chaos and stress...

this is chaos...

yes, that is my living room with 2 sofas and 4 chairs, one of which is on it's side. and what you don't see is that to the left there is a ladder and a sheet spread out with 3 different types of paint out. you also can't see the ceiling fan that is half assembled on the ceiling and the disassembled ceiling fan pieces spread amoungst the mess. wait, there's more hidden from view, there is a pile of boxes behind that chair, yeah, the sideways one.

and this is stress....

trying to mud and tape on a rainy day hoping that it dries quick enough to sand and mud again.

this is that state of my house right now. won't be blogging about sewing for a little while longer because to tell you the truth, there's about 5' of stuff piled in front of my machine right now :(

p.s. sorry for the bad photos the computer with photoshop is somewhere amoungst the chaos.

amazing grace - 6 months

i went to visit my niece, grace, yesterday (and my sister) and we had a 6 month photo shoot. she is getting really fun because 1) she is the most content, happiest baby ever 2) she giggles at everything and 3) she has been sitting up on her own for about a month now so we got to do the photos outside. yay! the lighting was perfect after her afternoon nap and the park we visited offered up an awesome setting. i would say these are my favorite photos that i have taken with my camera. i would like to show you all of them but i'm afraid they won't fit on this post so here's just a little taste.

today i played around with some of the best-of-the-best in photoshop (even though sooc were pretty good).

how can you not love this face?

now that i've blown through the entire morning i'm going to go clean my entire house in only 4 hours. wish me luck!

my first tutorial

i wrote a tutorial on quilt binding. i really just did it for myself, or for fun. go visit even if you already know how to sew on a quilt binding. TUTORIAL i have seen several tutorials for quilt binding but they all stop after the machine sewing and nothing continues to illustrate how to fold the corners and complete the hand sewing. i hope it's informative. let me know if you have any questions.

stumbled on a wonderful give-away

have you heard about this give-away? what a fabulous costume. i just can not believe the detail in the dresses! and such beautiful photography.

http://grosgrainfabulous.blogspot.com/2009/10/queen-of-hearts-and-alice-in-wonderland.html

halloween party!

can you believe it's finally here? yay! thank you vanessa for hosting this party. visit her at a fanciful twist to see a complete list of partiers. for this post i'll let the photos speak for themselves. enjoy, happy halloween!

a little more about me...

here are some questions asked by a country girl here. so you can learn a little more about me :)

1. What is your absolute best asset?

physical: big blue eyes; other: my partner in crime

2. What is the best thing that has happened to you in the past week?

umm, my dog came out of heat so she's no longer wearing a diaper (easier to let her out of the kennel) and she had 3 excellent breeding sessions (keep your fingers crossed for puppies).... i guess that stuff didn't really happen to me, does the answer count anyway?

3. What do you usually use to mark a place in a book you’re reading?

the printed receipt from the library (too lazy to dig out a bookmark)

4. How many times do you hit the snooze button in the morning?

i don't set the alarm anymore but when i was my answer would have been 7 times (yeah, that's an hour)

5. What was the last thing you put a postage stamp on?

FOID registration and license plate renewal, it's a tie

snack pack

made these cutie little re-usable snack bags today. saw them on the internet about 2 months ago and then came across a tutorial this week. helps that i've had them in my mind to make for awhile and didn't have to come up with my own pattern. the first one i made with cotton linning. the last 3 i made with rip-stop nylon (seemed like a better choice for food storage).

mail pile

i consider myself to be an organized person. so much so that i'm probably on the fence of o.c.d. i have to have a place for everything and i like when the books on the shelf line up and the food in the pantry is categorized with lables forward. my closet is categorized and organized by color and my house has even been described by some as "meticulously clean."

however, there are a few areas that i just can't get organized. trust me, it drives me bonkers! but i've learned to just ignore those few things and then this is what happens....

mail pile

...and here (sadly, that is my napkin holder with mail in it instead of napkins...)

...and here

...and here.

i hate mail. at least 99.9% of it. i hate the bills, the statements, the adds, the catalogs, and even the paycheck stubs. mostly because it leaves me with piles of papers that i feel are too important to recycle but not important enough to file. so today i gathered up my mail piles and sorted. i ended with a garbage bag full of recycling and 3 folders of stuff to be filed. these folders will help me to sort the mail as soon as it comes in the door. no more sitting around on the counter!

how do you organize and file your mail? do you have a system that works? please share because even though i have good intentions, this system needs a little work still.

red dots

first, an appology for the lack of creativity in my blog lately. i've been working up a storm on all my halloween decorations and haven't wanted to reveal too many of the secrets before the big day. well, the hubby is getting sick of my halloween craftiness and i'm getting to the finish line on that decor anyway. today i have a goal to finish with the decorations (minus the food table) so that i can move on to my next top secret project, STUD october, or perhaps work on something that i can blog about imediately.

this brings us to the red dots. almost 4 years ago i threw a bridal shower for a friend and the theme was black-white-and-red. this was back when we were really broke. so my decorations were simple and i cooked up all the food by myself (with help from my mom). i bought fresh flowers the morning of the shower and made the cake myself (from a box). the only other significant decor from that party was what i like to call the "dot garland." so, when the party was over (after i left up the dots for another 3 weeks) i put the dot garland in a shoe box and shoved it under the bed. well, i'm really not sure if i put it under the bed in the apartment but that's where it was when i found it in the house today. i spent hours cutting out these paper circles and i couldn't just throw it away when the party was over.

**please ignore the fact that we lived in a tiny, 1 bedroom apartment and stored our bikes in the living room.

we have now arrived, almost 4 years later, to another party that can use this dot garland (minus the red dots). i riped off all the red dots and i will be hanging the black & white dot garland for my halloween party. i'm glad i kept it all these years.