Happy Wednesday! There are 59 days until the walk! We have our final design and we are ready to start placing orders for Jack's Pack shirts.
The price for shirts this year is $12. 50% of sales go directly to the March of Dimes! Sizes available include:
Youth XS-XL and Adult S-3XL
To order a shirt, please email me at AbbiPena@yahoo.com or Maggi at Maggi.Campbell@gmail.com…
The first week of the 30 Day Shred challenge is complete. I will say that multiple days this week I could barely walk and I complained A LOT… but I am excited that I have stuck with this and I’m excited to keep going. I will say I think I wouldv’e quit after day 2 if I didn’t have the support from everyone else. And by support I mean Facebook messages bitching about how Jillian Michaels is a bitch. Shred on!
Greg and I were also busy this week with his family. His sister-in-law had an unexpected heart attack and could really use some prayers!
Friday night after a hospital visit, Greg took me out to a nice dinner in Shadyside. We don’t get down their often so it was a nice change of pace. MMM fresh scallops.
Saturday was an exciting day… I finally got a manicure & HOCKEY IS BACK! We met up with some friends to watch the first game at a new joint in Robinson (Latitude 40). We even made the local news station’s website. Check it out!
(still loving anything grey)
Today is all about sports. The Hoosiers pulled out the W. NFL is in full force (notice that the first game got me through my workout today) and the Pens start @ 7.
Dinner is in the oven (buffalo chicken potato casserole) – thanks Pinterest!
Hope everyone had a great weekend.
My goal for 2013- update the blog more frequently. Lets see how long I can go trying to post weekend updates.
Our week was pretty blah with Greg battling the flu.
Friday we were able to get out to a fun dinner with the Hough’s to celebrate a new chapter of their life 
Saturday Greg stayed in bed while I cheered on the Hoosiers and finished taking down the Christmas decor.
Saturday night I joined the neighborhood gals (& Ciara) for a theater show.
Today (Sunday) was a complete lazy day filled with football. Sad we don’t have a team left in the playoffs but it’s still the best time of the year for NFL! It was over 60 degrees outside today so it was nice to enjoy a little of that. Sounds like the 30′s are coming back tomorrow so it was nice while it lasted.
Tomorrow I will join in on the 30 day shred challenge with some fellow family members. If you know me, you know I don’t do working out. I could stand to get in shape but I am hesitant to say I’m extremely motivated/excited. We shall see!
So I lied when I said I would only be a day late on my Pinterest Christmas post. I underestimated wanting to relax/unpack the day after a trip to Indiana for Christmas and a 6 hour drive. Oh well. For this week of:
I was sort of lacking creativity/motivation/etc. and it was especially hard to be excited to make another Christmas craft when Christmas is over 
Next year (if I participate in a series like this again) I hope to start making these crafts way before the Christmas season even starts so I can enjoy them longer. Oh well… my PINspiration this week came from this:
BUT I would be lying if I said I planned this to be one of my projects. I guess my REAL PINspiration came from Kendra & Michelle:
Ab and I attempted to head out the day after Christmas to pick up supplies and complete together but the “Blizzard 2012” put a damper on this.
I planned on making the larger cone the red tree because I really loved Michelle’s color combo, BUT my larger cone was green styrofoam (smaller one is white) and it made more sense to put the green yarn on the green cone in case of any spaces while wrapping. I had red spray paint but no green (and didn’t feel like venturing out) so red on the small and green on the big it is. I also even made myself complete the large cone first because I knew that I would sick of wrapping pretty quickly (I completed the below project for a cute fall decoration so this wasn’t my first rodeo involving cones and yarn).
I pinned the start of the yarn at the bottom of the cone and started wrapping. It took me a while to find out the best method but I settled with holding the cone upside down to do the bottom portion (resting the other end on my leg) and spinning the cone around as I pulled the yarn. I also used my other hand to constantly push up the yarn as I laid each layer to eliminate spacing. I have NO clue if the method I just described makes any sense but it’s the best I can describe.
so if you’re looking at the above photo, I used my right hand to pull the string and used my left hand (thumb) to push up the string I just laid on the cone. After I got through about half of the cone, I flipped it back right side up and did the same method.
after finishing the wrapping it was as simple as heating up the hot glue gun and adding some pom poms!
for the red tree, the only difference was spray painting the cone prior to wrapping the yarn. This isn’t a necessity but I knew it would be better off.
love these trees! I might have to look for cute little stars to put on the top! and I think I’ll add some more white poms to the red tree
be sure to check out the other pinterest chritmas projects from this week:
Misha’s Magazine Bows & Chalkboard Art
So the local Indiana news referred to the snow storm we received yesterday as “blizzard 2012″ – this was quite dramatic. But the blizzard did put a cramp in my pinterest Christmas Thursday post. Greg and I are currently back en route to Pittsburgh so check back tomorrow for my yarn trees that I am copying from Kendra and Michelle
Kinda disappointing but I don’t have a fabulous craft to share with everyone this week. I was tempted to go out on Tuesday night to buy supplies and make the adorable Yarn Trees that Kendra posted. I’ve decided maybe next week I will try to do another “intense” project when I am home with Abbi so I can convince her to join in.
So anywho – here we go for week 3 of:
I did some small projects around the house that I am going to attempt to share with little pictures or tutorials.
First – how should we display our Christmas cards? Our pantry door is white and boring so I attempted to jazz it up. I bought ribbon and some plain clothespins from Michael’s. I thought (for maybe 13 seconds) about buying glue and loose glitter and making my clothespins very pretty but I opted for less of a mess and went with glitter spray paint. I taped the ribbon on the inside of the door (top and bottom) and just added cards as they came in!
Close up of the clothespins (thanks for modeling Gilbertson family)
Looking like lonely people with 2 cards…
And then finally they started rolling in…
Maybe next year we should think about sending a cute Christmas card to friends and family.
Next up: Felted Garland. My PINspiration:
So Misha was a rockstar with her felted garland a few weeks ago. I planned to do this until I saw words like wool and roving… eek. My savior (Amazon) had these cute felt balls (already made) for sale.
Thanks to Amazon Prime, they arrived in 2 days and I took a trusty needle and some twine and went to town.
Turned out to not be like what I imagined but I guess it’s still cute. Because the bigger balls (ha) are heavier it doesn’t lay like I would prefer but imperfection is in from what I hear.
my stocking holders were perfect for swooping? the garland (yes, we still don’t have stockings but I am determined to buy these after Christmas)
OK now for my fail of a project that I don’t have time to complete before heading to Indiana for Christmas.
My PINspiration:
I thought this was so simple/cute for the front porch. Who would’ve thought putting lights on an upside down tomato cage would make it look like a tree?
Issue #1 – Greg and I went to Home Depot and the only tomato cage I found was 5 ft. tall. Yikes. (Rodney likes to keep me company while I craft)
Issue #2 – I worked on this late Tuesday night and only had 9 ft. of garland and a set of 100 mini lights. See below for how far that gets you.
Although it didn’t pan out like I planned with my initial supplies, I think once we return from the holidays I will get more lights & garland (hopefully on a good sale!) and finish. I might also look for a 3 ft. tomato cage to put next to it.
LAST thing… my boss thought it would be nice to give some of the teams we work with a 6 pack of holiday beer. I agreed but of course knew we had to spruce them up! Ab made these last year and I thought they were adorable.
My PINspiration:
We bought 12 6-pack’s and I signed up to complete 8 of them (big mistake when you are trying to wrap presents, pack for home, do laundry, etc.). It actually went quite quick after I got the hang of it. For 12 6-packs I’d say the supplies only cost about $10 (which in my opinion is pretty cheap to give it a little holiday spirit). All you need is some brown pipe cleaners (5 for every 3 beers), red fuzzy balls, eye balls, scissors and a hot glue gun!
Enough of my random projects. Check out the other ladies’ projects this week and come back next week for yet another Christmas craft.
Misha & Amanda’s Paper Tree Forests
Kendra & Michelle’s Yarn Trees
Abbi’s Christmas Goodies
