Happy Birthday - butterfly card

Short and sweet today. Perhaps that could lead to a two post day (that would rock!) I made a birthday card for a friend's niece. It went through a couple phases. I am sharing two of them with you.

The first picture has the truer color. Which way do you prefer? The little jewel is currently on the butterfly, but it just might end up without either one. Please weigh in on the matter! Thanks for linking. I am linking up at the following places. Please stop over and share some blog love with them too!

Thanks for stopping by ~jen

Geocaching adventures

Today was a fun day. We met a friend of ours for breakfast and then hit up a local craft show. Lots of good stuff and plenty of great ideas. I sure hope Jim retains it better than I do. :) We made a couple small purchases. I will share the purchases in a different post.

I have mentioned before that like to geocache. We took advantage of this beautiful fall day and did just that. It was a great day for a walk on a local trail (with a meander into the woods). I thought I would share some of the pictures from our couple mile journey!

The view as we started out the trail!

Gnome home?

 Bittersweet is so so so pretty! 

Coming up on the dam!

Sometimes the fun of geocaching is finding other treasures! Today the treasures came in the form of old insulators! Jim's eye spotted them and Jim's back carried almost all of them back out of here. (Thanks Babe!)

SUCCESS! We found the cache! Here is what it looked like.

Once we walked back out the trail, we were on a photo journey. On our journey we had the chance to see this train. We very much enjoyed our Saturday together! If you haven't heard about geocaching and want to know more you can go here and learn more.

Thanks again for stopping by! Off to enjoy some chicken nuggets, fries, lemonade and college football! Life is definitely good!

I am linking up to Debbiedoos Blogging and Blabbing Newbie party. I hope you will stop over and give some blog love to the other folks there!!
~Jen and Jim

A Skellie Cake

Here is what I believe will be my last post for the linky party over at All Things Thrifty for her All Things Spooky Party. The hubs might even want to check out her very own post because there are power tools involved in pumpkin carving!!! I do hope you will stop over and check out some of the other great ideas.

For the same party that took the sick pumpkin to, we also took the cake. We were in charge of the cake, the sick pumpkin was an added bonus (if that is what you want to call it). If you didn't read the sick pumpkin post, the party I am talking about is a Halloween party.

First, Jim made the "cake box." (Actually, Jim did most of the work on this project. I was good moral support!)

I suppose first was really buying a skull to use as a guide, but since I don't have a picture of the skull at the ready, first is the box! Fun how that works isn't it? There was also some cake baking and fondant working in there somewhere. The cake was a chocolate sheet cake recipe. We also made the fondant. I can share the sheet cake recipe at a later date, but the fondant came off the internet.  I can tell you we played with a couple different recipes before finding one that was liked. Enough of the small stuff. Here's what was made!

Almost done!!

 At the party!! The bowl by the arrow--homemade raspberry sauce, otherwise known as blood for the evening!

Thanks for stopping by! Please leave some comment love and don't forget to stop over at All Things Thrifty
~Jen and Jynx, who is practically sitting on the lap top. Good thing this post is finished! Til next time~

A witches shoe and candy corn - the last of the Halloween Cards

I found my desk earlier. Don't worry it didn't last long. I put all the Halloween goodies in their respective places and I bet it wasn't 15 minutes before the work space was covered in 'stuff' again. I am blogging so I am not tempted to rush the Stickles dry on the birthday card that created the new layer of creative mess! If I am pleased with the birthday card I will share it soon!

What I am sharing tonight is the last (as far as I know, anyhow) of the Halloween cards. These two were pretty fun. I should have taken a picture of the one sitting on the coffee table that I am unhappy with and I bet one of you would have been able to offer a suggestion on what to do with it. Maybe that will be a post of its own. Anyway, these two cards I had fun with.  We're talking about glitter, candy corn and shoes, what's not to like? This first picture is of two candy corn, pretty basic 'finish' to them. Jim thought the bows looked like ribbons in their hair (good thing that was the look I was going for!!!)

The cheeks on the two above are colored with those fabulous Martha Stewart Glitter Markers! LOVE 'EM!
Things get a little more technical from here...The unfinished shoe

The finished shoe and a sparkly candy corn!!!!!! Do you see how I had fun?

All cards were stamped on the inside with Happy Halloween. The sentiment on the outside of the shoe was handwritten. The papers on the shoe are Bazzill and Cloud 9 Designs.

Linking up at

 Please stop over and check out the other awesome projects!!!


Halloween has been fun, but I am getting the itch to move on. I am sure there will be random card here or there between now and the end of the month and that is fine, but time to broaden our horizons!!! I need to share our new candy thermometer with you, the birthday card (if I like it), those freebies are still sitting in the garage waiting for someone to look at them and love them.......and whatever else that could distract me along the way! Thanks for stopping by! We've almost made it to Friday!!! Please leave a comment so we know you were here!
~Jen and Jynx (she is sitting on my feet)

A dresser saved and redone!

We've made it to Wednesday!!! It is a very windy Wednesday evening here. I am going to share a project that Jim did for me a little over 3 years ago. I was in need of a dresser and a friend of ours said he had one in his barn and it was mine for the taking if I came and picked up. Well, we went and looked and I saw potential but I knew I it was going to need some ok, A LOT of help. It had been in this barn for a number of years and exposed to the temperature changes that take place here, as well as, dampness. Take a look.

Definitely in need of some TLC. Keep looking.

The green arrow is pointing to my least favorite part of the whole thing!!!! It was gone quickly and would not be replaced.

An upclose look of one of the drawers. Do you see the potential?

Here is a peek at what happens after it has been sanded!

Jim sanded the whole thing down and this is what we ended up with.

The stain was picked out and applied. The picture of the dresser on its own up completion seems to be MIA, but there are plenty of pictures of this project. The following pictures have been taken since we moved into this house.

 New hardware, new color, new life! I love it!!!!!!

 In this pictures it is sitting in our living room. Life greatly improved from the time this dresser was saved until now. For that I am very thankful!!!!

This is the tag that is still on the back of it. We are relatively close to this town.

It eventually made it to the kitchen (everyone has a dresser in their kitchen don't they?).

The current look can be found here. Fun facts about the above picture...the tree skirt is my Grandmother's apron (love and miss you), the avocado tree topper, I managed to dry myself (yep still proud of that one), the coffee mugs came from Jim's Grandma and the stemware is from my other Grandma. We just might be a little sentimental in this house!!! :)
Thanks for stopping by. Please leave some comment love so we know you were here! Linking up at the following places! (Thanks for hosting!!!!)

One sick pumpkin

If you have been following my blog you know I have linked up to All Things Thrifty for her All Things Spooky Party. I have already linked up once this week but I am going to link up again. (I didn't see anywhere that said I couldn't) Brooke's post this week was about food. I commented and said I wished I could find the picture of a pumpkin we did for a Halloween party a few years ago.
I bought an external hard drive over the weekend to back up my computer (LONG overdue), my pictures and the blog. This means I can transfer some older pics that are saved to CD to the external drive. GUESS WHAT I FOUND!!!! Yep! The pumpkin and a several other pics. The pics might be a few years old but I think they will still be fun to blog!
Our friend Maribeth had a Halloween party and we took this pumpkin and the cake (cake is a post of its own). Both were a hit, here is the pumpkin!

Homemade, chunky guacamole never looked so appetizing right? Thanks for stopping by. I hope you will go and visit Brooke's party. I am linking this up there too.
Also linking up at  I hope you stop there and check out some great ideas!!!
~Jen

A Hunting he will go

Well, Monday is almost in the books! I am not necessarily a Monday hater, but today....I just wasn't in the mood, at least not for the work part of it. The after work part, well that was pretty cool. I had a night on the town with a besty doing some retail therapy and having some good eats. {heart} her!!!

Moving on! My Dad leaves for Colorado on a hunting trip this week. We live about 100 miles apart. I took this opportunity to make him a fun card. I mailed it on Saturday so I haven't heard from him about it yet. I used my Campin' Critters cartridge to make the cuts. I think it turned out pretty cute. Take a look for yourself.

You can't really tell in this picture, but the tree and deer in the middle is actually on the card with dimensionals. I wished him luck on the inside. It was a fun card to make. This was the first, maybe the second project, where I used the new style Cricut mats, I am not very happy with the stickiness. I was told that my JoAnn's still had some of the old style, I will be checking that out this week. I'd love to hear about the fun, random projects you have made for a friend/loved one.  (Maybe someday my blog will grow up and there will be a linky party for such a thing)  Thanks for stopping by. Have a great week! Drop us a line so we know you were here!!
~Jen (and Jim and Jynx. Jynx was acting like a cat again, watch for that post soon!)