Polka dot piggy

Several years ago my friend and I started our own little business painting personalized piggy banks called "Grace & Baby Duck".  Isn't it the cutest name?!  When I was little, my mom used to call me Grace (mainly because I ran into EVERYTHING...walls, mailboxes, you name it!) and Rebecca's mom used to call her Baby Duck...so that is how we came up with the name.  We had a blast doing it together and had our banks in about 15 stores as far away as Texas!  It was fun while it lasted but eventually just got to be too much.  Rebecca and I still are very close friends...she actually went back to school and performs sonograms on OB patients now :)  But...I still get an occasional call now and then to paint a piggy bank...and have sort of created a new style with polka dots and a cute bow.  I LOVE polka dots and CUTE ribbon...and still LOVE to personalize and paint piggy banks!

I absolutely am crazy over this one with the pink and black...too darn cute!  (Thanks Allison for being my very best customer!!...I hope Avery loves her new bank!)

And off she goes...

My sweet girl is heading to Savannah, GA tomorrow for a mission trip on her Spring Break.  Can I just brag a minute?  I am so proud of her for sacrificing her time away from school to go and serve others.  She has spent the past five months every Sunday preparing for this trip.  Morgan is in the puppet group and she has had a ball learning puppets!!  They are going to a children's home to do puppets, sign language, drama and singing as well as hanging with the children and loving on them.  Each of the kids have prepared their testimony and will be sharing that throughout the trip.  I am just so grateful to God for her servants heart and willingness to go...and I just pray that her love for others and wanting to serve will just keep on increasing as she grows.  Thank you God for blessing us with Morgan Brooke and I can't wait until Thursday when she comes back to hear how Your love was shown in Savannah!

TEAM ELAINE

     "Team Elaine"

 These are all sweet friends that came together to show love and support to one amazing girl!  

Some sweet ladies at a church made Elaine this prayer quilt.  Every time someone prays for her a knot gets tied...we tied alot of knots that night!

What a blessing she is to me!!!

A beautiful purse from Tara Byrd

Well...there has not been much "redecorating, crafting or organizing" going on around here.  What's important is taking precedent and that would be taking time to help out my girl Elaine as she recovers from surgery and soon will start chemotherapy to treat her breast cancer.  So I would like to share some pictures of a very fun night we had last friday.  We had a PJ party and got to spoil the heck out of Elaine for the night :)  We had Thai Basil for dinner and an endless amount of yummy desserts and snacks...food is so good for the soul :)  She got a ton of gifts...yeah!  After opening up her goodies, we had a very special time of praying for her...God is good!  

On the way to the trash...now it's a treasure!

So I have had these wood pictures for a very LOOONNGG time.  In this house they were in my laundry room...because they just didn't go anywhere else in my house and probably really didn't go in my LR, but hey, I had them...might as well use them.  Anyhoo...I got on this kick to clean, reorganize and decorate the LR.  These pictures were going to just HAVE to go UNTIL...I had an idea...my very own idea!  And here it goes....I have selected the pics I want to cover this already and we are outside ready to go!
The photo was cut to fit the front of the picture already.  I had a couple really really cute pics of the kids left over that were PERFECT for this project!
Then I used some spray adhesive to have the photo adhere nicely to the wood picture.  

This is sort of the finished idea...except I want to paint the edges of the picture black and change the ribbon color.  I already had this black/white toile, but it's just too bland and needs some pop!  I am also very impatient and didn't have time to run to Michael's, so I went ahead and hung them for now.

Another new do...this is for Mandy since she has given up FB for lent!

So...I cut off about 4 inches (well, I didn't personally cut it...you know what I mean!).  The back is alot shorter and from the side the angle is very sharp.  I love it and will probably keep it up until I get bored and do something else!

Happy Valentines Day

This year I actually pulled out some crafty stuff and WE MADE our own Valentine's Day cards!  Every year I have said we will do it but then I forget...uh hem...I mean procrastinate until it's too late and then we are off to Target to find the perfect card amidst 50 million different themes!!  I was sooo proud of Morgan because she came up with the design on her very own.  Here it is below...it says...."U are the best".  Then we punched in two holes so she could stick a lollipop on the card.

Morgan in the crafting zone...

These are T.J.'s below...he helped a tad :)  We used M&M's ties on with pretty red ribbon to his.  

The three of us had just a ball creating and making our own V-day cards...so much that we will definetely do it again next year!

Monogrammed frame

~Disclaimer~  this is not an original idea...I saw this really cute idea over at Bless My Nest and had to give it a try...especially since I have enough frames laying around for my entire neighborhood!

This is some leftover fabric from some drapes that my friend and I "mistreated"...isn't the fabric sooo purty?!
I guess I forgot to choose the original picture frame, but it was just a plain 'ol white frame with a matte inside.  Of course I had to spray paint it, so I chose a chocolate brown, I mean October Brown :)
I picked the striped fabric and just covered right on top of the matte.  I just used the hot glue gun to wrap the fabric to the back of the matte.
Then I took some white scrapbooking paper, and a brown paint pen to do the monogram.  I could of used my computer with a really cool font BUT...we don't have a printer up yet and I'm just impatient and wanted it to be done.  So in the future I could always just change this out...but I sorta like it right now!
This is the finished project sitting on the bedside table.  You can also see that I took some sandpaper to the frame to rough it up a little...give it that old look.  (The other reason...to cover up some of the dripping spray paint on the frame...)!
Oh yeah...I proudly went to Todd and showed him the beautiful frame I had made for us and where it sat right on his side of the bed.  He looked at it and said..."TWA...Trans World Atlantic"!!!!  What?!!  I said..."No babe, it's T for Todd, A for Ashley and W for Woodard!"