Bittersweet moment

That's how this morning was as I took my youngest child, Brooke, to start her first day of Kindergarten. Going there with her, taking the pictures & helping her get settled in was nothing for me to get emotional about. But as I sit here now, home alone, no TV on, no toys making any sounds, with just the quiet & me together, that kind of empty feeling, like I just lost my best friend & full time companion. Her & I have been together 24/7 for most of the days that she's been on this earth. I was looking forward to peace & quiet & the opportunity to do what ever I wanted, clean what needed to be cleaned & have it STAY that way. Now I wonder if I'll have the motivation to do all the things I planned on doing with my time. I should, there's nothing standing in my way now, except for being home when the bus gets here. It may take me a few days to adjust to this change though, but I will.

Here she is in her blue Tu-tu dress as she calls it, in front of her school. It's a really new building, since this is only the 2nd yr. that it's been open. We already dropped off her pink Princess back pack on Monday when she got to meet her teacher, Mrs. Parsons. They must do that so there's less problems with them on the first day. She was so excited to go this morning, but once she was in the classroom, she was pretty quiet. She didn't know any of the other children there & her best friend hadn't arrived yet, so she just seemed to be taking it all in. Her class has an even number of boys & girls, so they were seated boy-girl, boy-girl at their tables.
















I'm excited to go pick her up & hear all about how her first day was. Tomorrow she will ride the bus, since that's what she insisted on doing. It wouldn't bother me so much, except that she has to take her bus to the high school in town, grab another bus just to take her to her school that is practically in our back yard.

My 16 yr. old son, Jordan started at his school on Monday. He's a Junior this year & he's happy to be driving himself finally. I just hope he can stay alert enough in the morning to drive safely. Then there's those mornings with fog, snow & ice that will bother me when those day are here. He's not the most observant person & seems to spend too much time in his own little dream world. I'm not over paranoid, I just know my kid. My husband on the other hand always thinks the worst will happen & it never does - but we won't start on that topic.

Well, I think I will go look at some scrap magazines, clean a bathroom or two & do a little surfing on the web! Hmmmm....I might be getting over my empty nest feeling a little! ;)

God Bless & have a great day!

Disappointment

Well, the announcement was made last Friday, but if you're following Bo Bunny's blog, you know that I did not make their highly sought after design team. They said they had HUNDREDS of submissions for it. It would have made a great belated birthday present for myself if I had. But let's face it, I'm trying to run with the big dawgs & I think I'm just a dachshund. I get easily discouraged with these things, but I keep hoping one day I'll break into the land of recognizable designers, at least a little bit. I'm not looking to make a living off it, because I know I don't have that kind of commitment to lots of companies & commend those that can & do. I dream of it, but also live with my reality that it just might not ever happen. I say might not....;)

So, I kept it kind of under wraps of what I submitted, because I didn't want to jinx myself, but it didn't help (obviously). I'm hoping that maybe I made enough of an impression on them to at least ask me to be a Guest Designer - that would be cool!

This is the layout I did & I thought it was an "out-of-the-box" design that was really fun! Maybe I should have tried to find green Bo Bunny CS for this instead...












This is the card I submitted, but was not too happy with how it turned out. I kind of wished I would have added some extra embellies to it, but Ahhh, we know how good hind sight is, don't we????





















This is the altered object I made. It's a bottle of hand sanitizer that I added some rub-ons to with a ribbon of paper around the top & some star cardstock for the background color. I like to add it to the back of the bottle so you can easily see how full your bottle is withouth taking away from the design. I'm sure they would have been more impressed with a mini-album, but I've made 3 of them suckers this year already that have 13 pages in each one, so I'm a little burned out on mini books at the moment.

So, tune in tomorrow for another boring saga of "The Way Beth's World Turns".

God Bless & have a great day!

Christmas in July

Before I explain the Christmas thing, I have to warn you that blogger is not Beth friendly, so if you see gaps & text that is trailing far behind the photos, just know that I can't get it to work the way "I think" it should and I apologize. Just keep scrolling down until see my siggy line.

Now, I think I got a bit of a late start on the whole Christmas in July thing & now I don't want to stop! I really shouldn't anyway, since I have a craft show to do in November that I need to get more stuff made to make any decent money. I have been doing a few cards, as I have a tendency to only dabble in this area of paper crafting. I will say that I was playing around with one of my newer Quickutz embossing folders & have come up with several different styles for the same design. This one started out to be a white on white card, but quickly took a right turn down the road of glitz & glam! I love how it turned out too! It's one of those really simple to do cards, but has such a WOW! factor that seems to really impress. THOSE are the kind of projects that I like.


















Dimensional View

















Inside
















I also picked up this primitive style paper mache box at a garage sale for $1. I wanted to make it sort of Christmasy to sell in the craft show, as well. I love the little primitive wreath that comes on the Joys of the Season cartridge from Cricut! The Joy word is from the Stamped cartridge for a bit of a rustic look. The box is a simple design, but that's how country primitive is in general.

I also made up some wedding cards using the Quickutz embossing folder with the frame, like the Christmas card You seen earlier. I made several different variations including an envelope that takes no time at all to do & yet makes quite the statement before you even open it up!