Hi, My Name is M.J. and I'm a Pack Rat

Well, I didn't drop off the face of the earth. Though there were a few moments during the last week and a half that I wanted to get off the ride and take a rest. I did manage to get something crafted during my week-end away (all 45 miles of it;-), but I haven't taken one picture. I have, however, received lots and lots of boxes of my family's stuff out of storage. This is stuff, mind you, that we have been living without for a little over a year. Some of it I missed daily - like my medium size pot (who knew you would need one of those on an almost daily basis?), and my mixing bowls with matching lids, and some of it I didn't miss at all.

Most of those items belong to my kids. They, like me, are pack rats. Of course my items don't seem as trivial as their "sticker they got from their friend from down the street when they fell off their bike and ..." you get the picture. Throw the sticker away already. It's not in one piece any more and it is stuck to this fake birthday medal you got when you were 5 that I want to throw away too.

Of course if you touch any of my stuff and think, hint or make a move to throw out, you're gonna have to go. I'm sure I have a sticker or two from when I was 17, and or a post it note where my Mom wrote down the score to a game of rummy we were playing as a kid. That's just me - a Pack Rat.

Now as I sit here with 15 minutes to myself, I am running the things planned this week through my mind. It's a bit of a traffic jam in there right now lol. I have re-arranged my craft room to accommodate my larger craft table (rescued from storage yeah), but now to fit in all the boxes of stuff; I have another gathering with the girls this week-end but will only be able to attend on Friday since the 9 year old just turned 10 last week and is having a bowling party on Saturday AND the 1 year old is turning 2 on Saturday and will be having a little shindig at home on Saturday. Oh, and the 10 yr old wants a Skate cake. Not from a store but from me. O.K. Will do. Then the 2 yr old can't not have a cake, so for him I'll be making cupcakes shaped like...I don't know. I'll figure that out when I actually get them baked. What else...started potty training the baby, wait, toddler. That should be fun. Tonight is the Superbowl and I'll be there in front of the TV with wings, and chips n' dip. But first we have an impromptu birthday party at one of my SILs house. She forgot the 10 yr old's birthday and can't make it to the party next Sat so she threw one together. Took the two older kids to a movie (which is part of the reason I have 15 minutes to myself, A+ for her) and then the rest of us will meet at her house (make that an A++ since there won't be any clean up of me). I think it's hilarious - we move closer to them and that's when they forget.

Anywho, you get the gist of the past and the upcoming weeks. I will try to get the pictures taken on the little album I did for my Mom and of some of my favorite pages I've done. Maybe I just need to set my alarm to wake me at 1 in the morning to post here. At least the house will be quite, unless the Mr. is playing a video game, in which case he won't even notice I was up.

Until I come back (just being honest :)

M.J.

Ahhh, Friday

Just a quick post from me this Friday morning. I'm off to my weekend with the girls for a bit of scrappin' time but, first I've got to do a million and one things! I've got to get the kids off to school, bake some promised banana bread (for my Mr.), pack the car and what ever else comes up between now and when I have to leave (which is early this morning). I'll check back on Sunday and give you the low down on my first coupon"ing" trip. I did find some awesome deals like J&J first aid kits for $0.22! We need all the band-aids you can get around here! Oh, and free gum at CVS! I should be coming back with loads of projects to share with you over the next week. That's if I get anything done other than talk! But that is what these weekends are for!

Till I get back,

M.J.

On the look out for deals...

It's Monday and the monkeys are home...still! I think they are actually looking forward to going back to school. I know I am.

I spent some time yesterday and today looking at sites that list deals and printing off coupons. I was so into what I was doing yesterday, I forgot to send the Mr. off to get the Sunday paper. (This would be why he gave me a funny look this morning when I told him not to forget to get me Sunday's paper - today. He said nothing though I could see he wanted to - which not like him.)

I'm pretty good at finding deals and love a good coupon, but I can see that I've been missing out on some fantastic deals. So, this week will be dedicated to getting my "couponing" act together. I found about 5 or 6 offers of free sample that I signed up for! I already received my free trial size of Degree deodorant. Woot! Woot! I put up a link to one of the sites I like called The Krazy Coupon Lady. Check her out. As I find more sites I think are worth going to, I'll share those as well as I come across them.

For those of you into paper crafting, there are almost always a blog or two doing a give-a-way. I'll try to share the ones I know about with you. One I just signed up for was for the new unreleased Core Impressions paper pack. Click here to enter into the drawing or check out the Coredinations web site here.

Lastly, I'll leave you with a card I made for my kids' teachers as a thank you for all of their hard work. This is actually a redo, as I, of course, can't get my hands on a picture of the original two I did last year.

I love this stamp from MFT. Its the Pure Innocence - You Make the Grade stamp (I love this line of stamps! So sweet!). This was my first time paper piecing and using the few Copic markers I have. In this card, her shirt and the blackboard is paper pieced. The rest of her is colored with Copic markers. That's item number 143, to learn how to color like a pro with Copic markers! Oh, and to own more than 8 of them lol! The original cards had a little more going on, so I'll have to find those and share them too. One more item to add to my never ending "to do" list.

Till next time,

M.J.

Day Four

So it's day four of being stuck in the house. Last night at dinner we, O.K. read "I", decided we should have a reading contest to see who could read the most pages. The kids are really competitive so I thought this would be a good motivator and would change up daily grind a bit. They are really good about reading, in fact they love to read. But since they been off for the past few days, they want to play computer games, on their DSIs and the Wii more and more. So I said the winner would get to do something they like to do but don't get to do enough. The 7 year old wants to wrestle his father for an hour all by himself (read not with the older sibling around AT ALL). The 9 year old wants to wrestle dad too, or use my Cricut "all by myself" (yeah, I'm thinking I'll have to be within arms reach...). The hubby, he said he'd have to think about it a little more. Well I think him winning involves me making coffee, bacon and French toast for the next few days and bringing it to him in bed. That, is sooo not going to happen. Me, I would like 2 or 3 hours to be all by myself to do what ever I want to do. I mean ALL BY MYSELF - in the house alone. The three hours wouldn't start until they were completely out of the drive way and they couldn't come back in the house till I unlocked the doors. Don't get me wrong, I love my people, but I also love my sanity :P

As I'm typing this I just got word that school will be out tomorrow as well. I'm thinking my weekend of scrapping will have to be scrapped. A bunch of us are hopping we can all reschedule for next weekend. We'll see what happens.

Without further ado, here are a couple of the set of cards I made for my aunt.

They are 85% percent the same card, I just chose different ribbon and brads for each one. Enjoy.

Thanks for stopping by

M.J.

Still Stuck...

Day three of being stuck in the house and you would think I got a lot done. Yeah, no such luck. The little guy has been a little clingy - I think he knows the bigger monkeys should be in school. It has been a little interesting to watch him boss them around though. I'm not sure where he gets that bossy attitude from. Apparently we moved within a county that almost never closes it schools due to weather. Three days in a row is a big deal. I sat just not 30 mins ago and watched my husband carefully make his way down the front steps and walk to the drive way to clear the snow, wait, the icesnow (yes, not really a word, but it sort of all fused together) from the car. All while trying not to slip all the way down the drive way. He managed to clear it and salt the steep drive way and has since left to pick up some milk (these kids go through nearly two gallons a week!) and a candy bar for me - I do have a major sweet tooth! I'm hoping the roads further out of our neighborhood are not as icy as the one directly in front of our house.

On the agenda today is packing my crafty things up for a fun slumber party this week-end with a group of ladies I meet up with once a month. I'm hoping that the roads get cleared by Friday so I can go. Otherwise I might have to participate by Skype!

As promised the other day, here is the bow I made along with a matching card. I used some of Basic Grey's Olivia and Bazzil CS.

What's great about this bow and card is that it only took one 12x12 sheet of paper to do both. Hows that for thrifty? I got the directions from a blog I like, Court's Crafts, visit it here for complete directions!

That's all for now -

M.J.

It Snowed?!

It's Monday and the kids are home from school because it "snowed". Snow is in quotes because it's like just two inches on the ground. Yeah, there is some ice too but up north they only closed the school if it was -32 or colder. -31 and the kids were going to school. O.K., that may be an exaggeration. You get the point. It will take me a while to get used to things down here. O.K, I'll stop whining.

I created a handmade paper bow I saw on someone else's blog that I will put up tomorrow (and I'll link you to her blog for the exact directions). I love the fact that you can make a card then make a bow that matches it perfectly! But that is for tomorrow (mainly 'cause I need to make the card. But we aren't going to talk about that 'cause my day isn't going as planned anyway...).

O.K., without further ado, here is the second card I made for my aunt to send out as a thank you. This one is fairly simple but I really like how it came out. My aunt just received the package of cards and said she loves what I created - how awesome is that! She gave the first card away and the recipient loved it which makes me feel good!

I used Graphic 45 papers, Bazzil card stock, SU! "thank you" stamp and a little bit of bling to finish it off. I'm still working on lighting for my pictures - wish me luck in finding the right formula!

Thanks for stopping by and hope your day is a crafty one,

M.J.

Back Again

Yep, I'm back! I've manage to get the pictures onto my hard drive and it lead me to another goal for this year: don't let the number of pictures on the sd card exceed 50 or two "events". I had over 1,200 pictures to download and it took forever. Part of that was I had way too many things going on at once - 12 tabs open and 6 of them were all trying to load something or other. Yeah, I'm not always such a patient person.

Anywho, (yeah, I know it's not a word. I'll do that a lot here so play along with me), I will be attending the Mother/Son dance at my 7 year old's school this evening. He is actually excited. He is quite the dancer, he does say so himself. I am preparing to watch him bust a move and watch everyone else smile and laugh (in a good way). He is so outgoing sometimes I just sit and watch him inner act with other people and wish I could do that. The other two are outgoing as well. I'll save their stores for another day.

Here is the first of my creations I'll share. My aunt's 50th was at the end of last year and she was given a surprise party by her awesome husband and some of their friends. She decided that she wanted to give the main organizers a special thank you card and asked me to create some. This is the card I made for her husband since I know he loves cars. I think it turned out rather handsomely.

Now I'm still working on my photography issues, like getting the right lighting and focus, but you can get the gist of the card. Below is a close up of one of the cards and the "thank you".

Products used:

Paper: Graphic 45; Making Memories, Bazzil CS

Card Base: Canvas Home Basics

Brads: Making Memories

Stamps: SU Gentle Greetings; Inks:Color Box Chestnut Roan

Tools: We R Memories Keepers Crop-A-Dile Corner Chomper "Stub"

Till the next time,

M.J.

I know, I know...

While I have completed several projects and managed to get pictures of them before sending them off to the recipients, I still have not managed to get them out of the camera, into the computer and then into or on, however you say it, my blog. Now as I stated before, it is my new year's resolution to get the blog up and keep it up and running. Over the next few weeks it will change as I find the right template that really feels like home. So, as I get it going, I invite you to be patient and keep checking back. You never know, I may actually inspire you :) Or I may have the skinny on a great sale or giveaway! All right, I'm off to finish cooking dinner but I'll be back to figure out the whole picture thing.

M.J.