Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Random Hoopla...


okay...here's a bunch of random crapola.

Here's the wreath I made for Connor's birthday tomorrow. The blog I stole it from (Howdoesshe.com) said it took about 144 balloons...ummmm, I obviously did something wrong because I used about 400 balloons. Maybe because I cheated and cut a styrofoam wreath apart, added rubber bands, glued it back together and then jammed the balloons under the bands. I just couldn't find the greening pins they were talking about. Can you say 3 trips to Party City yesterday?!?!? I think it's cute. Sanford is NOT impressed. Connor hasn't seen it yet.



I decorated a licorice tub as part of my father-in-law's birthday gift.


It turned out pretty cute for an 8 minute project...


I even put a matching sticker on the lid...yup...dork!


Here's part of Sanford's Father's Day gift...a waste of cute packaging. He doesn't care.


Connor also got him a toolbox to keep all of the tools and parts for their new ridiculous RC cars in. I printed out a label that matches the maker of their cars and modge-podged it on...who knew modge-podge could be manly??


The camera adapter for the iPad finally got here. I downloaded some editing software and played last night...How adorable is that boy? It's probably why he's still alive!



ummmm...this might be a little much...but it cracks me up!!

Friday, June 18, 2010

all hail the glue gun!

so...not only did I decide what to do with them...I made more ;)



I just glue gunned those suckers right to my mirror...hopefully it'll be okay when I pull them down in a few weeks...whatever, it's festive for now.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

well.....

we went to the antiques roadshow...



it was a fun experience...kind of like geriatric disneyland...a whole lot of old people standing in reeeeeeeeeeealy long lines looking for a thrill...Sanford said we weren't old enough to be there. I pointed out to him that we had to borrow stuff from people OLDER than us to take...ummm...old people have better crap...or at least older crap ;)

so, here are our items in order of appraising...



This is my Aunt JoAnn's doll from the fifties. She has a case FULL of outfits and hats and purses and several colors of cats-eye glasses. She is all about the accessories!

Poor thing has spent her entire life being called the wrong name. She is NOT a Ginger doll, her name is Muffy. Hmmm...maybe she was happier with Ginger...I mean Muffy? Really? Maybe in Connecticut...anyway....she's worth about $75 and each of her little outfits is worth about $10...

so around $200 total.

Then Sanford and I split up. He went and stood in the PAINTINGS line...that wrapped around the building..okay...maybe not, but it WAS almost 2 hours...and I went to the DECORATIVE ARTS line to get this checked out...something else borrowed from my Aunt...



Whatever could it be?? Antique...hand painted...wooden feet....lovely...perhaps folk art? victorian umbrella stand? decorated by someone famous? Nope...it's crap. The appraiser actually asked me why I brought a trash can to the roadshow. Lots of people liked it. My aunt likes it. My uncle said it was in his house as long as he can remember. It's pretty...but still crap. Worthless. Feel free to drop in your banana peels and chewed gum. It was the butt of innumerable jokes throughout the day. My husband quite enjoyed it...so at this point it's a priceless family relic...I'll have to see if my aunt will leave it to me someday! It is without a doubt the cutest trash can I've ever seen...but it has no monetary value.

so $0 total.

Next up were two paintings from Sanford's parents...paintings that his mom said were worth thousands of dollars...(ah nuts...I just scrolled down and realized only one painting loaded...I'm not messing with it. The painting are basically the same...rough palette knife strokes...one is a seascape and the other is a mission looking building and some shrubbery...)



We had a good time waiting in the line. The women in front of us were a crack up...sisters...one who flew in from New York just for the show. She brought an Indian looking rug with her to get appraised...it had butterflies...it was cool...she paid $75 and it was worth $400-$600...she said if she set it in my trash can then the trash can could be worth $400.01-$600.01...yeah, the sisters were a crack up...I said something about being on the bullet train to hell and she said no...we were all just greasing out chutes...bwahahahahaha...so stealing that line! It's a winner!

Any way, after a 2 hour wait we got in and found out that we weren't retiring, or buying a new house, or a new car, or going on a cruise with the auction proceeds from these paintings. The artist was "prolific"...appraiser-ese for he painted TONS of crap and it's not worth much...

The appraiser worked hard looking to try to make it worth more money when we told him that Jane always said they were worth thousands...but again there was that word "prolific" and they are small and done "quickly"

total $300-$500 each.

So....yeah, monetarily...a let down , but honestly, none of it was our hoopla anyway...so what's it matter???

We saw Mark Walberg filming his ~welcome to San Diego~ intro, we saw a Keno brother, we had $8 cookies, we saw a half a lady getting pulled around in a wagon, we made fun of A LOT of people (who I'm sure were making fun of us for having a trash can ), and best of all...

I got this




yup...it's a gen-u-ine Antiques Roadshow T-shirt...that I won...in one of those spinning-wheel raffle give away thingies. I'm going to wear it every Monday night at 8 while I watch Roadshow until it's old and ratty...that or I'm going to wrap it in acid free tissue and preserve it in a lignin free box in unused condition so that Connor can take it to the roadshow in 50 years... ;)

now what?!?


so I had a few girls over on Friday to play all crafty...and Cindy mentioned that she wanted to learn how to make paper rosettes...I guess it stuck in my head. Then yesterday while hopping around in blog-land, I saw the cutest patriotic rosettes on a stick in a jar of red, white, and blue popcorn...seriously, who comes up with this stuff? (heartland paper company) Ridiculously adorable!

So, I broke out the paper and my scor-pal...and maybe a few other goodies. I still need to add buttons and a tag on the big one, but here they are...


The real question is...now what? They are big...the one in the center is 12", and the other 2 are 8"...I thought I was going to hang them from my mantle individually...um, no. Then I thought, okay, together on ribbon, kinda like bunting...um, no. So what do I do with them?!?




I used paper from the boxes that I never dig into anymore...I actually think there's a Debbie Mumm paper involved (reallly?) and I know that blue star paper is like 6 or 7 years old...so good for me using my stash...I bought the flags at Michael's when I went looking for paper to finish them off...I managed to buy paper, but none of it looked right when I got it home ...It may be good for a whole 'nother set of these darn things that I don't know what I'm going to do with though...anyway, the flags were way too cherry a red, so I might have colored the stripes with a marker to darken them up a little...is that something I can go to jail for??? don't tell! they do match MUCH better now ;) holy smack is that glass dirty...please ignore the filth!




I think the "usa" needs a little bling, yes? It looks so sad and naked in the picture. I have a set of 3 layered buttons to get tied on top of a tag that I'll put in the center of the ribbon bow...it'll be cute, but really...um, what am I going to do with them?????

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Retirement gift


so...it was more like a week than 3 days...but if I hadn't been a slacker, I might have knocked someone over from surprise...and I wouldn't want to use my blog for evil ;)

Here's the basket that I made for the MCHS school secretary that was retiring. Sanford really likes her...and she is always BEYOND appreciative of any little gifties that I send in. She is also crafty, so maybe that's why she's thankful...she actually understands how much work something is ;) Anyway, I wanted to make something special for her but it needed to be useful and tie into her retiring...

So, since she's a stamper...I made a basket designed around a color scheme and a stamp set.



I gifted a Papertrey Anniversary set from this year and chose my new fav color scheme...Hawaiian Shores and Pure Poppy...okay, aqua and red for those of you that don't speak papertrey-ese. I packaged up buttons and ribbon and flowers and all kinds of embellishment goodies.


Here is the stamp set packaged up...


Here are the buttons and a nugget tin done a la Nicole Heady...



I also wrapped up a chocolate bar and a clear box holding a set of blank notecards and cuttlebug embossed paper to use as bases on the cards.

This gift was ridiculously inexpensive (I think I spent $8 on the crinkle wrap and the tin it's all placed in). The stamp set was free because of the Papertrey deal where you get a free anniversary set with every 12 sets you buy throughout the year and I had the plastic packaging, nugget tin, paper, ribbon, buttons, felt, and small red tin...but I spent HOOOOOURS cutting and embossing and die cutting the labels and tags that matched the stamp set.

I would NOT have done this for most people. They just wouldn't appreciate the time and effort that went into it. I was happy to do it for her though. I just hope now that she's retired she has more time to stamp...that's what we're all looking forward to right? The day we can roll out of bed, stumble into the craft nook, and make a big, sticky, colorful mess before breakfast!?! I mean, we only work to support the craft habit...I swear sometimes I think it's worse than crack!

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

well.....



I honestly thought I took pictures of more of the teacher prizes from the last week of school, but as usual, I was a slacker. There are pictures of two of them. The first days prize wasn't really worth a picture, just a cute tiny basket from Cost Plus with a bag of dipping pretzels, fudge dip, and a cute tag. The next days gift was probably photo worthy...it was a bunch of pastel plaid stationary goodies that I got last year at the dollar section of Michaels, altered to be "teacher-y" with the Papertrey Teacher's Apple set...journal, thank you notes in a box, small notepad, and matching pencils...about $4.00 worth of gift, but it looked good.

My friend Jo-Ellen went to the dump with me on Saturday...and helped me shovel ridiculously smelly compost into bins, bring it home, and unload it...if you don't think that's worth a prize, you are an ungrateful maroon! So here's the giftie I gave her on Sunday....when I brought back her yard waste can that we transported compost in...did I mention how sTinKy compost is???


it's a Papertrey tin with antibacterial sanitizer in it...3 different smells...some scratch off lottery tickets, and a turtle purse/key holder thing...I don't know what it is, but she saw it at the gas station and liked it...her kids go/went to Turtleback Elementary, so she kind of has a thing for turtles.

Any way...I just popped the stuff in the tin, computer generated..."lucky to have you for a ", stamped on friend...and it was all good, because the lottery tickets tied in with the lucky part...I thought it was so clever that I used it again on a teacher gift...see the picture lower...



Here's a giftie for Connor's teacher...yup, I can see that I put the accent/embellishment on the side of the box where the printing is upside down...unfortunately, I DIDN'T see it before I used a bunch of scortape on it...oh well, ...it's made with mostly Pebbles goodies...I made the box a year ago and just never used it, so I don't remember where I got the pattern...it was free on the web somewhere...I wish I still had it...it's a cute box! Inside was a Starbucks gift card.




here's the teacher version of the lottery card holder...just versamark ink stamped on a tiny kraft bag from Michaels...simple, but cute enough...


okay...then we have the last day of school stuff...I made the BeSt prize for the teacher...a pop top can, like from pineapple, opened from the bottom with a safety opener, cleaned out, filled with a matching card and gift cards and then re-sealed...it was awesome!...yeah, you guessed it, no picture. I would have SWORN that I took a photo...nope...rude surprise when I loaded the pics onto the computer this morning and noThINg...uuuuggghhhhh!!!

Anyway...moving on...here's how I decorated the door this year. Connor only had to break through the crepe paper...not as much fun as the signs I usually make, but I completely forgot to get the paper...side note here...have you seen that blog where she does "Martha Points"? you get plus points if you do something "Martha-esque" and minus points if you screw up...It's hysterical...this reminds me of that...forgot paper for traditional sign -10 points...made up for it with a $3.99 balloon and left over crepe paper + 7 points...cracks me up...I would sooooo be in the negative section alllll the time! One step forward, 17 steps back!

okay, so ...a little cardstock, a cricut, some crepe paper, and a balloon...done.




not much to rip through and Connor was disappointed...so maybe it's more than -10 points ;(




So...again, I'll state for the record, my son is an only child, always will be. That makes this all okay...and probably gives me a few Martha points to boot!

He gets a few new summer/water toys on the last day of school. Here's a bucket filled with stuff from the dollar section...badminton rackets, water bombs, and water balls...




Here's a stack of gifts...I am aLL about the red, white, and aqua color combo lately...not sure what that's all about...but here are two new squirt guns and an airplane model kit...I bought a few board games too, but that seemed like to much, so I saved them for a few weeks for now when the "moooooooom, I'm bored....." starts!

That's all for now. I'll post a retirement gift I made for Sanford's favorite school secretary tomorrow...okay...it'll probably be like 3 days from now... ;)


Tuesday, June 8, 2010

soooooo happy....


just in case it hasn't been obvious in my long-winded, rambling posts, I never have a camera ready when I need one. I went through a stage where I took dozens of pictures of Connor every day for eons (that's probably why he has 4 completed scrapbooks and he's under 18 months in all the photos)...but I never remembered to take pictures on holidays or at family gatherings or any where important...looking in his scrapbooks, you might think that Connor was alone on the planet and that fines are issued if father and son are not in matching outfits! sooooo over that. Any way...Connor's third birthday. I may have gone a little overboard. Just a little. In my defense, he is an only child, so no one will ever claim it's not fair...he got a bigger party...and hence I will only throw ONE 3 year old party in my life.

sooo...I am happy that apparently my husband had a camera out and actually took photos of my handiwork since I was a complete slacker! Here they are....







Here's the sign announcing it's a third party for the boy in the front yard...




Here's the front walk way...back when my house was blue...




and here's a small portion of the plethora of Thomas crapola I got...




Here's the sign with Connor's infamous beady-eyed face ;)




ummm...yes, these might be the presents from just us...




here are the gift boxes...from the container store filled with who remembers what??? c'mon it was 6 years ago...



a little more of the Thomas hoopla...




look...my hubby took a kind of artsy photo of the goodies...I had to put it in because he made some effort... ;)




here's the sign announcing he's 3...notice how the sign looks like a railroad crossing sign...




another railroad sign...with a cute title...and paper pieced drinks...




and snacks...




and a "cake corner" sign...ummm, I might have been up til midnight making signs...




store bought cake....hadn't discovered cupcakes yet...I would have spelled my son's name right...






here's the boy...accccck! how cute is he!!??!!





here's gift opening...with unpainted book shelves, cream carpet, green paint, braided rugs...hahahahaha.....It makes me more appreciative of my house now...

Monday, June 7, 2010

Music Teacher Thank you


The entire third grade at Connor's school put on a musical performance. About 100 kids...ALLLLLLL of them with some percentage of squirrel DNA...some a little bit, some almost direct genetic matches!

The show was great! Connor was young Albert Einstein...a prodigy that kid is, I tell ya! Okay, it was three lines and two of them were back talking his stage "mom"...so perhaps the role was just an excellent fit ;)

Any way, I thought that the music teacher deserved some kind of thank you ...just a quick little giftie to let her know that the show was great and we appreciated all of her hard work.




I made her this...inside is a thank you note from Connor and some ghiradelli chocolate squares...peanut butter...and a few caramel filled ones...is it wrong that my mouth just watered?




I just used kraft cardstock and the 3,5,7,9,11 hut hut..oops..sorry...that's what happens when you're the coach's wife...the box pattern that's all numbers in the title from splitcoaststampers. Quick box...made from one sheet of 8.5 x 11 cardstock. So simple. I made one in purple too for Connor's teacher...her fav color...seriously, 30 minutes from start to finish.

Tomorrow is the last day of school for Connor. I sent something in to his teacher every day for the last week of school. Honestly...I've spent time with the boy...his teacher deserves more than goodies and prizes, we're talking canonization here! The least I can do is send in some chocolate and a few gift cards.

Maybe I'll get it together and post all the goodies tomorrow. Or, I could be my slackerish self and do it sometime next week...