Who cares about scrapping when I can eat?

I made a new recipe for dinner last night. You can find the instructions here: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2007/08/spicy_shrimp_yu/ . Oh man, it was so tasty. We just had shrimp and bread. But the shrimp would be good with some rice to soak up all the sauce. I think any leftovers would be great in some sort of cold salad. This was so simple and easy to make that I think it will become a staple at our house anytime shrimp goes on sale. I have also made the Pioneer Woman's bacon wrapped cracker appetizers and they were very good also. Be sure to check out all of her recipes and the rest of her blog.

Will I ever stamp or scrap again?

Seems like the forces of the world are against me ever getting anything creative done. This long holiday weekend when Tim was supposed to be riding in the mountains and I was supposed to be getting lots of scrapping done - we ended up making an unscheduled trip to KY. Tim's Mom is in the hospital with some heart problems. She got a pacemaker late last week and spent several days in CCU. She's in a regular room now and doing so much better.

We did take some time Sunday afternoon to drive up to Owensboro to see the kid. And, of course, I took more pictures that seem like they'll never get scrapped. Dylan did a project for psychology class using his dogs to test biocommunication. The teacher handed out awards for the projects. Dylan got a Blue Plunger for the best topic award. He's very proud of his blue plunger. He has one more week of school and is planning on working at Burger King this summer.

I guess this week I'll work on catching up on housework and laundry. Then this weekend I am going to scrap! Because my nieces have dance recital this weekend which means more pictures to scrap.

Mother's Day Cards

As usual, I was late getting my Mother's Day cards made and mailed. But they did finally get done. Everyone should have received theirs by now, so I'll share them with everyone else. A couple of weeks ago, my friend Judi and I went to a new stamp store in Matthews. I bought my first official unmounted stamp set. Unmounted stamps don't come on wood blocks, when you want to use one you mount it on a reusable acrylic block. The stamps are stored in a CD sized case. Which means they don't take up as much room so you can have more stamps. The set I bought is called Jolies Fleurs by Lizzie Anne Designs. They have been very easy to work with, so I think I see more unmounted stamp sets in the future.

I love the color of these cards - celery, coral and pink. I used a half circle punch to make the scallops and did some paper piercing along the bottom by the ribbon for interest. The large scallop circle is a punch my friend Donna has. I used the small hole punch in the scallops to make it lacy. A little ribbon finishes it off. And inside is stamped with Happy Mother's Day.

The New Bathroom

The bathroom is almost done. Tim is working on replacing the old weights in the windows. When he finished with that then he'll paint the window and door frames. The wainscoting and woodwork is a soft white and the top part of the wall is Koi Pond green. It turned out exactly like I pictured. Now that we have a new couch, we can move on to the living room and dinning room - maybe in the fall. This weekend we are going to take a break from working on the house and yard and head to the mountains and do some camping, hiking (me) and bike riding (Tim).

Home Improvement Day

Today we are busy working on the house. Tim is busy putting in base moulding in the bathroom. The house was built in 1930, so the walls are a little wavy. But he is doing a beautiful job. We ran out to Sherwin Williams this morning and bought paint for the top part of the wall. It is a soft green color called Koi Pond. It's a different shade of green than the towels we have so I might need new towels.

While we were out, we stopped by the local furniture store to look at sofas. We found one that we liked - and it was on sale! I'm sitting on it now. It's not as big as our old one - a little shorter and not as wide. It is a sleeper sofa to give us a little more room for guests. And it was made right here in North Carolina. Fitzie and Riley have checked it out already. The old futon we carried to the curb and the neighbors hauled it off pretty quickly.

The garden we put in last weekend is doing pretty well. No corn or beans have sprouted yet, and the watermelon and cantaloupes don't look too good. But everything else looks great. We also planted a lilac and hydrangea. We've had some good rain this week which has been nice. I still need to get some impatients to plant in the pot on the front porch.

After all this hard work, I'm sure we'll sleep well tonight. I did go to a crop last night so have a few more scrapbook pages to show you next week.

My Mojo is Back

On Tuesday morning I finished up the page that had been on my table for three or four weeks. These pictures are from when I was up in Michigan and had a chance to sit down and scrap with my nieces. I'm going to end up making three different pages with these photos - one page for me, One for Sarah's book and one for Sydney's book. When I started working on this page I picked some papers that matched the purplish color of Sydney's dress so the papers ended up being too dark and drab to enhance the story. I switch over to some lighter colors that would coordinate with the other colors in the photos. But I was using punch star shapes as an accent. When I went to look for some pattern papers to use, I only found paper with flowers. Then I realized I really needed to use punched flowers instead of stars. So after three weeks of changing colors and embellishments, I was finally loving it.

I just spent two days down in Myrtle Beach with some of my online scrapping friends. So Hopefully I can get a couple of pages scrapped to show everyone.