Only in Idaho....

On my way home from Jeff's office, I get to see this beauty every day...that's right, folks, it's an inflatable HUNTIN' snowman!

Proof:

Why pain killers & sewing don't mix

This is why I should not try to sew when I:
-am stressed
-haven't slept
-am on pain killers

Do you see something wrong with this picture??



No? Let's try a close-up:



Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaap. I guess I need to redo the legs. Arg.

Wisdom tooth be gone!! ;)

Ewwww...

This topic could also be called: Gee, I wonder whyyyy this tooth was causing me pain?!

I'm home and alive. The whole thing took about 45 minutes. It took a little more work to get it out because two of the roots were basically fused into a mega root and of course, it was growing in the opposite direction of the other root. It figures.

And because I am my father's child...I had to take pictures of that which caused me pain. I proudly took my tooth with me like they'd removed a bullet or something. :)

Hope these pics don't gross anyone out. I totally understand that I'm a weirdo for taking them in the first place! LOL...


Say it with me now. Ew. There was a lot of decay because I can't get a toothbrush back there. My dentist kept commenting on how small my mouth is. Lovely.


Here's a better shot of the roots. No wonder it hurt!



And here's with my hand, just to give some perspective of size:



So yeah...there you have it. I survived. Now hopefully I'll heal quickly. I currently have an appointment on the 18th to have the rest of them removed, but he's considering sending me to an oral surgeon instead because one of my lower teeth has roots that are curving toward the jaw like a fishhook. Either way, I'm going to be knocked out for that round, thankyouverymuch!

Anyway...time for an ice pack and hopefully Jeff will be back with my pain meds soon!

Lack of sleep....

I'm having one of my wisdom teeth pulled on Wednesday and it's been causing me a lot of pain. I've only been sleeping in 2-3 hour shifts, but at least I've been productive in the meantime!

I've got 11 ornaments finished:



and the Annie embroidery is almost finished:



I also have all of the Annie limbs stitched up and ready to be stuffed. Yay for progress, at least! :D

My peaceful morning...

I like this snow fall on Mondays thing we've got going on. Just enough to make it pretty...not slick.



I finally have the decorations up and the living room is mostly clean. I might add some little red garland to the fireplace...we'll see. Doesn't it look so cozy though? :)

A different kind of snow

Piles of snowflakes:


I frantically spent most of the weekend working on an order of ornaments (20 ornaments, to be specific)to send to Jeff's mom. I was hoping to have them shipped out already, but I've been home sick with the stomach flu, and it just didn't happen...Thankfully, I could finally sit up yesterday, so I finished the last two. I soaked them in the wax last night and now they're drying. I'm hoping I can get them mailed today, but we'll see...the kids I nanny for have Kindermusic and I have to pick the other one up from preschool, so I'm not sure I'll have time.



I think these are my favorites:

I guess it's that time of year...

Goodbye fall, hello winter!



It's falling so perfectly that it almost looks like it's in a movie or a screensaver. *grins*

Every Monday should start like this...

I need to remember to start taking my camera when I take Jeff to work. I keep missing the best photos. On Friday, a pretty rainbow. Today, there were clouds pretty much covering the city and as the sun started to rise and bounce off of those clouds...it was just gorgeous. It looked like staring at the ocean, but that it was somehow inverted. Amazing. And yet, no camera. Grrr. And by the time I got home, the moment had passed.

But...it turned into this:



The sky is on fire!



I miss my photo editing software (it's on the dead computer). The colors aren't quite right. It was definitely bright like that, but with a little bit of red to it too. Pretty pretty.

Happy Friday!

We now interrupt your regular programming to bring you this random thought:

This is a silly one, but my gratitude Friday thought is: I love my grocery bags. To be completely honest, when I made them I figured it was completely possible that I'd use them twice and decide it was too much trouble. Thankfully, that has not been the case.

They hold so much more stuff than a plastic bag! For instance, these two little bags:


carried all this!


A plastic bag would've snapped in half. I frequently get compliments on them, and only once have I had them be a negative thing: there was an overzealous lady at the door who decided that I must be stealing a cart worth of groceries since I didn't have plastic bags. *crosses eyes*

Anyway...I want to make some more, but I have so many Christmas things to finish up first. Let the countdown begin! 5 days till my birthday....6 till Thanksgiving...and then it will be Christmas before we know it! Eek!

Happy Friday, everyone! :)

Because I have no children to post pictures of, you get my darling kitty instead. Please meet the beautiful Miss Nermal.

Who's a pretty kitty?

Nermal is!


Nermal is!

Halloween decorations and pumpkins!!

Happy belated Halloween, everyone!

We had a party on Friday for some of Jeff's coworkers and it was so much fun! I decided to make a little graveyard based off of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyworld. I also carved a haunted mansion themed pumpkin for the party and made a little Elmo pumpkin on Tuesday for the trick or treaters.

Anyway, on to the pictures!

Elmo pumpkin:
I was going to smooth out the shaded parts, but I kind of like it like this. It looks sort of furry, don't you think?


Aaaand my haunted mansion pumpkin:


And here's a little closer, with some slightly better detail. It looks better in person, but I didn't have time to get the lighting right for a picture.




The tombstones (which I think I'll post a little tutorial of later) are made entirely of foam insulation sheets (which are carved and then painted with latex paint):


A few more shots of the tombstones are here.

Overall, I'm quite proud of my Halloween craftiness! :D

Catching up...

Aaaand here we are a month later. Life has been crazy. I flew home at the beginning of the month for a 30th birthday party and then my dad ended up in the hospital for just over a week...and I've been planning a Halloween party, which has sadly occupied most of my life right now.

Here's my most recent project for the party:

Gravestones!! These are made of foam insulation sheets and carved with a WonderCutter hot tool and my old pottery tools, and they're modeled after the gravestones surrounding the Haunted Mansion at Disney World.



In progress:


Individual shots of a couple:




And stacked together:



I'm about half finished with the carving. I'm hoping to finish that today and then paint them and distress them tomorrow. *crosses fingers*

Beaded Snowflakes

I've also started making some beaded snowflakes this week. I still haven't figured out how to capture their sparkle...




The white one is iridescent seed beads and bugle beads, plus some random blue pearly lined beads. The blue ones are a mixture of silver lined seed beads and turquoise silver lined seed beads, plus some cobalt iridescent bugle beads.

My first raggedy doll!

She's not exactly traditional, but I was working with what I had and I love her! Please ignore the fact that her arms are a bit wonky and the stripes on her legs didn't quite line up. She was my "tester" doll, so I already know things I'll do differently next time.

(as always, you can click on the pics for a larger version)




Closeup:



She was made with my stash fabric, with hand painted socks and shoes (using fabric medium added to my paint) and hand embroidered face and heart:



Here's a closeup of her little heart:



She's not perfect, but I'm pretty darn proud :)

Gratitude Friday

I know...I'm behind in this. So, here we go again!

Anyway, today I'm thankful for:

Creative messes




Time to create




The little details in life that make my heart smile



Happy Friday, everyone! :)

Things that make me smile...

Sidewalk chalk is fun!! :)

Reusable Grocery Bags: Take 2!

I've had these finished for a few weeks now...I just keep forgetting to post them. It's just basically a pattern cut off of a plastic shopping bag, but with a pocket sewn to the front, so you can fold it up into its own little pouch. The tutorial is here

These pictures aren't so great, but you get the idea:



I find it hilarious that it's the MALE checkers who go on and on about how fabulous and cute they are. LOL...

Here are the bags plus the first one I made:

Anniversary trip to Jackpot, NV!

I never got around to talking about our trip, so here we are.

As I've mentioned, last Friday was our 5th anniversary. We hadn't been on any kind of trip since our honeymoon, but we're still plugging along on paying down debt, so we didn't want to do anything *too* big. We were looking for someplace cheap, close and less smoke-filled than the mountain resorts that we'd looked at around here. We settled on Jackpot, NV. It was about 2 and a half to 3 hours from here, just across the Idaho border, near Twin Falls, ID. From my understanding, the city was created when Idaho outlawed gambling, so it's literally FEET from the Idaho border. Awesome.

Here's Jackpot:



It is the tiniest little strip. It's almost laughable. I think there were 4 or 5 hotels and maybe 5 restaurants, with 3 of those being housed in our hotel and the hotel across the street. I was a little disappointed about the lack of food choices, but oh well. Our trip mostly consisted of: pool, hot tub, jacuzzi (in the room), eating, napping and gambling. It was fabulous. :)

The first night, we had dinner at Cactus Pete's, the largest hotel there and the main casino (the rest were a complete joke. I think our hotel "casino" had 5 tables and maybe 20 slot machines? I've seen bigger arcades. I would hardly call it a casino.)



We had a seafood and steak buffet and I actually tried some swordfish and ate a bit of shrimp (I normally don't care for seafood, but I'm always willing to try!). The best part was dessert. We literally took turns picking what we should get. My tummy hurts just thinking of all the dessert!

Jeff decided to play a little blackjack after dinner and we met the sweetest couple. They were probably about our parents' age and they were so cute. Carol (the wife) decided that I should be playing as well, so she gave me a $5 chip and helped with playing. There was lots of giggling and chatting and we had such a great time. Unfortunately, Jeff lost my big $17.50 win, but at least we didn't lose any big money. Jeff's good about walking away instead of pushing to win it back.

Here's our hotel, the Horshu:



It was very "old west" themed, but it was still nice. It took a while to get into our room at first, but otherwise, I was rather happy there. I'm so happy that we decided to get the jacuzzi room too. It was awesome. :) We stayed up late playing cards and soaking in the jacuzzi. Good stuff.

On Saturday, we drove about an hour away to Wells, NV and took the scenic drive to Angel Lake (I'll be posting scenery pictures galore later). It was a nice little break, but Wells was even smaller than Jackpot. We think it must've been the original casino town before Jackpot, but it's mostly a ghost town at this point. There were two little diners and a Burger King and that was about it. We stopped for gas, and were baffled by the price difference. It was .56/gallon more expensive ACROSS THE STREET. What?!
Proof:
Where we bought gas:


Across the street:


Anyway, so we drove up an insanely steep and windy road, but finally found the lake. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, but it was still pretty. I took tons of pictures and then we headed back to the hotel.

That night we ate at the little Mexican place in our hotel "casino". It was pretty good, and reasonably priced...and our AWESOME waitress brought us the biggest fried ice cream I've ever seen in my life (go Jeffy for not so subtly mentioning our anniversary!)...for free!! I really wish I'd had my camera. It was in one of those giant martini glasses...and it. was. awesome. :D How is it that I didn't gain 50 pounds on this trip? I just don't know.

On our trip back home on Sunday, we accidentally took scenic highway 30 around Twin Falls and it was gorgeous. I'm trying to figure out how to take my parents there when they come to visit. It was a stunning trip filled with mountains, foothills, dessert sand dunes, rocky canyons and breathtaking waterfalls. Who knew that all existed in Idaho?

Pictures of scenery coming soon!!


All in all, it was a wonderful trip. I'm so glad we went! It's good to be home though. I missed my bed, my quiet house and my kitty :)