Cupcake Wrappers and Unwanted Hosueguests!!

Hi crafty people! 

I hope you all had a better day than I had! :)  I will start with my project.  My  mom had a tea party to go to today, and needed to bring a treat.  She decided on mini cupcakes, so I offered to make them for her, along with cupcake wrappers.   I just purchased a few svgcuts files, and one was a few cupcake wrappers with a patio theme.  So I decided to make sunflowers and picket fences.  Here are my wrappers:

 I had to cut the picket fence at 1.95" and the sunflower at 2.25".  They were pretty small, but they had to be to fit the mini cupcakes.  YUM!!

I kept thinking this morning, that I wanted to make cute little bee toppers for the cupcakes, but I didn't get aorund to doing it.  Little did I know that my evil genie must have been listening to grant my wish.  (lol)

Around 3pm today, I noticed a weird 'buzzing' noise.  I muted the TV, turned off the ceiling fan, and listened closely.  It was coming from the arcadia door.  I looked over at the dog, and she was acting strange, \just staring at the door, not sitting still, and tit seemed like she was trying to spit something out of her mouth.  When I walked over to it, I noticed what looked like bees.  Now, keep in mind that I can not see well at all.  There were about five that I could see....I thought they HAD to be flies... and there can't really e five of them...it is just probably my double vision acting up. I went to get the fly swatter, and the buzzing grew louder.  I tried hitting them with the swatter, and I missed of course (bad vision.) and man did that piss them off!!! 
So...long story short... I had my mom come over from her party, and we have been fighting bees ever since.  It is now around 10:15pm, and they are still trickling in.  It turns out, they were swarming out behind my house.  I don't know how they are coming in, through some crack in the roof perhaps...but man are they coming in!!  Around 4 or 5 pm, we were killing about 30 every two minutes.  It was hard to keep up!!   (at 4pn out back, they were swarming, not too terrible that you couldn't get away...but a lot.  and within 45 minutes...we had this: 

The bee exterminator showed around 5:30pm, and sprayed their cluster they had accumulated. They dropped in huge clumps to the ground!!!

The exterminator said that the remaining bees would get into that mess on the ground, and get into the poison too.  I think he lied.  LOL.  No, they have slowed way down...but I am still killing about two every five minutes.  Somehow, they are coming in through my kitchen.  That pile of dead bees the picture is just like the piles we have accumulated in the house.  The good thing is they are traveling to the arcadia doors and lights... so it is a little easier to track them down.  But JEEZ!!  I am not going to be able to sleep tonight!!  


I don't think I will ever cut out a bee from the cricut again. LOL.  If I never see another bee in my life, that is just FINE with me!!! Haha.


Hope you like my cupcake wrappers though!! I had a blast making them!! That was the good part of my day.  Haha.

JoAnn's Is Enabling My Addiction

Hey everyone!

 Yesterday I went craft shopping with my mom.  We both have  a list of craft projects that we want to make, and needed some supplies.   One of the JoAnn's stores in my area had just about everything in the store on clearance!  That is always bad news for me.   I heard once that Clearance items make people spend more money... it is SO true!!  I buy it because it is on clearance, and know I will not be able to get it at that price later.  Even though I may not need the item for any projects in the near future.  I'm bad.  So I ended up with a TON of paper.  I am a paper addict...no, I am a paper hoarder!  And it didn't help that they were having their 6 for $0.96 paper sale too.   Ok, enough about that.

While blog hopping around this past week, I came across a post on a few different people's blogs.  It just broke my heart, and I knew I had to do something.  This little two year old boy was diagnosed with Leukemia.  I can NOT begin to imagine how, as a parent, it must feel to watch your baby go through something like that.  My parents always told me how hard it was to watch me go through the hospitalizations when I was first diagnosed with Diabetes, and I was five.  But that is Diabetes, this little guy has cancer.  :(

Here is the post I came across:

Aidan is a sweet lil 2 year old, who was recently diagnosed with T Cell Leukemia.  

On Wednesday, he had a port installed in his chest, spinal tap, bone marrow, and chemo in his spine.  He did GREAT! This lil guy is such a trooper.  His parents have accepted that their BABY has Leukemia..NOT the easiest thing to accept, but their faith in God, and their support system, have kept them going.  T-Cell Leukemia has a high cure rate although chemo will be continued for quite a while.  Lil Aidan LOVES mail, like any two year old does...SO...

Let's get our crafting supplies out, and send this lil guy some LOVE!!  Pass this on to all your crafty friends.  I think we can all take a couple minute, and make something special for him, that will bring LOTS of smiles, and that he can look at over and over.   We all know how laughing and smiling can be good for the soul.  Let's give him this much for him to enjoy while he's battling this horrible disease.  I have no doubt in my mined that God can perform a miracle in this beautiful child.  Please keep him and his family in your prayers.  

Let's all come together and put lots of BIG Smiles on Aidan's and his parents faces

Please mail your cards to:

AIDAN
C/O Tanya Stilwell

P.O. BOX 143

Cecilia, KY 42724

So... even though I do not know this little guy, or his family, or even the people who posted this blog entries...I felt I needed to make him a card!!  I too have a port installed in my chest, and for him to be a two year old and have that done...WOW!!  He must be a BRAVE little man!! :)  

Here is the card that I created for him.  I hope it does ring a smile to his face, and I hope he feels better very, VERY soon.  

The car is from the Mickey And Friends Cricut Cartridge, (and so is Mickey, of course.)  I just used different colors than the car is supposed to be.  


I pooped it up with pop dots to add some dimension...

I also got him a little Hot Wheels Car to play with, and some crayons (the toddler ones) and a coloring book.  I know how bored I am when I start feeling better while in the hospital, and always want something to do.  I feel like I have the attention span of a two year old..lol..so I assume he would be the same way!  I hope he gets some use out of these things, and I hope the card brings a smile to his face!!

Thanks for checking gout my card!

Beer Battered Cake

Hi Crafty Pals!

My older brother, Scott had a birthday last week, so it was his turn to get a paper cake!   My brothers are all generally hard to shop for, because since we are all adults now... we just buy whatever we want for ourselves.  So, giving cash makes my paper cakes a lot easier to fill!  A couple years ago for Christmas, I gave Scott a Beertender, he liked it so much that he decided he wanted a full-sized keg one.  (A Kegerator.)  So for his birthday, I wanted to get it filled with whatever favorite beer he wanted, but it's not like I could just go grab his keg, and take it to the store to have it filled.  Not without him knowing anyway.  So instead I gave him cash, so that he could do it himself.  

My brother is a fun-loving guy.  He is always laughing and joking, and teased me merciless when we were kids!!  So, of course I had to give him birthday money all in ones!!  Yep.. eighty, one-dollar bills!!  (Actually, one ended up being a Silver Certificate.  How funny is that!?  The bank accidentally slipped it in with the ones.)  I rolled each one up in a bit of a hurry, not that I would have noticed that one was a Silver Certificate anyway...not with my eyesight!  I packed eight, rolled up $1.00 bills into each cake piece.    Here is a picture of the finished cake:

Please ignore my messy desk in the background!  (Of course there is a diet coke can in there too.  It's like playing "Where's Waldo" with my pictures...I think each one contains a can of diet coke! LOL.) 

The cake boxes were cut at 9" from the Tags, Bags, Boxes, And More Cricut Cartridge.  I glued silver bottle caps on the back/ends of each piece...and inside the bottle caps is a '30' (for his age.) 

The cake was placed on a metal bottle cap sign that said.... um.... I can't exactly remember what it said! LOL.  It was something like, "Cold Beer Always On Tap!"  I thought it made a unique cake pan/holder for my paper cake!! :)  The topper is a 'keg' cut out of silver metallic paper.  (It is actually the barrel cut from one of the Paper Doll cartridges, along with some Gypsy Magic!   (I don't remember if it was Paper Doll Dress Up, or Everyday Paper Dolls...but I can look if anyone needs to know.)     

(I can not figure out what that reflection on the 'keg' could be of!??! Haha!)  Anyway, Thanks for looking at my project!!   I think I am off the hook with paper cakes until July now!!  (I am probably forgetting someone though!) 

Have a great, crafty day!! :)

Mailbox

Hello everyone! 

Remember when you were in elementary school... and for Valentine's day, we got to decorate a box or bag of some sort for our Valentine's Day cards?  I can clearly remember decorating it prior to our Valentine's party!  Well,  I guess my nephew's school doesn't do that.  They just asked the kids to bring "something" to collect their Valentines in.    Boring for the kids..... BIG SMILES AND FUN for Aunt Lori!!!!!!! :)   Haha.

My mom found a little Tinkerbell Valentine's Mailbox for my neice to take to school, but there weren't any boy-ish ones.  So she took it out to my neice, and my nephew asked if I could build him one.  

HECK YES I CAN!!!!

So I made him a Chargers (his football team.) mailbox

.  

The Chargers Bolt is the mailbox 'flag!!!'  It can swing up, like a regular mailbox flag.  

It could certainly hold all of his Valentines!  It was rather large.  The bottom/base measured 11.5" x 8"   I didn't measure the height, but I would guess it was around 8" tall. 

Have a great day!! :)

Pun Fun and a Happy late Valentine's Day to you.

I'm getting caught up on some posts that I didn't have time to actually post in the past two weeks.  I'm going to be more strict about posting my creations as I finish them in the future.....hopefully! ;)

I made some simple Valentines this year for the kiddos.  I had to make quick ones, since I had the Disney Autograph Books to finish still.  So I made about 20 different simple Cards.  

They are all note card-style.   More like the Valentines that kids buy to hand out to their classes in Elementary School.  Just a front and back, not a card that opens.  

I had a lot of fun using silly puns.  Pun Fun!! :) I used the Create A Critter Cricut Cartridge to make the little animals.    Here are some of the one's I made:

And here are some Valentine's:

Pun's on the back of these are:

"WOOL you be mine?"  

"You are DINO-mite!!"

"I'm BANANAS about you!!"

"You are PURR-fect!"

"You are so STINKIN' cute!"

"You are DEER to my heart!"

"OWL always love you."

You get the idea. :)  I had fun making them!

Thanks for looking!

Keeping with the Cake Tradition...

I haven't had a chance to post anything that I have created recently!  It's been a crazy past couple weeks.  Besides being in the hospital, (again) I finally finished the other three Disney Autograph Books!  That is a huge relief!  I dropped them off at my brother's house tonight, and they are off for D-land tomorrow!! :)  I can't wait to see how many autographs they get! 

Keeping with the topic of my post... My nephew's birthday was the first week of Feb.  I made him a [Disney/Pixar] Cars cake.  I really, really loved it.  

I made just a plain red paper cake to start.  (Cut with the Tags, Bags, Boxes, and More Cricut Cartridge, cake pieces cut at 9".)  I then made the road signs from the Cars Cricut Cartridge at 2" for all signs.  These would be the decorations for the side of my 'cake.'  

I then welded four of the curved road pieces, (on my Gypsy) into a complete circle, going for the race-track look.  

I popped it up with foam dots on a scalloped circle base.  This is the top of my cake.  The 'frosting.'    Then I started building up from there.  I added the checkered flags and propped them way up!  I think I used eight foam dots piled one on top of the next.  

Next, I made a big Lightning McQueen for the top!  

This cake was filled with Dum Dum suckers, because that is my nephew's favorite candy.  I think I was able to fit about 200 suckers in it!! Haha.

Here are a few more pictures of it: 

Thanks so much for looking! :)

Crazy Weather!

This post is not craft related in anyway, but I just had to share a picture from my front yard, because this is SO RARE for Arizona!! 

This picture was taken earlier this week.  I know many states have been having crazy weather, but it is just so strange for us to see anything like this in the Phoenix area. Oh, and it SNOWED earlier this year too.  I didn't get any pictures of that though.  :(  

I just had to share this picture!!  I hope everyone is having a safe winter!

Disney Autograph Books!

Hey there!!

I haven't posted in a long time, I have been so busy making various projects...and have had no time to post them!  :( Boo.  

I started making these Autograph  books last May.  (yeah, I know!)  I didn't work steadily on them, but just did a page here and there when I had spare time between other projects.   My brothers typically take their kids to Disneyland in the winter, so I had plenty of time.   Then the holiday season came, and I had many, MANY other projects to make, and the autograph books were pushed aside.  So, around December 27th, I hear that one family is heading off to Disneyland in January!  AND.....I only had about three pages done!  EEK!  It was time to buckle down!  

Luckily I finished theirs in time, and I hope they get to meet all the characters, and get a ton of autographs!  The kids were excited to have them, I can't wait 'till they get back to hear how it went! 

I have a LOT of pictures.  I tried to make each child's book a little different from his/her brother or sister's book.  So the characters and names are different in their books.  Keep in mind, I had five of these to make, and I didn't have that many options in some of the Cricut cuts, so I did what I coul.d   I am going to show two different books in this post.     Again, I have a LOT of pic's!  

Also, I designed the book with room for the character's autograph on the right page, and left room for a photo of the character on the left page!! My brothers typically get a picture of their kids with the characters, and I thought it would be neat to display them next to their autographs!! :)

And now, here are the pictures! 

Here is the inside cover and front page: 

Mickey Mouse!

Minnie Mouse:

Donald Duck:

Daisy Duck:

Goofy:

Pluto:

Chip:

Dale:

Winnie The Pooh!!

Tigger:

Piglet:

Eeyore:

Cinderella: 

Aurora (Sleeping Beauty):

Aladdin & Jasmine:

Belle:

Ariel:

Alice:

Snow White:

The 7 Dwarfs:

Tinkerbell:

Faries:

Woody:

Buzz:

Inside of Cover and first page, along with Inside of Back Cover and last page:

Outside Covers: 

I put paper over the kids names on the covers.  Just because they are not MY kids, so I'm not showing their names in the pictures I post online..  :)

The book covers are laminated for protection.  The covers are made out of thick chipboard.  I punched two holes in the back cover, inserted eyelets and elastic strap for a closure.  I like that style of book closure. It's so easy to do, and keeps the books closed tightly so they don't get damaged in backpacks / purses / suit cases /etc at Disneyland!!  

The books measure 4.5" tall by 8" wide.  And all of the characters were cut at 4" 

Wait, I lied.  Not ALL of the characters are cut at 4", but most are.  The faries are cut at 3" I believe...  And Buzz Lightyear is also smaller, but i can't remember off the top of my head what he is cut at.  

I had so much fun making these books!!  I hope the kids have just as much fun getting them autographed! :)  

Thanks for looking!