DCWV July Stack-a-holic template challenge

I love my DCWV stacks, so when I ran into this challenge yesterday, I was so excited!! Nothing like last minute, since it is due today :)

I used my Immortal stack, which is my absolute favorite!! I glittered it up a bit for the banners. Since the paper is white on the back, I inked it black and added glitter before I curled it for the vertical strip on the right page.

 I really enjoyed this sketch that is from Susan at Sketch Savvy.

Cross your fingers for me, cuz I would love to win some more DCWV stacks!!!
Cheers!
~Mindi

D'Awwwhhhh

So, I am back in the saddle!! I got a card and a LO done since yesterday afternoon! WOOT! So I used the Let's Scrap weekly sketch


and I made a Thank You card to leave for my brother that we are visiting next month.

I used popsicle stick broken in half for the poles, some string for the clothes line and I have had the little clothes pins in my stash forever. I went online and searched for a t-shirt clip art, then loaded it into my SCAL for my Cricut.

ALSO.. this adorable page I did for my brother. The weekly DT challenge 105 from Let's Scrap was to use at least 5 types of ribbon for a back ground or main embellie and use a Let's Scrap sketch. I used ls117 for inspiration. I think I nailed it.

The pictures are adorable to start with, especially the dog in the buggy with them!! The whole background is ribbon that I made into a plaid. I started on one side with the large ribbon, wove in the vertical ones and glued as I went. Quite a project, but I love the way it turned out. Even with all the ribbons and buttons, the black and white pictures really stand out. I used decorative scissors on the photos to replicate the way the old pics looked. At the top I glued some buttons on a piece of rick rack. Added a few to the names and on the bottom corner. VIOLA! I really like this page.

So I have been playing for 2 days  now, the house has been neglected. I need to make some lunch and do some house cleaning. Hopefully I can make it back to the crack room today :)
Cheers!
~Mindi

My First Blog Award

Thanks so much to Linda at http://www.lindaspinkcraftroom.com for this cute blog award!!

I am a very, very new blogger and this means so much to me :) You should check out her cool blog and follow her, you could win some blog candy ;)
Lots to do today!
Cheers!!
~Mindi

Inspired!!!

So, I think all the crack room re-arranging did me some good! Looking out the window is a lot better than staring at a wall! So I had already done challenge104 from over at Let's Scrap, but I had a hair in my hiney to try embroidery on paper. It was interesting to say the least! Things you can do on paper but not fabric and vice versa. It was a learning curve, but I love the way it turned out! This is the only picture that I know of that I have of my gramma Myrtle. She was my Mom's mom. This photo is from spring of 1933. That is about all I know. I tried calling my Aunt to get some specifics for my journaling, but she has out of town company and didn't answer her phone. I will just fill that out later. I am usually such a minimalist in my scrapbooking, so I purposely made myself keep adding stuff LOL What do ya think? Did I go to far??
So here is the sketch from Let's Scrap that I used for inspiration. I only used the left side and I turned it sideways.

and here is my page of my beautiful Grandmother whom I never got to meet.

She was quite a seamstress from what I have heard, so I figured the stitching would be special for her page. I also saw she had on pearls, which any lady would back then, so I ran with that. The large lace and the doily were both white, so I used my chalk ink and colored them green to coordinate better. Here is a closer pic of the embroidery

I did have a helper in my room today, she wasn't much for conversation.

So  now I have to tidy my crack room up after the mess I have made. We are gonna start a fire pit and roast hot dogs for dinner. I am sure the kids will love that!!
Have a great evening!!
Cheers!!
~Mindi

Holy Cow Blog Giveaway!!

Michelle at the blog below is giving away an extremely huge and generous stash!! Lots of beautiful stuff! Go to her blog, follow her, add the giveaway to your side bar and blog about it. It  is that easy, and you could win!! (even tho selfishly I want to win!!!)

http://scrappinforkenzie.blogspot.com/2011/07/100-follower-giveaway.html

My room is finally organized how I want it for now, I really enjoy the new set up. I can look out the window now instead of at the wall!! Pics to come, Mike is way late going to bed!
Have a great night!
Cheers!
~Mindi

What a long weekend!!/my older pages

We had beautiful weather here all weekend, so not a lot of scrapping got done. Saturday morning I hit a couple of yard sales. Then 2 of the boys got a "new" bunk bed that we bought from a friend. So there was a lot of cleaning and moving stuff around. I took yard sale stuff that didn't sell to our local thrift store. I stopped and chatted with my friend from out of town who was doing an Herbalife (?) open house.  I spent a lot of time cleaning the crack room and rearranging, and sorting damn buttons LOL Mike's brother brought his boys over to play in the evening and he and Mike played some horse shoes. So it was a full day!

Sunday I spent 4 hours outside digging up my "flower bed". It was here when we moved in, but I just hadn't gotten around to doing anything about it. After that I was pooped. I showered, got some groceries, made dinner and I was spent! lol Played on the computer for awhile, followed a few blogs for chances to win goodies and watched Falling Skies with Mike.

Since I don't have a new page to post right now, make sure you check out my pages on the left. They are albums of my work. Some are pretty old, some newer, and a lot of them are pages I did from Let's Scrap sketches. I am hoping after Dr's apt today for my son, I can get some scrapping done. It is supposed to hit 100 degrees, so inside is the place to be!!

Have a great week all!
Cheers!
~Mindi

Button stash/latest page

So, my friend Angie came over this morning to scrap, and we took a break to hit an estate sale that a church was holding for someone. I got a huge box of sewing supplies for 5$! There was aida fabric for cross stitching (which I also do), tons of thread, needles, etc, and at the bottom of the box was a manilla envelope full of buttons!!! I dumped them into the lid of one of my Iris containers.

So, Let's Scrap can throw any button stash challenge they want at me now, I am READY!!! lol

Anywho, I started a page yesterday and made very little progress. I was way A.D.D. or something, I just couldn't quite get it together. I knew I wanted to sew an oven mitt for it, but that is as much as I could figure out. Well, lucky me, the Let's Scrap DT Challenge given today was to sew on your page! WOOT! That worked out just nicely! Here is where the challenge is http://letsscrap.ning.com/forum/topics/challenge-104
I used one of the very first Let's Scrap sketches as my inspiration

And here is my awesome page!!!

Sew, (laughing at myself!) I am so excited about how cute my little oven mitt and apron are!! I am not much of a seamstress, obviously, but they are adorable!!! The buttons are from my newly acquired booty load. I stamped my journal tag and wrote on the inside. I love love love the clip art I found online with the burning oven and the chef! I printed it on cardstock, then fussy cut it. Then, just to be safe that I got the sewing challenge covered, I hand stitched the corners with green and peach and the sides with purple. This is the first page I have been really excited about in awhile! I have a previous blog of the stove saga if you want to get the story behind the page! I do love that I was able to get pictures of Mike crushing the old stove with his garbage truck! Something satisfying about being able to see the destruction in person!

I am gonna drink my wine, watch a movie with my honey and hit the hay! I have tons of buttons to finish sorting tomorrow, and hopefully the scrapbooking muse will still be upon me and I can get another page done!
Cheers!
~Mindi

Finally...

I got a little bit of scrapbooking muse in me today! I have been plotting this page in my head for a couple days, then when Let's Scrap posted the new weekly sketch, I knew this would be perfect!!
This is the weekly sketch http://letsscrap.ning.com/

and here is what I did

This is another one for my brother Matt's album. He is the oldest boy. I love their fancy nehru(sp?)  collared shirts!! Gotta love the 60's!! I don't have a lot of older pictures to work with and this one of the few occasions that there was multiple pictures I could put together. I guess they were having a hard time getting everyone to smile (obviously) LOL

I just love the pages that the gals can just keep putting stuff on it without thinking twice but I am one of those people who start out with a whole bunch and slowly take them off!! LOL Just my style I guess, that is why everyone is different.

I do wonder though, does everyone take as long as I do to make a page? I measure everything to get it straight and fuss back and forth with papers forever it seems to get the right color combination. Is it my mild OCD that keeps me from being a "throw it together" kind of gal or am I just really way to anal and over thinking things way too much?? Hard to know!

I haven't heard anything about design team yet, but the deadline is the 15th. Not sure when they announce or how they do it. Either no news is good news or they are trying to think of a way to let me down nicely LOL! I have been in a scrapping slump lately so I wouldn't blame them. I can't wait until the end of August comes and school starts again. That way I can sit down and concentrate without having to get up every 2 minutes to solve some tragedy or another.

Well, it is fittin' on stormin' so I better get this posted to Let's Scrap and get dinner started.

Cheers!

~Mindi

All I got done today

So, I did get one page (or two depending on how you look at it), done today.

This is the weekly Let's Scrap sketch I used

I also killed two birds with one stone and did this sketch for the weekly design team Challenge 103. The challenge was to use a Let's Scrap sketch and use something other than letters in the title.
Anyway, this was 4th of July between eating dinner and lighting fireworks. The horse shoe pit was already here when we bought the house, but it needed a little love. Mike sprayed the weeds, put some new braces on the back boards and we put some sand in it. It still needs more sand, but works for now. Brian was really excited about playing and so was Mike. Like the journaling says, it is great that we all live so close together and can do things like this when we feel like it.
That's all for now, I have to start dinner soon. My work is never done :)
Cheers!
~Mindi

Out with the old...

So, here is my story of the stove and the rhubarb crumble. Saturday morning I was going to bake a crumble to take to Mike's company picnic. He took a  picture of our toter and I used my SCAL and Cricut to cut a logo out of paper. Then I used some cinnamon to make the logo. This is what it looked like before I put it into the oven.

and this is what it looked like after baking only 7 minutes of the 25 it is supposed to cook

Sooooo........ I was so upset that I had put so much work into this stupid thing and it burnt!!! So we turned the oven off and Mike went and got me some more rhubarb. I got it all made and waited to turn the oven on until I was ready to put it in, since it was already pre-heated. So round 2, was in the oven less than 1 minute and this is what happened

So then I was pissed! Out of time and completely out of patience!! So I turned the oven off and went to get ready. Mike went to check it out and the oven was still super hot. Even tho I had turned everything off, the broiler was still on going full blast. Of course, I wasn't even using the broiler, so that's really wierd!! He was gonna pull the stove out and unplug it but it was way too hot. He had to take the drawer out and unplug it. We waited until it had cooled down before we left the house.
When we got home, he plugged it back in, hoping we could at least use the burners until we could get a new oven. Not the case. As soon as he plugged it back in that dang broiler came right back on at full blast. So, stove is dead!!! Brian and Susie came over, along with some of Mike's co-workers, and we played horseshoes and had a great time. We figure we would get online Sunday and order a new one.
Sunday we got up and started shopping.Found exactly what we wanted and it had free shipping. Went to order it, and they wouldn't deliver to here. Downfalls of living in the boonies I guess. So I called Susie because she has a pick-up and asked if she was up for an adventure. So we drove to Billings, 130 miles one way, to get me a stove. I found the one I wanted at Home Depot and we brought it home. We didn't get home until 11pm and poor Mike had to be to work at 5:30 in the morning!
Not everyone has a garbage man for a hubby, but since I do, I got to enjoy the demise of the old stove. Mike brought the truck by on his way home yesterday.

Ahhhh, when we get rid of something, we do it right!!! So, here is my beautiful new stove! It has 12" or 9" burner and convection oven, WOOT!!!

Ain't she Purdy?? lol So that was my adventure for the weekend. Of course there will be a scrapbook layout of all this coming soon!
I am so gonna try to get some scrapping done today!
Cheers!
~Mindi

p.s. Google Chrome is fantastic for blogger, it uploaded faster and I can actually leave comments without any problems!

My "Crack Room"

My DH lovingly calls my craft room, my "crack" room. It just kind of stuck, we think it's funny anyway :)

So, it's not very big, 11ft by 13 I think. That is counting the space all the way into the closet I took the doors out of. I had more room, but now that I have friends coming over to scrap with me, I just recently completely rearranged to make room for another person. I don't mind at all, I love that they come over :)
 So I will start behind the door and move around the room.
This is the small wall behind the door

So, the stand is part of a 3 piece set Mike already had. The shelves on it I got for 50cents, the grey bins with ribbon, etc had 4 braces and 16 little buckets for 2$, the ribbon holder is from Michael's. It was in the "scratch and dent bin" as we call it. It was 15$ but it was returned because the hardware was missing. So I got it for 3$ and Mike put some screws in it for me:) The thing with the ribbons hanging off of it, is this

1$ at a thrift store. I painted it, clipped binder clips to it, and I have the lace, etc on large paper clips are that hanging from the loops of the binder clips.
Then the wall to the right of the door

Representin' the Let's Scrap group 100 Layouts in 2011. Chalkboard 1$ yard sale.

The top hutch is part of the set Mike had, the dresser was my Mom's, all the paper racks 75cents total, Cricut was birthday present in 09, printer Christmas present 2010. The dresser has pictures, office stuff, stash specifically for my wedding album, my scraps and my Cricut mats.

The small shelf with the humble amount of punches 25cents, the drawers with my Zigs and various markers are from WalMart. They were $4 for each set of 3 and I painted them also to match all my shelves.
Then the wall you see when you walk in

My big desk, free from friend, my AWESOME funky green and yellow metal canisters are from a thrift store all you could fit in a box for 5$, so pretty cheap. The shelf on the desk was 50 cents and all the spice jars with the buttons were 50cents for all of them. The buttons are from yard sales, when we cleaned out granny's house and from Susie's farmhouse. The little milk glass jars holding my various Zig glues were either 25cents or from Susie's farm.(I love milkglass!! I have a huge collection!) As I posted earlier, the flowers are all from yard sales or dollar stores and I cut them off of the stems. The glass jars are all from 25cents to 1$ for the bigger one. The chairs (this yellowish one and the one at the other desk) were garbage :) Of course, I have my hot wheels on the wall. I love old wagons!!

On the left, the wooden shelf holding my paints was 1$ for both (there is 2 on top of each other). Below that is shelf for 50cents with my glitter glue. Under the window is my glitter. The shelf was 25cents and I have most of my glitter in old salt shakers from various places. On the other shelves is my crop-o-dile, eyelets, brads, craft wire, etc. On the desk is my "kitty jar" and of course my Let's Scrap sketch for this week :)
This is the closet wall

On the right is my peg board with my decorative scissors (my DH cut and hung it for me) and them some storage. On the right is 2 old cupboards that I stacked, free from Mike's aunt. The wooden bookshelf was from my Mom's house free, canisters free from Susie's farm, and the blue striped boxes I have had forever.

The black metal cabinet was from granny's so free, the Iris containers were a birthday present in 08.

The metal paper rack with my 8 1/2 cardstock was 25cents, the shelf was a set of 3 from Michael's I got with a 40% off coupon, DH drilled holes in the side and I put a dowel on it with keyrings and binder clips to hold my larger acrylic stamps. The rest of my few stamps are in the cd cases (the cd rack was garbage). My few inks I have are in the the set of grey hanging buckets. My FAVORITE part of my room is the paper rack the Mike made for me!! What a Sweet Prince!!

So there ya go, more than ever wanted to know about my room!!!

I am off to scrap!!!!!!
Cheers!
~Mindi

hummmm

Yesterday was July 7, 1 year. meh. that is all.

Oh what a baby face!!!

So I got 2 pages done today, amazing!!! I got Challenge 102 done for Let's Scrap. http://letsscrap.ning.com/forum/topics/challenge-102
I used the left side of this sketch for inspiration


The challenge was to do a page about myself with pics of me at any age.  I figured this is the age I was the cutest!!

So the wide pink ribbon is from a yard sale, I got the whole roll for 50cents. The pink pearl strand was also a yard sale, in a baggie with a bunch of random rick rack an etc for 50 cent. The flower is actually from the dollar store. I took 2 of them apart and used my chalk ink on them since they were white. I did half of them pink and half lavender. I think it turned out pretty well. My favorite part of this is the cardstock. I just recently got DCWV stack "Once Upon A Time" and I love it!! It inspired me to do a page for Mike just for fun!

This is also a Let's Scrap sketch. I will be doing a "now" set to go with this "then" set of pages. I think it will be cute! The brackets around the journaling is actually pale yellow cardstock that I used a brown chalk on.

So, I have materials set out to start another page tomorrow, so I better get some creative sleep.
Cheers!
~Mindi

TIL

Today I learned (well, in all honesty it was Sunday) that my little desk I bought for 1$ at a yard sale a couple of weeks ago, has more to it! It is a Saginaw desk, extensol desk to be exact, and opens up to 7 feet long!! Of course I didn't have the leaves for it, so my dear husband cut me some out of wood that was in the shop when we moved here. So, for still that 1$, I have a table for when the gals come over to scrapbook.

What an amazing find!!!!

So, over the weekend, I had a yard sale, realized my table got HUGE, transferred all my pictures from my old laptop to my new one (finally!), bbq'd for 4th of July, took some phenomenal pictures of fireworks, and was outside just long enough to burn my shoulders. So it was pretty much a successful weekend! I am really glad I got my pictures transferred. There were so many I wanted to scrapbook, but hated dragging out the old laptop to get them.

So, it's Tuesday night, and I just finished my weekly sketch from Let's Scrap a little bit ago. I have been pushing my luck lately. Hopefully now that the holiday and yard sale are over I can get a lot more scrapping done!! Anyway, here's the sketch from Let's Scrap
http://api.ning.com/files/0WXMY0RUH-cAP9-O6DsT4yE*GU*zg4hGsP0Hbvr29IyHE-SM0FVhvSuQTCjFjyg*sxDtDQjwqmgzjZavaxtZIx5m7gN0ujZZ/Sketch.JPG

and here is what I did.

I didn't have any cardstock with camera's, etc, so I figured the gears would work. It is from the Tattered Time stack, which I am in love with!! The "cheese" is a family joke of sorts. If you see a pic with someone with a huge grin, then they are "Mayor McCheese" lol! I used some old film I have been carrying around for years and put a vellum quote on it and put it into an envelope I cut from a stencil.

I was short on embellishments, so I had to be creative! The camera on the right side page

was my first attempt at paper piecing. I found the pattern on www.scrapbooksetc.com, for free! Not bad for a first shot and it was a great way to get an embellie I didn't have.

Like I said, I am trying to get some scrapbooking done this week. I still haven't heard anything about the Design Team at Let's Scrap yet, but it is still pretty early. I would like to get some more pages done so they have something to look at, lol!! That, and I just REALLY need to get a few more pages done for my brother's book before we head there.

Well, I better get my sketch posted, so sweet dreams to all, including me soon!
Cheers!
~Mindi

Sunday Morning Coffee...

So, here I sit in my chair, with my coffee and my baby kitten sleeping on my lap. I am pretty pooped. Yard sale was a great success, thanks to the fact that 90% of it was given to us from Mike's Aunt! As all great plans I have, this one too has been altered. The yard sale money was originally going to be fun money for our trip to Spokane next month. After the flat tire incident last week, this money is now tire money so we can go to Spokane. I guess we are given what we need sometimes and not always what we want. At least we will still be able to go. I did take my 10% of profits for my scrap kitty jar. I think I earned it :)

I have quite the exciting day planned today, oh boy! I have to pay bills and figure out the budget for the rest of the month, make some phone calls about tires, call my brother we are going to visit and let him know that tattoo's are gonna have to be cut from the vacation budget AND (this is the big one) organize my photos! Part of my pics are on my old laptop and part are on the new one. I was smart enough to put all of them from the old laptop onto cd's, but I got bored and lazy with it toward the end and only labeled the cd's with dates. Not so useful. It is gonna take a huge part of my day, but it needs to be done. I can't find any pictures I am looking for to scrapbook. As much as I am dreading doing it, it will be so wonderful after it is done to be able to find the pics I am looking for and be able to just print and scrap!!

Summer school is over for our girl, so I won't have to be driving from one end of town to the other twice a day every day, so I hope to get a lot of scrapping done! I need to use up some of my stash so I room for all the cool stuff I am gonna get in Spokane. =)

So, I am gonna finish my first cup of coffee, and get my butt moving!
Have a great day and a wonderful 4th of July everyone, CHEERS!
~Mindi

p.s. I try to leave comments on other peoples blogs, but google just loops me between signing in and writing the catpcha codes over and over! any suggestions anyone??