Christmas cards...

Ever wonder what you are going to do with all those card blanks that you bought so cheap last year...or was that the year before?  Any way here is an example of what I did with a craft one and some Christmas papers by...I can't remember!!!

Any whooo...all I did was fold the card differently from what it was packaged and made an easy peasy gate fold card.  Don't fold the card on the crease but fold the card outside edges to the center to make it  have two sides opening or as someone told me a gate fold card looks like a barn gate opening....  I think it turned out okay for a first!

WOYWW #177 and life issues

The calendar tells me it is Wednesday and another week has just flown past.  I had just about decided to not post on WOYWW this week because of life being in a turmoil around here but...I am so addicted I can't not do it!   What is WOYWW?  Check it out here!

I have been really busy all week but I don't have anything but a messy desk to show for it...well not quite true!  I made about 10 cards this week but only have one I can show you.   Well...actually four 3" x 3" gift cards and six- 5 1/4" x 4" cards.  Nothing special but made them up for a card fest on Saturday where people will come to the LSS where I am on the design team and have the opportunity to make the cards for $1.  Here is one card!

Easy peasy simple and quick.  Let the paper do the talking!

Not my desk yet but will be an integral part of the work space when I finally get into the bigger craft space are the two Expedit units from IKEA that have been sitting around waiting to be put together.  Here is a picture of the 2x4 unit and there is another 2x4 that I couldn't take a picture of.

The die cut machine on the top is my Big Shot Pro a new toy I bought off a friend that bought the wrong machine for her needs so she sold me this one for about half what she gave for it and several dies.  Oh my I am so excited to have a 12" x 12" cutting platform to play with!  I had been considering the Pro or the Grand Caliber and this just fell in my lap. 

Okay now that is about it for the WOYWW part (so Julia won't yell at me for it being a long post!) but if you want to continue it is about life issues from here on!

I started a proactive program for getting my health back to optimal for what it can be and went through a rigorous looking over my mental, physical and social wellness and decided to make some changes a couple weeks ago.  Many of you know my husband travels a lot and while he was gone this time I decided to try a different diet regime that consists of no or minimal dairy, no wheat, and very limited sugar and no sweeteners.  I have felt so darn bad the past 6 weeks something has to change and doctors only want to lay it off on the Fibromyalgia and CFS/ME but I feel it is more.  The gastrointerologist was sure I had ceilac disease but nothing showed up with scopes or lab but I thought that I would try to go gluten free for a while anyway just to see.  Well it has been 10 days since I quit eating all the above and I really think I am beginning to see a change.  I went and bought a bunch of gluten free products...some are yummy...some not!

There are a  lot of gluten free products on the market and these are a few I found till I can mail order more.  I thought (knowing me) that I would really start craving things that I couldn't have...bread, cookies, pancakes, and other wheat based items so I brought these in to prevent the cravings. 

 The only mix I have opened and baked off was the cinnamon raisin bread below.  I added nuts and raisins and it was absolutely yummy!  After the second day it became dry and I cut it up and froze it for making french toast out of at a later date. 

YUMMY!

 
The only other baked thing was a pan of cornbread that I made to go with the Lima beans and ham I fixed the other night for my supper!  It was also good the first night but became a little dry the second night!

This week I received my 9 month chit...key chain from GA.  I am a compulsive gambler and decided about 9 months ago to not let it control me any longer and so far so good.  It is a struggle at times but I like being free of the compulsion to go and throw away my money better then tossing it away!  If you have any type of addictive personality disorder be aware that it is really hard to quit any thing alone.  If you think you do have problems find help and get free of it!  I did.

Okay that's well and truly all I am going to talk about today.  I have got to get a glass of iced tea and start my blog hopping.  Hope everyone has a great week and I will see you next Wednesday if not before. 

WOYWW #176

Busy week and not much to show for it except a messy desk and lots of things to clean up!!  Here is a picture of my desk today...

My desk is a mess so I am going to give you the narrow angle rather then the wide angle...oh my my! Lots of fun stuff has been going on here but I haven't been really tidy about cleaning up after myself!  See  my new Tim Holtz wings die that came today!!!  I am excited!

this picture is looking to the left of where I sit.  I can't figure out how to store stencils so I have just been dropping them in a clear plastic bag hanging on a hook with my Cricut mats.  Anyone have any good ideas for storing them?

 This past weekend I attended the second class with Frank Beilec down at Happy Trails in Wayne, Oklahoma.  The class started at 0900 on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and we stayed late the first two nights just visiting and hooking.  This time we made a couple items for Christmas using the templates he provided.  The snowman and Santa faces were made by Frank and we punched/hooked the hats and bodies for the figures.  The bodies are stuffed like pillows and sit up or can be hung on the wall.  They are suppose to be primitives and they are really cute but I don't know if I like the stick arms and legs.  Some people painted their sticks but I chose to go natural and now I am thinking the snowman has too many 'branches' and they just don't look right to me.  I am going to knit a little gold and green scarf for the snowman and a white fluffy one for the Santa. 

Frank used to be the anchor on a do it your self show on television called Trading Spaces that ran for about 8 years on TLC here in the states.  Frank holds several degrees but is an artist at heart!  Franks wife Judy also is an artist and felts awesome little animals and figures that she sells on their web site called Mosey and Me.  Frank brought several items for us to see and I ended up doing more then seeing and purchased the little felt pumpkin and the wizard mouse!  Aren't they darling!

The mouse has a really cute and expressive face but...I couldn't capture the picture with my phone! 

Okay I am off to check out the blogs at Ms. Julia's and I suggest you do so also if you like to snoop around the desk all over the world and see what they are doing.  Stamping Ground is the starting point.  Hop on over!

Trick or Treat Tags

I received a couple little goodies in the mail on Wednesday last week...A Tim Holtz strip die, the Halloween Shadows Sizzlits Die, and the Tim Holtz stamp set, Halloween Cutouts!  It was an immediate "oh my what can I do with these" type reaction when I opened the packet.  Well...here is what I did.  

I think it turned out really cute!  I masked and stenciled a big fat harvest moon on the tag in Mustard Seed Distress ink then used the fall inks to create this tag.  I stamped the trick or treaters on the tag in Archival black in then cut out all the I used all the die strip cutouts on this card!  The orange and brown card stock are some from Stampin Up!  Did you know that they now carry kraft core cardstock in 3 colors? 

 Well almost all the die cuts from the strip were used on this card but I had half the tricker treaters portion left so...  I made another tag!

I can see all sorts of possibilities with the tree, owl, and fence for use on ATC after the Halloween season is gone.  Lots of possibilities!

Comfort food recipe cards

A swap I am participating in asked everyone to make a recipe card sharing recipes for comfort food.  Here are a couple I made.

Rice Krispie Treatas with a twist.  The 6x6 recipe card was made using Stampin' Up! cardstock, BoBunny designer paper and Sizzix strip die, Stampin' UP! Oval Punch.   I like the way the 3 oval punches make a pumpkin.  Fun!

Yummy Pumpkin Chicken chowder.  The card stock is Stampin' Up!, Farm House designer papers and stickers.  Flowers, leaves, gems from dollar bins at Michael's.

Another style of same recipe because the paper pad I was using didn't have 6 of the same papers I mixed them up!  The card stock is Stampin' Up!, Farm House designer papers and stickers.  Flowers, leaves, gems from dollar bins at Michael's.

Halloween ATC of the creepy kind!

After the last post with the spider in it I thought I would just keep the theme going and here is a Halloween ATC in black and orange with another 8 legged creeper! 

On this ATC I used the Tim Holtz Halloween Mini Holidays and Halloween Silhouetes for for the spider then embossed the spider with a TH folder to give 3 dimensional affect.  Folder doesn't exactly line up with the stamped image but it was close enough. 

WOYWW #175

I would like to thank everyone for their kind thoughts and good wishes last week.  I am still having the same issues but doing better over all.  This just something I have to learn to live with and put up with flares from time to time but it really gets me down!  Anyway on to the real reason for this post!

Want to see desks in various sorts of disarray?  Click on this link and it will take you to the Land of Awes cause there is all sorts of nifty neat desks to snoop through and drool over.  Ms Julia Dunnit is the magnificent wizard in the wondrous Land of Awes and puts on a hop each Wednesday!  I have been really busy trying to get some of the swaps out that I have been doing for various groups so my desk is suffering to say the least.  I love playing with the inks and stamps but it is a real pain in the patoote to clean it all up again!! 

playing with punches, inks and glues...oh my lots of fun!

I signed up to do several swaps this month cause I wanted to stay busy and thought with a little challenge and prompting I could do anything...right!  I don't know what my problem is but nothing looks right to me and I just want to file 13 everything this week.  I have posted several different ATC on the past posts. 

A little on the spooky cutesy side.  I could not make up my mind what I wanted to do on this tag either.  BUT I persevered and kept on making it...I decided I am not going to let the Mojo go walk about I am just going to keep on playing till it kicks back in! 

Speaking of spooky!  See what I found when I went out to do a little pool work the other day!  See her abdomen is loaded with little bitty baby spiders.  This a common garden variety spider around this part of the states called a Wolf Spider.  Wikipedia  says they can be found just about anywhere in the world in one form or another.

This old girl was floating around in the pool so I rescued her and set her out to dry.  I would guesstimate her to be about 2.5-3 inched long from the tip of her hind leg to the tip of her front leg.  When we lived in Kansas City we had a Wolf Spider that lived in an old wood burner in the woods behind our house that was about the size of a cup saucer.  I exaggerate not, my DH says that I do, but this thing was huge!  It was there for years and years and had loads of babies.  The life span of a Wolf Spider is about 5 years...lots of babies.  Their bite is not particularly poisonous but they do bite and it hurts!!

Okay short and sweet...for me!  I am off to surf the web and visit a few blogs.  Have a great week!