I was thinking

Good Grief, that was probably my first mistake. But frequently my mind goes on little vacations and it gets all sorts of ideas.
Today I was thinking, that since we seem to be at the end of yet another snow storm, I would go out and take some pictures

 

This is standing at the end of my driveway looking up the sidewalk that runs in front of my house.

 

Duke checking things out

 

He wants to walk, I want to take pictures. Who do you think is going to win this one?

 

This is the Duke trail. It leads from the front of the driveway to the back door.

 

This is Duke's view of the Duke trail.

I was also thinking that maybe I should change my cell phone number. That way I wouldn't get any more text messages from a certain daughter who lives in Colorado and feels the need to send me a picture of the current temperature. I should have taken a picture of the text so I could post it. I get weather updates frequently now.

I was also thinking about making some changes regarding Entrecard. I'm not getting rid of it. It's still there but I no longer care if I drop or not. I'm more concerned with having time to read all the blogs I enjoy so much. What I've done is moved all of my favorites to google reader. However I keep finding that I've missed some. If I used to frequently visit you and lately seem to have dropped off the face of the earth it's because I've somehow overlooked adding you. Please let me know so I can make sure I don't miss anything else. By doing this I'm only spending time going to blogs that have a new post up. If I'm there and think of it I do the drop. The only thing I've noticed with the new system is that I have time to find more blogs I really like. Before you know it I'm going to be spending just as much time as I always did.

The Brenda Photo Challenge (2/27/10) Wood

I know I did this not too long ago but being my first time joining I was a little over excited and posted early. So I thought I would pull up a couple more pictures to go with the wood theme and post on the right day for the challenge.
If you want to follow along with the others or join in the next one, go to The Brenda photo challenge. Also if you want to see my earlier post for this you can find it HERE
Enough of the chit chat already, here's my entries.

 

I know that flip flops aren't made of wood but they are sitting on a wood deck.

I spotted this when I was out for a walk one day. 

Happy Saturday everyone.

White out

What do you see in the above image? Well that's pretty much what I was seeing this morning while driving. For those of you who don't get snow or very little, this is what it looks like when you are driving in a white out. There is no road in front of you just a wall of white. You have no idea what's in front of you, if you are in the right lane or even if you are still on the road. Well, chances are, if you have left the road, you probably would know that. I'm sure that the driver of the car that I spotted yesterday was well aware of the fact that he or she was no longer on the road. As a matter of fact, he or she, was no longer even sitting in the correct position. The car was on it's side, totally. That was yesterday, before the current storm had gotten into full swing. I picture young, inexperienced driver but I could be wrong. This morning I only spotted one car pulled over in a snow drift. I only said one bad word as the pick up flew by me kicking up snow and rendering me virtually blinded by the snow. I made it to work only 3 minutes late. I'm hibernating for the weekend.

Under the sea

 

So it's not the sea it's an aquarium but I can pretend can't I? I had my camera out last weekend and was trying to get some good shots of the fish. This was one of the better ones. The only thing I didn't like about it was the left side with that dark strip and of course the heater hanging down in the middle.

No problem just do a little playing around with it.

 

Of course now it looks more like a painting than an actual photo but I don't care, I like it.

Randomness with a little Duke in between

There's been a few little things that I've been wanting to mention but they just haven't quite fit into a blog post.

First off I want to thank all of you who have over the past couple of months honored me with awards. I appreciate them more than you know but I am so bad at getting around to posting them. I don't want to seem ungrateful but I just can't keep up with everything and unfortunately the awards always get lost in the clutter that I call my life. Just know that even though I don't post them, I do love them and all of you.

 

 It seems that the Twitter account that I have and never use has been hacked. If you have gotten a rude, crude or otherwise offensive or annoying direct message from me it really wasn't me sending it. I really should just go delete the account but for some reason I hang on to it. I have taken the recommended steps to take care of the situation. Funny though that as soon as I reset my password I started getting emails from twitter saying that my account had been a recent victim of phishing and I should click this link to reset my password.

 

Another thing that I have noticed lately is the amount of spam comments I have been getting. For the longest time I never got any, now all of a sudden there are a ton of them. Anonymous sure does like my older posts...lol I've changed some settings so that some comments require moderation. Hopefully I can get all the spam comments rejected before they get posted.

 

Not all Anonymous comments are bad. I got this one on yesterdays post

Anonymous said...

Tell Duke that I miss him mom! I bought something for him today while shopping with Billie and I think he is just going to LOVE them, I mean it! Anyway nice pics and stuff. ttyl, Amanda

When I read it this morning before I went to work I thought it said "Tell Duke that I miss HIS mom" I even told one of the girls at work about the sweet comment my daughter left on my blog. Then I come home and see that it says she wants me to tell Duke that she misses him....LOL  Ah well such is life.

Have a great night everyone and see ya tomorrow.

While I was out.

I'm sorry but yesterday I just didn't get around to putting up a post. I guess you could say I was just being lazy. I thought an evening of lounging on the couch with my favorite little white westie would be kind of nice. It was strange though, because usually he likes to hang out with me, but last night I don't know where he was.
Well today I'm feeling just a bit more peppy and thought I would share something with you. Remember I told you I got that cuttlebug? Well I did some playing around with it and made a couple of little notebooks. I'm not going to show those to you though because those were just to practice with and I thought I would wait till the next set before I show anything off. I did take pictures of them though and then just did some edits to them.
This was the first one that I did.

This next one, it seems to me that I just did a bunch of distorting to the above picture. Then I layered on a few older photos until it looked like this. I can't for the life of me remember exactly what I did though and now I'm even wondering if I even used that first picture. Oh boy, I think I'm in need of a vacation.

 

Duke said he's going downstairs to sit with dad now.

 

Hmm, I wonder what brought that on? 

Duke's show and tell

Hi everybody. I hope your week is off to a good start.

 

Mom is busy doing something she calls chillin so while she's doing that I thought I would play show and tell. Mom wasn't going to post these because she said they were her first try and not very good. She won't know though unless you tell her.

 

She said these were little composition notebooks. She covered them with scrapbook paper and then decorated them with stuff she cut out with her cuttlebug. She sent the one with the bear on it to Amanda last week. 

 

Uh oh, I think I hear her coming.

 

Quick, act natural.

Our prize

I recently won another giveaway and the package came in the mail the other day. I apologize for not getting this posted yesterday but time sometimes has a way of slipping by and before I know it the day is over.
Any how, this was a giveaway on Jen's blog Equine Epiphanies.
Here's what was waiting for me in the mailbox when I got home from work on Friday.

 

If you can't read it, it's addressed to me and Duke :) Here's what was inside.

 

Don't ya just love the suspense of it all? I'll quit teasing now and show you what was hiding under that cute tissue paper.

 

WOW! can you believe all that stuff. I've got to give you a close up though of just a couple of the items that I must say are my favorites. I think you'll be able to figure out why.

 

  

Now are those not the cutest things that you have ever seen? I'm thinking that a super cute Duke picture frame may be in the works here.

The purpose of her giveaway was to help convince a company to make a product.  Rather than screw up the details, if you would like to read about it the link to the post is HERE.

A couple links that I would like to mention here are

Jen's Etsy shop 

another shop that some of my little treasures came from  

the shop that was mentioned in Jen's post. 

and last but not least Epic Farms 

So Jen, thank you so much, Duke and I loved it.

I love the white stuff

No, I have not lost my mind. I truly do love the white stuff. I'm not talking about the snow though. The white stuff I'm referring to is white chili. Have you ever had it? If not, you really should try it. Years ago, a woman that was the deli manager at the the store I work at used to make it. I've always wanted to try it at home but she was pretty secretive with her recipes. I had forgotten all about it until one day when I was doing my blog visits I came across a post on Cinnamon Spice & Everything Nice. OH my, there it was, white chili. I followed her recipe almost :) and it was delicious.

 

My picture really doesn't do it justice but if you go to her blog she has some amazing photos that will make your mouth water. Just a word of warning though. If you do check out her blog to snag this incredible recipe, you WILL leave there hungry. 

The Brenda Photo Challenge

I finally got around to joining in on the Brenda Photo Challenge, of course I'm not sure if I'm doing this right or not by posting it now but I guess Donna will let me know if I'm not...lol

The theme is Wood, so without further ado here are my pictures.

 

This is a hanging on my wall and I like the way the edges of it are so rough. My son gave me this a year or so ago. It has a picture of a wolf on it. When I took this I didn't want to see anything in the photo other than the edges of the piece.

 

This one is a decorative wood bird feeder that I have sitting on the top of my kitchen cupboards. For added measure I even used a wood texture overlay in the photo.

OK Donna, how did I do?...lol

Another package

Another package was waiting in the mailbox when I got home from work today. I just love it when I find something besides bills. I kicked off my shoes, took off my jacket and opened up the envelope. Check out this cute little box.

 

Duke was all excited, another present for him and he couldn't wait to open it up. But I said "Back off buster, this ones for mom".

Once a week, Sharla over at Beaded Tail does a Friday Features post. Well last Friday I fell in love with the first thing on the list. Before I even left a comment on her blog I went and bought these.

 

Guess who made these? Yep, it was Sharla. I just loved them and had to have them. They were even wrapped in the cutest tissue paper.

 

Of course I had to try them on and see how they looked.

 

Check it out. There are hearts on the earrings and in the background I caught the picture frame that my kids gave me that says Love. Total accident but it worked out well, don't you think.

I'm sure most of you have been to Beaded Tail but if you haven't get there now. You'll fall in love with Angel, Isabella and Sadie. After that go check out Sharla's Etsy shop too.

I feel so disconnected

It's so hard to believe that it wasn't that long ago (or was it) that I managed to get through a day without being connected to the internet. I even lived without a computer. I don't recall exactly how I filled those days, it may have been with actual physical activity but I'm not quite sure. So today, I get home from work and NO internet connection. I already had some warning because they were having issues with it at the store. Here, if there's no internet, it's just me going bonkers. At the store, customers are unable to use their credit cards. It's back on now but it's been going on and off all night. I haven't been able to make all my rounds yet but I wanted to get my post up before it got too late.

For today I'm just going to go with some recent edits that I've done.
This one is one of the pictures that I used in Duke's Valentine post. I added a texture to it and I love the way it looks.

 

This one is a picture I took of  a butterfly I cut and a background paper I embossed using my Cuttlebug.

And this was a picture of a truck from Wade's die cast collection that I played around with. (The picture, not the truck) I would never touch one of Wade's trucks, really. I didn't even move it to photograph it, I swear.

Slug day

It's Monday, and aside from feeling a little on the sluggish side, I have the attention span of a....(I can't think of anything so just insert something here with a really short attention span)

I headed over to the post office on my lunch break today thinking I would mail out a little something to Amanda. I forgot that they weren't open today. Well when I realized my error I figured there would be no point in checking the email when I got home.

Speaking of Amanda, I got an email from her yesterday. I think she's testing me. She said that now that she's living so far away she does check my blog almost every day. She told me I could post the email. So, Amanda, did I pass?

I think I'll just give it up for today and try again tomorrow.

Duke's Valentine Surprise

Look what came in the mail yesterday.

 

Of course I took it right downstairs to give it to Duke.

He was lounging on the couch watching TV and when I gave it to him he wanted to know what it was. I told him to read it.

Once he saw that it was addressed to him he could hardly contain himself. He ripped right into it.

  

I never told him that he had won the giveaway over at Sugar the Golden Retriever. I wanted him to be surprised and boy was he ever. He couldn't wait to try on his prize.

There was even a Valentine in the package.

Thanks Sugar, Duke loved the ruffle collar. Happy Valentines Day to all of you.

I got a bug

Yeah, so who hasn't caught the cold or flu bug over the last couple of months. What's the big deal about me getting the bug? None actually. Yes, I do have a cold that seems to have taken up permanent residence in my head but that's not the bug I was talking about.
The bug that I got this time is the Cuttlebug from Provo Craft. (This was my yearly income tax refund gift to me) Now if I was loaded with money I would have preferred a Cricut but the Cuttlebug will have to do. If you aren't familiar with what this is, it's a die cutting and embossing machine. It's great for scrapbooking, cards, or other crafty type projects.
This is everything that was in the box.

 

I've been looking around and comparing prices on this and A.C.Moore sells it for  $93.99. I've found cheaper than that but when I saw the price that it was being offered for at Creative Xpress I couldn't believe it. When I ordered it they were selling it for $39.99. (as of today it's $49.99) I have never ordered from this place before so I was a little leery. I was very impressed with the service. I ordered on a Friday evening and according to their website that meant that I should get my package on the following Saturday. Not only did I get it one day earlier but I received 4 different emails from them during the week regarding the status of my order. That was not including the emails from FedEx. They even included a free gift in the deal. There were 5 packs of eyelets.

Here's a closer look at the rest of the stuff I got with it.

 

I really haven't made anything with it yet although I have tried out all the dies and embossing folders. Wade didn't share my enthusiasm for the whole thing. He has no appreciation of the crafty ideas that are just waiting to be carried out here.

I love the Fed Ex delivery person

This was sitting on my front porch when I got home today

 

Wanna know what's in it?

Well I'm not telling...lol  I'm going to make you wait until tomorrow because right now I'm off to go play with what I got. I'll give you one little clue though.

Good deed for the day

You should all be very proud of Duke today. I know I am.

 

Look the poor little guy is just worn out. He worked so hard today. He was out before day break with his little keg of brandy in search of stranded motorists. His only thought was of those cold helpless travelers. He came home exhausted and fell asleep almost instantly after setting down his empty keg. 

Thanks FishHawk for the inspiration :)

I hate snow

Have I ever told you before that I really hate snow? Well if not, I'm telling you now. I'm so sick of seeing the white stuff it's not even funny. We got about 9 more inches since I left for work this morning. Driving was not fun, in fact it was a little on the scary side. Actually I suppose it wasn't so much the driving as it was the (trying) stopping. Then of course I couldn't get in the driveway because there was so much snow piled up at the end that if I had tried I would have gotten stuck. If you can't get in the driveway that means you have to shovel. Have I ever told you before that I hate shoveling? Well if not, I'm telling you now. While I was out there shoveling, the plow drove by three times throwing more into the end of the driveway. I swear that driver was laughing the last time he went by.
I think the only one here who isn't phased by the snow is Duke.
Since I'm ready for spring I'll leave you with a little something that isn't white

 

Spring where are you?

Guard Duty

I tried to take a picture of Duke out in the back yard last night but I didn't have much success. See for yourself.

Here's the original picture.

 

The light was bad, he wouldn't stand still and I didn't have the steadiest hand.

A picture of Duke though is hard to throw away no matter how bad it is. So I tried to save it.

  

Now he's my hero dog guarding against evil predators. We can all sleep soundly tonight, Duke is on duty.