Jennifer's Birthday Celebration

Remember this girl? I have known Jennifer for about 14 years now. I made her a special birthday dinner the other night. Lemon dill baked salmon with rice, veggies, sparkling wine, and a Boston cream birthday cake with a single pink candle. I made sure to let her know not to waste this birthday wish. I told her to put ALL of her heart, and energy into this one single exhale. Hoping that moment of positive energy will bring good things, and possibly her wish WILL come true!
Her and her boyfriend stayed over for a couple of nights, and the weather cooperated! We took advantage and went for a little day drive out to the waterfalls.

We had to hike to the falls in the snow. 3 out of 4 of us did not have the right shoes on for this adventurous hike, making the experience hilariously memorable.

We went on down the road a little bit, and ended up at Odell Lake Resort for lunch. The frozen lake was a treat to see. We made sure these city slickers were not easily going to forget this trip.

All of the food on the menu is fresh, homemade, and delicious!

As always our adventure was a blast, and I think our guests had a great weekend "away from it all".

Our First Wind Advisory at the Homestead

Wayne and I were entertaining guests that had just arrived at our house when a wind storm picked up. There was so much debris in the yard, and I said, "Whoa this is crazy!" Then Wayne suggested they bring the cars closer to the house. As soon as he said that 2 trees fell knocking over a 3rd tree and one of them dented our guests rental car. The guys instantly went to work clearing out the driveway.. The ladies and I stood watching from the window. It was how I imagine hurricane winds to be. I saw Wayne start running towards the house and I looked out at the wind directly head on. The debris was blowing down and back up at the house hitting the windows. We looked out at the yard and saw another tree had fell. We all felt in danger. The only thing I could do was watch where the wind was coming from, and watch the trees. If I saw one coming towards us we were going to run to the opposite side of the house. The whole experience was unreal. We expect that we had 40+ mph wind gusts. Our guests wanted to get out of here ASAP! It was going to be dark soon, and they wanted to be able to see the roads and be able to call us to meet them if there was something that fell on the road. I insisted on staying at a hotel if this kept up. No way in hell I would be able to sleep seeing what we just saw. Trees are snapping like twigs! Somehow as our guests left so did the wind. What are the chances?! We are QUITE embarrassed by their experience of our property.. 

The tree we thought fell in the yard was actually half of the top of this tree below. 

On the plus side:

We have TONS (literally) of new firewood!

Also Kola brightens things up a bit. She doesn't have the slightest clue as to how much work this storm has caused us, but she is just filled with joy that we were all outside and able to throw toys for her in between hauling, raking, and cutting the debris & trees. She helps us take mental breaks from the work and keeps us laughing.

What a goober pants! ♥

SUNRIVER - A Great Start to the New Year

Wayne has a friend visiting from Hawaii and he and his fine lady wanted us to come out to Sunriver to catch up on things. We have also been dying to go out to the observatory! Having watched 4 Seasons of The History Channel's "The Universe" (so far). We have been looking for an opportunity just like this. You also can't beat the views both of snowy mountains, and perfect starry nights.
Our visit was a blast. Great food, and company. We had intellectual conversations with a side of sparkling wine and a movie night. My kind of people!

We showed up for the solar viewing to see the sun up close, and we had just missed a solar flare an hour earlier but could still see remnants of it. The photo of the sun is the photo that the Observatory at Sunriver posted on their facebook page. I couldn't help but share exactly what I saw! 

These are also photos from their facebook page down below. I couldn't capture the mind blowing experience in my camera without a tripod, but wanted you to see exactly how beautiful the view was(I'll be more prepared next time).

Visit the Observatories website HERE.

Happy New Year! 2014

Time to celebrate Page 1 of 365.

We enjoyed a quiet evening with some champagne for New Years. I put my stocking stuffer Rifle Paper Co. notebook to work with some new ideas for the shop. I am getting ready for Valentine's Day. That may sound weird to a lot of you.. But I am trying to stay ahead of things. So I should have a lot of new things listed very soon!

I wish you all a VERY happy and successful 2014! 

How To Make a Simple Photobooth Backdrop

You will need:

Scrapbooking paper in the color and texture of your choice, a sewing machine, a dowel(mine was a cedar fence board that was cut with a table saw), tape, and a circle paper punch(mine was 2 1/2 inches).

Start punching your circles out. I used 3 different types of gold paper. 2 in which were glitter paper.. I recommend keeping your scrapbooking paper simple. The glitter kept getting stuck in the puncher, and jamming it. It hurt my hands, and I wished that I would have just used the simple shiny gold paper instead for the whole project. The backdrop would have been bigger, but my hands hurt from stamping the thick glitter paper. So there is my 2 cents on paper types. Keep it simple.

Once you are ready to start sewing them together - Make sure that you have quite a bit of thread extended out to begin with. It will be the top of the strand. You will need enough to wrap that thread around the dowel when the strand is completed.

Make sure to have your tension loose, and will you have to pull the paper while sewing to separate the circles. If you don't the thread will cinch together leaving no gap between the circles. 

I made my strands all different lengths. The shortest had 17 dots, and the longest had 24.

 I wrapped the thread around the dowel at least twice. I then taped the thread in place on the top, and on the back. It would be wise to staple gun the tape also. I did not, but made sure to be VERY gentle in transporting, and untangling.

The end result was about 5 feet tall and 4 feet wide. The project took me about 6 hours, but I had a hard time as you know. The time would have been cut in half if I had stuck with a simple flat surfaced paper. So do take that into consideration.

Now that it is completed, Get those photo props ready! I got mine HERE. Enjoy!

Thanksmas 2013

My family came up with a between holidays- holiday quite a few years ago. Everyone has their own family functions on major holidays, so we  created a tradition for the extended family to all get together once a year on Thanksmas. Our Thanksgiving/Christmas. This year it was at my sisters house. She changed things up on us with an ugly sweater contest! Which I won 3rd place. I knew we had to have a photobooth with all of these ugly sweaters around. I sent my sister some photo props, and started sewing up glittered scrapbooking paper for the photo backdrop. I used a 2 1/2 inch circle punch to cut out the circles, and sewed them together to make 3-4 foot strands. I wrapped the thread around the small cedar wood rod I magically had laying around, and taped the thread on the top and back of the rod holding it in place (obviously not a permanent solution). Everything worked out the way I had planned, except some people are missing!
I went home and made a hilarious animated gif of my niece and I dancing the night away. Check that out HERE!

It was a good time as always!

The ugly sweater contest rule was if you don't wear one, then you have to bring a prize. My aunt thought that the prize should be ugly also. This horribly scary Christmas caroler doll was the perfect trophy(photo below on the left). The camper ornament to the right is the ornament I brought for our annual family ornament exchange. It was a hit! 

We are already making plans for next year! Can't wait.. 

♥

Winter Wonderland

Our (pre)winter wonderland lasted about a week. We had record breaking freezing temperatures, so it stuck around a while. Giving us plenty of time to play! We had so much snow for so long, we actually got a little tired of it. 

A bird hit our living room window one of those days (I am a bird expert now). They need a dark quiet place to recover. I closed up one of my large shipping boxes, and tore a large hole in the top. Placed a rag in there(because it was ridiculously cold out, and had been lying in the snow). Leave the box outside in a covered area. When they have recovered, they will fly away. We also had an interesting experience with hummingbirds! We had a thawing system going for the hummingbird feeders. They would freeze solid every couple of hours, and one night Wayne went out to bring it in, and found a hummingbird sleeping on the feeder. Apparently it thought it would die if it lost its only source of food, so it was worth it to sleep there all night. The majority of hummingbirds migrate, but if feeders are left out some will stay through winter. So you have to pay attention to them, or they will die. They are completely dependent on you. We are obviously now up for the job after learning that!

Next blog post: UGLY SWEATER PARTY!