November 1st means Day of the Dead!  Woo hoo!  Not only do you get a day to dress up in a cool costume but the next day has more celebrations!  I dig the decorations for today’s holiday.  I finally got to my DOTD skull today.  Quite fun and relaxing to doodle with bright colors on a pure white skull.  It’s even better that I finally had energy to do something.

Last week was crazy.  Being sick for practically the whole week but not having the same symptoms as Jeff made it difficult to realize that I was sick.   Jeff felt ill on Monday and I think I finally gave in on Wednesday.  I’m not sure what type of flu it was but it sucked the energy right out of doing anything except for sleep, eat, and drink.  I’m glad that it’s finally gone and definitely happy it was before we go to San Diego in a few weeks.

San Diego will be interesting as I think we’re going to Disneyland with young niece and nephew.  I’m unsure if it really has been settled that we’ll be going to Mickey’s house but I know we’ll be going to a concert for Edgar Winter.   That’ll be a hoot!!  It’ll be good to take some time off.

I’ve also signed up for a few online art things.   One is for the whole month of November.   Everyday, I will be doing something artsy.  It’s called Art Every Day Month by Leah [ Creative Everday].  I stumbled upon it today and thought it would be a great kick-off to my other art thing: { 12.31 } by Dawn DeVries Sokol [ D'Blogala ].  It’s all about documenting the holidays through creating your own journal and something other things that I haven’t heard yet.  The project starts on November 6th and goes to the end of December.  I’m excited.

So today’s skull design is brought to you by my first day of ADEM.  Enjoy.

So today I start!   I have many projects to start and variety of fabric to use.   A few men’s slacks I’ve been wanting to reconstruct is on the list as well.   Watch for later postings on my refashion adventure!!

Other things that are going on are organizing.  Sounds like fun right?   Well, when there’s too much stuff that you keep cleaning and cleaning and cleaning I doubt any organzing will assist.  So I’m going through my craft room and removing all the extra baggage that is in the way.

A lot of fabric is going to a friend I met at Urban Craft Uprising show.  She makes these wonderful resusable / collasable totes.  Check it out:  Tote2Go.com I’m sure she’ll do fantastic things with the fabric i’ve collected from thrift stores and craiglist.

I’m also thinning my scrapbooking / crafts / art stash.   My sister mistakenly agreed to take it. (HA HA Ami!!) I hope she will put it to good use because I’ve got so much that who knows when I will get it.

I better get crackin’ on some things.  Until I post again!

cheers, MJ

She is…

• very very affectionate.
• loves to sit on laps.
• lets you know when she needs petting.
• lets ya know when she’s done being petted.
• very good alarm clock.  Even on weekends! (ugh)
• BEAUTIFUL!

So for a Hero Arts challenge, I made a fantastic scrapbook page.

This layout used the SIS kit called SongBird.  So much lovely paper and items in this kit.  I only made a dent in the kit.  I might have to make another layout for our other kitty – Mochi.   Stay tuned…

Over the weekend, the Craft-a-long had it’s debut.  The first ever!  Washington state had it’s first snow fall of the season and a freakin’ cold snap that has been going since then.   That definitely had an effect on who was going to show up for the event.

In the end, it was just mum and I.  We had fun no matter what.   She worked on some cute Halloween pictures of grandchildren into a layout.  I worked on some snowy pictures from Jeff and I going up to Alpental for snowboarding.  The layout took all my time, some veggies, two cups of coffee, and a cookie.   Oh that cookie was good.  It helped create some cute chipboard covered in some embossed white powder.  Turned out really awesome.   I also added some felt and transparency flakes.    This layout also popped the cherry on my new Making Memories Slice machine.   Quite awesome to use on crops.  So small and compact that is was easy to transport around.  I loved the fact that I didn’t have to feed the paper into the machine.  I also realized that I could position the cut where I needed it.  I could fuse the letters together by watching where the blade was placing itself according to the previous cut.

I was working on another layout after this one, but with my sister’s family stopping by, I started to talk more than work.

So tonight I finalized the layout and here is the fun layout I got to breathe life into tonight.

Besides my paper packages I got today, I also got a few other things.   Some brads, stamps, and buttons that go well with the paper designs.  Actually, i don’t remember buying the buttons on ebay but maybe the lady was very happy that I bought so much paper that she threw it in.  Maybe no one else was buying them and decided that my house needed them more than hers.   I don’t mind buttons.  i am a button whore as well. ;D

After being overwhelmed by my stack of packages today, I decided to do another layout of my wedding album.  I am almost done actually which freaks me out because I thought I would slaving away and perfecting it.  Maybe it’s because the design is so simple and clean plus that the design is pretty set in how it goes that it does go pretty fast.

The layout didn’t go as I thought it would when i ordered the prints, but this seems like a good fit.  I pondered putting the best man and lady’s name on it but thought that maybe I’ll write them in or do some journaling on each page as well to stick into the album.

I also finally took pictures of the bottle cap necklaces i made.   I saw a few bottle cap necklaces on etsy.   Different than how I did it.

With all this jewelry making, I’m thinking of getting a crimper.  Not sure which one to get though.  Anyone in blogland got suggestions?

Now with this “lily” or a light yellow, the room looks so bright and cheery.

Not only that its cheery, but its been deep cleaned. Everything has its place the room. No more rotating things out of the way. Just plain awesome. However, the living room still has remnants and boxes from the room. So guess what room is next to declutter. Yep. it’s a never ending cycle.

See more pictures of my room…