Oh yeah. Resolutions.

1. Lose 50 pounds. The key to attaining this goal is to not be particular about how I lose the 50. How much does a right foot and two pinkies weigh?

2. Go to bed earlier than midnight. Or start sleeping in until 10:00 every morning and get fired from my job. Not sure which direction I’ll go on this one just yet.

3. Cut Justin Bieber’s hair. I have no plan of attack at the moment, but I think achieving goal #2 will be a step in the right direction.

4. Have my eyebrows waxed more often. This might not seem like a significant goal to you, but when your hairdresser refers to you as a wooly mammoth, you might consider it.

5. Make my kids do more chores. This goal allows me to negate what would be goals #6-72 for myself. It’s quite brilliant of me, really.

                              Less                                               More

 

Whatever your resolutions are, I hope you have a wonderful new year! Stay safe!

2010: In a Nutshell

Another year gone by? Really? This is the point where I start to think, “Did I even do anything this year?” and my friend Rhoda from Southern Hospitality decides to have a party to remind myself that I did!

Perhaps the largest undertaking was also the most rewarding. Board and batten treatments were quite the “blog rage” this year, and I’ve never looked back since completing mine. I’m simply in love.

You can read more about it (including specifics about the how-tos) here, here, and here.

The year also included some other projects around the house. Making the office into my craft room was a moment of genius (albeit much delayed genius), and I had fun putting the girly touches on it.

This girly lamp wasn’t so girly when I purchased it. We’re talkin’ eww to ahh here, people.

Adding some spray paint to an organizer helped me to organize my obsession with love of stationery.

Then there’s the ol’ “fly by the seat of my pants” project that made me swear like a truck driver. If you’re a truck driver who swears a lot. When reupholstering chairs.

What’s a craft room without organization? I was in some definite need of storage space, so I resorted to a $23.00 beauty (that didn’t start out that way) to add to the space. Just another one of those love at second site things.

Organizing. It makes my heart flutter with delight.  I gutted by laundry room cabinets and prettified them with spray painted bins and colorful ribbon. How can you go wrong with those elements?

Speaking of colorful ribbon (nice segue, huh?) Some chopped up cardboard and a dollar store basket changed my life—well, the life of my ribbon—by keeping it all together.

I was able to use a picture-turned-canvas as my inspiration for a baseball wall for my son’s room. Unfortunately, this is temporary. Yup. 2011 will bring some major changes for this room. Until then, appreciate the baseball nostalgia.

And with a year-end wrap up, would it really be fair to exclude the holidays? Remember any of these around here? You can click on the pictures to go there.

  

Well there you have it. Some highlights of 2010 at JaG’s place! The good thing is that now I’m looking forward to the new year—which includes new projects! That’s normal, right?

The Wishmas Tree

 I started thinking that I push the idea of thankfulness at Thanksgiving, but then I turn around and encourage the kids to “make Christmas lists”, “think of what you want for Christmas” blah, blah, blah. I spotted this little tree at Lowes, and a light bulb literally went on over my head.

When I brought it home, I cut up some strips of craft paper and was ready to tackle the decorating. If you ever take on a similar project, I have one piece of advice—don’t get overly wordy in explaining it to your little ones. Kids apparently “get it” that you want them to think outside themselves every once in a while. They made that very clear to me.

The concept was simple. While we sat down for lunch, the kids were to come up with wishes for other people this holiday season. I tried to keep the guidance to a minimum, and they came up with the most heartwarming wishes. Some were more universal…

Some were reflective of what 8-year olds are thinking about right now…

And some made me cry…

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Some coffee filters served as a little bit of filler, but the decorating was left up to the wishes. I think I’m in love.

So that leaves me with my wish. I wish for all of my blog friends—my blog family—to have a safe and happy holiday. I am so thankful for your comments of encouragement, your words of advice, and your ability to make me laugh. THANK YOU!

I’m off to visit family for a few days. I’ll be back next week! Stay safe!

A Girl and Her Dog

It’s no secret that Maximus gets the most attention from our daughter around here. Perhaps more attention than he wants.

The worry of getting a big dog while she was little quickly subsided one day when Maximus ate one of my daughter’s toys. She walked right up to him, opened up his mouth, and reached in there with her hand to get it back. At that point, we realized he was probably gonna do just fine in this family.

Here she is (in her prison attire) playing doctor. He tends to be the best patient. 

Of course, he also tends to be the best butt of jokes. Broo ha ha. He has no idea.

She reads to him when they’re bored…

and she showers him with kisses—even when he’s just not that into it.

It’s not all her, however. He makes sure to stand guard whenever she eats. 

     

Don’t judge this picture. The point is Maximus, remember?

And when she’s had enough, he just waits—hoping that she’ll look his way, and he can thump his tail loud enough to attract her over.

Of course, if he waits long enough, maybe she’ll take a nap—which means he also gets to nap. With a buddy.

Or on a buddy, as the case may be.

He’s been known to get a little jealous if someone takes his place for the night.

But she always comes back to him.

While I could do without this big lump of slobber on most days, I have a feeling she couldn’t.

 Looks like he stays.

Wrapping Presents: Keep it Simple

I tend to get a number of comments about my wrapping paper. I think I need to let it be known that I would love to spend more time on my wrapping. The idea of giving a beautifully wrapped gift is an important element of gift-giving to me. 

However, when it comes to Christmas wrapping, it’s a matter of survival for me. How can I wrap 6,319 gifts without drowning in the time it takes?

Here’s how…

I keep my paper and tag choices to a minimum, and I use jute, twine (are they the same?), and yarn to wrap them.  In the past, I found that half of my wrapping time was spent choosing the paper for the person or finding different coordinating bows to wrap them with. Indecisiveness, be gone! It’s so much easier now.

And here’s the result I get from it…

 

I can’t tell you how much easier and faster this process is, and I highly recommend it. What I do NOT recommend is to continue buying different holiday papers because you just can’t help it when you see them in the store.  It kind of defeats the financial benefits.

So when wrapping Christmas presents, perhaps you could consider the three F’s 1. Festive 2. Fun 3. Fast. Of course, maybe your F’s are 1. Fondue 2. Floral wire 3. Fushigi. That would be just as acceptable, I’m sure.

Inexpensive Teacher Gifts

And when I say inexpensive, I mean chee to the eep. I went to Lowes and shopped their tile department. They had simple white tiles for $.16 a piece. Yup. Six…teen…cents.

The ol’ handy dandy Silhouette machine came to the rescue once again. I found some cute snowflakes that were a pain the bahoony to line up right so easy to place on the tiles! The Silhouette made it SO easy to get these cut out, but the intricacy of the snowflakes weren’t all that easy to place. It took me two episodes of Modern Family—not too bad.

I hot glued some cork sheet to the bottom of each one and wrapped them with some ribbon.  Wal Mart has a beautiful section of wide satin ribbon. I make sure to stock up on it every time I go in. The width of it also helped to keep the tiles from sliding around.

I bought $5.00 gift cards from Starbucks for each teacher. I wasn’t impressed with the envelope they came in, so I turned to my Silhouette once again. Of COURSE they had a gift card envelope to cut! Why wouldn’t they?

Some coordinating paper I had on hand worked out perfectly. I considered punching a hold in it to thread it on with some ribbon, but it stayed put quite nicely. I left it as is.

You ready for a total on this one? Let’s see. $5.00 + $.16 x 4= (pause to ask my husband) $5.64!! Yahoooony!

Make sure you keep linking up to SaS Day! I’ll come back with some highlights later. Also, there’s still time to win the Baby Blvd. giveaway!