of helping, and spreading the ways we donate, and you can see that in our Charities link.

I know that we’ve had one year where we spent thousands of dollars on presents, I know one year at 7 mo pregnant I was pushing a 6 speaker system Onkyo system into the house, but those were the days. Christmas isn’t about how much we buy but it’s about Jesus’s birth. This is something that we need to work on with Emma since Jesus is not at all in the picture, it’s just Santa and gifts right now. But at least she’s got the giving idea right.

Hope you can share your blessings and joy with others who are less fortunate. I don’t need that extra stamp set, the $25 can go to Kiva.org