oscar loves Fifty Shades of Grey

what can I say?  he's just a regular old lonely housewife.

he just can't put it down.

next thing you know he's going to ask to see Magic Mike.

*note* Fifty Shades has recently become required reading for work so my boss has someone to girl talk about it.  This is not the kind of book I prefer to read.  thank you and have a wonderful weekend!

DIY deck of cards book

yeah I'm still anniversary-talkin' (still a couple more DIY's to come on that as well), but this is something you can do anytime!

So here's how it went down.

get a deck of cards (it should be 53 cards including the joker)

punch 2 holes in the side of each card (use your first card as a template for the rest)

aw.  my holes are hearts.

*I only own a heart shaped hole punch

print on card stock (or plain paper would work)

the title of my book and a special message for the inside cover

cut your title and message out and mod podge, baby!

oh!  someone broke out the fancy scissors!

so you come up with 52 reasons why you love your loved ones and you print each reason out (on card stock or plain paper).  I also mod podged scrapbook paper onto each card (and then repunched my holes)

I hope your printer is working... or that you have one.

Now we print the page numbers.  I chose a few different fonts just for funsies!

mod podge the whole card after you've put everything on it.  This seals it nicely.

let cards dry.

I was going to go buy some rings to put through the holes but I ran out of time and the craft store is so far away (waaaah).  So jute twine it is!

tie it, snip it, done.

so sweet.

and I was able to say that I gave a paper gift for anniversary #1

origami cat!!!

needless to say I was super excited when I came across this.

More difficult than a paper crane, but totally worth it!

his face hooks over the top of the page... adorable!

the perfect book to use a cat bookmark on.

looky what I got!!!

this book...

get ready for some pretty sweet eats to be posted soon!

painted plates.

I must admit that I got this idea from the Big-Ass Book of Crafts, which if you haven't taken a look at this book you really really must. It's packed with some fantastic ideas.

So I decided to try my hand at painting some plates (with the help of some printed images to guide me). Here's how I did it...

I purchased some clear plates, printed some silhouettes that I found on Google image search (I know, really original, Al), I taped the images face down on the top of the plate, then flipped it over and painted on top of the image. Then, I spray painted the plate on top of the image I just painted. Flip over, and voila! A pretty cool plate.

birds.

beatles.

I won!

After some intense writing today, I completed my novel.  

53,436 words.  69 pages.  whew.  Now I can blog again!!

NaNoWriMo!

It's November!  National Novel Writing Month.  

I've been thinking about doing this for the past couple of years and then November always sneaks up on me.  Then I think, "maybe I'll just do it on my own during another month." Another month keeps passing and I keep procrastinating.  I think I have so much to do but I might could swing it.  So the goal is to write a 175 page novel with 50,000 words in one month.  Crazy, frantic writing... taking risks... making it all up as you go (well, I will be anyway).

Let's see if I can get it done by November 30th at midnight!