I'm back - Believe it or not!

Oh my gosh! It has been a VERY long time since I have posted anything! You miss one day, then another, and then a week, then two weeks, and then you just start wondering if you should even have a blog! I have a fairly good reason for my absence, and it's really not pretty! It has basically taken over my life, and I am just beginning to resurface. So you're probably wondering, what the heck happened? Well, it's really not a huge crisis, except in my little world. In my 25 years of marriage and having our own home, this has never happened before... mice found their way into our house! Yuck! I still get the heebie jeebies when I think about it. I HATE mice more than anything else in this world (except maybe snakes). Not only do I despise them, I am afraid of them. Which my family thinks is quite hilarious, to say the least. So anyway, luckily they are only in my basement, but so is my stamp room. They got into a bunch of my stamped samples and chewed them up, ate my chocolate, and basically made my life a living hell! Because I am afraid of them, that meant I had a very hard time going into my stamp room, let alone doing any stamping there. So I haven't gotten much done in the past couple weeks because I'd just run in there, grab a few things to work on, and try not to venture down there again for the rest of the day! My husband has had to do "mouse checks" every morning to look at the traps and see if we caught any (which we did). Then, on top of it all, the little buggers wreaked havoc in my storage room. It was on my list as a winter project to totally clean that room out, go thru all the boxes, etc, since it had been a few years. Well, that project got pushed up to the present, so I've been getting up the courage to go in there everyday and clear out another section. I've gone thru just about every box and shelf, and have transferred everything into plastic bins. (Target and Lowes love me right now!) And I have to say, it's been very liberating. You would not believe how much stuff I am getting rid of, and boy does that feel good! Purple Heart is coming on Tuesday, and I hope they bring an extra big truck! So that is my life story, whether you wanted to hear it or not! And now I am going to show you two of the projects we did at my Holiday Gifts class, and I will post the rest over the next few days.



I think this was my favorite project. It's a photo/note/recipe holder. I painted a wood block that I got at Michael's with acrylic paint (just used a sponge brush). Then I cut Old Olive and Chocolate Chip card stock to cover the sides, and glued them on. I added Frosty Day Designer Paper to 5 of the sides, leaving the bottom with just plain card stock. I used the new felt ribbon from the Mini Catalog to tie around the block (love that ribbon!), and added a clip to top, attaching it with Sticky Strip. This was so easy! I am definitely making more of these!

This is a bookmark, and I copied it from a project we did at Convention. I just changed the colors a bit. The scalloped square is chipboard, from the On Board Something Seasonal set. I used Old Olive Craft Ink to color it. The flower is from the Eastern Blooms set, and it's layered on top of Urban Garden DP. My favorite part is the Filigree Brads, both in the center of the flower and on the end of the ribbon. This was another quick and easy project, the best kind!