An Award

I don't usually accept the blogger awards - even though I'm extremely flattered that anyone finds my blog worthy of one!  Jamie, over at Better With Age chose me for this one! Awww, thanks Jamie!

Since I had a little time this morning, I decided to fit this one in - just this once. We have about 8 or so inches of snow outside, so the kids are home from school today.

First, I'm supposed to list 11 random things about myself. 
So, here we go! (trust me, it's not really that interesting)

1. My husband and I originally met back in 1985 and he asked me out on a date, but I turned him down. I was interested in someone else at the time (that never panned out). 

Then, after being divorced from my first husband for some time back in 1999, my friend was trying to set me up on a blind date. It ended up being this same guy! He was literally a friend of a friend of her step-daughter, so she had no clue that there was a past connection between us. She was freaking out when I told her the story. We believe it is fate. I don't know if this is a stretch or not, but before reconnecting with him, I had went to a medium and she told me that I would be reconnected with a past love. I don't really consider him a past love, but that possibility was there. Like I said, it's kind of a stretch.

2. As I mentioned in the previous line. I do believe in mediums, not all, but I do think there's some kind of gift some have. It may not always be 100% right on, but sometimes, if you give it time & thought, they might be more right than you realize. Some people say you're just grasping for vague information & that can be the case, but I've had some pretty specific stuff told to me as well, that was not public knowledge & it was when the whole internet age was still in the baby stages.

3.  I also believe in ghosts. I've had my own personal encounters with some kind of spirit(s) that lived in the house I grew up in. I have never seen one in the house, but my husband claims to have seen one there, and he WAS a non-believer until then. I've had other experiences at other places also, so I don't know if they follow you or if I'm just a good channel for them. I didn't have any experiences when I lived in the house with my first husband, so it can't always be "just my imagination."

4. I've been pretty crafty since I was a kid. I used to sew my own Barbie clothes and accessories by hand, since I wasn't allowed to use my mom's sewing machine.

5. I LOVE flowers and flower gardens! I keep adding to my own gardens every year and yet I still don't have enough. When we first moved here, there was not much for gardens and everything was overgrown with brambles, briars, weeds and trash. When we moved in, there was even a pile of concrete & old car seats left behind by ALL the previous owners.

6. My husband and I always felt that his deceased mother's spirit intended on us having this house. We would have never been able to afford it without the inheritance from her passing. Why would I think she wanted us to have this particular house?

Clue 1-She was a lover of hummingbirds. She collected all kinds of humming bird decor.  If you look at the center of the window on the front door of our house, it has a humming bird etched in the oval window design. 

Clue 2-The hall bath has a unique linoleum floor design in it. We inherited a throw rug from my MIL that matches it perfectly in design & color. She never used it in her own house though & didn't have this linoleum either.

Clue 3-The upstairs bath has the same linoleum design, but in blue. Would you believe we she also had the same rug in blue? Yes. Coincidence? maybe. If it were just one bathroom rug, I'd say it was, but with 2? And the blue rug would also match the floor in the master bathroom. There are a few other things that I can't think of at the moment.

7.  My blog actually started out as a scrapbooking/paper craft blog way back in 2006, only because I was on a design team for a local scrapbook store and they wanted us to have a blog to help promote our projects that used their product. That's how I got the title for the blog, meaning under a pile of scrapbook paper/crap, but it has since evolved into different kinds of scrap & junk with some paper crafting thrown in every once in a while. I've only been putting my blog "out there" for just a little over a year now, so that's why it's still not that big. I kept it kind of private, like a diary, all that time.

8. I have 2 children that are 11 years apart. My oldest is my son from my first marriage, and he's 20. Then I have a daughter with my current hubby, and she's 9. He's the good "big brother" and they get along pretty good. He will eat just about anything and my daughter is the pickiest of picky eaters.

9. I only have one sibling and it's my sister Michelle. She's only 14 months older than me, but she has Down's Syndrome, so it's always been like I was the big sister taking care of her, and I still do. My mother suffers from mental illness, and that has been a struggle for our entire family. My parents have been divorced for years, so the responsibilities of finding care for my mom & my sister have been left up to me. They don't live with me, so that's a bonus. My sister lives in a group home with 3 other ladies and she wouldn't have it any other way. However, there may come a day in the somewhat near future, that will change. 

10. I sometimes think I'm ADD and I joke about it on here from time to time, but I do think there's some truth to that. I also feel it has gotten worse as I've gotten older. Maybe it's the times we live in that contribute to it, but I recall things from my childhood that lead me to believe that's not all of it. I think that's why I do so many different kinds of crafting. Once I complete something, then I'm over it and want a new kind of challenge, but I jump from project to project before finishing the last. I can't count how many projects I have started at this moment waiting for me to finish them. I do eventually, but I also will start many more before doing so. It's a vicious cycle.

11. I think I've only casually mentioned on here in the past, that I have been seriously thinking about opening up a shop on our property to sell the things I make, especially the bigger items, like furniture. I have already started a Facebook selling page that I have not yet promoted. But that will be posted on here soon. If you want to have a look, check out Rustique & Chic. And if you really like it, then, well, click the Like button. hee hee!

Next, I was given a list of 11 questions by Jamie to answer.

1.  What do you do other than blog?  {you mean you do something else? LOL}  Work outside the home?  Stay at home mom?  Empty nester?  Would love to hear about your lives a little bit.

 I used to do administrative duties in different engineering and quality departments of the automotive industry before getting married (I was NOT an engineer though).  Now, I am a stay-at-home-mom/wife (aka slacker) but I do a lot of repurposing of junk and furniture and have been contemplating opening my own shop to sell what I make.




2.  If you had an entire day all to yourself {no husband or kids}, what would you do?

I pretty much have that already until 4:00. I usually bum around online, work on designs in my Silhouette Designer Studio and recreate stuff and talk with a friend for a few hours at least once a week.

3.  What is your favorite guilty pleasure?  Could be a snack, TV show, etc. 

Wasting time online for hours every day. Really more than I should. Another thing might be going to thrift stores in the winter and garage sales when the weather is more suitable. My home reflects that pleasure by looking the like the beginning stages of needing a hoarding show intervention - minus the trash, well, it might look like trash to SOME.

4.  What is your favorite room in your house and why?

I would have to say the Master Bedroom, because it's the only room that is the closest to being updated of all the rooms in our home. We painted it and put in new carpet 5 years ago, along with new furniture and curtains. We just put in a new window, so it's back to being in a bit of mess again.

5.  Do you like wine?  Or chocolate?  Both?  If the answer is no to any of these questions then we can't be friends {kidding, kinda}.

Wine - no (my hubby's raspberry martinis-yes!), but I do like darker chocolate, but in moderation since it gives me heartburn something fierce!

6.  What is your favorite all-time movie?

That's a tough one, since we're not really movie goers or watchers. Oddly enough, the Disney movie Toy Story might be one of my favorites.  For many years it was the 1980's movie The Outsiders. I was in love with Ralph Macchio!

7.  What is your favorite all-time book you've read?

I'm not much of a book reader either ( I know, what DO I do?), but I like non-fiction, autobiographies and true ghost stories.

8.  Where did you grow up?  Where do you live now?

I grew up in a tiny, tiny little town of about 800 people in north central Indiana, USA, which is just south of South Bend, the home of Notre Dame University. 

Now, I only live 20 minutes south of where I grew up, in my husband's home town. We've lived in our current house for just over 10 years. 

9.  What kind of personality or what type of person are you?  {introvert? extrovert? hoarder? organizational queen?}

I am more of an introvert that still loves the spotlight! Does that even make sense? LOL! I've also become a new found hoarder with the onset of blogging and repurposing items, so that leaves out organization queen. This has just come about in the past year, seriously. My husband was the only hoarder before that. I have been working on the organization part, but it's a huge undertaking.

10. Describe a little bit about your dream home.

We are in the process of creating our dream home with the one we already live in, but it doesn't have a basement & I would love to have a huge, full basement for me to keep my projects and craft space in, out of sight from the public eye. My home would also be updated with new floors and carpet and doors.

11. Who is your favorite interior designer or decorator or blogger?

I think that Miss Mustard Seed's style is closest to what I'd love to do in my home, but my house doesn't lend itself to that style so much, and my husband wouldn't go for that either. He's more of a wood & earthtone kind of style and I'm more shabby whites & neutrals, but we both love rustic! I'm slowly convincing him how we can make both work.

I'm supposed to pass this on to 11 other bloggers, but this is the part I'm going to be a party pooper about and not do. I know that new bloggers like the recognition, but finding enough bloggers is the longest process of these awards, so if you don't mind, I'm going to skip it. Besides, I have to help my daughter make a poster for a project due on Friday.