They grow so fast

Well, I did it again. I got the pictures backward. I would much rather start out with pics of my girl, but oh well. It takes so long to load them I am not doing it over! So, the next two pics are a couple examples of the crafts I have been up to lately. The first is a pendant made out of a scrabble tile with 3 more designs in the background.  I am going to be putting them for sale in my etsy shop. thepapery.etsy.com

I already have a few things in there and will be adding the pendants soon. Unfortunately my computer died, and I have buy photo editing software for B's mac as well as an equivalent to Publisher.

This is just a covered mini comp with covered binder clips. 
And here are the important pictures!! Keara is two! I can't believe it has been two years. It has flown by. We went to the beach with her grandparents and aunt and uncle on her birthday and she had a blast. Most of those pictures are safe on my external hard drive, so they survived the crash. Too bad that hard drive doesn't work with a mac...  So, someday I will be able to get those off of that hard drive. In the meantime here is Keara cheesing it up for the camera while I was taking photos for my shop today.

The latest in my life

Well, Uncle Sam has spoken once again. What did he say? After less than 2 years here in Fayetteville we have orders to move to Ft. Lee, Va. Did I mention we bought a house here in Fayetteville? The joys of serving your country. The plan is to rent out our house, and rent a house in Va. We plan on getting a house well under our BAH, which probably means smaller than what we have now (which is smaller than what we had in Germany). Time to once again go through the house and get rid of stuff. This move I am planning on thoroughly destashing my craft and fabric supplies. I am planning on a two fold approach to this. First: selling supplies on etsy as commercial supplies (fabric and scrapbooking supplies). Second: making scrapbooking and card making embellishments, and other paper crafting projects (using my new cricut expression and paper and supplies I already have.) The paper crafting supplies I am selling on my new etsy shop www.thepapery.etsy.com  So, the next few months will be fun, seeing what I can come up with on my new toy. Actually spending time crafting again. Maybe I will have a few new craft projects to blog about again. 

More Vacation Photos

Keara has recently become fascinated with my clothes. She really likes my bras. So between her and her daddy we have the following photos...

This is what happens when I take pity on Keara and share my peanut M&M's. She likes to suck the candy shell off first.
The following are a couple more pictures of our vacation to Maryland. We went on a pontoon boat ride on the Chesapeake Bay. Keara liked it for the most part, but she really wanted to get down to run around the boat. That, of course, didn't happen and here is the result.

Amish Country

Wow! Has it really been 5 months??? What kind of blogger am I? Well, this is as good as it will get. Maybe I'll post again before another 5 months have past. The best news in the last 5 months is that Brandon got home safe and sound from Iraq last month!!! Keara has had so much fun having him home. It's great to see how excited she is when he gets home from work. We went on a week vacation to Maryland recently and stopped by DC on the way home. Here are a few pictures. They are out of the order I wanted them in, I forgot how it changes the order you load them in. Oh,well. For your first pic of Keara you get her melt down on the tour bus, instead of the smiling pic I thought would be first. It was hot, she was sweaty and hadn't had her nap. So this is what a half hour of the tour looked like.


We did the Tourmobile and got to see all the major sites. It was pretty cool. You could get on and off as much as you wanted.





The lady behind us kept making faces at Keara when I was trying to get some pictures of her smiling. So I got a bunch of her with her mouth open.

She finally took a nap and was in a much better mood afterward. I hope she keeps napping for several years, but it sure is an inconvenience when you are traveling and want to do things in the afternoon.

Push Pin Photo Holders

So, I started a new project. I think I OD on felt so I am taking a little break. I have returned to my first love - papercrafting. And an old love - gluing marbles on things, or things to marbles in this case. I used to use half marbles in mosaics and wall hangings and my husband teased me mercilessly about my love of gluing marbles onto everything. So, I decided to bring it back after seeing marble magnets on etsy. These are photo holders for the wall, or they could have a magnet and go on the fridge. To give you an idea of the size these are 5x7 photos and the paperclips are 3 1/2 inches long. I was thinking of making up a few sets to sell on Etsy, but wanted some feed back first. I know these photos suck, I will get some more tomorrow when the sun is shining, but I wanted to show them off tonight! So, please let me know what you guys think, or wait until I get better photos up tomorrow.

Mushroom Pin

I saw this adorable mushroom pin on etsy and thought about a certain friend. I almost bought it, and then thought "I could make this myself". So, I did. It is so cute, I think I need to make a little owl friend to go along with it. It has a pin back on it and could go on an apron, maybe. I'll be popping it in the mail later today, along with an overdue birthday present.

I am really just in love with the whole felt thing. I have always liked the look of it, but never thought it was something I could do. But, it is really not that hard. And stuff turns out so cute. Thanks to JennyP for getting me hooked!!!!

Etsy Shop

I started an etsy shop for felt food!!!! My shop address is www.inthestrawberrypatch.etsy.com
I wanted it to be just The Strawberry Patch, but that name was already taken, and by someone who wasn't even using it, no less. Here are a couple pictures of the 2 things I have listed. I'll be adding a couple more things tomorrow. I'm really having a lot of fun with this. We'll see if anything sells. Pricing things is always hard for me, so we'll see what happens. I may have to play around with different prices if things don't sell. Well, its 3 in the morning and I really need to get to bed. I just had to get a couple things posted in the shop.

Felt food follower

So, I am in love with felt food. In fact, the last two days have been dedicated to felt food. These are small projects that even I, notorious for UFO's (unfinished objects), can complete. I got a pattern for an Easter basket and contents from GulfCoastCottagePDF and am working on it, but have not completed it yet. Instead of buying patterns for the eggs (fried and Easter) and pancakes I made up my own. The donut was from the link on JennyP's blog.

The tie-dyed egg is supposed to be a sugar cookie.

I'm not too pleased with how my pink egg turned out, but it was the first try. And the inside of my donut needs some help, but overall I think things are turning out well. I want to get Keara a kitchen for her 2nd birthday, so I figured I could get a head start on making the food to go with it. I also want to make up some Easter baskets of my own design and see if I can sell them at the consignment shop on base. We'll see. I'll be happy if I can get some stuff made for Keara and my niece.

I made another cookie from a pattern I bought that was a jelly bean shaped cookie. I gave it to Keara to play with and told her it was a felt cookie and she immediately tried to take a bite out of it. I don't give her real cookies to eat so it was kind of funny that she would try and eat it. I guess it tasted good because I kept seeing her biting it!

I'm home, and back to blogging.

Yeah! I'm back after being on vacation for 3 months. Here are some photos from the last couple months. The beach photos were taken by Dejeun Clarke, a friend I met up with in Monterey who I know from Germany. I saw a couple old friends in Cali, but it was also nice to see a not so old friend too. (I don't mean age, but how long ago we lived near each other.) Well, this post will be mostly pictures. But who doesn't like pictures of Keara?