Glitter, glitter...everywhere GLITTER!

I've been working on some butterflies to add to my bedroom wall today. I've had them in my head for weeks and decided to get them created today--or at least started. I don't know if it's just me but I can't work with glitter without having a happy feeling :) It's messy and impossible to contain but I love it!

So what are you waiting for? Get in your craft rooms and dig into your glitter stash!!

Altered glass vase

It's been an absolutely beautiful weekend here in East Tennessee. It just doesn't get much better than this folks...sunny and upper 60's with just the slightest of breezes passing through the open doors and windows. If I wasn't yearning for spring already this has kick started the yearn into high gear!
Unfortunately, this particular warm spell is to be short lived as it's suppose to be back into the teens for lows and 30's for highs this coming week.
But enough about the weather...onto the project I finished today, right?!? Well a few weeks ago I purchased a glass vase from the Goodwill store. I generally search for anything and everything that is even remotely alterable when I shop the Goodwill store and I've made some great purchases there for just the purpose of altering. I paid $1.00 for this vase and I almost forgot to take a before picture! I actually had already made one swipe with the spray paint when I remembered (as you can tell from the photo)

But still you can see that it was just a regular, nothing special about it, clear vase.
I used my trusty old Rust Oleum spray paint...I seriously LOVE this stuff and use it for all kinds of stuff.

I used beads and paper from my craft stash to make a flower spray as ornamentation and here are a few pictures of that process:

And here is the spray put together...I love making flower sprays--you just start out with some paper and a few supplies and end up with something beautiful...it always makes me happy when I finish creating something <3

Add some tulle that I have for another project and VOILA!!

And here's a before and after side by side---I'm still learning how to do this so I apologize that the photo on the left isn't the exact size.

And that is another completed project/accessory for my evolving bedroom. It's still a work in progress but slowly but surely there IS progress.

And now the day has almost gotten away from me and I'm not yet ready for the weekend to be over. I think I'll just go see what else I have around to piddle with.
I hope you've had as great a weekend as I have! Thanks for coming by and come back soon!

And today...

Is a brand new day, my friends! As I'm sitting here contemplating the wide range of options I have in pursuit of this beautiful winter's day, my love is slaving away in the kitchen cooking a big breakfast for the family...Brandon is on the couch piddling around with his guitar and Garrett and Chris are remarkably in the same room discussing a game of some sort---THIS...yes, this is my idea of a perfect morning and it makes my heart smile.

Today as I was scrolling through my facebook newsfeed I came upon a new scrapbook sketch from Creative Scrappers and I think that attempting that sketch will be my main agenda for the day. They have a wonderful variety of sketches if you just need a little jump start to creativity and I have used their sketches more than once.
Here is the link for that blog if you'd like to follow along!
http://creativescrappers.blogspot.com/2014/02/cs-sketch-262-revealed.html

And now I leave you with a final thought for today...Embrace the possibilities!
Make this day a good one. Make it memorable and do something you love :)

Making "oven toast"...my FAVORITE <3

Hey Ya'll!

I'm still here...just haven't been feeling very inspired. I think with so much disruption in my normal routine it's gotten me off kilter. We have had quite of few snow days and cold weather days where school has been called off. I always plan on those days to be crafty and creative and somehow it never quite happens that way lol. 
We had a big (for US) snowfall a few days ago and it's really thrown me off. But today, Valentine's Day, I was coerced by my 18 year old son to help him with a gift for his girlfriend. Actually it didn't take very much coercion on his part...I love that he wanted to give her something handmade and from his heart. Truth is that he's not been able to work recently and his savings have dwindled. Nonetheless, I think she will love her gift.
After looking at the selection of flowers I've made over the past few years he decided that he wanted to try his hand at the coffee filter rose. He's a smart fella as that is also MY favorite :)

He actually made this completely by himself, procuring several burns from the hot glue gun along the way. NOTE: I already had the petals cut and in my stash.

He completely designed the card and I did the cutting and gluing. He did the stamping :)

And here are some of coffee filter roses I have made over the last couple years. They are even more beautiful in person.

We also got to spend some time with some of the kids and the grandkids after Tim got off work today. I can honestly say, without hesitation, that today was a wonderful day. I am so blessed to have a husband who loves me unconditionally and such amazing sons, grandchildren and daughter in laws. Life is truly good :)

And here I am with my beautiful granddaughter <3 She's the first girl in our family and if I were a betting person I'd be putting my money on her being one spoiled little princess before long.

                                             And here she is with both of us :)

And that's it for today :)  

If you're interested in making the coffee filter roses here is a link where you can see a great video tutorial. I watched several when I was learning to make them and this one was by far my favorite. I do warn you though that they addicting once you make one!

coffee filter roses video tutorial

when do you know if you have too much patterned paper?

SO...I have been trying to scrapbook today...trying being the operative word ((big huge sigh)).  I went through my massive collection of printed pictures in search of just that one photo that would catch my eye and beg to be scrapped and the pictures didn't disappoint. Unfortunately, finding the photo was almost as far as the process  progressed because the next step--for me--is finding just the perfect papers. And that, my friends, is where I am stuck.
I think part of the problem is my lack of space--as mentioned before. Also my organizational skills when it comes to my patterned paper are nonexistent to say the least. And the 3rd problem is that I just have too much paper--yes, I'm shocked as well!! And if anyone tells my husband I admitted that I have too much paper I will, of course, vehemently deny it haha.

Six 12x12 drawers of patterned paper

Hard to tell but this is a pretty good stack of patterned paper that I have no drawers for.

And even MORE patterned paper

Now tell me how it is that I can have all this and not have a paper I like or want to use on this page...
Now ask me if I will purge any of my paper? Uhhhh...that would be a resounding NO :)

Did someone say football??

It's been a loooong but exciting and eventful week! For the past 2 years our lives have been absolutely immersed in football and everything involved with competing for college football scholarships. It's a competitive endeavor to say the least. All our dedication and Garrett's incredible hard work paid off on February 5, 2014--aka: NATIONAL SIGNING DAY when he signed a letter of intent with Carson-Newman University. We are beyond proud of him and look forward to seeing him suited up in orange and blue...GO EAGLES!

Garrett in little league

Here he is the beginning of football season his senior year of high school. Quite a change huh?

And here we all are at his signing ceremony--VERY proud mommy moment :)

And that's the biggest thing that happened this week.

But amid all the excitement and brouhaha I did accomplish one semi crafty thing I want to share with you.
I know phone books are just about obsolete but we still have a stack of them and yes, my husband uses them frequently lol. He's got a foot out of the stone ages if only I could just give him a little extra tug on outta there. So I've had those phone books stacked neatly underneath the table where the house phone resides. But no matter how neatly I stacked them they continued to taunt and torment me. And while this isn't an ideal solution--it IS a cost effective one and you know I'm all about cost effective---haha, doesn't that sound much better than cheap?
Here's my solution to hiding the stack of phone books :)

a cardboard box, some metallic spray paint and a pretty ribbon

I had the box left over from Christmas, the spraypaint from a picture frame project I'm working on and the ribbon from my ribbon stash. It doesn't look as discolored on that bottom corner in person but the camera always wants to highlight every imperfection. And as I said, not perfect, but it looks better so mission accomplished!

Thanks for stopping by and come back soon!!

Hallway transformation

About a year ago or so I decided to paint the living room and hallway a dark gray color. To say that Tim was skeptical is putting it mildly. But, being the good husband he is he didn't nix the idea. He's really good about letting me do whatever I want when it comes to the decorating aspect of our home, and while it's a simple thing, it does mean a lot to me.
When we moved in I painted the living room, hallway and 2 smaller bedrooms a khaki color and it suited me for a few years and then I decided I wanted a drastic change....so gray it was. To be honest, even I was skeptical after the first coat. It was a bold change...but as the paint dried and I could get a true concept of how it would look, I just knew I'd made the right choice.
The hallway was another area I'd struggled with as far as decorating elements. I'd had a pair of pictures hung there at one time but never really liked how it looked. So I'd seen a wall on Pinterest...yes I get tons of ideas from Pinterest lol...with a "photo tree" of sorts and I loved it! The only problem was that it would need to be quite large--much larger than I could create with vinyl without going through some major headache and piecing together. Lucky for me I have an amateur artist in the house! I say "amateur" but really, Stefan has a true gift. So I printed a picture off from the internet and he created it for me. "Only one per lifetime..." is what he said lol...but I could probably coerce him into another one if I really wanted to.
I feel like I'm rambling so I'll get right to the chase...I have the before picture and the pictures I took today after FINALLY getting the photos hung on the tree. I still have some touching up to do but that'll wait until another day. So without further ado....here you go :)

I absolutely love it! Another very inexpensive project completed. The white paint we already had from the bottom part of the living room wall. The frames were .97 at Walmart and I even bought those a few at a time until I had enough. The photos themselves were a total of $2.49 for one-hour processing from Walmart. So we'll say a total of roughly $15 :)