Tile

Yes, we finally did it! After years of discussion, we finally installed tile in our bathrooms and laundry room. We decided to get it professionally installed instead of doing it ourselves, which turned out to be a great thing because the installer ran into a couple issues that we would not have been equipped to deal with! Anyway, without further ado, here is the finished product:

We absolutely love the look and it will be so much easier to keep clean than the carpet that used to be there (gross!)

More Crafting

I wanted to show you how I made my latest handmade flower. You need to start with approximately 8 hearts. You can punch out the hearts, hand-draw the hearts, or stencil them. I traced mine using some chipboard hearts that I had in my stash. You will want 4 larger hearts and 4 smaller hearts. The size you want will depend on how big you want your flower to be. Your largest heart will be about 2/3 the size of your completed flower.

Once you have your hearts, use your fingers or a pencil to curve them a little bit, which will make them easier to manipulate later.

Poke holes in the bottom of your hearts and put them on a brad -- smallest hearts first. Arrange the hearts around the brad and you will end up with this kind of flat looking flower.

Mist your entire flower with water so that it is easy to manipulate and then pinch each petal to get this look:

I used my handmade flower on this layout of our trip to Hawaii last year. I used MME's sketch, theme, and their new Lost & Found 2 papers, pearls, and brads.

I also made this card based the MME's card sketch & theme and using their Lost & Found Union Square and Lush Red lines.

Taos

Jesse and I had not gone to Taos except to ski, so we had fun taking my mom and Jeff there while they were here a couple weeks ago. We stayed there overnight so that we could have the time to see all of the sights. We walked around galleries and saw neat things like the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge:

the San Francisco de Asis Church:

And the Taos pueblo (my favorite):

We had a great tour of the pueblo, saw their adobe homes, and bought some art and bread:

Vintage

The Dusty Attic chipboard in the Paper Trail store (http://leaveapapertrail.com/zencart/) is perfect for those vintage-looking layouts. I paired it with paper and alphabet stickers from Fancy Pants' Its the Little Things line to create this layout of the marriage conference Jesse and I attended earlier this year.

The Big 3-0

Believe it or not, I am 30 today! Crazy, huh? It seems like there has been a whirlwind of birthdays lately. I have started making more cards and here is a birthday card that I made for my boss's birthday that was just last week:

I used Bo Bunny's Timepiece papers, Fancy Pants' It's the Little Things alphas, and Ranger's stickles on this card, all of which you can find at The Paper Trail store: http://leaveapapertrail.com/zencart.