My Husband

This is him.  The man that I have spent the last 23 years with.  Our 23rd anniversary was October 18th.  We have had such a wonderful life together.  We have never fought.  We haven't always agreed on some things like raising our children, yard work, how to drive!  :)  Life has been very good to us.  However, our blissful world has come crashing down around us.  In the early morning hours of Sunday, October 28th, my husband was diagnosed with Stage 4 brain cancer and lung cancer.  How do you deal with news like that?!  I am finding it not so easy to deal with to tell the truth.  I consider myself a fairly strong person, but I am also a crier.  I cry when the dog is sick, or when I see a sad show on television, or when I see someone else cry.  I have had to try not to cry because with the brain tumors, my husband's emotions are all wacky and he cries a lot now.  Who knew?

He is the most wonderful man and the most perfect one...for me.  He has treated me like a queen our entire married life.  I sometimes felt badly because I didn't treat him like the king that he is.  He has taken such good care of me and our children all this time.  Now it is our turn to care for him.  It's not easy for him.  It's not easy for our children.  It's not easy for any of us, but we just take one day at a time and carry on.  In my husband's words, "It is what it is."

So, back to how to deal with it.  Prayer is the first and foremost strengthener.  Without that we would be nothing, truly.  I have felt the strength of the prayers from our family, friends, loved ones, and even people whom we don't know personally but they know someone connected with us.  It's amazing how this all works.  The Lord is truly in charge...of everything, and we just need to humble ourselves and turn it all over to Him.

My heart is breaking right now, but I am comforted in the fact that I know everything will be alright...no matter what happens, we are a forever family.  With that knowledge and the Lord's blessings, we can carry on.  It is what it is.

Our Pumpkins!

Here are the two lonely pumpkins done at our house!  Mine is the ghost peeking out the door on the left, and Logan's is the flame on the right.  I think he did a pretty good job, don't you?  Mine looks much better at night when the light is on behind it.

We all went to Day Farms in Syracuse last Saturday and took a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch to pick our own pumpkins.  The entire family went, except for our dear Ryan, Shae and family in Iowa.  We sure miss them when we have our family get-togethers!  Everyone had a wonderful time choosing their own pumpkin!  Of course, Jackie had to find the "perfect" pumpkin and then "hailed", aka:  "yelled" at her dad from the north forty to go help them get her pumpkin!  It was such great fun and the weather was gorgeous!  We all returned to our home and only two commenced to carve their pumpkins!  Everyone else wanted to take them home and do them a bit later so they wouldn't mold and shrivel.  We had a family potluck which was delicious and just had a wonderful time!  I do love it when my family is all gathered round!

Today is my first anniversary of my blog and, although I started this blog to keep track of the things I made, etc., I am just curious whether anyone actually READS my blog posts or not.  So, for a little fun I am giving a little gift to the first person who leaves a comment on this post and tells me what I am celebrating today!  Be sure to leave your email address so I can get your address to mail you your surprise!  Thanks so much for stopping by and have a wonderfully nightmarish Halloween season!

Zebra Butterflies?!

It is my granddaughter's birthday on Halloween Day!  She will be 5 years old!  Wow, all my grandbabies are growing so quickly!  She loves anything animal.  I was told that she loves zebras and butterflies so I decided to mix them and make a wall canvas for her!  I tried applying vinyl zebra strips to the canvas but they would not stick.  I even followed suggestions I found on line about painting the canvas a couple of times first.  I did that and it still didn't stick.  Then about applying Mod Podge.  I did that.  It still didn't stick.  So I went the really easy route and bought fabric!  Doesn't that look nice!?  She has a lot of hot pink in her room so I decided to use hot pink vinyl to make the butterflies.  When I went to buy the hot pink, I found the "Pink Fizz" color at JoAnn's.  It sparkles!  That was enough for me!  I layered a few of the butterflies with the Pink Fizz and made the canvas sparkle a bit!  I got the butterfly file from someone on the MTC forum.  I can't tell you who as I got this shortly after I bought MTC and didn't label my files as to who made them!  I know, dumb me!  Anyway, I do thank whomever made the file so that I could make this beautiful canvas for my granddaughter.  I used MTC to duplicate the butterfly and make various sizes.  Then I cut them out with my Black Cat Lynx.  Such a nice combination to work with!  When I put the single-layer butterflies on the canvas, the zebra stripes showed through just a bit so it makes it look like the butterflies are pink zebra striped!  I didn't plan that, but it is a nice touch!  I hope she likes it!

It was hard to get a good photo without having the glitter vinyl shine.  I tried with a flash (top) and without a flash (bottom).  On some of the butterflies the vinyl looks orange!  I PROMISE it is hot pink!  Thank you for stopping by my blog today and I hope you have a wonderful week!  Just as a side note - today is my 23rd anniversary!  Happy Anniversary to me!  (and my husband!)

Halloween!

 I can't believe it as already mid-October and I am just now getting my Halloween decorations post done!  Wow!  Time is going SOOOO quickly!

 This is my ever-changing hutch in my kitchen.  I have gotten rid of SO MANY decorations already, but just have to keep a few of them to make my hutch look nice!

 It is always fun to decorate my long shelf in my kitchen also.  This has changed considerably over the years and now is not too detailed at all.  I am leaning more to a simpler approach to things!  The two wreaths under the shelf are permanent keepsakes for me.  On the left is the one made by my husband's mother.  She was a very talented woman in many different areas of arts and crafts.  She passed away 16 years ago so we will have this remembrance of her love for Halloween always.  On the right is the one made by my four oldest children when they were just little and their Grandma helped them make this one evening when they were staying with her.  Both precious keepsakes!

 For years and years, when the children were little, I always found cute wooden decorations that we could paint as a family.  We would spend the first Monday of October each year painting our masterpieces.  I have many, many that have been made, but only room for a few.  To this day, even though all the kids are grown, they love to come and see some of their earlier artwork on my cupboards!

 As I have mentioned before, I also change my curtains in my kitchen for all the different holidays and seasons.  I really like my Halloween curtains.  You can't see it well in the photo, but there are shiny lightning bolts that zigzag throughout the fabric.  I love them!

Here is the fireplace in my living room.  Nothing fancy, but it keeps Halloween present throughout the main rooms.  We love the ghost!  We use that to hold the treats for our trick-or-treaters!  They all like it also!

So, as I have mentioned, I have downsized my decorations considerably, but still keep the spirit in our home with what I have left!  I hope you all have a wonderful week and a terrific Halloween season!  Happy Haunting!

And More Projects!

 This entry is going to be very picture heavy but I wanted to show some more of my projects.  I did this on a black charger with the web in silver glitter vinyl.  I put those cute little googly eyes on the spider and it turned out to be the cutest Halloween plate!  I just love it!

 On this charger I just cut out the saying and then cut a grundle of little 1/2-inch circles from purple, white and green vinyl.  I think it is super cute also!

 This was just a three-frame piece that I cut the Boo out of vinyl and the little characters out of paper.

 I had this cool piece of scrapbook paper and found this saying on another piece of scrapbook paper that I had so decided they would go well together!  The saying is done in layered vinyl and the characters in paper.

 My husband cut the wood blocks out and beveled the edges.  I painted them, put the scrapbook paper on them and cut "Wicked!" out of vinyl.  We both love how they turned out!

 This is our favorite Halloween decoration we made!  I drew the witch shoe, my husband cut it out of wood, along with the top and bottom plaques.  I painted everything with glittery paint and it sparkles so nicely!  We glued the top and bottom plaques on the shoe and then placed a black plate on top!  It looks so cute with party treats or cupcakes on it!  I love it!

The next photo is a "Fall" frame that I made.  I put small little yellow glass tiles behind the mat, cut out the letters in brown vinyl, then a rusty orange scrapbook paper, then rust-colored Stickles on top.  It turned out very nicely!

And these last three photos are of my very first craft fair that I did today!  I can safely say that it is my very LAST craft fair also!  Man, I had two weeks to get all of this stuff done and we did pretty well.  I sold most of my Halloween things and about half of my Christmas things.  Not too bad!  I only had space for one table so I did half in Halloween...

 half in Christmas...

 and brought an extra display to put up all the glitter ornaments that I made!  It turned out just fine, but I don't want to do another one!

I forgot to add this tile before the craft fair display.  This is another Kim Bright file and I just love how it turned out!  I used red glitter vinyl and it is stunning when it is turned in the light!

This was quite a long entry today, but I just wanted to show you how much fun I have been having lately, creating, making and selling!  Thanks so much for stopping by and have a wonderful week!

More Projects...

Here are some more of my projects for the holidays.  I am not sure where I got the first file, but after that one I used a lot of Kim Bright's files (you can find her files here:  http://blingology.blogspot.com)  that I purchased a while ago and just have never used.  I am sure glad that I finally did!  They are gorgeous files!  It takes a long time to cut them, and an even longer time to weed them, but it is SOOOO worth it!

In these first five projects I used vinyl using my wonderful Black Cat Lynx.  On this last one with the tile, I should have used a darker green, but I really liked the light and wanted to see how it would work.  Oh well, lesson learned!  On the glass block, I am not certain whether I like the ribbon or not.  I will have to see if I can come up with something else.  Then I think I will like it better!

This is just a paper project.  No vinyl here.  On the snowflake in "snow" I covered it in Stickles to make it sparkly.  It is really very pretty when you actually see it.

And finally, I made these sets of coasters by using 4x4 tiles and scrapbook paper.  However, I forgot to take pictures of them when they were all lying loose on the table.  The top left and middle ones are identical patterns on all four.  The right one has two with the top pattern, and two with a larger swirl pattern.  The bottom left has the words "Family", "Home", "Love" and "Life".  The middle ones are identical and the right ones all have a different picture of a butterfly with a different saying on it.  It has been a lot of fun to get a lot of crafts made.  I haven't crafted like this in a very long time!

I hope you enjoy my projects!  There will be still more coming very soon so keep checking!  Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing my projects!  Have a wonderful day!

Been Busy.....

I found a couple of patterns on the internet that I liked, pixel-traced them into MTC, did shadow layers, cut them with my Black Cat Lynx and made these cute pictures.  I placed the leaves and pumpkins on a burlap backing, then used different colors of Stickles to make the vines.  A simple project with nice results.  I needed something for fall, not just Halloween.  These are perfect!

Next I wanted to do some simple Christmas decorations.  I adore the word "Joy" so decided to make a couple of frame sets.  I think they both turned out wonderfully!  I really like the wreath for the "o" in the top picture and LOVE the glitter vinyl in the second photo.  All the letters, wreath and snowflake are done in vinyl.  I just used Christmas scrapbook paper for the backgrounds.  All made with MTC and cut on my Lynx!

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!  There will be more projects coming soon!

Wooden Rocking Horse

My husband has been busy again!  The wood-turning group that he belongs to makes a tree for the Festival of Trees every year.  They all turn ornaments to hang on the tree and make it just beautiful.  This year they asked my husband to make a little rocking horse to place beneath the tree.  Isn't she beautiful?!  She stands about 21 inches tall.  I did the mane and tail.  It is a very soft yarn.  I love the way she turned out.  I may be prejudiced but I think my husband does beautiful work!  He asked me what I was going to name her.  With my uber creative mind I responded "Horse".  :0

Have a wonderful day and thank you so much for stopping by my blog to have a peak at our little creative world!

Love Frame......

I saw this idea on Pinterest, which led me here:  http://simplystoked.blogspot.com/2011/02/book-heart-art.html.  It is such a lovely, simple project.  I changed it up a bit but like it just as much!  I used a different saying and instead of cutting all of the hearts the same size, I cut two of three different sizes.  I used my trusty MTC to design and print the saying.  We have two of the same book of poetry in our library and I used the one that looked the worst and cut out the hearts.  I chose love poems from which to cut the words for the hearts.  Then I just glued the center of each one to the other and glued the entire stack to the picture.  I folded up the edges slightly so they would fan out a bit.  Very easy.  Very pretty.

I hope you enjoyed my post today!  Thank you so much for stopping by and have a wonderful week!

There is Music on my Wall.....

Back in May Tami from http://thisandthatfromtami.blogspot.com posted a tutorial on a music wreath that she made.  I fell in extreme like!  I decided I just had to make one of those.  It has taken me until now to do so!  Her tutorial can be found here:  http://thisandthatfromtami.blogspot.com/2012/05/page-wreath-tutorial.html
I decided that I wanted one that was much larger to fit above my piano.  Instead of using hymn book-sized sheets of music, I used ones that were almost 9 x 12.  For the back layer I tore them in half lengthwise, then rolled them.  Try as I might, I COULD NOT get my ends to look like Tami's, so I just went with what they turned out like.  I think it looks just fine.  For the shorter layer, I used one quarter size of my 9 x 12 page.  My mirror is a 9-inch mirror.  I liked her black scallop behind the mirror so made one of my own with MTC and cut it out on my Black Cat Lynx.  The total width of my wreath is a whopping 29 inches!  Now I just have to figure out how to hang it.  I need some way to do it that will have enough strength to hold it.  I can't exactly use nails to put hangers on the back!  :)

Isn't it amazing how you can follow directions to the letter that someone else has posted and have a completely different result?  I still like Tami's resulting ends from rolling better than mine, but I do love how mine turned out.  Thank you so much Tami for the tutorial and the inspiration!  And thank you to all of you for stopping by to have a peek!  Have a wonderful weekend!

Edited:  I FINALLY got this hung up above my piano!  I love it!  My husband loves it!  My son loves it!  We ALL love it!  I am just so tickled with how it looks!

Amazing Artist!

My son says I am not allowed to say how "proud" I am of him or of things.  So I just want to say how very pleased I am with him and his wonderful artistic talent!

He really likes the new kind of music the kids listen to today.  You know, the kind that I can't even understand the words?  There is a story behind the above picture and it really is quite interesting.  I don't know if he would like me sharing it or not, but suffice it to say that this is an extremely creative way to portray the story.  He sees an idea in his mind and just starts drawing.  He finished this in no time at all, and I believe it is done in pencil.

This one actually shows him at work!  (He is the one in the white hat!)  He said he was bored at work and was having a very slow day, so drew this.  I don't know who the little boy is.  This probably took him only a very short time to complete.  I have saved so many of his art projects and love to look at them from time to time.  Oh, to be so talented!  He certainly didn't inherit this from me.  His dad, brothers, grandmother, uncle, etc. are all very artistic.  It's fun to see all of the creativity.

Thank you for stopping by to have a peek and for letting me brag about my son!  I hope you all have a terrific weekend!

"Un" Happy Birthday Card!

I am SO unhappy about this card!  I spent about two hours getting it just the way I wanted it!  I embossed the "white" cardstock (which is now yellow), chalked the embossing and tried to get the shading just the way I wanted it, got the "Happy Birthday" just perfect, used more chalk (just a hint of yellow) around the edges, and punched the side.  It was just the way I wanted it....I thought.  Then I got the stupid idea to use some gold glimmer mist on it to make it shiny!  What a mistake!  My husband bought me this glimmer mist for my birthday and I was excited to use it.  I sprayed a couple of sprays into the air before I actually put it on the card just in case there were any "globs" in the sprayer.  Didn't do any good!  My card is a mess now!  There are gold globs all over the card.  Plus, with just a couple of sprays, the "white" face of the card is now yellow.  It doesn't show up in the photo the way I see it.  Don't get me wrong, I love yellow.  It is my favorite color.  I just didn't want the front of my card to be THAT yellow!  I am just sick about it.  I was going to give this to a friend, but not anymore!  My dear husband bought be two other bottles besides this gold one.  I am thinking I am going to just return them all.  I think I will be depressed for a couple of minutes and then get over it and get on with another attempt at making a card!  I hope all of you are having a better day than I am!  Thanks for stopping by and listening to me whine.  I don't do it often. :)

Hubby's Been In the Kitchen!

My husband likes to cook.  Isn't that wonderful?!  Actually, he likes to bake more than cook.  We like rhubarb a lot in our house.  With this in mind, he was going to make a rhubarb cake.  I am not really fond of cake.  Actually, I don't like cake.  However, I REALLY LIKE crisps, cobblers, crumbles, etc.  Lots of fruit, crunchy top.  You get the picture.  I told him to make a rhubarb crisp instead.  He says OK.  So while I searched for the recipe, I came across a rhubarb blueberry pie.  So my mind starts to go crazy with the possibility...Honey?  Want to make a rhubarb blueberry crisp?  He thought it was a wonderful idea!  Now his mind starts racing and he came up with this recipe.  It is delicious!  However, it is a very thin crisp.  I would have used much more fruit because I like very fruity crisps.  But nonetheless, he has invented a masterpiece!  Here is the recipe:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Filling
1/4 cup granulated sugar                                              1/4 cup quick-cooking tapioca
1/4 cup light brown sugar                                                3 cups diced rhubarb
1/4 teaspoon salt (I would reduce this to 1/8)                     3 cups blueberries

2.  Combine sugars, salt and tapioca in a large bowl.  Mix well.  Add rhubarb and blueberries and mix until fruit is well coated.  Pour fruit mixture in a 9 x 13 pan.  (This is where I might have used an 8 x 8 pan to make the crisp a bit thicker.)

Topping
3/4 cup flour
4 Nature Valley Crunchy Oats 'n Honey bars (they come 2 to a packet)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons butter, chilled and cut into small pieces

3.  Using a rolling pin, crush the bars until the pieces are about the size of Grapenuts cereal.  Combine the flour, crushed bars, brown sugar and salt in a bowl.  Add butter and using a pastry blender or two knives, cut in until mixture is like coarse meal.  Distribute evenly on top of the fruit mixture.  Bake about 30 minutes in 9 x 13 (or 35-40 minutes for the 8 x 8 pan) or until top is browned and fruit is bubbly.

That's it!  It is a delicious mixture of two scrumptious fruits with a wonderful crispy top!  Enjoy and thanks so much for stopping by today!

Happy Birthday DIL!!!

This is the birthday card I made for my sweet DIL!  (Happy Birthday Keri!)   I like to put lots of color on things, and needed to use up some of my scraps, so I found five pretty colors, cut out the banner strips on my Fiscars paper cutter, placed them all next to each other in my happy birthday embossing folder and embossed them all together!  I cut a black card base and glued the strips on leaving just a bit of a space between each one to help make the embossing stand out a bit more.  The little white shape was something that was in my shapes folder so I decided I would just use it, even though it is white!  I inked the edges with Tim Holtz Distress Inks (black) and glued it on.  On the inside I used a liner that is white with little colored speckles throughout, like that tissue paper you can buy with sparkles on it...you know which one I mean, right?  Right.....? :)   I used a Stampin' Up stamp "From the minute you begin it-Hope your day has fun things in it!" and put that on the inside.  All done!  It was fast and easy and I love the colors!  Hope you like it too!  Have a wonderful day and thanks so much for stopping by!

Wedding Card and Tile

My friend is getting married Saturday and I made this card and tile for her and her new husband.

For the card, I cut a back panel and inked the edges with Tim Holtz Distress Ink "black soot".  I then glued that to the card base.  Then I used the basic shapes in MTC and made a lot of circles of different sizes.  I cut them with my Black Cat Lynx cutter.  Next I embossed each circle with a different embossing folder.  I glued the circles in place at random, putting them where I thought they might look good!  For the center circle I printed the words, inked the edge with Memento "Lilac Posies" ink, glued on a rhinestone for the "ring" and drew little small lines with a marker.  Inside a put a personal verse for the couple.

For this tile I used Oracal 631 vinyl.  I designed the saying in MTC, cut with my Black Cat Lynx, and put the vinyl on the tile.  I really like doing vinyl work.  It is so easy!

I hope you like my little projects for today.  I am so glad that you took some time to stop by my blog and have a peek.  Have a wonderful week!

Redecorated Basement!

We redecorated our basement Friday (the 13th!) and I wanted to see what all of you thought of it.  Come on, don't be shy.  Let me know what your opinions are...

First we have the family room carpet and decor;

I think the color of the fans match my couch and chair perfectly, don't you?

Second, our exercise room carpet and new decor;

I love this room because of all of the fans that create a maze throughout.  It makes life much more interesting to get to the den and storage room!  Also, one must be very athletic to be able to climb over everything to get to the bedrooms...that seem to loom very far in the distance!

Third, our den;

The focal point of this room is the stunning hole that was cut in the sheet rock under the window.  We now have the other wall that looks identical!  It is such a nice airy look!

And, last, but not least, our storage room!

This room was particularly hard to do as our pressed-wood fire bricks kept falling over when the water hit them!  They seemed to just expand and explode!  Plus, all the fabrics I had picked out for this room were all in the green box and the other very wet box on top of it.

We decided to leave out the 130 gallons of water that were in the basement.  It just didn't seem to make the decorating any easier so it had to go.  I have been able to eliminate some of our less desirable "things" in our house and have down-sized considerably through this redecorating phase.

I haven't even shown you our garage!  It is just full of fun and decorative wet books, rugs, clothing, Christmas "stuff", stuffed animals, quilts, etc.  Isn't it just wonderful?!  I was serious.  Let me know if you think I would make it in the decorating world!  I would love your input!

Have a wonderful day and thanks for checking in!