Elves to delight you!

I'm still unpacking from our move, and haven't dug into my crafting boxes yet, so will delight you with some photos I took of my sister, Barb's, Elf Collection.  These are SO DARLING! They sit perkily on her kitchen windowsill, always there to give me an uplift and a smile.

 

Each one (or most anyway) is planted with some sort of cactus or succulent plant.

They are so whimsical and fun!

She collects them from all over the United States. Whenever she sees one, or whenever her friends or family see one, they just HAVE to get it for her!  We are all on the lookout.

It's a good excuse to go to the 2nd hand stores and antique stores (as if I really need an excuse?)

These are only a very few of what she has.

These are just a few of my favorites.

Look at this cute little snail!

I just LOVE collections, don't you? I have a Red Wing Pottery collection, the ones with the birds on them.  Some day soon, I will show you my treasures.

What do you love to collect?

Moving has taken "it" out of me........

Oh wow..... we finally got moved to a "new" rental and I'm sorry to say, I've kind of lost my creative spirit for awhile! I've been so busy packing, moving, unpacking, organizing and "where did I put this?".... ing... that my blog has taken back seat. so sorry.............

So for now, I'm going to show you some of my FAVORITE photos from one of my most FAVORITE blogs of all time!  The blog is by Helen Philipps, and I just love her creativity, bright colors, gorgeous whimsical fabrics, and awesome sewing and crocheting talents.

Here are some more of her projects:

I just swoon every time I receive one of her blog posts! Love love love her. Go check out her blog. She'll refer to where she purchased her DARLNG fabrics.

So until I get back into my crafting, and finish getting my new rental house in order, I hope you are satisfied with some of my favorite blogs and past photos I've placed here on my blog. I promise, I will get back to blogging very soon!

Miss you guys!

Writer's block, bathing birds and thunderstorms.

Hi friends....... you may wonder what I've been up to this summer? I haven't posted for 5 weeks! That's not like me.  Where have I been you say. Did I fall off the face of the earth?

I suppose it's not unusual for some bloggers to only post once a month or so in the summer, but I was posting every week or sometimes 2 or 3 times a week! What happened you may ask?
 
I'm stuck..... totally stuck.  I think I must have "writer's block"!  So here goes... a totally jumbled blog in no particular order.... just trying to get my "mojo" back.

I've been trying to do a blog post for the last month but the words just won't come! I've taken pictures to post, produced some "crafty" projects, and watched tons of YouTube videos. I can't seem to get inspired. My mojo took a hike.  I can't seem to be witty and funny. I don't FEEL witty and funny.  I can't even think of another WORD for witty... or funny! The words are stuck somewhere "out there". In one paragraph, other bloggers can be more witty and funny and entertaining that I can even THINK about being right now! What I think and write seems so dull and boring and mundane (to me anyway). 

 I have my blog open right now, and am writing my post and gotten this far, so hope I can get it finished.  I feel prickly and stickery like the "bunch grass" above. At a loss for words. Can't find a word in my brain to express what I want to say. I was trying to find another word for "bunch" so I could say 'I feel like a _______(word?) of bunch grass', but do you think I could come up with another word from my brain for "bunch"???? No!

So I guess I'll say I feel like a wad of bunch grass. That's the only word I can think of!

Swaying in the wind.... that's me..... with nowhere to go.

Well........I may have sort of an excuse for not writing or being inspired to write. We have been house hunting for FIVE months! Yes five!...... I think we've looked at over 100 houses here in La Pine! We've even looked in other towns within a 50 miles radius.  I think my brain has become frazzled.

We still haven't found the "just right" place for us, and we took a risk and didn't sign another 1 year lease where we rent now, and we have been given notice to move out by October 5th!  So we are packing up our house WITH NOWHERE TO GO at this time. Life can be so interesting and full of challenges, can't it????

My brain is stuffed FULL of house hunting facts, figures, equations, pictures, data, emails, websites (Trulia, Realtor.com, Remax), documents, scans, statements, information, and everything else that goes along with looking at houses and obtaining a home loan.  So I guess I've earned a little "brain fade" these last few weeks. 

And I think I've earned the fact that I feel a little worn out, overwhelmed and crazy!

Yes, we've even had some rain!

And the birds love taking baths in the rain:

So I decided, to maybe get me started posting again, (even though we STILL haven't found a house to buy that fits us or that we're emotionally attached to), I would just post a few pictures I've taken in the last few months. 

We had a beautiful rainbow last May.

I wanted to post photos of our gorgeous flowers (like every other blogger seems to be doing these days), but guess what? we don't have any flowers this year! Who has time to plant flowers when they're house hunting every day? We only have a few little perennials that came up all by themselves that survived our last winter's 32 degrees below zero temperatures! 

The chives that run wild in my front flower bed did make an appearance though, and what a lovely appearance:

Chives did put on quite a show for a couple of months.

And actually, ONE of my flowers also did make an appearance.... my Crocosmia bulbs that I brought from our house in Washougal.... and they survived our 32 below temperatures. They will definitely go with me to "wherever" we move to. Oops! posted this picture above! Oh well, it's so pretty I'll post it again.

And we've had some outrageous thunder storms and sunsets:

What's that saying? Pink sky at night, sailor's delight? Well.... no sailors around this high desert country, but what a delight our pink skys are! Everything turns pink.

Pink fences.

Pink pasture grasses.

 And then there's the gold skies.... oh so many of them during July and August:

And amidst all the thunder storms, rain storms, birds bathing and house hunting, my creative and writing mojo has blown away with the wind. I miss staying in touch with my followers and I miss posting some of my fun projects.... I haven't even DONE any fun projects, except for a few things that I saw on YouTube!  

I WAS on a roll for a few nights making "no cut and no glue" little boxes. What fun they are and I "was" going to do a blog tutorial on them, but that idea flitted right out of my brain. Maybe when my mojo comes back, I'll do a tutorial on these cute little boxes. In the meantime, here's the YouTube video by Papercraft Button on how to make these. I changed them up somewhat by making the lid shorter on the sides so the box would show more.

And one of these days, maybe once we get moved to "somewhere", then I'll post a complete tutorial on this darling easel card with a drawer, in a box, with a tiny mini album inside (that I made before my mojo took off and deserted me)!  

 

So gals, I really HAVE been busy... overwhelmed really...... and writing this post has maybe helped me a little bit to coax some of my mojo to come back... Please mojo... come back!  I need you! 

I do see that I'm as wordy as usual, so that's a good sign, isn't it?

 I'll try to post again in a few days (or weeks?). 

THE ART OF GIVING.... AND HONORING ERIC.

This post is in honor of my son, Eric James Fossum, who passed away 5 years ago today.  I miss you sweet Eric.
----------------------------------------




I saw a post on Facebook the other day, by the family of a sweet little boy named Danny, who has an inoperable brain tumor. His 6th birthday was July 25th.  All he wanted for his birthday were cards in the mail!

 
Danny loves getting cards. Here's the link to the story: Danny Nickerson story.  He has already received over 30,000 cards! The post asked that people send cards for his birthday. I was a little late, but got one done and sent today.

I used a darling sheet of paper full of all sorts of little critters and that had this chalk-like saying that I cut out. The row of animals on the bottom came from a different 6x6 pad! I thought a little boy would love all the animals.

I decided to make the card interactive, so on the inside I put a pocket along the bottom and put some tags in that he could write on (with a little help I'm sure), and a teeny tiny little pocket album with little tags inside.

This little album was made from a 6x6 piece of paper and is 2" tall and 1-1/2 inches wide! Very tiny but room inside for some little tags he can write on or put teeny photos (with help I'm sure!)

I had made the album a few weeks ago, which is a tiny version of the one sheet wonder pocket album that I love so much. Normally it uses a piece of 12x12 paper. This one was made with a piece of 6x6 paper and then I added the little paper edge for the spine. I thought it matched perfectly to put inside this card, and I stamped Danny's name on the front. What child doesn't like to see their name in print?


Here is one of the tags that I put inside. My husband said when he was a little boy, around 8 years old, someone wrote this out for him and asked him to read it. Can you figure out what it says? I thought it matched the little owls I stamped everywhere! He said he has never forgotten that saying, so I thought a 6 year old boy would love it too.

Below are the tags that I put inside the card. I had some journaling tags that I had printed with my computer. I put sticky tape on the back so he can write on them and then stick them somewhere (his bed? his mirror? the wall?). I thought he would get a kick out of drawing or writing on little cards!

This shows how tiny the album is. The card measures 5x7.

I think you can still send Danny cards. The address was posted on Facebook, so I'm putting the envelope here with his address on it.

This was so much fun to make and it felt good to give a little something to a sweet little boy who asked for so little, and ended up getting so much.  And I thought of Eric the whole time I was making this cute little boy card, because he was such a thoughtful and giving young man.

Maybe you can make or send a card to Danny too.

 

Hexagons and Sunflowers.

In honor of the warm summer days we're having now in Central Oregon, I thought I'd try a fun little hexagon "quilted look" card. For some reason, I love hexagons!  And how does this card remind me of sunflowers you ask? Read further.......  

I used a bright golden yellow for the card base (A2 size). I then cut a piece of scrap cardstock approximately 5" x 3-3/4" to lay my hexagons on. I cut out 19 little 1 inch hexagon shapes using my Cricut cutting machine. There ARE hexagon punches out there so that would also be an easy way to do this.  In fact, a hexagon punch is definitely on my wish list!

I picked summery colors for my hexagons in about 6 different designs. I used double sided paper so only chose 3 colors and used both sides of the paper. Remind  you of sunflowers yet??

Here's a close-up of the cute little hexies all snuggled side by side. 

All I did was start adhering the hexagons on my piece of cardstock, starting at the center top, and working outward. I used fast drying glue but you could also use adhesive tape. Just let them hang over the edge on the sides and bottom, and when it's mostly covered except for little side areas, trim all the sides and use the little leftover pieces to fill in the side areas.  Very fast and easy! 

Another fun thing I did was to emboss the finished piece once all the hexagons were adhered and it had dried. I have one Cuttlebug embossing folder and no embossing machine!  A Cuttlebug machine is on my "wish list". So I got the bright idea to use my pasta machine (which I originally bought for flattening out polymer clay, and have never used for that!) to run the embossing folder through.  I had seen this done on You Tube somewhere.

 
I set my pasta machine so the folder would just barely run through, put my pieced paper in, and cranked it through (it was hard to crank but it worked with some elbow grease). And voila! a beautifully embossed piece!

My little sentiment is one I thought up and printed out from my computer onto some nice white cardstock. I trimmed it and matted it on black. I also used some black glitter paper for a strip down the right side and the little scroll that I cut out using my Cricut cutting machine. The hexagon covered piece of cardstock is matted with black cardstock measuring 5-1/4" x 4". I love the black with the sunny yellows and oranges..... so like summer and reminds me of sunflowers! 

From BeginningAGarden.com

On the inside, I glued a piece of white cardstock with a little leftover strip of hexagons that I had cut off to make the 5x3-3/4  piece fit better onto the black cardstock.

Give this technique a try. It's so fun! Since I love quilting with fabric, anything I can do to make my card looked quilted I really enjoy.  I thought of putting some little stitch marks around the hexagons but it might have been too busy looking.

I think some squares of pieced hexies would look great on a scrapbook page. Can you think of any other ways to use this technique?
 
And speaking of hexagons, I'm just about ready to post my tutorial for my awesome HEXAGON BOXES. Coming soon!