Got a little messy...

I LOVE working with paint and canvas. I wish I could take credit for the design of this piece--I can't. I totally copied this whole idea from someone else. I saw it on the Living with Lindsey blog and thought it was such a cute idea and I love the quote because it sort of relates to my life with my hubby and such. Anyway, here is my take on it...

I got a few parts a little spattered with some black paint and I just kind of went with it and left it there. I figure it was just a happy little accident ;-). Besides it's just for me anyway. Just a way to get outside of my box and do something fun. I hadn't worked with paint in such a long time and it's so relaxing. I was so wrapped up in it, it was nearly 1 a.m. when I finished!! But I like it and for now it is gracing my lovely buffet table. I will probably move it into my studio/office at some point.

**Sorry about the flash on it, it was obviously dark when I finished it, so not a great picture, but you get it :-)

I almost forgot...

Here is a pic of the finished buffet table! I can't believe I almost forgot to post it.

First, one more look at the before:

And after:

I am hoping to do some more crafting tonight so I should have more to share tomorrow! Happy weekend!!

A solution...

Last night I set out to solve a problem. A big annoying problem that I have been having over the last couple weeks. See, my friend and I go for these long walks and I have to take the stroller, but Hayley is 3 now, so I use an umbrella stroller and got rid of all my other fancier ones and I was stuck with nowhere to put my water bottle, my phone, my keys, etc. while we were walking. My temporary fix was to use a purse but it was too bulky and got in my way, so I needed something better.

Here is my solution. It attaches with velcro on those tabs, since you can't see that from the picture.

Pretty cute, huh? I love this fabric! I bought it at http://www.aboveallfabric.com/. Well the swirly one anyway. The pocket fabric is actually just from a bandana I got at the craft store for like ten cents. My next one won't have such a deep pocket, though...I just wanted to make sure my water wouldn't fall out and I think even just a couple inches shorter on the pocket and the water would still be nice and secure.

And look! It works on my elliptical too! And I plan on taking it grocery shopping to hold my coupon thing and my car keys so i don't have to dig through the purse for those!

One year later...

Today is me and my wonderful hubby's anniversary! To celebrate the day since Will is gone, I took my girls to the beach where we were married and we spent the day there. Here are a few pictures from the day.

This is the aisle that I walked down a year ago today! Except this aisle now ends in a wall of sand that just drops off instead of the gentle slope it was a year ago. Amazing how much changes in just a year...not to mention that there is so much more grass here now when last year there was barely any. I had butterflies in my stomach walking through here though...I'm so glad I went there today. It was the best possible way to spend the day under the circumstances...and knowing me, I'll drag him back to this very same spot next year :-)
I love this beach. Today we decided to take a shell-searching walk and went all the way down to the end of the park area. We found some pretty cool shells, but even better was the complete lack of people down there! So peaceful. The ocean was so beautiful. This photo was on the first part of our walk but you can see that further down there was NO ONE there. It was awesome.

Happy Anniversary, Will. I love you!

Raspberry Suite Color Challenge 16

Once again one of Dawn's challenges has brought me back to life with my creative side. I just haven't had time to sit down and do much for ME lately. Will left last Saturday for his deployment and it's been a little overwhelming to get into the swing of doing everything on my own again. Will had issues with the international service on his phone, so I've had to run around trying to fix that and he still ended up having to ship it back home to me to take care of it here. Then Hayley has had a really rough time with this one and is still not quite herself and Caitlynn is of course testing her boundaries again to see how far she can push me. It makes things really interesting, I suppose, but it also makes me really frazzled! So between the housework, yardwork, kid work, and my actual work, I haven't had very much time to just do something fun for myself. That brings me up to today when I decided that I needed to just take a time out for myself tonight and do something creative. Get my hands dirty. So I did. Once again I made 2 cards for this challenge. I had this image of what I wanted to do in my head, but when it came to actually putting it on paper, it didn't work out as great as I thought. It's just a little busy to me. You can't really tell in the picture but the circles are punched out of the kraft cardstock and then the designs are on the inside. So it has some texture and stuff on it...but it still just wasn't quite what I had hoped for.
So I kept going and churned out another one...And I'm much happier with the final result on this one.

Tomorrow is my wedding anniversary and we are spending the day at the beach where we were married. I thought it would be nice to be there, to just connect with the day and just let all of the happiness from that day wash over me. Hopefully the weather holds out! Hope all of you are enjoying your Labor Day weekend!