Home Improvement ...

Well I certainly hope it improves :)

After the nice relaxing family time we had over the
holidays now we are on to the stressful part. Two
years ago on Christmas Eve we bought a large
screen LCD TV, ever since then my husband has

been wanting to do something to cover up the
wires and to add extra storage around the TV.
He started on his master plan yesterday and that
involved the removal of our TV, gasp and horror
on the part of our youngest son :)
If you can see the black frame in the middle

of the wall that is where our TV was.

Last night we had a great time playing a couple of new
board and card games that were received for Xmas.
Hoping we will be able to play some more to stop us
from going crazy :)

17...

Well here is my son on his birthday showing off the
artwork his friends did on the car overnight !
Apparently they quietly came and did this late the
night before his birthday and tied some balloons to
the car too. One of Alex's friends actually shares

his birthday and they did the same to her car too !
Must be an american high school thing. In England
you cannot even start learning to drive until you are
17 and by that time you are not in school but out
working or in college. He had a great day despite
having to do finals at school, now he has

a long wait until his next birthday.

17 years ago today...

I cannot believe how fast time has flown by, our eldest
son is 17 today. How come that I can remember so
much about that day but cannot remember things
that happened earlier this year ?

One of our family traditions is that we do not do any
decorating, including getting a tree, until after
his birthday. No wonder it always feels like a mad panic
at the end :)

Happy Birthday Alex, love you lots !

Tags 7 to 12

Well here are the last 6 tags done, I had so much fun
doing these. I only had 1 set of his Christmas stamps
and had to substitute for quite a lot of what he used,
but that is part of the fun, being able to use the
techniques with what you have.

I am not sure what I will do with them, they are all works
of art and I would love to display them somehow.

So as I enjoyed this so much I may go back and look at
the ones he posted from the previous 2 years and try
those, well perhaps in the new year as right now it is
getting very busy :)

12 Tags of Christmas...

I have been totally consumed by Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of
Christmas. These are my first 6 days of tags, yes there
are 7 in the photo as one of the days we did 2 of the
same technique. Tim started doing this back in 2007,
I did not have any of the supplies at that time, even last
year I did not join in, but this year I seem to have a few

of the right type of stamps and a lot of the ink pads.
It is so much fun to learn lots of new techniques with
very detailed step-by-step instructions and photos.
Really we are all getting to learn a lot of different ideas
and techniques all in the comfort of our own homes.

So if you would like to play along please go to Tim's blog .

Unfortunately this obsession has stopped me from
working on my December Daily that I started last
week, I will have to catch up with that soon :)

This year I decided that I would try and do a December
Daily, a project started by Ali Edwards a couple of years
ago. I have always liked the idea of using up bits and
pieces to put together an album ready to go for future use.
The picture on the left is my Day 1 (yesterday) as it was
before anything was added to it. The next picture is the
front and the next is the back of the page. Using clear
pages is always a challenge, don't want to see any
backs of things or any adhesive.
I may add something to go over the back of the
day embellishment, not sure yet.

Now all I have to do is find something to document for the
next 24 days.....

Two things...

1. After more mammogram screens and an ultrasound
this morning I am happy to say that everything is OK.

2. Tim Holtz's 12 Days of Christmas tags started today
and if you have not been over to see Tim go now you
will be blown away by the tag and his incredible instructions.

I am off now to go and try it for myself, I do not have
those stamps but I know I can find alternatives.
Who else is going to play ??

M 3

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, nice and
quiet here :)

So for this week here are my 3 :

Thanks so much to Heidi from Simon Says Stamp for
sending out a Tim Holtz refillable Alcohol Ink pen to
everyone on our Artful Voyage Cruise. Looking forward
to trying it out and if anyone has experience with this
any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Second, tomorrow I have to go back for a more in depth

Mammogram :( not sure what happened but am hoping it

was just a glitch in the new digital photos they used.

Third, also tomorrow I am going to start my December
Daily for the first time. If anyone follows Ali Edwards blog
this is something she has been doing for the last couple
of years. You get an album set up before Dec 1st then
add notes and photos each day showing your build up
to the holidays. It has always looked like so much fun to
do so I pulled it all together last week and I am ready
to go.
If anyone else out there is doing this also I would love to know.

Need inspiration please ..

Well I bought this at the antique mall about a year ago.
I had an idea to use it for our Xmas cards, but it did not
work out. It is supposed to be a postcard spinner display
but the spiral parts are very close together so it is
hard to use.

It has been sitting around all this time and I would like
to use it for something and am looking for ideas,
any suggestions ??

I have thought about dismantling it and just keeping
the crown part, after all that is what made me buy it :)

I will have a little something for anyone who comes up
with a good idea, so get your thinking caps on !

M Cubed...

First of all I just wanted to thank everyone who stopped
by on the Blog Around the World this weekend. I had a
lot of fun and got to catch a glimpse of other
people's world's.

On to my 3 things for this week, the picture above is my
finished piece from my Beeswax collage class I took this
weekend. I had a lot of fun and learned some new
techniques, not sure if I am really getting the hang of it
- might need to take a few more classes.
I went with my friend Lisa who also enjoyed it and her

piece came out fantastic, I think she may be getting
some of her own beeswax :)

Secondly, I watched the movie "Up" last night, what a
great movie. Yes I know it is a Pixar animated movie
and my boys are teenagers but I had heard so many
people say what a really good movie it was, and they
were right. Be warned though you will need a few
Kleenex if you are anything like me :)

Thirdly, and the thing I am most excited about
this week.......

Adam Lambert's CD comes out today..
Since I wrote this post I have heard things about his
performance on the AMA, I did not watch it so cannot
comment, I just like his music.

It's here - Blog Around the World ..

Today is the day, hello all my fellow blog around the world
blog hoppers !

Welcome to my corner of the world, Phoenix, Arizona. This

is a photo from my back yard of the Saguaro cactus that is

on the other side of my wall. Looks like there is a visitor today :)

Coming up this week I will be doing my new M Cubed
post on Monday and later will be asking for suggestions
with something else.

Have a great weekend and don't forget to go visit

Julie for the next part of your journey around the world.

Around the world blog hop..

One of our prompts on the Blogging for Scrapbookers
class was to get a blog train going with some of the
other people in the class.

A blog train is when a group of people get together for
something and you get directed to other people's blogs.
So you would visit my blog then go to the blog I give the
link to then follow that and go to the next person's link
and so on. This will be my first attempt at joining in a
blog train, hopefully everyone will get done what they
need to.

This is going to be an Around the World event with
people posting photo's of the view outside their window,
should be exciting to see what it looks like in other parts
of the world.

If you want to follow along come back here this weekend.

To co-ordinate times with the person in charge my post
needs to go up at 2pm MST this Saturday, hope it works :)
Care to guess what my photo is ? please leave me a comment.

A Year Ago...

We have been given a prompt in our class to see what we
were doing a year ago by looking back at our previous blog
posts. Well I have not been blogging that long so I went to
my trusty Picasa and looked back at this time last year.

Interesting photo you may say ? This is an all around
head x-ray of our youngest son. This was the start of
his journey of Orthodontists and oral surgeons. Poor boy
has 2 missing teeth, never had them as baby teeth and
then one he had a baby tooth for has no adult tooth !

Then we find out just over a year ago that the 2 teeth
that were to come in next to the 2 missing teeth were
stuck somewhere and would not come through without
intervention. So we started the long process to help get
the teeth through which involved having braces on his

upper teeth, surgery to expose the teeth, having chains
attached to the exposed part and then 2 posts put in the
roof of his mouth to attach the chains to.

Sorry if anyone is squeamish, I am too and so this has
been hard for me to look at.

The good news is that the teeth are slowly making
progress, well one more so than the other one.
Another visit to the oral surgeon this week and now
another procedure to help the other tooth.

We of course have been having regular visits to the
Orthodontist on top of this and I have to say that our
son has been absolutely wonderful with all this and
the discomfort he has had to go through.

The good news is that the process is coming along, I think
quicker than we had been originally told. It hardly seems
like a year has gone by since we started this.

Time really does fly, on that note I encourage everyone to look back on what they were doing this time last year. Hopefully it will bring back some happy memories :)

M Cubed...my new regular Monday feature..

Metallic Maya Mists...I am in love :)

I am being inspired by my blogging class and one of the
prompts was to have a regular theme that you blog about
once a week if possible. After much thought I am going
with M cubed, this will be 3 things on Monday that I am
either going to do, want to do, or new items to talk about,
not necessarily art/craft related.

I just bought 2 of the metallic Maya Mists this weekend
and now I want more... I love the Lime and have seen
that they also do Avocado which I am on the hunt for.
I tested out both the Lime and Plum and also a Memories
Mist and of course Glimmer Mist.

It is not easy to see but the Maya Mists are by far the
most glimmery. The red one is the Memories Mist and
has no shimmer at all but I sprayed on top with silver
Glimmer Mist and it is so much better. The blue one is
also Glimmer Mist, a little shimmery but not too much.

So for my other 2 things for this week, in keeping with

the 'M' theme I went for my annual Mammogram this
morning, torture is now over for another year.

The 3rd thing is Jessica Sprague's last class of the year

started today, "Holidays in Hand", looking forward to it.
I believe you can still sign up for it up until tonight so if
you want to try it, it is free, here is where you need to go.
Get over there now !

Now time to go mist something, Happy Monday !

New Tool, and the do's and dont's...

Today was an exciting mail day.. I got the I-Top tool,
something I have been on and off about, not sure whether
it would be something I would use or not. Well I saw it on http://www.scrapbooksteals.com/  for a great price,
including 2 of the punches and other extras.

First of all I found out that I should not use my circle
punch to try and punch stretchy vinyl :( 
Luckily I managed to save my punch.

Second of all it is not a good idea to use the metal tape
that has an adhesive backing as it kind of gets stuck to
things when you do not want it to.

Third of all, and most important, do not try and prise
apart the brad after you have made it......
I again was lucky and managed to re-use the parts to
make a new brad, it might not be totally round though !

I really am a gadgetaholic so it was clear that eventually
I might own this tool. The little secret I will tell you that
made me finally get this is that whilst I was on the
Tim Holtz cruise he mentioned that it was his new
favourite toy and he would be having lots of things he
would be showing with it in the future.
Now I am armed and ready so I am waiting Tim...

A couple of answers..

I would just like to answer some of the questions I got in
my comments over the last few days.

To Deb in Chandler, yes I shop at both of those stores too,

although Scrapbooks etc is a much longer drive for me.

To Mrs Spotts, I am short too but did not get R2D2,
must have been your answers, lol.

To Sharyn, I love Ali's class and am glad I signed up for it
is as I do not think I will get to take a class in person with her.

The photo I posted today was one of the gorgeous sunsets

we get here in Phoenix, it was taken last Weds.

One last thing.... the  black and white photo was taken
in the mid 1960's.. that is all I am going to say :)

A Fun Quiz...

I am a huge fan of the original Star Wars movies,
do not really like the 3 new ones but I watched them
anyway, just once though :)
There are several quizzes on the internet that help you
figure out which character you are from the movies so
today I thought I would give you all the chance to try
it out for yourselves, just go to Which Star Wars Character Are You ?

By the way I am Obi Wan Kenobi, have fun.

Who's that girl...

and any idea what year this picture was taken in ???

Seriously I have very few photo's of my childhood as my
parents really did not take photos and relied on my aunts
to do it. This is one of about 10 or 12 photo's I managed
to persuade my mum to send to me so I could have
some keepsake of my childhood.

This is all coming home to me now as I am taking a
wonderful class on Big Picture Scrapbooking called
Yesterday & Today with Ali Edwards. It is a great class
and I would love to do all the layouts but as I said I am
sadly lacking in the photos. Ali has been great though
about giving alternatives and I know it will all work

out in the end.

So in case you haven't guessed, yes it is me. If you would
like to make a guess on the year please be nice :)

Made this heart shadow box this week...

A Trip to the Pharmacy..

I am at my Target pharmacy almost every week
with all the prescriptions that I have to pick up for
2 members of my family.
Now I have another one who is starting on some
medications, so today I had 4 to pick up !!

I saw that if you got one of their Target cards you
can enrol in a frequent prescription plan, after every
10 prescriptions filled you get a coupon to spend at Target.
Well I was almost half way there already today.
Obviously you have to use the card to pay for them
so as I was going through the process to get one I
realised that I had already paid with my credit card.
My very kind pharmacist said he would refund it and
we would start over. Well after going through all the
steps to enrol it turns out that I have to wait for them
to send me my card, aarghhh !!
So I got my credit card out and paid for them all over again :)

Sometimes I wonder if things like this are worth the effort.

Three favourites ...

In my online class Blogging for Scrapbookers we had a
prompt today to do more of a list type posting as opposed
to a regular posting. So it is a very small list but these are
my 3 favourites right now :

• Tim Holtz Fragments
• Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks
• Rub-ons - any kind

I have been making some gifts and just started playing

with these 3 things and am really excited about all the
possibilities they offer.

Blogging for Scrapbookers..

So Sunday night I signed up for this online class being
taught by Shimelle Laine. The class started yesterday
and so far I am very impressed with what we have been
given. Our first assignment was to write our intentions

on our blog, well I am a day late but I think it will be OK :).

I am taking this class more to help with the blogging than
the scrapping. My wish is to figure out how to use all that
is available out there to make my blog look better and to
be able to do more with it. Also I would like to update my
blog more regularly, now I don't mean on a daily basis but

at least a couple of times a week. Now I need to go and
read my prompt for day 2 and hopefully will be able to
keep up with this and not get behind !

A Taste of Mexico..

Here I am using the Molcajete, a mortar and pestle made
from lava rock. The traditional sauce made in it is also
called Molcajete sauce. I took an excursion from the ship
in Mazatlan where we did a walking tour of the old town
then went and had a cooking lesson, after which we got
to eat lunch using the sauce and guacamole we made,
it was delicious.
I have to say though that it takes a lot of muscle to use
that thing, which is why I had to stand up to do it :)

Here is a different taste of Mexico, my cabin mate Michelle

and I had a great time wandering around Puerto Vallarta,
but ended up at Senor Frogs for lunch.
This was my first experience here and I have to say it was
definitely different. The food was not great but our
non-alcoholic Pina Coladas really made up for it.
Never having been to Mexico  before I found out an
interesting fact. All the waiters at the restaurants there do
not get paid by the restaurant, they only get money from
tips the customers leave.
This of course explains why we had so many wait staff looking after us.

Flight of Creativity...

this was the name of our Mega project with Tim on the
cruise last week. I finished it off at home this afternoon,
I really like it but it is lost on my husband :(

I did as much as I could in class, there were lots of layers
involved in this project, as well as working with Beeswax
and inks. Most of the decorating, positioning and
embellishing is what I saved to do at home. I have never
done anything like this before and it was a lot of fun.

I am pretty sure that everyone who did this project ended

up with something completely different. Tim provided us
with the basics to start then gave us all lots of different
things to use as embellishments,
a lot of Heidi Swapp products, and also lots of ideas.

It was tricky trying to take a photo of this, mostly due to
reflections from the glass and the mirror. This was the
best one but it is laying down so you cannot see the
effect of the dangling chandelier cyrstals as well as
when it is upright.
Tim really stressed about layers and different depths when
we were making this. It really does look much better when
it is upright, promise :0

Goodies galore !!

So today I finally got around to sorting my stuff out.

This is a photo of all the goodies we were given last
week on the cruise. Some of them were to add to
projects we made, others were just a gift. It is not
very visible in the photo but in our first class we were
given a Ranger Travel pack of things we needed in

class. As well as the blending tool which did not fit
in the bag we had Jet Black Archival ink pad, a
Ranger scraping tool, Brushed Courduroy Distress ink,
Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls, Pitch Black Paint Dabber,
Rock Candy Distress crackle paint, Rock Candy stickles,
small bottle of Glossy Accents, small bottle of Multi Medium

by Claudine Hellmuth, an Inkssentials Opaque white pen
and later on a Black Glaze pen. How great was all that !!
and it was all inside the small vinyl bag with the string
on at the back of the picture.

We got a lot of Heidi Swapp stuff, Halloween stuff from
Cosmo Cricket, 2 packs of Grungeboard - including the
mega Alphabet pack. A Glue Glider Pro and refill was
given out at our first class also.

As if getting all that and the classes was not enough,
on the last day at our Farewell Reception we were all
given a custom made stamp that was the cruise logo
that Tim designed, it fits exactly into the tiny little suitcase
that it came in.

So now all I have to do is finish 3 out of my 6 projects, lol !

Hola Amigos !!

Yes I am back home with my new friend Senor Bones !
he came all the way from Puerto Vallarta, he is a
Day of the Dead figure.

Had a great time on the cruise, making art and new friends.
We had rough seas trying to sail around a tropical storm
around Cabo, the ship had to change it's itinerary for that
so we stopped there on the way back. Lost a lot of people
from our classes that day due to seasickness,
thank goodness I was taking the Bonine pills.

Well when I have finished my fabulous projects I will post
them, will probably be posting a picture of all the goodies
we were given when I get round to sorting out my piles of stuff !