It's Been a While

I'm still here. Just scrambling to stay afloat at the moment. The upside of having two bad head aches back to back was that I got to listen to a lot of the Olympics that I would have otherwise missed. The downside was losing over two days to the head aches. Bah. They are gone now and I have been caffeine free for four whole days in an attempt to eliminate one possible contributing factor (since the family can't be eliminated). I have to say I continue to feel just a pillow away from a nap at any given time, but I'm making it. Yay.

The above are my parent's birthday presents. I can say that because odds are they will not come across this in the next few days. I am always and continually at a loss as to what to give them and have been trying to make things that I feel they would appreciate - not like the square mug I made them once....or the mug that said "B'S" because our last name started with B. Apparently my Mom took that one another way. Oops. Their birthdays have come and gone but we will be seeing them this weekend and I like to save on postage, simple enough.

I started with layering paper and tissues on top of a piece of muslin covered in diluted white glue. I just spread more glue over everything as I added layers. I have seen this done on Quilting Arts TV more than once, but here is the link to the tutorial from the most recent encounter I had with the idea. You may have to register to be able to see it, so for reference it's project 409-2 that I used as my starting point. I didn't turn mine into vegetable shaped pillows though. Once I had my paper base I did some stamping on top and then added silhouettes of both of my girls that I cut out of black card stock. Getting their silhouettes was really easy. I took a picture of them standing against a wall in profile then uploaded it to picnik where I scaled it to the actual size I wanted it and then traced it right off the monitor onto a piece of white paper which I used as my template for the final cut out. Adjusting the exposure also helped to be able to see the silhouette a bit better. And let me say that the pictures were in no way fussy. I believe neither had had their hair brushed, they were in their pajamas and it was just point and click. I would show you how un-fussy they were, but really, they are not even shareable.

So now it's time to clean the house, as my parent's haven't been to visit in a year now and we have a whole new kitchen to show off. Last time they were here we didn't have a kitchen, so we've greatly improved what we have to offer guests! We'll also be celebrating both their birthdays as well as the girl's, as Sarah's will be here in a week. There'll be a whole lot of aging going on this weekend....just glad it won't be me doing it ; )