A while back I said I wanted to showcase an artist on my blog once a week. ( I know I dropped the ball last week! SORRY!)

This one is a little different…

I  ran across The 1000 Journals Project. This project is really inspiring! Basically, they have dispersed 1000 journals all over. People write… add a sketch or picture… and then pass the journal to a friend, acquaintance…. strangers… ANYONE!

They made a book with some of the best journal entries!

The journals are used as an outlet for people to share their creativeness with one another! How neat is that!? This was written in their about overview:

Rediscover Your Creativity:

If you ask a kindergarten class how many of them are artists, they’ll all raise their hands. Ask the same question of 6th graders, and maybe one third will respond. Ask high school grads, and few will admit to it. (explained in Orbiting the Giant Hairball)

What happens to us growing up? We begin to fear criticism, and tend to keep our creativity to ourselves. Many people keep journals, of writing or sketching, but not many share them with people. (when was the last time a friend invited you to read their diary?) You will not be judged here. And you will have company. This is for you. For everyone.

This really made me think. It took me until my junior year of college to believe that I could be an artist. As a society we all base things off of what people think, but really it doesn’t matter! As long as you are creating art that you enjoy… who cares what people think!? It’s really all for your enjoyment!

I guess the whole idea of this blog post is to say… Never quit being an artist! It doesn’t matter how the work turns out as long as you are having fun!

If you would like to be apart of a journal go here!

Valentines Day will be here before you know it! I have been wanting to make a Valentines Wreath for weeks! Finally… I made one. And… here’s how I made it!

I got this idea from Tatertots and Jello. Her page has some great stuff! You really need to check it out!

This wreath was so much fun to make! I sat down with my Aunt Trish and we had one of our chatting/crafting sessions that we have not had in almost a year… I love those sessions. She always brightens my day

Here’s what you will need to make the wreath!

An 8 inch stryofoam wreath, atleast 100 cupcake liners, a hot glue gun, glue sticks , and wide ribbon

First thing I did was wrap my wreath with the ribbon.

I started off by gluing one end and then started wrapping.

Make sure to wrap it tight!

After I wrapped the wreath with the ribbon I started adding the cupcake liners! I use a bunch of different cupcake liners for my wreath. You could use just one pattern or multiple like mine

I put my glue onto the wreath. Trish put her glue onto the cupcake liners. It's whatever pleases your heart!

I scruntched the liners up...

Then placed it on the glue! You have about 10 seconds to move it around some once you put it in the glue. (I know... I did it a lot! lol)

Continue to add the liners! I placed mine very close and tight...

FINALLY!

All filled up!

I decided to only cover the front of the wreath because I wanted the red ribbon to show.  You can cover the inside and outside of the wreath if you desire!

In the beginning we decided to save the large cupcake liners for last… We wanted to use them for “accessories” to jazz up our wreaths lol (They are in the clear box in the picture of all the supplies… They definitely look bigger!)

We played around with them until we decided to put two of them together and make them look like a large flower…

My finished wreath!

Trish's finished wreath! I love hers! She siad she left a little more room between her cupcake liners to look like flowers... where as mine were tight together and looked more like lace.

We then used straight pens (just like you would in sewing) to secure our accessories to the styrofoam.

It worked Great! We liked it because it allowed us to move the flowers around and we did not worry about permanently gluing them onto our wreaths.

Lastly, we cut a piece of ribbon and secured it to the back! And… there you have it… a beautiful Valentines wreath!

I decided to not hang mine outside… it is hanging in my dining room in front of my mirror!

Trish had a surprise for me! She  made me a table runner out of this:

It has gold glitter on it! Trish said she thinks it will go great with my gold mirror! I think so too

I can’t wait to finish decorating my table!!

I have to say there is nothing better than sharing time and a hobby with someone you love… Oh! and guess what!? She taught me how to crochet! I may be able to cross that whole learning to knit/crochet off the New Years Resolution list!!

Hey Ya’ll! Let me first start off by saying sorry I’ve been going MIA for days at a time… and sorry that I have not been posting many pictures or interesting blogs… Sickness has hit our house hard…  It’s been going straight to work and then straight home for me…

It’s that time of year… flu, colds, pneumonia, the crud… all of it. I figured you guys are probably going through the same thing… so, here are the things that have helped our household make it thus far!
Everyone really needs one of these puppies!


This has really helped us out! With the heat running non-stop, the air is sooooo dry. It really makes a difference!
Plus, you can add some of this!




and your head will just open right up! It’s awesome! (If you have children check and make sure it’s safe… I see where some of them have age limits.)

BUT whatever you do… do NOT set the bottle down on your furniture!!!!!!! I saw it sitting on the hub’s nightstand and said you better not put that on there! He lifted it up and his eyes were as big as baseballs…

Well, I guess atleast he had it where we could cover it up with the lamp!  (If you know of an easy fix… please let me know )



The next thing… My mom says it’s for old people… but I think it’s great!
Yep, ENSURE! It taste so yummy and is full of so many vitamins… but full of so many calories and will definatley make you gain weight… Oh well… I say this is a good time to drink them! Gotta get your energy back AND on a side note… I talked my mom into thinking they are no longer for old people… but for ALL people!
To got along with that Ensure you need some fresh fruit and veggies! I’m not doing the best at this but… I’m trying

And my husband swears by this stuff!!
He says it always works and he has made other people believers… go figure…
Last but not least!!!! You must have humor!


It really speeds up the healing process! Leave a comment and let me know any tricks you have to staying well! We could really use them! Hope ya’ll stay well!!

Oh yea! Don’t forget the hand sanitizer!

Somehow between my senior year of college and the time I got married I lost my cooking skills! Bad timing right?

I moved home with my parents for a year and they did the cooking… mostly because they didn’t trust me to cook…

Well, I guess the other side of the truth is that my mom was/is always scared I’m going to serve her ground turkey… What’s wrong with ground turkey? I love it! and it’s better for you… You just gotta know how to cook it!

I learned from the best… Rachael Ray… SHE’S LIKE THE TURKEY BURGER QUEEN! She says to always cut up a veggie (onion and/or  bell pepper is what I use a lot) to cook with the turkey… it helps keep it moist! Maybe I lost all my cooking skills because I’ve run out of time to watch Rachael… hmmm maybe I should invest in a TiVo…

I love that blue frig!

Anyways, moving on… my Mema has been a collector of cookbooks…

Oneday, I was at her house making ham delights for her to take to church (those poor people… I’m jk… they tasted pretty good!) and that was the day I inherited some of her collection…

This is one I received:

Apparently she thought this was perfect for me… boy was she right!

Who knew?! You can cook an entire meal in the microwave… and it doesn’t have to be a Lean Cuisine!

Did you know you can cook… fried chicken in the microwave!?… Or I think… it’s a hen in this case? But whatever it is… it looks fried!

(We do love our fried chicken here in the South.)

Or even… BBQ ribs??

Ribs? in the microwave? If you say so!

They even have recipes for baking in the microwave! But at the same time… how do you do that without  setting the microwave on fire??

Maybe I’ll have to give this microwave thing a try… I’ll experiment and let you know

Are you an experienced microwave cooker or baker? If so let me know!

I love snow but HATE pneumonia. (I mean I dislike pneumonia… never use the word hate right? lol)

These peppers portray how I feel...cold and sick lol

This past week has allowed me to catch up on some quality daytime tv and movie watching.! Now, I haven’t watched daytime tv in FOREVER and the lady at the movie store tried to talk me into horror movies even after I told her…  “I don’t like scary or bloody movies”

This was my experience:

Horror movie lady: “Ma’am can I help you find a movie?”

Me: “No Ma’am I think I got it… but thank you”

Horror movie lady: “We have lots of movies let me help you. Do you like scary horror movies?”

Me: “No Ma’am I don’t. I don’t really like anything scary or anything with a lot of blood.”

Horror movie lady: “Well hunny this movie is really good and it’s NOT a horror movie, its just about somebody killing other people with a machete and chopping them up in little pieces!”

Me (wide eyed mouth dropped open… thinking did you really not hear what I just said?) “Really?”

Horror movie lady: “Yea, you should really get it!”

Needless to say, I backed my way out of that one and said that I didn’t want to worry about my husband being too scared tonight and walked out with the a Madea movie…:-)

I also caught a Dr. Phil episode today… it was pretty interesting… but not nearly as interesting as when Madea went and met with him Madea and Dr. Phil

As far as daytime tv goes, I found the Nate Berkus show… I have really enjoyed  watching his show and finding out the latest fab’s for the 2011 home decor. I also like how he takes things you already own (clothing, jewelry, etc) and makes them into home decor!

Anyway, you can find out the top 5 home decor trends of 2011 here!

I particularly liked the mirror accessories, modern art idea, and the scarf idea… well I guess I should just say i like ALL of the new trends! You’ll have to go to the  website to find out exaclty what I’m talking about (linked above)

Oh yea! If you liked the typography print as much as I did then you can find it here and you can read the artist’s blog here.

A friend of mine took the coaster idea (click here to see how to make your own coasters!) and made it her own! They turned out awesome! She based her design off of Charleston gates!

Denver and I like buying art straight from the artist and Charleston is a great place to find great art! I love the gates in Charleston so much that I have pictures of them hanging in my house! So, of course… I love these!  Great job Katie!

The last one may be my favorite! She used free flooring samples and cork instead of the felt pads! I was so excited to see that someone tried the craft! I love seeing your ideas! Let me know if you try it as well!

On another note, a new spinoff of Grey’s Anatomy is coming on! Super excited! However, I don’t think any show could beat out Greys!

Today we were not snowed in… we were iced in. Our driveway had a nice thick coating of ice on it. (Yep… YUCK!)

I went out this morning and attempted to shovel the ice so that we could go to work… It was a big failure and I almost busted my behind. (I’m a southern girl! What can I say?)

The Ice Rink... I mean driveway

However, we went back out at around 2:00 and were successful! Now I don’t have to worry about the car sliding back down into the house when we try to leave for work tomorrow!

Another sight we never thought we would see... shoveling ice/snow in the south??

In other news!

Tonight I joined StumbleUpon! I must say it is really neat! You can pick out categories you are interested in and StumbleUpon different sites! You then Like the site or Unlike. This helps StumbleUpon understand what sites you are interested in and what you are not. I have really enjoyed it so far!

As many of you know I love art!  Not just sewing and crafts… but art in general! I really enjoy learning about different artists and their work. I picked art as one of the categories to StumbleUpon and I wanted to share some of what I found!!

Here are are a few I ran across today:

Street art that uses grocery bags and trash bags! So interesting!

I know this is in another language but I think it is absolutely amazing! I wish I could understand it because it brought some people to tears.

I loved watching this guy make this piece of art! The process amazed me.

If you want to start “stumbling” you can go here to sign up! You just sign up and download the tool bar to your web browser. (I’ve found that you must add this tool bar for it to work!) I would say it is defiantly worth it!

Do you make art?

If so let me know! I am going to start showcasing a new artist every week! I would love for you to be one of my showcase artists! It can be photography, painting, woodwork, graphic designing, welding…it can be simply drawing on the sidewalk with sidewalk chalk! There are so many different types of art! I would love to see and hear about it!

Just click here to tell me about your art!

Over the past 24 hours we have had thundersnow, sleet, and freezing rain.  We ended up with around 7 inches of snow here at my house. It was SOOO pretty! However, my driveway and yard is now an ice skating rink and the trees are full of ice!

7 in! and that was before we had a down pour of half dollar size flakes!

Half way up my calf!

My husband loves studying  meteorology and I’m not quite sure why he didn’t decide to do that for a living. Anyway, he has always talked about thundersnow before but we never ever thought we’d see it in the south… EVER!

However, at around 5 am we woke up to see if work had been canceled and sure enough it had. I laid back down and he followed shortly after. He laid down and said “We may have some thundersnow. I would love to see it.”

As soon as he got it out of his mouth we heard a “BOOM”. We both jumped out of the bed and ran to the window. It was the craziest thing I have ever seen! Snow was pouring down, the wind was really up, the sky was lit up with lightening… it looked like a snow thunderstorm. You can go here to read about thundersnow.

The light reflecting on the snow is so pretty! The layer of ice on top makes it look like glass!

We were pretty excited about getting to spend the day together watching movies and eating yummy food. We decided to make french toast for breakfast. I had never made it before… (Yea, I was thinking the same thing as you…please God don’t let me start a fire because it would take the fire department quite a while to get here!)

So, I had to figure out a recipe. I searched online and looked at many different ones before I decided to just make up my own! It turned out really delicious! Here’s the ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 2/3 cup of milk
• 1 tsp of cinnamon or more if you like
  
• 2 squirts of honey in the batter (I love honey!)
• 6 slices of bread
• powdered sugar (However much you like!)
  
• butter or Pam for coating the pan
  
• salt to taste (I just used a pinch)
• 1 banana (or whatever kind of fruit you like)
  

I mixed together the eggs, milk, honey, a pinch of salt, and  cinnamon. (Nutmeg would have been great with this, but I didn’t have any on hand… and I couldn’t get out of the driveway )

I then poured it into a deep styrofoam plate for dipping. (I’m sorry… I know it’s not green, but.. I promise I normally always use my “real” dishes rather than the styrofoam plates.)

I dipped both sides of the bread in the mixture. You really want to use texas toast bread, but all I had was whatever was in the pantry and it ended up working great! (Note: Just don’t let it soak too long… I learned the hard way… It will fall to pieces!)

I used my electric skillet to cook them. I turned it on 350-375 degrees. I put butter in the skillet then threw a couple pieces into the skillet at a time. I let them cook for about 3 min on each side or until golden brown. (I like cinnamon, so I added a little bit extra to the toast when I stuck it in the skillet. )

By the way... this is a great use for all those end pieces!

After they had cooked to a golden brown on each side I transferred them onto a plate. I then cut up some bananas, added powdered sugar, honey, and maple syrup. (I’m not a big pancake syrup person but I LOVE maple syrup!)

We cooked some eggs with Mexican cheese for the side. Did you know that they make cheese with the taco seasoning actually IN the cheese? This is new to me and I love it! I normally add a dash of milk to my eggs to make them fluffy. I saw it on some cooking show one day… It seems to work!

Gilly sat on a bar stool and supervised.

It was delicious! (and I didn’t burn anything!! wohooo!) We decided this is our new snow day tradition! Do you have any snow day traditions at your house?

We used the leftover BBQ pork chops my dad cooked last night to make quesadillas for dinner! They were yummy! But, that’s a recipe for a different day.

The rest of the day was full of me and Gilly napping on the couch. Denver worked on a new Flossy blog design and layout! It will be coming soon! Hopefully it will make will make the blog easier to read and post comments! I’m so excited!

Besides working on the blog, my animal loving hubby was worried about the birds. So, he decided to put together our bird feeder for the birds! So sweet!

All in all… It has been a great snow day! Let’s just hope and pray the power doesn’t go out and everyone travels safely tomorrow!

Sorry it has taken me so long to make this post! I promise I have a really good excuse. But anyway, here is the long awaited craft!!

Everybody needs coasters! Growing up coasters were like the 11th commandment… Thou shall not set a glass on the furniture without a coaster… Mom made sure we knew this rule!

Now that I’m married and have my own furniture… I make sure to have lots of coasters! I mean… we all work so hard to get our furniture! I know I don’t want mine messed up because I didn’t use a coaster! (After 23 years… I get it Mom )

So, I decided to try my hand at making some! And guess what??? You can make them too! Your toddler could even make them! It’s super easy.

Here’s what you’ll need:

4×4 tiles

paint brush

stamp and stamp pad

3/8 in felt pads

Not too many things right? You can make these for as cheap as 10 dollars or maybe even less!

I’m not the best drawer. (I try but it just doesn’t work out sometimes.) So, I decided to use a stamp to help me out. You can get these from any art supply stores and a lot of times they have them on sale! I would suggest making sure you get a stamp pad that will stamp onto tile and is waterproof. I also used acrylic paint. However, if you don’t like to paint or do anything artsy… you can find some beautiful tile and just add the coaster sliders…. and in just 1 easy step you have beautiful coasters! I can bet you nobody else has a set like them!

Here’s how to make them!

Step 1. Prepare the Tile and Stamp

Make sure all dirt is removed from the tiles. Just wipe them off with a damp paper towel.

If you use a stamp go ahead and fill the stamp up with ink. (They also make ink pens specifically for stamps. With these you can color the stamp multiple colors! Pretty neat )

I love this tree stamp! I think I will use it for many projects in the future.

Step 2. Press down and transfer!

Find a place on the tile that you would like to stamp. Make sure to place it down and not to move it. You don’t want your ink to smear! (But if for some reason it doesn’t come out the way you want… it’s ok! You can incorporate it into you design. I ended up having to do this with one of the coasters I made.)

You can see where I practiced before putting it on the tile. I like to do a test run before stamping onto the real thing.

Press down with even pressure on the stamp so that all of the ink will transfer onto the tile. Then pull the stamp up carefully.

And voila! You have something to work with!

Step 3.Repeat!

Repeat as many times as needed

Step 4. Add to your design!

I then added acrylic paint into the mix. I decided that doing the different seasons would be fun and if you have children it’s a great way to teach them about the four seasons!

WARNING: If you are using this paint with children, you may wan to give them an apron or old clothes. You also may want to get a cheap table cloth from the dollar store to put over your table and floor... or do the painting outside if the weather allows!

I just started mixing colors and making dots for leaves... because in reality... not all leaves are the same color or same size!

Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall!

This is the tile that had some problems with the ink transferring. I just filled in those areas with snow!

Spring... I was trying to figure out how to distinguish Spring from Summer... so, I just added some flowers blooming in the tree

Summer! I just mixed some different shades of greens and made the tree thick.

My favorite! I love Fall or Autumn (whichever you prefer )!

Step 5. Add the coaster sliders!

After the ink and paint have dried you can add what I call the coaster sliders (felt pads)! lol You need these so that the bottom of the coasters will not scratch your furniture. I used these:

I placed the coaster sliders (felt pads) on each corner.

Another idea would be to use cork. I’ve seen cork added to the bottom of coasters to keep from sliding and to protect the furniture. It’s whatever works for you!

If you decide to just buy some decorative tile then all you need to do is step 5. Just make sure before you purchase the tile that it does not have any uneven points that would make your glass overturn.

You could also probably decoupage pictures onto the tiles. I’ll try it out sometime and let you know if it works! OR if you try it out let me know!

I would say this is a great project to do with children of all ages. I think I may borrow some and try it out with them . It would be great to use their little thumb prints and make things like turkeys, reindeer heads, snowmen, etc. It would be something you could use and keep forever.

Let me know if you try this project! I wold love to see your ideas

I said I would have a craft up tonight… but I ran into a few speed bumps. So, sit back and have yourself a Pepsi Cola… Or in my case a Diet Pepsi Cola (I’d rather use the calories and sugar on chocolate.) AND don’t forget to use a coaster!

I think it's a lot more fun to drink out of glasses like these. The best place to find inexpensive fun glasses? Thrift and antique stores! I found a set of six of these pretty cheap! They make a great conversation piece and who knows... you might end up with something worth a lot!

I promise… the craft is done! I will get it up ASAP! By the way… can you find the craft in the picture above?