Old books...and bloggy inspiration

I'm a book lover. When I was growing up you would rarely find me without a book in hand, or at least close by. I read anything I could get my hands on, especially in during summer break. I'd read to the dog, the calves on the farm, and holed up in the treehouse with one of the stack of books I checked out of the library each week. Now that I am older with more responsibilities, I don't do nearly as much reading as I used to, but I still love books. I almost always look at the books at garage sales and thrift stores and I shop the Friends of the Library sale shelves at our local library.

When I saw this post on Mitzi's Collectibles Blog I thought the books she covered in sheet music were adorable. She just made slip covers for them like my kids do with paper bags for their school books. Adorable.


Peat Pots. Who knew? I've been seeing them everywhere, so I picked a pack of peat pots up (say that 5 times fast!) for a buck and a half, and the two little boys and I busted out the paint on Saturday. Monkey pooped out after painting the blue one and went to work with the paper shredder to shred the "grass". Fez added a ribbon and paper handle to his green pot, and I went with ribbon, flowers, and buttons and added a pink tag for gift-giving. We used the medium sized pots, not the little ones.  They're the perfect size for an egg or some Cadbury mini eggs, jelly beans, or the ever-important chocolate bunny.

Joe's is the dark green pot.

Since the boys went with jewel tones, I softened the red pot with a doily tied on with w ribbon bow.

The amazingly talented Vicki Chrisman posted a picture of her peat pot Easter basket here, (Warning, she has music on her blog so turn of the speakers if the baby is asleep or you're reading this at work! Just scroll down to see it and some of her other lovelies.

Martha Stewart has an adorable Easter basket made from the small square peat pots.

I'm linking up here:

Well, I must still be in a mood.

I've still been in my scrapbooking frame of mind, and I've put together some new pages and a couple of cards.

This page took me, no kidding, ten minutes to make. I have been using some sketches from PageMaps, (LOVE them!) and all I have to do is grab some paper and pictures and throw them all together. I had my sewing machine out, and threading it with black thread took longer than the rest of it. (Dang machine!) Both of these sketches are from the December PageMaps newsletter, and on this page I used:

Bazzil cardstock
Making Memories Patterned paper
Daisy D's Patterned paper
American Crafts Thickers
Embossed felt flowers from an Etsy shop, don't remember which one!
Library card



I have tons of pictures, and in my usual organizational style, they are scattered hither and yon and with no apparent rhyme or reason. That being said, my latest project is putting some semblance of order to all of those pictures! I've been sorting them into a sorting box from Creative Memories, and I'm loving it so far! I was really dreading the process, because I didn't know where to start, so I just dove in.

This page is about my mom and her two sisters. It's a picture that I ran across while sorting all of those photos, and I got to thinking about all they've been through together. This is based on another PageMaps sketch.

Die Cuts With a View Patterned paper
Autumn Leaves Patterned paper
Vintage and new ribbon
Hydrangea flowers


Hope you all had a great Easter! We did, and my sister posted pictures here to prove it, so go take a look.

Spring is just a far away dream

Yeah, it's snowing here. Not just a sprinkling, or a dusting of the stuff, it's actual big, wet, fluffy snowflakes covering the ground in inches.

I thought it was spring! Today is the first day, but I guess the calendar did not get consulted. It's a good thing I didn't get all wound out and start "spring cleaning" or anything. Just sayin'. Cuz I was really going to do it! Guess I better put it off for another week.

I ran across this idea for storing some of my scrapbooking supplies. I've got some CD cases lying around that will be put to good use when I get to that spring cleaning.

Instead of actually starting my spring cleaning, I thought I'd read some articles to get me inspired. Really, that's what I'm doing. I'm not just wasting time surfing the net, there's a method to my madness. Here's a good article about curing clutter and spring cleaning.

Family Home Evening has a giveaway going on right now with just a few more spots. Leave a comment on their post here and you could win a copy of 52 More Weeks of Family Night: Scripture Study edition.

I'm contemplating whether the weather will be keeping us from going to church tomorrow. Since I have sharing time and am in charge of a Teacher Training meeting that includes lunch, maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing. But then all of that work I've done getting ready for them will be wasted, and I'll have to reschedule the training. So I'm hoping that church is on. By the way, this picture is from the last storm and not today. But it's looking pretty close to that right now! And Easter is just 2 weeks away.

Watch out for this crazed bunny

Oh, I guess she might be OK.

Looks like trouble just hatched.

She even likes a Monkey.


Got Eggs?