This is what's been going on in my world......

Hi everyone.....yes I'm here.  I've been so busy with school and work I haven't had time finish any of my latest project or to even write a post.  School is crazy busy....lots of studying and tests - my brain really hurts.  And work....oh my!!  Thank goodness this is a short week, plus the hubs and I are on vacation next week.  Yay!!  

I want to thank everyone for visiting and staying with me....I haven't lost anyone yet. ☺

Well here are some pics to share what I "have" been up to lately.....if you follow me on Instagram then you've probably already have seen some of them.  Sorry this post is picture heavy and some pictures are not the best.

My b-day was on 2/20 and my besties b-day was on 2/15, her gift to me was a night of painting and drinking....well not so much drinking of alcohol, more water.  We were driving separate cars so we couldn't drink. 

My gift to her was half of the "Best Friend" charm from JamesAvery, this is my half.  I had a few charms put on my bracelet this past month.  The "I♥Crafts" was from my sweet hubs.

These two charms were from my brother and his family.... "PreciousAunt" because I am the coolest auntie around and "SweetTea" because I do brew a pretty darn good batch of tea! (",) 

Yes, I got my birthday crawfish boil with all of the fixings!!  Thank you hubs they were sooooooo delish!

Here is my niece Milan at the crawfish boil.  Isn't she the cutest! She's 2 1/2 going on 18, the little diva.  

Glad to spend time with my sisters! I love them! 

and my lil "big" brother!

All the hard work in the back yard is paying off....look at all the flowers that are blooming. 

Knock out roses, dianthas, poppies, Yellow Ladybank roses and lots of other stuff too.  We are currently having our patio built, so I can't wait to be out there hosting something or just relaxing with the hubs. 

Weekend watching movies and eating icecream....could there be anything better?

Sunday morning breakfast for the hubs and I - making pancakes from scratch.....yummy!

Thanks for stopping by! 
I'm trying not to be a blog slacker, lol!!! So I'm attempting to come up with a blog schedule.  Key word "attempting".....we'll see how it works out.

TTFN ♥

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Patriotic Pillow

This past Saturday we drove out to the country to visit some wonderful friends.  They have their property in Sommerville, TX and a short gulf cart drive to the lakes edge.  I love it!!  Well, we never go or leave there empty handed. Not that we expect or they expect anything, it's just a nice gesture since we only get to see them about once a year.  I wanted to make something that I knew they would enjoy and appreciate.  So I decided on a Patriotic Pillow.  Of course it can be put out all year round, not just the 4th of July. 

The Patriotic Pillow

(I apologize for the not so great pics. I was in a hurry)

I decided on the more muted colors of Red, White and Blue. 

1.) Washed and pressed the 3 fat quarters.

2.) Made my cuts, I didn't measure - I usually eyeball everything.

3.) I printed out a star, traced it onto cardboard and cut it out.

4.) I traced stars on the light fabric.

5.) Cut out my stars and they're ready to be sewn on.

6.) I sewed using a zig-zag stitch.  I sewed on the stripes to the light fabric, I sewed the stars to the blue fabric, then sewed the blue fabric onto the light fabric.   Then I used embroidery floss to sew the buttons onto the stars.

For the back I used burlap lined with the light fabric, I didn't want the stuffing to poke out thru the burlap.

Here is the finished pillow.  I have to say they really loved it.  I loved making it for them. 

I made another pillow for my friend's birthday but I will show hers later.  If you follow me on Instagram (@fifiybr) then you got to see a sneak peek of it and I also introduced her pet potbelly pig Bacon.  Her parents are the ones who received the Patriotic Pillow.

Thanks for stopping by, everyone have a fabulous day!! 

Until the next project.....

Linking at these spots and others on my Link Party page

CraftyTexasGirls

Savvy Southern Style

My RePurposed Life

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Spray Paint project!

I ♥ spray paint!!!  Why, because this stuff can pretty much change anything into something pretty to look at.  Frames, furniture, glass, even shoes!!!!  I'm still trying to convince theHubs why I have so many spray paint cans or why I keep buying more....lol!!

I spent one of these past Saturdays spray painting outdoor plant pots.  They were due for a upgrade.  When we first moved into our new home we had no plants what so ever, the front door looked sad and lonely.  My mother-in-law gave me this potted plant, it is a type of Ivy.  The pot was painted white, probably with house paint not sure and after 7 years the paint has chipped away.  I sanded down as much as I could as you can see from the picture below.

It's no secret, I love easy projects.  This was super easy too!  I didn't remove the plant, because I was lazy and I said I loved easy projects.  So I just covered the plant with a plastic bag, tucked in all the long Ivy arms and pushed wooden skewers in around the bag so I wouldn't get spray paint all up in there. 

Ta-da!!  Fresh and white! 

I picked up this salmon colored pot at a garage sale for $1.00, yay!!  I washed and dried this baby and it was ready to be painted.  I loved the shiny color it had, it just didn't go with the outdoor color of the house.  So I just chose another shiny color to make a statement in the entry way.   

LOVE IT! Who doesn't love a nice turquoise?

Now, they are ready to show off!

I just put them here to take the picture.  They have since been moved, the blue one is on the walkway now.  

Everyone have a fabulous day, stay cool if it's hot out or stay dry if you're getting the rain! 



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Pictures and Words - Wednesday (i guess the opposite of Wordless Wednesday)

Well, well, well  look who decided to bloom this past weekend!!

 

My Passion flowers.

 

These flowers look absolutely gorgeous.  Sadly the bloom will only last about a day. Luckily there are tons of buds on the vines, so I'm happy that I have been getting about 5-7 blooms everyday since Saturday.

They look like they could be from an alien planet. I know that there are about 500 different species, well according to the Internet ('~')! You know how reliable that is, lol!  Some vines will bear the passion fruit.  My vines never have, but I'm happy they don't....who knows what animals I'd have coming in my yard.

As you can tell from prior posts, I do love to be outside in the yard tending to plants.  I'm always watering, trimming and talking to them.  Yes talking....and I said I would never be a "talker" to plants but I do.  I know I'm not the only one. 

Happy you stopped by to take a look!



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Spring cleaning in the yard!!

Besides scrap busting for the past couple of weeks, I have also been doing a little Spring cleaning in the yard.  Well when I say "I", I really mean "we" as in theHubs and myself.  He cuts the yard and edges and I do the weed pulling, planting and sprucing.  This is sort of looooong post, but I have pics!  "You've been warned" lol!

March was here and then it was gone, I kept putting off the yard work.  I had no motivation to get in the backyard and clear thing up...it was getting kind of ugly back there.  Looking in the back yard is kind of scary....weeds up to my eyeballs, which isn't saying much because I'm like 5'2, there are spiders in the grass, wasps and bees a buzzing, ants.  Fun times!!  

Look at this....ocean of weeds!!  Looks like a family of Leprechaun's invaded my space. This stuff was in the WHOLE BED.  Which is about 50 ft across and varies between 3, 5, 8, and 12 feet wide in some places.  Every time I pull weeds from this bed, I ask myself....."WHY"  well more like screaming that is.  I knew it had to be done.....theHubs said he would hire someone to come and clean it out, but I said why should we waste money paying someone to do this.  Plus, I could use that money to buy more plants or potting soil. So I got to it and started.  One Sunday, took me about 5 hours minus this corner below.

See this pic below....well in this corner there should be a moss rock border, Lantana bushes, a hibiscus plant...I think. Sometimes I wish we had nothing back there, it's too much work.  But then I'd be mad because I'd want plants and color back there.  

I was there another weekend and only got halfway done here...I started to see my plants! Now you can see the rock border too!!  I just wish you couldn't see the cable boxes.  Thanks "SBC"  why did my yard have to have them....oh well once the plants start growing you can barely see them.

This is what I did on Good Friday!!  It doesn't look like much yet....I have to wait a couple more weeks before the flowering plants start blooming.  I also added a Yellow Lady Banks Rose bush....I can't wait to see that start to crawl.

This whole bed was full of weeds!  The biggest tree here is a Texas Lilac, it can be trained to grow as a bush or as a tree.  I loooooove this tree,  it has about a zillion buds on it and it looks awesome with its flowers.  The only bad thing about this tree is the tree leaves look very similar to a marijuana leaf...weird, lol!!  I can assure you, there is no illegal plant growing going on in my back yard.  I have a Bradford pear tree,  a couple of Crab Apple  trees, Althea bushes, and a Rose of Sharon bush, Lantana bushes, sage bushes.  The knockout rose bush is in full bloom....even though it hurt me to my heart to hack it up, it was getting kind of wild.  See below ↓ I cant wait till all the color comes in.  It looks amazing....then when fall comes it looks sad and pathetic no color and no leaves.  I can see the backs of my neighbors houses and we have no privacy at all.  Due to deed restrictions we can't put in 8 ft fences....booooooooo. And since we to share fences with 4 different houses it would be kind of hard to get any of the neighbors to pitch in any funds to replace the fence.  That's the burbs for you. 

Lookie here.... we have some buggy competition going on.  It's good and bad....these are the leaves to the Crab Apple tree.  So now they're gonna get eaten by the caterpillars...and I saw like a billion of them.  No worries,  they asked for permission and I said as long as you turn into lovely butterflies and visit it would be okay.

The Crab Apple is full of blooms too!!  Soooo pretty!

The front yard is pretty much full of colors.  I love it!  This plant below is a Duranta bush and will flower all the way to Fall.  

Pretty right???? Next to it I have some Morning Glory and Passion vines crawling. 

Hey lil fella...what'cha doing there.

With all the Spring cleaning going on, I broke all my nails, went through 2 pairs of garden gloves, got bit by ants (knee, arm, shoulder, hands, ankles, thigh, and a toe)....why do their bites hurt so bad, killed  6 (BIG) spiders, scraped my calf with the shovel, got a lil sunburned, almost ate a knat, almost stung by a red wasp - there's a nest in one of the bird houses and had a lizard jump on my leg.  I told theHubs that I'm glad we only do this a couple days out of the year....my back was killing me.  See fun times!

I hope you enjoyed my Spring post.  Thank you for stopping by.

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Scrap Busting - Yes....more! It's a desk pad.

The Scrap busting fool is back!!  Since all I'm using is scraps I didn't have enough to really make something more glamorous, like fancy place mats for the dining or breakfast tables. But I did have enough scraps to make a desk pad for my laptop.....yay!!

Here's what I did...

1) I cut up 2 x 2 inch squares

2) I arranged them the way I wanted it to look, stacked them by rows,then sewed them to make the strips.

3) Sewed the strips together and now you can see it what it will look like.

4) Here you can see what the back will look like.  I used a white on white paisley print.

5) Now to baste, bottom and top sandwiching some batting.  Then I pinned to keep it all in place.

6) Since this is a hodgepodge of different scraps I just top-stitched squares on the inside of every square on the top. (boring)

7) Whew....I was close to not having enough scraps for the the binding.  I had to sew lots of little pieces together, then cut to make it about 2 inches in width.  Make 2 folds towards the center, press with the iron....then fold that in half and press with the iron....done!

8)  I pinned the binding allllllllllll the way around.

9) Sewed the binding on and mitered the corners....at least I didn't mess those up because that sucks!

10) Done......It's not perfect but it will work for me.

11) Now my Laptop can sit all fancy on its new desk pad.  Perfect fit too!!

11)  Just had to show off my little desk top too!  You can barely see my plant on the left side. I've had that ivy for about 13 years now.  It stays on the desk in my craft room...why?? Oh because I have 2 really bad and sneaky fur babies that like to shred my plants.

Hmm....I wonder if I'll have more Scrap busting posts!  Maybe, I do have lots of it.  You might get too bored with it.  We'll see, lol!

Thank you for stopping by!! Have a great day!!

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Scrap Busting - Scrappy Table Runner

Well sadly I was not one of the winners of the $$MegaMillions$$ 
<insert sad mopey face here> lol!  
But I'm happy that I'm super blessed to have what I do have and I am not without. I have the things I need and most things that I want.

Okay, there has been a lot of scrap busting going on in the craft room.  I have bins of scraps that I just don't want to get rid of.   So, I decided to get busy with the scrap busting.  

Without going into too much detail - the hearts were made from scraps of a quilt (not so mellow yellow) I am still working on from last summer <sigh>, the top is a piece of muslin fabric, the bottom is a piece of white on white paisley print and batting for the middle.  

I never tire of seeing what people are making or creating.  So I hope you all never get tired of seeing the things that I post.  If you really read and visit most blogs you'll see the same things, just different spins on it.  Bags, totes, clothes, pillows, curtains, mug rugs, painted furniture, recipes - you name and there are about 3 zillion different variations of the thing. Which is why I never get tired of seeing so much inspiration.

Here is my spin on one of the many things that I have made.

Tumbling Hearts

Scrappy Table Runner

Thanks for stopping by!  
Let me know what you think.... I ♥ comments!
(I try to e-mail to all my comments, I want you to know that I do read them and
appreciate them.  If you still have no-reply set up, I reply to the comment on the post.)

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