Apparently, I'm Very Versatile

because Steph S, from "A Day In The Life Of A Grad Student's Wife" has presented me with another "Versatile Blogger" award! Thank you so much Steph!

UPDATE: Jessica, from Caterpillar Family passed this on to  me the next day so I'm cheating a bit and combining it with Steph's. 

Steph has a lovely blog and right now she's got a feature called and a picture of my favorite drink in the entire world, a Starbuck's Iced Mocha, so you know we get along fine! And she has an etsy store with some very cool signs.

So now on to the rules of the award and I have to say, I have a dilemma. I have been fortunate to receive a few of these lately and since you have to tell 7 things about yourself and I am just NOT that interesting, I'm going to modify this a bit. I have mentioned that I can relate almost anything to a movie so I'm going to list the 7 movies I've seen at least 7 times!

1. "The Godfather"
2. "The Godfather Part Two"
3. "Steel Magnolias"
4. "The Color Purple"
5. "Terms of Endearment"
6. "Rocky"
7. "The Hunt For Red October"

How's that for versatile? And now to the 15 bloggers to whom I'm passing this on:

1. 504 Main (Holly loves mochas too!)
2. Beyond The Picket Fence
3. Blommi
4. Cindy Adkins Whimsical Musings
5. Decor Chick
6. Diary of A Chocoholic ('nuff said!)
7. Envirocraftiness
8. Flamingo Toes
9. Less Cake More Frosting
10. Life By Chocolate
11. Ma What's For Dinner?
12. Mom. Undecided
13. Roller Coaster Life
14. Sweet European Dreams
15. These Creative Juices

Please go check out these wonderful blogs! Thanks again Steph!

Woo Hoo! We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Blogging

to say that I reached 200 followers today!!!!!!!!!!!

THANK YOU all of you lovely people who are following me! I will be celebrating this milestone with a giveaway which I'll announce when I have my first ever link party one week from today.

We now return you to your normal programming.

Reading Glass Cases

Welcome to those stopping in from

I'm always on the lookout for things I can do away from home, either in the car or to take with me when I travel. I saw this idea somewhere that of course for the life of me I can't remember , so if anyone has an aha moment, let me know .

I love working with felt because it's so forgiving. So I made these felt reading glass cases which were :

1. Easy
2. Inexpensive
3. Functional

I made a pattern out of some scrap printer paper...a basic rectangle with a chunk cut away:

Fold the left side over to line up with the right and do a blanket stitch with embroidery floss. I started on the bottom left, worked my way around the top and then across the fold area. I used the section I cut away to make a double layer of the top which helps when you stitch across the fold. Sorry no pics...I was doing these in the car over the 4th of July weekend.  When you're done with your stitching, freehand cut random shapes to embellish your case (great way to use scraps) and add whatever misc things you have on hand...I have a stash of misc. buttons.  It was  also a great way to use up extra flowers I had left over from another project:

How Could I NOT Blog About This?

Giveaway: Chocolate Bliss Cookbook & Nielsen-Massey Vanilla. 

Hello? You've seen my blog name? Happy Happy Joy Joy! Over at BLOMMI's site ( which is the combination of blogger and mommy ...genius!) she's hosting a giveaway for this incredible book which yours truly would have absolutely no use for (you didn't really fall for that part did you?) :

 and a bottle of Nielsen&Massey Vanilla which is to bakers what 12 year old scotch is to those who appreciate that stuff.  With Nielsen&Massey Vanilla you can make things like this: 

 

Yes, I did that to you. If I suffer, you suffer! So head on over to BLOMMI's blog and check out the details how you can win this for me, er um, I mean win this for yourself ! G'head...I linked it for you and everything.

 

What The Heck Wednesday....

I won! That's what the heck! What am I talking about? Jill over at Envirocraftiness has a feature called..."What The Heck Wednesday". In her own words:

It's going to be called "What the heck do I do with this?" Wednesdays.

Aka What the heck Wednesday!

This is where I pull something I want to use up from my stash and you all get to leave comments and let me know what you think I should do with it. 

 

I love this idea because her blog is focused on crafting and recycling and WTHW  requires using up existing supplies aka "stash busting" and generates creative ideas from followers about what the heck to do with some of the stuff  in her stash.  I commented on one of these about a tray she was trying to decide what to do with and I won the prize. I never win anything so can anyone tell what a treat it was for me to receive her email telling me I won? Lookie what I get: 

 which I can't wait to drool over.  So thanks Jill! For a great recurring feature,  for the prize ( I won..did I mention?)  and reminding us to use what we have (says the person who needs to work on that!)

Time In A Bottle

I'm no Michelangelo, who saw things in a block of marble, but when my husband finished off a bottle of his favorite adult beverage, I saw this idea in the bottle. No, I hadn't been helping him finish it off when I started seeing things!

 

I've been intrigued by bottles and this one was both old looking and had a great shape and made a fun backdrop. Keeping with the "time" thing ( which is perfect since Mr. Chocolate loves watches and clocks so "time" is a theme in our house). 

I started out with the bottle, Mod Podged some sheet music and painter's masking tape around it:

You know how you get into a project and then you forget to take pictures? Yep. I went looking in my stash o stickers and found a sheet of time themed ones by Kelly Panacci, one of which I used for the focal and then fought with, I mean super glued, the copper K&CO frame to it. A couple of weeks ago, I bought a jar full of chandelier crystals at an antique shop ( used some of them on my bird cage) and made a "stopper" from one. Wrapped the top of the bottle w/ twine and a muslin scrap ( this is usually the kind of thing Mr. Chocolate asks "What made you do that?" and I answer "No clue, next question").

A couple of months ago I picked up a magical bag of watch parts so I pulled one out and glued it to one of the containers I picked up at the same time, and then glued that to the front of the bottle. I took another piece from the bag, put it in a bottle cap, filled it with "Diamond Glaze"  and once dry, glued that to the bottle. Last but not least, I inked a vellum tag with black and linen ink, used some more of the "time" stickers, and glued some small keys to the tag, attached a bead and tied it to the bottle

Now the funny part. I picked up the most recent copy of "Somerset Studio" and lo and behold, what do they have featured? A "Time In A Bottle" project. So clearly I'm not the only one with visions of time and bottles :)

Linking Up At:

What Day Is It Again? And a Card.

Monday holidays always mess me up because I'm one day off for the rest of the week. So my brain says it's Monday but the calendar clearly says Tuesday which means it's time for Tuesday blog hopping. Thanks to anyone stopping in from :

Here's a card  made for my Auntie's Birthday:

• Basic 5x7 cream card (I made mine from Domatar Feltweave Cardstock)
• Cut 5x7 panel from "Me & My Big Ideas" Venice paper ( I love their papers because they're double sided); adhere to card
• Paper flower made from coordinating scraps ( cut descending sized circles, tear edges, scrunch and layer)
• Coordinating acetate strip from stash; layer to scrap of cardstock same width as card with edges torn
• Sentiment. I like to minimize waste / maximize use of my supplies so I created a page of birthday sentiments in my desktop publishing program and printed it out on a transparency. I think I fit 15 different birthday related sayings in different fonts on one sheet so I can just cut them out as needed.