A UFO

No, not a flying saucer... an UnFinished Object!  A project I need to work on this weekend.   Have a great weekend!!!

On the Eleventh Day of Christmas...

Here's another of my favorite Christmas songs -- "The Hallelujah Chorus".  We sang The Messiah last year and it was a wonderful experience.  Wish we could have sung it at Macy's like these people did:

Today was my day off.  I think I actually finished my Christmas shopping.  I bought everything except perishable foods that I'll have to buy next week.  At least, I think I did.  I'm wondering what I'll remember on Christmas Eve.  And so far, I haven't lost anything...lol.

 I got an email a few days ago from a Stampington editor that my work is in another magazine.  This time it's the Somerset Studio Gallery - Winter.  I have two projects in this edition.  I haven't received my copy yet but I did find it at JoAnn's today and took some pictures on my phone.

The first is a little carte de viste photo that I altered.

The second is a Bible that I altered.  I also did some things inside.  I'll try to find the photos I took and share these with you later.

Now that my shopping is done (and just in time... it just started raining) and the soup is boiling I need to go upstairs and make room for Mark & Lauren who'll be here Thursday.

Please pray for them as they travel.  Mark is sick today, too -- got the stomach bug from kids at school.  And pray for my sister who found out today that the baby is breech.  She's going in later this week to see if they can turn her around.

Don't forget that Room With a Past is open this weekend!

More Keys

OK, I think I'm addicted to skeleton keys!  I was looking through a Restoration Hardware Home catalog last night while waiting for choir rehearsal to start and one of the things that jumped out the most to me was this framed key:

 They had them hanging in a 2 x 3 grouping in a bedroom.  Looked great.  And they are "only" $199 each!   Here's what I made a couple of months ago to sell at Room With a Past:

 Of course, mine are a lot smaller.  But I'm selling them for only $10!  Maybe I should raise my prices!

And here's a link to Urban Outfitters that Jordy sent me.  At least their prices were reasonable!  I'm gonna try to bend one of my keys to see if I can make her a bracelet like this one.  Anyone have any suggestions?

BTW, I did take some photos of our fall decor but it was too dark & they didn't turn out very well.  So I'll take some Saturday -- after I clean house.

A quiet Tuesday Evening

Happy New Year!!!

Tuesday is usually my day off but today I had to work to fill in for a coworker who was out for Rosh Hashanah.  But that's okay... maybe I'll make enough to buy a plane ticket to Michigan!  :-)

Angie gave me a couple of paint color samples last week -- Thanks, Matt!  We're trying to think of something to do with them for Christmas.  I'm thinking ornaments & tags.  The same day she told me about them I saw this picture in an ad for a diy magazine.  Look closely at what they used to decorate the table.  I thought it was tile at first.

This weekend is ladies retreat.  Angie, Elizabeth, Karen, & I are driving down & rooming together.  We're already planning snacks & fun time.  It's supposed to rain (finally!) so we may not get our hiking in.  We're bringing craft supplies just in case we're rained in.  

I just listed this notebook in my Etsy shop.  I have a few more Halloween things then I'm going to move on to Thanksgiving!  Remember -- I celebrate Thanksgiving before Christmas.  ;-)  

We went years without watching any prime time TV shows.  But in the last few years the girls have gotten us hooked on 1 or 2 shows a season -- 24, CSI, American Idol.  This season it's House -- coming on in 20 minutes!  Glenn's doing his homework now so he can watch with us.  He has more homework than Jordann!

Grandpa -- when Jo & I have a crafting spell like in that last post we just don't eat at the table.  

Our First Tutorial - Halloween Spiders

Last Saturday we went to the Illuminations store in our local mall.  They had out all their fall & Halloween decorations.  One of the things they had was a bag of spiders!  Jordi looked at them and decided to make some for herself.  She was working on them when we Skyped Kim Tuesday.  Kim said her dd would love to make them but she couldn't ever think of fun stuff like that to make.  So we decided to make a tutorial for her -- and anyone else that would like to use it.

Here's what you need to start:  

pipe cleaner/chenille stem, 1" pom pom, 2 googly eyes, old scissors, and a glue gun.

Fold the pipe cleaner in half, then half again, and then half again.

Until it looks like this:

Gently pull apart and cut at the bends.

You should have 8 little "legs" now:

Grab each end of one leg.  Move one hand up and one hand down to make the bent parts of the leg.

They should look like this:

Put a small line of hot glue on one side of the pom pom.  She tried gluing each individually at first but this method was easier.

Then glue on the eyes and you have a cute little spider!

Jordi hung a few on our scary black light fixture to show you how to use them.  Angie said she was going to try to tie a black thread on it to hang hers.  That should be cute.  

Hope they don't attract any of the real thing!!!

Hope you enjoyed our first tutorial.  If you make them add a photo to your blog and send us the link.  And let us know if you'd like to see more.  I may take pictures at our craft day and give you a step by step for some of the little books we've been making.

Wednesday Night

Just sittin' around tonight listening to Sarah Palin.  Picked more tomatoes today.  Dyed more tags.  Then I thought I'd share some photos for my Sweet & Sinister swap partner & Angie.  Here's something else we can make next week!  ;-)

I don't do a lot of Halloween decorating, we decorate more for fall, but Halloween is the main holiday at my office, so I've been doing more crafts to take to the office this year.  But we usually at least do a jack o' lantern.  And we dress in costumes every Halloween in the office.  I haven't decided what to wear this year -- any ideas?

I'm in 2 Halloween related swaps this year plus I'll probably be putting some of these in my Etsy shop.
Here's a banner I made last fall:

The Adventures of Super Cat

Today started out quiet, with a nap on Jordann's bed.  But it got much more exciting!  I was calmly sitting at our dining table crafting with Jo when I saw 2 small, furry bodies jumping around outside the door.  Needless to say, I started screaming.  Doesn't Maow look proud in this photo?  (Notice the tail at the edge of the sidewalk!)
Here's why:
Now we have a cat on guard.  No mice are getting through here!

Jo & I had gone to JoAnn's & Beverly's earlier today.  There was so much fall/Halloween stuff it got to Jo... she started growing fangs:
We poured a bowl of pumpkins & candy corn then hid the rest from Glenn.  Hey, L, look at her new shirt.  She got it at C28.  
Angie, you should have come over and played with us.  I worked a little more on the books:


And Jordi made some fun tags:


Then she made some spiders:
Hope everyone had a great day off today!  Tomorrow it's back to work for me.  I'm filling in for someone tomorrow so don't get my usual day off.  Maybe we can have another craft day next Tuesday?

Just a Reminder

I just got back from our first night of choir practice for the fall season.  I'm tired.  Just have time for one short post.  I bought a box of flash cards.  As soon as I got them Jordann pulled out these three and said we needed to make a banner.  That was the fastest craft ever!  We had it done about 5 minutes after we brought them in the house!

My Saturday

OK, had to take a break from chores so I thought I'd catch up my blog.  Thursday night my parents caught me on Skype when my mood message said I was upstairs crafting.  They wanted to know what I was making so I thought I'd show them some pictures.

I got a little carried away making tags again!  :-)  I'm thinking about having a "tag of the month" club!  Anybody wanna sign up?  lol...  Look, I even put my leftovers together in a little tag kit -- it already sold in my Etsy shop!

So this morning I decided that I really should trim my monster tomato plants a little bit.  I hauled off 2 black garbage bags of branches I cut off my tomatoes, herbs, and flowers.  And if you hadn't seen it before you probably wouldn't be able to tell right now!  I tied up a lot of the branches -- they're kind of running horizontally across the fence right now, kind of like grape vines.  I also brought in 4 POUNDS of tomatoes!!!  And remember, I've been eating a handful of grape tomatoes and an Early Girl every day for the past few weeks.  I've had whole gardens that didn't produce as many tomatoes as I'm getting from these two plants.  My patio smells really good right now -- a combination of tomato plant, chocolate mint, lemon balm, rosemary, sage, and chives!  

Since we're going to a semi-formal wedding tonight I'm going upstairs now to see if I can get the green stains and ink off my fingernails.  I'll tell you about that tomorrow.

Butterflies

Before I start, let me remind you to add a comment to my previous post if you want to enter the drawing for my tag!

My butterflies have been very popular on Etsy lately.   A couple of weeks ago I had an order for 6000 and I just got another request for 3000!  I usually sell them in packets of 100 so this was a BIG difference.  I have a lot of fun with them so I thought I'd share some of the things I've made with them.  But first, I was looking through my new September issue of Country Living last week and they have a great article about crafting with words and look at this photo!  Just like my butterflies.  (Some of mine are piled on top of the photo.)

This is the matchbook card that I made yesterday.  It's made the same as the ones in my Somerset article, just decorated differently.

And of course, tags!  I love making tags.

BTW, Lauren Skyped us this afternoon and gave us a tour of her apartment.  Way different than the dorm I stayed in in college.  It has 2 floors, she's on the bottom floor of their apartment which is actually the 3rd floor of the building -- make sense?  Each floor has about 8 girls, an office/study room, a bathroom, kitchen, and living room.  It looked nice from what we could tell.  Clean -- at least for now.  lol...  She has a couple of days of orientation and classes start on Wednesday.  I have her mailing address now, too, so if you don't have it yet email me and I'll send it to you.