Today {Random Thoughts and Facebook}

Time is flying by so fast. My birthday was here before I could establish a really strong birthday wishlist!!! I was just talking to my Mom-In-Law about looking at a few brands of bread machines, and then a few days later, the bread machine I had my heart set on shows up at my door [from her and my Dad-In-Law] because I am not a very spoiled girl. No, not at all. *winks* 

Seems like it wasn't a long time ago when John re-did one of the bedrooms in our old house and turned it into a craft room for me for my anniversary gift. This year, he is building some more for my craft room in our new house for my birthday. :) Seems to me like we keep starting over, but we also keep upgrading. Each time we start, it is always some place better.

Around this time each year, John and I are usually building a list of things to do in the spring all the way up to the fall. This year, however, there isn't much to do. At least not anything major. It's all little things here and there, but knowing my Husband, one of these projects we got planned is going to turn into a major makeover.

I cannot wait to get this wall filled up with storage. This is the current state of my craft room. There has been a lot of activity here lately, so I don't even bother to do much of putting away, just until our friends, Chris and Julie get married in April. I am kind of helping them with some stuff for the wedding, plus all the other crafting and sewing that I do here.

 

John is getting ready to put a built-in on this wall so I can put away pretty much all of what you see on the floor. There's not a lot, everything else is put away, so this 13.5 feet built-in storage unit will come in very handy when he's done with it. This is #1 on my birthday wishlist and I am getting it in the next couple of weeks! I am very excited.

It will also add some work surface, which would be fabulous! Don't get me wrong, I love the gigantic desk he built for me last summer. However, at this point in my life I just don't paper craft anymore. I make pretty much everything. I sew, I take pictures, I make home decor, and not just for me anymore either. I have friends that come over and play in here every so often. This room gets more traffic than my kitchen does and my kitchen is pretty darn busy all the time, given there is always something baking or cooking in there or a cake or cupcakes are being decorated there constantly.

Enter this hutch...

 

We got this hutch years ago. It looked really good in the past few houses we've lived in, but it isn't looking too hot in my current kitchen. This is why it's been sitting here empty for a couple of weeks. I can't quite convince myself that I like it or I want to keep it at all. The only thing that is keeping me from taking an axe and destroying this thing is the fact that it is built good. It is an antique. So I am spending a couple of warm days to get it to my liking, otherwise, it is out the door. 

This armoire on the other hand is a keeper. This used to house our computer, it is now the house for my die cutting machines, my wireless printer and other things I don't use all the time. I am not sure if I want to re-do it yet, we'll see...

I am tackling this wall very soon. The canvas print is going to be finished too.

 

Lots of little things on my to-do list. Here's hoping it warms up soon so I can finish all of them and I can fly out of here for a while and visit some really important people who I haven't seen in a few years.

Speaking of wanting to see some people, this year for my birthday, I decided I would shut my facebook timeline posting down. I love social media. I connect with a lot of my family and friends there. While it is true that you can connect with people there, it is also the most impersonal place to hang out at. Although I know that there are people that love me and vise versa on there, there also people on there who just say things just because it is easy, not because they mean what they say.

So this year, I made sure nobody can post HAPPY BIRTHDAY on my timeline... and it was awesome!!! One, my phone didn't blow up from all the happy birthdays. Two, my timeline didn't get flooded with greetings from people I don't normally talk to. Three, all the people that really care, found a way to get a hold of me and didn't grumble because they couldn't post on my timeline.

It's crazy how I say it is the most impersonal place to hang out at but people take everything that they read or see on there very personal and get upset about things that most of the time have nothing to do with them.

This year, I promised to myself to make it a point see or personally talk to all the people I love. I am not quitting facebook, however, it won't be my major hang out, it never was in the first place. There is more to life than staring at our computers all day and creeping on other people's facebook pages. Make something pretty. Get a hobby. Learn to do something. Go outside and enjoy the sunshine. As for me, I am going to visit the ones I haven't seen in forever... because seeing pictures of them on facebook just doesn't quite do the job! :)

See you soon!!!

Hello There!

Hello! 

I hope everyone has had a nice Halloween. We didn't do anything halloweeny [no, that's not a word]. I am not a big fan of the holiday. It seems to me like it happens, kids/people overload on candy and then nothing...  So I don't invest time or money on it. I did end up channeling my energies into other things, like play with my Silhouette. :)

I finally got a Silhouette Cameo early in October. I say 'finally' because I have been planning on getting it for like a year and a half now and I got it at an unbelievably low price. Getting it was one of those right place, right time kind of thing. My Cameo only set me back $70 as opposed to the $269 price tag it has on Amazon or anywhere else. And it was very very brand new when I got it because the person I bought it from did not want it at all.

 

I have played with it a ton. And I have cut quite a bit of stuff from it... and I am very very impressed by all that I learned about the Silhouette Cameo in comparison to my Cricut Expression and the other stuff I have that has to do with the Cricut. Here's my list:

1) The Cameo doesn't require cartridges, unlike the Cricut. However you do need a computer with the Silhouette machines. But what crafter/paper crafter doesn't have one nowadays? Also, as a Cricut owner, it is an awful feeling paying $20 for a cartridge just so I would get the one or two images I have my eyes on. The Silhouette images only cost 0.99 cents a piece and you can cut any .PNG, .JPG files you have on your arsenal. And if you have the Designer Studio software, you can cut .SVG files too.

2) The design software for the Cameo comes free with it. I paid at least $20 for the Cricut software. My bestfriend, Sara and I got ours from ebay and spent days, maybe weeks waiting for the right deal to come around. Then I spent at least $40 on Sure-Cuts-A-Lot just so I could use the fonts on my computer and non-Cricut .SVG files without depending on my cartridges. 

3) You had me at Print and Cut! Yes, the Silhouette has this capability and I didn't have to buy a totally different machine. I am able to print any image through my printer and cut them in my Cameo.

4) The detailed cuts are SUPERB! I can't tell you all how happy I was when I found out that I could load my vinyl into the machine without the mat! You could certainly NOT do this with the Cricut and there is no guarantee the Cricut blade won't rip your vinyl either. I am loving the presets on the Silhouette software.

5) I love the weight of the Cameo compared to the Cricut. I have tried to lug my Cricut around with me in the past, and none of them was a pleasant experience. I could probably load my Cameo in a plastic sack, that's how light-weight it is. 

6) The learning curve. To me, there is/was none. I am used to using the Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop and I am used to using paths, layers, adjustments etc. So for me, it was easy transitioning from the Cricut to the Silhouette.

I may have forgotten to mention some stuff, but the bottom line is, I love my Cameo. It is totally so much better than what I am used to.

 

John, my Husband has been wanting me to do this for a long long time. But I couldn't do it with my Cricut. I had forgotten about it until a couple of days ago while I was playing with the Illustrator and I bumped into it. So I laid the stuff out on AI and went to cutting this morning.

I also made this last week...

After I painted our kitchen, I found that getting rid of the wallpaper in there also required starting from scratch decorating-wise. So I really can't show much of it right now. It is in the works and John and I are in the process of figuring out the route we want to go design-wise for our kitchen because it has taken a totally different personality soon as I started rolling that grey paint on the walls. :) I wasn't surprised but it sure made me re-think our furniture choices and all kinds of other stuff. 

One of the things I had to re-think was our window treatment/s

 

We only have one window in the kitchen, but we have french doors leading into our back porch and backyard. There used to be lace everywhere in this kitchen. I love lace. Every time I go window treatment shopping, when I see lace, the search is over. This time around though, I decided against it but this doesn't mean I don't have lace anywhere in my house now. I have them all in my craft room.

I've seen a ton of these [photo above] on Pinterest. So I decided I'd give it a shot. I am on a sewing kick so this is a No-Sew project. I actually sewed the slats onto my fabric to secure it. The only tricky part is making sure that all the slats are on straight otherwise, your shade won't cover your window like it's supposed to. The level was my bestfriend during this whole process!

In addition to my subway art, I also added a few other things... I made sure we had a place for precious gifts and memoirs from loved ones. I am working on a really special display for Grandma Turner, John's Granny. In the process of making this house ours, we also don't want to forget that she is responsible for us getting it, and we want to make sure we are reminded every day of her and how wonderful she was. :) I will make a post for it very soon. 

I also did some shopping. Fall is when I do a lot of it because I love fall and winter, and this is also the time when summer clothes go on sale. So I go on a clicking frenzy online and spend most my days waiting for the UPS or the mailman to deliver the goods to me. I love shoes but we are very partial, we love Nike and I love Zappos.

 

 

Also got these gorgeous boots. They [may be] Nine West.

 

And last but definitely not the least, I put one of our trees up in the kitchen! :) To me, Christmas ALWAYS trumps halloween. I did buy two bags of candy, and made loots for my little buddies Reed and Riley [our friends' kids], everything else went to John's belly. He loves candy and he doesn't like sharing. 

 

So, I really didn't miss Halloween. :) I have had a really great time the past couple of weeks getting my house ready for Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year. I am ready for Christmas most of all. It's my favorite holiday. 

I'll be back soon for more updates. I am having a good old time working on our house. This has been a great year!

Laterz gatorz,