New Cartridge!

Since Provo Craft introduced the Cupcake Wrapper cartridge, I've been DYING to get it. It's available at Wal-Mart for $39. It killed me to pay that much since I can get the cartridges with all the features on-line for $35 after they've been around for a while. However, I HAD to have this cartridge for my daughter's birthday. I chose the gift box wrapper and the stars topper. The best part? She LOVED the finished product! Makes all the work so worth it. A couple of years ago I bought the cupcake tier at Hobby Lobby with my 40% off coupon. I was afraid the cupcakes wouldn't fit on the tiers with the wrappers, but with a little persuasion, they looked great! Bonus -when I lit the candles I didn't start the cupcake above it on fire, so the house is still intact.

Gotta get the close-ups in.

Slightly different angle.

My husband thought I was nuts to put all that work into the cupcakes, but I'm definitely going to do it again. I LOVE the way it turned out. Thanks for looking!

Good job!

What did I do this past weekend? My brother Eric and I did some landscaping for my Mom. She had the windows in her basement replaced last year. To do that, the window wells had to be taken out which really tore up the yard. Eric put the wells back in a week or two ago, but the yard still needed to be put back together. I don't have a "before" picture, but it wasn't good. The grade was off and Mom actually got some water in the basement through one of the windows a couple of weeks ago. She was lucky and didn't suffer any damage, thank goodness. Below are the "after" pictures. Once we get some bushes and flowers in, and let's hope the grass seed takes off, I think it will look great!



Has anyone else started to work out to lose weight? I started about a month ago. I lost 5 pounds in about 2 1/2 weeks in the beginning. However, I've actually gained some of that back even though I've been doing Weight Watches AND exercising. How disheartening is that? I'm hoping that it's because I'm building muscle. I've heard that muscle weighs more than fat. I think my clothes are fitting more losely around the waist and hips, so I'm going with the loss of fat, gain of muscle theory. If you have any insight, I'm all ears!

Jill

Last minute

My daughter's birthday is coming up this month. I've been asking for several weeks if she'd like to have a party with some friends this year, go up to our camper for the weekend, or just lay low this year. She kept shrugging her shoulders and saying, "I don't know" incoherently as only a teenager can do. Then Wednesday she said why aren't we doing anything for a party for her birthday this year? As all parents of teenagers know, it doesn't pay to remind her you've asked several times what she wanted to do without a definite answer. So now we've got to kick it into high gear. I found out she wanted a beach theme, so I pulled several of my Cricut cartridges for her to look at to find out what kind of look she wanted. She made it perfectly (can you say crystal) clear it couldn't look baby-ish. I finally came to my Everyday Paper Doll cartridge and hit pay dirt. I drew up a design that night. Thursday I took a couple of hours to cut everything and put it together. This morning they got mailed with 12 days to party time. AND she likes the way they look. As my daughter would say, "I'm gooooooooood!"

Here's the front. You can see there is no "baby-ish" stuff on it. All teenager approved colors. I used my Cuttlebug to emboss the sun and sand. Adds a little something something, don't you think?

I popped up the sand castle after chalking the edges to make it stand out against the sand underneath.

Love the dancing crabs across the top. The stamp is from one of my Stampin' Up sets. The info stamp was one I got from my Aunt Dot after she passed away. I think we had the same taste in stamps.

Well, I'm very happy with the way it turned out. But, most importantly, Alyssa is happy with them. Now, on to the party planning. Should be fun - yeah, right!

Jill

Just enjoying the garden

Instead of being unhappy with the bumper crop of mosquitoes, I've decided to be happy with how well my garden is doing. There are issues with it, but today I'm going to be very positive. For instance, my husband and I constructed the fountain and round flagstone patio together about seven years ago. It turned out perfect. I have issues getting anything in pots to grow on the fountain because it's extremely hot on the stones, but I have some ideas for next year that don't care how hot it is.

Here's another awesome thing in my garden this year. My sweet corn is about ten feet tall! My corn has never been that tall. The saying is "knee high by the Fourth of July", but mine was almost as tall as me by that time! Love it!

Don built a pergola for me several years ago. Two years ago I planted a grape vine on it for a little height in my garden. We got a few grape bunches last year, but this year is unbelievable! Can't wait till these purple Concord grapes are ready to eat.

In the back garden, this Turk's Turban is doing well. This morning we had evidence of deer, so I hope they don't start eating the pumpkins and gourds.

The purple cone flowers are almost a weed again this year. It's a good thing I love them!

I planted several rows of zinnias in my cutting garden this year. The next couple of pictures show some of the colors. I love zinnias - there so happy looking!



Take time to enjoy August. Summer is on the downside of the hill. Even though the rain and hot weather have brought those nasty biting insects, drench yourself in the bug spray and take a close look at all the green before it's gone.
Jill

Camping Weekend

We seem be be doing a lot of stuff this summer - which is A-OK with me! My family, minus the dog, went to our camper this weekend by Athelstane, WI. We have a postage stamp size lot, but it provides a semi trailer size amount of fun. One thing we have plenty of time to do there is to relax. My favorite place to do that is in this Adirondack chair my brother Jeff made and gave me for a graduation gift three years ago. It fits the body like a glove. VERY relaxing.

Don't know if I've mentioned this previously, but my daughter's least favorite color is pink. We are technically not allowed to say the word pink, so we normally just say "the P word". My husband and daughter have each had their own 4-wheelers for years. I never have and usually had to stay at the camper with the dog while they had fun wheeling around. Well, in order to have a 4-wheeler that nobody else would want to "borrow", I decided a "P word" 4-wheeler was what I really wanted. I LOVE it! I can sometimes be a bit of a girly-girl, so this 4-wheeler was perfect. This weekend the trails had some major size puddles. You can definitely tell by the state of my 4-wheeler.

Here's Alyssa's idea of relaxing at the camper.

After an exhilerating time 4-wheeling, we decided to take it a little slower and go mini-golfing. This place is close to us.

In my experience, most mini-golf courses are not very well taken care of. This is the first one I've been to that was REALLY nice. Several water features and the plastic grass looked new.

Here's Lys planning her next shot.

Here's Don showing what a pro golfer he is. He's definitely in the rough.

Lys obviously didn't want to pose for this picture with the Chinese wise guy and her Dad. Teenagers . . .

Apparently this is what she really wanted to do with the poor Chinese guy!

Sunday we woke up to rain, rain, and more rain. Good day to drive into Lakewood. We ALWAYS go to the candy store when we go there.

Little did we know it, but they had a parade at noon. Since we weren't busy, we decided to stay for it. We were really glad we did! Boy, did they throw out the candy! They had the typical small town floats like this one.

And this one (well, maybe just for Wisconsin).

But here's one we weren't expecting!

Another great weekend!
Jill

Pounding rocks!

Here's something I had no idea I was going to be doing on my week off! My brother, Eric, gave me a call asking about drilling holes into rocks. Certain people in my family have an abnormal attraction to rocks - I'm one of them. Eric has acres of rocks. Isn't he lucky! Any way, he decided to make "planters" out of some of the rocks. Of course I had to run out to his house to get in on the action. We went looking for "practice rocks". Here's one we found.

We also found wild animal havens - not high on my list of fun things to do.

Once we found some rocks, we needed to drill some drainage holes.

Didn't it turn out good?!

Now time to make the little hollow for the plants. Grinder time!

Now for the Michelangelo part. Break out the chisels.

Look how they turned out! Not bad for a couple of amateurs! Eric supplied the rocks and tools, I supplied the Hens & Chicks and talent!



We're taking orders, send your money our way!
Jill

What a fun day!

Since our daughter is camping with friends, Don and I were able to do whatever we wanted to yesterday. Alyssa is not big on gardening or shopping. Come to think of it, neither is Don. However, he was awesome and went to the Mitchell Park Domes in Milwaukee and shopping in Cedarburg with me yesterday. What a guy!

I haven't been to the Domes for years. They weren't quite what I remember, but the inside was beautiful, nonetheless. The first Dome we toured was the tropical one. Even though it's 140 feet across, it seemed smaller than I remembered. It was big enough for a pond, small waterfall, and bridge, though. There are even some fish in the pond.

There were a few different types of birds flying around, and I spent a good amount of time trying to photograph them. This was the most colorful bird. I have no idea what it's called, but it was big on Halloween colors.

Neither Don and I are big on desert plants, but the Desert Dome was nice. It always amazes me that so many plants with thorns can be housed in so small a place.

The Show Dome was done in "Riverboat Tales" while we were there. It looked like Tom Sawyer was the inspiration. I enjoyed how they put flower and foliage colors together in the beds. I even took a picture of the gazebo so that Don would remember what he'll be building for me in our backyard. Wasn't that nice of me?



After the Domes we drove to Cedarburg. We found a park and had a picnic lunch - how romantic (wink, wink). From there we started walking and visited several shops. Their Washington Street has really been done nicely. We went into several antique shops looking for cameras, but didn't find anything that "tripped my trigger". I found a bead shop that I want to take my sister to, though. We recently took a jewelry making class that we both really enjoyed. This shop had some unique beads that I think would be fun to encorporate into some jewelry. Don didn't enjoy it a much as I did, but he's a trooper!

So far I'm enjoying my vacation. Still a couple of days left, yeah!
Jill