Friday Funny

Dedicated to my geeky husband who introduced me to The Fifth Element

Monster Birthday

My middle sister, Mary, turned 30 last week and told her boyfriend that she wanted to see monster trucks for her birthday. So last night, a dozen of us got together at my baby sister's house to celebrate with pizza and cake before taking Marta to see monster trucks at the Georgia dome.

A Pinterest-inspired birthday present my BFF asked me
to make for the occasion

Make a wish! Mary made a special request for Sarah's famous rum cake

I made it my mission to capture photos of monster trucks in flight

Sarah's blog post about Mary's Monster Birthday: Rum and rednecks

Recent Knits

I went a little scarf-happy during my holiday vacation...

Mix blue/green/purple fun fur (left) with orange/yellow/green fun fur (right)
and you get a double-strand funky rainbow scarf (middle)!

More random stash yarn transformed into simple garter stitch scarves

A bag full of scarves ready to donate to a local women's charity!

Stash from a BFF Christmas care package = future scarves?
P.S. Thank you, Heather!

My unfortunate model ignores a new ruffled scarf-in-progress

Reading Resolution 2012

I learned last year that I'm better at reading resolutions than "work out more" and "eat healthier" resolutions.  For 2012, I debated between re-reading a series (Anne of Green Gables) with its prequel (Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson), or reading at least one new book each month from the stash I already own (and then posting at PaperBackSwap.com to make room for more books), or the resolution I finally decided to tackle... reading all of the borrowed books I've collected!  Perusing my shelves, I found almost a dozen titles that have been collecting dust anywhere from a week to a few years:

• On the Street Where You Live by Mary Higgins Clark
• The Essential 55 by Ron Clark
• Making Love Last a Lifetime by Adam Hamilton
• The Matchmakers by Debbie Macomber
• Almost Perfect by Julie Ortolon
• Just Perfect by Julie Ortolon
• Too Perfect by Julie Ortolon
• The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
• Hester by Paula Reed
• The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
• Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World by Joanna Weaver

Have you lent me a book not on the list?  I thought I found them all, but you never know...

Happy New Year!

Happy almost 2012! 

www.BizarroComics.com

Peace, Joy, and Soap!

It all started while searching Pinterest for co-worker gift ideas... I liked the idea of taking something practical like hand soap and crafting it into something gift-worthy.  I started out with the idea of something simple, maybe with a little silver bell bling.  Then I found the most brilliant idea yet--transparency film inside the soap bottle!  For those of you who know me well, you understand how hard it was to use MarthaStewart.com for anything, but she had the best free monograms I could find for this project.  Add a cheesy little saying in a homemade card and PRESTO!  Co-worker Christmas presents are done!

Clear hand soap $0.89 each, Snowflake stickers $1.29,
Silver ribbon $0.74, Decorative bells $1.00

Transparency copy $0.10,
Labor to remove soap labels FREE (but my poor fingernails!)

Cutting the transparency to the right size for a circular bottle was a pain.
Next time I'll find rectangular soap bottles!

These bells were the best find at Dollar Tree!
I just had to restring them onto silver ribbon.

The stickers were originally going on the soap bottles, but they made cute
cards instead with the added bling from leftover wedding craft supplies!

All bagged up to go to work--I love the snowflake stickers on top!

And the biggest compliment? My boss thought I'd bought them somewhere!

Sister Scarves

My oldest nieces are almost 3- and almost 5-years-old. They are sisters, and at their age, they (or at least the younger of the two) want to have everything the other has. So when knitting scarves for them for Christmas, I used the exact same pink/purple/turquoise eyelash yarn for both and made sure they were just about the exact same length (sorry, I'm not double-checking by counting rows with furry yarn!)  These will accompany t-shirts from the Disney store.  I know, they're not the same shirt, but there were no Perry the Platypus shirts in a 3T, and I *had* to get a Perry shirt for at least one of them!