Had to do one more

Found out it was a friend's b-day yesterday and since the table hadn't been cleaned yet and the images were already stamped well.... laziness is the mother of invention. I need to add a bit more bling in the upper right hand corner but it's for a guy so I don't want to girlify it out too much. The only things I changed were the images (obviously) this is CosmoBella and her accompanying martini stamped on the inside and then the sentiment here's to you is also Bella. The Belated Happy Birthday stamp was one of the ones I ordered from PrickleyPear Stamps when they had the 50% off unmounted stamps (see previous post from like a month ago, don't worry, this is a new blog).

Java Bellas

This marks my first challenge. As in I've never gotten around to doing one before. Ever. Now the average reader may think sooo what's your point? but for the card maker that's not so common. I'm pathetically laggin', what can I say? Now on to the details, there were 3 requirements, colors this time actually. Old Olive, Purely Pumpkin, and Chocolate Chip. The cardstock was SU Old Olive, the background patterned paper was My Mind's Eye Wild Asparagus, the pens were SU in all 3 colors and a little Bashful Blue for the vase. I used the aquapainter for the color blending and the white paper was cheapie water color paper from Michael's. I've never worked with it before so I figured why pay for the good stuff if I'm only practicing. The 2 flower embellies are actually the same color blue as bashful blue but they reflected light something awful when I took the picture. I found those in the dollar section at Target. 2 stamps were used JavaBellas and Many Thanks from All Year Cheer I. It was a reeeaallly simple card to make except for the learning curve on water color painting. Not the fine art form I was expecting it to be....

Watercoloring & Stampin Up pens, Baby Oil and Prismas

Alright, I had to try my hand at it. And it was interesting. I'm not an artist and it's been awhile since I've even used a coloring book but it was fun. Bottom line, it's going to take some practice. This is the one Bella that I added to my order for my friend, SweetieBellas. I like the idea, I can't stand the background of the wood bench. It makes it too busy for my taste but it's still cute. A bitch to color but cute.





This is one of the Stampin' Up stamps I love and have no idea what I'm going to do with. No big, it's not like I let that stop me from buying the set. Like I need an excuse to spend money, pfft. She colored up with the Prismas a lot better than the SweetieBellas did. You're supposed to use odorless mineral spirits to move the color though and I used baby oil instead. I used to be a chemist, I really don't want to be sucking in fumes anymore. Really. So I'm going with the baby oil. BTW, I have a thing for the Ochre color Prisma has (the hat and the sand). I don't know why, it just does it for me.

And last but not least my first tries with the watercolor paper, SU pens, and the aquapainter. The one on the left was my first, had some issues but I got over it. The one on the right was actually started by my 6 yr old. Sadly it looks much better than mine. She did the pants, copying mine, and used too much water so it ran all over the paper. I cleaned it up some with the aquapainter and then she did the shirt too. I did the cats and her hair. Someday I hope to be as talented at coloring as my 6 yr old. Hey, a girl has gotta have goals.

Chemistry, it's everywhere

So the dh is teaching swim lessons for the dd's swim school right now (long story, I won't bore you with the details). Anyway it's a big competition pool and one of the ways to get to the bathrooms is outside through a breezeway and you're not supposed to go bare foot but of course, the dh does. He came home the other night saying that he had a piece of glass in his foot and would I get it out. Sure yeah I say and then we both promptly forgot about it. He comes home the next night after swim lessons and says 'My foot hurts' so we stop futzing about and go upstairs to my craft room (aka room of all things surgical and now used for paper crafting) and I bust out the materials. The dd is now asking, 'Will it hurt?' 'Are you going to make daddy cry?' and all sorts of questions I had great answers for but really couldn't say in front of the kid. Ah, such is life. So I've got the exacto knife, 3 sets of tweezers, the Ott lite centered on the foot and the dd is bouncing back and forth worriedly from a chair to the side, very anxious and nervous that I'm going to hurt daddy. We had to take a splinter out of her foot once, it was HILARIOUS and will probably result in many many therapy sessions but that's a whole other story. So it was deep but he had already sliced his foot open there trying to remove it himself so barring any serious digging I really couldn't do much more. So I squeeze. And this wee slice of glass comes sliding out. It had been in for 2 days so there was probably a lovely pus capsule that helped it slime out. Anyway I tell him to go and put some peroxide on it. And he, being a guy, is sloppy with it and gets some on his hand. He's wondering why it's burning his hand. His hand now looks like the skin is a dry and sanded off. Now look, he doesn't usually shower after getting out of the pool. So lets do some basic chemistry here. Chlorine. Peroxide. H2O2 and Cl makes something...hmmm....HCl sound familiar? Ouch. Knew I got that degree in chemistry for some reason...

My old home is burning

It's very sad to watch. We always knew it would happen again, the Cedar fire of 2003 was not a one time wonder. Historically there were always wildfires in east San Diego, that's why no one ever built there. Of course now it's only 4 years later and this new burst of wildfires is going like gangbusters. Faster moving and completely out of control. They don't expect it to stop moving west until it hits the ocean and then they fully expect it to move up and down the coast. I wonder how long it'll take to contain it once it does reach the water. The MIL has her best friend staying at her place since she was already evacuated. From Solana Beach. Let's think about that now, Solana Beach. There are mandatory evacuations for a beach community and this has only just begun. So not good. My dad lives very close to downtown, near Petco Park so if he's evacuated the city is, for all intents and purposes, gone. There are friends of mine that have already evacuated, 2 in Escondido and 2 in Ramona. Of course they evacuated the entire city of Ramona basically straight off the bat. It doesn't look good and all of San Diego is holed up in their homes just waiting to be evacuated...

A/C to Heat to A/C

So this weather in Texas thing, it's just plain odd. First off it's hot here during the summer. Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be mind you, we never hit 100 all summer, but still it's hot. We just hovered in the 90's for a good long time and then today we woke to 54 degrees, rain, and an insane amount of wind. Tomorrow of course it's supposed to be in the low 70's and then we go back to low 80's for the rest of the month. Alright that means we go from a/c to heat to a/c. Like there's no in between and the 50 degree thing only lasts for one day, as does the low 70's thing. One day! Then straight back to the 80's! Where's the in between?? And don't even try and tell me that's why everyone lives in San Diego. Watch the news lately? Apparently the horrid fire of 2003 was only a prelude. Now the whole city from the border and then up to Malibu is just going to be one big stretch of burnt landscape. It's bad, really really bad. I worry about my family and friends there. Already there are 2 families that I'm very close to that have been evacuated and those are just the few I've called. There are most likely more and that is very disturbing.

It's DONE!

And we are sooo finished. We had a great time and could not believe how many people fit into the house and back yard. Really, it was INSANE. We didn't invite the whole classroom, maybe 12 or 13 plus our close neighbor friends. Oh and the 2 pinoy families we've met since we've been out here (love them!), I can't really call them neighbors when they aren't in our county but we go visit them whenever they have b-day parties for their kids! When the hubby was helping me set the food out and move the chairs he was like "Wow honey, now I know why you are so dead set on moving into a larger house with an 'open' floor plan". Every house we look at, every floor plan we see I look at evaluate the how the flow of traffic would move. There's a restaurant that we went to, Scenic Loop Bar and Grill, that has the perfect floor plan. He thought I was nuts when I got all excited sitting there, now I'm not so nuts. So back to the story, we had an insane amount of kids here, like 25 or so? I dunno, it was LOUD. They loved the jumpy (once I figured out that the back end tube wasn't tied off all the way and was making the thing collapse on the kids (freaked me out!!) and we didn't have any collisions until the last half hour or so. Not bad! I know several of the parents we had over live in homes that are at least twice the size of ours and they were undoubtedly thinking that they appreciate the size of their homes all the more after experiencing this mayhem. Wow, there were a lot of kids here. I'm sooo glad we didn't invite the whole class. The hubby's mom is a party thrower, 50, 100+ guests is common in her household so B is used to hosting these things (she has an open layout in her house). Still, he's not used to having them in his own home. He loves it because he was born and raised to but he's still totally blown. I think the main thing that makes it all worth it is that all of these people, even the parents we just met tonight, are really cool people. We found out one of the kid's good friend's family just moved here from Temecula (wow, small world) and another of her friends has a dad (and consequently the rest of the family) that has his heart set on getting a frenchie. He totally knew about FBRN! Very small world. Oh and since we invited whole families we even had some of the 'older' kids meet and have fun together, I think Will and R.J. ended up trading phone #'s. How cute is that?

I tried the water color thing

So the new thing lately with the card makers is using Copic markers or prisma colored pencils Gamsol (odorless mineral spirit) and stumps to color in images. There is a tutorial here on how to do this, really not all that terribly complicated but shiiit those pens are expensive! We're talking $5-7 each (and if you were ever wondering what to get me for Christmas here's your chance to get me exactly what I want for many years to come, there are a bazllion colors...). What, am I going to be selling my cards at a 500% mark up? Wait, I'm not selling my cards.... so where's the logic in that? Here's the thing, Copics are an alcohol based marker, Stampin Up markers are water based. So some brilliant woman came up with a tutorial using the aquapainter and SU pens to mimic the Copics. I call her brilliant because she's thinking outside the box and as we've discussed before, I like my box. You really need to use water color paper which I don't have yet but the picture is me trying it on regular paper. The SU markers were a big enough investment as it is and since I am not, nor will I ever be, artist material I see no reason to jump on this "I gotta buy a whole new set of super expensive markers" bandwagon. Not that wouldn't love to own it all but damn, $6 a pen? Not until I buy my husband one of these. Ha ha, ha ha ha. Not.

The 2 day marathon begins

So this weekend is the weekend we are celebrating the dd's 6th b-day (it's technically next week remember?). Today was round one, we began by waiting for the delivery of the jumpy thing which was supposed to be between 10 and 12. We then needed to drive the 20 minutes to the only So Cal Mexican food place in San Antonio (Los Robertos) to order the food. By 12:30 we still hadn't heard from them so we called, they managed to get here around 1. So we booked out after that, had lunch and ordered the food, left to come back to pick up the kid and managed to get here in time for school to let out. Of course we then had planned the Libby Lou adventure with 2 of her friends at school. Did you know you can fit 2 full sized and one compact booster seat in the back of a 4Runner? They were packed in like sardines but those seats weren't going anywhere, let me tell you! They had a grand time, makeup was done, as were the nails. Dressed up, and then added Hannah Montana wigs, damn they were cute. Then we drove to the Micky D's drive thru and packed them with french fries and chicken McNuggets. We got home and tossed them out back in the jumpy and let them burn themselves out. Niiice. By 6:30 I had the two girls dropped off at their respective homes and they are now hyped for the at home adventure tomorrow. Tomorrow we need to go to HEB and get the cake, Costco for the ice cream, ice , water, and what not, then Los Robertos to get the food. By the time the party starts at 5 I'm gonna be dead and probably not give a hoot about who shows up or whether or not we have enough food. Doesn't bother me a bit!
Oh and as to how the dogs reacted to the Jumpy in their backyard, Jayne is totally enamored with it. Now dogs are, of course, not allowed anywhere near the thing so hush up but damn that dog loves that thing! 70 odd pounds of boxer bouncing around and ploughing through little children with glee. Just too funny to not try at least once! He's not allowed in anymore but he does go to the front of it now and 'ask' to go in. So cute, so wrong.

PS

The bunny has nothing to do with the funniness of the link below. You must go read the link, the bunny is just for your viewing pleasure....

Oh God this is funny

I don't know who this person is but they are fuck off funny and obviously watch Firefly.
Miss Doxie blog
Read their adventures in Colorado (Day 6 : lol crap)

And so that there's a pic for you today, enjoy the vengeful bunny.

Chaos Reigns

But that's to be expected. The MIL is still here and we are having a good time but the almost 6 yr old dd and the almost 11 yr old nephew have become antagonistical. They are so much like bother and sister, which makes sense, my mil took care of them for many years while their parents worked and they were treated as such. They miss each other terribly when apart but a 5 day visit hits its max at day 4. They are going to go back missing each other terribly in about 2 days. Such is life when one family moves away. We loved San Diego but the family drama is something we soooo do not miss! This visit has been very nice but I still love San Antonio and neither I nor my dh have any intention of going back.

The other drama? Ah that would be the dd's 6th b-day party scheduled for this Saturday, 5pm. On the schedule food catered by our favorite So Cal mex taqueria, a pinata, and a jumpy thing. On Friday after school we plan on taking the dd and 3 of her good friends to Libby Lu to get dolled up and do High School musical song and dance.

William Tell Ovature

I found this on the message boards. It's for all the moms out there or even though who have had to listen to those moms out there. It's pretty darn accurate. William Tell Overture

Visitors

So the MIL has come to visit and has brought the 10 yr old nephew to visit. The dd is thrilled! She loves her cousin to death, she even brought him to school with her for show and tell (this week was the letter B and, conveniently he' a boy...). Today the dh took them both to Fiesta Texas and they had a ball. The temp was perfect, 85, a bit cloudy, and a bit breezy. I took the mil to the outlet mall and the quilt store so fun was had by all. Tonight we're going to put the kids to bed, watch Bones, drink wine and eat chocolate. Perfection.

I forgot to mention

That full set of SU markers and Color Caddy finally made it to my house. The color caddy was perfect, brand new and it came with the extender kit. The pens are only a little used which is perfectly fine. Hey $80 is a helluva bargain when new it's $140+tax and shipping. So the little bit of risk in buying online from fellow stampers has worked really well for me. Maybe if I get burned I'll stop spending so much but so far I've had really great luck. Knock on wood!

My box

Yeah yeah it's been like 2 whole days since I've posted, whatever. I figure after that last monologue you'd probably not come back anyway. I am obviously not for the faint of heart. So on a lighter note I've found another stamp place to toss my money at. Now don't get all wrapped up in the grammatical mistake here, she's fixing it. Papertrey stamps has a new set coming out on the 15th and she's posting samples on her blog for the next 5 days. I just love what she did with her aquapainter, so simple yet so pretty! So simple it makes one wonder "Why didn't I think of that?" Of course I've never really been one to think outside the box either, not much of an artistic mind going on here. Give me an example and I can reproduce it perfectly. Come up with it on my own? Not really my strong point. I like my box, it's nice in here.

Adventures in feeding raw....

So when we adopted our first dog together (that would be Roxy) we noticed that she had allergies. I could go on for awhile with the details but suffice to say the it culminated in the switch to a raw food diet for her and the consequent dogs we acquired. I could also wax on about the benefits of such a diet but I'm not going to bore everyone with detail plus that's not the point of this post, just the back story. For those who are interested though I'll add some links here, here, and here. And if you are still nosey please, feel free to ask. Don't bother criticizing though, I'm not by any means saying it's for everyone's life style, plus like I said, it's just back story.
So when we lived in San Diego we were members of SoCal BARF, yeah BARF for biologically appropriate raw feeders which is what they call us raw feeders. It is the largest raw feeding co-op in the world. They cover all of So Cal and order food every month by the TONS, literally not figuratively. So when we moved out to San Antonio we were pretty much sol, not much other than grocery store stuff out here, slight variety but not much. We were having problems anyway, our boxers (being boxers and having notoriously unstable tummies) hadn't really stabilized on the food, gastronomically speaking of course. Their coats were BEAUTIFUL and their teeth shiny clean but their butts had issues. So we switched them to high quality kibble for almost a year. Their coats and teeth went to hell in a hand basket. And if that wasn't bad enough their tummies didn't like it either! Now mind you I was a vet tech for 5 years, there's not much I don't know how to work though but the mooshie poo is just damned annoying. About 3 months ago I got an email from a woman, they were starting a raw feeding co-op in San Antonio. Ahhh the possibilities. Apparently there is one co-op in Texas and it's in Austin (ARF). Now I find this odd because there's an awful lot of people who feed raw and geez, this is Texas, raw meat should be a gimmie out here. Regardless, this is what I have to work with so now here's the new adventure.
SARF (all co-ops use Yahoo groups, it works best this way) is just starting out, we presently have like 35 members and most of them order from Buddy's, the chicken supplier for the local grocery stores out here. The woman in charge of the group is Jacque, a chow breeder, and she has been making Buddy's orders for awhile so all we are really doing is adding more onto her order. It's great because one of the main problems with ordering is the shipping and or delivery. Bravo's charges $350 to get an order to us. UGH! This is where poundage is a make or break kinda deal. So Cal BARF got great deals, they made enough money they could actually rent cold storage space and everything and most chicken products came in at under $1/lb. I feed about 90lbs per month so obviously price makes a difference. None of these people feeding raw are rich, in fact most of them are your average blue collar animal freaks. You know, the crazy cat lady? Yeah, exactly. So the fact that the account and shipment already existed is great. At So Cal we had to drive up to the cold storage facility once a month. In inland LA. I think it was a 3 hour drive. Yuck! Jacque's house is about 15-20 minutes away from me. Any way back to the point. We are in the process of gathering new vendors, one of them is Omas. This was the product that got me back into raw feeding. See I was feeding prey model, no veggies. I think the variation in meat plus the lack of fiber (which I still think is unnecessary for all dogs except boxer butts) made for the smooshie poos. The first Omas order we made was an adventure. Skipping all of the drama we came to find out that the woman Jackie had helping her out with the Yahoo group (who was moving down here from Austin and was a member of ARF) had taken all of ARF's documents and posted them on our Yahoo group with out ARF's permission. Also she had never responded to ARF's offers of help and she was much to busy to communicate anything with anyone. She was, of course, the one in charge of the Omas order. Me being the evil dominant person that I was, could not handle the level of incompetence that was being exhibited and contacted ARF resulting in flushing out all of the bad blood between ARF and SARF that poor Jacque didn't know existed. And all I wanted was to make an order, trust me, the drama was totally uncalled for.
Now mind you we were ordering the Omas through the ARF distributer which, unbeknownst to us, was located in Pflugarsville. Now the adventure was a long one to get that first order but we managed it, got home at about 11 pm but we got the food to everyone. This time around we are setting up our own account here in San Antonio. Why didn't we do this the last time around? Well for one we didn't know the order was coming out of Pflugarsville and two, the woman with the Omas account told us that Omas didn't work with co-ops anymore but she was grandfathered in. I think it took Jacque 1 phone call to set up the account. Can I even begin to tell you how much easier my life has just become? Pflugarsville is about an hour north of Austin and the food always comes on a weekday around 5pm. Rush hour. Through San Antonio and Austin. Not so fun. All I want to do is get food for the 3 fuzzy butts and let me tell you the adventures we've been through! All of the drama to not step on peoples toes and blah blah blah. Growing pains I suppose but right now I feed Omas exclusively and if I can't get a hold of it somehow I'll become a distributer myself! Fortunately it looks as though I won't have to do it, nor will I have to drive 3 hours to Pflugarsvlle. Yay for Jacque!

I finally caved

I have a link to a blog here for Bella Stamps, a Canadian stamp maker named Emily. Her stamps are all of this skinny woman she calls Bella. Mind you I'm not usually into stamps that can really only be used for cards. I'm really all about multipurpose stamps. I also really don't like tall skinny models either, bad for the self image you know. Regardless, I still love these stamps. I have refrained from buying them but in the end, she offered free shipping. It's horrible, I fall for it every time. Just. Can't. Resist. I got CosmoBella (by far the most popular), JavaBellas, KittyCattaBella, PresentahBella, WinoBella, and a few sentiments. So I got on the Bellaholics Yahoo group and went to the photos section. Went though all 174 picture files to make sure I liked the examples of the ones I ordered. Obsessive much? Yeah, just a bit.

Andy Rooney* on women over 40

This is an oldie but goodie, I had forgotten about it until it came up again in my flit through cyber world. I'm not 40 yet but I find that I totally agree with the old coot. Which is probably saying I'm old for my age, or maybe just too mature?

A woman over 40 will never wake you in the middle of the night and ask "What are you thinking? She doesn't care what you think. If a woman over 40 doesn't want to watch the game, she doesn't sit around whining about it. She does something she wants to do, and it's usually more interesting. Women over 40 are dignified. They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant. Of course, if you deserve it, they won't hesitate to shoot you if they think they can get away with it. Older women are generous with praise, often undeserved. They know what it's like to be unappreciated. Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to a woman over 40. Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over 40 is far sexier than her younger counterpart. Older women are forthright and honest. They'll tell you right off that you are a jerk if you are acting like one. You don't ever have to wonder where you stand with her. Yes, we praise women over 40 for a multitude of reasons. Unfortunately, it's not reciprocal. For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed, hot woman over 40, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some 22 year-old waitress. Ladies, I apologize. For all those men who say "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free"? , here's an update for you. Nowadays 80% of women are against marriage. Why? Because women realize it's not worth buying an entire pig just to get a little sausage"

*side note, after doing a bit of research Andy may not have been the original author of this, it may actually have been Frank Kaiser. Mr. Rooney is a bigger name though so he stays on as the headliner. Hey man , welcome to the real world where sex sells.

You know it's bad when...

So the husband said to me today "Look what Trish (our neighbor) sent us a link to!" and showed me a website with the cutest Frenchie blouse and socks set. Alright, I can't believe first of all that one exists. Secondly (and most sad) is that we're known by the neighbors as the frenchie loving freaks. I mean how many other neighborhood moms know to send us these links? Sadly, almost all of them.

The 3 hour kindergarten project...

So why is it the things they send home for parents to do take all night? I mean really do they think we're going to do some half ass job on them? Lets get real here people, you send a poster board home for the scrapbooking mom to make a poster of her 5 year old child and what do you expect? Alright so I was given a bit of fair warning. A few weeks ago we were given a list of all the kids and what week they were assigned to be a "Super Star". The teacher sends home a poster the Friday before and we work on it that weekend. Yeah, so she forgot (and I didn't remember until Sunday night but of course, had no poster) and we got it on Monday to be returned on Tuesday. Yup, 8-11pm Monday night there I am paper punching and adhesiving and Cricuting. The damn Cricut didn't want to cut out the full name completely so I had to hand cut out most of it following the cuts and that took at least 45 minutes. I used wee little pop dots to attach her name, it only took 47 friggin' dots...
I used pictures that I didn't want to cut because they are eventually going into scrapbooks, that made it a bit harder too. When I was almost done the dh came over and complimented me, I told him since he was the at home dad he needed to learn how to scrap because he needed to be doing this project. He was totally cool with it, I was impressed. Not sure I want him in my stuff but I suppose I can share if it means that I don't have to do these damn projects...