Long time, no post

You've probably all given up on me by now, it's been so long since I blogged. I have been making more cards and stuff so I think I'll get on here more.

It's kind of like a journal, isn't it? Don't write for a long time, feel like I have to catch up.

Anyway, a few pictures. I made a gingerbread house for our church party. I didn't actually get to go to the party because we were in Grand Island, but the house got to go. Since I am terrible at cake decorating (or gingerbread decorating), I made my gingerbread house out of PAPER.

Luna made me a birthday card

Notice the subliminal message? She was actually trying to write "open".


Last week was my (hmmmf)th birthday, and Luna made me a card. Let's take a look, shall we?

Back to School, Already

Two of my children are soon back to school. Nathan continues his engineering studies at the University of Utah, and Andrea begins her work at the University of Central Arkansas.

I made them these cards, which also work with the challenge at todays www.365cards.blogspot.com: "Today I challenge you to create a scene on your card. In March, I posted a similar challenge, which was to create a nature scene. This time I'm looking for something indoors. Use stamps, stickers, fussy cutting, whatever you wish as long as it creates a scene."

Well, at the risk of creating a scene, here they are.

Another Day, Another Card

Today's challenge was to make a card, adding dimension at least two different ways. Here is a card I made for my grandson, for Back to School. It has cuttlebug texture and the backpack is pop-dotted.

Also in the news, we bought a little wading pool for the grandkids and Luna and Dallin enjoyed it this afternoon. Wow, we have an exciting life. Luna is also spending the night with us. She's a sweetie.

365 Cards Challenge: Keep it to yourself Tuesday

Hi. Today's challenge is to make a sympathy card without the sentiment (words) on the outside. It's hard to see it, but the flower is very lightly chalked with pink petals and a yellow center.

We went and saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. When I read the book it knocked my socks off, and the movie was terrific.

From 365cards I found this challenge: make a card inspired by "Twilight" (the book and the movie). It must have black base or background and red paper, rhinestones or glitter. The scan doesn't show it very well, but the words are from Doodlebug sugar- coated paper in black.

Blogging with or without photos

Hello, Everybody.

I've discovered I can upload photos from internet explorer but not from Foxfire. This makes no sense to me whatever, but there ya go.

Here at the Place, as we like to call it, we have been working very hard. The floors are done, the painting is nearly done, and Dave has planted a garden. If I can find his camera, I can put up some pics. Heh heh, I guess I'll do pics tomorrow.

Anyway, in the news today is that I think you should all join facebook. I keep up with Trent and Nathan there, at least somewhat.

Also in the news is that Dave has a new job. He will be starting it next week or the week after. It is in a town about an hour an a half away, but get this: they pay him while he commutes plus they pay him for mileage. With our hybrid car, he will even make money on the way there and back. So we can stay here, in our happy little home.

Now all you kids who never call--that's OK, because I don't really like phones anyway. But I would love to get emails to see how you are all doing.

Love, Love!

IT WORKS IN EXPLORER BUT NOT FOXFIRE!

Frustrated

Don't know how to fix image upload button. Have pictures but can't post them. Grrr.

Need help with photos

Hi Fans,

Does anyone know how I can fix my photo button on here?

Actual Progress

We are making some progress on the house and move, although by the time we're finished we will have probably won the Guinness Book of World Records for Slowest Move. However, we have only two more rooms of wood floors and one small bathroom to tile, and we will have all our flooring done. We've also moved a few loads of stuff from our old house to our new house, including nearly all of our clothes. Now we'll see if we really have enough closet space.

Here are a few cards I've made recently, since I got my craft room up and running again.

Oh, dear. I can't get the blog to let me upload pictures. I'll go look for help and get back to you.

Thanks to my family

I want to say thanks to my wonderful children, grandchildren, and hubbybubby for making my Mothers' Day wonderful. I loved hearing from all of you.

Nathan sent me the following message, which is especially beautiful.

Subject: I wanna make sure you got Mother's Dayed.

Hello Mom,

I called last night and got your voice on your message system. It was great to hear that much. I'm sorry I couldn't call back a whole bunch of times but I'm really short on money and am conserving my cell phone minutes.

That said, I wanted to write you a note that expresses my feelings so you at least get to hear me say stuff.

Thank you for listening to me when I ramble on about things I like. That really shows patience and love.

Thank you for commiserating with me when I gripe about my problems, even though you've got plenty of your own.

Thank you for being there when I go through bad times as well as good times.

Thank you for making me feel loved and appreciated and secure and welcome all the time.

So thank you for being my mommy.

I love you and wish I could be there.

Soon enough...soon enough...

Love,

Nathan


I've cried this weekend over missing my own mother, about our little Sara being sick, and about the love I get from my family. Some tears are sad, but many are happy.

I got a terrific spiritual uplift from going to church on Sunday. I think it's the combination of great talks and lessons (Dave spoke in Sacrament meeting) and the love I feel from the sisters there. I'm grateful for my family and my church family. :)

I wish I could be there

Just found our today our little Sara has cystic fibrosis. Please pray for her.

Waiting, waiting, waiting

We're tired of waiting for our new house to be finished, so we took air mattresses out there and we are sleeping there nights. It's so quiet. Almost spooky. In the daytime we hear lots of birds and cows, but at night they must be asleep.

I've decided I want to install the hard flooring myself, so I'm going to be learning how to do wood floors and laminates. I can hardly wait. We're just waiting (errgh) for the money from the trustee. I've looked and looked and planned and planned and waited and waited. You get the picture.

I found a lot of comfort yesterday by rereading Alma 7:23.

By the way, I'm way behind on birthday cards and cards to the grandkids. So sorry. Things will get better soon.

Love all my dear readers.

I'm not really lost or stolen

I'm just offline during the move. We have to dig a tunnel or something to get internet at our new house.

The painting is almost done, as it has been for over a month, and soon we hope to start the flooring. This project is taking forever. Not much progress has been happening out there. I wish I'd just done the painting myself; it would be done by now.

The house really wants us to move in soon, and we do too.

We saw ducks on Lake Nataluna yesterday.

A couple of cards I made this week:

Beautiful Baby

Take a look at this beautiful baby. This is Trent's little Sara Bentide. And a pic with her mommy and sister and brother (Trent's steps).

And Thursday was our wonderful Aedan's 5th Birthday. We hope he had a terrific birthday! Having grandchildren is the most fun ever.

A New Sara

Welcome to our newest grandaughter, Sara Bentide, daughter of Trent and Hanne Line. Isn't it fun that she was born on March 11? That is the date of my Grandma's birthday --Sarah Ann Smart Flowers. How neat is that? Hope to have more information to share soon.

I hate Daylight Savings Time

Hello Family, Friends and Fans,

It's time again for my annual rant and sulk about Daylight Savings Time. Unfortunately, I am too tired to rant in my usual amount of detail. I would, however, like to remind you all that when I run for Emperor of the United States, I will eliminate DST. Thanks for your support.

Our house is getting painted and is starting to look quite beautiful. I'll post pictures later; I have to get them off of Dave's camera.

Here's a card I made for a church sister.

Nearly to the finish line

We're nearly to the finishes on the house. Next week the painter will begin and then probably the next week the floor coverings and then we can move in. I couldn't sleep last night so I started arranging furniture in my imagination. I am especially excited to put together my craft room there. That's usually the first room I do when I move anywhere.

We had fun yesterday peeling more wallpaper backing off the kitchen walls. It was great to work together on our dream.

I got a book from the library I'm hoping will be helpful. It's about the 150 best non-stressful jobs.

How about a couple of cards I made?

Happy Valentine's Day

I made Dave a Valentine but I haven't given it to him yet so I'm not going to post it. However, I made a card for my brother RO's birthday, and I'll put it up. It will probably get there late.

I still haven't mailed the Valentines to the grandkids yet. For sure, they will be late.

We went out to the new house this morning. The walls upstairs are done, and the ceilings are all textured very nicely. Downstairs walls are done and the texturing of the ceilings was about to begin. We have to decided pretty soon if I am going to do the painting.

Making cards is fun to do, fun to do, fun to do...

Yesterday I conducted two sessions of card-making classes as an Enrichment activity for Relief Society. We only had three people at the one in the morning, but we still had a good time. We had several more ladies at the evening class, and they all did a great job. It is so fun to see people who say they don't know how to be creative jump in and make an original card. They are so pleased with themselves when they see the pretty things they have made.

Bethany was there in the evening, and she looked so pretty. She claims to struggle with crafting, but we all know better, don't we? Remember the pop-up cards she used to design when she was a little girl? And the miniature kitchen she made me once? She can do anything from crafts to fine art. That's my girl.

I wish I had taken pictures of all the ladies creating. You know what seemed to be the hardest for most of them? Deciding what paper to use!

I got Valentines made for the grandkids. Parent of grandkids, please note: I am so slow lately. The Valentines are all going to be late except for the ones I don't have to mail.

Love you all. Hey, tomorrow is Friday the 13th. Maybe it will be our lucky day.

It's appealing...

So we went out last night to peel off the paper on on the walls that was left after peeling off the wallpaper. You know, that stuff that doesn't want to come off? We needed to get it off, especially around where the mud guy needs to tape around the new ceiling in the kitchen.

We drove out there, dressed in grubbies and armed with tools and a trash bag. It wasn't until I actually flipped the switch and no lights came on that we remembered the workers had taken down all the light fixtures to put up the new ceilings. Ginko biloba, anyone?

Sigh. We went back this morning and got the job done.

Dry walls get drywall

We moved a bunch of our storage stuff from our storage unit to the machine shed at our new house. Some of the stuff I have no idea why I am saving. What a bunch of junk we have been paying to store. At least we can store the junk for free now. When it is warmer (it only got up to 12 degrees today) I plan to go through the junk and get rid of a bunch of it. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

Our new house is getting drywall last week and this week, now that the place has dried out. It looks a lot nicer with ceilings instead of insulation up top. We met with a painter to get an estimate this morning. I think I have decided on all the colors I want. I mean I think we have decided on all the colors we want. The kitchen was the hardest but I think we're going with pale pineapple and light lilac. We both liked it and so did the paint store lady.

Another example of how nice people are here in Nebraska--a farmer drove by and noticed all the construction guys' vehicles parked at our new house. He stopped in and asked them if they would like more room to park. They figured it would be nice, and the farmer snowplowed two parking areas for them. The snow removal also made it possible for us to get to the machine shed to put the storage in. We don't even know who the farmer is. He's probably someone who considers himself a neighbor. We had a number of people introduce themselves at the auction the day we bought the house. They would say, "Hi, I'm your neighbor. I just live down the road a couple of miles." One guy lived down the road 10 miles. The people here are good neighbors, even if they are not close neighbors.

Cards I made recently

I made some cards to send to Grandma Murdock to send out to people. She seemed to really like the idea of having handmade cards.

Here are just a few.

Happy Anniversary...

to Andrea and Mark. (((((hugs)))))

Happy Birthday, Aaron!

Today is the birthday of our wonderful grandson, Aaron. He is 8 years old. I didn't take a picture of his birthday cake card before we sent it, so I can't post it.

He is talented, amusing and good looking. We love him very much.

Scout camp

This weekend the scouts from our ward camped in our new woods. It was pretty cold, so most of them eventually ended up in the house to sleep (we told them beforehand that they could do that).

The scouts want to come back in the spring and build us a fire pit, trails and such.

This week the rebuilding is supposed to begin.

We have been feeling a little low because the house trustee lady was mean to Dave yesterday when he tried to talk to her. They ruined our house and they aren't even sorry. (The trustee and the family of the old people who owned the house.) They hate us and think we're going to take undue advantage of them. We're going to be fair. We just want our house put back into livable condition.

Trustee lady thought we should have had someone just drag out the wet carpets and that's all. She can't seem to understand that the mold would have a) been unhealthy for us and 2) made our house worth less money. She thinks what we had done was a ripoff.

I can't stand the thought that there are people out there who don't like us. Guess I'll just have to deal with it, eh?

Wallpaper gone

I went out to the place (that's what we call our new house to distinguish between it and our current home) yesterday to make decisions about paint colors and to peel wallpaper. Stanley Steemer pulled off 98% of the wallpaper already, but I wanted to get rid of all the rest before the contractor comes to do the drywall and paint.

First I made final decisions about colors. I'm going to scan them in.

OK, one note. The blues aren't really blue, they are more oceanic. They are actually a little more green than blue. And the pink is tan. The green is prettier in real life. Anyway, a soft tan on most walls, white trim. Accent walls in Living Room and Dining Room are the one that says, "like Shenandoah Valley" on it. The entry is one shade darker.

The green is for my laundry room. It's already that color - Cricut green - and I like it. It amuses me.

The kitchen has me stumped at the moment.

The bathroom has me stumped as well. They didn't tear out the ugly gold floor and the fixtures are blue. They had this wallpaper on it but it's all gone now. It will show you the color of the tub, toilet, and sink. (Please see wallpaper sample, wherever this blog chooses to put it.)

Anyway, after running around taping paint chips here and there on the walls, I decided it was time to finish up that wallpaper. So I pulled and peeled and got it all down. It was mostly in the kitchen. Now my house is wallpaper free. I'm actually kind of thankful for the flood because I wanted all the wallpaper gone and now it is.

We are on our way. We have decided on paint, carpet, and wood floors. We still have to decide on vinyl, dishwasher, and colors for the kitchen. The contractor starts next week. We'll be in before you know it (by which I mean springtime??).

Creativity today

I made a few cards today. I won't post the one I made Andrea's family yet, so she can be surprised.

My birthday cake card got a mention in the Cricut newsletter, the CHIRP.
(blushing modestly)

Fun with color

Today is Conrad's birthday. I made him a birthday "cake" filled with money. He's really been interested in penguins lately, so I put a few on his cake. Conrad, if you're reading this, don't look at the picture!




Yesterday we went to the paint store to pick paint colors for our contractor to use on our new house. That was lots of fun. At first I was just going to have them paint all the walls "tender tan" and all the trim white. But then our imaginations got going and we picked out colors for accent walls.

The paint store lady, Diane, suggested I go to diamondvogel.com and try out their virtual painting software. There I uploaded my own pictures and "painted" them whatever colors I wanted. I enjoyed that. We haven't been able to find the perfect color for the kitchen yet. We were thinking (well, Dave was thinking) of an orange sherbet sort of color. But it seems too orange (duh) and neither of us are that fond of orange. I'm tired of blue. I kind of like plum but it is pretty dark.

We get to go pick carpet soon, too. It's going to be like a new house when it's done.

Brrr...

We went over to the house yesterday to talk to a contractor about doing the drywall work. The house was cold. Ah, the furnace has stopped working. Since it was below zero last night, we knew we couldn't leave it like that. We bought a propane heater to try to keep the house above freezing so that we didn't have a rerun of our whole problem.

We have a heating guy going over today to look at it.

But the good news is, the contractor can start next week to put up our walls.

Progress...

Today is Ammon's 11th birthday. Do you think he got his letter from Hogwarts?

This is the birthday cake card I made him. I hope he doesn't think the flowers are too girly.

It is a joy and priveledge to be his grandma.

I LOVE YOU AMMON!

Beginning and Middle, but not the End

I thought it might be fun to show a few before and middle pictures. "Before" pictures are from the open house before we bought the house. "Middle" pictures will show with water, and then some pictures of the removal results.

OK, this isn't really fun. This is kind of depressing. I have to remind myself that when it is done, it will be beautiful.

(I'm not too good at figuring out where the pictures are going to end up when I post. I'll work on that.)

The room with the fireplace is the living room. The mold picture is showing damage above the fireplace. Then there's a picture of the living room with the ceiling and that part of the wall removed.

The other two pictures, the room with the chair, and the very dark picture, are of the dining room. That is the same window in both pictures.

Oy.