After dinner fun!

I raced home from work, and made a stop at the scrapbooking place for some Halloween papers to use to cover my mini book that I am making in the shape of a haunted house. Oh yes...I found everything cool for it. Then I raced home to find my DIL had made dinner. I raced in to eat. Then...the most amazing thing happened...

The kids and I started turning an empty diaper box into a haunted house!





I used all my papers to decorate floors and walls. We have one outer wall of the house that has a spooky black tree and owl silhoutte, and my daughter made windows for the outside that showed ghousish figures inside the house. I cut out big blocks of one paper that had different characters on them, and glued them to the indoor walls. We got this far in about 2 hours...and we have a pretty cool looking haunted house! Now each day until Halloween we are making paper furniture and I think a black chandelier, and a few hanging spiders would be cool. Donovan really had fun watching it come together. It's a group project and we are all contributing. Daughter is making an orange couch as we speak! What a really fun evening! Gooooooooooooooodnight!

Emmie turns 3!

Emily turns 3 on this upcoming Tuesday...she had her birthday in advance at a park yesterday where there is a little water play area attached. Loads of fun for the kids, for sure. Her Mom made a butterfly cake for her. Pink and purple, of course!

HOME FROM HOSPITAL

Daughter home after surgery...doing well...taking lots of icy cold stuff. Thank God...it,s over. No more tonsils.

Earthquake, mini album, and the ATC's I recieved at my 1st monthly meetup this past Saturday!

I was in such shock when I heard about the earthquake today on the EAST coast...I felt tears coming!!! It made all my troubles feel small. It is an amazing thing how you can be feeling such strain and anxieties from everyday matters, and then when something really terrible happens (by terrible, I mean a disaster of any kind)...it just puts things into perspective really quickly!!!

The hurricane threat is looking less and less here...thank God. I keep praying it moves further out to the ocean and never hits the U.S. coast. Looks like the Bahamas will be hit though, sadly. As far as I know right now, we are still on track for my daughters surgery on Thursday. One more day of work, and I will be off 4 days...good thing too...sounds like it may be a little rainy, and windy. We shall see.

I wanted to show you the three ATC's I got at the ATC, inchies and altered book meetup last Saturday. I had only made one, but the lady I gave mine to, gave me one of hers, and the other two gals who had made some, also gave me one of theirs. I will not give their names out, as of yet...but if I get permission next meeting, I will. These are the three I received:

This sandcastle was made out of sandpaper! Cool!

Ship in a bottle tossing on ocean waves! Love it!

The creator of this one took a photo of her own feet at the beach...sweet!!! Don't you love the fancy cut edge on this one...looks like waves washing onto shore to me! PLUS, a real tiny shell in the corner! Brilliant!
You can see I was lazy and took the pics with the ATC's in the pocket protector!

I can also show you the book we are working on.



So far all I have is the folded 6x9 manilla mailing envelopes we got hinged together in preparation to add the back and front covers. It will have a house shaped cover and I am thinking maybe I will make it into a haunted Halloweeeeeen book. I went ahead and bought these cute stickers just in case!


These envelopes will be covered back and front with scrapbooking paper...I am thinking maybe it is scrapbook cardstock weight paper. I still need to find out.

Speaking of that...you have got to see this video of a book I can only dream about ever making! This thing is awesome! Check it out!! The fence and gate binding it are just fantastic!



Everyone be safe wherever in the world you are!
Love, Julile

Hurricanes Suck!

Dear Lord,
Please take this hurricane out into the Atlantic and not get anywhere near it's projected path (over us). Daughter needs to have her tonsillectomy on Thursday, as planned. My vegetable garden is thriving, and is begging not to have to be all moved indoors...especially the pole beans who are already climbing up the fence and trellis. I am already crying over the thoughts of Irene who is heading right for us!
Love, Julie
ATC was made by me back in 2008.

My new baby!

Hello everyone on Thursday evening!
It has been a busy week, and I am still washing clothes, gosh darn it, at midnight...the fun never ends. A few days ago I rescued this pretty little AF at Lowes! I would say 75% of the African Violets they had there, had dried up to nothing! This one was begging me to save it! The color of the flower is actually much darker, and very beautiful! I wanted to get one that had a frilly edge, but then this color just stuck out so much for me, I had to get it! I used to grow them all the time in my kitchen window, but then needed a change so gave them up for something else...probably when my succulent addiction started!!!

Is anyone out there a stamp collector? I got my stamp collection out tonight just to look through it. I collect used world stamps, and I decided many years ago that I would mainly collect beautiful stamps of my choosing...called TOPICAL stamps, there are so many featuring animals, plants, mushrooms, etc...your hearts desire really! Anyway, with the advent of Ebay, you can really find more or less many of these and I think I want to have a few goals in mind when choosing my stamps. I would like to get at least 1 stamp from each of the countries I have pages for, and I would like to concentrate on stamps that might have meaning to me. For example I have many nurse, dog, cat, plants, flowers, mushrooms, insects, reptiles, birds, Harry Potter, chihuahua, U.S. Army tanks, and famous people stamps. I believe the one stamp I came across tonight that seems very special to me is an Abraham Lincoln. Then I do enjoy getting big batches of all sorts of world stamps to sift through and find spots for in my book. I have a huge book that I made myself from a gigantic binder, with tons of countries (some of which I know not where they even are in the world), and also added blank pages in some countries because I have so many for that particular place. One example is in my U.S. stamps, I have so many LOVE stamps, and Christmas stamps, that I had to add extra pages just for those!!!
I am rambling on tonight about this, only because I had pulled it all out tonight to look for any extra water bird stamps that I might use for ATC's. Sometimes you get multiples...but I could not find any water birds. Poo. I did find about 10 blackbird stamps from Ireland that I did not realize I had. I think it is time for a blackbird ATC swap!!! LOL.
Well, anyway...this is what I have been up to tonight. Trying to keep up some sort of personal time, even with the grandkids here...once they get to sleep, I can have an hour or two to myself...if I can keep my eyes open!

Solitude At The Beach

I am going to be attending an ATC, inchie, and altered book meeting on this coming Saturday... I am supposed to make 10 ATC's, and 10 inchies...but guess what...I won't have time, so I decided to make just one for the lady who told me about the class. I will meet the others, and be an observer for this one, then start full fledged next time. The theme is BEACH. I think it turned out kinda cute... I had all the ingredients around. The water and sand part of the card are made from my homemade paper, as well as the sea shells on the bottom. The only part I don't like are the footprints. They are messed up. Oh well...I think, all in all, it's pretty cute. I really love that most of it came from recycled paper. That is awesome.
Sorry...am posting from my phone and can't figure out how to turn the photo...so look at it sideways, OK????? :)
UPDATE 8-18-11...lookie...I got the picture turned the right way once I could get on my gosh darn desktop!!! The only thing now is that I am seeing a mirror image of the real thing!!! Oh good grief...I give up! :)

A few shrooms for ya!

Hi everyone! In place of Cactus Monday, I bring you Mushroom Tuesday! LOL. I am so bad...it seems impossible for me to keep up with CM anymore. I worked the weekend too, which made it even harder.

I found these mushrooms that I had seen, on my camera, and wanted to share, as they are such a lovely shade of O-R-A-N-G-E!!! Yeeeeeee!



And as I looked down through my steering wheel yesterday at the end of a hard day...this is what I saw (and see every day as I am out driving for work)...my cherished succulent cross that my friend Mary, over at Pokeberry Patch made for me many moons ago! Lovingly made with skilled hands, carved and colored and waxed. I love the rough twine that hangs it too...isn't it just the best??? Thanks Mary!!! It gives me peace, comfort, and happiness each time I see it!!! It sure brightens up a dirty steering wheel too!!! (EMBARRASED).

Doggy Chop Up, Revised

I continued to play around with my abstract doggy, which I had started on last night (see last post). I chopped up his legs and tail more, and then scanned it into Paint program, where I added color and background. I think I kinda like it. This was a fun little project to work on. It appeals to my cut and paste personality!

Puppy Chop Up!

Don't ask me what came over me tonight whilst I was just sitting around for 5 whole minutes!!! I decided to try drawing out a puppy from a coloring book (belonging to the grands) by Lisa Frank, and cutting him up a bit to make a sort-of Picasso-ish thing out of him...well, I got his head chopped up really well, I thought, but the rest of him needs more chopping. I was going to color him in some way, but then I liked the white on white and the outlining of all the bits of paper after I glued him back together. I tried hard to think of another place I could stick his tail, but my mind won't let me go to crazy. This really aggravates me. I wish I could be wild. I'm going to try this experiment nightly until I can be happy with it. Just a little something different in a few moments of time I catch here and there...

Pokemon sighting at the beach, and EDM # 125...draw a bird!

We had a Pokemon sighting down at the beach here (OK, I made that up)...but here is my childish drawing of Pikachu. I used some Crayola watercolors to paint him after I drew him with my thin Sharpie. My first time watercoloring...pretty fun!

I decided to do an EDM this weekend, so I drew the bird on my husbands beer box! It sure is a beautiful bird, the Heron! Done with thin Sharpie and colored pencils. I have enjoyed some small and quick moments to sit, draw and color this weekend.

New way to fall asleep instantly!

Lay down anywhere and read an e-book on your electronic device...and you will be asleep in 5 seconds...at least I am!!!

As much as I love downloading new e-books from my public library...I seem to have trouble staying awake for them!!! No problem if I am sitting upright, but don't let me try to lay or semi-lay down somewhere. Oh no. Asleep again!

Yesterday morning, I woke up and could not find my new phone. I called it and it was ringing from inside the couch (yes, I had fallen asleep on the couch)...

My DIL and I both tried to reach down the back of the couch and couldn't get our hands through far enough...so I had to cut the underside of the couch to reach in and pull it down and out.

You wouldn't believe what I found in there. 5 binkies (pacifiers), whole sections of newspaper, tons of dog chewy sticks, and crayons.

We were really wondering where all those binkies had disappeared to.....I've got to guard my phone!!! Wish me luck!