MIA 4 Numerous Reasons...

Mainly because my little 8 year old broke my laptop screen. I can see about 1/4 of the screen.
Of course it's not a full 1/4 of the screen~ it's about 1/3 over in the bottom right of the screen and the rest in the upper left of the screen. Needless to say it's an adventure each time I turn it on.
I have to admit it's very comical trying to farm on Farmville (Facebook), but I try doing it anyway. I also can't see the middle of the screen, so if anyone on Facebook instant messages me I can't even see it, so don't be offended if I don't respond to you!
So forget about trying to blog from home on my laptop...it's impossible. So here I am at Mystic Paper typing in a quick update.
Earlier this week I took the boy child and his BFF to Legoland. But only after Tucker locked my keys in my car and I have no idea where an extra set is. The first day of course was spent driving to San Diego, the next day we went to Legoland, but guess what? They were closed! We went to Paper Tales (thanks Michelle for the great visit) and then to Coronado Island, which has been one of my favorite places since I was a teen, especially the Hotel Del Coronado!
I promise to post some photos sometime soon.

After watching Dancing With The Stars...

I have to admit that I still have a little crush on Donny Osmond.
I wonder if he would be my Facebook friend?
Below is the Donny that I knew and loved as a small child. I remember my Mom making me purple curtains for my bedroom in honor of Donny~ my least favorite color now.
And YES, I still have this album.


I mean, come on!

Meet BOO-mer...


He is a scrappy little Halloween guy, complete with vintage crepe paper, attitude and a little nick in his ear from tormenting all the other neighborhood cats.
I was lucky enough to take this "Spooky Kitty" paper clay class this past Saturday at...wait for it....Mystic Paper! The class was taught by "The Polka Dot Pixie" Jenny Hernandez. She will be teaching at Mystic Paper again in December. Please go to her blog to vote on the Holiday item she will teach. I have to admit, I am now completely obsessed with these little guys. I am working on a little pumpkin head guy and of course Tucker wants to make one too. He is working on a kitty. I will post our final projects sometime later.

Graceland is beautiful. It was worth going to see and I really enjoyed it for many different reasons, but I felt like I was invading someone's privacy.

It started here...

Well, actually it started at my house Sunday morning getting ready for to get to the airport. Then I flew here, to South Carolina. On Monday we started our little road trip to Arizona.
We went through Atlanta and decided to stop here.


This is where both Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King are buried.

Just on the next block is this...
Where MLK was born. It's nice to see this important history preserved.



Next it was north-ish to Tennessee.

This is my sister's on board navigation system, it has an English male voice. We have aptly named it~ or him "Ian". Ian is a little persnickety and a bit bossy. We make fun of him and he tells us where to go. Hmmm. Needless to say many tears were laughed with Ian as our object of ridicule. We decided to take a little detour in Tenn. and that's when Ian started acting up because we went off our original course.

History is abundant in this neck of the woods, along the way we drove by this historic landmark. Or is it a landmarker? How about a historical point of interest sign? Davy Crockett hung out in these here woods, and wrestled up many a bear and wild turkeys.
Can you see the wild turkey? You just don't see many of those in Arizona that's for sure.

This is what started the detour, we thought since we were near by this place we'd go check it out. We drove much longer than we anticipated, much, much longer.

This place of course! Jack Daniel's distillery When we finally got there, it was closed! It was a very long drive to get back to the course that Ian had set for us, and boy was he angry with us. I think he was just anxious to see the King.

Update on the Home Front...

Here are my finished curtains in my bedroom. I love them, I made 8 panels that are about 86" long, so they go to the floor and drag a couple of inches. I figured if they were too long or bugged me I could raise the curtain rods up as much as I needed to. Luckily the fabric's pattern made it easy to sew and iron down all of the hems straight.

Here's something that happens in the kitchen when I am not looking, a little bug infestation in the cupboards. Can you see them yet?


Okay, there's only one little cute bug!


On Saturday I took the boy to his most favorite thing ever....MONSTER JAM!
Since I don't get out much (as we all know) I had to Google where the Cardinals Stadium was. We got to the stadium at about 4 pm and we were there until 11pm. It was action packed the whole time. It is amazing to see what they do with those huge trucks. It's also amazing to see what kind of damage happens to the trucks during these events. Here is Tucker with the driver of the "Bulldozer". Of course Tucker knows all of the trucks and what they are called. And the are HUGE, or even MONSTER!




Check out the Superman driver he is hanging out on top of the truck! When Tucker becomes a Monster Truck driver and he does unsafe things like that he will definitely be grounded! lol

A lot of busy work each day adds up to a busy week!

We have been in our house for a week now and it's been tons of busy work for me, trying to get everything all put in it's place~ as if that's ever gonna happen!

First thing is you gotta power wash the house right? The house had tons of little spider webs and dirt all over the place. Luckily The Peddler has a power washer and showed Tucker how to use it. I think he was a little bored when he got around to the back of the house, but he did a great job!

Replaced the shower head, now I'm in love with the shower. I love me some HGTV and DIY.

A huge branch fell in the driveway~ that took all morning. I didn't handle this one the owner took care of it, she's just a little slow. Although it was a very huge branch...

Painted my bedroom with the help of my new neighbor~ as you can see there are many windows. What to do with this many?

Here is the $3 per yard fabric from my favorite local fabric store. I'm using the striped fabric to make curtain panels (more photos to follow)

I also bought some very inexpensive vinyl blinds for all the windows...they were so cheap that I only had to spend about $20. Here is my little tutorial on how to make the cheapy blinds look custom. You just cut them down to fit!

First remove the little cap off the bottom.

Take out all the cords.
Needle nose pliers work great to pull the cords out.

Untie the main cord if possible, you'll have to put it back through the little hole on the top again.

Cut the excess blind parts off to the desired length.

Slip the bottom rail back through the cord ladder (I just made that up, I'm not sure what it's really called, but it does look like a ladder) and feed the main cords back through the hole and pull out the bottom with pliers. Tie the knots back and shove the cords back in the hole.

Replace the cap and you're good to go.

Viola! Doesn't it look tons better without 20 extra slats at the bottom?
See, I do have many windows, just 3 more to finish!

Now here is an extra little bonus of having a young boy...this is the mess I came home to yesterday. Phone book pages all over the yard, the street, and there were some pages in the tree! I had to go find the two little culprits to come clean it all up.

Oh look, here they are now. They got side tracked with a very smelly bird egg.

This morning our new kitten Scarlett got to go to Niki's Place Spay & Neuter Clinic in Gilbert with our neighbor Buck. LUCKY ANIMALS!