Hi! I have a habit of diving into altering projects without ever taking a before picture. So you will just have to trust me when I say this was a natural wood color with metal letters screwed on it that read “letters, bills, misc”. This organizer hung by the telephone in my grandmother’s kitchen for as long as I can remember. These colors were her favorite, so in a way I made it mine, but I feel like I made it even more hers as well.

I removed the metal words (and stashed them for a future project), and then jazzed up the whole thing with black paint (I used an Elmer’s paint pen- worked perfectly for this project!) And then covered the rest with papers (pink paislee), ribbon and sparkles.

The quote is by Mother Theresa and says: “We can do not great things, only small things with great love.”

Well, with all my lazy, book devouring days this month, of course I can pull off a book review! (In fact, I could pull off about 6 this week alone. . .yes, it’s that bad). “Return to Sullivan’s Island” was one of my favorites so I’m starting there. Written by novelist Dorothea Benton Frank, this book is part of a larger conglomeration of stories called “Lowcountry Tales”, and there is a book preceding this one called “Sullivan’s Island”. The two do not need to be read in order, as they contain independent enough stories to stand alone, or to be enjoyed together.

Return To Sullivan’s Island is a story about the second generation of characters, namely Beth Hayes, an aspiring writer. She is expected to return to the large family’s now empty home, Island Gamble, to serve as it’s caretaker while her mother fills soem of her long time dreams. The house is haunted by the generations past, and is a character in an of itself that weaves its power and gives it’s opinions and services as it pleases, according to the fancy of grandmothers, grandfathers, uncles and even the long gone hired help. Weaving Southern charm and superstition, a cast of cleverly executed characters is born, and the stories they tell and trouble they find is quite interesting.

Well written and expertly unfolded, the story will keep you captivated and turning pages until the end, and does so without being terribly creepy or sensationalized. It is simple, yet quirky, comfortable yet unexpected, and a fantastic summer read!

Ok- The winner of the Chicobags is

#6

I would love to win this!

Comment by Jane — June 8, 2009 @ 2:45 pm | Edit This

Jane, you have e-mail (if it turns out that you don’t, e-mail me).

Thanks for entering guys!

It has been a wild few days- Jonas’ birthday among many, many obligations and outings and things to do. I just haven’t had a second to post!

So- today, rather than read me. . .go check out this poem. I adore it. It’s so me right now, and so beautifully expressed.

Lil’ man, as you can imagine, is usually a line for a boy, but I thought it worked very well for a layout about being an Air Force wife. I distressed my papers with Glimmer mist, especially the papers I used for the paper posies. The orange paper is actually the same cardstock as the background only covered in Glimmer Mist and then distressed until unrecognizable. I got the color by mixing orange and sand glimmer mist together, a little bathroom alchemy, if you will. To get the cardstock as distressed as possible, I got it wet, misted it and then scrunched it up and used it like a towel to clean up the mist mess in my sink. I know, my methods are amazing hee hee!

Making the paper posies is quite simple- just cut 3 circles in 3 different sizes (I used circle punches), then layer them up and pop a button in the center. Of course, I have to distress the tar out of nearly everything so mine are misted, inked, edge distressed and crumpled to within an inch of their lives before they hit the page.

That gorgeous red ribbon/lace was stolen from off my parent’s suitcase handles when they visited in march. I know, I have no shame. Thankfully, I have parents who understand my strange magpie behavior, and who were just fine with me swapping out their ribbons with some fun bright green trims.

Alrighty- let’s get down to brass tacks.

1) I forgot to post the winner of the pump! So lucky #39:

#

I’m SO in need of a good electric breast pump. I had one with my other two, but since we’ve moved so much, it has disappeared. I even went to the storage to get it out of the box where I thought I had it, and it was GONE. Gone. So now, I have a manual pump that hurts and doesn’t work all that well, so a double electric pump would really be a life saver. Daniel just turned 3 months.

Comment by Ellie — April 22, 2009 @ 6:44 pm

Congrats! Send me your info and I will send you your pump!

2) I’m feeling a little hither and yon mentally these days (um, I showed up for a party that isn’t until next Saturday last Saturday. I’ve called my children every name but their own. I find myself staring into space while people try to converse with me, and when they try to bring me back. . .whoops! She’s gone again!) Anyway, by way of hoping for a coherent blog post- how about a little Q&A.

Dear readers, ask me anything and I’ll give you some answers in an upcoming post. No query to small or too silly. Let’s chat.

3) Maggie and Me:

‘Mommy, let’s play hide and seek!”
“Alright.”
“I’ll hide and you find me.”
“Ok. 1, 2, 3″
“Mommy! I’m hid! Come find me!
Mommy walks around the corner. . .

Want to make a crazy spinner card wagon wheelish layout? C’mon- follow me and work outside the square!

1st- Cut yourself a circle larger than the spinner card. You will want to be able to fit photos between the card and the spinner, so it needs to be a biggie- mine is nearly 12 inches.

Take your spinner card and a piece of scrap paper and make yourself a template for your photos. Extend the lines of the spinner card. trim the edge with a curve using the curve of the big circle.

Cut your photos using the triangle template. You will want to fussy cut them so they fit best into the place in the wheel.

Some of these you will cut from tall photos and some from wide photos. You can see that I was using the Kraft circle as a template - I re-cut my circle out of the cardstock I planned to use, and then backed it with a slightly lager black cardstock. You can skip the template if you want. I was still figuring this out at that point.

If one of your photos is a “close but not quite” fit you can use this little trick to make it work. Just add a snippet of the photo that matches to “patch” the empty space. Chances are, no one will look close enough to tell that you fudged that tiny corner.

Take your Cosmo Cricket spinner card and trim it into a circle. Then trace the shape of the inside triangle and make 8 little triangles out of your blue cardstock.

Mix and match some alphabets to create your title. Remember- if you use chipboard, the spinner is just for looks. It will no longer spin.

Now cut some strips of ledger paper (I used a Girl Friday ledger paper (the backside)) to 12x1/2 inches. Accordion fold them in tiny folds. You will probably need 5 or 6 strips for the outside of the big circle. Make 3 1/4 inch accordion strips for the spinner cards as well. You will want to ink the edges.

Adhere them like so:

Glue

And then stick. You will want to use a good liquid glue and then give it a few minutes to reasonably set. Before it is totally hardened you need to double check that you have glued them on evenly so your circle doesn’t become lopsided.

like so

When that is mostly dry, add on some ribbon as well just for a little extra texture.

Now that those pieces are secure, apply glue to the back of your altered spinner, and then gently squish it as you press it into the center of your circle. You want the accordion paper to fold in onto itself a bit, or this layout is going to be five inches thick in your album.

Use a black pen to add faux stitching on the blue pieces on both the large circle and the spinner. Also, add in some small words; names, descriptions, etc.

And there you have it!

I really hope your scrap space isn’t as trashed as mine is now. . .

I also hope your four year old doesn’t sneak over to your layout and swipe the chipboard letters so she can “mail a letter to grandma with them”. Yeah. You’ll have to re-do the whole title and hope you have enough letters left. Little skunk.

Hello, I’m alive.

-Easter was interesting. Everyone was off in so many different directions that we woke the kids up in the middle of the night to hunt eggs and find baskets. Jonas was great with this, Maggie, not so much. Best part: Jonas found Gabe’s basket (which matches his) and started opening Gabe’s eggs and said, “Mo-om! The Easter Bunny brought me pacifiers!” Hee!

-Chris’ dad had an incident Monday that is still up in the air diagnosis-wise. The collective assumption is a mini stroke. The good news is he is fine. Of course, upon hearing that he was ill, we threw everything in the car and left town, which is mostly why the blog has been post-less for a week. We’re home now.

-I did some scrapping yesterday, so I will have projects to upload over the next few days. Woo! One I did, ripped apart, did again, ripped apart, did again. . .and still am not 100% sure if I’m ok with it. I’m thinking I should just move on.

-I have been asked to do a few product review type things in the near future. I hope this doesn’t bore you guys- I never review anything I don’t actually like, and the really good news is that I’ll be giving away something very useful to a new Mommy sometime on Monday! Keep your eyes peeled for the give-a-way!

-Maggie has toned down the anger and resentment at least 30% and she is much easier to live with now. *whew*

-My favorite photo processing place in town is closing. Now, I used to have a photo printer that worked very well, and I loved being able to print from home, however, that printer died. I have had a total of 4 printers purchased for the purpose of printing pics, and all but this one have been total garbage. Rather than buy another one and play that crap-shoot again, I sucked it up and bought a Costco membership. Turns out, they do a pretty decent job with the pics, not as good as Ritz (which closed), but infinitely better than Wal-Mart, which gives me the heebie-jeebies every time I walk in the doors in addition to printing every photo way too dark. Viva la Costco and their 39 cent 5x7s!

-Facebook has sucked me in. If you want to hear about the totally mundane moments that I don’t even blog about, feel free to friend me. If it weren’t for the internet, I’d only have two friends ha!

-My washing machine is dying. It won’t spin out, and it is driving me crazy with the amount of time and energy it is wasting having to dry dripping wet clothes. I’m going to try to fix it, but of course I’m scoping out my options as well. Everything I want is really expensive. Turns out I could win an awesome new eco-friendly one from Electrolux, by blogging about it. Here’s the details on how my readers could possibly win one too!

Electrolux and Kelly Ripa have teamed up to introduce an eco-friendly front-load washer and dryer in a truly vibrant shade – “Kelly Green.”

Just in time for Earth day, Electrolux kicks off its virtual flower garden campaign to drive awareness and raise funds for Global Green USA. Starting today, when you go here and plant a virtual flower for a friend, Electrolux will donate $1 to Global Green USA to support their healthy green schools initiatives across America. Everyone who logs on to the site and plants a virtual flower will be automatically entered for a chance to win a new eco-friendly Kelly Green front-load washer and dryer!

In addition, Mom Central will be giving away one eco-friendly “Kelly Green” washer and dryer set to a member of our community! To enter, simply go here and (1) tell us which flower you planted on the Electrolux site and (2) share your own “laundry tips” for saving time and energy. Mom Central will pick one lucky winner in a random drawing from all entries received!

Not bad, eh? Save the Earth and possibly win a new washer/dryer. I can dream, right?

Ok, readers. I’m back, expect some posting, sorry for going AWOL.

Have you guys seen the Making Life Better website? It is a collaboration put together by the Unilever corporation (think Dove, Vaseline, Suave, Klondike, Popsicle, Ragu- a TON of well known companies).

This collaboration is basically your typical grocery store woman’s magazine without the trashy celeb gossip. Beauty, mothering, cooking, style, articles are here, and they update frequently. They also have a nice spot for deals and steals, special offers, and their newsletter is loaded with coupons.

I am loving it because it has some good recipes, and we are in a food rut at my house. I changed it up because “hey, it’s Easter!” and bought a ham today, and was pleased to see the coupon Unilever is offering where you can get up to $20 back on your ham or turkey purchase by mail when you buy $40 in Unilever products during the month of April. The coupon is in newspapers last Sunday, April 5th, so rustle up a copy, stock your pantry and eat ham!