hairbrained schemes

Get away from that thing, it's dirty!

That's what my mom used to shriek when I was a little kid and my cat would kill something in our yard.

That, along with getting my thumb mistaken for a worm by an extremely agressive chicken when I was about 5, has created a deep-seated fear of birds and bats in me.

So, clearly, this was therapy for me.

We're gearing up for Halloween.  I wish I could share now what GG and I are going to dress up as, but I have some friends who just might find this through facebook and I would hate to ruin the surprise.  (Although Lucas found out, so that cat is probably out of the bag and running for it's life).

 

This screened thing used to be my jewelry hanger.  Then one day I realized that I had more jewelry than hanging.  (Not really a shoe girl, but I'm finding that I might be a necklace girl).

So I made a huge display board for jewelry and this thing sat in my craftroom collecting dust for a couple of months.

So I dusted it off (briefly contemplated the fact that I may have a hoarding problem with frames and the like) and started cutting up some paper.

I used a clip art image for the haunted house and bats:

(you should be able to click on these images and enlarge and then save and print in whatever program you use)

 

Okay, confession.  I used my cricut to cut these, but you can totally do it by hand (I cut like a meth addicted three year old, so that wasn't really an option for me). 

I cut a bunch of the bats, backed the house with vellum to make the windows look kind of cloudy and spooky and then strung the bats onto twine using glue dots.

Confession part deux, the house isn't even glued on.

It's just sitting there.

I know, I probably seem like a total renegade right now, but it's not that, just laziness. 

Have a great Saturday. 

I have a date with 6 meters of fleece, some 8 foot curly willow branches and my sewing machine.

 

The Pitter Patter of Little Feet.

Up and down the hallway last night at 3 am.

Of course, now that breastfeeding is done, I (choose to) sleep through most of the extracurricular activities the boys might dream up. 

Last night it was the poops.

(I will refer to it as that because the word diarrhea makes Gorgeous George fake gag, shake his head and walk away from whatever conversation I decided turn down that road, even though the fact that I had to look up the correct spelling before I typed it makes me want to pepper it through this entire post).

Poor Lucas.

Then after the indignity of the poops, I had the gall to force him to stay home from school. 

I had to bribe him with lego.com and the story of Ellie, the little girl in my fourth grade class who peed her pants. 

The poor girl had that attached to her all through high school.

You can't take any chances with the poops.

Well, enough about diarrhea (sorry GG, but you know, you should have seen that one coming).

I just finished up a supercool assignment for Simple Scrapbooks' May/June issue.  I had a tough time with it for some reason, usually, the pages they do flow, but this time was a struggle.  It might have been all the holiday hoopla looming over me, I don't know, but it's done.

Here are a few things I made last month, when Christmas seemed to be forever away and when I was sure by this time I would be sitting back, packages wrapped, enjoying a hot toddy, instead of knee deep in wrapping paper ends, only 1/2 my shopping done and cleaning up vomit and diarrhea (I can't stop.  It's a sickness.)

Advent calendar:

Another advent calendar (with the numbers on)

...and off...

Tomorrow night, we are taking the staff (and the hubbies) out for our

Life Simplified Christmas staff party.

Gorgeous George said he wasn't sure if he wanted to go because he heard the parties got pretty wild and that one time one of the owners took her top off. 

He wishes.