Finally....

Seriously. I am the Queen of the Procrastinators. I am completely and totally aware of it - I have come to embrace that aspect of my personality. Well, almost. With that in mind, I have been telling myself and promising everyone in my family that I will start a little shop on Etsy.com. I started the promises about a year ago - or more.

Finally... I did it! I sat down and just got it done! And I feel so much better about it. I named my little shop Pamcakes. Mark gave me the nickname when we first started dating and I thought it would be a really cute name for the shop. Right now, I just have some greeting cards that I designed. The photo above is one of my little cards. I have hope of adding a few more goodies to the site very soon. So... stop on by my little Etsy shop when you have the time.

Luxe and the City...

Carrie is witty & funny. She is the creative one and deep down she just wants to be loved This kit was inspired by Carrie's funky chic fashion sense and was put together in honor of Sex & the City's opening weekend at the box office. Join the Luxe and the City Celebration and post on this blog by Tuesday 5 PM CST for your shot to win "the Carrie". Check the other Luxe girls' blogs for "the Samantha", "the Miranda" and "the Charlotte". Also look for "the Manhattan" on the Luxe blog and our"If Carrie and Charlotte got together to crop..." t-shirts on our Facebook and MySpace pages. Have a fabulous weekend and LIVE LUXE!

Sometimes...

... you just need a S'more. The other night I thought it would be fun on my way home to pick up stuff to make S'mores. We have a gas stovetop at our house and I can roast a marshmallow like the best of 'em! Mark has never experienced "indoor S'mores" - so, I thought I should let him in on my skills. It was the best dessert ever. It took me back to my SoCal roots and bon-fires on the beach.... Ah, the good ol' days.

Even Miss Abby wanted in on the action... but really who am I kidding - she's up for anything involving food. However, she did con us into a graham cracker... sneaky girl.

In the know...

Just a little insight to being a "professional" scrapbooker - you can't always scrapbook photos of your family. Honestly, you get a little tired of looking at their mugs (no offense.) So, you have to ask friends for copies of their photos etc. When you have exhausted all of those options - you have to turn to stock photography. I diligently peruse pages and pages of photos until I find just the right one. Here are two examples: One is a layout using a great photo from my friend, Paulo. And the other from a stock photography site - isn't she a cutie.



It's a little running joke in the office. I make pages like this and say... "I'm sure 'someone' loves her." Or sometimes I give them names... but you get the idea. The hardest part is to make sure you keep the same name if you intend to use the photo on another layout. The best part is being able to name them names that you have always liked, but weren't sure that you would ever name your child that name. Kind of silly - but now you are in the know.

So simple...

A couple of things that I have learned over the last week:

a.) Plumbing will always get the best of you - emotional breakdowns are to be expected.
b.) Employees at home improvement centers have a gift of explaining projects that make them seem simple.

(Oh, look who is in the picture saying hello... well, I guess it could be the Chairman Mao statue that Mark's buddy so lovingly brought home from Singapore for him. Mark thought that our kitschy little phone center would be the PERFECT place to display it. I'm sorry, is the sarcasm that apparent? But, really it's Apollo.)

This bathroom is exhibit A. Our house was built in the sixties. When we first moved in here. I thought I was going to HATE the vintage tile in the bathrooms. We were pleasantly surprised at how it had a way of growing on us. Now we understand that some individuals have been blessed with avocado green, harvest gold or Pepto Bismol pink tiles. We, however, were one of the fortunate houses that reserved themselves from the trend and went with white and black. Praise the good Lord! As a design girl I thought, "hey... I think I can work with this." And we started our "little weekend project."
a.) We needed to paint the walls.
b.) We needed a new faucet. (thanks to my 'rents... they put that in for us in November.)
c.) We needed a new light fixture.
d.) We needed a new shower head with an extension to raise the shower head above our heads. We were both a little tired of a short shower.

Sounds pretty simple, right? Yeah.... well we got through steps a-c relatively easy. It was step "d" that beat us down. I made the mistake of thinking that I could easily take the shower head off myself and replace the pipe thingie with the new extension. WRONG. OH, SO VERY WRONG! I broke off the old rusty - crusty- been there since Kennedy was in office-pipe and left threads behind in the said pipe. Two trips to the HD, 5 days and two emotional meltdowns later we still didn't have the new fancy shower head installed. We finally asked our trusty handyman to help us and in NO time at all and very simply I might add... he had it fixed. Behold our finished little vintage tile bathroom.


I think it really came together nicely. I think the mirror is my favorite part of the whole space. I have actually had that mirror for over 4 years. I used it as a full length mirror until we moved to this house. It couldn't have worked out better in the bathroom. I LOVE when things can be re-purposed.

A new winner...

... and I choose lucky number 7.

Steph said...

I love the layout you made! Such a fun picture!

So... Steph from Nashville, Tennessee - email me with your address and I will send you the goods.

A big thank you to all that of you that played along. Please check back from time to time... I LOVE giving away goodies.

.......................................

And here's another layout... just to keep the ol' blog looking pretty. Enjoy.

Getting into my groove...

... and blogging. I think I may have even surprised myself. I have blogged three days in a row. I will be the first to admit that I am terrible about updating. I am making it one of my goals to blog more often. Even if it's as simple as just uploading a new project. So there it is... it's on the blog for all the world to see - not that I think the whole world reads this thing, but if they wanted to... they certainly could.

I thought I would share another layout created for Emily's Luxe challenge. It has been such a fun and inspiring few weeks at Luxe. I have completed more layouts that I have in a long time. I have so much to share with you all - so keep checking back.

Mark took this photo at the Polyphonic Spree concert a few months ago at the House of Blues. I think it goes so well with the diagonal stripe paper from the Polo Shirt line. Enjoy!

Faking it...

... yep! We faked it for one really quick photo. Just a little background on this layout, Mark and I have a lot in common - including our fear of ferris wheels. Especially, the "fair-type" ferris wheels! And one poor choice in judgment, fueled by a couple of beers and peer pressure from friends... we decided it wouldn't be SO bad. WRONG. Oh-so-very-very WRONG! It was sheer terror for what felt like an hour, which in reality was only 5-7 minutes. Although, you would never know with those faked smiles!

Back to blogging...

... and loving the color pink. (And the color turquoise! I will share that later.) And... loving a giveaway. I thought it would be fun to have another giveaway just... well it's really because I forgot about National Scrapbook Day! So here it is....


Leave a comment on this post to enter in the drawing. You have until Friday, May 9! I am looking forward to hearing from you.

I created the layout pictured above, last week. It's part of the "Scrap your Stash" challenge with Luxe. Make sure to check out the fun stuff we are doing over there too!