1st Place!!!

I won 1st place in the pumpkin decorating contest! $50 buck-a-roonies!

Update!

Today my cheeseburger project was turned in. I'm not at work so a guy I work with turned it in for me. He's been hiding it behind books on a shelf in his cube since last Friday. He emailed me this:

While I was there voting, a meeting got out and the acting VC and your boss came by and the VC said she was blown away by your entry. Every response I've overheard (about 5) has been extremely positive. Everyone seems to love it. It is the most creative and best looking one of the six. So if people vote honestly (and not for their friends) I suspect you'll win by a large margin.

How exciting is that!? Made my day!!!

19 Years Ago...

Nineteen years ago today I married Greg. I actually find it hard to explain how lucky I am to have found him. It's a mixture of so many things that makes what we have special. When people say it gets better with time, they're right. Each year things do get even better. I've told him 1000's of times that he's the only one for me...I can't imagine my life without him. I wouldn't want to live without him. We're like peas and carrots, as Forrest would say. I aways wondered when I was younger if the dark cloud that seemed to follow me around would go away and I'd find someone to love and grow old with. Thank goodness the skies cleared and he came into my life.

Happy 19th Anniversary to my honey.



First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

The first time ever I saw your face
I thought the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon and stars were the gifts you gave
To the dark and the endless skies, my love,
To the dark and the endless skies.

The first time ever I kissed your mouth
And felt the earth move in my hand
Like the trembling heart of a captive bird
That was there at my command, my love
That was there at my command.

And the first time ever I lay with you
I felt your heart so close to mine
And I knew our joy would fill the earth
And last till the end of time my love
It would last till the end of time my love

The first time ever I saw your face, your face,
your face, your face

Pumpkin! Cheeseburger?

Yes, it's an In-N-Out double double. With fries.



I cut the faux pumpkin in half and painted it brown bun color. I cut onions out of a plastic lid. Painted a foam disk brown (shown wet below). The cheese is a skinny piece of yellow foam. Thankfully I didn't have to paint that. The lettuce is a piece of crinkled paper and the tomatoes are foam painted red with a narrow strip of paper wrapped around it.



Greg and I had to do yummy "research" at In-N-Out so I got everything perfect. The people at In-N-Out were nice enough to give us a bag an unused fry try :) Maybe I'll give this to them after the contest at work!



I made the fries out of foam that I cut into thick strips and then painted with 2 colors of yellow to try to achieve a real fry color. I put a piece of brown paper in the cup to make it look like it has cola in it. Sorry, I didn't get a photo of the top of the cup.





Everything is glued together and then glued to the try. Nothing moves. All the fries are glued together as well as the burger parts. The bag and everything else is stuck to the tray. I had to do that to make sure nothing fell off during transport. Plus, people might try to pick something up and not put it back the right way. I like it all just the way I put it down and don't want anything moved....right down to the paper the straw came in :)



I really like the way the fries turned out, but I have to say, I loved making the receipt!

What you think? I only spent $12 bucks on the whole thing. The red tray was the most expense thing....$4 bucks.

I'll let you know what happens! Wish me luck!!

I know this is going to sound crazy, but I want to go to Istanbul.

I'm sure most, if not all, of you are currently sitting with a furrowed brow after reading that. Why in the world, literally, would I want to go to Istanbul!?

Well, Martha Stewart did an entire show on her trip there and I was intrigued. It's not a place I'd have thought of going to. Ever. I might have made a joke about going there, but never serious. After watching her show, I can see it looks like a pretty interesting place and I bet it would be a vacation to fondly remember. Especially if you stay at the Four Seasons that's there.

Oh.My.Goodness.

This hotel looks amazing. It was a 19th-century palace that was big enough to convert into a hotel. And it still looks like a 19th-century palace. It has 170 guest rooms, which isn't very many for a hotel. I'm not sure how many rooms it had when it was a palace, but I'd guess in the 200 range since there is another palace there and has about that many. And, you should see the pool. Wow, so pretty. And the indoor pool! Beautiful! Looking at the pictures online, I can tell it's pretty high class.

There are dozens of attractions to see. For some reason I imagine it would be a bit like Estonia. Outdoor markets, mosques, palaces, museums, all kinds of shopping....it all sounds very interesting.

Maybe I will get to go someday :)

Four Seasons Istanbul

Been having a rough week even tho I had Monday off. It's just been "one of those weeks". Plus, last week I had my review and I went into it with the intention of just letting my boss give me her comments and have it be over. However, it didn't go that way. I read through her written comments and they were complementary and there wasn't anything negative, but it lacked appreciation. Sort of a canned remark kind of review. I just know I work hard to get everything done and I think I do a pretty good job. It wasn't coming through on the review. Was just had a...."she works here and blends in with everyone else" feel to it. Now, if I were like that, then fine. But I don't think I am. So I told her. It didn't exactly go over well, but it didn't go over badly either. I mean, I basically told her the review of me sucked....and since she wrote it, it was kind of telling her she sucked at writing it. BUT....I think some of the things I said about how I felt struck a cord with her. She did *seem* to get where I was coming from. This is hard to do with her because she rarely admits wrong doing or mistakes. Granted she didn't say she was wrong or anything like that, but I did get the feeling she understood my point and didn't try to sidestep much of what I said. In the end I walked away feeling maybe she will express more appreciation towards me. It would be nice. We'll see. The picture is of me about 5 minutes ago :)

Conversation with Greg

We were in the car talking about our Tempur-Pedic pillows. This is how it went.

Me: My neck hurts. I think I slept on your pillow last night.

Him: Uh....why would that make a difference?

Me: My pillow is more broken in than yours. My head must be heavier than yours because my pillow is softer in the middle. Must be because my brain is bigger and more full of information than yours (*grinning*).

Him: Or....your head is full of rocks...

I burst out laughing. Outstanding comeback :)

What’s your creative style?

I took the quiz and this is mine:

Creativity enriches you

Creativity is separate from the real world for you. But it’s a magical world in which you like to immerse yourself. When you’re involved in it, you get the wonderful sensation that there are no limits, that anything is possible. What you are really looking for is harmony — you want to feel you are a part of what you create. Planting flowers, writing poetry, embroidery or putting together a photo album, these are all suited to your sort of quiet creativity. You want to fall in love with what you create. You also think of creativity as a part of you in which you can take refuge and feel protected. As the psychoanalyst D Anzieu explained, creativity acts as an ‘encouraging parent — loving, enriching and supportive’. You would love to use your creativity to retreat into a world that is kind and reassuring. For you, being creative means having the chance to become one with what you create, bathe in the glory of it and allow yourself to be taken over by it. This is why you seem more suited to the sort of creativity that calls for gentleness, subtlety, harmony and patience.

Find out what yours is here.

Embellish Magazine's Quirky-Cutesy-Clean Style Challenge

Here's my card for Embellish Magazine's Quirky-Cutesy-Clean Style sponsored by Lawn Fawn. The challenge was to use sea foam, peach, kraft and cream colors plus incorporate a quirky, cutesy, clean design. This "Squeak" stamp set by WeR Memory Keepers really stood out to me in my stash of stamps for this challenge. I just think that squirrel is so cute! Plus, one of the stamps in the set is an acorn. Do you see where I used it? It might be hard to see in the photo, but I used VersaMark ink (water mark ink) to stamp an acorn background pattern! Goodness....so darn cute! Hope you like it :)

Shoes

I've never been of the opinion that a $400 pair of shoes is better than a $40 pair of shoes. Shoes are just...shoes, right? I do know that there are realllly bad shoes, so this opinion excludes the obvious cheap shoes that kill your feet and make you hobble for days after having worn them. I'm talking about the $40 - $60 price range. Good shoes. I mean, what could be so much different between them and the $400 pair other than the brand name?

Well.

I have seen the light...so to speak.

I held a pair of $500 patient leather Gucci pumps and I've never touched a pair of shoes that....soft. The leather was slick and so very smooth. I've touched many pairs of patient leather pumps before and they were all slick and smooth.....but this Gucci pair was different. I don't even know how to explain it. And they were stunning.

Here is a picture of them. The pair I saw were blue, but it's the same shoe.



Looking at the picture, they might seem kinda ordinary. Especially since they are gray. Not too thrilling. I think for you to fully understand, you need to touch a pair like I did. If someone else wrote this and I was reading it, I'm not sure I'd be convinced of a huge difference. But there is.

Having said all this, I'm not investing in a $500 pair of pumps. Not even a $200 pair of pumps. For one thing, I don't wear pumps anymore. I wear jeans and flip flops to work and we don't go to dinner parties so they would collect dust in my closet. But I bet Gucci makes leather flip flops.... ❀

(Greg is cringing right now!)

Etsy Inspired Challenge #101 {Lover Dover's Handmade Goodness}

Here's my card for the Etsy Inspired Challenge featuring the Lover Dover's Etsy site as the inspiration. The challenge is to use this Etsy site as inspiration when creating a card/project. This site is full of colorful and imaginative aprons! My inspiration piece is this Snow White apron. I cut the Bon Appetit tag from my DCWV kitchen paper stack ~ love this paper! And it was perfect to use for this challenge :) Hope you like it :)