Getting Ready

I am so excited!  My sister, niece and I are going to participate in a Craft Sale on October 1st at my Mom and Dad's church.  I love creating and love it even more when I have an outlet for it.  Every nook and cranny of my house is packed with items for the sale.  One of the items we will offer is called "Party in a Bag". The product includes a hand-made paper bag, note card and tea light cake.  Other coordinating items will be available to add to the bag to complete the gift.  We are hoping that these will be a big hit!

I am also making bunches of bitty boxes to use up retired textured paper and will use all kinds of greetings and embellishments to make a fun display.  Jewelry, candy or even money fit nicely in these cute little boxes.  I had four tags left from a tag set I made so I now have four Christmas Bitty Boxes ready for the sale.

Also thought I would share our breakfast plate from this morning.  My daughter requested blackberry and chocolate chip pancakes.  Never had that combination, but they were super good!  Thanks for the blackberries, Daddy!

Lovely Gift Card Holders

I just love to give and receive gift cards.  I recently enjoyed watching a video on how to make these cute gift card holders.  Here is a link to Dawn's blog.  She does some really cool things!

I decided to flip the design on the holder (right photo).  I think it turned out cute.  This is an awesome way to use up some of the retired designer paper.  Thanks Dawn for an awesome project!

Trying to stay cool today.  It is going to be 101 degrees here in Raleigh with a heat index of 110!  Unbelievable!!!

I Love the Smell of Basil

I love a summer garden.  Since we finally got some rain this week, all my plants are standing tall.  It is time to harvest some herbs, so I started with my basil this week.  Here is the tray filled with basil stems.  I let them air dry before drying them in the oven.  All of this yielded about 1/2 cup of dried basil. It will come in handy when my tomatoes are ready and I can make homemade tomatoe sauce--yum yum!

Scrunchie, Scrunchie!

Today I want to share a crochet project that has been keeping me busy on my lunch hours.  These  are just too cute and are perfect for the "tweens" who think they are too old for the big hair bows, but still need something to keep that hair out of their eyes.  I actually did some test marketing (unheard of for me) and found that the 5 year old and the 10 year old love them.  I also found that I set my prices much too low!  both Moms told me they would pay twice as much as I was going to charge.  So, I have set the price at $4 and hope they sell :)  Enjoy!

Hot Summer Days

It amazes me how quickly time passes.  My best intentions to blog regularly somehow fall by the wayside through the activities of everyday life.  What have I been doing?  Well, I can assure you that I have not been idle!  In fact, I have been so busy with projects that I have not even taken time to photograph my creations or even special events.  Well, almost too busy.  Here is a pic of David, Robin and I at the Fearrington House Inn where we went to celebrate my 57th birthday. 

It was a beautiful evening and the meal was top-notch!  David is so good to me!

Crochet is my new passion.  Robin was telling me how Dr. Bob Jones III takes one topic a year and learns everything he can about it.  I thought that was a really cool thing to do to keep my mind and body sharp as I grow older.  Some of my past goals, such as regular exercise have become my lifestyle, so now I can branch out and add new interests to my ever expanding list.  This year it is CROCHET.  Have you ever Googled a topic, given your email to a site and then been bombarded with emails about the subject?  I now receive about four emails a day from different crochet websites.  Once I get my fill I will have to unsubscribe :)

One of my greatest joys this summer has been watching my 22-year old daughter start to spread her creative wings.  I always knew she had an eye for color and texture, but only recently has she started to attempt her own projects.  She is currently exploring the "refashion" rage.  I must say that I am very impressed with her diligence and expertise.  Visit her blog to see what she has been doing http://robinelin.blogspot.com/

That's enough for now.  I hope to have some pics of my recent projects to share by tomorrow!  Have a great and godly day!