Housewarming Party!

   I made a card for my son, Nathaniel, and his girlfriend, Kristin. They have bought a house together. I am so excited for him. The house is a brand new home which has all the "bells and whistles". They have moved in and are celebrating with a party next month.

Love the window die cute from Memory Box.

   I cased this card from Pinterest which is my new inspiration site for just about everything.  This is a link to the card I cased:  Stamping with a Passion
   I had a heck of a time figuring out how to color the background. I thought you inked the embossing folder with a brown color and then put it through your machine. Tried that ... no go.. Then I took the time to read the blog and saw that you use a cream color and ink the folder with white ink. That worked..Whew!!
   It does give the card a nice setting for the window. Love that die cut from Memory Box. In fact, there isn't a die cut I don't love from Memory Box.
   I made my own window box since I didn't have the die cut that goes with this window. I didn't think I did too badly there. Thank goodness for the flowers spilling over.
   I took patterned paper with roses on it and cut it out to fit the window. I pictured this card with someone looking into the home and seeing the wonderful roses on a table; like someone got a dozen roses from their husband for Valentine's Day.. Hint.. Hint..
   The flowers were from a punch from Punch a Bunch, and the greenery is a die cut from- Guess where?  Memory Box.
   On the inside of the card I found a wonderful prayer online. 

Heartfelt prayer

 It really expresses how my husband and I feel about their new home and how excited we are for them.
 

  On a note about OUR home, we are continuing our efforts to get more organized and neat. We are working downstairs in the basement. Our dream is to get everything in its place and therefore have more room to... get more stuff!

Great job!!

Looking good.

This is a picture of the shelving my DH made for the basement in order to get things organized. He does a great job with carpentry. We decided to paint the shelves to lighten up the basement and pull everything together. Here is a picture of the shelves  painted. 
   I helped him paint and let me tell you it is no fun sitting on a cold cement floor painting. But I love the results.
   We are going to paint the wall to the left as soon as my bum get thawed out. Then we have the fun task of labeling and putting everything away neatly. Pictures to follow.
   Well, that's my life lately. Perfect for January. It has been way too cold lately. This is the time for inside work. Hope you are keeping warm and cozy. 
  
  
 

Going to Disney!

  Baby, it is cold outside. We have been spoiled the last few years. Then I hear that it's going to rain on Wednesday. We do have weird winters here sometimes.

Love Mickey...

Side view.

  Anyway, we are heading to Disney in February. Can't wait. So I thought it would be great to make an Exploding Box to be ready for all those great pictures. This box is not a large box; which I like because it won't take much work to finish it. 
   I got the directions from a site I found on Pinterest. Here is a link to that site.  Exploding Box Directions    Her directions were great. The pictures really helped me to see what to do. It was truly an easy project.
   It does take 12 x 12 paper to make the inside of the box using cardstock.

Take a look inside.

  The inside is really cute. You use whatever patterned paper you want to decorate. I used my Disney paper and stickers.

Another view

 I will finish the inside with pics from our trip. I thought I would stack boxes instead of albums for our trips to Disney. They are wicked cute, too.
  We recently took a trip to Topsfield, Mass. to visit one of our favorite places: Absolutlely Everything. It does have quite a bit of crafting supplies all in one place. We, being my sisters, were there about an hour  and we could have looked even longer. But we had our husbands with us, so we took pity on them.

  While we were shopping, my husband visited the bakery right next door. He found some wonderful whoopie pies.They looked  good and tasted good, too.
   We then proceeded to our next stop which was Dover, New Hampshire at Stamped Designs. We love that shop, too. It has alot of the supplies that we like for paper crafting. Jeanette tries to keep up on all the latest trends. She had just come back from CHA in California and will be getting new items in soon.

Not sure what it is...???

  While we were leaving the shop we saw this ice sculpture outside. It was pretty amazing. I am not sure what it is, though. It should be doing well outside this week. Next week with the rain, I am not so sure.
   Hope you are keeping warm and dry.

January Projects!

Love these lights.

  We are now in the midst of getting our "January Projects" done. What better time to do indoor renovations . It's been cold outside, until recently, so we have been inside with our to do list. Russ has really be going at it with alot of energy. He redid a closet for our bedroom linens, put together shelving in our basement for our seasonal decor, and most recently finished putting up our pendant lighting above our island in the kitchen.
  He really is handy to have around the house. It took a little work because the opening for the recessed lights were bigger than the opening for the pendant lights. But he got them up and they look great. It really changes the look of the kitchen and gives us much more light than we thought.

Another view.

  His next project is working in the basement to get the seasonal room finished a wall coming down and organizing our "stuff".
  I have project I am doing also. I just finished painting a bench that is in the mudroom. I really like the white against the white walls.
   However, I think I am going to put the bench outside come spring and have Russ build a white bench from wall to wall instead. I saw a picture of this idea on Houzz. It really looks clean and fresh looking in a mudroom.



Well, I will show you pictures of our finished projects next time. We are still working on them instead of being out in the cold. Not unhappy about that at all. Next time.

Christmas Past

So pretty....

  It's hard to believe that Christmas is over and we are enjoying the cold of January. We had a great Christmas Day at my sister, Rochelle's, home. She went all out with decorations and great food.

Tasted good, too.

  I was pretty proud of my hash brown casserole. I found the recipe on the package which surprised me since I usually find a good recipe on Pinterest.I have been using this site regularly to find great meals for us. Maybe I should pin this...ummm..

Too cute

  Rochelle did a great job with the name tags for seating. They were so cute. I got to take ours home and store them for next year. I think the candy cane may be shot by then, though. Check out her blog for more info on how she made them. Creative Corner Studio

Mom loved this shawl.

A great get together

  Here are a few pictures of our day.

More of us

   I have started my thank you cards to people. It will take me a little time to finish them. I am getting great ideas again from Pinterest. If you aren't on this site, you should really check it out. I liked the layout of this card. It's one I haven't tried yet. I made the flowers
'cause I didn't think I had the stamps that the gal
used on her card. Turns out that I did. I am going

I made these flowers.

to make this card again using the stamps. It was fun making the flowers though. I used some punches that I had on hand and just embellished them with white enamel accents. I used a flourish die cut from Cheery Lynn. I cut out two different shades for brown.
   I also made a sympathy card for my first husband's stepmother-in-law. Danny's father passed away at 90 years old . He was a wonderful man . I am saddened by their loss.

Penny Black stamp

  I made this card.
   I used a Penny Black stamp with a brown ink. Then I used Versa Mark and off set the stamp image. Using opague white embossing powder I heated the image. I really like the effect. I used my chalks and sponged around each flower.

   I got a fabulous birthday gift. It was a gift certificate to Soakology in Portland, Maine. What a great place to relax with friends and family. I went there with my sisters: Chris and Rochelle.  We had a great time. It was a great way to start the New Year.  Hope everyone had a good start to their New Year.

Relaxing Tea for three