So....

anyone remember me?  I haven't blogged in forever!  Life caught up with me!!  I also haven't posted anything new in my etsy store for a while.  I think I'm going to put my store on vacation until I have more time to devote to it... so what all have I been working on?

- teaching the 6 year old to read!!
- teaching the 6 year old to ride his bike without training wheels!
- completely remodeling our master bathroom... (I will post pictures in the next day or so when it is all done!!
-scrapbooking... I've really gotten back into it thanks to the suite crop I went to a couple weeks ago!
- week long trip to Disney World!!
- school and driving the boys here there and everywhere
- just general house things!!

I plan to blog more often and hope to get back to my etsy shop at some point soon!!

Random thoughts...

1.  Today is one of those days that I'm sure every mother has had... I have spent all day in the car!!  I am currently relaxing for the next 30 minutes and then it's back in the car for all the afternoon pick-ups!

2.  When I stopped to get gas in my car, the gas station was BLARING "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas" over the loudspeaker... in my opinion, a little early and a lot too loud.

3. Why is it, that when I request a lot of books from the library they all seem to come in at the same time even though sometimes I'll be person #2, sometimes person #60, and sometimes person #232... they all come in on the same day.

4. So yesterday morning at Walmart, Eli (my 3 year old) told the cashier and everyone in line that a new baby was coming to his house (no clue where he got that idea... I am not and will not ever be pregnant again).  They all started congratulating me... I didn't know what to say!!  Then we ran to Target last night and he's sitting in the shopping cart belting out Katie Perry's Teenage Dream all through the store.  I was trying so hard not to laugh, but hearing a 3 year old singing, "put your hands on me in my skintight jeans" is absolutely hilarious.  That kid cracks me up on a daily basis!!

5.  I've had a big ol' crockpot of chili cooking all day and it smells delicious!!  It has taken every ounce of willpower in my body not to eat any of it!  Hopefully hubby will be home soon so we can eat!!

6.  The tree in my front yard is still bright red and absolutely beautiful!!!!  It hasn't seemed to have lost any leaves yet, hopefully it will stay beautiful for a couple more weeks!!

7.  I listed some Cricut cartridges on my etsy store (My store).  I have duplicates of some cartridges and so I'm looking to sell the duplicates (all are brand new in the hard plastic shell).  I usually list them on ebay, but I've had a lot of problems lately with people winning auctions and then not paying... it's really frustrating.

8.  I know I've had some other random thoughts today, but they escape me right now, so I will stop here!!

Beautiful...

Yes, I'm jumping straight from Dirty Jobs to Beautiful things, but I just want to share something beautiful.  This is the tree in my front yard...

The other pictures are looking up into the tree at the leaves... absolutely beautiful!! I Love Fall!!!!

Dirty Jobs???

Isn't there some show on TLC or Discovery channel or some channel about Dirty Jobs???

I've never watched it, but I would really like to know if they have ever interviewed the truly dirtiest job in the world... you know the one I'm talking about... those of you who live (like me) in a household full of males... yes, I'm talking about cleaning the boys' toilet!!  I just spent an hour taking the toilet apart and bleaching every part of it to try and get the urine smell gone.  It's disgusting!!

Well now that I've said that and I feel better and the entire upstairs of our house has a slightly bleachy smell to it, I'm going to go do something crafty!!

Leech trapper, cricket farmer.... HA!!  Go hang out with a 6 year old boy and a 3 year old boy!!  Ok, so the dung beetle researcher may have me on the dirtiest job... and with that I will not google the Dirty Jobs show anymore!!

It's beginning to look a lot like....

Christmas around here!!

First off, let me say that I am FINALLY starting to feel like a human again.  I have had this horrible sinus infection for about 3 weeks and now that I'm half way through with my second half of antibiotics, I think they are finally starting to work!!

Ok, so why is it beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here?!?!?  Nope, no snow in Kansas yet!!

Here's my top 10 list of why I think it's beginning to look like Christmas...

10.  I had to pull out the boys' heavy winter coats today... don't think we are going to get by on the fleece anymore!!

9.  Our heater actually kicked on during the day!  We leave it set at 63 so it's kicked on at night a few times, but yesterday was the first time it kicked on during the day!

8.  There are very few leaves left on our trees!!

7.  We receive at least 3 magazines/catalogs in the mail everyday (none of which I signed up for, I think?!?!?)

6.  Everytime I log onto ebay there is a countdown till Christmas - FYI... as of today there are 41 days!!

5.  My children have started cutting apart every single magazine we have received in #8 to make a pictorial list of what they want for Christmas.

4.  Every store I have been into this week has all of their Christmas decorations out (a couple have even been playing Christmas music).

3.  The invites to the holiday parties have started appearing.

2.  Thanksgiving is in a week and a half!!

1.  I have started posting Christmas decorations and gifts in my etsy shop... SkinnyJenny Etsy shop

Fun stuff!!

I've been adding some fun stuff to my etsy store today (and plan to add some more tonight and tomorrow)!!

Check it out... Etsy

Another treasury!!

My pilgrim die cuts got picked up on another treasury... check it out... Etsy treasury

Moving right along to Thanksgiving!!

I went ahead and have started listing some of my die cuts in my etsy shop.  The first set I will share on here... they are an embellished male and female pilgrim silhouette... I think they turned out really well!!

So the best thing about this is... I posted these cute little pilgrims in my etsy shop and about 15 minutes later I received an email saying that they had been picked up to be showcased in a Thanksgiving treasury!!
You should go check out all the super cute items listed in the treasury!!

Happy Halloween!!

I'm not a huge fan of Halloween, but it's ok!!  There's just so much sugar and junk involved with it that I could take it or leave it, but since my kids love Halloween,  I soldier through it.  For the kiddos classes this year, I decided to go with a non-candy option to hand out, and with the help of Buzz and Woody (my kids' costume choices) we decided to hand out play-dough.  Target had these packs of 20 little containers of play-dough for like $3 each.  We got a couple packs, but the boys and I decided that the little containers looked super boring by themselves so I decorated them... I think they turned out super-cute... what do you think??

I used my cricut to cut out the spiders and then I used a 3-d glue dot to attach the spiders to the top of the containers.  I then used my computer to print out little strips that said "Happy Halloween!!  From: David" (or Eli - for his class).  I was able to use black scraps for the spiders so the whole project was not very costly at all!

So, the very interesting thing is that I got a TON of comments on them so I've decided to add another category to my etsy shop... I will now be selling embellished die cuts by themselves as well as die cuts attached to certain items (for instance playdough containers.)  These die cuts will be perfect for making cards, scrapbook pages, bulletin boards, etc.  Stay tuned for more fun surprises!!!

Some shirts (well actually onesies)

I have a dear friend whose third kiddo will be 1 this weekend and she is having a cowboy themed party for him.  So she asked (or I suggested... I don't remember) that I make him a cowboy shirt for his party.  I have some of the CUTEST vintage cowboy material.  When I say vintage it came from my mom's stash of material (and possibly she got it from my grandma's stash).  I was going to make a long-sleeve t-shirt, but it's virtually impossible to find 18 month long sleeve t-shirts so I went with a long-sleeve onesie.  This is probably my most favorite shirt I have made to date...

The other most recent shirt (onesie) I made was for the same friend.  It is a gift for her niece Zoe.  Here are the pics of that one...

Remember you can click on any image to see a close up of the picture!!