office supplies gone cute

i'm certain i stole this idea from another blog as well, but i'm not sure which one...thank you for the idea whoever has it posted out there.

i used the same buttons from wally world that i made the magnets out of that i previously posted.

i used aleene's jewelry glue...it typically holds up nicely.

a girlie gift

our cousin cassandra had her sweet 16 this week! oh to be young again!

i love when our girl family members or my friends have bdays because i get to make cute girlie things!

i ran across this idea a week or so ago when i was searching my crafty resources:

http://thecreativecrate.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=50

being the wife of a cabinet designer, we tend to have random pieces of wood, doors, counter tops, etc laying around the house that we feel the need to keep rather than throw away. conveniently with the basement flood i found a door with speaker screen in it that shaun had brought home from work. i thought this would be perfect!

here is the final product:

i didn't have much to do on this project because the screen was already in, the wood was already finished, so it took me all of 5 minutes.

i hot-glued the flower on the front, staple gunned the ribbon on the back...i used two staples on each side to get the ribbon to lay correctly.

the screen required some tape to get it to stay, so i used some of the duct tape i had left over from the art tube i made our niece for Christmas.

i really like how this turned out. thanks to those folks who publish crafting ideas...i'd like to think that i have original ideas, but rarely is that the case!

genna, if you're reading this, i hate to ruin the surprise, but you're getting something similar for Christmas! it was just too cute, i had to post it.

flowers were a flying

i knew when the rain and ice came over the past couple of weeks i should have taken the flowers off of my car, but did i, nope.

they've been curling a bit, but being the lazy girl i am, i still didn't bother taking them off.

on the way out to the farm today i got onto 64 and oh boy. flowers were flying off everywhere. i felt terrible, then paranoid that someone was going to call me in for causing disruption on the interstate!

needless to say, i need to take the flower magnets off of my car. i'm disappointed, but honestly figured this might happen.

no more car decorations you might be thinking...hold your horses! i have an idea to test to see if it preserves my precious car ornaments!

i still cannot find the pink and green polka dots that the dollar tree once had, but i did find green and blue polka dots, which matching the landon's love theme! i plan to magnetize these as i did the flowers, but then i am going to mod podge them to see if that helps. i thought that the smaller, round shape along with the mod podge might help lengthen the life. i should probably make an effort to take them off when i know it is supposed to rain.

i will get some pictures up once i get all of this done.

creative online games

i've already mentioned Set...if you haven't checked it out, what is wrong with you? j/k :-)http://www.setgame.com/set/puzzle_frame.htm

tiffany got all of Walton crazy about this game. my kids get to play games for the last 20 minutes of class on fridays if they are not missing any work and 99% of the time they choose this game!
http://www.coolmath-games.com/0-bloxorz/index.html

this is another game many of the kids like to play.
http://www.coolmath-games.com/0-extreme-parking-mania/index.html

if only i would have been creative enough to make something like this, i could be sitting home each day eating bon bons!

scrapbooking without really scrapbooking!

(photo from http://www2.snapfish.com/photobookcategory/)

i am probably 2 years behind on putting our pictures into photo albums. it stresses me out every time i think about it.

i have seen photo books advertised with snapfish many times and always wondered if they would be cool. i love scrapbooking, but just don't make the time these days...i'm thinking when life slows down a bit...HA!

i thought i would try these photo books when they had a special in december. i picked my favorite photos from each year's album and created the book on snapfish's website.

i think they turned out great for what they are. the best part...they took a fraction of the time of making a 3D scrapbook, i didn't make a mess in the house by making them, and i can even write in the books with a permanent marker if i ever choose to.

http://www2.snapfish.com/photobookcategory/

i kept the covers really simple by just typing the year on the front with a black background.

the really nice thing is that you can have anywhere from 20 to 150 pages (20 is standard...you pay for the extra pages). You can get snapfish to auto fill or you can place pictures exactly where you want them. you can choose from themed background and a nice selection of layouts. If you're like me and get distracted you can save your project and come back to it after you change that diaper that's funking up the house!

if you could see my coffee table right now, you would see my 4 "scrapbooks" from '06, '07, '08, and '09 :-)

check out snapfish.com they are currently running a free shipping special. if you're not a snapfish fan, i feel certain other similar sites have photo books as well.

still a mess, but there is progress

they came and shampooed the carpets today, so things are looking half-way normal downstairs...in fact, they look a lot better than they did prior to the flood. for any of you who have been over here in the past 3 years, i'm sure you would be highly impressed...you can actually see the carpet in most rooms :-)

don't get too excited, everything is still all over the place and we have a long way to go...i'm thinking weeks before everything is in "its place," but the fact that i could start moving things back downstairs today made me so happy!

i thought at first that i would start taking things down and fill one room at a time, but it didn't really work out that way. for now, i started filling up 3 storage areas--the creepy, under the stairs space (and yes, i was FREAKING OUT about spiders--see The Stokes Family blog), the coat closet downstairs, and the closet in the "bedroom" down there. i am putting things we won't need for months or years in the creepy storage space...the spiders can have a field day in there for all i care after i fill it up...i'm not going in there. i really can't stop thinking about spiders after talking to dana yesterday, so if items didn't fit in a storage container, like Landon's car seats, crib mattress, and gate, i put them in big black garbage bags and tied the tightest knots i could in them.

after spending hours last weekend organizing all of Landon's old clothes, i found another bin downstairs that i missed. grrrrrr! i wasn't about to drag all of that stuff out again, so i just left it for now. i might regret it, but organizing the basement was going to be my spring break project until this flood forced me to do it now, so maybe i can finish organizing all of his old clothes then.

i think this weekend calls for another trip to wally world for some storage bins, a little work here and there, and something FUN...shaun and i keep finding each other walking around in circles with the most disgusted and disappointed looks on each other's faces. we need to do some things to get our minds off of this house!

i know we'll get out of this and the house will look better than ever, but it seems so overwhelming most days.

losing it

i am just about to lose my mind. i have stuff everywhere, school is back in session, the weather is gross and i want to craft and be creative and i can't because there is NO SPACE!

i broke down and decided i was going to make something tonight and low and behold, the staple gun is out of staples...you wanna know where the staples are? you guessed it! downstairs...yeah, fat chance finding those.

i do have some great ideas thanks to the crafts blogs i am now obsessively checking. can't wait to get the house back in order so that i can share some ideas with you!

bins, lids, and labels

i won't go into my trip to wally world in the pouring down rain with a 45 lb child who refused to walk or get in the cart...

i'll simply say :-):

30 storage containers were bought and used today (thanks for your advice dana, i got something i thought would be good rather than settling on containers)

there is plenty more i need to find a home for, so i'll have to make another trip tomorrow.

everything i've put in bins is labels...i even found a couple of cute labels i had left over from one of landon's birthday parties.

schmoopie and moo moo even got in on the action and "helped"

i couldn't get to sleep until 2am this morning worrying about all of this stuff, so i'm heading back to attempt to get to bed earlier tonight.

tootles.

lots of trash and some wonderful treasures

i certainly didn't choose to be in this current situation, but i have to admit i have had a few moments over the past two days where i have been really glad to be rummaging through boxes i haven't looked through in years.

i have found some things that take me back...

a program and balloon from senior prom:

trinkets i had on a bookshelf as a little girl...i plan to display these on the bookshelves whenever we get them back into place downstairs:

can't wait to get this mug fired up once my hair gets longer:

speaking of hair...dana, remember our "ugly phase" conversation we had a couple of weeks ago???

i can't believe i even shared that with you all...i'm going to regret this, i know!

all of my dance costumes were ruined except my "Cats" costume that my mom made when i was in 4th grade:

i was just getting ready to order nesting dolls for school to help the kids review the Real Number System...i found these in a box today!

handmade valentines from my parents from college:

a scrapbook from genna and a poetry journal Katie gave me...both birthday gifts...i think my 16th:

more notes from genna than days we've been alive :-)

some of my favorite finds were notes and cards from family members who have passed:

when given lemons, make lemonade i guess :-)

i don't even know what to say...

so, yesterday shaun calls me at school to tell me that there are 4 inches of water in the basement!

fast forward...our entire basement...minus the TV room is now upstairs...have a look...







This stinks.

With that said, I kept thinking two things last night:

1. these are just things...they can be replaced...we still have each other.
2. this is an opportunity to start over...get rid of things you don't want, organize the way you want to before you put things back.

With that said, i just spent 3 hours trying to work on #2, and things look the same if not worse. i have trash bags full of crap EVERYWHERE...which i would put in the back of my car to take to school for the yard sale, except during the blizzard, i think the latch on the back of my car froze and then we tried to open it and now it's broken, so i cannot even get into the back of my car.

God only knows how long the downstairs will take to dry...they're saying 3-4 days.

they are coming Monday to dig up the front yard, so the outside of the house will look as nice as the inside.

so much for all of the work we put into the house over Winter break...here we are a month later, almost to the day since we lost power and had to leave the house.

so much for a relaxing day off on Monday, because you know school has been so relaxing and stress free this year!

i was really looking forward to starting the year off right...i guess there is still hope, i am just a the height of disappointment at the moment, and you guys get to hear about it!

i guess i won't be reporting an crafting projects for a while on the blog, but stay tuned if you are interested in how i attempt to get us out of this mess...literally!

i guess my first step is to take a trip to the store to get some storage containers...you have to start somewhere.