Your Thursday Laugh

Let me just begin this post with a statement of how much I love my husband. I do. I love him to the moon and back. I am so lucky to have him and how or why he puts up with some of my sh-- ... um crap ... I will never ever know. OK, that being said, I bring you this funny.

My daughter's pre-school class required her to bring a pumpkin to school today so that they could paint them. The teacher told me "cataloupe sized". No problem. So on Tuesday night (two evenings ago) we had to do a quick run by the store for milk and I texted my husband from the car asking him to also pick up a "cataloupe sized" pumpkin. Well, his phone has issues, and he didn't get the text until he had already gotten back to the car so no pumpkin. No big deal.

So last night as I was throwing something together for dinner (have I ever told you how much I detest making dinner? NOT one of my specialties by any means. I could craft a dinner out of all my supplies better than making something edible), I remembered the cantaloupe sized pumpkin. I asked him if he wanted to take Hannah to get one or if he wanted me to do it. He easily volunteered to do it. So I told him a small, cantaloupe sized one and even used my hands to show him the size of what I wanted. Off they went. Upon their return I asked to see it. This is what they showed me ...




And I ask you this. Have cantaloupes shrunken recently and I don't know it? Is this global warming thing affecting the size of cantaloupe growth? I included the pear for reference. No, that is not the world's largest pear! It's a normal sized pear.

When I said, "That's TOO small!!!!" he said, "What? You said 'get a small pumpkin' and I did." I do find it funny that he has no recollection of the cantaloupe sized part. Not to mention the text from the night before. I'll blame it on the Dodgers because the sad pathetic game they played was on and he was constantly saying, "I think I like the torture." So perhaps he wansn't paying complete attention to me.

This is my "Seriously?!" face:


Believe it or not, I wasn't mad in the least. But I did have to run out to the store to get a cantaloupe sized pumpkin for dear sweet Hannah. My husband didn't understand in the slightest why his little one would not do. Two reasons. (1) She's barely 4 and is supposed to paint on this thing. She needs a slightly bigger canvas that your typical college art student for such a project. (2) I feel like my whole life I never had the "quite right" materials that were required of me. My mom had three other kids below me and I think this is where I paid the price. I can't remember a specific incidence that traumatized me, but I know it sucked not having exactly what I was supposed to and when I can help it, I don't want that for my kids.

So I hope you get a little chuckle out of this. I sure did.

My latest craft endeavors

I just realized that my last post was my 100th post. Crazy!

Anyways, I actually was able to get a little bit of crafting done recently. Here's two projects.

A housewarming gift for some good friends.

I just bought a wooden wreath from Michaels along with one strand of beaded garland. Tied that to the wreath with some floral wire. Then hot glued the leaves and pumkin on. Made a bow and tuped up "Live, Laugh, Love" on a scalloped tag. Nothing too difficult. Hopefully they'll like it.

Here's a 8 1/2x11 layout for Joel's grandma. She lives in Oregon and doesn't get to see the girls much. I thought she'd enjoy this picture of them.

Hope everyone has a nice week.

More from Hannah's Birthday

So I thought I would share a few more photos of the big 4 year old's birthday celebration.

Her birthday panCAKE ...

Her new bedding ...

Now to only get some things on the walls.

A few from Build-a-Bear ...







A few from Disneyland ...

A few from her party ...

SUCCESS!!!!

As promised, if I thought the cake turned out OK, I would post pictures. So here it goes ...

Ta da!

Let the singing commence!

Make a wish and blow!

Who wants cake?

When I first began frosting the cake, I thought to myself, "This is not going to be fun!" And the "why do I always do this to myself" thoughts began flooding in. But after I got the cakes themself to an acceptable point, the rest was fun. Time consuming of course, but fun. When Hannah saw it in the morning (as assembled as it was going to get before transporting it to the party site), she said, "Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Is that my castle cake, Mom?!" That was enough for me. But to add to my glory, another sweet almost 4 year old friend of Hannah's said to me, "That was the best cake I have ever had!" I would do it again in a heartbeat.

I am so glad to have the party behind us. It's been an exhausting birthday week for this family. We did Build-a-Bear and Disneyland on Thursday. Then the party of Saturday. Today I allowed myself to do pretty much nothing. Feels good!

Wilton, are you looking for a new spokeswoman?

Ummm ... I think I have a problem. I have recently accumulated quite a bit of Wilton baking supplies. But it's not my fault. I have to make a princess castle birthday cake. No, not because Hannah begged me to. She could care less. Because I decided I HAD to make it. I am gearing up for the process. I have watched enough of those cake shows and Food Network Challenges to have this in the bag. I think. The plan as of now is to make the cakes tomorrow evening. Then Friday night I will begin the assembly. Haven't decided yet if I will assemble the whole thing here or put the finishing touches on the cake when we get to my dad's. I am just hoping and praying that after all the materials I have purchased, that I will be able to turn out a nice looking cake. You can see what the finished product is supposed to look like in the box there.

Step 1: tint fondant and cut out 300+ mini flowers

Step 2: after flowers dry, pipe a flower center into middle of each flower

Step 3: bake the cakes

Step 4: Attach dowels to towers with melted chocolate

Step 5: frost cakes and insert dowels

Step 6: stack cakes

Step 7: decorate cake with various colors of royal icing

That is the super simple breakdown. Some of the instructions read like a manual for assembling some sort of huge toy or something.

You can be absolutely 100% sure that if it looks OK, I will post 101 pictures of it on this blog. Hopefully I will remember to take some of my darling little 4 year old as well.

A peek at what I have been up to

Wish I could say it's been more scrapping but that is not the case. Life is hectic as usual. A good kind of hectic though. I did manage to pull away for a couple hours to work on some SGT Design Team projects. Here's one layout I busted out. It's growing on me. Wasn't sure about it at first. It features Bo Bunny's "Kitchen Spice" line. I just love the colors in this line and new it would work perfectly with Makaela's Halloween 2008 pictures. Is she not the cutest mermaid you ever saw?! (please excuse the colors being a little off ... the lighting was TERRIBLE!)

Vegas Baby!

So it's been a crazy past week or so. My birthday was on the 8th. To celebrate Joel and I hauled off to Vegas. I have the BEST husband ever. He knows me too well. Back in March he booked rooms for us at the Bellagio. I never would have done this for myself. Too impractical. Too much money. Well that was then. After this last weekend, I am not sure I can do Vegas the old way (cheap rooms, food, etc.) This was by far the best Vegas trip ever. We had a full view of the watershow and sat at our hotel window for hours on end just watching the water dance and listening to the coordinating music via the TV. So mesmerizing! I will share more pictures later, but for now I will leave you with these.

At the Bellagio pool. Did I mention best-husband-ever also rented us a cabana!

The view from our room during the day.

The view from our room during the night.

QuicKutz Club Project

So if you're reading this, chances are you linked up from SGT's blog. And if that's the case, you might have heard about the QuicKutz club. Well for the month of September, I was responsible for designing the project and here's what I came up with. It's a sweet little 3x3 chipboard booklet. There are 4 pages in all. It can be given as a sweet little gift. Or kept to showcase a few special photos. This project is so easy to make and can be recreated with any other papers out there. Think Christmas gifts -- pop a few photos, or quotes, or Christmas song lyrics in it. So if you're interested in learning how to make it, call the store and see if there's a spot for you.

Make your own letter stickers!

I posted this tip over at SGT as well, but I thought I would share here too. I haven't seen this anywhere else but I am positive I am not the first person to come up with this idea.

That being said ... I keep seeing all those teeny tiny letters floating around on people's layouts. They look so cute. Perfect for short little journaling places. They can say a location, a name, a date, etc. With two children, it's hard to get out and shop for supplies. And I am too impatient to order them off the interent and wait for them to arrive. Plus this economy has me focussing my money on smarter purchases. This all leads me to my creation. Do it yourself letter "stickers". In 5 minutes I had whipped up a set in black and brown.

How did I do it? I opened up Word. Set my font to Times New Roman at size 20. Then I typed rows of letters. A row of a's, a row of b's ... you get the idea.

Then using my handy dandy paper trimmer, I cut the rows of letters into strips. Now I have rows of letters in two colors. When I want a letter "sticker" I find the correct strip, cut off a letter and glue it to my project.

I am really excited about this idea. The possibilities appear to be endless. You can print out letters in any size of font or color. You can change the paper color. Vanilla would be a good paper color. You can ink them too!

September Projects for SGT

Just for you Susan ...

Here's a look at the September projects I did for Scrappin Good Times. Both feature American Crafts "Backyard" line. And both are showcasing the same event. One for each girl. They were so cute with this large amount of ladybugs Joel found while working in the yard one morning. Please excuse the terrible wardrobe both girls are in.

I got a lot of use out of my Silhouette on these projects. Pretty much all of the embellishments were made with it. If you don't know what it is, it's an electronic die cutting machine that hooks up to your computer. You can then print any font out in any size on pretty much any paper. It's made by QuicKutz. Not only does it cut fonts, but there's tons of places you can download shapes (as in my ladybugs, the vines, the flowers, etc.) I really love this machine!