A few years ago my Mom and I went to the Tacoma Quilt Show (I can’t find a link, it isn’t the machine quilters show that is first in a google search though). It was SO fun! We saw presentations and wondered around the booths. There was so much great fabric and project ideas there. We ended up buying a few small things - fabric and a pattern for a rag quilt for one. I still have the fabric here with me as we never started working on it.

In keeping with the great stuff I’ve missed while not paying attention to craft blogs, over at Booga J, she’s started doing a quilt block a day. What a great idea! I love that she is following the thinking that 21 days of doing something forms a habit. I’ve always been told that and admit to rarely following along. But this, this I could do!

I’m thinking I may start this in February sometime and send some fabric to my Mom so we could quilt along side each other. Or maybe I’ll wait until she comes to visit. She is planning on staying for three weeks and we could get a lot of quilting done in that time. Decisions, decisions!

I’ve been such a bad blogger - both in reading and commenting - that I have just missed out on so much. I am using Sage, which is a plugin for Firefox and I really LOVE it. I just click a button and up comes all of the blogs that I am subscribed to. Organized that I am (really! Hahahahaha) they are in folders - folders like mine (for my blogs), money (for personal finance blogs), crafts (for…craft blogs! :P), military friends (for my military friends I’ve ‘met’ online), business (for the work at home blogs I read) and I think a couple more but it isn’t open right now.

I’ve been great at keeping up with a few - the money folder only has seven blogs in it, super easy to read. Same with military friends - I think there are 8 in there. But crafts - ah, my obsession with crafts….I am sure I have over 40 in there. And crafters, it seems, are notorious for posting daily.

I so need a laptop so I can check the craft blogs regularly!

I started checking just a few of them earlier and look at what I’ve missed out on!

Confessions of a Ribbon Addict put together a prima flowers share. How awesome is that! I love it when I can get in on a good deal. She ended the signup today so I didn’t even try - plus it would have been an impluse purchase and I’m trying so hard not to do this anymore. LOL But I hope she does something like it again - or for ribbon! - and I am so there. I love card supplies of just about any sort.

Craft Apple has a few great things I’ve missed out on. I just love all of the fabric choices in these posts! First there is an artist drawing case - great idea. I love these and I’m thinking of my nephews and different fabrics for each one. She also made a few things using awesome material perfect for her projects. Her blog is great eye candy for fabric lovers at heart.

Okay, it’s getting late, but those are just a couple drops in a large bucket that I have missed out on. I plan on reading a few more and then more until I get caught up. Or at least caught up enough that I feel okay again. LOL

And yet - another swap card that I made the other day. This one is for February (my early card since I was late with two of them!). I really like this Valentine’s Day card because it isn’t pink or red. LOL

All images, paper and ink Copyright Stampin’ Up. I used Almost Amethyst, Certainly Celery, Apricot Appeal and Whisper White paper, Certainly Celery ink, Sage Advice stamp set and clear embossing powder. The rhinestones are from Target.

See, a quote! I like that I lined up the hearts and the quote against the stripe, but sort of feel like something is missing in the space. I try not to always center everything – a drawback from my Desktop Publishing teacher drilling it into us that center everything is not a good thing. LOL

Oh and you can’t really tell from this scan of the card but the inside of the hearts I filled with embossing powder so they are shiny.

I try to send Valentine’s cards out every year - at least to my Mom, Dad, Grandma and nephews. I’m not sure if I’m going to use this card though. Well I mean, I’d have to make more because I just made the few to send out and one for myself! In my card making I found a LOT of pink paper … so maybe I will have to just go with pink.

I’ve been tagged by Helen!

• Get tagged by someone
• Write down 5 things that have never been revealed on your blog before
• Tag 5 others

Let’s see ~

In sticking with Helen’s number 5 on her blog….

1. I can’t curl my tongue. My Mom can and I think just one of my brothers can too. Not the other brother though. And my husband and daughter can but my son can’t. What an odd gene to pass on! I wonder how that happens. I remember being told that if you have dimples in your cheeks that means that muscle didn’t fully develop - I wonder if not being able to curl your tongue means something didn’t full develop?

2. I desperately want need to finish my degree. I have around a year left of school and then I will be done. I left college with that year left to move in with my now DH. I have no regrets about life, but I do have wishes and this is one. Especially since he is one and a half semesters away from receiving his Masters degree!

3. Speaking of degrees, I’ve wanted to be a lawyer since the 4th grade. Of course that was put on hold for a brief period of time when in the 5th grade I decided I wanted to play professional basketball. This was long before the WNBA and I’m glad I got to dream big - literally. Because I’m only 5′4″ - pro ball, yeah right! LOL

4. I’ve really been missing my Dad lately. It’s because of the Grey’s Anatomy story line and George’s Dad dying (George on GA). I talk to my Dad several times a week but the storyline has had me doing a lot of thinking these past few weeks. Odd how Hollywood can make you think so long and hard about something!

5. I don’t wake up in the mornings until my kids do. See, it’s 1:30 AM right now. I’ll probably go to bed in the next half hour or so and — darn it I just remembered that DS has gymnastics in the morning so we will have to get up early! Okay so other then Tuesday’s, I don’t wake up until they do (most of the time). I don’t mind getting my quiet time at night - though my DH finds it weird that we sleep in until 9, 9:30 or sometimes even 10. For one they don’t take naps every day and for two they still sleep 12-13 hours at night.

That is much more then five. Ah well.

I am really bad at tagging. I pick *you* - yep, you. If you are reading this, free free to grab this meme and play along. I promise I’ll play along if you ever tag me.

I almost forgot! I joined Create Your Year and the theme for January is “It’s Snow Lovely.” I thought about this quite a bit actually ~ we don’t get snow here but I’ve seen picture after picture from my friends back in WA. It doesn’t snow all that often where we used to live there so when it does you can bet it makes huge news. LOL Here is a pic of our tree at the other house.

I definitely miss that! The snow and the tree - that tree is beautiful. I have no idea what it is but the leaves are red and last all summer long. I’ll have to dig out pictures of that.

For my Snow theme I am going to submit another card project that I did. It was for my friend group swap and for December. It counts at January though because I just made it last week. LOL

All paper, ink and images copyright Stampin’ Up. I used Bashful Blue, Pixie Pink, Gable Green and Whisper White paper; The Snowflake Spot and Warm Words stamp sets; Pixie Pink ink pad, Pink Passion marker; Silver Embossing powder; Dazzling Diamonds glitter.

This scanned really badly. See on the snowflake in the middle where it looks … like glue is on it. It’s glitter and so it’s all sparly. The words at the bottom also have glitter on them, but this just makes them look covered with something. I need a new camera so I am relying on my scanner for these pics.

I think this is a cute card! I love the sparkle and be merry words but I wonder if this would have been better being stamped in pink and then covered in glitter, rather then doing the silver embossing on the snowflake. The glitter that I added did make it better, but it still feels like something is missing.

I’m loving feeling and being creative again! I’ve also been writing more and more every day. I need to put them into a file though because the desktop on my computer is littered with notepad files. LOL When I was in college I kept a journal on the computer, I don’t think I’ll do that again, but it is so easy to open the notepad program and type away when the mood strikes.

Remember I mentioned being two cards behind in my card swap group with friends? Well way back in November my group swap theme was Red ~ just anything red, red card, paper, ink, etc. I picked red as an accent on a welcome card:

All image, paper, stamps and ink Copyright Stampin’ Up. I used Chocolate Chip, Ruby Red, Creamy Caramel and Whisper White paper, Ruby Red and Chocolate Chip ink, Warm Words and Fresh Fillers stamp sets. The ribbon and rhinestones are from Target.

I like this design but feel like something is missing. Maybe something should be on the ribbon? Maybe there should be not as many flowers? I’m not sure. I do like the overall design though.

A lot of the stamps that I own are words ~ quotes or words that make up something a phrase, like Happy Birthday or Merry Christmas. I’ve always been a writer and assume that’s why I am drawn to the words. I like the images, but find I don’t have the patience to color a stamp multiple colors or to even just color something in. I have both the SU chalks and the watercolor crayons (I bought them before I joined SU – the chalks come with the demo kit) and have never used the chalks and only used the crayons a few times. I wish I wanted to use them more, I probably need to find designs that I like and just run with it. I’ve done projects with the watercolor crayons and oh my gosh they are so fun to play with and just beautiful. That’s it, I just need more project ideas!

More then two weeks after my first Tackle It Tuesday I am finally ready to update my first try. This post is picture heavy so be careful.

Just for an update, here is the post sharing my very, very messy office/craft room floor.

Since I generally tend to think of myself as organized, I’m not sure what it was that made me take so long cleaning up the area. I don’t mean the past two weeks, I mean before that. I shred junk mail the day it arrives, I put my crafts away when I’m done. It just all exploded.

But first, the bathroom:

We had that small dresser in the bathroom and it just wasn’t being used properly. Sure toilet paper was in the bottom drawer, but that was it! So I bought a cute stand, a scarf and a toilet paper holder and voila! Instant adorable-ness plus I get to use the dresser somewhere else. And a plus is the bathroom looks and feels bigger now. Because that’s important right? LOL

So the dresser now houses the kids stuff in the craft room. The bookcase in here had been sort of organized. I had the bottom shelf as office supplies (labels, envelopes, plastic boxes to hold them, etc), another shelf as kids stuff (crayons, markers, coloring books, etc), another shelf for stamping/card making. But though each shelf was organized, none of it really matched. So I moved a dresser that had been in the bathroom (here is the bathroom before w/ the dresser - and after with the new stand) upstairs to be the new kids stuff section in the room.

The bookcase went from looking like this

to looking like this after

I know, I know, what fun is showing an empty shelf. But it actually stayed empty for a few days while I tried to figure out what to put on it! Now I have a bunch of craft magazines but they are only taking up about 1/4 of the shelf. It’s nice to have an empty spot in here, I know I have a lot of stuff.

Here is the rest of the room (okay the plugin I use for my Flickr pictures isn’t working and I added a bunch of notes so feel free to click on the picture to go to Flickr to read the notes. LOL)

Standing at the door

Left side of the room (sewing table hidden behind artwork that is still there!)

Closet & Right side of room

Full on shot of right side

Basically *everything* in the room has been organized. The shelves on the bookcase are better put together and three of them are housing card making supplies, ideas and samples. The closet top shelf is organzed with cds and software rarely needed, photo boxes and kids school supplies like the 30 boxes of crayons I have. LOL Two shelves are for stamps and more card making supplies, and a third is partly card stuff. I moved a shelf from the left side of the room over to the right and have utilized it much better then before.

One thing that amazes me is that I didn’t have to go buy anything - I just used what I had in the house. I knew I had a lot of baskets and plastic boxes, but really, this many? LOL Good that I am finally using them though.

The room is still relatively cleaned up. I still haven’t moved the artwork (the pictures were taken a few days ago) or empty containers nor have I cleaned off the sewing table. I admit I took a lot of my card making stuff downstairs to the family room as for the past week or so we have all been watching a lot of movies. Never one to sit still, I make cards while we are doing so. All is neat down there though, I have enough containers and craft organizing bags that I just packed up and moved out.