New Digital Camera Needed

Hi everyone!
Well it is sad to say but my digital camera is no longer working. It has been repaired once in the past and since I can get more mega pixels, etc. now for a cheaper price than fixing this 4 year old camera I am off to some stores to shop around.

Unfortunately I will not be able to post any pics of my hand painted cards until I purchase a new camera. Hopefully I will find something suitable within the next few days.

Keep checking back .....

Darlene

Doing a few creative things lately

I just realized that I've been a bit behind in my posting. I honestly have been working hard in our back yard. My husband and I have been building a beautiful picket fence for our vegetable garden and we have begun designing a privacy fence too. We are in need of replacing our basic yard fence and we decided some privacy would be nice.

I managed to make a few of these butterflies this week. These are great on cards and scrapbook layouts. I hand emboss them and hand chalk the colors. Of course I have to add some bling so they have some very classy bodies!

I also just completed a hand painted design for a birthday card. I used the bright papers and the design consists of white daisies with yellow centers. They look very pretty. I'll post the final card soon. Off to the yard for another long day of setting posts and cutting wood.

Take care everyone,

Darlene

FUN Visit with Eli

Tom and I enjoyed a great visit with our grandson Eli last weekend! We had a busy day on Saturday with Todd, Karli, Eli and Heather visiting for the day. We also had two crazy dogs getting involved in all the fun (especially with Eli's toys). Todd and Karli had a wedding to go to so we had Eli over night Saturday.

He had a nice bath (Heather helped and got as wet as Eli) and then snuggled in his blanket while Tom and I read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to him. He fell asleep in my arms so off to bed he went.

This photo was taken on Sunday morning right before he was being picked up by mom and dad for another busy day of fun. He's just a cutie!

We miss you little one!

The Attack of the .....Evil Dinner Fork

Oh Boy....let me start out this blog post with a little background on my wonderful a.k.a. dangerous (to himself) hubby Tom.

Most of my family and friends know how many times I say the sentence "Hmm....Tom hasn't left a trail of blood for me lately. He's due!"

My husband has had 911 called because his breathing stopped after his shoulder surgery, has almost passed out while on the roof leaning over telling me of his intent (I used the mother tone at that time and told him to lay on his back and pass out THAT way because I wasn't able to catch him), has fallen down, and also up, the stairs and injured his shoulder (weeks of physical therapy), had a 2 3/4" gash in his arm requiring 20 stitches, walked directly into the safety gate across the doorway and made an immediate lunge forward almost hitting his forhead into the wall in front of him (Flamingo knee position), almost biffing it directly into our plate glass window with scissors in his hand because he was avoiding the dog at his feet, need I go on....I think you all have the picture. He's a very dangerous man to HIMSELF. I've also come home from work in previous years to trails of blood on the floor. You learn very quickly to not be too reactive when you have this type of character in your life. You never know what you are going to find at the end of the trail. He also makes a great subject for pictures and humor on those "remember when" family stories" moments.

Well to get to the point of this post. My wonderful guy decided to make dinner for me Sunday night because I was on the phone with my son driving back to Missouri and I was helping him pass some road time. We were having a nice conversation when I said to him "hold on...Tom was that an injury walk I just saw?" I had been sitting in my bedroom by the doorwall just chilling out but I could see directly down the hall leading toward the main livingroom and kitchen. Tom's answer was "Well I'm not sure, it might be". I asked him if he needed me to get off the phone and assist him and he said no he was doing just fine. My son heard it all going on and said "Mom you might want to go in the bathroom and check on him. You know how Tom is and he might have actually hurt himself. He won't say anything until it's all taken care of". I asked Tom the question again and he admitted that he poked himself. I then asked for greater detail expecting the hear he was using a sharp knife to trim the chicken breasts he was cooking. I even said "Did you cut your self with a knife?" His reply was very disturbing and I truly didn't believe him. Let me inform all of you that my hubby is quite a jokester so you never really know the truth. Tom stated "No, it was a fork." I said "Yeah right!" He then said "No really, I stuck a fork in my finger." He again said he didn't need any help until I heard him talking to himself from the bathroom complaining about the bandaid wrappers....yes plural ....WRAPPERS. When Tom uses the plural form of a word in this type of situation I am already thinking Emergency Room.

I told my son I better go and off to the bathroom I went. NOT to my surprise did I find a sink full of let me gently said "red colored water" with a large collection of kleenex wrapped around his finger (that WAS NOT really stopping the bleeding very well). It finally stopped after I told him to sit down and hold his hand up high while I prepared the bandage. I asked him for the whole story and this is was he told me.

He had started to cook the chicken breasts in the pan (sprayed PAM so they wouldn't stick) but it was getting a bit dry and he thought he would add some butter. Well the butter was in the freezer. He unwrapped a frozen quarter stick and instead of cutting a chunk off on the cutting board and taking it to the pan he decided to use the pan as a prop and use the fork to pop a small chunk off into the pan. He said his instincts told him not to do it but he did it anyway. Well needless to say, he's a strong guy and the butter isn't THAT frozen and he used all his might and the butter broke off pretty easily and the fork when into his finger. I honestly can't imagine a dull normal dinner fork impailing a finger. The worst part is that it didn't just go in.... it went in one side of his index finger and out under the the tip of the nail of that same finger. Just the fact that the fork tine gets a bit wider in size is what stopped it so you get the picture. WOW. I can't believe it was only one tine too....usually Tom would do at least two for effect!


To make this long story as short as possible he's all bandaged and recuperating with a nice black and blue finger tip. He just got feeling back in it this morning.

My goodness.....there's no lack of excitement in this house LOL!

Have a SAFE week everyone!
Darlene

Scrapbook Room Re-Do Part 4

Tom finished installing all the molding/trim and I have filled the nail holes, sanded and painted them. It really sets off the colors I chose for the room. I painted the trim a "satin" finish which is the same color as the flat ceiling paint. It brings the whole room together. It's hard to see the exact color but the beige is a nice warm tone.






We added the register cover and vacuumed all the dust. We're very happy with how it looks so far. We now need to install the doors and then we will design the wall unit. This should be fun to decide exactly what we want and make it to our plans.








Sadie just relaxed once the vacuuming was done! She's a BIG help....NOT!





I also took a little time to create these fun 3D Origami flowers. I did some sanding and stamping on these so they could be used on more masculine scrapbook pages or cards. I really like making these!

See you in the near future.

An Awesome Day in Michigan

Wow were we blessed with beautiful sun and a gorgeous blue sky all day today. We watched the sunrise and enjoyed how it hit the decorator pillow on our spider back chair in the livingroom. You couldn't have asked for a prettier sight this morning. These aren't the best pics....I'm still saving pennies for an SLR camera so these will have to do for now.



I also had made some homemade veggie soup. I decided to hold back on adding any meat and go strickly veggies only. WOW it was so good just to have something basic once in a while. I set the table and put croutons and parmesan cheese out for toppings. I told my hubby Tom to go ahead and add the goodies and I would add mine after. Here is the results of our soup adventures.



The beginning of the "soup pot". I put onions, garlic, fresh mushrooms, cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini, swiss chard, spinach, carrots, celery, sweet red and yellow peppers and seasonings along with the chicken broth.


Almost done.... nice a basic. We loved it!

My boring place setting.....

and then Tom's creation....

He said you MUST have a smiley face at all times. LOL

Enjoy your weekend everyone....

Darlene

Today was a day of PLAY

We decided that our fur babies have destroyed almost every toy they own so Tom and I went on a small shopping trip for new dog toys. It's very hard to find something that Gretchen can't chew through. She's a very gentle dog but has very strong jaws and doesn't realize her strength. This is their first "Flying Squirrel" in the AFTER stage and the new one we bought today. Hmmm.....I wonder how long it will take until we have another after stage!?!

She loves to play tug of war with our other dog Sadie and also her parents! I'm just not strong enough to tug with her very long so I'm very glad Tom is here to assist. She sometimes pulls him off balance and he is a very strong guy.

After taking this pic I can see that I will be staining the deck this spring LOL! Winter in Michigan is the pits sometimes. It sure takes its' toll with outside maintenance.

Here are a few pics of our day today. It was still a bit chilly out but the girls are willing to play outside in anything. I should say the girl (singular) because our Brittany Sadie seems to be a bit lazy lately. She's more interested in observing the playground instead of participating on it.

They also got a new duck tuggie and a super strong Kong. Gretchen seems to really like the duck. Sadie hasn't decided if it's worth the effort yet or not.

Thanks for checking in.....have a super week and I'll be back with a scrapbook room update in a couple of days. The molding is almost painted!!!! YAY

Darlene

The Wood Floor - Part 3

We have been working very hard on installing our Brazilian Cherry wood floor in the scrapbook room. It's been very easy to do as long as you don't have two dogs coming to visit every 5 minutes and helping. Seems like we have alot of canine supervisors lately. I was able to capture a couple of pictures of one of the biggest interruptions during this project!!!! By the way...I really am helping :-)

To back up a bit....

We had a beautiful oak hardwood floor in this room but it was just awfully worn out. This home was built in 1967 and even though it has been updated throughout most of the living area this floor hasn't been touched since then. Tom and I enjoyed alot of discussion and decided that it would be faster, less expensive and also less messy if we layed down a new floor rather than renting 2 sanders (1 large and 1 edger), restaining and finishing the existing floor. Now that the project is done I think we made the right decision!

We purchased 7 boxes of flooring going by the graph on the floor package and to our wonderful surprise we are able to return 2 boxes. This manufacturer was very generous with their square footage estimates. We will get approximately $85 back so we can go buy the door and floor moldings and not spend any extra money.

The process of each row went quite quickly.

The floor is now done and we just LOVE it. Tom is putting in the transition strip to go from our hall carpet to the new wood floor and then we can begin installing the molding.

Everything is coming together just as I visualized it to be. How exciting!

I'll post more updates on the molding and installation of new closet and entrance doors. We will then move onto designing the wall shelving unit. That will take a bit to finish I'm sure.

Scrapbook Room Re-Do

Part 2

I have been working pretty hard on this scrapbook room. I had an old wallpaper border that of course decided to NOT be strippable like advertised. So I spent a few hours with my Paper Tiger tool, wallpaper stripper and some elbow grease. I finished removing all the old paper and then washed the entire room with a cleaner and degreaser. Finally I had clean walls!

I decided to paint the ceiling a nice tan color. I have always had white ceilings in my home so I took a deep breath and painted it a color. Wow to I love it! What a new look for such a warm cozy room. It brought out the dark metal in my ceiling fixture (that is what I was hoping for) and it will coordinate well with the new dark wood floor. This has been such an exciting project for me. I can see each little piece of my vision coming to fruition a step at a time.

I had fun doing the wallpaper too! Every time I do a remodeling project in this house I talk out loud to myself about the builder (and not in a good way!). I can't believe that from the ceiling to the floor on a corner of the room was off by 1". Of course I would not have ever noticed that if I hadn't decided to wallpaper and needed a plumb line for the first piece. Wow what a surprise. With the wallpaper choice being a subtle stripe behind the damask print I would have really been in trouble if I had cheated on the first piece and didn't use a plumb line. The room would have looked like it was in a fun house instead. Now it's nice and straight. It looks wonderful and I am very happy with the results so far.

The final piece.............yippee!

I love the texture on this damask print.

Another close up pic.

The flooring is the next step. We had success with finding our flooring today and opted for a nice Brazillian Cherry. I can't wait to get started putting it in with my hubby.

More updates on the floor soon :-)

Darlene

My Surprise!

My wonderful husband surprised me with a beautiful bouquet of roses last Thursday. I was having an awful day and he called me from the cell to see how I was doing. I told him that I was managing but.....was feeling a bit lousy. He came home with these beauties! What a sweetheart he is. It sure cheered me up and they are just as gorgeous today as they were Thursday. The scent is unbelievable!

Thanks honey!! I love you so much (and when I don't get the flowers too).

I hope you all had a great Valentine's Day with your loved ones.

I'm off to continue painting the scrapbook room. Pretty soon it will be wallpaper time. I just LOVE this paper and I can't wait to see it on the wall.

Take care and have a great week!