KONG: Skull Island layout from Hawaii

Nothing like a couple of extra days off to inspire you to wrap up a layout from this past spring. I had ONE MORE page to complete from our Hawaii trip and I had decided to wait until Halloween to scrap it for two reasons. The first was that I was nearly out of the paper packet I had used to scrap a lot of the photos and the second was, well a huge skull & bones scattered all over the ground.

Halloween is long past. In fact, we're even done now with fall here. We had an early snow fall and unlike how things normally work here...that snow is still on the ground. It does mean a cease fire on the outdoor work so the painting tasks that were not wrapped up are left for the next spring. This means more time in the scrap room! Hooray!

If you notice, I have a lot of strips & blocks of paper. I assure you that although they look like whole pieces, a lot were pieced together. I used a whole handful of paper scraps up! As I'm being really intentional about paper buying (it's the only product I have besides glitter that seems to multiply on it's own...why can't the T!M die cuts do that) this is a good thing!

I can imagine living & working on this ranch, that the view below never gets old. Those hills have been the backdrop of many a movie, including KONG:  Skull Island. In fact if you look really close on the right hand side around the middle, those big bones are sitting right out waiting for the movie cameras to roll. They are made of a very light weight plastic (it reminds me of the spray foam we use at work) and weather quite well.

Here's a photo I didn't use, but you can see the scale. I WISH they had let us in to see them closer and perhaps play with them! This was the very end of the tour and sadly the end of our trip in Hawaii. Seems so long ago that we were among the pretty flowers now that we have snow on the ground!

Happy Thursday! Hope your day is super productive!

Musings Over Stuffing

I'm making the stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner. Since we are just rolls away from sitting down and my side involves adding hot water, butter, and some fork fluffing, I'm pretty sure I've got things under control. My Mom is at the stove where she's working on putting the two dozen rolls on a tray. I'm considering how it would be easiest to boil the water. The microwave which is above her head would be quickest....but also involves grabbing the glass measuring cup which is in the cupboard by her knee. I hear the oven creak open and as soon as she's moved, I've nabbed that space and more importantly, the stove.

It occurs to me as we dance around the kitchen in a ballet of food prep, that at work, our Habitat for Humanity Build Club is a lot like Thanksgiving dinner. My husband and Dad are watching from the sidelines, offering antidotes and unneeded advice while my Mom and I battle over who gets to use the saw. We both want to get our projects done. There is only one stove or one saw. We have to work together.

She had taken over from the start, even though it's my kitchen. I'm OK handing over the responsibility since she brought the turkey. It's hard though, because I know where all the things are she needs. I also know where the missing beaters are for the potatoes. They are in the camper and she doesn't want to wait while THE MAN ventures out to find them.

Why are they in the camper, he muses. Deviled eggs two camping trips ago, I mutter under my breath. He urges her to use the right beaters after he retrieves them and she gives him the eye ball. This happens weekly over at the Habitat House. Nobody has time to wait for the right (insert tool here) and sometimes the stain can gets opened with a chisel. That whole use the right tool for the right job motto does not apply when you are older than sixty. Nobody can tell you what to do, you've already done it the right way hundreds of times.

Besides, you can open a can of stain with a chisel. Or beat the potatoes with beaters for bread. It all works. In the end you have a delicious dinner or completed house. It's all pretty amazing when you think about it. Many hands coming together to create something brand new be it a house or a big family dinner. I'd venture to say each completed house is nearly miraculous. I'm nearly finishing the 5th that I've worked on and I'm still not sure how it will get all done. At work we mutter Build on Faith repeatedly although each time we say it it's just as scary as the first time.

The house will be done some day very soon and we'll be packing up our stuff and moving on to the next. This is very much like Turkey Day here. The leftovers are packed away in the fridge and it's time to move on to the next big event, Christmas. Time to get out the lights, tree and sparkly bits. The house we're moving on to doesn't have any lights, so it's time to get out the cage lights and get things lit!

Candy Bar Pocket Box Holders for THE CUTTING CAFE

What a sweet treat! I was very impressed on how easy these little boxes were to cut out and embellish! In fact, I made four in one go and then cut out those little deer to decorate them with! Love this file from THE CUTTING CAFE called the Pocket Box Template.

The one I used was deep enough to slide a "fat" candy bar into and I'm going to try using a "thin" candy bar with some little scrap treats for some friends! Just a few little lovely pearls, some leaves an acrylic rose and these are done!

I hope these got you inspired to make a few little goodies for your friends for the holidays! The other set I made are just done in every day paper so you can use them any time of year!

Happy Tuesday!

Drill Baby Drill Layout with THE CUTTING CAFE

These two cuties demanded a pumpkin the other day. Not just any pumpkin but a BIG PUMPKIN. Their Dad tried his hardest to escape picking one up, but since he was making a hardware run next door to a store, he ended up getting them the nicest one he could find. It's likely the last pumpkin a Pratt kid will carve, so I decided to make a page about it.

It's a pretty simple page. The really great part was finding the perfect paper and then adding those premade die cut apples from THE APPLE TREAT BOX file over at THE CUTTING CAFE. See, this page will go right next door to another page I made using those apples. 

These two pages next to each other really make me smile! Love seeing Megan and Luke having some fall fun!

Happy Saturday to you! I'm off to work on some centerpieces for an upcoming party and the oldest is playing with chalk paint & a really old parlor table!

A Sweet Time: Layout for THE CUTTING CAFE

Goodness gracious it was nice to spend some time in my craft room this past weekend! Took a little bit before I could get to the fun stuff. Not only am I enjoying a new printer, but my laptop recently died, so I have a new one of those too!

My original plan was to make apples for this page using my Silly & then print that circle graphic out on top of the shimmery apple. I tried three times and I didn't quite have the hang of the new printer as of yet to get that all accomplished. So I printed one on nice paper & cut it out.

The apples are from THE APPLE TREAT BOX file over at THE CUTTING CAFE. I made quite a few cut out of white paper once I got the Silly set up on the new machine. Then I inked them up with red & orange & sprayed them with a shimmer spray for the mottled water color look. The Be Thankful circle graphic is also from THE CUTTING CAFE and part of the So Thankful Circle Set.

Lately I've been making a lot of extras, which is nice for some cards or a layout later. In this case I have enough for five more cards that I'm going to share with friends at an event I'm going to. Love that cut out heart I added to the middle! So cool!

One more page done and dusted, one card, and five card kits! Not bad for a day where I spent a large chunk of it getting my technology all set up! Have a great Tuesday!

Victorian Sugar Skull Piece: Artists Collaboration

About a month ago, I was seeding and sticky strawing our most recent Habitat for Humanity house lawn. It was pretty late in the season, but we're on a slope and I really wanted to cut down on the mud being tracked into the house. While raking, I found a little wad of metal & these really cool vintage items welded onto them. It had been rolled around by the equipment and probably dug out of the hill.

One of the house lots we built the house on was previously where a house that had burned down, so we've been finding bottles, glass pieces, and all kinds of fun things.

I ran my found vintage metal bits through the dishwasher and this is what they looked like after all the grime & mud came off. So pretty!

Really loved the patina on the biggest one, but it was hard to see so I repainted it a green patina color & added some peals for accent. Honestly everything on this project was pretty much from my stash or were found items. The only thing I bought were those little roses which are Tim Holtz, Idea-ology and were awesome to ink up with some alcohol inks. Took the color really well & made me happy!

This piece was made as part of an artist collaboration. It was supposed to be Halloweenie, but fought me all the way on that part. I settled for it being a transformation. When you dress up for Halloween, if you've really done it all the way you are someone completely different than who you started as. I see this piece as having done that very same thing. It was originally just "junk" rolling around a new house site and now it something very unique. Which, now that I'm thinking about it is just what our Habitat house is. It starts as a pile of lumber and through a lot of hard work on the part of volunteers transforms slowly into a dwelling that will change the life of the inhabitants & those who worked very hard on it. So cool!

Happy Monday!