18 days.

18 days ago I lost my dad.

Suddenly.

Unexpectedly.

Unfairly.

He was so much more than just my dad.

He was my best friend in the whole wide world.

I miss him so much it hurts.

Pet Photo Contest at Pets Jubilee!

My etsy shop is a member of the Pets Jubilee team and this month they’re having a fun contest.  Submit a photo of your pet dressed in their Halloween costume.  How cute!  There are 3 entries so far and they’re so creative!  There is actually a marionette!  ha ha   Here are the details:

This month’s theme is “Halloween”. Show us your pet in costume, or in a Halloween setting. Send in your photo, slide show, or video of your pet. Add some words to be posted with their pic to go along with the theme, and don’t forget to include their name(s). We’ll be accepting entries from now through the 31st noon EST. See the right side bar for more information.

We welcome all pets: dogs, cats, birds, gerbils, hamsters, geckos, chickens, frogs, turtles, snakes, pigs, horses, just to name a few.

Sometime on the 1st, we’ll choose a winner using random.org and announce the results here. So comment as often as you like for as many furbabies as you like.

You can go here to get the e-mail address to enter.  It would be fun to have one of my blog readers win, so let me know if you enter!

There she goes…

Off to Girl Scouts camp 3 days ago.  And insisted on carrying everything she took with her by herself for the half mile walk to the tent area.  Wouldn’t let me or her daddy help.  Okay, girl, knock yourself out!  ha ha

My house is so quiet…

Cool etsy shop.

Just wanted to show you something I really loved and gave my dad for his birthday in May.  I bought it from this etsy shop and framed it for him later. 

I also got this one for my daughter:

for her 11th birthday.

and my very favorite one to hang in my studio/office (every brave girl should have one):

Just so ya know, I don’t know the owner of this shop (except that I’ve now bought 3 of his prints), and I wasn’t paid to tell you about these things.  I just LOVE these prints and wanted to show you!

Check me out!

I’m the guest blogger over at the CSI Project blog!  I repainted my kitchen cabinets and wrote about it for their kitchen makeover series.  Please come on over and check me out right here and let me know what you think!

In my yard…

Isn’t this the prettiest WEED you ever did see?  It’s growing in one of my bushes in my yard!  Love it!

testing

1….2….3….

I just realized when I switched my blog over to a new host a few months ago that the feed was broken so those people who subscribe to my blog via email haven’t been seeing any posts from me! Ack! I’m hoping it’s fixed now….

Z-Access display frame.

Check this out!  I was contacted by the people who make this frame to see if I would be interested in reviewing it here on the blog.   Since I am into preserving memories and displaying items outside of my scrapbooks in addition to inside my scrapbooks, I jumped at the chance.  Seriously….this is the coolest thing ever! 

It’s called a Z-Access Display Frame (website here) and you can use it to display momentos or souvenirs in a 3-D fashion because of this really cool stretchy clear “stuff.”  They call it “flexible frame insert”, I call it awesome!  ha ha 

They sent me the 4×6 rotating frame with a frame (with a base).  It comes in 6 colors (I got ivory) and is $20.99, which I think is pretty reasonable.  They have a cheaper one that doesn’t rotate for $15.99.  Here are some of their ideas for using the frame.

I love this idea, the thought of taking a few sentimental items that might be too bulky to place inside a scrapbook and putting them on display this way.  I have a beautiful old pair of my mother-in-law’s cat’s eye spectacles that I’m thinking about putting in this.  It’s really neat because it spins around and you can put it vertical or horizontal.  You can even use it as a plain old photo frame!   Another cool thing about it is that this film will shrink back to its original shape, so if you get tired of displaying something and want to change it you can because it won’t stay all stretched out from the first thing you put in it.  Neat, huh?

This is what I did with mine and I love it!~  This is a mold of my daughter’s foot from when she was very little.  I’m so mad at myself that I didn’t write the date on it somewhere!  Ack!

Here it is horizontal without the base part.

I also tried putting my daughter’s bronzed baby shoe in there. 

You can see above how far it’s sticking out.  That film is really stretchy.

Check that out!  ha ha 

And look …..this is what it looked like after I took both items back out of it.  It really did shrink back into place! 

Truthfully, they sent me one to check out for free, but it’s so cool and so affordable that I would totally buy this anyway.  I’m even thinking that I’ll be buying a few to give as gifts for Christmas gifts this year.

They have other styles besides the one I got.  Go on over and check them out here and maybe you can start your Christmas shopping early!

Giveaway — CSN Stores gift card!

Soooo….let’s start off the new year with some fun. CSN Stores is giving me another gift card to give away to one of YOU! You’ve done all that Christmas shopping for everyone else and now you can pick out something for yourself! Don’t you love that? And you can use it at any of their stores. There are over 200 of them and you can get everything from a suitcase to a magnet to living room furniture! I’m getting ready to buy my daughter a new backpack from them. We searched a ton of places before school started this year and couldn’t fine one she liked, and then I finally discovered CSN has them and they have one she likes!

Okay, so if you want to win the $35 gift card for CSN Stores, just become a follower over there on the right hand sidebar and leave me a comment telling me you did so (or that you already are one). That’s it! I will toss all your names into a hat and draw one out on Monday, January 3rd. Good luck!

** Edited January 1st — I’m so sorry if you haven’t been able to leave a comment! Someone emailed me this morning and let me know it wasn’t working and I haven’t been able to figure out how to fix it. This is so frustrating! I’m going to extend the giveaway until next weekend because of this. Please just send me an e-mail telling me you’re a follower instead of commenting until I can get this thing fixed. Send it to sumsmom 528 @ yahoo.com (without all the spaces!) So sorry for the inconvenience. Geesh, this couldn’t have happened at a worse time than when I’m trying to give you all a prize!

My new assistant.

I’m quite busy, you know.  I work full time (from home thank you Lord) and in my “spare” time I’m raising a 10-year-old daughter (with help from hubby thank you Lord) and I play around with paper and other scrapbooking materials and make cards and scrapbooks and quotes on canvas (for myself and for sale).  It’s really just too much and lately I’ve had an assistant who has been hanging out in my office with me every day.  His name is Angel. 

Don’t let the name fool you.  He’s NO angel.  My job is as a medical transcriptionist.  I type all day long.  And my assistant blocks my view of my computer screen.  That is not conducive to my productivity.  It’s quite annoying actually.

See?  This is where I type.  And he’s THAT close.  ha ha  Plus he thinks it’s fun to knock things off of my desk (including drinking glasses that shatter into a million tiny pieces….nice).  I keep politely moving him out of my way into his own space that was put in my office literally JUST FOR HIM, but he keeps coming back to be right in front of my face.  AND he naps.  For hours at a time.  What kind of an assistant comes to work and then naps right in front of the boss all day?  I’m seriously thinking of firing his ass.

But isn’t he beautiful?