You might want to know ( hint - sweet giveaway!)

So I don't do this often but there are several of you who have little ones in your life and I thought you might be interested. Mrs. Lindsay is having a giveaway HERE and it is CUTE stuff! Go check it out!

a quick view

Here's another little collage of our trip - ziplining! Fishing for their dinner - minnows with spaghetti as their back-up. A little country "fair" that had the worlds tallest inflatable slide - 53 feet of pure adrenaline & fun! The rock that we found that looked like a heart that Abbi brought back to Grandma - since she was supposed to go but missed out due to health reasons - boo! Also in here in that pic of the water falls that were so beautiful and worth every step!

Enjoy your Thursday evening - we are having Family Movie Night at home (with a quick run squeezed in there) and are off to the Water Park tomorrow. Haven't used thosed passses enough.

Just a Piece

After all my groaning yesterday about one photo from picasso I discovered the collage option. I played with it for just a bit and got this great little set-up. One of the MAJOR places we spent our time was in the creek. It was so gorgeous, peaceful, like it was carved out just for us (not sure God was specifically thinking of our vacay when he made it but we are super thankful for it) It is one of the reasons we want to go back to this cabin as opposed to somewhere further North (closer to the rafting)


The kids moved rocks around all over the place. Made their own damns - better than little beavers and it kept them busy forever! They found "rock stations" where there were large rocks (BTW amazed at how strong my little man is!) there were small rocks stations they found just filled with the little pebbles to fill their tiny holes, and then we discussed what diversity and variety were and there were "varity rock stations" AKA places in the creek where all types of rocks were present in one place. Seriously, we visited the creek AT LEAST once a day and most days it was a morning and afternoon affair.

The Smores were fun too but our marshmallows were a bit too big - the second time we cut them in half before roasting!

Thanks for sharing in our vacation memories. Here's hoping I will finish a craft/LO today and share that tomorrow!

Instantly Home

Two weeks ago we went to the Mountains - we were all so looking forward to the break and hoping the website was accurate of our lodging. Praise the Lord - it was AMAZING! The place was just as pictured and we were all in love instantly. This is the first vacation in a while (at least with kids in tow) that when it was time to come home NONE of us were ready. Had it not been that we wanted to be back for church on Sunday - we would've stayed another day (or two, or three!) There were so many fun things we didn't get to do and then some fun things we would've loved to do again. We're already making plans for next year! More fun pics to come if I can figure out how to load more than one photo at a time ( I loaded them to picasso, trying to blog from there and not sure how to do more than one at a time - all up for tips on that!)

Life in the "Strenuous" Lane

So I should really be doing something else right now but I wanted to poke my head back into the blog world even if only for a minute. We have been crazy for the last bit and no signs of slowing down at least until next week. It's ok - manageable (for now) - just crazy busy! I took this pic of the sign at Amacalola Falls in Blue Ridge on our Georgia vacation last week. Sometimes life is strenuous - no way around it - but with Jesus holding our hand we will make it to the top!




















There will be many little pics of our vacay thrown in over the next few posts - we had an amazing time despite injured toes, bicycle falls, and mini-meltdowns (each of us had at least one, even the grown-ups!) But as the pics will show, God's creation is gorgeous and full of great joy!

Happy Wednesday

Subway Art

So FINALLY I finished it! I have been seeing this type art projects for over a year now in blog land and I think they are really cool - and wanted to do one for the house. However, life is busy and it took some time so I decided instead of doing one for a particular holiday (i.e. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter) I would do a full season so the time pressure wasn't so much.

Next thought - I need some decor for around the pool/patio/etc. So I decided on subway art for the "backyard" activities. And here it is.....
It includes many of the things that take place in our backyard. I used my cricut to make the stencils in all different fonts and sizes. I used paper - not what I would recommend when doing this project. The paper gets wet from the paint and sometimes leaves pieces behind.

This project is made of 2X4 pieces of wood = way too heavy! Maybe outside it will be fine but inside i think 1X4 would be good or even a canvas. Here is a shot of the back where the strips of moulding type wood were nailed to keep it all together.

I painted three layers on here. The first was a chocolate brown, the next was the light aqua, and the last the sage/mossy green. These are the colors of our patio furniture so it should look great. I didn't try to get all the uneven places on the wood perfection and that was he point. I like the aqua showing through and maybe as it wears some of the brown will show through also. Hope you like it - it's on my list of 37 things for this year - "create all those beauties I've been admiring on blogs" Hope you like it!

p.s. - we will be going out of town on Saturday for a week and I hope to get some scheduled posts but if not - see you after a relaxing week (fingers crossed!) in the Mountains of Georgia!

Paper & Thread

I have a scrappy post today. I pulled out the sewing machine and changed the thread (my least favorite part of that hobby and the reason why I don't do it as often - lame - I know!) to do some 4th of July shirts for the children, to be shared in a later post as I forgot to take photos before they were actually on said children. And since my thread was white it worked "perfectly" on this layout.

Now as you look at this layout you may not recognize these people. It's o.k., you're not going crazy! This is my super fun military customer who is currently stationed in Italy. She and her cute little family get to go all kinds of AMAZING places and she gives me the honor of preserving those memories.

I have done most of the album in real travel inspired, neutral-ish colors but the bathing suit and water in this one was calling for some color. I mimic the suns rays and "mounted" the pic of her daughter and then tied it in with the title block.

Instead of a drawn line border, double zig-zag stitch worked great.

These suns rays were hand drawn and crafted by yours truly, Intended to be a bit "abstract" but I think they worked out pretty well.

Whether it's stitching or not, I hope this post inspires you to pull out an old tool and use it again. Happy Monday.