Thing-A-Day 2012 - #8 Felt Heart Bunting

#8 - Felt Heart Bunting

I had a huge stack of felt that I bought several years ago for another craft that I never got around to finishing. I've seen these heart buntings around the 'net for awhile now, not only in felt, but paper as well. It took me longer than I thought to hand cut all those hearts and in the end I had to cut some more to complete the entire room. On the up side, I did use up most of my felt bits and instead of tossing all those scraps I stuffed them into an old mason jar, tied it with a bow and called it "bonus craft!"

And later I can pull those scraps out and do something else with them ;)

There is nothing better than making something awesome out of scraps that would normally go in the trash. 

Thing-a-Day 2012: #7 - Valentine Specimen Art

Valentine Specimen Art

I already had the frame and tons of paper scraps so this craft was a no-brainer. I do wish I'd had a heart punch to make this go a little faster. I didn't enjoy hand-cutting 20 little hearts for this. I think I'll need to skip my next craft because it requires almost 100 tiny hearts. I need a heart punch. I'll leave that craft on the list for next year, I guess. I'll also add the punch to my Christmas Wish list :)

Side note: I missed days 4-6 because I was sick - as in really, really sick. It rarely happens that I am so sick I'm stuck in bed for 3 days. I was so bummed that I missed out on completing the Thing-a-Day challenge this year. Ah well...can't win 'em all.

Thing-a-Day 2012 - #3 Circle Ornaments

Paper Circle Ornaments

I've seen these around the 'net and in several magazines lately, so I thought I'd give them a try. And goodness knows I have plenty of paper laying around to play with :)

Thing-a-Day 2012 - #2 Kitty Cat Origami

Thing-a-Day No. 2: Kitty Cat Origami

I have this Origami calendar from 2005 that I threw in my craft supply box, since the origami paper is still in good condition and I knew I could use it at a later date. And I have. Several times! A few years ago I made origami hearts and fish and things for the thing-a-day challenge. This year I have several origami bits I'd like to make. I especially like this kitty because, if I change the color to something a bit more orange-ish it could look like a fox! Way cool :)

Thing-a-Day 2012 - #1 Wire Snowflakes

You know those annoying, plastic-coated wires that are used to fasten toys to their boxes? I save those. Just for this reason: to reuse as a craft supply! Today for craft #1 of the Thing-a-Day 2012 challenge I used some of my wire stash to make these snowflakes. They are now hanging in my kitchen window to help remind me that it really is winter here, despite the fickleness of the snow this season!

4x12 January 2012

Happy New Year!

4X12: October 2011

This year I made sure we got ourselves out to the local corn maze. Not only did we have an afternoon full of crazy maze fun, we also went home with a giant bag of apples, half a dozen pumpkins, 2 gallons of fresh apple cider, some acorn squash, and various peppers.

4x12: September 2011

September was a crazy month, what with school starting and all. Now that The Girl is in High School our days are all wonky. It's going to take us some time to adjust the new schedule. So this month's picture was a few days late in being taken. Every time I wanted to head out to take the pictures the weather turned or someone had to be somewhere or people were cranky ( like me! ). It's becoming more and more of a challenge to find good places to take these family photos. With winter on its way we're going to have to think inside the box!

4x12: August 2011

Here it is! The August family picture. We're 8 months into this challenge and they still complain every time I announce "family picture time". Maybe by next year they'll be used to it?

4x12: May, June, July 2011

May 2011: I realized on our way out the door to the kids baseball/softball games that it was the last day of the month and we still needed our family picture! Three of us have lived in these uniforms all month, so this is a good representation of our lives right now.

June 2011: The seasonal campers are in full swing at the campground now. We've been spending the weekends hanging out around the fire. I grabbed this one really quickly while hanging out and goofing around.

July 2011: This was taken at a wedding reception. I was hoping the kids would agree to dress up a bit more. But I'll take what I can get!

Spring Ball

Baseball season is fully underway, and with both kids playing this spring, our schedules are overly packed. We've had a game or practice 6 days out of 7 for the last 3 weeks! Sometimes, the kids have games on the same day, which means Dad takes Little Man and I take The Girl. Plus, The Mr. is a Coach this year so he really needs to be at every game even if Little Man isn't playing that day.


It's difficult for me to get photos of Little Man since I often do the scorebook. So I'm going to have to take a game off here and there so I can get some more pictures of him in action.

This is The Girl's first year playing on a team. Because they offer a girls softball league here, they wouldn't let her play baseball. She was not happy. And the coaches are having a hard time retraining her! She doesn't throw like a girl :)

And she loves to slide! Here I caught her stealing home. Which she does quite often. She's also managed to get pretty banged up while doing it. That's my Girl :)

Little Man's 13th Birthday

The Big 13! I can't believe it. The day started off with a light breakfast. We then went to a movie, and CiCi's for lunch. While at lunch, Little Man opened some gifts.

After lunch we did a little shopping, got some DQ and then headed to the Silver Hawks game. We had a birthday message put on the board. I think they should give us a refund since they misspelled his name :( During the 7th inning stretch Little Man got to play a relay game. He wasn't too thrilled with how it went down. But you can't tell from the grin on his face!

Later that weekend we had a little family party and I made the obligatory baseball themed cake. I think this makes 4 years in a row?

Next year he says I just have to make a baseball stadium just like they did on Ace of Cakes! I think I'd best start planning now...

4x12: April

Once again I found myself scrambling to get in a picture. I almost have to make sure we have a big event scheduled sometime during the month to get us all in the same place at the same time. Hopefully with the warmer weather we'll have more opportunities for fun family photos :)


I had the Pastor snap this for me. We were all meeting up at the church that afternoon to send the youth group to the Aquire the Fire conference in Lansing. So while we were waiting for everyone to show up, I asked the family to sit for our monthly photo :)

The "Anti-virus" Virus

A few weeks ago all three of our laptops got zapped with this nasty virus. Talk about chaos! By the time we realized what was happening, the virus had eaten all of my photo files that were saved on Little Man's computer, since I use his computer for all of my online work. (My personal computer died a year ago and has not been replaced yet.) The Girl's laptop got so messed up it wouldn't let us update or reinstall her virus protection software. She can no longer go online for ANY reason. Then the Mr's laptop got attacked and acted all wonky, but he managed to get rid of the virus before any real damage was done. So Little Man's computer suffered the most damage. And I was very upset. Losing all of my photos makes me very angry.

The funny thing is, the computer said all those files were still there. But when we searched for the files all we got were empty file folders. Grrr...

Yesterday, (being Mother's Day), I had the afternoon all to myself, just as I do every Sunday afternoon. I sat down to work on balancing the checkbook and make entries into my Quickbooks program. And guess what? The virus ate those too!

So I went to the help site for Quickbooks to see if there was a way to recover them. Turns out there is. So I read the directions a half dozen times and took a shot at it. Unfortunately, I didn't recover my financial records. BUT, I used the same procedure to search for my photo files, on the off chance it might work, and I found myself grinning from ear to ear as every single missing file began filling up my window! I could have gotten up and danced a jig, except I didn't want to take a chance that they'd disappear again! So I recovered all of my photo files and then plugged the computer into the external backup and copied ALL of those files. Now I know they are all safe and sound if another virus decides to attack. Which is more than likely. Sadly.

So everyone learn a lesson here: Go back up your computers!

Now I just need some luck finding those financial files...

The Mr's 40th Birthday

He wanted a little cake with a lot of candles. All for effect :)

4x12: March

Better late than never, I suppose! Not having my own computer to work with really hampers my creative time online. One of these days, I'm sure I'll break down and buy a new computer. In fact, it'll probably be sooner rather than later...

March 31 was the Mr's 40th Birthday! To celebrate we blew up 40 balloons after he went to bed so that when he woke up in the morning he would have a birthday surprise. It worked out pretty well. But when it came time to take pictures we found that most of the balloons wouldn't float any higher than our heads. So we blew up the rest of the balloons to give us a nice big bunch for the pictures. So the Mr's birthday pictures are pulling double duty this year!



A simple family picture turned into quite the production. Little Man turned his funny bone on its side and gave me plenty of photo ops:


He's such a goof ball! I suppose that's because he takes after his father...



Even The Girl got in on the fun!

Project 365

Opening page of the 2011 Album.

Project 365 is well under way. I've been doing a lot more digital work this year. Some of the pictures I use for the everyday shots come with a few more pictures I'd like to include, so I'm making extra pages to put into the binder. I'm also adding a lot more ephemera. There's so much stuff sometimes! I have a bunch of layouts at the printer right now. I can't wait til they get here so I can get the binder caught up! I sometimes wish I could print my pictures everyday, but I know that it just isn't economical, and definitely not practical to our lifestyle. So once a month I send in my order and once a month it feels like Christmas when I open my package and see all the memories!

Spring has almost Sprung!

It's almost time! We went out to the RV park this past weekend and got the RV put back into place, all lined up and ready to hook up for the summer. We didn't have time, or the suppies, to do any cleaning, but that will come soon enough! We have lots to do!

New Polish Color

"Flat Iron Green" by NYC In a New York Color Minute, Quick Dry Nail Polish

Okay, so I saw this color in a magazine and immediately fell in love with it. In the light it's very green, but without the benefit of UV, it's an almost black color! I just had to find it! So, I scoured the shelves until I found it on the very bottom of the display at the local Wally-World. I thought for sure this would become my new favorite polish. But I was completely unprepared for this. I expected, with it being one of those 60-seconds-to-dry type polishes, that it would also be a one-coat polish. WRONG! It took 4 coats total. And it dries so fast, sometimes I couldn't get the entire nail painted before the drying kicked in. Lots of streaking going on.

On the up side, it didn't chip right away like most polishes. A couple days after applying it, I trimmed my nails and gave them another coat. And now it's the color, and coverage, I want! While not technically a "spring" color, it does a good job of playing with spring. This probably won't be one of my go-to polishes since it takes so many coats before it's looking pretty, but when I have the time for multiple coats, it'll be right up there at the top of my list.

Something pretty...

to look at! found on pinterest. A very cool website!

I would love to have the chair and mirror in my master suite...that is, ehem, if I had a master suite...