Treasure Chest necklace

If you hadn't noticed from my last post, I have a weakness for tiny things. I'm the kind of person that runs squealing into a Sanrio store because I just know they'll have itty bitty staplers, tape rolls, pencils, ect that I can coo over. I also have a strange love of secrets and surprises. I've always loved treasure hunts and hidden spots. Some day my home will be filled with secret nooks and crannys where I'll hide cute things just so I can utterly forget they're there and surprise myself later. 

Yes. I know that's weird. Moving along. 

With my love of little hidden treasures, it was no wonder my heart swooned when I found this tiny chest pendant. 

I knew I had to have it so I snapped it up and string together this fast necklace with spacer beads and little gold and silver ammonites. I wanted to create an undersea treasure feel and the tiny sea critter charms just did the trick for me. 

No treasure chest would be complete without a trove inside it though.

I filled the chest with a little nugget of gold, some dice to honor the gambling pirates who lost this chest, and a few silver stars because...well, stars are treasure to me. ^__^ 

It's simple but pretty and I love it dearly. 

Thanks for looking!

Embrace Your Inner Child

Now I know I'm not alone out there in my love of polymer clay, anyone who's searched through blogland can find a billion examples of cute things made with the stuff, but I just can't seem to help myself when it comes to making tiny versions of things with it. 

Whenever I sit down to craft with grand ideas of making something truly impressive with clay, I usually find myself a good hour or so later holding some itty bitty version of a cake and squealing in delight over it. It's a weakness, I know. But look at them!! How can you not like tiny meringue pies?!

Each one is about the size of a quarter. I wind up putting them on phone charms, necklaces, bracelets, you name it. It doesn't stop with pie though. Oh no, this tiny food sickness extends to other foods too. 

Strawberries also wind up with the tiny treatment. I sculpt each one by hand and then, after baking, I lovingly paint them all. They look so happy! 

Cinnabons are not immune either. I had some fun with liquid sculpy here to make the runny syrup look. The bottoms of them reveal that they are all swirled like real cinnamon buns. 

My favorites though are the stars.

I know, I know. You're asking why these are so special. They're cute and all but not as nice as the cinnamon buns, right? But stars have always meant something to me and these hold a secret that I delight in every time I turn out the lights. 

Thanks for visiting!



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House Wars: The Realtor Strikes Back

Sundays have become a whirlwind for me with all this househunting going on. It seems to be the only day that we can go look so I have to squeeze in tours between various meetings for The Random Act. This Sunday was, hopefully, the last one I have to do that. 

We set out yesterday with a list of four more houses. We'd originally had 6 but one was bought before we could look at it and the other one just didn't answer the phone to schedule the walk around. Oh well. 

The day turned into a grand adventure in hidden surprises. The first place we went to? Very beautiful right from the start. Huge, sitting on a hill and overlooking a park. I was in love. Then I walked around the side of the house and saw this:

"It's just a broken window," I can hear you say. True and I thought that myself. Maybe some rambunctious kid threw a rock and, hey, accidents happen. Then I walked to the back of the house. 

Yeah, both of the bottom ones are busted out too, not to mention the builders didn't even bother to finish shingling the roof. Not a good sign. I didn't take photos of the inside. I think it was because I was in shock. We walked in and I was impressed at first by how large and lovely it was. Then I got to the kitchen. There is no kitchen. It's gone. Thieves are so prevalent in this area that they stole the cabinets.

No, I'm not making that up. The cabinets were gone. The appliances were gone. THE BATHROOM SINKS WERE GONE. I couldn't believe it. We went back and looked at the door again and found signs that it had been kicked in repeatedly and the current owners actually bolted metal plates onto it just to prevent that from happening again. Yeah, we moved on. 

Next on the list was another house in a bad neighborhood and every window had bars on them:

This never bodes well. The neighbor was a drug dealer or a hoarder, not sure which, but no one who owns 17 coolers all stacked on their back porch, 6 cars (only two of which appeared to run), large angry looking dogs, and tons of random trash strewn about their yard could possibly be up to any good. Or at the very least, I doubted they'd be thrilled when I showed up with cookies. >__> 

We went to the next home and found a place that was honestly on our list of potential houses. It was oddly laid out but the front was lovely enough and there was a nice sized back yard. The kitchen was just gorgeous as was the dining room but all the other rooms were lackluster. They were tiny and cramped, the bathrooms were itty bitty, and I don't really need the random half bath tucked into what used to be a closet in the middle of the hallway. Still, those things could be fixed. 

Then we got to the basement. Everything looked great right up till we opened one of the doors down there and found this. 

That's water....the door you see there...that doesn't lead outside. If it led outside I could at least tell myself that maybe it was just rain. Alas, no. This speaks to a much larger problem. 

It wasn't in just one place either. Most of the floor was like this. I swear I saw the Loch Ness Monster in there. We decided that between the water and the too small rooms, there was no reason to pay more for this place and then have to work even harder to make it livable when we had another option that was already great for us. 

The last house on the list was, well, perfect in so many ways. It was staged wonderfully. It was bright and homey. The only issue there was that it was too expensive and too small. For all that it was gorgeous, I just couldn't swing paying too much for something already decked out when I could pay much less for something I could decorate myself and make it look just how I wanted. 

All that said, we returned back to the home we'd fallen for last time and it still didn't fail to enchant. It's not too big, not too small, and has great potential for redesign without breaking the bank or US. 

This is the home we've decided on. Isn't the kitchen lovely?? I'm already planning out some things on this. I want to restain the cabinets, repaint, put up a tile backsplash, ect. 

This is the livingroom. It's right off the kitchen. I love the hardwood floors and there's plenty of light. 

Some of you might recognize this. That's right, it's the bathroom I'd fallen for. The jacuzzi tub and all! YAY! It's right off the master bedroom and is just too pretty. The master bedroom itself is lovely with lots of windows, sunlight, and hardwood floors. It even has a trey ceiling! 

The room on the left is the master bath and this is inside the master bedroom. This is even larger than it looks as I was only standing halfway into the bedroom. 

This is the backyard. It's AWESOME. That tree is a huge magnolia so it's going to be so pretty in the spring. I want to do terraced gardens in the back and we're going to replace the rickety chainlink fence with a white privacy fence. The one you see in the background is the neighbor's, not ours. Listen to me, I'm already talking like I own this. Heh. 

This is the back. I'm already dreaming up things to do. We're going to build out a carport to the left side. I want to tear up all that bland concrete (yay for jackhammers!) and put down patterned brick walkways instead. The whole house is going to get repainted into something a little less bland, I think. I want bright (not purple, mind you) and welcoming. :) 

Tonight we're putting in our initial offer. Wish me luck!

House Wars: A New Hope

As I reported earlier, the husbird and I are on the lookout for our very first home. All the unhappy stuff like financing is all done and out of the way and we're at the part where we wander aimlessly in a sea of potential homes trying to find one we like. Last time I mentioned that there were two homes we were looking at: the one my hubby really liked with the nice backyard and the one with the nice bathroom that I really liked.

Let me tell you, we learned so many lessons doing our first walkthroughs. First, never ever ever trust a photo. The beautiful back yard the husbird was so excited about? Yeah, it's at the bottom of a floodplain. When we got there, it was still saturated. Not a good sign for gardening when there's a huge run-off ditch running down the yard and the ground is still wet from a rain we had two days ago.

I wish I'd grabbed photos of how the place was laid out too but alas I was a little too busy being taken aback by the odd little nooks and poor use of space inside the home. Suffice it to say, we marked that off the list.

Then we went and looked at this one:

Cute enough, right? You'd think that. WE thought that. 

We were wrong.

This is but part of the horror. The bad wood paneling was everywhere. The bathrooms were tiny. Heck, the ROOMS were tiny. The basement had me convinced that we had stumbled into a horror movie and any minute I was going to fall victim to a man wielding an axe. 

Also, there was the smell. 

I'll just leave that part to your imagination.

Finally, we headed to the house that I was so excited about. My lovely large bathroom with the jaccuzzi tub. 

Remember this guy? 

Yeah, it was just as gorgeous as the photos. :) WOOO! It was such a relief to get to this one and find that it was even better than we first thought too! 

The master bedroom has this lovely trey ceiling, though that fan may have to get changed out, and there's good closet space. The bathroom is recently renovated, the carpets are all new, the kitchen is all refitted. 

Yeah, it needs some crafty love but that's part of the joy! I would have my own home to craft up, remake, and turn into the lovely and fabulous space I've always dreamed. 

Even the livingroom is lovely and it sits right in the front of the home with plenty of direct sunlight.

Oh, and that back yard we were so worried about? Yeah, it's MUCH bigger than the seller said it was and there's a huge magnolia tree right in the middle. <3 I'm already picturing us putting a hand painted picnic set out there. 

So, after only three homes, we're already liking this one enough to make a potential offer. I refuse to jump too fast, don't worry, so we're doing 6 more walk-throughs this Sunday and I'm going to hold off on being excited until AFTER the inspector comes to check the place out. No point in setting my heart on a house that later turns out to have the largest colony of termites outside of Africa. 

Still....EEEE!! So excited!!!

I'll bring my camera with me on the next set of tours this weekend and I'll update to let you all know what happens. Who knows? Maybe I'll find some place even better...or perhaps I'll find another home that smells suspiciously like a skunk had a bad love affair with a bag of mothballs. *cough* 

Make a Difference: The reason for my silence

Hey everyone!

Sorry I've been so out of pocket for a few days. I haven't had time to finish up the projects on my plate because of a very special bit of news that I'm now at liberty to share.

As you all know, I'm a member of the military. Helping people has always been something that has driven me and for a while now that has taken the form of protecting others. While on my last deployment though, I discovered an amazing company called Random Acts. These seemingly disparate people from all walks of life have come together with one common goal: 

To change how people see others and to change the world itself through random acts of kindness. 

I joined their ranks and have, since then, never regretted a moment of it. I've found myself spending less time with my head in my headphones and more time just talking to the people around me. I'm meeting people I never thought I would. I'm making a difference one person at a time just by doing something nice. The big thing here is that it doesn't take a monumental effort either. Random Acts brought it to my attention that just taking two minutes to tell someone I like their earrings can really change that person's whole day. That takes, what? Two seconds? For the person having a bad day, those two seconds could mean a world of difference.

Just recently, Random Acts began to restructure and they asked for some volunteers to help out. I put my name in and suddenly found myself as the Assistant Director of a world wide non-profit organization. All of our staff are volunteers and they are some of the most talented, driven, and amazing people I've ever had the honor of working with. 

So if I've gone quiet, that's why. I'm working heavily with this group to help make the world a better place. Don't worry, I'll still be updating here with lots of crafts and tutorials; after all, sharing a how-to with people is still an act of kindness is it not? ^__^ I just might not update as often as I'd like as I have to work to support these incredible people as they work to make a difference in the lives of perfect strangers. 

If you want to join us, we'd love to have you. We don't ask anything of you, there's no fees, no joining a mailing list, nothing of the sort. You just bring your heart and get ideas for acts of kindess you can do right where you live. We'd love to hear about them, we love to share them, we want you to have the chance to connect with others in your area that care so feel free to sign up at the forums if you like:

(^ Click me!!)

Wanna see what we do? 

This is an example. Yes. They're wearing fake mustaches. Why? Because silly is awesome. ^__^ 

Hope everyone out there in blogland is having a great day! I'll be back soon with an update on the house hunting adventure!

Kirigami Cards

I am super excited to show yo one of the projects I've been working on this week! 

As some of you know, I recently got a Cricut for Christmas and it's my very first electronic cutter. Goodbye, sore fingers and Mr. Exacto blade!! Well, ok, not goodbye really because I will use you for other things but you can sit quietly in my tool drawer until I need you for something else. Anyway, as I was saying, my lovely sister gave me this Cricut with one stipulation attached. Yes, she put a condition on my present but hey, that's her for ya. ;) 

Her one requirement? I had to make her a card using it. Not bad, right? It's not like she wanted me to cut out a billion damask patterns and stitch them together for her to wear as a necklace or anything. 

So that is precisely what I did. Now, bear in mind that this is my first ever time of making my own card like this so I know it's not as fancy as some but I like them. I had some pretty papers that I cut down to fit in an envelope and then I used the Cricut pack Grow My Garden to cut out a few flower shapes and a butterfly. While I was making my sister's card, I decided to just make one for my aunt in Germany too.

I folded the pattern to the inside of the card and then used the strip with the blank cutouts to embellish the bottom. Then I layered and played with various other flower patterns on the front. 

Never content to leave well enough alone, I went hunting around on-line and found THIS:

Is this not cool or what? It's a 3-D orchid that pops out of the card when you open it. The site I found it on is called Easy Cut Pop-Up and they sell the patterns for these for pretty cheap. I decided to buy their whole flowers and butterflies set because it came with a ton of designs for about $12 and it ended up around $.50 a design. Not bad if I say so myself. I pulled out some parchment and used it to print the design on. The directions were really easy to follow and in no time, I had two pretty orchids popping out of my little home-made cards!

I used a little watered down ink to brush some color on the one for my aunt. I don't know if I like it yet or not. I also cut out a small square of the same parchment to write my little message on. 

And then, because I can't leave well enough alone and I wanted the recipients of these to really feel special when they opened them, I made two pendants that matched the colors of the cards. The one in my aunt's has a touch of red and that soft parchment shade in it while my sister's had some pretty blue-green shades that went well with the inside of the card. 

I used some copper elastic cord to loop through the pendants and then punched two holes in the card to wind the cording through. Then I just tied the cards shut with it. 

So what do you think? ^___^


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