Vintage Findings - Jenni Bowlin Eat Your Heart Out!

A few Sunday's ago I went to this "fleatique". It's located in a field across from Historic Hannastown. There are at least 50 vendors, if not more. I try to scan real quick each table and see if they have anything that I'd be interested in. It's a good way to burn some calories off, too!

Last time, I got some really cool stuff. Check it out. I got the printers tray last summer. I still need to dress it up:

The vintage stuff I found were buttons, lace, some thimbles, pins and other sewing stuff.

Mostly stuff that I can incorporate into scrappy goodness!

And, yes, Jenni Bowlin, eat your heart out! I love Jenni's stuff, her butterflies and her vintage BUTTONS...but here I've got the real deal! This is my favorite place to stop when I go to the fleatique. The lady sells vintage buttons and her mom sorts them into colors and sews them onto index cards. It really makes it easy to pick out buttons!

Check out the detail in these babies!

Well, that's about it for now. Just a brief update. I've been so busy with work, that I still haven't scrapped. :( I hope to this weekend. Crossing my fingers!

I'm actually updating this from my oncologists office. I hope this is my last appointment. I don't even have to get blood taken!! Do you know how cool that is? Ahhh, I see some light at the end of a very, very long tunnel.

Take care, have a great day!!

Zooming By....

This week has just zoomed by! I blinked and it was Thursday!

Lot's of milestones this week...

I finished my chemo pills on Saturday (did I mention that before?). So glad to be done with those. I'm just very tired this week because that gunk is still in my system.

My son went to the dentist/ortho to get molds made for his expander. Next week he goes in for spacers. I kind of feel bad, I know it will hurt. :(

Here he is getting the mold. He did very well.



Those were 2 milestones... next one is that I went in for my radiation appointment. Apparently, they tattoo you so they can zap you in the exact same spot every time. I will begin radiation August 18th. Next week I will go to get my tats! LOL!

7 weeks of that, then, dare I say, good Lord willing, I hope I am done with all the cancer treatments. You must go Monday through Friday. Everyone that I know who has gone through radiation said that this is the easy part.

After all that, I will get reconstruction, but that's about a year down the road.

I had absolutely no time to sit in my scrap room and get creative this week... but, I did play with some digi stuff. I made this layout about the 4th of July... technically is was July 3rd, but we were celebrating anyway.



All the digi stuff is Crystal Wilkersons. She rocks!!

Tomorrow I will go to see my oncologist. My liver levels were up from those chemo pills. They made me get a scan. Dr. P (he's Russian and has a very long name) saw the report and didn't say anything, so I hope that means I'm "normal".

It will be nice to have a few weeks of not going to the doctor. I do have to get a mammogram next month. Can you believe that in August it will have been one year since I found the lump. So, I said to my husband, since I only have one boob to mammo, do they only charge half price??? ha!

Don't forget to feel your boobies!!

Giant Clothes Pin Recipe Holder

Happy Friday! Another gorgeous summer weekend is upon us.

I was at Michaels a week or so ago, and came upon a big red wooden clothes pin, and I thought wouldn't that make a cute recipe holder? And indeed it did! I love red, and I love, love, love this paper from Cosmo Cricket, Early Bird... it's old, but it's still pretty!



Side view:


And the back side (sorry for the blurry photo):


On Tuesday, we visited the local farmer's market. The people there are so nice and charming. I loved it. I tried to buy something from everyone, but one can only eat so much zucchini! I had to pass on that.

I did get some neat stuff... purple "green" beans, cute carrots and the most awesome bread. It was tasty!!



Oh, and potatoes and some little quince pears... so cute! Everything is so colorful! YUM!

Everything is organic. I even bought some grass feed ground lamb... now I need to find a recipe for the lamb... I'm thinking something Greek, maybe Greek inspired lamb burgers.

Have a super weekend!!

New Bangs!

Not for me! I barely have any hair! LOL! But, for my daughter. Her hair is getting so long. I have hair envy. My hair used to be like that! She wanted some side swept bangs cut into her hair. Right before vacation, I took her to the salon to get them trimmed up. She loves them.

Here's a layout I did using those photos. I used the new Kaiser Craft line Utopia that I got from Ally Scraps. All the instructions are on the Ally Scraps blog. I was very honored to guest design for Ally Scraps this past month. They have had quite a few "famous" people guesting for them lately, so for Dana to ask little ol' me, well, I was just thrilled! :) You'll have to check out who posted before me... Melissa Phillips and Cherry Nelson. Next month is Linda Albrecht! Pretty exciting!



Emma loves purple, so this paper was great. It's paired with blues and greens and browns.

Here's a close up of this flower that I made with my Slice. I used some stickles and a gem for the center:



That's not the best Stickle-ing in the world, but it added some sparkle.

I'm very excited about summer and all the summer food. Our garden is doing well (so are the weeds in it! LOL!). We have at least 3 farmers markets in town. I found that Sarvers Farm is totally organic, and they sell eggs for about $2 a dozen. That's cheaper than buying Egglands Best with the Omega 3's.... by the way, did you that ALL eggs have omega 3s? It's just that when you feed the chickens stuff they're not supposed to eat, they start producing Omega 6's - the bad fats. Now if you just let a chicken be a chicken, let them roam around and pick at the dirt, grass and bugs, the eggs are naturally full of Omega 3's... so the fancy eggs really aren't all that fancy, they're just EGGS! Isn't that funny? They are normal eggs, the way God intended them to be. Not the way the commercialized eggs are. I feel bad for those poor commercial chickens.

I'm learning a lot about food... there's a snippet. I don't want to overwhelm you, but next time you eat or bake with an egg, maybe you'll look at it differently. The more we buy natural foods, the less they will cost, and of course, they're much better for you.

Have a great day! Hope you can get creative, or at least stay cool! ;)

ETA: after I posted this, I did a little poking around the internet. I was using a reference from the book that I'm reading, Anti Cancer, but here I found a study on Mother Earth News. :)

We have a WINNER!!

It’s Marti!! #28


Woo-hoo! I contacted you via facebook, so look for a message from me! :)

She gets the fun little goody box.

It’s nice to know that people actually read my silly ramblings!



We went “junkin’” this past Sunday. I picked up some “antique” buttons, some neat sewing stuff and some vintage lace.

While on vacation, I hit these little antique stores, all sort of connected together, and I found 2 more floral frogs to add to my collection.



They need to be cleaned up a bit. The green one has some kind of smelly putty on it. I guess the putty was used to hold the frog in the vase. It must be at least 20 years old (the putty) because it smells really bad! lol!

Oh, and I finally got scrappy. Here’s a sneak of what will soon be up on the Ally Scraps blog.


Once again, my beloved Slice comes to the rescue... I use that thing A LOT! Totally worth the money!

Thanks for stopping by!! Have a great day!

My Stick Family!

My Stick Family from WiddlyTinks.com

Aren't we cute?

Don't forget to comment on my "Blogiversary" post to win a nifty package!

Happy Bloggiversary!

Today is my bloggiversary! 3 years!

It's funny, I barely remember why I started this blog. Now it's become a place where I can share my art, a bit of me, and throw in some digi freebies now and then.

My favorite share was being published in CK. I never thought in a million years that would happen! That was the highlight of my past year.

I think the hardest thing that I shared on my blog, was me getting breast cancer. I really just wanted to pretend that nothing was wrong, and just show you all my "happy" life. Unfortunately, life isn't always happy. I thought long and hard about sharing my cancer story, and finally I thought you know - if I only help one person, then, it was worth posting.

In the future, I will continue to blog about scrapbooking, because it's my creative outlet, where I can get my hands dirty, or well, not dirty, maybe sticky and sparkly! ;) But, I also want to share some stuff I've learned along the way about how I've changed my eating habits and how having cancer may have just saved my life. I know that sounds weird, but I've always said everything happens for a reason, and maybe having this life altering experience was to prevent my children from eating unhealthy food and going down the obese/diabetes/heart attack path. Those 3 things all run in my family. My uncle died from diabetes, I have a cousin a few years older than me that had open heart surgery. All this can be prevented. Even some cancers, by eating more the way our ancestors ate.

So, that's where I'm at. Hopefully it will be interesting, and I won't bore you to death!

Now, for the fun part!! Since it is my bloggiversary, and I've been blessed with so many things this past year (believe it or not!), I'd like to pay it forward. Just leave me a little comment, and I'll draw a random winner next Monday morning and get this box of scrappy goodies sent to you!!

Good things come in small packages!! ;)



Have a scrappy happy day!!

It's gettin' hot in here....

It's the dreaded 3 h’s today... hazy, hot and humid. UGH.

Looks like I’ll be spending the day indoors. But, that’s OK because I need to finish my catalog flyer. I’m just taking a break while my camera battery charges up. (the product shots are on my camera!)

Here’s my weekend update... BBQ on Saturday, then went to my inlaws yesterday, and grandma gave the kids little fireworks and some sparklers. Thanks to a tutorial by Noel, I used my Shutter Priority setting and got awesome results. Her tutorial was here.

Saturday's BBQ:
Pearl loved how my blueberry lemon cake batter tasted:


Our drinks, don’t ya love the old fashioned coke bottles? Well, 70’s era bottles, not the 20’s. ;)


Love a little sun flare:


And our sparkler fun, with a little fireworks thrown in:






Hope you had a great weekend! Keep cool! Stay inside and get creative!

P.S. stay tuned for a bloggy giveaway coming up say around the 7th!! ;)

Happy Fourth of July!! + Eye Candy...

Technically, as of this writing, the 4th is tomorrow, but I won't be here, so I'm posting today.

Phew what a week. Super busy with Creative Charms new product package design. I am sooo excited about their new stuff coming out. I am almost done designing the catalog insert sheet for the new products.

Today we're having some friends over for a cookout. My husband accused me of being "Martha Stewart". I take that as a compliment!! I've loved her for years, thru her ups and downs. I bought some Coca-Cola in old fashioned bottles. They are so cute!! But more importantly, there isn't any high fructose corn syrup in it!! DO NOT believe those commercials that it's OK to consume. It's not. Yes it has the same calories as sugar, but your body doesn't metabolize it like sugar. It's like injecting your cells with crack, they go a little crazy, your glycemic index goes up and well, you get fat.

More on that later... I've been reading the book "Anti Cancer, A New Way of Life", and I am learning a lot about what we should and should not be putting into our bodies.

I had a great vacation week. I had planned on blogging everyday this past week, with what I did last week in photos, but alas, work got in the way.

When I went to the Outer Banks, I got to meet a scrappy friend. Patti gave me a HUGE basket with all kinds of goodies. What a sweetie. Here are a few things that were in there...


Then, of course, Patti took me to her local scrapbook store, and I bought these scrappy goodies (and then some):


I seriously want to do a beach mini album, or big album, or do a digi book from Shutterfly... I haven't decided yet. So many choices!!

We had our mail put on hold for the week, so on Monday we got a big bunch of mail! AND, yes!! I got a fun scrappy package from my favorite Hawaiian Scrapper, Joscie Cutchens! What a sweetheart for her to think of me. Here's what she sent me!!


And also some TA stencils, so I can't wait to spray and play with the mist and the TA stuff I got at the OBX scrapbook store.

Now, if I only had some time to play!

Seriously, I come home from vacation, then suddenly everyone else is going on vacation, so I had to do all these projects and of course they were due pronto! Here's the tally: One mailer for SSPC, designed, logo designed for it, print management and print production, next, photography snapped for the new Creative Charms fall and winter line, Creative Charms 4 package headers, the catalog sheet, and the order sheet... also an ad for a local hospital. I had designed the ad, in bw, but she got a great deal on the back page of the news tab — so I had to redesign it in full color.

Phew... see, that's why I couldn't update my blog!

Oh, and yea!! Ally Scraps put this layout I did up on their blog. I used the Pink Paislee Starlight Collection. It's perfect for the 4th of July, or as I used it here, a Father's Day tribute.



I made these little fanned embellishments, in lieu of a flower, since it's a masculine page.



I made a banner using the fun banner stickers on the PP sticker sheet. Love banners!



I'm going to hop outside now and snap some photos of my little deck all set up for our picnic. It's not happening until 6 when the sun goes down, but I started to set it up. I need to make the 7 layer taco dip and a lemon blueberry cake.... mmmmmmm!

Have a great 4th of July to all my USA readers, and just an all around happy day to everyone else!! Peace!