The way back machine.

Since I worked a 10 hour day yesterday and nothing to use for a blog post I decided to go to the way back machine (google photos) and pull up some baby Gibbs pictures. Here is your daily dose of cuteness. All of these are from 2015.

What I did on my day off

It was a rather enjoyable day off yesterday. After a slow start to the morning, I took care of a few things around the house. After that I divided my time between playing in the craft room and playing on the computer.

I started two different projects and neither of them are finished. One is a vinyl project and the other is a scrap fabric project.

I don't have any pictures of the work in progress but you'll be seeing this in one of them.

This is a free SVG file from Free SVG Designs.

This week may end up being a bit hectic since I'm scheduled to work more hours than usual. The extra money will be nice but won't leave for much time to do anything else. Hopefully I can get both my projects finished tomorrow.

It's starting

Yesterday I posted this on Facebook

Ginny told me it would make a great blog post.

Well I've got my costume

Now I just need to go pick up a turkey and then head home to cook it while I put up my tree.

I didn't really need more

I already have enough ideas for craft projects so I didn't need to add to the growing list but while in Walmart Amanda and I had browsed through the Christmas stuff they had out. I can't believe I was actually doing that because as far as I'm concerned it's way too early but there I was.

Any way, I took a few pictures of things I liked and thought I could probably make those a whole lot cheaper.

 The picture on the bottom left was a garland and it was just foam balls covered in different fabrics and then there were wood beads in between.  For some reason those trees really caught my eye too especially the plaid one. I don't know about duplicating the owls but maybe I"ll give it a try.

My problem with collecting all these ideas is that I have too many and I don't know which one to start with so I usually do none instead.

Books aren't just for reading.

Another project I saw on Pinterest. You can decorate with books. The tutorial that I saw actually painted the hard cover books and stamped directly on the spine of the book. It looked nice but it's very permanent. I tried it a different way.

So that I could reuse the book for different season and not actually harm the book itself, I covered it with brown paper bags. For the spine I stamped the words then glued it to the book cover. The tutorial said not to worry about being perfect with the stamping and that crooked or uneven spacing adds to the charm. The perfectionist in me had a hard time letting go and not worrying but as you can see I managed.

It was finished off with a fall ribbon and I tucked in a leaf and a sunflower.

Simple as can be and oh so cute.

Gloomy outside but crafty inside

Monday was dark and gloomy but I didn't let that dampen my spirits. It made for a good day to spend in the craft room.

I've been seeing nightlights that people were doing Cricut vinly projects with and wanted to give it a try. They were buying these nigh lights from Dollar Tree and applying vinyl cutouts. I checked in a couple of the Dollar Trees and couldn't find these but finally spotted a couple the other day.

I went in search of a design that I liked. Then I downloaded it, uploaded it my Cricut design space and cut it out. All that was left to complete the project was to apply the vinyl cutout to the night light.

Now to see what it looks like once it's plugged in.

I'm really liking these and think not only will they make good gifts but I can have a different night light for my bathroom for every season and holiday.

Believe it or not

Believe it or not 1
The other day I grabbed the mail out of the mailbox and found this letter in there.
It was addressed to the estate of Wade C Thompson and the end of it was completely missing.

Here's another picture with it up against the same size envelope so you can see how much is actually missing. I wasn't able to read the letter because part of it is cut off. It appeared to be an attempt to collect a debt from his estate. I believe it's from per capita taxes that he owed from before we were married. I had gotten a letter regarding that and called and was told to send a copy of the death certificate.

Believe it or not 2
A while back I had gotten rid of the lamps and end table in my living room. I hated the lamps and the tables were in bad shape. For lighting I temporarily moved a floor lamp into the one corner. Sunday while I was cleaning I picked the lamp up to move it and the entire bottom fell out of it.

The contents of the bag sitting next to the lamp. This is what was in the base to weight it down. It totally crumbled and fell right out.

The weekend

I didn't mention it but I had a four day weekend. I scheduled a couple of vacation days and I so enjoyed the time off. Most of it was spent at home doing whatever I felt like doing which included some cleaning but on Saturday I took a little road trip with my daughter Amanda.

We went to Volant Pa. I didn't take a whole lot of pictures because I only had my phone but I have a few from the day.

Neither one of us bought anything but it was a fun trip and I enjoyed looking around the shops. In one of the shops we ran into some real witches.

In the upstairs of the Volant Mills barn they had some antiques. I snapped a picture of this

In pieces

The whole dog is adorable but so are all the pieces of him.

 From head...

...to toe

and from toes...

...to head

He's just too darnd cute for his own good.

He just wants to know when I'm going to put the darn camera away.

I finally finished something

Way back on THIS POST I showed you a canvas that I had painted red. Well I changed it up a bit and decided to do it as a reverse canvas project instead. I finally got around to finishing it yesterday. I know it's a bit early for Santa but I wanted to get this done and off the table.

I painted the canvas and the wood frame the same color red then added the white vinyl. I messed a couple of the letters up but it's a small enough goof up that it's still good enough.

Trying a new technique

I can't remember who told me about it and where I saw it but I wanted to try a new (to me) technique. This is basically taking a napkin with a nice printed picture on it and fusing it to a piece of paper so that you can use it for various paper projects.

What you do is take a piece of paper or cardstock in my case, lay a piece of plastic wrap over it and then layer a napkin on top that has had the layers separated. You want only the top, printed layer of the napkin. Then you cover that with another piece of paper and iron it until the plastic wrap melts and fuses the napkin to the paper.

I used mine to make a couple of cards

Who wants a cupcake

Recently I saw some really cute cupcakes on Facebook and decided to try and copy them.

This is the picture from Facebook

Mine don't look quite as good. They either had a bigger cupcake or smaller cookies. Oh well it was fun trying.

Getting ready

This time of year there are things we need to do to get ready for the colder months ahead. Gibbs figured that now he's got less fur to keep him warm he should try out a hat to see if it would fit.
Too bad I couldn't get a better picture of him. He wasn't quite sure it was his style or not.

Everybody loves a parade

Last Saturday was the fair parade. Some of you may remember that this goes right by my house so I just have to go sit in my front yard to watch it.

I dropped Gibbs off at the groomer and then went and picked up my son and Presley so they could come over and watch the parade. While we were waiting for it to start we watched a bunch of people come up the sidewalk and choose my front yard to park their chairs in. There were some other people coming over to watch too so I had bought some donuts for the all the kids. I took the donuts out so the kids could each pick one and went in the house to grab something else. When I looked out there was the kid who was with the group I didn't know helping himself to a donut. Well alrighty then.

On  to the parade. Just a few pictures

The marching bands are always a treat.

This band was led by their eagle mascot.

We discovered that Presley did not care for the clown

She did have her parade wave down pat though.

New man

No I haven't started dating. The new man is Gibbs. The old man was looking very scraggly

Saturday morning he went to the groomer

He no longer looks like a homeless dog.

The last time I took him to the groomer it cost me $25.00. This time it was $42.50. I don't know if the cost has gone up that much since the last time I took him or it was because he was so bad. Of course this is a different groomer than I went to before also.

Finally fixed

For several years now the door on the back of my house that goes into the basement has been seriously messed up. The storm door has sat crooked and then the winter before Wade passed away the handle on that door broke and he rigged something up temporarily so it could still be opened. This is what I have been dealing with.
Not only did it look hideous but it was rather embarrassing.

This is the redneck door handle I've dealt with.

On top of how bad it looked, last winter there was a lot of cold air coming in through that door. This year once the mortgage was paid off I knew I had to get this fixed. Finding someone was a real hassle but I did finally find someone. He told me he was really busy but would squeeze me in as soon as he could.

He finally came yesterday.

Smart dogs

This is fair week here in our small town and if you've been with me for a while you know this is a rough week at work. Being that I'm not getting any younger it's kicking my butt. I'm taking the easy way out today and sharing a video of some really smart dogs.

Proof

I can't believe I'm going to reveal the proof that I'm getting very lazy about housework. But here it is. I walked into the kitchen the other day, looked up and saw this.

So here it is in black and white. Do you think this will shame me into getting things done around here?

Changing things up part two.

Here are the rest of the fall decorations that I put out on Monday.

My dining room table

The mantel

 

My hutch cabinet