With the end of the school year quickly apporaching (this week is it for my granddaughter)I worked on a few of the gift items. Today was cards for the teachers.

These will match with some teacups I cut out and made with my cricut Expression machine using the TAgs, Bags, Boxes and More 2 cartridge. The teacups are being filled with a variety of tea bags and gift cards for the teachers to relax and enjoy the start of their summer vacations. I just love this cartridge! Which I will have to upload those photos later as they are on a different computer. Tomorrow I will be making some fry boxes as a container for the three teen teachers Jaiden has in pre-school and filling them with gift cards to the fast food places in town. What teen doesn't love fast food eating for free! Other than that lately I have only done a couple little things such as this little sketch pad to carry with me for sketching out LO ideas and a couple of recipe pages (which are also on the other computer).

A little playtime!

Over the weekend I was able to play a little bit with paper! This also helped me to get a little work done for the Christmas Season...and it is still April. Here are Christmas Wish lists for each member of my family to write their wished for gifts on and then each member will draw a couple items from the wish lists to do their shopping from. Later I will be able to add these to the scrapbook pages for the year's Christmas and save not only the memory of what everyone wanted, but also a sample of their handwriting.

Next: I found a small (4x4 inch) graph paper pad, and thought wow what a useful thing to carry with me for when I feel inspired to sketch out a layout or sketch a garden plan. Only it needed something, so I made a basic cover for it. It still needs a little work to complete it like a clasp type closure, but I like the way it turned out so far.

Some old photos!

Our Entryway transforms for Halloween to a Witches' Parlour.  Complete with huge spider climbing down from the ceiling.  Each year we try to add to the graveyard in the front of the house and parlour.  We have a lot of fun planning and then watching the reaction of the trick or treaters faces.
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A New Beginning

Spring is here and underway; and time has come to begin anew in other aspects of life.  One of those for me is working hard to use this blog again. 
I have started the planning for planting the vegetable gardens and also replanting some of the butterfly garden. Which will be alot of fun this year, as an early Mother's Day gift my daughter has put together a potting table/area on the patio for me.  She is repurposing some of the tables used at the store she worked at (one that is closing) and supplied me with a tool pouch, seeds and bulbs and even potting soil.  Even cleaned off the patio complete with power washing it.
Rain today prevented me from taking a photo of the area, but I really look forward to working in this space.

Awww Sweet Memories!

In 2004 I was blessed to be a chaperone for a school trip to Europe. I had been to a couple places in Europe before but this was trip over 17 days visiting 6 countries, 14 cities with a bunch of high school students. It was a blast! Our first stop on the trip in Europe was in Frankfurt, Germany. During our short stay, we ate some lunch and tried a wonderful dessert called Spaghetti Eis. Ice cream sundae that looks like a dish of spaghetti... YUM.

Over the summer months this year I located and purchased a Spaghetti Ice Creamer machine. This is like a big garlic mincer looking tool and you push softened ice cream through it. Then top the "spaghetti" with a strawberry puree and top with "parmesan cheese" made up of grated white chocolate. You can add "meatballs" made of chocolate balls or "pepper" (finely grated dark or milk chocolate). It is really just a fun dessert to have.

Here is a photo of my first attempt at making it.

Christmas crafting

I have finally gotten a couple things started on my Christmas crafting. My first attempts at making these and I like how they have turned out. So I guess I will be making more eventually.

This is the front

and the back

I made 3 of them for now.

Happy Birthday!

I figured it was time to get this site updated...about time! 

Along with the Birthday of America, our family also celebrates the birth of our daughter, Angel. She will be 23 this year; Wow time flew by quickly.

A tradition for our family was born the day she was born. We always have a cookout, now I know this isn't something original for most Americans...I mean July 4th and cookouts really go together. For our family it all began with a ship's cookout at our house in 1988. We planned and planned and prepared for it for what seemed like for month's. Keep in mind the ship's crew was about 150 and maybe 2/3 of those crew members were married. So we were expecting quite a few people.

Angel wasn't due until 1 Aug, but I guess decided she wanted to join the party. With a house that had been scrubbed down spotlessly and a yard that I don't think could have been any cleaner itself, with the grass cut and edged, and even the curbside swept up to be very clean. The fridge was full of lots of delicious food waiting for the guests and the heat of the grill. I went into labor at 2 am (as we went to bed) and she was born at 7:11 am.

Needless to say she and I didn't get to attend the cookout, but there was no way I was going to let my husband and 3 boys call it off...everyone seems to have a great time, so the pictures show.

Our following annual 4th of July cookouts are no where as big, but we still enjoy having friends over to celebrate this wonderful day. Oh btw, I don't think I mentioned really that at the time Bill was in the Navy and so up until about 3 years ago all the friends attending were also in the Navy and really part of our extended family. Now our friends are neighbors. Which are really just extended family as well!