The headboard is finally done!

It's already past the middle of November and I haven't posted anything since the day after Halloween. Yikes. It seems so far away, even though it was only a few weeks ago. I have a few projects I'm working on that I'd like to post soon, and one to post now...





My finished Headboard for our bedroom. I figured out how big I needed it to be, and my dad helped me build the frame. It's built out of a piece of plywood and a few 2x4's. That took no time at all! I had Lowe's cut the plywood piece for me (It was only 75 cents!) since I don't have a big table saw in the garage, but I cut the 2x4's with a circular saw. Then I just screwed it all together. The next step was to paint the legs which would show after the upholstery was done. I just spray painted them a nice dark chocolate brown. Then I bought some 3" thick foam from JoAnn's. (Be sure to use a coupon for this...it's not the cheapest.) I used spray mount to glue on the foam then all I did was take a big piece of chocolate brown suede, wrap it around the front, and staple it on the back with a staple gun. Finished! All in all it took about 2 1/2 to 3 hours from start to finish. (Not including shopping time for foam, wood, and fabric.) The wood and screws were about $30, the foam was around $50, and the fabric was around $20. All in all I made a new headboard for around $100. I thought it was a pretty good deal! And the best news is that Christian loves it! Next step is to use the same brown suede and make a simple bedskirt for the bed. Then the bed should be done. After that it's on to the window treatments.


I also finished some ornaments for an online swap that I'm in. Christian asked me if I really had to send them out. (He wanted to keep them!) I fell in love with them too! I just used the sizzix die in my Cuttlebug machine and cut out the snowflake twice. Once with chipboard (which I then spray painted with the same brown paint as the headboard) and once out of christmas paper. I held them together with a brad and tied on a loop of brown ribbon. I think I'll make more. Lots more. (If you live close, you're more than welcome to come over and use it anytime!) The finished size is around 4" in diameter.



More projects soon! I'm off of work for 5 whole days!!!!!!

Trick or Treat!

Here's what greeted the Trick or Treaters tonight!

My homemade ghost with felt eyes and a bouncy ball head. And my free spooky Halloween tree. I made Christian go with me and find a spooky dead branch at a little area of trees not far from our house. We found the perfect one and I stabilized it with a bucket of landscaping rocks we had in the garage. Next came little plastic skeletons I had and some orange pipe cleaners made into quick squiggles. I think it turned out alright. Next year I might have to try some orange lights. I also had little luminaries lighting the path. Some of the older boys found those amusing.

In general it was a good night. We passed out a lot of candy. It seemed that it started later than usual, probably because Daylight Savings time got changed from before Halloween to after Halloween and it's really no fun Trick or Treating in full sunlight! At first I was worried that somehow the first 4-5 people that came to the door forgot the magic words....I opened the door and all I got was "Happy Halloween" and then their bag would open for me to drop candy in. I guess someone reminded them because after those first few it was "Trick or Treat" as normal.

Among the interesting things I heard tonight:

-Dude check these out! These are sweet! (Referring to my little plastic skeletons hanging from the tree)

-You look nice tonight. (I'm not sure how I feel about this one, coming from a boy about the age or 11 or 12. I was just wearing my Halloween shirt from Target...Hmm..)

-That's all? The guy down the street gave us like 5 pieces! (I don't think I need to explain this one.)

All in all a good night and the consensus is that we'll do it again next year!

Halloween Wall Art

Here it is:




And here's how it's done. It's pretty easy. I used two different FREE downloaded digital scrapbooking kits:



Coralee Evans, aka MzCora Halloween Mega Kit found at http://mzpimptress.vox.com. This kit is awesome! So many different papers and embellishments! (She just emailed me and let me know that her site where the Halloween Kit is found is down at the moment. If you leave a comment with your email I can email you the pages that I used to make the kit.)



Ronna Penner of Scrapadelic.com ExpressYourself alphabet found at http://www.scrapadelic.com/ (Well, it was found there, but I think it was a limited time only kit for free. The only thing I used from Ronna was the alphabet, which you could switch out the letters for any other font you feel like, but I still have to give credit to her.)



Anyway, just print out the pages onto white cardstock, trim to sizes below, glue/tape to foam core, tie together and your done.



The quantities and sizes of the pieces are as follows:

4- 2 1/4" x 10" paper pieces

2 - 3" x 3" paper pieces

3- 3" x 4 1/4" paper pieces (This is for the BOO pieces. You can print them out with the green background or if you have green cardstock, just print out the black letters onto the green cardstock to save a little of your ink cartridge)



Glue/tape them to foam core board and trim to the correct sizes. I hung all of them from a empty paper towel tube wrapped in black chenille yarn. Just put a stripe of glue down the tube and start wrapping! I connected all the pieces together by taping more of the black chenille yarn to the backs.

Finished Size: 12" x 24"



Designer Tips:

I made mine to hang against a wall, but if would also make a great mobile. Just cover the backs of the pieces with solid or more printed pattern cardstock. (This designer tip is from Christian! Thanks!)

I originally designed this to be a Christmas wall hanging-use christmas colored paper and instead of the BOO you could have JOY, or put pictures of your family inside.

If you're into quilting, this would also be great made from fabric! or wood, or...well you get the idea!

Also, since you're only using small pieces, you can crop the papers down to size before you print them out, then you use even less cardstock and ink.

Any questions? Just ask!

-Erin

Colorado Springs

So I made it back from Colorado Springs....barely. I got a small flu bug the night before I was supposed to leave and was up all night with the usual flu symptoms minus actually getting sick. I figured if I hadn't actually gotten sick then I'd be ok to fly on the plane. Well, it was not fun! The minute I got to the airport I had to run for the trash can. The guy at the check-in counter didn't want to give me my boarding pass but I assured him it would be fine. He threatened me with the "If you get sick on the plane they'll have to land and it probably won't be in Dallas" speech. I assured him again that I'd be fine, all the while telling myself that I'd better be fine, because I sure didn't want to be stuck here. I promised him that if I still felt sick in 2 hours when they boarded the plane I wouldn't get on and try to take another flight later in the day. But when you're sick, all you want to do is be at home...not at some hotel room with no one there to help get you soda and tuck you in! Then there was frantic calling to Christian, Mom and Dad. Everyone prayed for me and literally no more than 10 minutes before they started to board, I felt much, much better. Definitely another testament to the power of prayer.

But, here are a few pictures that my friend and I took after work one day in Colorado Springs. There's a fun little place called Garden of the Gods which is a bunch of sandstone formations. We got there a little before the sun was setting and had a chance to walk around a little. It was beautiful...

This rock has a heart that was eroded out of it. I thought it was neat...

-Erin

And I would walk 500 miles...

Well, I don't know if I'd be physically capable of walking 500 miles seeing how I haven't really worked out in a year....but our cute little Toyota Camry just hit 200,000 miles! Wow! That's a lot of miles that we've put on our car...and there's actually no problems that we're aware of yet. Well, except for the massive oil leak...but we decided that it would be cheaper to just keep dumping oil into it than actually getting it fixed. The quote to fix it was $1000 and you can buy a LOT of oil for that much money! We'll see how many more miles we can get on it. I also have more updates and pictures from my little trip to Colorado Springs last week but I'll post those when I'm not here at work eating my lunch :)

Updates...

Last week went by so fast I didn't get a chance to update the blog. Hopefully this will do...

-Christian finished his Harvard application this weekend and will be sending it off tonight...we won't know until January if he's been accepted or not. Good luck Christian!

-We went to the Harvard Business School information session here in Dallas last week. It was at the Dallas Petroleum Club which is on the 40th floor of the JP Morgan Chase Building downtown. It was beautiful! Anyway, after watching their short presentation and listening to the lady from admissions speak we really felt like the school's teaching method, which is the Case Study Method, will work best for Christian as it's all about analyzing and strategies...two of Christian's favorite things to do!

-We finished watching the entire season of Smallville:Season 6. Well, Lex is pretty much pure evil now...

-Our toilet downstairs literally exploded from the inside! My friend and I were just leaving to go to the Women's Broadcast at church when we heard a large crashing sound. It sounded like ceramic or pottery hitting the floor. I figured it was the cats knocking something off of the kitchen counter. I walked over to the kitchen and saw nothing, then I looked towards the bathroom and heard the sounds of gushing water and saw water already creeping out of the bathroom into the kitchen. I ran inside and quickly turned off the water supply so it wouldn't flood anymore. Apparently the white tube that regulates the water flow popped off and up, knocking off the top of the toilet and everything that was on top of the toilet onto the floor. It took the bathroom rug and 3 more large towels to clean up all the water. Tonight I've got to go to Lowe's to get the right part and we'll try to fix it. I've never replaced that part in a toilet before. (As I'm typing this I'm getting more worried about the other toilets. If this one broke, what about the other two upstairs? Are they going to explode soon? Hopefully when I'm around and not at work! Maybe I should replace them all!) If I hadn't heard it before leaving the house I'm positive that water would have been gushing out the front and back door by the time we returned. Hmm...better be safe than sorry on this one.

-I was hoping to finish and post a picture of the headboard I made for our bed, but due to other factors (see below) did not have time this weekend.

-I got pulled over on Wednesday night coming home from the grocery store. I knew the minute that I saw the lights that he pulled me over because one of my headlights was out. (I knew this because I know I wasn't speeding or swerving or any number of dangerous driving things.) I knew it was out, but haven't had the time to replace it. He took my drivers license and proof of insurance and went and looked at the front of the car. When he came back he asked me where my license plate was. (Darn it! I knew I'd get pulled over eventually for it! In Texas it's a felony for not having your license plate on the back and front of your car. We didn't buy our car here so it didn't have the bracket to install it, and I felt weird drilling a hold in my bumper to hold it. I kind of felt like I was reducing the structural integrity of my bumper and figured I'd rather have a working bumper than a second license plate...) I told him I had it and had never installed it. Luckily I got only two warnings. So instead of finishing the headboard on Saturday, I had to take the car in to get a new headlight and have them install the front license plate. So I guess our car's legal again!

I think that's it for now. I've got some more projects I'm working on and will post those shortly! Hopefully! -Erin

Quick and Easy Accent Pillows

Two placemats: (Yes, placemats!)

$3.49 each from Kohl's

One bag of polyester fiber filler:

$3.99 from Walmart

Two festive fall accent pillows:

Total: 30 minutes and $11.00!

All I did was unpick about 5" of the lining on the back off the placemat and stuff it with pillow filling. I stitched it back up and got two cute fall accent pillows!

Christian's Card

Here is a picture of Christian holding a card he made for his mom's birthday! He did a good job! Aren't they BOTH cute?!?

Here's a close-up of the card!

Below are some quick cards I've made recently:

The one below is a gift card holder I made for a swap. I modified the idea from this instruction booklet that I downloaded from a blog: http://stampinmama.typepad.com/stampin_mama_a_mama_that_/2007/07/my-surprisea-gi.html Look for the link that says "download the thank you issue pdf". This will give you step by step instructions on how to make it. I changed the size of mine and used a envelope that fits a standard size card instead of a business sized envelope. It fits a gift card nicely!

This is what it looks like when it's open. It's got two pockets, one for a gift card and another one for a note.

My 1st Groundbreaking!

Yesterday I got to attend my first groundbreaking. This is for a college building that the architectural office I work for designed. I was project designer for the interiors of the 60,000+ sq. ft. building. That's me in the black suit towards the right! See me digging with my gold shovel?

Ahoy Mateys!

Shiver me timbers! It's Talk Like A Pirate Day! So act a little silly because it's ok to talk like a pirate today....althought it's not a well known day yet so everyone might look at you a little strange. Talk at your own risk! -Erin

Lots of words, no pictures...

So here are some pictures to break up all the words lately!

This is a Birthday Card I made for a coworker of mine. It's hard to tell but the brown petals have clear embossing powder on them to make it shiny and a little rhinestone center. As usual, it's much better looking in person!

This one is for no one in particular...just a fun birthday card that fits inside a standard business sized envelope. There's a little folder inside to hold money or a gift card. I scrunched up the ribbon to make the icing on the cake and then sewed it to hold in place. It turned out really nicely! -Erin

Oh the Joys of working Downtown...

First, before I start the story that gave title to this posting I have a small disclaimer about the Neiman Marcus Cookie Recipe below. After Christian read it he wanted to make sure I wasn't breaking any copyright laws by posting their famous recipe....so to answer your question: I don't think I am. On the recipe card that I got from Neiman Marcus it says "...take the legendary recipe home and by all means pass it on..." So this is my way of passing it on!

On with the reason for the title of my post today...

I work in downtown Dallas and my office is about two blocks from the soup kitchen that feeds approximately 600-650 homeless every day for lunch. So naturally, on occasion, there are some hanging around my place of employment. Last week I had an unfortunate incident with one. I decided that I wanted a donut from a little grocery/cafe store called Urban Market. It's not far from where I work, in fact it's just across the street...safe enough! (Or so I thought) I left my building and as I was crossing the street I noticed that I would be walking right past a homeless man with his little suitcase. He was walking towards me and honestly made me a little uncomfortable. I finished crossing the street and right before I passed him he stopped and looked like he wanted to strike up a conversation. I noticed this and decided not to make eye contact and just keep walking. Little did I know, this was the start of a somewhat large fiasco. As I walked past he said "Hi, how ya doing lady?" I didn't respond and kept walking towards the door to the market. Next thing I know he's right behind me yelling at me, calling me all sorts of names that I'd rather not post. All the while, asking, well yelling, That I must be too good to talk to him. I brushed off the choice names and words and figured that if I could just get inside the market he would leave me alone. Unfortunately, not the case! I got about 15 feet into the store and I turn around and see that he has just come in the door and is still yelling at me! Then I got scared, found the nearest associate and let him know that the guy that just walked in was harassing me. He was very quick about stopping what he was doing and went to ask the guy to leave. Well, then the homeless guy started yelling at the associates and wanted to know if they wanted a piece of him. Next think I knew, the seemingly unremarkable suitcase became a flying weapon of sorts. Two men eating at the cafe realized what was going on and got up to help the associate. From then on the slowly worked their way towards the door, while punches were flying. I sure didn't mean for things to go that badly. I just didn't want the guy following me yelling and cursing and name calling me. They got him outside finally, but not off the property so 911 was called. I went and bought my donut and sat down to eat it there in case the police needed to talk to me when they arrived since it was me who was being harassed first. The police took a little while to arrive so I left and went back to work after leaving my name and phone number in case they needed me to come back over and make a statement or something else. The associate called me about 30 minutes later and said that the owner and associate that helped me filed a report and I didn't need to. Apparently the guy had been bothering other people the day before so they arrested him and took him to the psych ward. So all in all, a little scary but it turned out ok for me. I was a little shaken up but I'm sure that the homeless guy probably still had a worse day than me. Thanks so much to everyone at Urban Market that helped!!! -Erin

(Oh and by the way, my co-worker said that from now on she would walk with me because she wears stiletto's and we figured they might come in handy!)

The REAL Neiman Marcus Cookie Recipe

I guess this year is Neiman Marcus' 100 Anniversary so today at the stores in Dallas (and maybe elsewhere but I'm not sure) they gave away a free cookie and the recipe. Some co-workers and I went there after lunch and picked up the goods. I'm sure at one point or another you've come across the email with the recipe and the story about the lady who paid $250 for the recipe and was miffed about the cost so she shared it with everyone via email...well supposedly that's an urban legend but anyway....here's the real recipe (and the best part was that it wasn't $250!!):

The Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip Cookie

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
1 cup light brown sugar
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons instant espresso coffee powder
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Cream the butter with the sugars using an electric mixer on medium speed until fluffy (approximately 30 seconds). Beat in the egg and the vanilla extract for another 30 seconds. In a mixing bowl, sift together the dry ingredients and beat into the butter mixture at low speed for about 15 seconds. Stir in the espresso coffee powder and chocolate chips. Using a 1-ounch scoop or 2-tablespoon measure, drop cookie dough onto a greased cookie sheet about 3 inches apart. Gently press down on the dough with the back of a spoon to spread out into a 2-inch circle. Bake for about 20 minutes or until nicely browned around the edges. bake a little longer for a crispier cookie. Makes 2 dozen cookies.

Well, there it is....now for my notes on the recipe:
First of all, I don't drink coffee so I think that it would be fine to omit the espresso coffee powder. Second of all, yes, do put them about 3 inches apart on the cookie sheet. These are huge cookies, I'd say that they are about 4" in diameter when they are all done...They are pretty good, although the recipe has very similar ingredients to a lot of other chocolate chip cookie recipes I've seen...so anyway, ENJOY!! Erin

Cats playing Fetch?

We're not sure if it was a fluke or not, but Sneak was playing fetch with me one night last week. She would jump up on my craft table, drop her little stuffed fishie, and wait for me to throw it. I'd throw it, she'd run and grab it, and drop it off again on the table. She did this about 8 times, but then it was time for bed. Christian and I thought that it was just some fluke..but the next day Christian was home from work and Sneak wouldn't leave him alone. He threw that little stuffed fish about 30 times. If he tried to take a break Sneak would meow and meow until he picked up the fish and started playing with her again. Maybe she had an identity crisis....thought she was a dog? Who knows?!? Silly Cat! She hasn't done it again since then... I guess we'll see! -Erin

Rejected...

Well I tried to give blood today but to no avail. My iron was a little to low. Kind of sad, it was going to be my first time. Well, I guess I'll try again in a few months!
I had a great installation with a client today. We installed 4 rooms of custom window treatments, including a two story window on a curved stair...that was fun standing on a little ledge about 1 1/2 stories above the ground...well, not really but I'm not too scared of heights, it's just hard holding window treatments, drilling holes, and screwing in screws while you have a 12" ledge to stand on. (We couldn't use a ladder because of the curve, and the stairs) Anyway, it went well with the help of the client's husband. Off to create some more....I'm in one of those moods where I've got about 8 different projects in my head and need to design, design, design. Good thing it's a holiday weekend! Erin