We're getting closer

The turtle pen/pool bench is almost complete.  And I'm pretty sure I love it now!  It looks sooo much better with stain.  Plus, we rearranged the patio furniture and I pulled all of the cushions for the furniture out of the garage (they have been sitting on top of Brandon's old Volkswagen for months now) and scrubbed the crap out of them yesterday.  And I do mean CRAP.... literally!  We have a very nasty dog that lives in our garage.  If you ever thought you wanted an English Bulldog you were WRONG.... and I mean seriously mistaken. 

Anyway... Back to the new piece of furniture in our back yard.  Here is a little sneak preview.  It will be so much better when I get all the cushions in place and the plants start to fill in!  We can not wait for SUMMER!  It's going to be sooooo relaxing sitting out by the pool EVERYDAY! 

And when you look carefully inside the structure you can see some of our box turtle friends...

And because I previously mentioned the English Bulldog issue...  Here is our little sweetness, Klaus.  You see him and just want to grab his little cheeks.  Until you start to approach him and he begins to growl.  We've decided it's a bad breed.  Don't let the pictures fool you!

I've got a Scentsy party tonight that I need to prepare for....  Tomorrow I have big plans to get some sewing done in the morning.  Perhaps I might actually get some new shirts done.  We shall see...

Sew Busy!

Well...  It's almost the end of my spring break and I actually feel like I have started to accomplish a few things.  Here are some of the awesome things Diddles and I have been doing around our house.... BTW, I think I love our house and our awesome neighborhood more and more everyday!  It's okay if you are jealous...  I mean, we have plenty of room for all of our hobbies, awesome places to walk and ride bikes, beautiful weather and everyone knows our names (and they always stop to say hi)!!!
Anyway, let's get back to the projects:

This is a little something I whipped up for Parker...  Pretty sure she is one of the best dressed kids I know.  And about 90% of her wardrobe has been personalized for her!

And this is a shirt I made a few weeks ago for our school nurse so she can support her daughter at basketball games.

This is one of the projects I am MOST excited about!  I've been desperately trying to figure out a good way to store my ribbon.  As I was sitting in the craft room yesterday I looked in the corner and saw some curtain rods that we used in our old house and no longer had a place to use them in the new house.  It hit me...  DUH!  This would be the perfect way to store my ribbon.  So, we put them up and added a couple of cafe rods below for wrapping paper.  I am soooo in love with this!  I also have a few other cafe rods set aside for a couple more rolls of paper.  This uses up some of my blank wall space and it makes everything so much easier to access.  Yay!

 This is the beginning of our new turtle enclosure/pool side bench.  Brandon and his awesomely talented dad finished the building process on Tuesday.  Today we stained and added a few plants.  The turtles should be living in luxury within the next day or two.  This bench is HUGE!  It may not look like it from this angle, but I'm sure 20 people could sit on it all a one time.  I can't wait until the new plants start filling in.

And finally (I really had more to show off, however my computer is rude and I don't feel like dealing with it anymore)...  My new Scentsy tester baskets that I will be using at parties.  I have a party tomorrow night and I can't wait to use them for the first time.  Thank you Target dollar isle! 

Looooong Hiatus

I have to apologize for the long hiatus.  I have been beyond busy with work.  We have just six weeks until my kids take the TAKS test.  Boo!  (I hate loathe standardized testing)  So, I've been working really hard to prepare plenty of supplements for my lessons + doing before and after school tutoring. Then, my sewing machine started acting up on me.  However, spring break is coming and I plan on getting caught up on the 50+ shirt orders I  have.  AND I want to work on fixing up our home office a little bit.  We shall see...

Valentine's Shirts

Look what I whipped up for Valentine's Day!  So easy, so cute!  :)

And don't mind some of the ribbons got ironed funny.... That will easily be fixed with a little fluffing!

Not your momma's iron ons!

OMG!  Have I told you that I am slowly becoming smarter than my Cricut!  I can't believe it's finally happening.  I've actually made a few gifts and things for my house using the vinyl.  And just this week was college week at school.  AND we were able to wear jeans EVERYDAY as long as we had on a college shirt! **For those of you who don't know - Wearing jeans to work is a big deal for teachers!**  Anyway, I graduated from college 4 years ago and my SFA spirit shirts are starting to look a little worn.  So, I needed another shirt ASAP.  And Diddles over here didn't have one at all (and he just graduated like a year ago).  His only college shirt has now become mine b/c it is much too small for him.  Anyway...  Thanks to my handy dandy Cricut and some iron on vinyl I was able to whip up these babies in a matter of minutes:

Yes, I know they are super plain.  I was in a hurry and this was just my first experiment with the wonderful world of iron on vinyl.  I looooooove it!

Scentsy News!

Ok, I had little time to craft this weekend. I just needed to rest. However, I did find out some rather exciting news from Scentsy. Our new Spring/Summer catalog will be coming out soon with new scents and warmers. I can't wait!!!! That also means many of the scents and warmers will be discontinued to make room for the new products. So here is the discontinued list (make sure you stock up before March 1st):
Scents - Guava Nectar, Sentimental Cider, Central Park Pralines, Christmas Cottage, Christmas Tree, Cozy Fireside, Eskimo Kiss, Gingersnap, Poinsettia Pine, Snowberry, Spiced Grapefruit, Winter Wonderland, Twilight, Vanilla Suede, Peligro, Rustic Lodge, Clarity, Rainforest, Pineapple Paradise, Tropical Twist, Cranberry Spice, Just Peachy Ginger, Pumpkin Roll, Toasted Caramel Sugar, Vanilla Walnut, Maple Butter, and Silver Bells.
Warmers - Wild West, Love Life Hope, Blynken, Wynken, Merino, Give Thanks, Sparrow, Canary, Sendai and Prancer.

I'll post pics and descriptions of the new products as soon as I can! Now it's time to sleep... Another looooong work week awaits! :(

Can We Have a Little Privacy???

Before I get started here are a few pics of what I've been doing lately.  Keep in mind I have about 20 more where these came from.  I've been VERY busy!

So, we just purchased this house on November 20th (Yes it's been almost 2 months now!) and we really looooove it.  We took our time and waited about 7 months after selling our last house and we totally made the right decistion b/c now we have our dream house at the ages of 27 and 26...  actually I was 25 at the time.  I've only been old since Christmas Eve ;)

Anyway..... We LOVE our house.  It has a place for everything.  3 guest bathrooms, giant master suite, gameroom (that we started transforming into a home gym), craft room, guest room, pool, 3 car garage, music room for the hubs and even an office to hide our computer and his books.  I could go on.  But, lets get back to this office. We never really considered having an office before, but this house had one and it was an extra feature that we really liked.  Now this office is opens up right to our foyer/ dining room/ living room/ front door area.  The office is covered in real wood paneling. It's quality stuff... just a little too formal for us.  We may change it in the future.  But, the even bigger issue is that the office houses our crappy computer desk that I drug back from college.... And right now the office has really become our dumping ground for all of the things that we aren't sure what to do with just yet.  So, it really isn't something I want everyone to see as they walk into our house.  So, Friday night I had the bright idea to do etching on the glass of the french doors.  I sent Diddles out Saturday to get some stuff to spray on there.  Needles to say it was slim pickin's.  Right now we are on our 1 billionth coating and it still isnt quite where I want it to be.  But, I know it will get there.  The next thing on my list is to get the outside part of the door primed and painted white to match all of the trim in the rest of the house.....   See what we've done so far:

This is the beginning stages of taping everything off.

And here it is with about a can and a half on it....

Here is what it looks like from the foyer right now....  It will look sooooo much better with a few more coats, an nice white paint job and some new handles!