taking a look at life mid-august

hoping that my dental appointment goes well next week. I haven't been to the dentist in about 5 years. 

listening to channel 975 on the Dish. I think it's called "the Light." I enjoy it because there are actually songs from artists I like that I've never heard. Listening to the radio gets boring some times because they play the same songs over and over.

eating (finally) some tomatoes from our garden. The cucumbers are going strong and the zucchini keep growing.

drinking iced tea.
procrastinating on lots of things. What else is new? 

shredding about 900 pounds of credit card crap today. Applications for new cards, "easy cash" checks, and old statements and bills. I think I burned up the shredder. It will shred about 20 pages and then shuts off. Time to go industrial.

organizing the scrapbook room. I've been working on taking pictures out of old acidy albums and sorting them in photo boxes (for now). Throwing out stuff. Going through files in the office part of that room and weeding out and reorganizing. I've spent two whole days in there and I'm still not done.

enjoying a cooler evening walk with my dog.

hanging drapes in our living room. We have a huge 100 inch window and finding a curtain rod was a bit of a pain. I actually spray painted this one because I couldn't find a silvery one anywhere big enough. The curtains were a steal at Ross, only $19.99 for the pair, but they look a little slim, so I'm going to have to watch and see if I can find another pair. 

using the cordless drill all by myself and following the easy-peasy tips for hanging curtain rods found here. Life changing, I'm telling you.

pondering what my future in education is going to look like. Or if there will be one.

loving summer berries. I picked about 2 quarts of blueberries off our two little bushes this year. It was a good berry year in these parts.

deciding on our fall ladies' Bible study. I've picked this one. We'll have a Sunday morning group and a Wednesday night group (which I'll facilitate). It will be my first time leading a study. I'm excited, but a little bit nervous.

needing to finish the deck painting project. Here are a few pictures of the progress we've made so far. The before (it had been cleaned and power washed a few days before).

And the after. You can't really tell in this 2nd picture, but the deck boards are stained a tobacco color. Much darker brown with no red.

making embroidered quilt squares and scrapbook pages for our former pastor's wife.

thinking about presents for my niece Hannah and nephew Keegan who have birthdays in 10 days or so. 

valentine's banner



Last night I pinned a bunch of Valentine's Day stuff. Today I thought I should quit pinning and actually make something I've pinned. I wanted a banner for my cut out wall between the living room and dining room. This quick and easy heart banner was the winner. It uses one inch wide strips of paper, a stapler, and some twine. 





I had some cute Valentine's day paper (My Mind's Eye) stashed away from a previous project. The tutorial I followed used 12", 10", and 8", but I thought that was a little too big, so I cut mine 10", 8", and 6" with a 3" tab for the center. I just tried to vary the papers as I was making them so no two were the same.

Line up the strips and staple at the bottom. Then roll in toward the center and stick the 3" strip in for the hanger and staple again. Punch a hole in the hanger and string the twine through. 

I like that this banner doesn't have a front and back. It can be enjoyed from both rooms. Cute and easy. My kind of project.

cookies!!!

This past Sunday afternoon I had a packed out little house with the guests all bringing in tray after tray of fabulous Christmas cookies. I had ten friends this year join me for my 4th annual Christmas cookie exchange and it was awesome!

I made these cute little Santa Suit invitations (yet another pinterest idea). I set up an assembly line on the dining room table and whipped them out rather quickly. Straight strips of paper, square and circle punches, and an edge punch. I didn't emboss or make them too fancy because,
1.) I don't have an embossing thing-a-ma-jig, and
2.) I was pressed for time and needed to get them in the mail.
I do send out a facebook save-the-date message a few weeks ahead of time, but the invitation lists all the specifics about what to bring. In case you're wondering, I have them bring 5 dozen of their cookie. And an appetizer. Because we have to eat real food first ;)

I reused my centerpiece from the ladies' luncheon the week before and here's the table all decked out with Christmas yumminess.

We had oatmeal fudge bars, peanut butter blossoms, almond joy cookies, no bakes, powdered sugar almond crescents, an almond shortbread, a caramel-y/pretzel-y/chocolate-y bar, and these cute peanut butter melty snowmen. Can cookies get any cuter than this, people? I think not.

I loved these Oreo truffles. Basically, a bag of Oreos crushed in the food processor, add in a block of cream cheese, roll into balls, dip in white chocolate, and sprinkle candy cane pieces on top. I can't even begin to tell you how good these things are.

After appetizers and chit chat, we get down to the serious business. . . dividing up the cookies. We just circle around the table and fill our Rubbermaid containers. We try to keep the fighting and nail gauging to a minimum!

It's a super fun time and it forces me to clean my house and get the decorations out, and when it's all done, I get a freezer full of all different sorts of cookies.

Group shot!

And a yearly tradition shot. . .

My trusty friend, Barbara, wasn't with us this year because she was enjoying Christmas in New York City with her son, daughter-in-law, and two cute grandkids. Lucky duck. As you can tell, she was missed. And so was her purple sweater :)

my pinterest inspired ladies' christmas event

So, I've been busy the last few weeks planning and preparing for yesterday's Christmas party for the ladies at our church. This is the third time I've coordinated this event and it's a lot of work, but totally worth it in the end. It took me a while to get the theme, and I was starting to get worried because I kept scouring Pinterest for ideas and talking to friends, but I was coming up with nothing. It wasn't until the end of September, after our Fall Festival of Missions weekend, that it all came together.

Our church conference theme for the ladies' events in 2013 was Come Walk With Me. So our spring retreat and fall festival both took on those sorts of ideas. Well, at Fall Festival, one of our guest speakers was a gal from Hope Teams International. She spent quite a bit of time talking about Project Manuelito, which is an orphanage many of our churches sponsor, in Honduras. She mentioned something about Christmas shoes for the kids there, and I took that idea and rolled with it. Thank you, Pinterest, for helping me to pull it all together. I really am not very good at coming up with original ideas, but I can surely use resources like Pinterest and the interwebs to make it happen. Why reinvent the wheel? That's what I always say.

So our theme became The Christmas Shoes, and since that was kind of an unusual theme, I told the table hostesses they could do anything Christmas related, it didn't necessarily have to be shoes. But some of them managed to incorporate shoes into their tables and it was so fun!

Here's my table. My original plan was to fold the napkins like elf shoes, but after watching the youtube video a couple of times, I realized that the reason it wasn't working was because I needed rectangular napkins, not square ones. I ended up going with this pocket fold instead. I also had been seeing lots of yarn trees on pinterest, and when I was at Craft Warehouse and saw the cone trees 40% off and the chunky red and lime green yarn 2 for $3, I knew what I was going to do for my centerpiece. Super easy. Super cute.

The hostess of this table made everyone salt dough ornaments in the shape of a high heeled shoe. She filled her purple shoes with Hershey's kisses.

 Silverware wrapped up in Christmas socks.

 Santa's boots filled with glittery ornaments.

 Santa's boots again, this time as flower pots.

 Nativity themed table. . .

 complete with an ornament for each guest.

 Pretty Willow Tree angels.

 Another Nativity themed table with hand knit coffee cozies for everyone to take home.

This game was super fun. I thought everyone would think I was a dork for making them draw a picture on a paper plate that they couldn't look at, but they loved it. The finished artwork was pretty fabulous too.

One of my favorite things about this event is picking out some sort of prize for something. Sometimes it's just a door prize - like check under your plate for a tag and win a pineapple (that was last year) or whoever bought the first ticket wins something theme related. Well, this year, the winners from each table got a bottle of nail polish (in keeping with the shoe theme) and I made tags that said for your mistletoes. Another stolen idea from Pinterest. It helped that I scored a fabulous deal on nail polish at Ulta!

We also have an ornament exchange, and every year I've hosted, I've always heard ladies say that they have no idea who their ornament was from and they wished they did so they could thank them. So this year, we just swapped around the individual tables. I found this left-right Nativity story and it was perfect! I only read part of it because it's kind of long, and I had requests to get people copies of the story to them. They loved it. Seriously, there was so much laughter I was cracking up while reading it.

I always want to do a little something to decorate the room. It's a good sized room with a stage that we don't really use. I saw this idea for stage decorations and loved it, but it didn't work out quite how I had envisioned. A man from church brought me some good sized pieces of really thick (and hard to cut) cardboard from work and I went old school with the overhead projector and traced out some trees. I wanted them to be bigger than what I ended up with, but the way the cardboard was cut, I could only get them like this. I bought metallic gold, silver, and bronze spray paint and here's what I ended up with. Propped them up on a table and it turned out to be a great place to collect the socks and money for shoes for the orphanage.

We ate an amazing catered lunch, sang carols, watched a slide show with pictures of the orphans we were helping out, and our pastor's wife always reads us a Christmas story. So much fun, but I'm glad it's over. I've still got pumpkins and Indian corn to put away. My Christmas cookie exchange is next Sunday, so time to transform our house from fall to a Christmas wonderland.

playing with paper

Since my dining room table has been covered with scrapbook stuff for like a month, and it had been a while since I made a card, I dug through my stuff the other day and made a few. 

The first was a pinterest inspiration. I didn't have the stamp they used, because I'm not a stamper, but I did have this die cut on one of my cricut cartridges that I thought would work. I actually painted the blue background with water colors. I used water color paper which has a neat texture to it and tried to go for something in the ombre effect. I made several of these, some in pink. I didn't have a sympathy stamp and, at the time, didn't think I had a sympathy sentiment to cut out, (but later found one) so I hand wrote on the front.

Next up, a birthday card that made my eyes go crazy. I sort of got my inspiration from this card I saw on pinterest. So much going on in those paper patterns. Combine that with the bright pink and I was seeing spots. But it turned out super cute. You can't see it, but I cutsied up the inside and used that same diecut that's on the first card. The card base was black, so I added more pink on the inside so I could write on it.

A thank you note on kraft cardstock with the pink water color paper. I used black chalk ink which I don't really like, but it was all I had. It kind of came out gray and not very clear. I need something darker that makes more of a statement. Any recommendations?

 And finally, a couple of cute mini cards made entirely of scraps. They;re about 3 in. X 3 in.

And now I should probably get that table cleaned up.

a pinterest-inspired bridal shower

I had the privilege of planning a bridal shower for a friend from church. Katie's story is similar to mine - we're both teachers, and we both waited a loonnnggggg time to find Mr. Right. I wanted her shower to have the same kind of special touches that my church shower had. (Sidenote: I get to be her honeymoon sub when she's whisked off for her first week of married life.)

So I began scouring pinterest back in January for ideas. You can see my board here. I kept the decorations simple, using her colors of purple and gray. I took her vellum-overlayed invitation apart and used the photo in a frame I had and bought the beaded stems and purple jar at Michaels on sale.

 I made the banner out of chipboard and cardstock.

The games were super cute as well as short and to the point: fun. (My kind of games.) We played "Who Has the Groom" which was hilarious. I printed out the tuxedos and then cut out faces of famous men, a few guys from church, and the groom, sealed them up in individual envelopes, and whoever found the groom won. Only problem was I made too many cards and after twice around the room with 30 ladies no one picked the groom, so I gave the prize to the bride. We also played a version of "Who Said It?" I made the little K & D flip stick things, read through the questions and answers, and the guests flipped it to the initial of the one they thought said it. I put my cricut to good use for this event. Note: there was a lot of prep time involved in these two games, but it was totally worth it. Seriously, the Who Has the Groom was absolutely hysterical. Someone ended up with Al Roker. Yeah for google images!!!

The prizes were hand soaps from Bath & Body Works. I made the tags that said, "From Katie's shower to your sink." That idea was totally stolen from my friend Jenny who made homemade soaps as a favor for one of my bridal showers. Her tags said "From Wendy's shower to yours." I've always loved that idea and I've had it tucked away ever since.

I really wanted to make cupcakes and try my hand at making this cute bridal dress pull-apart cupcake cake, but then I had to get real and tell myself it wasn't going to happen. I didn't have any cake decorating practice, nor did I have any cake decorating tips, tubes, and whatnot, and I was sick. So off to Costco I went to order a cake. I loved the design and it was really good, but I was less than thrilled with their interpretation of an initial monogram. Oh well, let it go.

 Other ladies from church helped with food and drinks, so I didn't have to worry about that part too much.

There were 30-35 ladies that came and she received lots of good stuff. . .

 like this super cute apron,

 and a beautiful handmade quilt from her mother-in-law to be.

We had the shower at the home of another friend from church. They live in a beautiful home right on the Columbia River. Here's the back of their house.

How's this for a view?

So all in all it was a beautiful day for a beautiful shower for a beautiful bride-to-be. I was happy to help pull it all together.