SSDS: ABC - Anything But a Card

10/31/09
I had a hard time finding a project for this assignment. First, I decided these bookmarks were too easy and I didn't want a holiday themed bookmark anyway. Then saw these great treat jars, but I didn't have any 1 quart jars (I made blackberry jam once but I used smaller jars) and I didn't want to buy a case of jars at Walmart (although I have other jar recipes that I could do for Christmas in them). I saw Lindsay's post. I was even looking at Scrapbooks ETC. and StampTV for ideas. Finally, I found this. PERFECT!! I could make several of these and give them out to the teachers I work with.
Then on Oct. 23 with out warning, I was demoted as Owner of the yahoo group I opened up by the other person that told me to put her on as co-owner. I was so mad I was shaking. I almost felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to quit that group immediately. I waited an hour to see if it was a mistake then I did quit. But first I emailed to myself links that I wanted to keep. I added those links to the yahoo group, because I thought I'd never be out of this group and it would always be active so I'd always have access to it at any time but if I can get demoted, I can get booted. I'm keeping this post as a reminder of the above links but I've post dated it instead of forward dating it. The good thing about this...I don't have to do this Anything But a Card Challenge anymore.

Rec'd Thank you cards and a Calendar page

First, some cards that I've gotten in a swap.

One that's bigger than average for a swap

It opens in the middle to reveal...Inside

And the rest of them:

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Then here's what I made for a calendar page.
I don't think I've shown this yet (was hoping for an easy way to show you all). I made my own One Sheet Wonder, but used three coordinating sheets to do this. Neither of my attempts to take a picture seem to work.

This one you can almost read the numbers the the next one you can't (but you can see all the lines on the 12x12 sheet better).I thought I had taken a picture of all the card fronts I made. I can't take a picture of all of them (already used some of them) but I can show you some of what I still have.

I'm planning on making more because I've decide to use this as my calendar "theme". Next year, I'll do 2010 with a different back ground.

Lot o' scrapping (finally)

I went to a weekend retreat with 45 hours available to crop (I slept some of that time but one lady stayed up the entire time until she had to go sing at church - don't know how she did it). I got 27 pages done and used my SCAL/Cricut for some of it. Here are the completed pages and I listed what I cut (if I did, not all pages got diecuts)

Derby Day And the Crowd Goes Wild

Merry Christmas

The Horses
Purple frame and butterflies
Gingerbread House
Merry Christmas
Phrase "Where the Wild Things Are...@ Grandma's House"

the number 5
cut the letters "Happy Birthday"

Playing with Sure Cuts A Lot

I created some pumpkin frames and title for a swap that I'm in using Sure Cuts A Lot and if possible, I wanted to share with you since I've been getting so much help and freebies from others.
Pumpkin Frames w/ rectangle and Pumpkin Frames w/ oval


Here's a close up of the title followed by the full page kit (I added the tendrils by cutting green cardstock by hand).
The little stamped pumpkins are Angel Company stamps that I cut out then colored the stem and tendrils green.

Here's where you can download it all if you have Sure Cuts A Lot
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=5fcc61d458c81729d2db6fb9a8902bda

More blog things

What Your Back to School Personality Says About You

You are a lively, ambitious, and passionate person. You are driven to do well in life and aspire to great things. You are most likely to succeed if you are working with other talented people. You thrive on a team. Your greatest skill is organization. You are good at laying out a plan and making sure it gets followed. Your biggest stumbling block in life is worrying about what other people think of you. Their opinions matter even less than you think. You're not quite sure what you're thankful for in life, it doesn't seem like there's a lot to be thankful for these days.

The Back to School Test

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Your Common Spelling Mistake Score: 60% Correct

Your spelling is decent, but you do make quite a few mistakes. Let's just say you won't be winning a spelling bee anytime soon!

Do You Make Common Spelling Mistakes?

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You Are Cheese Ravioli

Compared to most people, you are incredibly laid back and fun. You love loud, crowded dinner tables and cooking with a crowd. For you, a meal is more about the overall experience than the actual food. You enjoy fun foods. You love theme dinners and funky appetizers.

What Pasta Dish Are You?

What kind of tea are you?

You Are White Tea

You are quite delicate and very sensitive. You are easily overwhelmed. Peace and serenity are important to you. You shy away from intensity of any sort. You appreciate a simple quiet moment. You can relax easily without feeling bored. You take the time to enjoy life. Even when things are busy, you make the time.

What Kind of Tea Are You?

Back 2 School Tag & Pocket

These are for a swap. Part of the requirement was that there had to be 3 embellishments/alterations done to it. I wasn't sure if that meant 3 per item or 3 total so to play it safe, I did three per item. This is my first time swapping with this group and I didn't want to mess up and make others think I didn't do my fair share. But it's hard to stay generic enough that the item could be used for anyone. I chose green because that's my son's school colors but white seemed too plain so I used gold for the other because that is one of my school colors (red with green would look Christmas-y). I then realized that I just made the color combo for my husband's school. I mounted Yellow tag on Green tag cut with Cricut using Tags, Bags, and Boxes cartridge, and zigzag stitched (to make one) with metallic gold thread, Eyelet and fiber (would that count as only one or as two treatments? again, I erred on the side of doing more) and then wrote a common cheer that is chanted in school (so there's three for the tag). For the pocket, I added three brads (1), chalked the dk. green outer square (had to fill in so item #3 would show up), then used Doodlecharms to create the bus. I hope they like it and that it's embellished enough for the rules.

When we moved in 11 years ago, the bathroom walls were white and the shower walls had this paneling-type wall board (my parents used the same stuff for the entire bathroom but not in the tub). I think they did this to make a quick sale because when we removed the curling wall (water wasn't good for this stuff), we found out that someone did a cr@ppy job of tiling around the fixtures (I'd show you a picture but I can't get Adobe Photoshop Elements to cooperate and show you a photo and the file I keep on my desktop has been burned to a CD to clear memory on my computer harddrive so I can't access it the way I usually do - I just hope I printed them already and can find them so I can make a scrapbook page later).
Anyway, I painted the cheap flat white paint into a semi-glossy burgundy, kept the pink tile sine I didn't want to mess with that, and had installed a nice new tub surround. The window was a bit tricky but my old handy man that I hired to do this, came up with a nice way to deal with it I think.

Here are the photos of the completed bathroom - just please ignore the mess (dirt in the corners, caulking tubes, toilet paper out, etc) since I hadn't put everything away yet when I took the pictures.
Here you can see the painted wall, the new shower curtain and the new cabinet that was bought two or three years ago (bought it the same time as the one over the toilet but never put it up until I was able to get this project done because I didn't want paint on it and I didn't want it getting dinged up with the tub walls).
Here you can kind of see the new tub walls, the new bath mat (on the side of the tub so the cat doesn't pee on it) and more of the new painted walls. The mirror was also bought over 6 years ago but we've been using it. You can't see it but the light over the mirror has a bulb with a short in it that we'll still need to figure out what to do with it (can it be fixed? or does it have to be replaced?). I had to remove it off the wall (but we didn't "un-wire" it (or would it be "de-wire" - guess I'll have to ask my DH what the opposite of "wiring" would be) to paint around it and I had further proof that the wall used to be yellow before the cheap white paint job.

We're still trying to figure out how to have these faucets. The hot and cold handles both turn counter-clockwise while the middle handle turns clockwise to make the water flow from faucet to shower head. They look nice all pointing down, but the hot water handle is in the way of the middle shower handle when you are ready to move it. They are just a little too close and the handles hit each other. :(
I thought these colorful daisies were a nice addition to the tub. One other thing we still need to figure out, how to get the water to drain out faster. The tub didn't have a stopper and everything could go down if it could fit into the hole (and believe me, my boys have stuffed quite a few things down there during their baths/showers) so now that we have a cover over the hole, the water doesn't drain very quickly. I was standing in water up to my ankles during my shower this morning.

Now my next home improvement project is to decide what to paint the dining room & hallway and I'll be rid of that cheap white painted wall. Someday, I'd love to be able to push the wall out from the back of my house and enlarge my kitchen and dining area so not sure how far I'll go with redecorating if I paint it.