Looking for Craft Ideas

I am on the hunt for some cute St. Patrick's Day crafts. I am finally starting to feel up to being creative. Do you have an idea for me? I would like to have the crafts finished by the end of the month so that I can display them starting March 1. Also send me some ideas for Easter, really any spring craft. Keep in mind I am diabetic so I don't want things that revolve around baked goods or candy. Any suggestions? Would anyone like to come over and craft with me? Here are a couple things I have found so far:

Luck Sign from It's A Girl Thing



Fabric Flowers from The Creative Crate



Butterfly Wreath from The Creative Crate



I LOVE the fabric flowers, I think they would look so cute in my kitchen or on my entertainment center. I would love other ideas though, and I'm serious about a craft party! Thanks!

Lovin' It

Oh man, I am so loving this Valentine's Day kit I bought this morning. Best part, it was on sale! Yay! I used the Vintage Valentine kit from ScrapOrchard to decorate my blog. It's probably my favorite blog look yet, so don't be surprised if I don't change anything until October! Anyway, I love this kit and I just wanted to share!

Also, I am posting a hot wing recipe on the Durfee Family Recipe Blog. I made 4lbs. of these suckers yesterday and Nate and my brother ate them all! They said they were great! I didn't even get a picture of them because they were eaten so quickly!

One last thing, since I am talking about things to love, I am so loving Tim McGraw right now. His song "Felt Good On My Lips" has been stuck in my head all weekend and I love it!

Finished!

Woo hoo! I just ordered my book. I saved $118 due to the sale. I am so excited, I can't wait for it to get here. They said the estimated arrival date is next Wednesday, so hopefully it comes on time. One of the last pages I did was a double page of our wedding, I wanted something simple and clean, yet still formal looking. Here is what I came up with.



P.S. I have the worst cold. I just want it to be gone! It's obviously making me grumpy, plus it is making my blood sugar go all crazy. Lame. Colds suck.

Random Facts

So I spend what feels like a million hours scrapbooking today and I need a break. One thing I noticed about my scrapbooking is that I need to do more pages of everyday moments, the simple things that make us who we are, funny things Nate says, our date nights, things like that. In the spirit of celebrating the simple things here are a few random (and little known) facts about me. Enjoy!

* I am freakishly good at guessing the temperature of a room. No joke, I can tell you the exact temperature of a room. Seriously, just ask Nate, I'm good.

*I refuse to sing in public. I was once told that I had an awful voice after singing in church one day, and I haven't sang in public since. I will however rock out to Pandora when I am at home alone. I always play music when I cook or clean and I think I sound just fine. One time my neighbor in the apartment upstairs told me she could hear me, so embarrassing! I try and sing more quietly now.

*When I am home alone I cannot have silence. It freaks me out, I have to have music or a book playing on my ipod or have the tv on. I have to feel like there are other people there with me. The only time it is silent is when I read, which is not very often.

*I consider myself a better cook than my mom. Please don't tell her. Don't worry, she doesn't read my blog. Does that make me an awful person? I'm not sure.

*I am a fast reader, always have been, and I hope I always will be. I'm no champion speed reader, but I read faster than the average bear. I enjoy reading, I need to read more, I just feel like I never have time!

*I really like my handwriting. Oh my gosh, that sounds so vain! Do you ever have those days when you seriously can't think of one good thing about yourself? Well every once in a while I do, and I remind myself that at least I have decent handwriting.

*I still get jealous when I think girls are being overly friendly to my husband. One time we were going through a drive through and Nate handed over his debit card to pay. The little cashier girl asked if the picture of the snowboarder on the card was him. Oh my gosh, you should have heard the way she said it and the stupid smile on her face! She was totally flirting with him! And his ring was on his finger and I was there in the passenger seat! Slut!

*When I was growing up I really really wanted my name to be Montana Jo. Okay, stop laughing and let me explain. First of all, this was a secret that was going to be taken to the grave, but I made the mistake of telling Benji and Amanda and they thought it was so hilarious and of course they kept bringing it up. Amanda is now pregnant with a little girl, I offered to let them use the name Montana Jo and they said no. So rude! Okay, here is the story. I have an older half sister who is named Tori Jo. Tori is 14 years older than me, so I have some super fun memories of sleeping over at her apartment and hanging out with her and her roommates when I was like 8 or 9. So since she was Tori Jo, I figured I could be Tana Jo (that would be my nickname) and everyone would think we were so cool. I also really liked the name Brooke growing up, that was my second choice.

*Here's another fun fact about young Kim. I used to get perms. The sad part is that my bangs got permed too. Keep in mind that I was young, really young, and that it was totally my mom's fault! It was the 90's people!! No, do not even ask to see pictures.


Okay folks, laugh it up, laugh it up. Hopefully that made your Wednesday a little bit better. I wonder if I have any friends left after this post. Feel free to share embarrassing facts about yourselves in the comments! Ha! Okay, I need to get back to scrapbooking.

It's Panic Time!!!

Okay folks it's official. I am going to be off the grid until Saturday. Please do not be offended if I don't answer calls, texts, or emails. I also will no be looking outside for carrier pigeons of smoke signals. Sorry. It is crunch time! Winkflash is having their flat rate book sale for the next few days. This is a huge deal! I get a beautiful, custom bound 12x12" scrapbook filled 100 pages of my digital scrapbook pages for only $25. That is insane! Do you realize that you can't even have individual pages printed that cheap, let alone bound into a book! Insane! So basically I need to get my hiney in gear and finish my book. I have nearly two books full but since they are in chronological order I can't leave any gaps, and I have some pages that bug me that I want to re-do. I am determined to finish and have it ordered by Friday. Oh my gosh I can't wait!!! So for the next few days I am going to scrapbook and watch the first season Burn Notice, don't judge me, but it actually sounds fun!

P.S. Please don't look at my blog. I LOVE February, it is a fantastic month, and hugely underrated! It saddens me that I haven't put up a cute February header and such, as soon as my book is done that will be next on the list!


***UPDATE***
Okay, I finished the wedding announcement/invitation I was working on yesterday so I am scrapbooking my little heart out. Here are the pages I've made/edited so far (as of 11:20 Tuesday morning). One is from 2008, one from 2009, and one from 2010. I still need to make a double page of our wedding from summer 2007, but I am dreading it because I know it will take forever. That will probably be the last one I do.

-Newport Beach Vacation 2008. Don't worry about how the papers don't align perfectly, the binding will hide it.


-Zak's Homecoming 2009. Boy pages are not my favorite, they stress me. I don't want to make them all frilly and feminine, and I kind of feel limited. Oh well, here it is.


-Benji's Birthday 2010


*Answer to a comment. Yes, I do everything from scratch. Sometimes I browse through templates and find some inspiration. Some templates might have a photo grouping that I like and some may have a fun way to incorporate a title. I use those ideas and make my own pages. My most favorite digital scrapbook store is Sweet Shoppe Designs, they have the best selection hands down and I like the aesthetic of a lot of their designers, I would say 90% of all my scrapbooking purchases are from this site. I also like Shabby Princess, Scrap Orchard, and Scrap Matters.

Making Me Proud

Woo hoo Natey! My handsome husband was nominated and received a little $50 award for being amazing at work.
The award states; "Nathan Smith is one of our newer employees, however Nathan has done an exemplary job in several key areas. Nathan receives excellent customer surveys, is punctual, and extremely efficient. During a time of record workloads for our TSE team Nathan has demonstrated how to handle a large workload with extreme efficiency."
That's my husband! Good job babe, you always make me proud. In an effort to be a little more positive in my everyday life, I want to celebrate the little things more, things like this award. I know that Nate is a hard worker and I am glad he is being recognized for it.

Here is what I think he should buy with his prize money:
It's called a Connect-A-Desk laptop holder, I mean, if that's not sexy I don't know what is! You can find it online at Think Geek.

It’s Not A Tuma!

The title is supposed to be said with an Arnold voice ala Kindergarten Cop.

So as is clearly evident in the photos below, this is not my finest work.  I love to cook, but I have a love/hate relationship with baking.  Today it is a hate relationship. 

Here’s the story.  For some reason I was in the mood to bake today. For Christmas one of my gifts from my family was this huge assortment of sprinkles.  I wanted to use these cute dinosaur sprinkles.  So I thought I would be cute and surprise Nate with a yummy dessert tonight.  He loves chocolate cake and so I found this recipe that looked delish (even to me who doesn’t like cake or chocolate).    I followed the recipe exactly.  However, much to my surprise, I had two ugly cakes with sunken middles and weird lumpy tumors. Not what I had planned.  Then to add insult to injury I tried to turn one of the cakes out it completely fell apart.  I think I am on a baking strike for the time being.

Epic fail.

On the flip side, I have tried some new recipes of the non-baking variety and they have turned out so good!  I am trying another new one tonight.  Head on over to Durfee Family Recipes to see what I’ve been cooking.

I Win!

In our home a great debate has raged for over 3 1/2 years.  Cheese chips vs. nachos.  If you are awesome like me, you are on the nacho side.

Let me explain.  What do you call a plate of tortilla chips with melted cheese on them?  Nate calls them cheese chips and I call them nachos.  To me cheese chips would be chips that have a cheese flavor.  Nate strongly disagrees, strongly.  No, I am not crazy, my best friend and sister-in-law Amanda has this same debate in her house.  Of course she and I agree that chips with melted cheese are nachos.  We are so  right, and I can prove it.

Have you ever heard of  The Pioneer Woman?  Of course you have, she is a cooking authority, she even beat Bobby Flay in a Thanksgiving throwdown.  So we all agree that she knows a thing or two about cooking.  Well, today I was looking at her website and I saw a recipe for salsa, see picture below.  If you click on the picture, it takes you to her recipe.  Once you are done with the recipe, you will notice that she recommends serving this salsa with NACHOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   I quote, “Serve with tortilla chips or cheese nachos.” That’s right Nate, NACHOS.  I win.

 

P.S.  Dear Nate, they are called laundry baskets, not buckets. Buckets do not have holes all over the side.  Stay tuned for when I prove that to you. :)

Scrapbook Pages

Finally.  I feel like I haven’t scrapbooked in forever.  Here are a few pages I’ve finished this week.

Christmas Eve – I don’t love it though. I might re-do it.

 

Christmas Day double page

 

Brandon and Julianna’s wedding double page. I really like how it turned out.

Happy New Year........I Have Diabetes

Today was kind of a crazy day. Crazy good and crazy bad. Nate had today off of work for the New Year, they didn't want to have another holiday in 2010, so they made today a holiday instead. I love when Nate is home from work, it is nice having extra time with him, and he has been super great about helping out around the house. Also in the good new category... I got my camera! Woot woot! I've been waiting and waiting, and today was the day. So rockin' pictures will be coming your way! Now on to the bad news. This morning I had yet another doctor's appointment. I officially have diabetes. Crap, actually the real word that went through my mind was s*#@. I'm none too thrilled about this situation, but it is nice to know why I have been so sick lately. Basically due to the fact that my PCOS went undiagnosed for so many years my pancreas was damaged and led to my diabetes. Can I just say once again how much infertility sucks! So yah, that was my day. I want to cry a little bit, but I know what I need to do, so I will carry on. That is my resolution for this year, get healthy! Sorry for the past few posts and the negativity they've contained. Soon I will update the look of my blog and post some darling pictures from Christmas.