What I’ve been up to this week…

I am so hooked on Instagram!  Love this beautiful sunrise picture…I actually stopped on my way to work to get this shot!

New project with an old lamp!

Made these really cool sea shell cards this weekend…so easy and so cute!  You can read about them here!

I hung a few more Es on the wall behind my chest of drawers…

And I cleaned out one drawer and one cabinet.  I have been trying to clean/organize my home one tiny step at a time.  I get sooo overwhelmed with how much I need to do, so I decided each week or weekend I would start by doing one or two small cleaning/organizing job.

I had so many pics on my iPhone that I had to clear out most of them in order to do 15 updates! I don’t understand why I had so many, but thought this might explain it!  Baby Brady is so cute!

My great niece is going to be Batman for Halloween and her mom asked me to make a tutu for her to match the Batman top! 

Of course I had to make a matching headband too!

Another beautiful phone pic from today…love it!

Dictionary Page Note Cards with Seashells

I like plain blank cards that can be used for any occasion.

I love the sea life motifs that I found here on etsy!

I had the blank cards on hand, had been wanting to put them to good use!

Now I can just add my message to the inside and have a personalized card to let people know that I am thinking of them.

Love the coral!

This shop has so many sweet designs, it was hard to choose just a few!  And the prices are really reasonable too!

All I used was a $1 dictionary (mine happened to be from Target and half off) and some plain note cards (I had a pack of 50 from Hobby Lobby for $9.99 before I used my 50% off coupon) and these cute little sea life crocheted pieces from GoldenLucyCrafts. 

Hope you are having a good week!

I am linking to these great parties!

What I’ve been up to this week!

I did some thrifting…found this wine crate for $3 at the Salvation Army…it will be used to organize in my craft/sewing room. I am just going to use some lemon oil treatment on it and I think it will perk up just fine!

I bought this full of thread spools at an auction…I wanted the spools, but am thinking the jar is pretty great too.  I think it might be a 2 gallon size, not sure, but I plan on making a terrarium out of it.

It was half full of spools…love it!  Lots of old ones, all wooden!

I have washed all the spools and will probably rub them down with pledge to make them pretty again.

The best thing I found was this pretty yellow all wool blanket!  I was so excited…it is a square about as wide as a twin blanket but not as long!  I have already felted (or fulled) it in the washer and it felted beautifully!

I have been motorcycle riding lately with a friend…four times over the past month, the first time for half the day!  I love riding and I needed a jacket that won’t be too hot but will keep the wind off me. 

I have even gotten brave enough to let go and take a pic or two…here I am in the reflection of Larry’s helmet!

I wanted a plain denim jacket and looked at several stores and catalogs, finally settled on one and it was $50, I hadn’t ordered it yet, but was going to…  Imagine my surprise when I walked into the Salvation Army and found this perfect denim jacket, it’s a little long but that will be perfect…Just my size and only $5!!   So glad I didn’t order the expensive one yet!

A week ago Friday we had a bad hail storm with probably a tornado too…there was a funnel cloud sighted within a few miles of home, but it’s not official I guess.   I didn’t lose any trees but there are a lot of trees twisted off at the ground.  The hail on the glove was pulled out of my friend’s gutters the next afternoon!

I was upset that the umbrella cover I made had several holes in it from the hail.  Bummed!

But I am thankful that my car and my son’s car were not at home or they would have been totaled! 

And the hail was sooo big, in my area, people reported up to baseball sized hail.  When I got home 4 hours after the storm had hit, the hail I found in the yard was still up to 2 inches in diameter. 

Almost every plant on my deck was demolished!  All summer it’s been so hot and I have watered them 3-4 times a day, but now they are all broken off. 

The ground was covered with leaves and sticks, the trees looked so bare! 

Insurance adjuster was out yesterday and now I am just waiting for the roof and gutter and chimney replacement estimates. 

Itty-Bitty Cloche

I found this hideous weensie pheasant under glass at Salvation Army ($1) Saturday.  I was looking for a sweet little tea cup and saucer for a gift basket, but didn’t find that of course.

Instead, this ugly little bird with fake grass but it was in a glass cloche with a wood base.  Isn’t it just wonderful?!

The glass wouldn’t let go of the base, so I soaked the whole mess in a cup of warm soapy water…it just popped right off then. I cleaned the glue off the base and sanded it really well.

I used a turquoise enamel I had leftover from another project…perfect color, distressed it real good after that and I was good to go!

It’s only about 4” tall and makes a great way to display a special seashell or crystal.  Oh, and can I interest anyone in a lovely pheasant?

That’s all I have for now…Hope you are having a good week!

I am linking to these great parties…

Marble Gazing Ball

Been wanting to make one of these for a while…

I found this styrofoam ball at the ReStore thrift store in Fort Collins.  Crazy to bring a styrofoam ball back from Colorado, but I did.  This 8 inch ball is from $12.97 to 14.99 at various stores (Wal-Mart, Hobby Lobby, and Michaels) here in town. 

One buckaroo!  I have been wanting to make a gazing ball using flat marbles.  The marbles I had were partly clear so the color of the ball would show through.

I painted it with some left over spray paint and then sponged on various assorted colors, mostly silver metallic, blues, turquoise and green.

At first I just set it down on the table and started gluing the marbles on.  Pretty soon I was chasing that thing all around the living room, so I decided to put it in a bowl to keep it from rolling off the table. 

It was soooo much easier after that!  I glued like marbles in rows, throwing in an occasional 1 inch round marble with a tiny square mirror underneath it. I wanted something that the sun could reflect from…

I just kept adding rows.

I just used hot glue to stick the marbles on.  Lots of strings!

It went pretty fast after I got started.

Frosty is not sure, he would have made it a different color!

Now just waiting for some clear grout!  I didn’t even know there was such a thing, but Lowe’s had it in stock so I picked some up.

I added some millefiori glass pieces left over from another project, just to fill in the spaces between some of the marbles.

I wanted some type of clear grout/filler.  I searched the web and found a product that Lowes carried.  Well, when I got to Lowes the worker in the tile department highly discouraged me from buying that product! 

So he talked me into buying a clear adhesive grout product…CLEAR…did you catch that?  Well, apparently I don’t understand what clear is because this sure looks white to me!  So, it is still wet at this point;  I hope it dries clear!  The white isn’t terrible, but I wanted the colors underneath to show through!  I was hopeful that it would dry clear!

Ok, so you can see that it doesn’t look quite as white, but it is not clear either!  So….not exactly like I had envisioned but it’s still good!

It has a pearly finish…not bad! 

I am linking to these great parties…