Crazziness of Life....

Okay so time has totally gotten away from me. I can't believe how long it has been since I posted on my blog. Lots has been going on in the last two weeks! We celebrated my dad's birthday, went to camp, worked a 7-day stretch, celebrated my birthday, had a wedding, and played in a baseball tournament. All in the last week. I did make a couple of projects that I am hoping to post during my two days off. So check back here soon to see my dad's birthday card and my best friends birthday card.

First Blog Award...

I am so touched, I have received my first blog award. This came from "Snappy Scraps". I love her blog as it is full of great ideas using the cricut. She is right now on a mission to make all of the cards on the Wild Card catridge. Thanks to her challenge I have now decided that I can't live without the Wild Card Cartridge and will need to find one to add to my collection. For this award I need to tell everyone 3 things I like about myself. Not always an easy challenge as we are all our own worse enemy.

1.) I love my energy! I know this remark may sound funny to some but I am a very loud, happy, bubbly, person. To some I am to loud and I talk to much but for me I love that I am happy and energetic person and try to always find the fun in everything.

2.) I love that I am a creative individual. I love having a hobby and a creative outlet in my life. It brings happiness to my day even when it is a little rough.

3.) I love my red hair. I know you can all stop laughing but I really do! I love being unique and different. I am a true redhead and I love that there aren't a lot of redheads in this world. I am sad that as I have gotten older my hair has lost some of it red so I have had to start using a bottle to get my natural colour back. I was also a little disapointed that my daughter didn't get the redhead gene.

Now I have to list 5 blogs that I would like to pass the award onto....

The Spotted Chick

Cheryl's Window

Sparkle Power

Clever by Heidi Grace

MADE

There is so many more that I would love to give it to, including the ones that Scrappy Snaps had already listed. These are the few blogs that I visit everyday and read all of their posts word for word. There is no skimming the pages on these blogs. They all have greats stories, ideas and tales of their daily life. Congrats girls keep up the great work!! 

I Spent the Day Out with Thomas ... and Thomas Spent the Day Out with Me!

Ahhhh, the things we do for our chilldren. My daughter is quite the Thomas the Tank Engine fan. She loves watching the show, but it is on right before naptime so I PVR it for her to watch later. I must say that she is not as big as a fan as our friend's son. He knows the name of every train, all of there parts and what they do. When our friends told us that Thomas would be at a train station in Minneapolis we decided to take a small family vacation and join them. We drove for 7 hours to get to Minneapolis and then another 40 minutes to get to the train station. But in the end it was all worth it to see how excited they got when they saw Thomas in real life.

The Day Out with Thomas festival was really well ran. They had lots of neat activities for the kids and lots of volunteers to help run them. They also had a gift shop set up with every Thomas item imaginable. We picked out a T-shirt, a wodden Thomas train and a Thomas whitsle (we definatley regreted the whistle purchase, along with every other parent aboard the train). Thomas was equipte with 3 passanger cars to take ticket holders for a 25 minute ride. I was told by our friend's son Collin, that there names were Annie and Clairabelle. Too Cute!! The weather was quite dreary but it was kind of nice as the crowds were a bit smaller then later in the afternoon when the weather turned nice.

We also decided to take in some of the Minneapolis sites while we were there. We spent one evening at Mall of America shopping and enojying the amusmant park. To our surprise it was Dora's Summer Adventure weekend at the Mall. Rhys was so excited to see Dora and then we even waited in line to meet her. When we finally go to the front of the line Rhys became a little nervous about seeing her so she decided to hand out in Dad's arm and take her in from there. She did get to check out Backpack and Map, which she talked about for the rest of the weekend.

We also found a new attraction to visit. It's called Como Town. It seems to be a hiden gem in Minneapolis, as no on that I talked with had ever heard of the place. It is a Zoo, conservatory, Spalsh Park, and small amusmant park. And it is all free, well they ask that you give a donation of $2.00 per adult and $1.00 per child. That was quite the steal, for a full day of fun. It was a super hot day with temperatures over 40 degrees with the humidity. We did however enjoy all the parts of Como Town especially the splash park. We had remember to bring bathing suits for the kids but had forgot about ourselfs. That didn't stop us we enjoyed the water to in our clothes. It was so hot we dried off before we went back to the hotel.

ENJOY!!

Cricut Cover

I am very thankful my mom taught me how to sew when I was young. She has a passion for sewing and quilting and is also quite talented at it. I, myself, not so much. I can sew a straight line and make thing from simple patterns but not much more then that. I inherited my grandmother's sewing machine when she passed away. It is quite new as she bought it just before she passed and hadn't had much time to use it. However I must say nothing beats my mom's original Singer sewing machine that my dad gave my mom for her birthday the first year they were married. They have been married for 34 years now, so the sewing machine is quite old but works just like the day she got it! My sewing machine never seems to works for me. It always seems to catch and get tangled causing me hours of frustration and usually breaking down into tears. This lead me to making a suggestion to my mom that I would love a new simple sewing machine for my upcoming birthday. So when I began to sew my project I kept my new sewing machine in mind and reminded myself if it goes really bad I will just put it aside until then. How surprised was I when I actually finished this project and the sewing machine never caused me one problem. I swear it has ears and knows it was in it last life!

When I saw the post on "Cheryl's Window" blog I knew I wanted to try and make a cover for my cricut. I printed out the pattern from Custom Crops website and headed off to my local fabric store. I picked out two coordinating fabrics, one for the main part and the other for the end. I won't lie I thought it would be pretty easy. Well, I was quite wrong! The pattern was easy but the instruction were not. I had no idea about gathering so I "You Tube" it and watched a few videos. It took a lot of patience but in the end I love how it turned out.

I have been wanting to try cutting fabric with my cricut for awhile now. I thought this would be the perfect project to try it with. I ironed on the Heat and bond to the wrong side of the material. I left the paper backing on and put it paper side down onto the cricut mat. I cut my letters a 2" using the Winnie the Pooh marker font. I then peeled of the paper backing and ironed the letters in place. It was so easy I think I want to try it on a shirt now.

ENJOY!!