I found a new home

In a previous blog post from a couple of weeks ago I mentioned two sites that showed you how to reinvent old items into new items. Well I went out garage sale shopping this past weekend. The two items I did buy were not really in any need of reinventing, they were pretty much in good shape. One thing I did learn, if you don’t claim it when you see it, then it’s not going to be there when you get back. I lost out to a very cute Parisian cart because of this. It would have looked great in my study or dining room. Oh well!

Here are my finds:

A canvas print of Italian coffee now hangs over my pantry door in my kitchen. I had been meaning for the longest to try and find something for the only wall space I have in my kitchen. The red colors in the picture match well with the red on my bar counter. Listed for $10, I offered him $5. Sale price - $5.
My second find was an old picnic basket. The bamboo was a little fragile, but when I got home I pulled the pieces out that were holding the lid in place and tied it off with an animal print ribbon. This basket now serves as my scrap basket for all of my scrap pieces of scrapbook paper. Cute & neat and goes with the theme of my scraproom. Listed for $5, I offered her $3. Sale price - $3.

What old treasure can you find a new home for?

Cyber-Site Tuesday

Are you a gardener? I used to love to garden, not sure what has changed. I have a huge palette in my backyard that is waiting for some inspiration and has yet to be inspired.

I used to love sitting in my backyard of my previous home and enjoy the color of the flowers that I had laid down or the pieces of artwork I had made for the flower beds. Somehow I just don’t have the time for it anymore.

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I went out to Enchanted Gardens to take a look at some flower beddings. They have great ideas there to create your own beds. There were a ton people out there ready to prepare their spring and summer gardens. For some reason nothing was really grabbing my attention. So, Hector and I decided we would look at some books and websites to get ideas for flower beds.

If you have a green thumb or enjoy gardening therapy visit some of these gardening sites I have found for Cyber-Site Tuesday.

• http://www.sustainable-gardening.com/sites/blogs2.html (Garden blogs by region)
• http://suburbanwildlifegarden.blogspot.com/ (Texas garden blogger)
  http://www.wildseedfarms.com/ (If I lived near this Texas hill country nursery I would be there every weekend)
• http://www.robomargo.com/trash (Click tab yard art. Great ideas to turn trash into yard treasures)

This coming week I will be visiting Round Top – hopefully with my fingers crossed. When I go there I usually get easily inspired. Check out by blog next week for my Round Top finds.

BTW…remember I mentioned a couple of weeks ago about Dear Trash, a website teaching us how to reinvent new items out of old junk. Well, I went garage sell shopping over the weekend, come back tomorrow for a report.

Bieber-Mania

Justin Bieber-mania is sweeping the nation and has invaded my home!
Last Sunday I took Samantha and a couple of her friends to see Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. I do believe that every pre-teen and teen age girl in the state of Texas must have been there!

Prior to the show, the girls and I visited the midway full of colorful carnival rides. Samantha and her friends are brave souls riding those looped to looped rides. I just can’t do it! Never have been able to, I cannot stand that nervous stomach feeling. The lines were horrendous and they were longer than the ride itself. The girls finally got tired of waiting in lines and had ridden most of the rides they wanted to adventure on. What tickets we had leftover we handed them off to another family to enjoy.

We made the trek into Reliant Stadium to go enjoy the show! Unfortunately, we had to wait in more lines in there - a line for over-priced t-shirts, a line for pizza, and a line for the bathrooms. My patience was wearing very thin at this point and I exploded! We had been waiting in line for pizza for about 20 minutes when I realize that no one is taking any more orders (BTW…the girls just had to have pizza). I went to the front of the line to ask what was going on and the lady at the counter told me they were backed up and they were not taking any more orders. I proceeded to say “so you’re just going to let us stay in line until you got caught up and not say anything.” How crazy of them not to have some pizzas ready to go, knowing that you have 70K+ people walking through the doors. Finally, after I threw my irate tantrum, Samantha and her friends got their pizza. Persistence of impatience does pay!

After a long day and several hours of watching rodeo action, Selena Gomez takes the stage. She was okay, but her tribute to Selena Quintanilla was the best part of her performance. She mentioned that she was named after Selena Q and that she wanted to dedicate the performance to her family. Selena G. sang “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” and she did great! It actually made me cry, because the last time I saw Selena Q. was at the HLSR which was her last performance before she died.

Selena exits and then enters the star of the show - Justin Bieber. The crowd roars and pandemonium begins! He actually was better than I thought he would be. He did an acoustic version of his new song, while playing guitar. He also did a small solo on drums. Quite the musician, I was not expecting it!

• Rodeo rides and tickets $200
• Food, t-shirt, and other goodies $65
• See your daughter have a good time with a smile on her face - Priceless (That is what it's all about)

Cyber-Site Tuesday

Books are powerful teaching tools, but the quest for knowledge and learning lies in life experiences. I’m not knocking education by no means, but I wish my parents had given me a chance to experience some of the opportunities I had wanted to do as a teenager.

While in a summer church camp I had an opportunity to do some volunteer work in Guatemala. My parents would not let me go, because at that time Guatemala was having a civil war and guerillas were creating havoc there. Another time a friend and I joined PDAP (Palmer Drug Abuse Program). We did not join because we needed the service ourselves, but it gave us the opportunity to help wayward teens on the street. Of course my parents freaked out and forbade me in attending any of more of their meetings. I guess they thought they would change me instead of me trying to change them.

What would I have gained from these experiences? I would have had the chance to visit and experience the culture of Guatemalans and assist the needy there. I joined PDAP, because I wanted to make a difference in another teen’s life and show them a new way off the streets. In turn I wanted to better understand what lead them there.

What does this have to do with today’s Cyber-Site post? Dosomething.org is a site that is made for teens that want to participate in volunteerism or create a program themselves. Teens have a great opportunity to provide assistance in any category that interests them. The best part is that they can get school credit for it and it looks good on a college admissions resume. When I was in school we did not get credit for volunteering, I wish we had though!

I’m hoping that my daughter has the ambition to step outside her comfort zone and do something good for her community.

Cyber-Site Tuesday

Today’s site reverts back to a post from a couple of weeks ago, RECYCLING!

I love refinishing and reinventing a new item from something old. Unfortunately, due to time and storage issues I have not had the opportunity to do any of that in a looooong time. The last project that I did was to take an old 3 drawer dresser and create a wine cabinet for my entry hallway.

A friend and I did craft shows many years ago. She and I used reclaimed fence wood to make craft projects. I created wooden crates with a holiday motif and she did yard art. We actually did pretty well with it but it takes time and lots of storage space, which I do not have a lot of right now.

I’ve been thinking about getting back into refurbishing and selling some of my items on Ebay or Etsy. Maybe one project at a time would make the storage space not seem like such a problem (actually it’s not a problem for me, but for my husband – he likes a clean garage).

I found Reinvented a couple of weeks ago as I was browsing for ideas to create. There are some neat projects on this blog. It also includes a blogroll of other blogs who are re-creating new products from old items. In the blogroll I found My Dear Trash and this person is doing exactly what I would like to do, market my new products on Etsy and Ebay. Check out her March 10 post.

Lucky for me Round Top Market Days is coming up in a couple weeks. I’m going to start making my wish list in preparation for my shopping junk spree!

Blog Shout-out!

There is a giveaway on Haveanepiphanie.com. Go check it out, there could be a reward in there for you!

Photography color

A month ago I received a flyer about a new business that opened in Fulshear – The Sweet Tooth Shoppe. My first thought was what a great place to take photography shots.

One afternoon Samantha, a friend of hers, and I headed down there to check the place out. It’s as cute outside as it is inside. The building reminded me of the game Candyland. I was so excited about the outside I forgot to even check out the inside, until my daughter dragged me in. The décor is right out of Willy Wonka and his candy factory - to a photographer this really was eye candy!

I told my daughter and her friend to pose for some shots, so I could get the layout of the place for reference. They even have M&M candy sorted for the local high school colors - Seven Lakes & Foster H.S. There is an area in the back courtyard to hold birthday and other parties. We did not get a chance to go back there, but saw it through the fence. Very cute too.

I can see this as a great place to shoot toddler and senior shots. Can’t wait to get the first shoot there!

Cyber-site Tuesday

Q. When did cupcakes become the latest craze?

A. Just like everything else, it’s a popularity following and has seemed to become the best way to have a slice of cake!

Cupcakes have been around forever. I remember when my mom used to bring them to our school holiday parties – and they were homemade! Today there are cupcake bakeries everywhere displaying the most exotic flavors on the menu. Check out Cupcakes Take The Cake on top cupcake bakeries in the US.

I’ve been in search of the best cupcake in Houston and I’m proud to announce that Ooh La La in Katy (where I live) bakes-up the best in the area! They even got top honors recently in the Houston Cupcake Smackdown. There are two others that I have visited Sugarbabies and Crave I was not impressed with the quality, quantity and price point at Sugarbabies –too much for too little. Crave was okay. Taste was good, but again too much for too little.

My favorite at Ooh La La is the Velvet Elvis, red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting - YUM! I took my friend Rachael there a couple of weeks ago and she and her kiddos loved the place. What’s not to like about a giant cupcake!

Today’s Cyber-site is a site I found browsing for cupcake recipes. She has some interesting cupcakes with great displays. She hasn’t posted any updates recently, but there are some great recipes on her blog – 52 cupcakes (maybe she has reached 52 flavors).

You know what else is getting popular – cake pops. Check them at on this blog site Bakerella. This is a great idea for kid’s parties, just a couple of bites, no mess, and easy clean-up. I love the spring chicks idea and see myself making these for Easter.

Enjoy a little baking this week and try a recipe on one of the blogs mentioned!

The Academy Award goes to…..

I stayed up way too late watching the Academy Awards last night, but I never miss them. Even when I was a kid I loved watching all the glitz and glamour of the awards.

What I particularly missed this year was the award ballots that we passed around at work. Every year our graphics department would compose a ballot of all of the awards and we would have to cast our votes in for who we thought would win. First place usually got a gift card + a spa day somewhere. Second and third place usually just got the Target GC (but I was okay with that). Well those days are over-due to the BIG layoff consolidation

I’m so happy that two of my picks got awarded – Sandra Bullock and Jeff Bridges.
I love Sandra Bullock and The Blind Side was such an awesome movie. She just seems like she has an all around girl personality, which is why I like her. She also has made Austin, Texas the location of her production company Fortis Films and has several other businesses in the area. She’s not Texan by birth, but we accept her with open arms.

I haven’t seen Crazy Heart yet, but definitely plan too. I was happy that Jeff won and I loved his acceptance speech. Thanking his mom and dad for “turning him onto such a groovy profession”. Jeff reminds me of old Hollywood, maybe because of his parents. I watched his dad, Lloyd Bridges, in many western movies with my grandfather. Another reason I want to see the movie, I heard it was filmed in New Mexico (Santa Fe & Albuquerque). I’ve visited both of those cities and that vacation has to be on the tops of one of my favorites. I loved the people, food, and scenery.

Congrats to all the winners, but finally someone prevails on my list of favorites!

Cyber-Site Tuesday

This feature on Cyber-Site Tuesday is not really about the site itself but something I found on the site - YouTube.

As you saw in my previous post from last week, I made some rosettes for a letter swap. I had learned about the rosettes from Tim Holtz, one of my favorite mixed media crafters. He used a Sizzix flower diecut, one I do not own. I had to figure out how to make them using one of my cricut flower fonts. I went and did a search on YouTube and found one! After a few mistakes and figuring out the right cuts, I mastered making the rosettes. Check out the video below for the tutorial and the next time your not sure about a particular project check out YouTube. I'm sure you will find video to follow.