What do your friends mean to you???

I don't know about you but some of my very dear friends are just like family to me and I love them so much.  Sometimes some of them have been there for me more than actual family has been.  I wouldn't trade them for anything.

I was sitting there the other night and thinking about a few dear friends that I've been talking too and decided I wanted to do a project with just that saying.

I had a set of 3 paper mache boxes that I just painted up, quick and simple.  Got out my vinyl and finished it off by putting a jute bow around it.

Put it in the guest bedroom on the bookshelf so that when people stay over, they know how much we care about them.

So on that note my dear friends, have a wonderful evening and happy crafting!

xo ~ Laura

The little things that matter in life

Can't believe it is Monday again already!!  There must be something in the air as everyone keeps asking me what I am taking because I have been in a great mood lately!!  I said just taking things in and enjoying life.  Even to the smallest details and that is what matters in life.  There are so many tiny miracles that surround us everyday that sometimes we forget to stop and take a look around.  You know what.....it is contagious!!  :)  Well our vacation is coming up in 17 days also so that may have something to do with it too ;-)

Anywho....wasn't able to do much today as I had to work and it was my middle granddaughter's birthday and also my SIL so went home to let the dogs out and get them fed, then off to the party.  I did get a few things done this evening though so I will share.  Remember.....it is the little things ;-)

I found these cute storage containers at the Dollar Store and could not pass them up.  I always need little containers for so many things and I love that some of these have slots too!  They come flat and very easy to put together so now I will have to figure out where I am going to use them at.

Put up a little saying on our backdoor....the picture turned out strange as the door looks curved to me but I swear it isn't and it is straight lol.

Stopped to take a look up in the sky as occasionally that is my real quiet time and especially when I am missing Dad.  The weather was strange today.  It got up to 87 degrees and was sunny for awhile, then clouds rolled in but still the same temp.  Strangest weather I've seen in all my 50+ years lol.

 These are some pencil pouches I picked up and wanted to personalize for the grandbabies.  I still have 2 more to pick up but they didn't have the colors I wanted but all 6 of the kids will have their own this year, all fit to their personalities and color likes :)

 Birthday present wrapped and all pretty for the birthday girl and the last touch to her present are the cutest lollipops I've seen in awhile :)

Think it was a productive day all the way around :)  Have a wonderful evening and happy crafting!!

xo ~ Laura

House Rules

Happy Wednesday!

I'm a happy girl today as the sunshine is coming back again!!  We had a few days of rain around the PNW which is OK as the grass needed it bad.  The one nice thing when it gets so warm as the grass doesn't grow as it dries out so no mowing, which my hubby likes lol.

My projects this weeks have been smaller ones as I still am not back to 100% yet but getting close.  This darn cold is a pain but oh well, that's life lol.  I left you with a teaser, yes I know...I'm good at doing that.  So I'll give you a refresher.  I found this for 50 cents at Goodwill many months ago.  It had the tag on it from Pier 1 and I thought "SWEET"!!  Now you may be asking, OK Laura, so what is so special about a stand???

Well I needed it to put this on.  Yes I had a few of the thin canvas' laying around and wanted to do up something fun for the kitchen.  Guess I'm in a sprucing up the kitchen mode lately lol.

Brought out the good ole paint and did a dry brush affect on it as I wanted it to resemble wood. I think it turned out pretty good :)  Then out came the vinyl.....I had saw this on a blog (I'm sorry I thought I copied the name and I can't find it so if it was you......thank you for the idea)

Thought it was cute and loved how it turned out!  My husband asked if the "House Rules" applied to him and I said yup lol.  We both had a good laugh with it. 

 Here is where I put it.  On top of our fridge along with some of my porcelin cow figurines.  Now that is country huh ;-)

One last thing....Carissa had gotten me this magnet a year ago for Mother's Day and she has been after me to put my face on this as it is a picture holder also so I finally did and I think it is just cute.  Love the saying on it :)

So that's all for me right now.  I don't even have any teasers for you tonight!!  Guess I better put my thinking cap on for some more ideas huh :)

Have a great evening and happy crafting!!

xo ~ Laura

Ever misplace your keys???

Happy Tuesday!!

So do any of you ever come home, throw your purse on the nearest table as soon as you walk in the door, along with your keys and then later look for them and they've been moved??  I so do not like that feeling and I am notorious for doing that.  OK, I admitted it lol.  The first thing I want to do when I get in the house is drop everything from work, let my 3 boys out of their kennels and give them some loves and let them out.  Hey, it isn't just me either.  My hubby does the same thing, but his is also his badge he needs for work and then frantically looks for it in the morning lol.  So why am I telling you all this?

Remember my last post of the sneak peek???  Yes it is a little stool or bench I guess but I had other plans for it.  What did I do with it and why am I saying things about keys?????

Here is what I came up with!  I thought it was pretty creative if I do say so myself.  Now it is the last thing you see when you go out the door and the message will let my hubby know I am wishing him the best day at work yet :)  The little red crate is for his cell phone and badge for work and his keys are right there too.  Pretty cute huh!!

I love these hooks!  I found them the other day at the store and said yup, got to have these :)

So what is up next??  I'll give you another sneak peek.  I'm terrible about making you wait huh lol :)

Have a wonderful evening and happy crafting!!

xo ~ Laura

Amazing what a few new things brings

Happy Monday!!

I hope that you have had a wonderful day and are doing well.  Today I went back to work after being sick all weekend with this darn chest cold and am feeling better each day.  Annoying cough and a few sniffles but not bad now. 

Got home and did something a little easy tonight as I didn't want to over do it and make myself go backwards so am starting back into it easy.  I know myself oh too well, as well do a few of you, when I start going I don't want to stop lol.

My neighbor had a yard sale over the weekend and I had a few things that I contributed to it and also gave her some of my extra Mary Kay products that I had left over from selling and she was in 7th heaven.  So in return she gave me this as she knows I look for these types of things.  I told her it wasn't necessary to give me anything but she insisted so I said "thank you" with a big smile :)

I left the base coat green as shown here with a coat of brown over the top and after it was dried, distressed the edges and much better!!  So I already had something in mind for it, go figure :)  I have vaulted ceilings in my house and the space above my kitchen cabinets is quiet high so I decided to give it a little more "feel" up there.  Here it is before:

And here it is after :)  What do you think?

Next project sneak peek......

Have a great evening and happy crafting!!

xo ~ Laura

Think it's time to by Lotto!!!

Good evening!!

I think it is time to go by the winning lotto ticket as I've won a few give-a-ways this week!!  :)

Courtney over at A Diamond In the Stuff contacted me today that I had won the give-a-way over at Shabby Creek Designs!  Gina has some awesome things in her store and I will get to go do some shopping and I'm excited :)  Check out her store....you'll enjoy it I promise :)

Onto the next win.....  Cute As A Fox!  I won a photo program called Any Pic Image Converter.  I've just started playing with it and it is a lot of fun :-)  She has a very cute blog and I've enjoyed looking all around it :)

Then last but not least, Isabella over at Le Chateau des Fleurs with this adoreable baby snuggle which I am going to pay forward to giving it to my friends whose baby (Gavin) had heart surgery.  He is still at newborn weight so that will be perfect for him :)  Aren't these just the cutest things ever??  No...the babies are not included :(

I didn't get any crafting done this weekend as I had gotten a bad case of a chest cold thanks to one of my co-workers from last week so I spent my days off just resting, laying out in the sun to try to sweat it out of my system and get better for this work week.  I feel a lot better so hopefully I will sleep well and can make it through this week.  Hoping to get back into the swing of things this week so stay tuned :)

Have a great week and happy crafting!!

xo ~ Laura

Cow Country!!!!

Happy Saturday!!

I was hoping this morning to start to feel a little better but that didn't happen :(  As I got up to grab a cup of coffee and look outside, I knew it was going to be a beautiful and sunny day and I didn't want to just sit inside all day and feel icky.  I decided this afternoon to be brave, put on my swimsuit and go into the backyard and just lay in the sun and try to sweat some of this crap out of me.  I think it is helping too :)  Still going to just lay low for the rest of the day and not over do it.  I don't even have the motivation to craft :(

Well lets move onto what I did do this week :)  I have this love addition for cows and also chickens, and my hubs likes them too so I thought this would be cute to do up.

I had purchased some pictures at the Puyallup Fair about 5 years ago with cows, chickens and pigs and decided to move them around some now and do up some new wood signs with vinyl on them.  This was the one project I was working on the new technique with.  Remember this?

 And so here is my new sign I did up.  Larry came home and said oh I like that one :)

Well that's all for me right now.  Just sitting here listening to the hubs snoring (yup the sun took him out lol) and wondering to myself.........is there anything I can do to not set me back????  You'll have to stay tuned for that answer lol.

Have a great weekend and happy crafting!!

xo ~ Laura

Switching things up

Howdy!!

Well I can honestly say I am SO glad it is Friday now and the start of what I'm hoping will be a relaxing weekend.  This darn cold is driving me nuts!!  I basically quarantined myself at work today so that I didn't pass it on to anyone else because I'm careful about that.  Disinfected everything!!!  I just wish others would be that considerate but what can you do. 

I was able to work on these cute magnets when I got home.  I found the idea over at Midwestern Sewing Girls blog and thought these would be fun stocking stuffers for Christmas.  I plan on giving some to the kids and also my ex so that they can display them on their fridge.  I had printed out a lot of extra pictures from Carissa and Brandon's wedding album so was able to use them.  I found these 6 pack of magnets at Target in the dollar section so why not play around right?

Take the portion of the picture you want and put the magnet right over that spot and trace around it.  You could also use an craft knife also if you want.  Whatever is easiest for you.  Then use Mod Podge over the top of the magnet, put the picture on top of that and press it down and another coat of the Mod Podge and let dry.  Here are different stages below.  I used the gloss one and it turned out great!

 When dried, put them up on your refridgerator!  Simple and fun to have :)

That was a quick project and wanted to move some things around, or add some new decor on my shelves in our livingroom so here is this switch up :)  Added my wine crate and put a few knick knacks in it, added the vase (had used it for the wedding) with some green silk plants.  Done :)

 Moved the plate around and added my painted watering can.  Not really doing it for me so will have to think about this one more lol.

Added a mirror window frame that I had painted and one of my old glass jars.  Looks much better on top of this cabinet now.  The advantage of having vaulted ceilings in my house :)

Well it is time to go relax and take it easy and drink some more hot water with lemon and honey to curb this darn cough.  Hope it clears up soon!!

Happy crafting and have a good evening!!

xo ~ Laura

Bathroom ReDo

Hi!!

Do you ever get in the mood that you're just tired of looking at the same old things in your house?  I know I do lol.  One of the many things I love about crafting is that you can change it out whenever you feel like it and I love doing that!  Plus......cheap makeover and that's always good huh :)

I've had this shelf in our bathroom for quiet a few years and I was in a white and blue mode at that point of time but it was time to change things out.  Seems like I'm in a "natural" color mode right now lol.  Here is the shelf and the picture I had on the wall over our vanity in the master bath, pretty blah I know.

So out came the paint, vinyl and sander and away I went!!  I decided the picture needed a little sprucing up also so brought out the bronzer for that too.  What did I come up with???

I think it is much better now.  I have a lot more to do in our bathroom and little by little I am getting there.  The hubs came home and saw it and said oh I like that much better so I guess I did good :)

I haven't done too much this week as it seems that everyone at work is coming down with the late Summer cold and so now I have it and I'm not happy about that :(  At least tomorrow is Friday and I can take it easy for the weekend as we don't have anything planned except to take our little Taz Man back for his checkup to make sure he isn't producing anymore crystals to form more stones.  So think I'm going to just go relax now for the night.

Have a good evening and happy crafting!!

xo ~ Laura

New Technique :)

Well hello!!!

Hope you are all having a great week so far, I know I am and enjoying myself :)  I'm trying very hard not to let all the stress at work over take my happiness and so far, knock on wood, this week has been great!  OK...so it's only been 2 days but it's a start right???  lol

When I made my chicken wire frame a few weeks ago, I loved the detail in the wood as it look worn and beat up which is perfect for our country decor so when I was out on one of my excursions on the weekend, I found just this plain old light wood frame.  Boring huh ;-)

So to give it that beat up look, what did I do???  Well brought out my trusty hammer!!!  Start banging it with the claw part to however you'd like it to look :)

Next you just take black paint and put it in the lines that you've made and don't worry about being neat because it doesn't matter.  (I forgot to take a picture of the black paint portion so here is another project I'm working on with the same technique so you'll get the idea)

 Last step is paint over it with what ever color you'd like and you can see how cool it looks!!  Isn't that fun???  And easy too :)

So what did it turn out like???  TaDa!!!  This is actually going to be a Christmas gift to my oldest daughter as she loved mine so I just put my thinking cap on to see how close I could come and I'm saying 99% perfect!!  Total cost.........$1.50  Can't beat that huh :)

When I was putting my supplies away, I came across this Mother's Day card that Carissa had gotten me last year and I took the time to open it up and read it again.  Do you do that too?  Go back and remember that warm feeling you get when your children gave you something?  I love doing that :)  Anywho......it has a Rascal Flatts song that plays when you open it and I just loved being in the moment remembering the day she stood there and gave it to me.  So I thought I'd share :)  Makes me feel like I did a great job raising my kids.

BTW, I'm sorry I haven't given an update on my friends grandson, Gavin.  I shared a few weeks ago he had open heart surgery and had actually gone into cardiac arrest.  Well here is a recent picture of Gavin.  He isn't out of the woods by any means but the Dr's are calling him the miracle baby!!  He is still in the hospital but just got released out of the ICNU and put into the regular floor and will be in there for at least another 10 days while they finish his therapy of bottle training.  Please continue to pray for him and the family as the results should be in tomorrow on whether or not he will just have to get another heart surgery to replace the stent or if he will have to have a transplant.  But wanted to let you know and the family truly appreciates all the prayers.

This is Macie (the big sister) loving on her baby brother.  She has told her parents all the way along, "Don't worry, Gavin will be fine"

 This is precious baby Gavin.  He's off all his machines except the feeding tube which you see in his nose.

Have a great evening and happy crafting!!

xo ~ Laura