A baseball Album I made

I made this awesome little album for my grandson Alex who is 7 years old and playing baseball on Monday nights. I haven't got to see any games but had a few pictures sent to me which is what I used to start this album.

I used a blank 8 1/2 x11 portfolio. Notice the cute baseball brads that I found to use in here! On the cover I used 2 of them with some ribbon to make a closure.

The inside has 2 mini albums in the middle to add pictures as the summer goes along.

The left side I made a pocket underneath the picture of him ....maybe he will put in score sheets from the games. The big word Baseball on the middle flap is a raindot from the Fiskars line. So are the words like at bat etc and the little baseball bat & baseball. They sure added a little extra bling to this project.

I will be waiting to hear what he thought of it as he was off with his dad when I stopped by yesterday so I missed seeing him & spending some time with him. Next time I need to make my plans more firm after driving all those hours.








But to my surprise I got to see the HUGE treehouse my son was building for him. It even had windows and a foldup bench he could sit or sleep on. Hard to imagine anyone having the talent to build something like that without even having plans. I took some pictures but can't wait to see the finished product. I'm sure Alex will remember it all his life and really enjoy it during his childhood.

Fathers Day book

I haven't blogged for abit but I do have an excuse.....I have a condition called "costochondritis".
Pain caused by costochondritis may mimic that of a heart attack or other heart conditions (that's the definition) I think all the stress in my life finally caught up with my body and this kicked in big time. So I took my meds, rested ALLOT and just chilled out. We even did some fishing over the week-end and at this moment I feel all better. When it happens it can be real scarey as I don't know if it is the "real thing" or not.

I made this little paper bag album for my Kevin for father's day. He has been such a great step dad to my sons, a great grandfather and a great husband with little recognition from anyone. So while he went golfing with his dad I spent the day doing this.

I used everything from staples to ribbons to paperclips and I think it turned out well. There are 3 pockets with tags that pull out and also have pictures on them too.

I also liked that I tried a different way of making this album......instead of closing it and punching holes on the outside to tie........I opened it to the middle and made 2 sets of holes on the top and bottom and threaded ribbons thru them and tied them on the outside. Made a big difference!
I hope to get another project done today since it will be in the 90's so stay tuned!

City destruction at our home

This is the day the city came to put in swails (ditches) to solve a water problem we don't have. It was heart wrenching to watch them destroy the lawn we took care of so well for 7 years but the city has a right of way and can do what they want when they want.....so much for our taxes. Anyhow this is one side of our driveway........before and after.

This is the side in front of our home. Real pretty huh? No they did not hit our golf ball mailbox which is one reason I was out there all day watching and taking pictures. I'm not sure they had supervisors like me at every property but I watched every branch break and every scoop of dirt. I think they nick named me "trouble maker" as even the mayor was out today right before they started on our lot.

I went to the council meeting the other night and even called the mayor but all I managed was to save part of our lawn which we use as a 2nd driveway since we do own 2 lots in 2 tax parcels. Watching them work was heart wrenching but I will let the pictures tell the story. Sorry that I can't get all the pictures in order but still haven't figured that out but I'm sure you can tell where it starts & where it ends.

Landscaping project DONE!

It has been a very long week here and first I want to say thanks for all your kind words for the difficult situation I am in. I still have not been able to contact my son and Allayah's mom has not returned my emails or phone calls either so here we sit in limbo wondering when we will ever get to see our granddaughter.

We did put our time and energy into finishing landscaping our yard. We already had a pond and waterfall that my wonderful husband Kevin built plus many flower beds but we wanted to eliminate having to mow the grass back there so we dug up the rest of that section and put in more flower beds and paths. I'm sorry did I say WE.....Kevin did all that hard work. We then went and got a few truck loads of mulch for the paths. Hit some nurseries and garage sales for more perrennials which I planted and now it is time to sit back and enjoy it. Plus Kevin has to go back to work tomorrow. So enjoy the pictures.

Mean people

Well I've been trying to call my son and send emails to ask him to reconsider his decision about not letting Allayah come up here..........but nuthing. Today I went to his My Space page thinking I could leave him a message there in case he doesn't get my emails (his girlfriend has been know to go in and delete them) and under his friends was a picture of his girlfriends 3 kids(2 of them are with my son) and this is what she has written for the world to see

"Nik must be awfully powerful to keep a son away from his mother. I could rule the world! "

Yes her name is Niki and yes she is proud that has the power to keep my son and grandkids away from me but this is just plain MEAN! Don't you agree? A 28 year old woman who goes to these extreme measures just for the fun. Funny she doesn't include Allayah in the picture either since that is Tory's daughter and not her's. So if you think I felt bad yesterday........guess what.....I feel worse! Only good thing is the 1st level of our 4 level home is spotless........back to cleaning the stove and the kitchen. Say a prayer for me!

We are going to miss Allayah

It's been a rough week around here with the construction and then the scraproom disaster but I was holding on by a fine thread until yesterday. I went to Lands End private sale & I got this adorable 2pc swimsuit for Allayah who just loves to swim.....there is even a little mermaid on it. You all know how we have been waiting patiently for school to get over with this week so we could have her up here before summer school starts. She has been coming here since she was a year old and loves it up here and we try to have her as much and as often as possible.

Last night I got an email from her mother Sarah letting me know that my son Tory will not allow her to come up here anymore. We have always kept on good terms with Sarah since Tory's new woman positively hates us and does not let us see our other grandson Gavin that lives with them. She even went as far as sending his bday gifts back via UPS last summer just to spite us. We have never had a problem having Allayah up here and I can't tell you how heart broken I am that people will keep grandchildren away just to be mean. Do they not know how much they are hurting the child? I am not sure what to do besides being hurt and angry. The only way right now to handle this is to clean and keep so busy so I could be out of touch for awhile.

My scrap room is back in shape

Yes it's been a long few days living with that mess in there but yesterday on that rainy cold day Kevin finally got my shelves back up. I did promise I would keep my glass jars on my desk and not put so much weight on there again. That might have contributed to the fall.

Speaking of glass jars..........yes I did buy a few more............but what a mess cleaning that up! All those little slivers and shards of glass mixed in with the flowers and brads.........I did get a few cuts out of it. But now they are lined up nicely on my desk and I won't have to worry about them falling off any more.

My shelves turned out nice too and I found some neat organizing tools. The round basket on the left hand corner of my table I put some styrofoam in and then arranged all my jars of stickles in there upside down. I also punched out all the sizes of Fiskars squeeze punches I have and glued them along the top shelf so I would know what shapes and sizes I had.

So everything is in it's place but not sure how much scrapping I will get done this week since Kevin is on vacation. We hope to do some fishing, some landscaping, take a few long drives in the country (with the poles in the trunk just in case) and hopefully at the end of the week get our precious little granddaughter Allayah to come up and spend some time with us. The good thing is we can just do what we want when we want and sometimes the best times are had when you don't have it all planned.

Can you say BAD DAY?

I'm not talking about a bad hair day cuz that is going good today but it all started yesterday when the city showed up to start doing some ditching in front of our house to solve a water problem that we don't have. This is the before picture. The other picture is the other side of the driveway and the extra lot we own. You can't see the pink flag there (the right of way) as it is in the middle of those bushes in front of our wood pile.

Mind you we just got these letters hand delivered on Friday so really no chance to fight the city on it. Here you can see them marking how much of our lawn we are going to lose to this "swail" ditch system(about 20 feet). I called the mayor, the street department, the engineering department and our alderperson and got absolutely no where except for getting my blood pressure up and stress level up.

Here's a picture of the park side that they finished yesterday directly across from us. Nice huh? Good news is they are going to go down that side all the way to the end so we will be the last block done.

Bad news is that with all those heavy machinery out there yesterday I found that one of my glass jar full of flowers was knocked off the shelf in my scraproom. I cleaned up the mess last night and thought this morning I would do some scrapping.

I was going to move the glass jars so that no more would fall off due to the vibrations but guess what happened NOW? The shelf came away from the window and EVERYTHING fell off........... so now I have a really bad mess.......glass, flowers all mixed together. I will have to take everything off the shelves and wait for Kevin to put it back up more securely...........probably didn't help that I kept buying pretty glass jars and sorting my flowers, buttons etc..........maybe it was a little my fault? Right now I just know that I got to get out of this house before I start pulling my hair out.....maybe some chocolate and shopping might help???

colors of the rainbow

The other day I was at Goodwill and picked up this bag of mesh remnants and the colors were so pretty that they reminded me of a rainbow. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with it but for 99cents for this bag full I knew I could come up with something and this is the layout that I did. It's easier to see in the closeup but I used the purple mesh as a mat for the pictures and

then I tied a piece together and put a black button on it to use as a decoration in the center of the page. I like the way it turned out.........do you have any other thoughts on how to use this mesh?

Here is a picture of the color of the pool floors and NO the situation isn't solved yet but the pool is almost balanced and I hope to recover it by tonite and start heating it back up to a comfortable swimming temperature. The baby in the picture playing in the sand was Allayah when she was small. The artist actually painted her from a snapshot and added her to that mural. It's funny when she comes now as she will stand there looking at herself wondering if she was really that small LOL!

Well it is only 37 right now but we are heading for a high today of 69 which was the same as yesterday so off to get some stuff done around the house.

Guess what Wii been doing

Saturday night we went to visit some friends and that was the 1st time that I've seen anyone play the Wii game and it was so much fun.It was impressive that not only kids can play it but adults plus it gets you off the couch. So come Sunday morning (yesterday) we went to Best Buy and got ourself our very own Wii! We also got the Wii Fit game............did I say game? It's actually a fitness workout but fun and challenging too.

The same friends came over on Sunday and helped us hook it all up and we had to move our coffee table but after that it was just pure fun. We have played endless games of tennis which I get beat at all the time but we also have done allot of bowling and YES I can beat my darling husband who is the pro bowler around our house. We have played baseball and soccer but have not yet tried the golf. It is hard to believe all the different games and skill levels that come with it but also harder to believe that you actually get a workout standing there pretending to play the game. The sounds and the graphics are just too kewl!

The Wii fit game comes with a pad that you either stand on or step on and off it. The Wii actually keeps track of your weight and skill levels............believe me I've already had it tell me that I was unbalanced or a couch potato! We haven't had it long enuf to see what it all can do but I've had it unlock extra Yoga stuff already and it seems really funny to say that I've just finished skiing in the middle of summer. Good thing it's all re runs on the tv right now.

I don't want anyone to think that's all I have been doing as I planted a bunch more flowers and I did some weeding out there today. Still working on getting the pool back in shape and NO the paint did not dry in quite a few places.............that's sad but I'm getting it cleaned up and ready to swim whether the floor is done or not. I'll try to remember and get some pictures as I do really like the new color.

Tomorrow is also the day they supposedly are starting the ditch on our road and I've already taken before pictures and not looking forward to seeing the after pictures.

So does anyone else have a Wii? and what are your favorite games to play? Any hints for a novice like me?