It's been a while

Have you found Pinterest http://pinterest.com/ yet? I love this  place. I no longer have a mile long list of favorites listed on my computer. I can actually see them all in one place and stalk every one Else's favorites.

I am sitting here this morning with a DOZEN things to do .... not doing any of them. Watching Ellen, and playing on Pinterest.

I was shopping this weekend and saw all of the Halloween goodies in the stores. When my children were small I decorated for every holiday big or small. My daughters favorite holiday is Halloween.

 When I logged on Pinterest this morning I saw a full page of  Halloween ideas.  Wow I can not believe  it is that time already.

Check out these cute cup cakes they are on the Better Homes and Gardens web site.

Wouldn't this be fun to do with a  group of friends and see how every ones monsters turn out.

I may actually have to make some of these for the Holiday they are soo cute!!


http://www.bhg.com/halloween/parties/monster-cupcakes-for-halloween/

I have lots of new things to tell you about. I just have to take the time to post it all and share it with you. I hope you all had a fun summer.

In two weeks I will have lots of time to tell you about it. My job is being eliminated and I will be unemployed.

I have projects in Somerset Memories, Green Crafts, Scrapbooking and Beyond to share to show you.

I have really been lazy as far as my crafting projects lately. I am just starting to become a little more motivated. I am starting  to get involved again. Just not quite sure where my mojo went these last few months. Too much life taking over my time lately.

I have been on a major clean our and reorganize bing though.  Some of my closets look a little better. 

 What have you been doing this summer? 
Have a great week.- Gayle

Really Reasonable Ribbon

This month I had the honor of being the guest designer for Really Reasonable Ribbon's online store. Later tomorrow I will be posting the rest of my projects on their blog featuring Helmar products. My projects were created using their Baker's twine, and gingham assortment. They have a wonderful collection of 12  Baker's Twine with a  total of 60 yards for only $9.49.





For the holidays I created some Easter decorations and have included a vintage image for you to use. I enjoy saving old postcards and collecting vintage images, so i incorportated them in to several of these projects.

 

I used empty glass bottles from the kitchen that had been washed and dried.  I used the Helmar Quick Fix Adhesive Runner to adhere the image to the glass bottle. To finish off the bottle I tied the Bakers twine around the neck of the bottle with a small tag.

I will be posting the rest of the projects from Really Reasonable Ribbon on the Really Reasonalble Blog on April 23.


 I have more projects using recycled bottles  as well as some scrapbook projects to show you.
Thanks for dropping by have a great week!
Gayle

April 20th 1984 my last baby was born

Here she is the Queen Bee it's her birthday week. 
 April 20, 1984 at 3:42 am- Baptist Hospital in Kendall, Florida

 Meghan Alanna Martin
8 pounds 6 ounces
blue eyes
dark brown hair

















This is her first birthday in our home in the Redlands near Homestead , Fl. She celebrated with mom, dad and with the brothers . The girl is more interested in her chicken leg than the birthday cake.

Meghan attended Beginnings Preschool in Boynton Beach, Florida.



















Happy Birthday baby hope your have a wonderful birthday week!

Love you,
mom

Somerset Memories Spring 2011-Bicycle Book

Spring has officially arrived in Florida, The flowers are in full bloom and are just beautiful. I spent two days taking photos of the trees in my front field. The flowers were gorgeous and the  bumble bees were heavy flying in and out of the tree limbs and flowers.







I  have some projects to share with you that are in the latest Spring 2011 Somerset Memories magazine. My projects that are actually from a couple of years ago. This is what the magazine looks like if you look for it on the news stands.

One of the items if a project called the Bicycle Book. It was created as a flag book which is a very easy book to assemble. You start with an accordion fold as your binding and add cards to the folds which allow it to flip back and forth. It is a really fun way to put together your own book when you are using lots of photos.

The photos in this book are of my brother teaching his two children and my niece how to ride a bicycle one week end while they were at Flagler Beach. After the many trips running up and down the block with 3 small children I figured that event needed it's own book. So here you have the bicycle book created with Helmar450 and Helmar Quick Fix Adhesive Runner.

One of the scrapbook pages published is a baby photo of my brother standing at my mother's clothes line in our back yard. The back ground is hand painted with Luminarte paints and the leaf design is drawn on the paper. The page is assembled with Helmar 450 and Helmar Quick Fix Adhesive Runner.

1992 Flash Back

This morning I called my mom to see what she was doing and she said she was sorting
through old letters. My sister and her family are coming to visit her next week. The children usually use the back bed room/ craft room/ my dad's office in my parents house as their bedroom. The last time I was at my parents house they were remodeling one of their other rooms. The back bed room of their  housing had quite a bit of the stuff  store in it from the other room. It virtually was a maze of boxes and stuff waiting to be returned to the other room.

I asked my mom how the  clean up and put away was going after the remodel. She started telling me that she was sorting and organizing. My mom just had a minor surgery last week, so I new she was limited in the amount of work that she could do.  I told her I would come over and help since I was off from work today.
.

My mom said that I did not need to come over and work at her house. I told her she must be kidding. You are sorting and we need to be in serious warp mode clean up at this point. You have a house full of company coming in one week. I want to make sure she has all of her energy reserved to shop with my sister when she arrives.

All is well at my mom's after a day of clean up. We still have time for the heavy cleaning next weekend!

As she was sorting though  she gave me this post card that my 8 year old daughter sent to my father in 1992.

My mom, son, daughter and I were visiting my sister and her husband in Ridge wood , New Jersey. This was  my children's first trip to New York City, so we made all of the usual tourist trips and visits. We usually traveled by train in to the city and used taxi's to get around to the different locations we wnted to visit.

My daughter sent a Statue of Liberty post card to my dad who she calls Papa.

 Note the spelling of his name on the card! 

We visited the Statue of Liberty, The Empire State Building,  and The World Trade Center among other things. In case you need help ciphering her english!

Last year she graduated from the University of Florida with an Bachelors in English. This year she will graduate with a Master's in Epidemiology.

I am sure she will find dozens or typo's in my post ( she usually asks if I use spell check). 

I love this post card and even more that my parents have it almost 20 years later.

                                                                                                                                                                   We visited New Jersey several times to see my sister and cousins. But we always had to go in to the city while were were there.

 My daughter and husband recently visited New York city and attended some plays. We  loved to go to a matinee and an evening show almost every day.

I am glad she still enjoys the theatre. Last week her husband purchased tickets to take her to see Wicked in Orlando for their second anniversary. She loved it so much she has convinced me that my husband and I should go see it before it ends this month.

Have a great week!

Gayle

Random Act of Kindness Week Feb 14-20, 2011

 This week is RAK week or Random Act of Kindness week.  I hope you will join in this week or any week with your own RAK.
Some quick ideas
Pick your receiver or be totally random with your kindness

Send a card  or small gift in the mail- every one loves mail
Leave a small gift, encouraging word, poem or quote  for some one
Leave beautiful photos or pictures for people to see
Do a small favor for some one but do not tell them
Use your own imagination it does not have to cost anything to be kind

Random Acts of kindness blog.

 The first challenge is a really easy one
Kindness Idea of the Day 
Be Generous With Compliments


You’ve probably experienced what it feels like when someone else says something nice to you or compliments you. Even a very simple compliment can brighten your day, and make you feel better about yourself.


For 7 days you are to take take Extreme Kindness Challenges.
You can also follow them on facebook  Facebook Random acts of kindness.
 

So here is my gift to you. It has been very gloomy and grey weather here in Florida. It seems that every Monday for the last month it has rained all day. In an effort to bring some color to my life I purchase flowers for my self every week from Publix. They have a huge collection of flowers that are 3 bundles for $12. Finally on Tuesday the sun peeked out for a few hours in the afternoon.

 

Here are some photos that I took in my back yard with a few short rays  of sunshine from Florida. I then played with  the photos in Photoshop using some actions and textures. This is the original photo and below is the photo that I played with in Photoshop.
 
 

Added an action and a blur to this photo. This is a $3 bundle of flowers and some pine needles from a tree in my front yard.












This photo is a bunch of Tulips that are in an antique Blue Ball jar. Love this photo!

Added a linen texture over this photo and then erased the
texture over the tulips.

Have a great week!

Next week I am taking photos on Monday and Tuesday, so I will update you with new photos later in the week.

Gayle