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!

T minus 9 days...

Will leaves in 9 days. For 4 months. Not at all looking forward to it. I know as soon as he gets his bags out and starts loading them up, I'm going to be an emotional basketcase. Happens every time he goes TDY for an extended period of time and it definitely happened for the last deployment. The hardest part about being a military wife. The goodbyes. I HATE the goodbyes. Blah. Trying SO hard not to focus on that happening here soon, so I'm trying to stay extremely busy with my crafty stuff. I have a couple cards to share today and an update on my buffet table that I've been working on sporadically over the last few weeks! ** I apologize for the not so great photography here...I was photographing these while the kids were eating so I didn't have a whole lot of time to play around and then crop and edit before they were ready to get up and play!

First the cards... some I made just for fun.

Used all PTI stuff on these. Friends Til the End, Women of Life, Polka Dot Basics, and Damask Designs are all the stamp sets I had pulled out for these. I used up a lot of my scraps from some other cards and projects which always makes me happy!

And here is the progress on my buffet table. The staining has begun. Hoping to have that wrapped up today so it can dry completely and then I can apply the polyurethane finish! And then it will be DONE and displayed in all it's glory in my entry way! WOOHOO!

A couple more hair flowers

Here are the other hair flowers I said I would share. I am super excited because I actually sold these about 10 minutes after I made them and talked about them on facebook! (Thanks Ronee!) Now I need to go to the store and get some more supplies to make more and maybe I'll sell those too!!

Happy Friday!

Raspberry Suite Color Challenge 14 take 2

Will decided to watch a scary movie last night and I'm not a big fan of watching those when I need to be guaranteed to get some sleep so I had to distract myself. I had some papers and supplies still left out in my studio from working on the challenge card I posted the other day, so I thought I would use those up and make another one. Pretty pleased with it! I seriously LOVE this Star set from PTI!

Here are the challenge deets again...And my 2nd take on the challenge...

So what do ya think? Pretty fun, right? I used a SU backgrounder on the large Plum Pudding piece and sort of mixed and matched stamps from a few PTI sets for this one. Some dots from Polka Dot Basics, the large stars and sentiment from Star Prints, and the small stars from Let Freedom Ring. I admit I didn't use much scarlet jewel, but it's in there! One of the large stars and the "you're my shining" part of the sentiment ;-) I squeezed it in!! And this card is a larger format than I usually work with, but I think I'll have to do it more often! It's a 5.25 in. square card.

That's it for now- I have some more hair flowers to share tomorrow as well as a couple cards I made for an old color challenge that I missed during my crazy summer hiatus :-)

Good thing I already have things done because a busy night ahead for us. I'm working today and then tonight we have Meet the Teacher Night at Cait's school. She is beyond excited to go back and see everybody and find out who all is in her class!