Jessica Sprague Class - Lesson #1

I signed up to take the free Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects class from Jessica Sprague's website. The two week class started on Monday, July 6th.

I am a couple of days behind, but here is my picture for lesson one. In this lesson we learned how to add PNG frames and Word Art to our pictures.

Tennessee!

We had a lot of fun visiting Mr. Mister's Mother, Sister, and family in Tennessee.



There was lots of talking, and catching up with everyone! (This was the first night we were there. There were approximately 30 people there on the 4th!)



The BBQ got a workout! Here is my brother-in-law, doing what he does best!



Come to Mama! DROOL!



Of course, we shot off some fireworks.

















It was a good time! And it was nice to just sit back and relax for a bit!

Honey? Can we go on vacation again THIS weekend?

The Garden In June!

The garden is gorgeous right now! All of the summer flowers are blooming! I just wish it wasn't too hot to go out and enjoy them more! I had sweat rolling down my face, just trying to take a few pictures!



OH! You want a CLOSER look? OK! (Good thing I had my close up filter on the camera!)



























I just LOVE those...in your face...(I mean stamen)...kind of pictures! LOL!

Glass Etching With Cricut Machine & Vinyl!

I saw this really cute idea, that I fell in LOVE with, while visiting Living With Lindsay's blog. She put her dish, and hand soap into olive oil bottles and sat them next to the sink!

She boosted the "WOW" factor by sitting them on a white dish and adding a tiny vase of fresh cut roses. How COOL is that? Check out her blog to see her version of this fun project!

Well, I had been buying the smaller bottles of soap, and then refilling them, because you could see my kitchen sink area from the living room, and I really didn't like seeing the taller plastic bottles over the top of the counter. It was not attractive AT ALL! So, I decided to make my own pretty soap bottles!!

Because our dish and hand soap are both purple (or slight variations of it) I decided to take my bottles a step further by etching on the fronts of them. I made a stencil for the "H" and the "D" out of vinyl on my Cricut machine. Then I put the stencil on the bottles and applied the etching cream on top of it. I let it sit for about five to ten minutes, and washed it off! TA DA! This is the final result! I totally LOVE the way they turned out!



This one is a little blurry, but I wanted you to see the letters better, so I moved the flowers off the plate, and sat them on the counter.



And, the bottles by themselves.



I will definitely need to dilute the soap down some, but I wanted to fill them up high enough to see the color behind the letters.

The letters were cut using the Storybook Cricut Cartridge. I found the bottles at Old Time Pottery. They were sold as a set for $4.99! You can't beat that!

WICKED Clouds!

This is what we saw when storms came through earlier. The pictures of the clouds are straight out of the camera. They are not black & white, and they haven't been touched up at all. Pretty WICKED!









This sign is beside the highway. This is the area that funnel clouds were reported.



From what we have seen on the news, areas just a few miles Southeast of the highway were hit up pretty hard. We haven't ventured out that far.

Too LONG!

I don't want to wait five more months to see THIS!

Waiting!

I'm still waiting on my Coneflowers (Echinacea) from Spring Hill Nursery. It's showing an estimated delivery date of 6/5/09 - 6/8/09. But, that keeps changing. So, we shall see.

I found most of the others that I was looking for, at a local nursery! I was SO excited, because they ended up being MUCH cheaper, and I didn't have to pay shipping and handling!

Of course, I haven't figured out where I am going to plant all of them yet! LOL! I always do that! Buy a bunch of plants, and then think "OH! Where am I going to put them?" They are all lined up outside, waiting patiently to go into the ground! Thank goodness for all of the rain we've been getting, because I was having to water them constantly!

After looking around more on-line, I found SO MANY different kinds and colors of Coneflowers that I want to get. It's going to take time to get all of them! Only bummer is that to get extra plants from the ones you grow, you have to divide the plants, you cannot use the seeds, because the plants that come from the seeds, tend to revert back to the original plant coloring.

Anyone want to come help me figure out where to plant all of my new pretties? They need to be in the sun! And need soil that drains well! So, that leaves out the most obvious place for them, which was down along the fence!

Hmmmm! Thinking.........Thinking!

OK! Enough of that! It makes my brain hurt! LOL!

Off to make a smoothie!

Birthday Fun!

Sunday was my birthday, and I had a GREAT day!

Actually, I was pretty much spoiled for the whole week because of Mother's Day, and my birthday being so close together.

The kids gave me money, because I told them that I wanted to start an Echinacea (Coneflower) garden. Of course, I already have the "normal" Purple Coneflowers that you see everywhere. And I have seen White Coneflowers sold locally, so I will buy them here. BUT, I was looking through my Spring Hill Nursery catalog, and found that there are quite a few different varieties available, and I want to "collect" all of them. I hope to dedicate a spot in the yard to all the different types of Echinacea. I LOVE these flowers, and the fact that they attract butterflies, and gold finches, is a HUGE bonus!

I started with:

Green Envy Coneflower



Sunrise Coneflower



And, Sundown Coneflower



Next up, will be:

Twilight Coneflower



Coconut Lime Coneflower



And, Pink Double Delight Coneflower



All of the pictures were taken from Spring Hill Nursery's website.

Aren't they gorgeous? I cannot wait to get them! I am sure there are other varieties out there that I don't know about. So, if YOU know of any others, please let me know.

During the week, one of my friends took me to a little town nearby, to go antiquing, and eat lunch. We ended the afternoon with an old fashioned vanilla malt. (EXTRA malt please!) It was SO YUMMY!

I came home to find a box from my Mom waiting for me. Inside, was a BEAUTIFUL blue crackle glass decanter, and the cutest little crackle glass perfume bottle. My crackle glass collection is growing! YAY! The decanter is now the largest piece I own. (It's difficult to find larger pieces.) And the blue is GORGEOUS!





(Sorry! The pictures aren't the greatest! You can see the tag on that back of the decanter, shining through the front.)

I also got a delicious cake, that helped add more pounds to my rear end, but it sure was good! (We cut the cake on Saturday, because both of the kids had to work on Sunday.) Brat Girl said that she was going to have them put "Happy Birthday PUNK" on it! LOL! YEAH! I get called Punk all the time around here! (Actually, we all call each other PUNK! LOL!) But, she decided to be nice, and left it just saying "Happy Birthday."



We were cracking up, because the letters were melting SO FAST! They were collapsing all over the cake! LOL



Mr. Mister let me pick out some of the JustRite stamps I have been drooling over! I absolutely LOVE all of the different ways you can use these stamps! I will have to keep adding more of them to my collection (YES! Another collection!) over time. They have an awesome blog, with a super talented design team. CUTE! CUTE! Ideas!

As for the rest of Sunday, Mr. Mister took me to eat my favorite meal at Romano's Macaroni Grill. They have the BEST Chicken Toscana soup. And, I cannot go there without ordering the Vodka Rustica. (Recently, they took the Vodka Rustica off of the menu! I almost CRIED! But, they told me I can still order it whenever I come in, because they will always have the ingredients to make it! WHEW! You really don't want to see me blubbering in the middle of a restaurant!) After enjoying the meal, they brought over a piece of cake, and sang Happy Birthday to me in ITALIAN! It was so COOL!

Then, off we went, for another visit to the Country Wine Gardens. (Rhonda, from the Christmas Notebook, mentioned this place on her blog last year. They enjoy going there because they collect Daylilies, and this place has some huge Daylily fields.) Every year, they dig up plants from the fields, and sell them. We didn't buy any Daylilies this year, because they weren't in bloom yet, and I couldn't remember what we had bought last year. But, I did find another Yellow Coneflower ( Yellow Echinacea Paradoxa) plant, which looks like it will be darker than the Sunrise Coneflower, and Mr. Mister bought some Stargazer lilies, and some really pretty "Gold Rush" Shasta daisies.

This is what they will all look like once they bloom. These pictures were taken from the internet as well.







Now, to figure out where they are all going in the garden!

The Country Wine Gardens also has a restaurant, and (obviously) a wine tasting area. I had read on their website that they carried our favorite wine, Moscato D'Asti, so we decided to pick up a bottle, sit on their patio, and drink it while we people watched, and listened to the band for a few minutes. (YEAH! We bought a few more bottles to bring home with us! NO! We're not lushes! LOL!)

After all the fun we had, we came home to enjoy a nice, quiet, evening. It was a wonderful day!