Happy New Year!

Wishing you the best for 2010!

Hilarious Outtakes Photo Challenge

This weeks Challenge at iheartfaces.com is hilarious outtakes. So here are a few of my favorites out of the many I found.


Entry 1

Dancing for Santa coming through the neighborhood on a fire truck.




Entry 2

This is from a long time ago, I don't know what my oldest was doing.

Entry 3

I thought I was catching her doing homework, who knew I'd get her smelling her pit.

(I'll be in a lot of trouble for this one.)

Entry 4

I guess the milk didn't taste too good.

Entry 5

My husband wanted a nice photo of all our girls for his desk. It took a little while to get one.

Want to see more outtakes? Go to iheartfaces.com

My first Cricut project

I know I'm going to love this machine!

It's not the most creative thing but I'm getting the hang of cutting and transferring the vinyl.

Merry Christmas

to all, and to all a good night!

Wishing everyone a joyous Christmas season!

i heart faces-pets

This is my first time entering a photo at i heart faces. To see more pet photos at i heart faces click here. The challenge this week is pets only. This is our cat Quita. We've only had her a couple of months but she fit in with our family immediately.

A couple of little gifts I've been working on

I thought I would post these two cuties.  I made these for my two oldest and snoopiest daughters. (if snoopiest is a word)  Yes, they found out I was making them.

I found the toast plushie here.  The cupcake pattern I made myself.  I should have made it smaller but I think it turned out fine anyway.   I'm normally not one for hand sewing but I really liked making these.  I'm definitely going to make more felt plushies in the future. 

Lucky me

My mom put my name in for a raffle at her Christmas party for Catholic Daughters and lo and behold I won,  a beautiful afghan.

What a nice surprise!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing everyone a wonderful and yummy Thanksgiving!

Crafting my butt off

I will post soon.  I've been very busy working on Christmas gifts.  I'm trying to get them done so I won't be knitting furiously fingers almost bleeding, hope they liked their gift  when I should be nestled all snug in my bed waiting for Santa. : )

Any quilters out there?

A few weeks ago I was cleaning out my laundry/craft storage area when I started going through an old box of my Grandmother's patterns.  (Mostly quilting patterns with a few other types of patterns thrown in.)  I remembered seeing one of the quilts that I found the pattern for and I knew I had it somewhere in the house.  Well last night I found it in a different storage area.  We're getting ready for a yard sale and are going through everything in the house.  Anyway...the quilt is torn on the left side corner.  I was wondering since I'm not a quilter but I really want to preserve this what I could do to fix it.
I've had this for a long time, but sadly never noticed until last night that my Grandma Jo put the date when she finished this onto the quilt,  14 January 1941.  So if any quilters out there would like to give me a little advice as to what I can do to fix this I would really appreciate it.  Thanks in advance for any help.

 

 

OMG!!! The best chocolate cake ever!

Triple Chocolate Layer Guiness Cake.  Chocolate and Guiness, I knew when I found this recipe it was the perfect thing for Kevin's birthday.  I'm not the best at frosting cakes and I was in a hurry to get this on the table for my sweetheart.  But looks aren't everything.  This really is a most excellent cake and I don't really care for chocolate cake normally.  I got this recipe from Hope Studios.  

Kat's new hat

I finally finished Kat's new slouchy beret.  It's only been a month and a half.  Sorry kiddo!  I got sidetracked by some other projects.  I got the pattern off of Ravelry.com  It's called Star crossed slouchy beret by Natalie Larson.  It's very easy and fun to make.  This is actually the second one I've made.  

 Here is a peek at the first.

Yummy Mummy!

These are the cupcakes I sent to school for Emma's birthday.  They were so easy!  I found them here at Hope Studios.

Finally got my Halloween things up

We've been so busy lately helping my parents move that I haven't had much time for anything else.  I actually got a whole day at home today with no interruptions.  Hooray!  Here's my ladder that Kevin made me all spookified.

Simple pumpkins

I don't remember what site I saw these on, but it was a few weeks ago and they have just stuck in my head as something I would like to do.  And it was soo easy.  I didn't measure it and just had Kevin cut a 2x4 where I had marked it.  Then he drilled a hole in the top of each block to match the stick I cut for stems.  I sanded all three pieces down and rounded the edges a tad.  I painted them and glued the stem into place and let them sit to dry.  I distressed them with watered down black paint and rubbed it on lightly with a rag.  I cut a strip from a remnant and pulled the edges to fray it.  Tied it on and voila!

Quick Halloween decoration

I saw a post on The Graphics Fairy where someone had made Halloween potion bottles so I thought I could come up with my own more macabre creation.

I saved a couple of bottles from the recycling bin and soaked them to get all the labels and sticky stuff off.

I had two paper mache skulls that had been rolling around the house waiting for me to do something with them.  First I cut a hole in the bottom to fit the bottle cap.  I painted them red and black, let them dry, then applied crackle medium.  Once that was dry I painted over the black with a subtle yellow, and over the red I painted white.

While they were drying and doing that magical crackling effect, I found some vintage looking Halloween labels on Love Manor's flickr group, but you can find many different ones online.  I printed them, cut them out and then made them into stickers using my Xyron machine.  I adhered the labels to the bottles and then dripped paint in and on them for added interest.

 

Now to make a spooky vignette somewhere in the house.  I will post pictures when I get it all together.

Sweet delight

I have had a craving for lemon squares lately, and luckily (for my tastebuds not my hips and thighs) I happened upon a wonderful site a few days ago called Bakerella.com   So I had to make the lemon squares recipe that was on there.  It was delish!!  The girls loved them and I think we will be making them more often.  Check out all the really great ideas that are on the site.  I'm going to try the cake pops for Emma's birthday treat at school.  I want to try the pumpkin pie bites too!

Halloween is a coming and Emma already has her costume done.

 

 

 

 

It really turned out cute, although it's hanging sort of funky on the right side in the picture.  I don't have mad sewing skills and it has three different greens but I like it and more importantly Emma likes it. (Especially the tutu)  It cost me $12 to make it, not to bad for a costume considering I usually spend  about 20.  Gotta love remnants and coupons.  On to Katherine's devil costume, it is similar but with a few changes. 

Tutu Mania

I made tutus for Maggie and Emma over the weekend.  I found a few patterns online but sort of took a little from each and did what I like best.  Most of the ways to make them involved ribbon as the waist but I'm lazy and don't want to tie these things every time the girls want to wear them.  So I bought some non-rolling elastic and cut it to fit each of them plus an inch.  I marked them just so I wouldn't mix them up.

 I took out my trusty sewing machine and stitched the elastic together.   This could be done by hand also, but I hate hand sewing. 

 Now for lots of rolling and cutting.  I bought 8 yards of tulle for each tutu.  Roll the tulle into a tube and cut it every 5 inches or whatever size "curlers" (as Maggie and Emma called them) you want.

 Unroll the tubes and cut each strip in half.

Fold a strip of tulle in half and loop around the elastic, pull the two ends trough the loop and Voila!  Keep going until the elastic doesn't show.  I made mine really full and floofy (if that's even a word) but if you don't want it as full just don't use as much tulle. 

Here's Emma in her tutu.  This is the start of her Tinkerbell costume for Halloween. 

 

And here is Maggie in hers.  She's going as a ballerina princess this year.