LOVE THEM LOOOONG HOLIDAY WEEKENDS!

well, my holiday weekend is just a lil more than halfway over and we've already done soooo much.

first, i received my handmade thanksgiving goodies for the thanksgiving swap. rachel had me and sent me the cutest lil salt and pepper shakers. thanks rachel :)



on to thanksgiving. thanksgiving is soooo lo-key around here which i must admit is nice. its very laid back. there is not a time that dinner has to be on the table, and afterwards consists of laying around and waiting for the night to end (not in a bad way of course). we ate tons (and let me stress the word tons) of yummy food and were quite exhausted after we ate.


the thanksgiving card i made last year decorating the table.


my plate.


me & mike doing our usual pose.


me and my favorite lil man "bug"


bella-boo eating a pickle refusing to look up at me.


and then there was friday. how i couldn't wait for friday. me and greta spent the entire day on the couch watching the first three discs of veronica mars season 2. we have waited months and months to be able to catch up and i wish that we had the other two discs so we could have kept on viewing.

why is it when you do nothing but sit on the couch and veg out watching tv all damn day that it makes you so stinkin' exhausted?

anyway, me and g failed our duties and didn't get a shot of the two of laying around like zombies all day.

today, i picked up my rental car (hmmmmm....i did mention that the day of the craft fair that my car broke down right? well it looks like they are going to need to replace the engine and they still haven't made that determination yet. so god only knows when i'll get my car back). so i picked up the rental car and me and the kiddos did some christmas shopping. do you know how hard it is to pick up christmas presents for your kiddos while they are right there with you? i had mikey on so many lil scavenger hunts for things i didn't need it was down right ridiculous. but that didn't matter b/c he has no idea that snuck things in the cart for him....lol.

after the shopping, i stopped home, let everyone potty, grabbed the camera and then headed for burger king. we went thru the drive thru and then headed down to the park. i played with my camera (mistake b/c some of my pics were over exposed) but had fun shooting the kids. mikey had fun with the camera too. i was a brave ol soul and let him take some shots too!











so now the kiddos are taking a nap and we're waiting for mike to get done with his part time job so we can go to cracker barrell and get dinner. boy do i love that place. i used to hate it as a kid. whenever we were doing the infamous parent swap at a hotel on the side of the interstate, we always stopped at the cracker barrell. i think i hated it b/c the one's in georgia and tennessee had well water and i hated that.

but now i love it. i love to shop there too...which is prolly one of my secret motives for going ;)

hope everyone had a wonderful thanksgiving and are having a wonderful long weekend.

*smooches*

well, the fair is over and it wasn't as successful as i would have liked, but i made back my table money and sold a couple of things, so that makes me happy.

i have a *ton* of goodies left over which i plan on adding to etsy soon. but if my bloggin' buddies are interested in having first dibs, let me knowb/c i plan on posting the goods on the blog first.

here was the setup. i love all that yellow :)















mike drove up with the kiddos after he showed the old house (cross your fingers and toes) and he put the kiddos up in the tree that we were sitting in front of. i thought bella would be scared, but my brave lil bella-boo didn't think twice about it.





after mike and the kiddos left, i got a phone call say that my car just completely stopped and it needed to be towed to the dealership {insert deeeeep sigh}. of course the garage at the dealership is closed on saturday, so they won't even be able to look at it until tomorrow. and with it being a holiday week, i can only pray that they will fix my car by wednesday. for now i'll have to drive mike's huge ass truck that i hate to drive.

so that was my weekend folks. i'm so glad the craft fair is over. now i can focus on getting the ornaments out for the ornament swap that i am in and get working on my christmas cards (gotta get those out soon).

big hugs to ya'll and thank you all so very much for the kind words on the goodies i made for the craft fair. ya'll have no idea how much that means to me :)

*smooches*

WHAT THE HELL HAS SHE BEEN DOIN'???

{sigh}

i have been non-stop creating. i'm beginning to wonder why the creative juice hasn't run dry yet...lol.

i spent 12 (yes, i said 12) hours sitting at the craft table busy as a bee. i'm exhausted and i still feel like there is so much i need to do. i do hope the craft fair is quite the success. sista here needs christmas money (esp. since she just got a good estimate on how much her new house is going to cost each month...YIKES!!!)

so i thought i would take a lil break and snap a few pictures of the goodies that have kept me so stankin' busy.


ornaments


hand stamped cards. some of these cards are using stamps that i carved myself. these are extremely simple, but i've noticed lately that i have been drawn to simplicity.


hair clips using mostly vintage fabric.


rings. again using mostly vintage fabric. i would have liked to have made more of these, but this was kinda a last minute idea and i don't have many ring forms left. i def. need to order some. i just love sporting around original rings. i constantly get comments on my big silver one.


chunky notebooks. again, i would have loved to have made more, but when i went back to my source store, they were all out.


larger planners/calendars. i actually hope that one of these doesn't sale so i can use it myself....lol.


pocket calendars. these turned out so much better than i thought. again, my source ran out.


picture albums. despite my need for simplicity, i think some of these turned out more plain than i would have liked, however, i keep reminding myself that there will be a pictured placed in the middle square by the new owner, so ya don't want it too cluttered.

so that is a samplin' of what i have been doing and what will be displayed next saturday. whatever doesn't sell, will be added to my etsy shop in the next week if anyone is interested. there were some things that i wanted to make that i just didn't have the time to do (scratch that....i've had the time, i've just waited until the last minute to get some stuff done).

oh and i friday i will be making some of famous chocolate chip cookies, wrap those up in cellaphane and tie with a pretty yellow ribbon (good morning sunshine=plenty of yellow-ness).

so hopefully, after this is all said and done, i'll be around more.

okay, gotta get back to work.

I'M A BIG FAT LIAR!!!

its been almost a week since i promised to catch up on all the going-on's around here and i haven't done it yet (sorry father-in-law ;)

i have been busy though getting ready for the craft fair and for a couple of swaps i signed up for at the same time {don't know if i've mentioned it before, but i love the time line pressure that kind of stuff gives me. even if i do bitch about it}.

so needless to say, that hasn't left much time for going through photos, chaning their sizes, uploading them to my online photo storage place, and posting them.

so i'm not going to make any more promises about when i'll have updates up b/c i don't wanna break em. but i do hope its soon.

but what i really came here to talk about was my love for photography.
i have always loved it.
to have my own dark room is a dream {and a possibility in the new house huh babe?} to look at a picture and have it take my breath away is a feeling like no other.

as i've mentioned before i struggle with my camera. i wanna know all its in and outs. all the features and what they mean. there really isn't a place around here that teaches classes and unfortunately, i don't learn well from the hubby {even though he knows his shit and the reason that i probably have the problem learning from him is that i am frustrated at the fact that he knows something that i don't. i know, i know....ya'll don't have to tell me how wrong that really is}.

so that leaves me to try to really listen to what the hubby has to tell me when he figures he'll give me another shot at learning and/or by turning to the web. i am constantly in awe on a daily basis of the photobloggers out there.

so today i have hopped from one blog to another.
soaking up as much information and knowledge as i can.
re-reading definitions of the settings.
learning when to use which setting.
learning about light.
learning how to make light boxes (thanks shannafor the link)
and having my breath completely taken away.

RANDOM FACTS FRIDAY!!!

i know, i know.
i need to post about the minneapolis trip.
i need to post about the halloween party.
i need to post about trick or treating with the kids.
i know this.
and i will this weekend {maybe even tonight}.
so be on the lookout.

okay, onto the random facts.

can you guys believe that i have actually kept up with this whole random facts friday thing? i can't and you have no idea how amazing it is that i have.

okay, so this week's topic i've been wanting to post for a couple of weeks, but other topics have came up.

i'm going to talk about a love of mine.

a love of classic rock music.

now don't get me wrong, i do love other music/artists {insert my boyfriend dave (matthews) and damien (rice), but most of my ipod is contained with classic rock.

five classic rock stations are programmed on my car radio.

i can't live without it.

since i was young, i've always loved that type of music. probably has something to do with the fact that my mom listened to that type of music (to this day, i can still remember her buying me one of those "paint" books (where the paint is already outlined on the page and you just "paint" with water) and listening to toto singing "africa". i was probably six or seven. wouldn't that be about right mom? we were on natamac).

anyway, there is nothing that gets my body shakin' more then listening to "mr. saturday night" by lynard skynard or "while my guitar gently weeps" by the beatles.

i'd give my right arm to see the rolling stones on their current tour (anyone wanna buy me a ticket at $500 bucks a pop???).

i don't know why i like, but i do!

i love it all.

while we were in minneapolis, i had forgotten my ipod at work and had classic rock withdrawals. as soon as we got in the car back at the airport at home, i turned the radio on so friggin' fast (before i had even lit up a smoke) and deep sighed commenting on how much i missed it.

okay, here are a few of my favorites:

"mama i'm coming home"-ozzy osborne
"under my thumb"-rolling stones
"you can't always get what ya want"-rolling stones (my life theme song)
"while my guitar gently weeps"-beatles
"free bird"-skynard
"mr. saturday night"-skynard
"turn the page"-bob seger
"jukebox hero"-foreigner
"break down"-tom petty
"refugee"-tom petty
"pressure"-david bowie/queen
"no more mr. nice guy"-alice cooper
"simple man"-skynard
"fool in the rain"-led zeppelin
"living on a prayer"-bon jovi
"pour some sugar on me"-def leopard
"hurricane"-bob dylan (this is one of mikey's favorite songs which i don't know if
that makes me a bad mother or not, but oh well).
"keep talking"-pink floyd
"devil went down to george"-charlie daniels
"witchy woman"-eagles
"bungle in the jungle"-can't think of who sings that right now



i guess i'll end the list there. wish i had my ipod with me and then i'd be able to list em all. 'cause i could seriously go on and on and on.

i wear a rolling stones and a lynard skynard tshirt (ya know those "vintage" style ones they sell at walmart?) ALL.OF.THE.TIME!!!

what can i say?

i'm a classic rocker through and through.

so thats it for this week's installment. anyone else with me? anyone else out there that would agree that listening to a good tom petty song is the best damn thing ever???

{now off to listen to yahoo's classic rock channel}