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It's been so long since I've posted, I'm sure that nobody reads this anymore. I started this blog so that I could connect with people and so that I could share my scrapbooking projects. I have now branched out into sewing, and this blog seems a little limited. So I started a new blog which will be a place for not only scrapbooking and sewing, but for personal and family things as well. I can't promise that I will post regularly, but you are more than welcome to visit me on my new blog...Doodah Daisy ...Hope to see you there!

Sarah

What I've Been Up To...

Paint and floors!!! Oh if only it was that easy!!! We have had nothing but problems. To start with, the tile that I had picked out only a few weeks ago...DISCONTINUED!! The good news is that the store manager happened to walk by the flooring dept where I was unwillingly picking out a different tile, noticed my plight and offered to price match the new tile...So I got 13x13 tile for $1.48 A PIECE. So long as I don't compare this new tile to the original tile, I like it. Then my husband hired 2 neighbors/friends of ours who could use the money to do the work. Together they worked one full day and two half days before one of them quit. That left the other guy by himself to finish up. I guess it was a good thing, or so I keep telling myself, because I have had to repaint everything the Quitter did, since he just slopped it on. At least the job wasn't over and paid for before I realized the shitty job. Good for the other guy to stick with it, but parts of the floor have to be redone in the hallway, because he didn't cut the pieces right around the doorways, and I still don't have one single transition piece down. I have a friend of mine whose Hubby does floors for a living (and probably should have been the one to do the floors in the first place...) and he's going to come over and do all this for us (for free)...God love him, it made me cry. So I just have to finish glazing the cabinets and refurbishing the hardware and the kitchen will be done. And then we can move on to our next bane...I mean, home improvement project.

EDTA: And all my scrappy stuff has been relocated to various hiding spots so it won't get ruined and has yet to come out of hiding. To be quite honest I don't know when it will come out...I want to scrap badly but I just don't want to deal with the mess...sigh...

If you have stuck with me through this novel...you may now enjoy some pics of said hell...


"Bayou Shade" in the living room...


"Lunar Tide" in the dining room...ok, bad pic, it's a light green...(and yes, the light fixture is going to be replaced eventually)


Freebird (the non quitter) working on the floor...


The (2nd choice) tile in the kitchen...


"Drumskin" base coat on the cabinet doors...


"Bark" glaze...Love it!!

Going GREEN

Don't mind me...I'm just playing around with the look of my blog. What do you think of the new background, header, and colors? I need something more spring like. I'm also really into green right now. Maybe that's because...we are gonna be painting soon!!!! And the walls are gonna be green. I have picked out flooring finally!!! We'll be doing that as soon as the painting is done. I.can't.wait.



This is a pic of my paint colors (All sitting on top of our new countertops)...The darker green will be in the hallway and living room, the lighter green in the kitchen and dining room with cream trim and doors. The colors on the right are going to be my kitchen cabinets...Cream with a dark coffee like glaze. (I don't think I'm gonna use the light or medium colors). The piece on top is a swatch of my curtains...totally gorgeous IMO!!!



This pic has all my swatches and...my floor samples!!



I really think these pics don't do it justice...just know that I am super excited to finally be getting these things done, and I won't have to be embarrassed to have anyone come inside my house anymore. So nice...

A Couple of Challenges...And One Personal One

So I'm at home with my sick baby. I had a horrible day on Monday, just trying to get Ethan in to see someone was crazy! None of the pediatricians would see him before school let out, so I went to the oncall clinic...what a nightmare! I will never got to that place again. Without giving all the mundane details, I ended up being there for about 5 hours. Ethan has influenza A and I had to fork out 50 bucks for his Tamiflu! And that's with the insurance!

I digress...

So yesterday I decided to chill with lil man, brought some of my scrappy stuff to the living room floor, and worked on a challenge from Dream Girls using 80% American Crafts products w/ a heart and flourish somewhere on the page. And I have some papers that I've been dying to use! Here's what I came up with...




This morning I whipped this puppy out. I'm usually a really slooooow scrapper, but this one was so easy and fun to do! It's for the Noel Mignon challenge which is based on an awesome website called Curly Girl Design. I love her products! Here's my inspired creation...




On a more personal note...I have been struggling to deal with a "friend" I use the term loosley. This will probably turn into a novel, so bear with me... It started on Thanksgiving evening. This friend left me an odd picture comment on myspace, so I messaged her and asked if everything was ok, was she upset w/ me. This unleashed a fury from her. She wrote about grievances from almost 4 years ago up til the past summer. I was so upset and I cried all evening. It took me about a week to mull everything over and talk several times with Hubby before I wrote her back and point by point explained everything she said. Some things I apologized for and some things simply were not true. Her response? "whatever" We sent some emails back and forth, but mostly it hasn't been nice from her end, she has even brought my kids into this, calling them names. I know you thinking "screw her" and "she's not a friend" etc, but then I find out from mutual friends that she's been drinking again (she's a recovering alcoholic) and going to rehab. Well I've had about enough of this and send her an email pretty much telling her that I know about it and threw a few of her phrases back at her and Karma's a bitch, etc. I know, not really nice but I was mad that she was playing the victim in our relationship when she's got issues herself. Yesterday she replies to me and tells me she's humble and caring and that I'm soulless. WTF?? I am so pissed now! But I suck it up and reply that my feelings have been hurt, that I apologized to her. She hasn't even acknowledged it or said she was sorry back. And why did she wait so long to tell me and let it fester for years? So far no response...

Here's my main dilemma...we have mutual friends, our hubbies have been friends since grade school, and we hang out in the same places. We have kids that are the same age, she was at my house for my "obnoxious" daughter's bday party! I would like to resolve this so that we can at least be at the same place and not want to kill each other. I just don't know how, if she seems to be hell bent on calling me and mine names and not really saying why she feels this way except that she's felt this way for a long time. I am absolutely sick over this.

Valentine Crop-a-thon

So this week at Noel Mignon's message board she hosted a Valentines Crop-a-thon. Much fun on the board complete with make and takes and challenges with prizes. I got 2 of the layout challenges done. Jana's Love Letter layout challenge...Write your journaling in letter form, include a heart somewhere on the layout and be sure to tie a ribbon around something. Here's my entry...



Jana's Red Hot layout challenge... Red = the color red somewhere on your layout

H = Hand-cutting
O = Circle Element of some kind
T = Tearing

And here's the one I did for it...(I think that I got the idea for this LO in a magazine, but I can't recall where :D)

Traditions

The tradition in my family is that the boys don't get their first haircut until after they turn two years old. That is about the time that they stop being little babies and become little boys, and we mark it with a new little boy hair do. Well...Ethan turned two last weekend. I didn't really want to cut it, but I had to since it was my tradition and all. So we took him to the barber shop, and got 'er done. He was sooooooo good...he sat still and didn't cry...unlike his mother who cried like a big 'ol baby. I don't care who you are...he's still my baby!!!


Before...


At the barbershop...



Of course he got a sucker...



After...

Ethan Turns TWO!!!

Here's a slide show of Ethan and some pics from his bday party. We had it at McDonald's because it was free and we could use the play area. I made a cookie cake and decorated it myself...a first for me since I don't bake. I think it ended up pretty good considering the hell I went through to get it done in the first place.

Gutter Girlz...Still Hurting

The Prompt:
Still Hurting
The Song:
Not Ready to Make Nice by the Dixie Chicks
The Product/Technique:
Pins/Sewing Needles


Here's my take on it. I'm so glad for this prompt. It helped me work outside my comfort zone and made me scrap a subject that I haven't wanted to do before.

Published!!!!

Not me...but my daughter!!!!

There was a contest for all the 4th graders in the school district. The Mary C. O'Keefe Cultural Center picked 12 students to have their drawing on the Mary C. Christmas cards and Lauren won first place!!! The cards were also available for sale. We are sooooooooooooooooo PROUD of her. She's got an amazing talent that will only get better.


The card...signed by the artist:



Proud mama and the artist with the framed original:

Happy Birthday....

...to ME!!!!

This is what my wonderful hubby got me for my birthday!!!!! And he totally surprised me with it too! This is the man who goes to Walmart the day (or night) before, and manages to pick up something. I am so happy!! I can't wait to play with it!

Mini Album

Here's the mini album I made for my next door neighbor. They went on a cruise to Cozumel and Progresso. She's giving it to her room mate for Christmas. I have added binder rings and some ribbon as a final touch.

Stupid HTML

I spent the better part of 2 days trying to change my blog, but I have no idea how to keep my widgets when I change the layout. So I've been browsing the web and I have found how to change the column size (sorta) and the background and the header (good to know!!). But not how to change the color of the columns (because I hate a white background) or how to use a premade blogger layout (from somewhere like pyzam) without losing all of my links. Grrrrr

Can anyone out there help me?

Harvest Crop

This past week was the first ever online crop at Noel Mignon. There were daily challenges, games and prizes. I got 3 out of 6 layouts done, and I won a RAK and a prize! I also preordered Noel's latest kit, Winter Weather...which are now sold out! Here are the LO's that I did, and I'll post the kit and prizes once I get them.

Festival

The first weekend in November is the Peter Anderson Festival, and its another one that I love and wait all year for. Like Cruisin the Coast, each year it gets bigger and bigger. Martye and I took the babies and stayed for the whole day. I was sooooo tired by the time we went back to the car. But we had such a good time.

For lunch we took our food to Marshall Park and let the babies out of the strollers.


Dylan and AbbyEli

Checking out something beyond the fence.


Eli wants to see it too...


Abby doesn't want to be left out...



Here's some of the goodies that I got...and now I'm broke! lol

Marlin Miller is an artist who has been carving some of the trees that Hurricane Katrina damaged along Biloxi beach.
I got one of his carvings and talked with him some. He and his wife are very nice. Lauren and Marlin gave each other a hard time. She asked him about doing a little bitty owl carving and he showed her a twig snake that he "carved". He even signed the bottom of the Egert.
Ocean Springs Harbor by Linda Theobald. We already have one of her prints with the Barrier Islands. And Craig and I love just about any artwork that is about OS Harbor.


This is a photograph by Steve White. It's the buoy on Horn Island. Isn't it gorgeous?? I believe its the same buoy that we saw on the island after Katrina. I got a t-shirt from him as well, and we already own a print of the Golden Fisherman from him.


I got Lauren a tie-dyed bag and a pair of earrings that I can wear with my scrubs at work. Oh and I got hanging made of driftwood and a ceramic fish. Now I have to get all these framed and figure out where to hang them all!

Busy, Busy, Busy

Between my job and Craig working out of town, I have been going non-stop. Me and the kids have been doing so much, especially on the weekends. The first week in October is Cruisin' the Coast. I looooove Cruisin'. I can't wait for it to come around each year. I really enjoy the muscle cars of the 60's and 70's...Cameros, Corvettes, Mustangs...and especially this Nova which reminds me of the one my dad had when I was a kid.



Lauren likes the older cars of the 40's and 50's (?) Especially the ones with flames painted on them.





And we all love the burnouts that they do...



The last couple of years Mom and I have been taking Lauren over to the Mobile Fair, but this year it just wasn't possible. So we tool both the kids to the Church of the Redeemer fall festival and pumpkin patch. Lauren got her face painted.



Both of the kids played games like feed the pumpkin eater and cake walk (mom won a cake on that one, YAY mom!) And they got to walk around the patch and pick out pumpkins.







And of course, there's Halloween. Lauren and I painted the pumpkins while Ethan was napping. It was nice to have a little bit of time with just the two of us.





Here's the finished products...The little pumpkins have faces on both sides of them.



Lauren dressed up as a pirate...Think Elizabeth Swann from the first POTC movie when she stowed away on the ship.

Big Boy here was Superman. I went with something not too hot (do you know how hard that is??!!) and something that didn't require a headpiece.



We piled up and went up to my mom's church this year and did Hallelujah night. We usually go downtown, but with Craig gone this year, I was not carting two kids around that many people by myself. I think they had fun...Lauren gushed "This is the best trick or treat ev-er!!" She's so dramatic.





Lauren bobbed for apples but I didn't get any pictures of it. She came up to me twice dripping wet and dashed off again before I could even think to get the camera. So here's the bucket...



She had so much fun playing all the games. She was trying for 50 tickets so she could get a slingshot, of all things!