I love you every hour of the day!

Love is in the air and so is the sweet smell of chocolate.

I made my hubby a "Valentines clock" for Valentines Day. Each number is a note with a message from me to him. He can only open a note when it comes to that hour of the day. The paper was cut using my Silhouette.

My little dude got this monkey card. I copied this idea straight off of the Silhouette blog. You can find the example here. The original lollipop was found and consumed earlier today. He enjoyed the magnetic letters as well.
I was surprised by this sweet Valentines card. I do love homemade Valentines cards especially from my boys.

Happy Valentines Day

Spiritual Art

I was asked to help do a craft at our church that would be considered "Spiritual Art" and $2 per project.

Yay a crafty activity!! Well I first went to the mecca of all things crafty u-createcrafts.com and clicked on the label that said "religious". From there I found a cute temple block craft from the website lilluna.com. She and her husband antique temple pictures to be used for this craft. This project is becoming fairly popular based on the number of different temples she had on her site. However, she didn't have an Atlanta temple so my dear friend Stacy helped me out and sent me a great temple picture.

I was expecting 15-20 people to sign up but we had over 60 people sign up! We had around 50 people at the activity too. What can I say girls like to craft...or they like anything that is free.

I managed to stay in the budget and in the end spent $1.80 per craft. They didn't charge me at Home Depot to cut the wood so that was a life saver and I learned at Kinkos it's 9 cents a page to use the copy machine with USB port opposed to 48 cents a page to use the printer. It's the exact same quality. This helped me save so I could spend more money on ribbons. Everyone did a great job especially with their ribbons which is something I am very dysfunctional at.

There was a second craft too which were these cute vinyl tiles that are super easy but turn out so sharp.

Receiving

Christmas is a season of giving but who am I kidding it's fun to get things too!

My sister-in-law Jill gave me Craft Hope, a book I wanted that is filled with crafts and organizations that are in need of those crafts. The pictures are lovely in the book.

My mom surprised me with a big gift I was totally not suspecting! Just wishful thinking...

(photo from http://www.dana-made-it.com/)

Holy moly a Silhouette! Let the fun begin. My husband and I (since we got it before Christmas) played around with it a bit. I'll have to get some pictures of my first projects (journal jar and nativity tile). However, I do have a picture of a silhouette made with my Silhouette. We took the picture below at a pumpkin patch and I took out the color and heightened the contrast so that it would be easier to trace on the software.

Viola! A silhouette of my little guy. A perfect keepsake for his baby book. I can always remember how he likes to jut out his bottom jaw.

I'm excited to make more fun things.

Sentimental Gifts

God. Country. Family. Those things get me every time. I'm sentimental and I admit it completely. When I make a gift for someone it tends to be sentimental opposed to practical. I do like to make gifts for family around Christmas time but it's usually only one person. Too much stress otherwise.

A few years back I made a freshman guide for my brother. Last year Mike and I made a storybook for Matthew and this year I made a photo book for my grandma. My grandma's birthday happens to be Christmas day and I wanted to make something special for her. She's a strong women with a good heart, and whom I think I look the most alike of any of my grandparents. I loved looking through the pictures seeing the clothing, cars, her changing hair styles and my mom as a little girl. I also found some ancestor pictures online by googling their names and connected with a second cousin who had a genealogy blog! Ha who knew. I gobbled it all up, loving it all because like I said I'm sentimental. Here are some pictures from the book.

My grandma's father is on the top in the middle. She never knew him because he died when she was 6 months old. This is one of the pictures I found online.

My grandma is in the middle.

My grandparents wedding day.

The bus.

Totally Jackie O in this shot!

A pictures worth a thousand words.

I love this of my parents.

That's me.

Sacred Places

My friend Deanne is in grad school for photography at SCAD (Savannah College for Art and Design). She was working on a photo assignment which required taking pictures of people in their sacred places outside of houses of worship or other religious buildings.

I started to think about what were my sacred places outside of my house of worship. The first thing that came to mind was in the delivery room where my son was born. That moment when I held him for the first time was certainly sacred. It's hard to put it into words. When he was very little I would watch those tv shows with women going into labor. I think I wanted to recreate that feeling. It's one of the most sacred moments of my life.

When I continued thinking about sacred places I also thought about the sun. Oh how I love sunshine. There is something very settling and energizing to me about the sun. Walking around outside on a bright sunny day is one of my favorite ways to ponder and think and speak to God. My friend asked if she could take my picture with the sun. So on an autumn day we went to a park by her home and took pictures of the sun on me coming through the trees. I'm glad I could help her on her assignment.

(photographer Deanne Andrus. She sent this picture to me right after the shoot so there isn't any editing on this pic.)

Now that our thoughts have turned to Christmas another sun comes to mind. The son of God, our Savior Jesus Christ. A babe laying in a manger in a stable is a sacred place to many Christians. I attended a Nativities display at an LDS church which had a room full of nativity scenes from around the world. I was overcome with a feeling of joy and humility for a child who was brought into this world in such lowly conditions but who has triumphantly overcome the world.

I hope this Christmas season to turn my thoughts to Christ and remember one of the most sacred events this world has beheld.

Acorn Wreath

My son and I gathered some acorns under this big beautiful tree. I used them to make a little wreath for our door.

Unfortunately our door has a big key padlock on the front which kind of detracts from the whole splendor of the wreath. (sigh)
So here it is hanging off the balcony door...not very cool but at least no pad lock.

The Flying Monkey

For Halloween this year our little guy was a flying monkey. I've had a few ask me if I made his costume. The answer is yes and no. I created his costume but only handmade some of it.

We found the cute monkey costume at Party City. It was there that my husband suggested our little monkey could be a flying monkey. So we went with that and found some wings we could use. Then I made a little hat and vest out of leftover felt I had from my playhouse. There you have it-a Flying Monkey!

The whole family