The Surprise

Awhile back I mentioned that I was working on a new project.

Then last week I mentioned that I had a surprise to announce soon.

Then of course, as I could have predicted.... I started getting emails asking if I was pregnant.

Of course, these were mainly from female relatives who had guts. The other female relatives all just called each other to say, "Is Bobbie Pregnant?"

Then the rest of the conversation would go something like this;  "I don't know... she never tells me anything!", "You know, she thinks she's soo private but she publishes everything, including our yoga pictures on her blog."

I love it. If you are one of those relatives (Aunt Debbie, Dawn) who did email and ask, I did not reply on purpose. It was too much fun to make you sweat it out for a bit but I do appreciate your gumption.

For those of you with gumption and Patience, I can now tell you my big surprise.

Clumsy Crafter is moving, not to Hawaii as I had hoped, but I'm moving to a self hosted server. For my dad and others who might not understand it really just means that you will no longer have to type in http://www.clumsycrafter.blogspot.com/, from now on all you will have to do is go to http://www.clumsycrafter.com/ .

Nice huh? Of course if you click on the Google Friend Connect to the right hand side of subscribe to my RSS feed from the new Clumsy Crafter site, then you don't have to worry about typing anything in, do you?

So go over there, take a look around.. and please remember to change your bookmarks or favorites if that is where you have listed me at.

But if you forget and come back to this website and not the new one, don't worry.. there will be a little sign there to direct you to the right place.

See you soon. (I hope).

http://www.clumsycrafter.com/

1-1-11

2011 started with a clean sweep, literally.

• Damion cleaned the garage while I was waking up (it's a process that shouldn't be rushed)
• We raked and bagged the rest of the leaves out front.
• Went on a family walk and played on the neighborhood graffiti wall  playground. We also took a plastic bag and picked up trash on our walk. Princess Girly Girl loved making the earth "all pretty". She's such a girl.
• Went to dinner at Fudruckers, which I LOVE. I think it's the cheese sauce. It reminds me of the skating rink in the summer of 5th grade. 99% of the time I went there to see the cute boy that was always there, Jesse, and also because 98% my mom thought I only wanted to go to skate. I have no coordination, skating is just a broken hip waiting to happen.
• Took a trip to the grocery store with Damion and all three kids in tow.
• Started to declutter the house. It was that or just blow the entire thing up, which really isn't a viable option. I would loose too much fabric if there was an explosion.
• Folded the five loads of laundry that Damion did, at least until Princess Newbie wakes up in the morning and unfolds it all.
• Steam cleaned the stairs with Damion. I realized on the second to last stair that I had the steam cleaner on the wrong setting and I was only cleaning with water the entire time. I look smarter than I am.

Tomorrow we have to be at church an hour and half earlier than we normally go which means that I shouldn't have been steam cleaning the stairs until 11pm and I shouldn't just now be getting into be at almost midnight.

Tomorrow we have even more cleaning to do and Christmas decorations to take down.

2011 might start with a clean sweep but might possible end with me in the loony bin if it keeps going at this rate.

The Last of the Year (in pictures)

The last of 2010 in Pictures.. and some commentary because you all know that I don't know when to be quiet.

Woke up:

Got dressed to discover that someone ate my lipstick but I'm not mentioning names... see the pigtails?

IWelcome to Texas. I bet he has a gun, in his truck and on his hip.

 Goodwill lovin'.

 I thought about buying these for Princess Newbie but then Damion wouldn't go in public with us anymore. Wait,... why didn't I buy them?

 Met up with some beautiful girls for lunch at my favorite place, Cafe Adobe.

Saw this guy wearing this shirt and no.. it was not a joke. Almost lost my delicious lunch.

 Braved the craziest grocery store ever with a teething, sleepy toddler and a red balloon.

 Watched Free Willy 4... I didn't even know there was a Free Willy 2 or 3.

 Sat outside to watch all the neighbors do fireworks, someone stood on the doorstep and cried when it was time to come inside.

 Ending this year cuddling with my hunk of burnin' love, and our technology devices because we love them too.

Goodbye 2010. You were a good year but I believe that 2011 will be even better..... as long as coffee and chocolate remain legal.

The Mashed Cake

Last night when I was in the shower, some cute adorable baby came toddling through the shower door and into the water, fully dressed. This is a normal occurrence around here lately so I wasn't too shocked. What I was shocked about was that about a minute later, the lights went off. I started hollering to Damion to stop playing a joke and turn them back on when I saw the flashlight beam and heard him say that it was not a joke, the power was out. I was left standing in the dark shower, not dressed, with a dressed, soaking wet, and freaking out toddler.

The good news is that it was almost the girls bedtime when it went out and it was very easy to just put them to bed. Then Damion and I layed in bed and watched episodes of "The Big Bang Theory" on his Ipad until the power came back on around 11.

The bad news is that I had a lot of stuff to do online and of course, I could not connect with my laptop.

So here is one last old post from this past year. It's one of my favorites and would be very cute to serve your family for New Years if you're not a traditional black eye pea and cabbage type person, which I am not.

Mashed Potato Cake

Here's a few pictures of my newest cake April Fool's Day joke.

Looks like a cake but tastes like meatloaf with mashed potato frosting.

I even fooled His Royal Highness. He really thought that I was serving him cake for dinner. We only have cake for dinner in my dreams.

It was really easy to make. I just baked two meatloaves in cake pans with ketchup in the middle of the layers. Finally I used whipped mashed potatoes as frosting and decorated it with mashed potatoes and ketchup mix to make the peach colors.

Recycled Gift Bag Revisited

Here is another old project that was posted about this time last year. It's a gift bag made from recycled Capri Sun pouches. I'm still working on my project so I hope you're enjoying these older crafts that you might have missed.

Recycled Gift Bag:

Sometimes I hate seeing how much trash we have as a family of five. There are often days that we use an entire trash bag in one day. Lately I'm trying to throw less away. I'm saving anything glass and trying to at least let my girls play and destroy with anything cardboard. Now if I could just figure out what to do with those pesky CapriSun packages.......

I also hate buying gift bags because they cost so much now and they just get throw away! So I decided to make a gift bag out of CapriSun packages. I've made purses out of the packages before but never a gift bag. Plus after you give the gift, they can use it as a tote or purse.

I made this one for a little girl that was receiving a tea set and needed a medium sized bag for the gift. It required about 27 packages to sew. No matter how hard I tried to keep all the juice packages after the princesses drank them, a lot of them went into the trash on accident and a few of them were actually left in the backyard because the princesses thought the dogs would like some juice. At the last minute I discovered that I was a few short and had to tear apart the house looking for stray packages.

I simply overlapped the edges and used a zigzag stitch to piece them together. It was an easy project but required a lot of sewing machine needles because they dulled or broke easily. Plus my sewing machine being a direct descendant of Satan didn't help the matter.

I used large pink rick rack to make a girly handle and it was done! Quick and easy! Green and good for you since CapriSuns are preservative free.