Oooo..

OK.. so I don't normally get very excited over cricut catridges (to be honest I find most to be cheesy looking) but I WANT this one. It comes with pretty much a billion options and it is cute cute cute. Click the picture to see more details.. and check out the cute little birds and the fancy corners. I can't wait to own this one!! I hope they keep coming out with better catridges like they have been lately. I picked up indie art from Walmart recently and can't wait to use it.

Jude giggled today, for the first time! I just about died of happyness. It's such a complte joy every time he does something new.. and speaking of new, he is finally sleeping through the night. 6-7 hours at a time! I am so proud of my little man :) He is such a ladykiller. I can't get anything done when running errands because every second woman I walk by needs to stop and fuss over him. I think he's getting a bit of an ego ;) hehe.

My neighbors had another litter of kittens today... and I was so incredibly saddened to find that out. Normally, I would be overjoyed about new kittens but these neighbors already have 2 litters of young kittens that seem underfed and they are constantly roaming around the parking lot. When we leave doors open they run into our home and/or our car like they want to escape to somewhere better. The fluffy gray one saw me through my window and came up and started mewling at me, and it pretty much broke my heart. I think I am going to call animal control tomorrow anonyously. I really hate to have to resort to that but I truly believe these kittens need to be removed from these people (they will take them to the humane society). Luckily, our friend Jenna took one home after our party on Saturday but there are so many more that need people to love and care for them. I wish I could take them all in myself.

On a happier note, Scrapscene posted my letters tutorial! I love that website, I read it almost daily and am trying to read all of the archives as well (I'm on page 51 so far). Check it out and bookmark it if you haven't already. The best part is, the owner is a Canadian! Scrapping Cents also used my tutorial on their blog!

Awesome Times

So, our party last night went well. Everyone enjoyed my snacks and the Karaoke went over well. There were still four people here this morning at 10am so I think that signifies a sucess lol :) I think Matt is hurtin' pretty bad today tho. I am so happy to be getting to know people here and making new friends, and I'm really happy we moved here (it just took some getting used to in the beginning). It's great to be surrounded by wonderful people in such a beautiful place.

I went to breakfast and then to the flea market today with Sharlene and managed to find a few awesome things. Check out the cabinet shelf I got for $7



I'm going to re-paint it, but isn't it awesome?! It's going to be a perfect embellishment center. I also got a couple spools of vintage lace/ribbon.



I only paid $2 a roll for these and they each have 20 yards on them. Not exactly sure what I'm going to do with the excess but I just thought they were too pretty to pass up. I also got a glass jar, a little ceramic unicorn, a couple baby toys for Jude, and the new issue of Domino Magazine. I'm definitely going back to that Flea market again next Sunday! oh! and yesterday we were driving by a garage sale and I spotted a long shelf I just had to have so I begged Matt to stop and I got the shelf for $8 and found a brand new unopened SNL Dvd Trivial Pursuit game for $5! This weekend was the weekend of awesome bargains :D

Sorry I'm so absent!

So, I haven't posted in a few days! I wish I had more time to devote to this blog lately... but I'm busy! Matt started his second job this week so he has been around a bit less. We're also having a party tomorrow and I've been busy preparing for that. On the menu:

(o) Buffalo Chicken Dip
(o) Tomato Avocado Mango Salsa
(o) Goat Cheese Torta
(o) Mini Stuffed Potato Boats
(o) Various Chips /Party Snacks

Most of his friends have never been to our house and none of them have ever tasted my cooking so I want to impress them. Unfortunately, impressing people is a lot of work lol.

Jude got his first innoculations last Friday. My poor little man cried *real* tears. I think I was more upset than he was though. It's scary the needles they use - they're as big as the ones that adults get. He also slept though the night last night.... 11pm to 5:30am. I am so proud of him. He's 13lb 4oz now and 24 inches long. I an't take him out anywhere without all of the ladies flocking to him. He's going to be a little heartbreaker I can just tell.

I haven't had any time to do any crafting but I did get some decorating done in my craft room, yay! I also managed to take a trip to the LSS and get some goodies which I can't wait to use.


Anyways.. until next week (just kidding, at least I hope not). I shall update soon with photos of my craft room, the newly decorated nursery, and my party food :D

I miss you my love

This video is making me majorly homesick. I used to drive those streets almsost daily. My god do I ever miss that city.

Happy Father's Day

First off, I want to say Happy Father's Day to Matt - it's is first! He is an awesome daddy :) Second I want to share this video



I can't stop listening to this song. It's not the typical kind of music I like but the lyrics/video are really funny and catchy. I like the version without akon better but I couldn't find that one on youtube.

We're having a housewarming party this weekend and I'm getting pretty excited. We used to have fairly regular parties in Calgary. I love having people over for fun times and I make pretty good party food. Judy is letting us borrow her karaoke machine for it too, yay!

I've been pretty busy with wedding prep lately, it's getting exciting now! Just over 3 months away..

June 15th Challenge

A photo of the sunset on a beach in PEI last Summer.

Making your letter stickers go further

Since gas prices have been going up up up, my already small scrapbook supply budget has gone down down down! I've been trying to make my supplies stretch further and I came up with a cool idea today.

Something I use a lot of is letter stickers for titles, especially American Crafts thickers. I was looking at some of my half empty sheets today and noticing that when a sticker is peeled off, there is still a little outline of the letter on the backing sheet. I thought about cutting that out and using it on my page, but unless I always want to use white lettering that's kinda boring. So, I came up with an idea!

To do this, you will need:



(o) The backing sheet from your letter stickers
(o) Small scissors (I use cutter bee) or a craft knife, whichever works best for you for cutting detailed areas
(o) Loose glitter or flock. I have even used loose eyeshadow or crushed up powdered eyeshadow to do this. (I was/am a makeup artist so I have alot of eyeshadow sitting around that I need to use up). The loose glitter shown in my photo and used on the letters is from the dollar store and cost me $1 for 5 colors!
(o) Glue. A glue pen will work, or for an even cheaper alternative use white elmer's glue and a small paintbrush.
(o) A nail file or sandpaper.
(o) I forgot to put this in the photo, but an embossing tool or ballpoint pen with no ink left in it.



First, cut your letter out of the sheet. Next, take your pen/embossing tool and go over the outline of the letter while applying pressure. The outline is usually very faint so I find this just helps to make your outline a little bit more visible when applying the glue. Don't use a pen with ink in it or your outline will smudge once you apply the glue.

Second, gently file/sand the letter. The backing paper is smooth so the stickers can be easily peeled off and the glue doesn't like to stick to it.

Fill in your letter with glue, and then apply the loose glitter or flock. Shake off the excess. I usually blow on them a little to get the rest of the glitter that shaking doesn't remove.

Trim the white from around your letter. If your outlines were a bit shaky or you went out of the lines with the glue a little, you can fix that during this step.

Tada, your result:



If you wanted a thicker chipboard look, you could glue your letter to a piece of cardboard and then cit it out. Try a cereal box or kleenex box!

So - yay! You save that sticker backing from going into a landfill, add an extra handmade touch to your pages, and have beautiful titles in custom colors. Try printing off your titles on plain white paper using fancy fonts that you downloaded for free online and using this same trick for an even cheaper alternative to stickers!

Also - here is a layout I did today/last night. I'm going to be framing this one and giving it to my mom as a late mother's day present (on Father's day - kindof ironic lol)



And some gratuitous cuteness for the heck of it..

Tia !

My friend Tia started a blog:

http://canaderican.blogspot.com/

Go read it for some awesome photos/recipes of her cooking. I'm drooling over the taco dip.

All about ME :)

I seem to have been a bit absent from blogging lately. I've been obsessed with reading home decor websites and searching youtube for videos on organizing and DIY products for the home. When I was pregnant, I was unable to do any nesting due to moving and all of that and now that I can I am *loving* it!!! :) I am working on my scrap room usually every day and it's really coming together. I have so many plans for things around the house. For example;

I'm going to hang a set of brown curtains on either side of my shower. I have a curtain with blue/brown swirls already so this will look really cool! There are already hooks on the shower to pull them aside with.

Planning on picking up some shiny aqua material and making faux curtains on the door of my craft cabinet. I am so into pink/aqua lately!

I want to build a little window box for underneath the window in our upstairs bathroom, and paint it blue. There used to be a towel bar there but it broke and we can't find a bar that fits in the fixtures so I'll build the box just big enough to fit between them, and then store rolled up towels and stuff in it.

Currently working on a hanging bird mobile for the scraproom and a 'create' banner.

Covering my formula can in PP so it looks pretty on the counter.

Using a bunch of tin cans and got gluing them together after covering in paper to create a pen storage space (so that they can lie flat).

Adding fabric underneath my coffee table to hide the baskets on the shelf under it. Almost like a bedskirt for a coffee table lol! I want to do this w/ my computer desk and the table in the scraproom too.

I have a bunch of art to hang on the walls, esp in the living room. I have a painting above the TV that says my name on it.. and I want to add more around the tv in a big random group, so the TV is like a picture itself. The plan is to do a rainbow color scheme and start with red on the left and end with violet on the right.

I need more time in the day!! And money for that matter. I'm hoping to go to garage sales some day soon and pick up things for my home that I can alter.

Anyways... onto the big blog challenge for the day.. blog about yourself. Hmm.. where to start?? I don't really like talking about myself all that much, I find it hard to come up with interesting things to say lol! So, I'm going to just post a few random facts about me.

1. I spent my entire life in Alberta and now I live on Prince Edward Island.
2. I have a 2 month old son.
3. I am getting married on september 27th.
4. My favorite color is pink.
5. I'm scared of the dark.
6. I like dancing and indie music.
7. I'm pretty funny, especially once you know me better.
8. I have kinda big feet.
9. I'm a perfectionist, a worrier, and get anxious a lot. I'm hard on myself.
10. I probably nag Matt too much.
11. I appreciate a really good piece of grass.
12. I LOVE hockey, but other sports bore me to death.
13. I love bargain shopping. Well, shopping in general honestly. I don't care what I am buying but I love to browse!
14. I drive a burnt orange Honda Element named Cloud Rider.
15. I am very proud and greatful to be a Canadian.
16. I get jealous easily.
17. I am very shy and nervous when I meet new people for the first time.
18. I kick ass at karaoke.
19. I am a makeup artist, and have worked for almost every major line and done things like theatre posters, billboards, restaurant menus, fashion shows, local tv, etc.
20. I love guys wearing glasses.

So enough about me. I want to know - how is everyone dealing with the gas prices? It's well over $5 a gallon where I am and has been for a while. I live on an island so everything has to be driven here from the mainland and I notice the prices of everything going up. A 4L thing of milk is $7! I'm beginning to majorly stress about money. I am on maternity leave and not making a lot, and unfortunately wages here are nowhere near as good as what they were in Calgary. Matt is making less than half of what he made in Alberta. I hate being broke.. we seem to end up fighting a lot and I hate eating so much pasta all the time lol. Driving less is unfortunately not an option, and we have a vehicle that is fairly good on gas. I think the world is going to end or something soon, lol. Well not really, but this is not good and I don't see it getting better any time soon.

Photopost!

I made this mini album as a gift for Matt's stepbrother's wedding.

Inside the mini album
I made this silly Unicorn plaque last week.... I can't wait to put it up on the wall. It's very sparkly!
Some of the polymer clay stuff I was working on. Matt made the little version of me :P unfortunately, I accidently forgot these in the oven and uh.. kinda burned em.

I organized my bookshelf by color.

I used some PP I wasn't going to use in a LO on the door to my scraproom! I'm going to do the closet door, too. It's K+Co.
One of the shelves in our upstairs bathroom.
Jude's lil wee feet.
Jude's newly acquired skill: smiling.