Monday, September 28, 2009

Lucky Number.........

13 - Mary!
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Gotta love random.org.
No, it wasn't too late. Of course this may have reinforced your tendency to comment on my blog at the last minute. Remember, I need immediate, positive attention when I post!
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Love ya! Buh bye.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Giveaway!

While making the Frenchy handbag, I realized that it's been awhile since I've done a giveaway. So without further ado, and with utter simplicity...... Leave a comment if you want it.
I'll choose a winner next Monday night. Buh~bye til then.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Last Weekend of Summer

We wanted to take advantage of our last official weekend of summer (haha OK so yeah that is funny) so we decided we should hit the water again for a little kayaking. There was a 50% chance of rain but as you can see we were fine. What wasn't fine though was the tide working against us both ways! We headed out right at the end of high tide... which was pretty cool the water was a solid 8 feet above low tide.
This is looking out to the ocean from the bridge. Usually what you see is a ton of grass and a windy river that you have to weave through to get out to the open water. Well when it's high tide you can practically shoot straight down the middle. We hit the ocean fast!
As we were rowing through some of the taller grass i was slightly freaked out by these black things on the grass. At first I was worried they were spiders because there were webs around

But when we slowed we saw they were crabs. There were TONS of them all through the grass.
There were some that were much larger but they were too fast to get a photo of.
I'm so glad they weren't spiders!
We finally made it out to our beach... but it was almost completely under water! And let me tell you this is a very large beach. The little land that was left above water was so saturated that you sunk a good 6 inches with ever step... not cool!
We had a very quick snack and then took off again since we were going to be fighting the tide on the trip back.
And of my goodness did we fight it! We were a little worried we weren't going to make it back. (not joking!) this next shot is grass that we had rowed over on the way out! Can you imagine fighting that much water flowing at you?
Another shot of the bridge on our way back you can see how much the water dropped and this was just 2 hours later.
Well enough about kayaking!
We spent tonight with the cable repair man trying to get our Internet and cable working.... apparently the evil cable auditors came by and put a blocker on our line... we aren't really sure why they would do this but it wiped out all of our service... and while uber was trying to figure out what was going on our modem died! So a new modem and a visit to remove the blocker and we are back up after having nothing all weekend... I had no idea how important the Internet is to me!
Anyway I am crafting... it's all in progress and slow going so I will have to show you that later!

Sunday Travel Log and Cute Overload.......

Or, there's something for everyone in this post, so keep reading, or if you don't like reading just look at the pictures.



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Esslingen Burg.

You know who got me up and out of the house on Sunday afternoon. We went for a drive around Stuttgart, stopping in at a couple of favorite towns. Esslingen was first, if you haven't been, at least go during the Weinacht's Market. Their Medieval section is fantastic. Rathaus.



Love the painting.


I want this door knob.




Our second stop was Waiblingen. This door was small. Smaller than me.


The wall around the city, I wonder how it's still standing.





Market house where we happened onto a car rally. We should have just drove our 450 on up into the square.


The only thing we were missing was one of these yellow tags.





While you know who contemplated the possibility of showing our car at one of these rallys, I took the opportunity to do this.


Reflections can be fun.



My first car was a Plymouth Belvedere. This was not it. I kinda wish it had been. Sorry Mom, just sayin.

This was more like what my car looked like. Mine was blue. The lacquer flaked off the top when I drove anywhere. People called it the dandruff car. I was lucky to have that car. Have you gone to the Mercedes Museum?

Now for cute.
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I started this bag Friday night. It's the Frenchy Bag by Amy Butler. I used Natural Effects by Michelle D'Amore for Marcus fabrics. We just got this line in the shop and I love it.





I decided to add a small bag and key fob. You can hook the key fob onto the bag and make it a wristlet. There's also a ring inside to latch it onto so you don't lose your keys at the bottom. I had enough fabric left over to make the handbag version. Including all the same accoutrements.





The stiped fabric is fun.
Thanks for stopping by.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Random

The one item we did manage to pick up on my Orlando shopping list was the EXPEDIT shelf from ikea. Which was actually the most important item... I do have to say the ikea trip was rather rough because it came right after shopping at the millennium mall next door that had nothing I had needed...plus ikea has this ability to suck all of your energy away- have you noticed this issue? We were in and out in an hour and it felt like it had taken at least five. And of course ikea is always slammed. Anyway, we got all the way to the display for these shelves and it said that they were out of stock in the white... it was a total bummer but I know that this happens all the time at ikea so I tried not to let it get to me... actually I told uber it saved him some money because there were some small items I was going to get but I didn't feel like waiting in line for. Anyway we checked the warehouse area anyway and it turned out that had a bunch of the shelves in stock! So mission accomplished.

I don't have much respect for ikea stuff it tends to not be made well but I do have to say this shelf is very sturdy and didn't take terribly long to assemble.
I bought the shelf because it is the exact size of the opening for our closets in the guest bedroom and study. We decided to try it out first in the study and we will buy a second one for the guest bedroom on our next trip. Uber removed the doors from the closet. We are going to store them in the attic for the time being because I wanted the closet opened up for workspace.
So here is the first peek at it. There is a lot more that we are going to do with the closet area but this is the first step. And since I am really not sure how long it is going to take me to get to the next steps I figured I would show you what I had so far!

The ultimate plan is to paint the closet with an accent color. Remove the wire shelf and replace with a floating shelf, raise the ikea shelf up on feet to counter height and top it off with a counter top to make the whole thing feel built in... it wont be done to be permanent since the next person to own the house may not want it and we will make it so the closet doors will still work with it inside.
I found the paper and ribbon shelf sitting on top at Michael's, I think it is a new product they are carrying, I really like them I might run by and pick up a few more of the cubes I think they have about 10 variations with drawers and all sorts of things, they are stackable and they even sell counter tops to be attached across the tops of them. I was in the study cleaning and thinking I could really use something to organize all the random paper I have and then I walked into Michael's and they had this line all on promotion at 50% off. So I grabbed the ribbon thing too. I never realized I had so little ribbon! I think I am going to have to go shopping!
Oh and this is a picture of the whole room so you can see it's a mess. Uber wanted you to see it. He was making fun of me for taking a picture of the closet from the one angle that you couldn't see all of the mess from. So to get him back I took it with him in it.... he is part of the mess you know...
I had some fun this weekend on etsy and ordered a bunch of fabrics for my nonexistent stash. I am loving these prints. I am hoping they allow me to finish a few projects that I have started. I am realizing that you really need to have fabric on hand. I didn't buy a lot of it I am hoping I don't regret it later because these prints are pretty awesome. Alright I have to get to church.

Monday, September 14, 2009

It started to rain

Just as I finished Jessica's quilt, I took it outside to try and get a decent photo. It was raining. I tried anyway. I had to put it on the ground in front of my apartment and run back inside, stand on a stool on my little balcony to be able to get the whole quilt in. One day I will have a wall to hang quilts on when I photograph them. That would be nice. There are things that didn't go quite the way I wanted. I still like it alot. I learned that I cannot talk on the phone and cut a quilt top at the same time. That was a hard lesson.
Hope you like it Jess.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

back... finally

So I kind of disappeared for a while oops! I know it's a little late but I hope everyone had a good holiday weekend. Uber and I went down to Orlando for some shopping... nothing eventful.... actually I had a rather long shopping list for the trip and almost every store we hit had nothing I needed in stock...bummer... I will show you the one thing I did manage to get soon though. Then I proceeded to be sick all week long. Lovely huh? WELL Thursday I finally got busy again and I have quite a few projects going on now.
I managed to complete the invites for an upcoming baby shower. Which is being held at my house so you will likely be seeing more on it!

The mom to be is doing a butterfly/flower theme in the nursery and her colors are blue, yellow and brown with pops of red.
I had a lot of fun putting these together. I especially liked the different choices in color. No pink! In fact I am sure the blue envelopes will throw plenty of people off.

I printed the seals on mailing labels and punched them out.
I snuck in a little advertising on the back of the invites... whoot!
One small rant though.
***stop reading here if you aren't in the mood to hear me whine!!!***
I just have to put this out there. Joannes is evil. I dislike that store so completely and I spend so much money there it angers me. I hate supporting such a terrible organization. They have terrible customer services and EVERY single time I really need something they are out of it and have no idea when it might be in and won't notify you when they do get it. But they will tell me that a store an hour away has x number in stock if I want to drive there and get it. If you are a super store supplying thousands (literally) of people why would you only order out of stock cardstock twenty sheets at a time or carry only 6 packs of each envelope you stock? ARGH! Ok I am done now because I could go one for hours. In case you are wondering I found envelopes at Target of all places. For cheaper and plenty in stock. I love Target... and costco... well costco is a love hate thing... emphasis on love though. We were doing our weekly shopping on Saturday and they were trying to sell us on an upgraded membership with cash back incentives. They do this by showing you how much you spent in their store the previous year... I had asked them to never show me that amount again... lol
**end of ranting**
My favorite part of invites though is seeing them done and out the door... it's always a relief!