A CARD FOR HOPE!!

here is a card that i did a few weeks back for hope

i waited until after i knew that had recd. it before i posted it, just in case she came around here.

PICTURES FOR DADDY!!

here baby are some new pictures of your lil bugs. they miss you incredibly and we all cannot wait for you to come home next saturday! can you believe that we can finally say next saturday? (and for those of you that get your "next" and "this"____ confused, i mean on the 19th).


mikey and isabella coloring at the table.


mikey and bella dining in his room (yes, i am that kind of mommy!)


this is what i get when i let lil bella eat chili on her own.


bella playing in her "kitchen" after we got her room all cleaned up.


here is bella acting like she is asleep....ahhh, i can already hear her acceptance speech "and i would like to thank my mommy for always having the camera in my face which is what has inspired me to be the academy award winning actress that i am today!"


bella going for a drive at melana's bday party


bella going for a bike ride at melana's bday party.


and for anyone that is wondering where are all the single shots of mikey, he's been too busy playing to have his picture taken (playing and cleaning up the hell-hole we call his bedroom).

THANK YOU CARDS!

here are some thank you cards that i made for a couple of outta town relatives that sent me bday presents! easy peasy to make!

A COUPLE MORE SCRAPBOOKING PAGES!!

here are just a couple of scrapbooking pages i've done (i really need to get my ass in gear and scan all of them. but there's a good 75+ and that's kinda time consuming...maybe if i gave up a lil tv ;)



here's a page that i did with this excellent picture that mike took of me and bella shortly after we were finally able to bring her home. i luv how it looks like she is giving me a kiss! the lil bottles that are hanging down for the title, the first and last contain seed beads and the middle one contains a letter that i wrote her for her to read when she is all grown up and inherits her scrapbook.



this is me and mikey eating the delicious food they served us while we were in the hospital after delivering bella. now i have to ask, who in their right mind serves a woman who has just been cut open from one side of her to the other so another human being can be taken out of her, red beans and rice?!?!?



this picture (which breaks my heart every time i look at it) is my lil bella-boo while she was in nicu. she was there for about 6 days. i'll have to post her birth story at a later time.

BABY WREATHS!!

i'm entirely too tired and too lazy to post some new things that are going on (which means i would have to upload the pics from my camera, blah, blah, blah) so i decided to post some old crafts.




these are the baby wreaths i make for friends who are expecting babies. these wreaths are so much fun to make and everyone loves to receive one. bella's is still hanging on her door!



i've even made one for my door for the 4th of july. i had planned on making one for each of the holidays, i just haven't gotten around to it.

WHERE I'VE BEEN

just a lil more about me :)

bold the states you've been to, underline the states you've lived in and italicize the state you're in now...

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.

SO MUCH TO SAY.....!!!

...about nothing really. this post is going to be pretty damn boring, so prepare yourselves now. i haven't posted in a week and i wanted to stop by before you guys thought i may have fallen off the face of the earth (again!). lately, i have just been too busy reading other people's blogs, that i haven't had time (or felt like) posting on my own. hopefully tomorrow or the next day (or maybe even the next day) i will post the finished library card kit i made (well almost finished. i only did 30 cards) and some pics of my bug-a-boos.

for those of you who have asked (and i do apologize for not responding to the posts on my own damn site), mike will be home in another 18 days. i am going to fly up there (knoxville, tn) on the 17th so i can see him graduate. i am so beside myself about it i can hardly sit still. i miss you so much baby, you will never know. the kiddos do too! i don't know what i'm going to do with ya once ya get home (well besides that ;) since i felt that i have been playing single mommy for quite a while now. the idea of having another adult in the house is going to be pure bliss.

for those of you that didn't know, saturday was my birthday. i had all these great things planned. i was going to have my brother come up to the house and keep the kiddos while me and the girls went out and partied it up. i haven't been out drinking in god knows how long (this folks, is what happens when you have children). its been so long that i had do go out and buy what i thought may resemble a "going out" outfit. so my bday weekend started out good (i get a whole bday week if ya didn't know). that friday, the best boss in the whole wide world took me to lunch and then let me leave a lil early. i then went shopping for that outfit, stopped at walmart to get the kiddos and my brother some junk food for saturday night, and then came home. fell asleep on the couch watching hunter with mikey and woke up with an icky stomach (mikey had that at the beginning of the week). i crawled into bed and laid as still as i could praying that i wouldn't throw up. sure enough, we all know what happened next. this continued till i woke up. i lay there listening to bella letting me know over the monitor that she wanted out of bed. my stomach began to grumble...uh oh. i laid still again while i heard mikey get up and come into my room. the lil bug walked over to my side of the bed and i opened my eyes. he told me to go back to sleep so he could tell me happy bday. he remembered which was the best gift of all.

i spent my bday on the couch with an icky tummy falling in an outta sleep. poor mike felt so bad that he couldn't be at home with me and that my plans were ruined. even though i started to feel a lil bit better as the afternoon went on, i wasn't even going to chance going out and then having to make a mad dash for the bathroom.

so that was my 27th bday in a nutshell. later i will post the bday gifts that my mom picked up for the kiddos. i told her that she didn't have to do that since we were celebrating my bday with the kids and mike when he got home, but she insisted. even though they were lil gifts, they were the best. esp. since mikey picked out his own.

my mom also gave me one of my grandma's rings (daph, we both have one of our grandma's rings now :) which is great. i just need to get it resized so i can wear it.

well, i guess i am going to end this boring ramblings here. the bachelorette comes on in a bit and i have to give my undivided attention to my boyfriend jerry. i promise though that tomorrow i will have pictures and all that jazz.

FABRIC FLOWER PINS!!

today, while surfing around craftster, i found a tutorial for cute lil flower pins (or hairclips).

it took a bit to figure out how exactly she was folding the fabric, but once i got the hang of it, i flew through the other two! the worst part is tracing my pattern onto fabric and then cutting them out (does anyone have any ideas that i could use to make this process faster? i prolly just need to find a good fabric pen instead of using the regular ol pencil i have been using)i absolutely love these. i definetly will be using up some of my fabric stash to make a buncha these (wanna join me daph?)

now i have to figure out what i am going to wear tomorrow so i can wear one of these.

BELLA AND DORA HAVE A TEA PARTY!!

this a.m. bella and dora had a wonderful tea party complete with plastic cookies. what i wouldn't give to be her age again!

SEMI-HOMEMADE WITH ELIZABETH MANNA!

have any of you guys ever seen semi-homemade cooking with sandra lee? if not, she cooks things using prepackaged items which make life easier (or so she says).

so this a.m., i took some martha white muffin mixes (blueberry & blackberry) and mixed em up according to pkg. directions. then i made a crumb topping and popped em in the oven. don't let the dark brown scare ya off. they were delicious. def. tasted like something i would pay top moo-la for at the store.

here's the recipe i made up for the crumb topping:

4 T. margarine
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup flour
sprinlin' of cinnamon

cut the butter in with a fork. once cut in pretty good, top on muffins before baking them.

voila!

SHRINKY DINK CHARMS!!

last night, me and mikey sat down to color on some shrinky dink paper. lil did he know how magical the paper really was. i was making some charms to turn into jewelry (well, i had my fingers crossed anyway) and mikey was just wanting to make some "art", as he called it.

so i gave him a big square and told him to color away and when he was done, i would cut it in half. i had the intention of turning his art into some jewelry for me. what was great was that he wrote his name on one of em.

so we popped em in my lil toaster oven and watched the magic happen right before our eyes.

now, you would think that shrinky dinks would be fool proof, but i guess not for this fool. i don't know what it is, but i can never get the sides to stay straight and for some reason, only the edges were curling up and the middle was staying in this great hat shape. i ended up pushing the sides down on a couple of em when i took them out.

we had so much fun and as soon as i get some good cording (or search around elizabeth's craft store for some) i am going to turn these into necklaces. i really can't wait to wear mikey's.

WHAT A GREAT HAT YOU'RE WEARING!!

last night when i was on the puter blogging, the kids were turning mikey's underware into hats! of course i had to break myself away from the monitor to notice, but as soon as i did, i ran to get the camera. this isn't my most favorite pic (i mean it looks like the waistband is cutting off the circulation of mikey's head) of the two of them (b/c yes, i took about a dozen of em) but in the other ones, bella had a big ol snot bubble coming out of her nose.

bad thing about cameras, you don't really notice those things until you pop em in the computer and look at em ;) those of course will be filed with the poop pictures for future needs ;)

FOR ALL YOU CUPCAKE LOVERS OUT THERE!!

here is a blog for all things cupcakes! i found it via not martha and lemme tell ya, after scrollin' around that blog, makes me wanna whip up some cupcakes for sure.

hopefully i will have more exciting news to report later on today. i am spending the day getting some stuff done (laundry, the pile of dishes sitting in the sink, etc). i must say, that i have been doing my dishes by hand since mike has been gone due to the heating element going out on the dishwasher. boy, how spoiled i have been and didn't even know it. i cannot wait until he gets home so we can buy another, quieter dishwasher.

thank god my mom made me have dish-pan hand all those years doing her dishes, my poor hands are pretty used to it :)

A BIRTHDAY CARD FOR GRANDMA!!

this is the bday card that i made for mike's grandma for her upcoming bday. i used an old photograph of her, yarn-like ribbon, stickers that look like typewriter keys, page pebbles placed of them, a brass envelope charm that i got from art chix and a red heart button that i placed in it.

i love the way it turned out and am very pleased with the style of the card. i really think that i am going to take all those supplies that i am hoarding in the other room and start to make a lot more cards like this.

A BIRTHDAY CARD FOR GRANDMA!!

this is the bday card that i made for mike's grandma for her upcoming bday. i used an old photograph of her, yarn-like ribbon, stickers that look like typewriter keys, page pebbles placed of them, a brass envelope charm that i got from art chix and a red heart button that i placed in it.

i love the way it turned out and am very pleased with the style of the card. i really think that i am going to take all those supplies that i am hoarding in the other room and start to make a lot more cards like this.

ONE COOL CHICK!!

check out this cool chick!

CANDY SWAP!!!

these are the goodies that i received from new zealand for the glitter candy swap.

do they look yummy or what? i haven't opened anything yet. gotta save it for when the kiddos are not around.


yes, i am a selfish candy whore!

LIBRARY CARD KIT!!!

this is my lastest crafy adventure. i am making me and greta library card kits. i got the basic card template from craftalong but i kinda revamped it in an excel format so i could fit more to a page.

i then printed a few copies out, bought a huge pack of cardstock from office depot and took em there to have about 63 copies made. this ended up being so much cheaper than if i would had printed them from home and used all my printer ink.

for the pockets, i got the template here and traced the design on manilla envelopes. now this process is a bitch and is taking forever. but i know once they are all done (all 250+ of em) i am going to luv em. greta is going to use them to keep track of all the dvd's that she loans and i am going to use them for that and books (even though it breaks my heart to glue something into a book).

so that is what i have been up to. well, that is besides laundry, dishes, taking care of the kids, working, picking toys up every second i am home, and watching my recent obsession "under the tuscan sun".

THANKS STATE FARM!!

yesterday, i received a gc for a free chik-fil-a sandwhich from my state farm agent for my birthday!

poor mike was jealous that he didn't get one when it was his birthday. maybe if he's lucky, i'll share :)

VDAY CUPCAKES!!!

bella finally got her wish and the kiddos had a valentines cupcake for dessert. they thought they were deeeeelicious!