Christmas is Coming (the goose is getting fat!)

We have another melt down free holiday under our belts! Thanksgiving only had a hitch or two and I must say that the we are getting much better at working on the fly. Dad and Mary Ann (Steve's parents) weren't able to make it and they were greatly missed. I  McGyvered up some desserts without having to go to the store and no one left hungry.

I had my nieces over for a slumber party on Friday night and we got our decoration on. The first project we did were the beautiful glitter bulbs shown above. This was the easiest project ever. Some how I inherited a couple of strings of outdoor lights and we don't put up outdoor lights. Several of the bulbs were broken and corroded so this was something destined for the trash until I saw this little project on Pinterest! We unscrewed the bulbs, painted them with modpodge and glittered our hearts out! They turned out super cute and are in a glass jar adorning my mantle. The upside to a glitter project with three not so neat girls (and an aunt who's a straight up disaster waiting to happen!) is that not only did we make beautiful crafts but we also made a sparkly rug, a sparkly chair, a sparkly sink, sparkly soap...it's like a troupe of fairies came to party at the Love Shack! Honestly, I'm a crafter so things like this really don't bother me, but if you're messphobic, you might want to do any glitter projects outside (someone else's house).

We also painted these lovelies using vinyl stickers I made with my Cricut. The girls painted over the stickers. Believe it or not, I did not tell them how to paint their canvases (which is rare for me!) and I think they turned out super. I told them that we had to wait until the paint was completely dry before removing the stickers, but I lied. I peeled them off as soon as they left to go wash their hands. I've never been known for my patience. As a matter of fact, I hung them on the wall before they were dried so there are a few drippy dots that are all my fault. While my mom would save these forever, I will probably recover the canvases with burlap after Christmas and use them for a new project.

I also wanted to tell you about my photos. If you like the vintage look and feel of these pictures, and if you have an iphone or ipad (they've got to have it for android too, I'd think...), you must get the Hipstamatic app. I don't pay for apps, but I had to have this one and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it! (And seriously, it was $1.99 so it's not going to break the bank.) You can mix and match films, flashes and lenses for various effects OR you can just shake the "camera" and it will choose a random combination for you! It comes with plenty of lenses and film to keep you playing for a long time, but there are little in app add ons (.99) that give you even more stuff to play with. Oh, and you can upload from the camera app directly to facebook or twitter! 

Tuesday's Creation

These are some birthday cards I made. The colors are more vivid than it appears by my photo and there are also some sugary sparkles on the cupcakes that aren't very visible. I used my Cricut to cut the diecuts and then outlined them with a thin black marker to give it a more handmade look. The background of each card is a page from one of the books we use in my recovery program that I watercolored. (I'm making the cards to share with friends when they celebrate their recovery date anniversary.)

I love making cards and having some stockpiled because it's often challenging enough to get ourselves together without adding a run to buy cards, gift bags and tissue paper on celebration days. I also like to give handmade mostly because I can. It's a win/win, I get to enjoy my time making cute stuff and people really seem to appreciate the effort (and well, it's cheap too! The card blanks cost pennies and the rest of the stuff I already have!)

Today is Saint Patricks Day and as it is my first with this fine Irish sirname, I am going to boldly go where I've never gone before: I'm cooking corned beef and cabbage. My husband is delighted and I am not nearly so sure, but I'm using a recipe from Taste of Home. If you don't know about ToH and you like good food, you need to check it out. I fell in love with the magazine years ago because it had recipes from real people to make real food like the stuff at a church potluck. All the other magazines had recipes that required pans I didn't have, and spices I didn't have and ingredients I'd never used to make stuff that I wasn't sure I'd really like. So I'm off to fire up the crockpot and figure out what kind of yummy fun I can get into before Big Daddy gets home!