Skeleton in my yard.

 While out walking in my back yard, I was surprised to discover a skeleton. Don't worry is wasn't the least bit gruesome or scary.

Back to the yard.

 The other day I posted about going out to the yard with my camera. I only talked about the guy working on replacing the grass so today I'll show you some things I saw.

While not everyone is happy to see them, dandelions always make me happy

The forsythia is finally blooming

This grows all down the side of my house. I've contemplated pulling it all out because it gets to be quite a chore keeping it trimmed back.

More diamond painting.

It's been a while since I showed you the first heart-shaped diamond painting keychain that I made. Since then I have finished all five of the heart-shaped ones and have moved on to the butterflies. Today I'll show you the hearts

Blog pal Andrea had commented on my last post with some suggestions about sealing them. It's nice to have blog pals who offer advice. I had actually already saw a video comparing different things to use to seal these projects. As luck would have it I happened to even have one of the glues in my craft supplies.

 

Of the five I would have to say that this one is my favorite

I have really enjoyed doing these and at the time of this writing, I only have 2 1/2 of the butterflies left to go. I went on Amazon and picked a couple more kits to purchase. One was for Christmas tags that will be nice to tuck inside cards when I send them. The other was suncatchers. I figured those will make nice gifts too.

Pioneer Woman Wednesday

 It's time for another addition of Pioneer Woman Wednesday. Lets see, what do I have to show today.

Last week I showed the pans I bought. I mentioned that the set I got came with some utensils and baking dishes. It actually was supposed to have 2 different sized baking dishes but when I opened up the box the smaller of the two was broken. I had tried to get a replacement but Walmart was not very cooperative. They said that because it was  a special deal there wasn't anything they could do unless they had the same set in stock at the store, which of course they didn't. I could have returned the whole thing but it had been a good price for just the pans alone so I just dealt with it. 

I do like this dish and it comes with a plastic vented cover. I think this might be a 2 quart size dish.

Taking advantage

 The last few days have been absolutely beautiful. Yesterday morning I thought I would take advantage of it and go outside with my camera. I was out in the back yard crouched down taking pictures of something growing in the grass when I heard a voice. They are starting to work on replacing the grass that was dug up in all the yards last year when they replaced the gas lines. I started walking towards the man and he said "don't take a picture of me, you'll break your camera." Then he asked if I could move my car. Last year they had dug from the road to the house along the edge of my driveway. He needed me to move the car out of the way so they get their equipment in there to get the dirt ready to plant the grass seed. 

I couldn't resist taking a picture of him through the window when I went back inside.

He was wrong, he didn't break my camera at all.

cheater day

Work kicked my butt yesterday so today is a Facebook find cheater day.

 

A touch of spring continued

Yesterday I left you with the signs of spring in my yard. It felt like winter was finally over and then came Easter Sunday morning. As I was leaving to go to work this is what I saw through my windshield 

 

Let's turn on those windshield wipers and get a better look

 

The pictures aren't very clear but let me assure you, it was snowing like it was Christmas morning instead of Easter. 

A touch of spring

It was a week ago Wednesday that I came home from work to notice a touch of spring in my front yard. Daffodils were blooming at the corner of my house.

 

The hydrangea bush had little tiny leaves sprouting

All these signs made me happy. Spring has finally sprung and then...To be continued

Anniversary

 It almost slipped my mind that today would have been mine and Wade's 16th anniversary. We were married in 2006. Happy Anniversary in heaven Wade.

This is a repost from 2019

On April 22, 2006 Wade and I were married. Today I celebrate the anniversary of that date alone.

Can someone please tell me why I always get caught with the weirdest looks on my face?

This was the group shot with some of my family.

New construction

I came home from work on Friday and discovered that there was a new home being built in my neighborhood. However the new home is actually being built on my property. And to make it even worse it's being built on top of the outside lights by my front door.

 Saturday morning I spotted the Builder out in the backyard collecting materials. So far I have to say this looks like a very messy construction.

Pioneer Woman Wednesday

 Today I've got pots and pans. Years ago I contemplated purchasing a set of Pioneer Woman cookware. Walmart had the set at a pretty good price but like any other purchase over $50 I hesitated, contemplated and procrastinated. When I finally made the decision to go buy them they had raised the price and I changed my mind. Turns out I made a good decision because when I finally did buy a set it came with extras that weren't included the first time around.

I can't remember what the other color choices were when I bought these but I liked the red.

Also included with the set was a cast iron skillet

There were baking dishes that were included as well but I'll save those for another post. I can't remember if there was anything else included or not. I absolutely love these pans though and I'm really glad that I decided to buy them.

Happiness is...

 Saw this on Facebook. 

Diamond painting.

 I had heard about diamond painting a while back. I have even looked at kits to give it a try but never saw anything I really liked. Recently, while browsing on Amazon, I came across a kit for diamond painting keychains. The size of the project appealed to me. I would be less likely to give up half way through completing it. Since this came with 10 keychains in the kit it would also provide gifts. 

This is half the kit. It came with 5 different hearts and the other half had 5 different butterflies.

The kit didn't come with any kind of instructions. I suppose they think if you can't figure it out yourself then you're too dumb to even have it. Well I pretty much thought I knew what to do but just to be on the safe side, I turned to google for answers.

After getting all the info I needed to start, I chose what looked like the easiest of the designs. 

Amanda asked me how long it took to do this and I said I didn't know exactly but I thought it was under a half hour. Truth is it may have been longer because I was sort of lost in the whole process just enjoying it.

This has the same design on both sides so it looks the same no matter what side you are looking at. 

Happy Easter

Wishing everyone a very Happy Easter.

Mindless fun

One of the blogs that I follow in my Feedly feed is Jennifer McGuire. She has videos with different stamping and die cut ideas for card making. I don't always try things she does but I have done a few. Any way, she works with ink a lot and is always making beautiful backgrounds for her cards. One of my days off I thought I would just do some playing around and see what I could do.

I grabbed some of my inks, some watercolor paper and a small water spritzer bottle and sat down to play.

I inked up the paper and used my blending sponges. Then I spritzed them with water.

This one is still wet. I kind of like how shiny it looks.

This one reminds me of an Easter egg. 

So I didn't do anything with these when I was done. I simply had fun playing.

Yellow roses

 Amanda had sent me a text message saying that she knew what she wanted for her birthday this year. (it's not till June but no sense waiting till the last minute.) Any way, she said she wanted flowers this year to plant outside. She specifically mentioned roses and that she liked yellow ones. 

The very next day I went to work and we got our delivery of Easter flowers in. Can you guess what was included in the delivery? Yep, yellow roses. They're the mini roses and I know that's not what she was talking about but I couldn't resist buying these for her.

Putting all the pieces together.

 So that stack of paper pieces I showed you the other day got put together to make a cute little Easter treat. This was a free cut file from My Scrap Chick

This is the bunny Hershey bar wrapper.

Here it is opened up

And a close up of the bow tie band that holds it all shut.

Pioneer Woman Wednesday

 What shall I show you today?

Well since sometimes I don't always feel like I measure up to people's expectations of me, I'll show you that Pioneer Woman always helps me measure correctly. 

There is this set of measuring bowls. At first I didn't think I would use them very often but I find myself reaching for these a lot. 

The set on the left is a 2 cup liquid measuring cup along with a set of dry measuring cups.

The set on the right is measuring cups and measuring spoons. This set came included with something else I bought.

Finally I have these glass measuring spoons. Surprisingly I have yet to drop one and break it.

Cricut gets a workout

 So I mentioned the other day that I had gone to the craft room and gave my Cricut a workout. This was some of the pieces I had cut to work on, 

Tomorrow is Pioneer Woman Wednesday, but I'll be back on Thursday to show you what I turned that pile of paper pieces into.

Getting ready for Easter

 What's Easter without some eggs. I could hard boil some and then color them but I decided to do my eggs a little differently.

I bought these extra large plastic fillable eggs at Dollar Tree. They have a clear plastic top and a small design on the side.

I cut some vinyl and decorated the front. I think I may have found this design on Cricut Design Space but I'm not positive. I changed it a bit because it was all black with little red hearts on either side of the word say. I turned the bunny white and changed the hearts to Easter eggs.

 

I had a hard time getting a good picture because the light was reflecting in the plastic tops. 

These are now filled. I scrunched up some tissue paper to put in the bottom and then added some chocolate of course.