Skeletons and Coral

Haley drew this skeleton....really, she did.  It amazes me because I can't draw a stick figure.  Check out her blog, Driftwood, to see how she went from that to this:

Thanks for supporting a new blogger who has tons of talent!

I made my coral using Viv's, from The V Spot, salt dough tutorial.  The salt dough recipe I used was 2 cups flour, 1 cup salt and 1 cup water.  I didn't think playing with dough would be that complicated, but mine kept crumbling as I tried to roll individual pieces.  Anybody have any ideas why that may have happened?  I mean, I see lots of potential craft projects with salt dough, but I'd like to know how to make it a better consistency. 

The coral and starfish before baking:

After baking, and painted:

I got the coral color by mixing red and terra cotta acrylic paint.  The color doesn't show up well on the starfish but I used a very light ocean blue mixed with french country white. 

These are my displays right now.  I will be picking up some sand from Dollar Tree to fill in the bottom of the glass.  It just looks too plain without it.

Once again....sorry for the sucky pictures!  Still need to get my own camera!  Thank you so much for stopping by! And thank you Viv from The V Spot and Lucy from Craftberry Bush! 

Have a wonderful Tuesday!
Libby :)

Haley's Blog and Yard Sale Finds

My daughter, Haley, has started her own blog called Driftwood.  Please visit and become followers!  She is an amazing artist and will be earning her BAE in Visual Arts Education at the University of Kansas.  Let's show her some LOVE!  I've shown some of her art here and here.  I'm a proud mommy :) 

I finally got to bring home my yard sale finds from when I was visiting Kansas in April.  I'm super excited to get started on the shutters.  Here's my loot:

Not sure what I'm doing with the other stuff, but I'm sure I'll think of something!

Have a wonderful, creative weekend and visit my daughter's blog....go on, do it.  I dare you, I double dog dare you....THANKS!

Libby :)

HOME SWEET HOME...not really, but I'm trying to be positive

I am home!  I wasn't really ready to leave Kansas, Heather or Kayden, but my husband insisted that the dog couldn't live at the kennel all summer.....damn dog :)  I'm sure Bosco wouldn't mind staying in an air conditioned pen, it's not like he's been living the hard life while we were gone! 

My niece (more like bratty little sister), Randa Bliss, came back with me.  She'll be visiting for a week and I plan to drag her into my crafts.  It won't be too hard, you may have read about her blog, From the Random World of a Free Bird, on my blog before.  She's pretty creative too.  This is the first project we are going to tackle:

You all know that I {HEART} Viv from The V Spot and she made faux coral out of salt dough.  Check out her post about it here.  I.  HAVE.  TO.  MAKE.  THIS!!!!  You remember my starfish that I made using a tutorial from Craftberry Bush, well, now I need some faux coral to match my faux starfish!!!! 

I better wait a day before I start hounding Randa to make it with me....she's still recovering from the trauma she sustained by witnessing my road rage.  But c'mon men!  Really!??  You get THAT irate, threatened and insecure when being passed by a woman????  Men, before you get on an interstate again, pull your panties out of your butt, ask your wife to get your balls out of her purse, and drive safely using the head attached to your neck.  Seriously! It's not okay to to act like that when I am transporting precious cargo....mama bear came out in full force!  And Hagan may have learned a not so nice word....

I'm off to learn yoga or meditation or how to breathe......
Libby ;)   

The Road and a Feature

Kassandra over at Coffee and Their Kisses FEATURED ME!!  Little ol' me :)  Well, technically she featured my EAT sign that you can find here.  Thanks Kassandra!  You can find her button on the right side of my blog!  Go visit her site and tell her I sent ya!

Also, I left this morning on a road trip to Kansas with Haley, Hana and Dino Boy, aka Hagan.  We have stopped for the night somewhere in Arkansas....couldn't tell you the town if my life depended on it.  So thankful to have access to a computer.  I was going to do a lamp tutorial yesterday and let you all know that I may be M.I.A. for awhile, but Hago spilled soda on our keyboard and the letters N and B, plus the spacebar, wouldn't work.  Even popped off the keys and took a Q-tip to it.  No luck.  You should read my comment to Kassandra....the space bar was working then, but then took a turn for the worse.  Anyway, I will try to update my blog while I'm in Kansas, but my time will be taken up with Freshman orientation at Kansas University for Haley and baby love from my granddaughter, Kayden.  I can't wait to get my hands on her!!!!! 
Hope you all are enjoying the beginning of summer!
Libby :)

EAT! I SAID EAT!

Before I started my blog, I was stalking, um, I mean, browsing through other blogs and I was loving all the EAT signs in Blogland.  There are some really cute ones, like these:

 Inspirations For Moms

 Craft-O-Maniac

 Cottage Elements

Crafts By Amanda

So, I decided to make my own with what I had on hand at the time.  This was probably back at the beginning of March.  I used to work at HomeGoods (and no, the discount wasn't that good, only 10%!), but did I ever bring home a paycheck?  Hardly.  Hubby was not happy :)  Anyway, I won a $15 gift card and picked (probably the ugliest) metal art to hang in my bathroom.  I have no idea what I was thinking, but it was the first thing to come to mind when I was looking for material to make an EAT sign.  Plus, it had three separate thingys for the letters.

 Seriously!  What was I thinking???  It may be somebody's taste, but not mine.  I must have been suffering from exhaustion during this purchase.

Please, please, please, don't stop reading my blog because I have crappy pictures!  I really do plan on getting a new camera soon!

Used whatever cheap spray paint I had and let me say....it looks 100 times better just like that!.  This is when my brain goes into weird mode because I hadn't yet figured out what I was going to do.  I wasn't having much luck with my scrapbook paper matching my decor, and I knew I had to make the letters either, red, green, black or white.  Then I stumbled across some aqua colored paper and thought I could make it work with red letters.  But that wasn't going to cut it...looked too plain.  Then my mind went, "eat, eat, eat.....food, food...RECIPES!"  Went through my recipe books, found one my sister gave me AGES ago (low-carb...phft, who needs low-carb??) and pulled out three recipes...an appetizer, main dish and dessert.   Used good old Elmers glue to glue down all the paper, then did the scribble transfer ( that is printing out your words, tracing them on the back of the paper, putting them in place on your board or other material and then scribbling on the front side, transferring the words to the material so you can hand paint them.  You can see the method here and here)of my letters I made in Word, then hand painted them.  I added some watered down brown paint on the edges to give it a distressed look.

 I added an old fork and spoon (well, they weren't really old, just a mismatched pair we acquired from somewhere....probably my mom's) and it was finished.

I could have done a lot better, painting straight lines, but I'm okay with being an imperfectionist! :)  Is that a word??  It is now......

I'm linking up to these parties:
The Shabby Chic Cottage
Paisley Passions
Yesterday on Tuesday
A Glimpse Inside
Somewhat Simple
House of Hepworths

Thanks for stopping by!
Libby :)

The Hubster

I miss HIM.  I love HIM.  That is all.

Libby :/

Superhero.....or Villian??

Last week I finished up some decor for Hagan's room.  We will be switching around rooms in August, but I couldn't wait to make some stuff for his room.  I'm also doing it by not spending any money because we will spending a lot moving Haley and Hana will actually need some new stuff for her room.  Plus, I really don't know if I want to keep his room this theme when we move next summer.  

Instead of buying the cool wall stickers, I made my own version.  All materials I already had at home.

I let Hagan paint a board:

Then he painted himself and left these all over the white tile:

He said he didn't do it, "they're dinosaur tracks."  Yeah, ok :)

This is what he painted, I just added the "H," the year and an old hook I spray painted Oxford Blue (my new fave).

Hagan had to hang up his own artwork too, a triangle with one of his sisters graduation envelope seals:

After I hung up these signs it took me a minute to figure out why the big one looked so familiar...

And now I can't even look at it because it reminds me of this:

Hahahahahahahaha....oops.

Now I have a dilemma.....everybody would love to think their kid is a superhero and not a villian, right?  I thought Hagan was a superhero....at least until yesterday at the pool.  He got out of the pool holding his um...privates.  After asking several times if he had to potty or if he hurt himself, and him denying that anything was wrong, I finally tried to remove his hand.  Yup, my darling, sweet superhero had stuck another boy's toy in his swim trunks!!!  He was trying to steal!!!  He's THREE!!  The other mom was super sweet about it and was telling Hagan that next time they came he could play with it...that was really nice, but I was trying to scare the life out him and she didn't help me get my point across at all!  I was talking police and jail...you know, trying to scare him straight, hahahaha.  We came home and I made him tell Haley what he did and when she asked him why he would do that, he actually said, "I didn't know mom would find it.  I was being sly like a fox."  !!!!!!!  Damn Swipper the Fox!  I'm sure that's where he got that from!

Oh.....the toy was a Spiderman action figure....a little villain stealing a superhero.  Aaahhh, the irony.

Have a beautiful Sunday!
Libby :)

Where, Oh Where, Does The Time GO?

My beautiful daughter, Haley, turns 18 today AND she is graduating with honors this afternoon.  Tear, tear, sniffle, sniffle....I can't believe in two months we will be moving her to college (Rock Chalk Jayhawk KU).  It's going to be a fabulous day with lots of celebrating!  My girl, Sarah B., is going to set up a surprise for her while we are at graduation and dinner.  I don't know what I would do without a friend like her!!! 

Sarah B. was inspired by Viv at The V Spot for her jewlery frame, well really, anything Viv does inspires us both and to hear us talk about her, you'd think we were actually her besties....We're okay with thinking that...Viv might be a little scared! 

Sarah B. found two cute frames at The Salvation Army last week (blue sticker, half off!  Woop Woop!) and worked some magic with them.  Here is what she did:

I love it!  I really love the color of the material with her fancy pin or "brooch" (I personally like fancy pin :)). 


Sarah also made us both these little signs with her Silly:

 I truly love this saying.  I have seen these all over Blogland, but I have never seen this particular saying and it fits us so well, you know, with us being Army wives and all.  Hoohah!


I'm off to enjoy my family today and really missing my hubs.  Sometimes the Army takes him away for really important days like this, but what can we do?  KEEP CALM AND SOLDIER ON
Libby :)