Laura's roses

After Rylie (Laura and Kent's dog) ate my garden, I got mad and just hacked away at everything in it. My husband says, 'You can't do that to a rose bush'!! I didn't care at the time and kept hacking. Just a couple of months later this is what became of it. Roses are not such delicate creatures after all.

WIP House

This is my Daughter and Sons new home. Isn't it BEAUTIFUL? I LOVE IT!! Unfortunately it has allot of trees that have not been cleaned up after and foliage that has not been pruned for a long, long time. I spent allllllll day and only got 1/3 of the front yard done. I didn't even know that there was a stepping stone walkway leading all the way from the street to the house until I raked. What a beautiful surprise!! Well, after filling six or seven large trash cans with leaves and weeds I pooped out. Pretty good start though don't you think?

Crazy WONDERFUL husband!!

After searching for months my daughter Laura finally found a house. It's big and beautiful and needs allot of work! Unfortunately the 'work' part has to be done quickly so that they can move in and out of the apartment they have been squeezed into. It's in Ramona with a big yard for the dog and next to the boys new school. Everyone has their own room for the first time plus an office and an extra room for guest and hopefully a nursery later :) It is a two story house and EVERYTHING had to be scrubbed and painted. Laura fortunately has the best Daddy on the planet and will put his life in danger to scrub her walls.

Great Friends

I have to say that my daughter Laura and her Fiance Kent have really excellent friends. While Mark was helping Kent load everything they own in a truck and then also helping him unload it and painting a room afterward, Chelsea was with us scrubbing and painting and running to the store for us. She is really wonderful and we were very lucky and grateful to have her help.

Over IT!!!

After two days and hours and hours of scrubbing and painting my little girl is wiped out!

New Baby

Tinkerbell has a new baby sister. Some friends that we camp with brought this four week old baby with them camping because the mother of the litter had killed the five other babies :( Well as soon as I saw her I knew who the perfect Mommy for her would be!! I got her on the cell phone before she even arrived and said, 'I hope you're prepared to have a new baby in the family' Heather and Terry took her home and she is very happy.

Baby Shae's Bed

Last year my friend Heather got a new puppy 'Tinkerbell' and I made her a cute little pink bed that she LOVES. Well, now of course Baby Shae has to have her own special bed. I also made them each a pair of matching pajamas.

Hang Tag Materials

You won't need too much when making your hang tags this way. A sheet of 'Shrinky Dink' material for 'Ink jet Printing', ruler, pencil, scissors or slide cutter, paper to bake on (a grocery bag works perfect) Oven or toaster oven and a paper punch.

Instructions for Hang Tags

The old & the new tags

For a long time I didn't put any kind of identification on my dolls showing who made them. Many people told me that I should but I couldn't figure out how was the best way to do it. I started sewing a small fabric piece that had 'AC' and the year it was made into the underside of the cloth but that didn't always work. Plus being allot of extra work that I had no ambition to do. Then I got the bright idea of making hang tags out of Shrinky Dink material. For these I use a Business Card template and make a whole sheet just like the others. To give these a more finished look I rounded the corners. I will remove one of these from my Santa but just wanted to share what each looked like.

Easy gift using a hang tag

I am so overwhelmed with the excellence of care that my Grandmother is getting at her new facility that I decided to make each of the employees a small Christmas gift to show my appreciation. This also shows how I use the smaller hang tags. I will post each step of making these ornaments when I get home from camping. This picture is just to show the hang tags use.

Homemade Shank Buttons

My beautiful friend Ree posted her idea of homemade shank buttons so I thought that I would do the same. They say that 'Necessity is the Mother of Invention' and that is how these came about. All the materials used were already things that I had in my stash. The 'Shrinky Dink' material is something that I got for the kids to play with when they would visit. They LOVE it because it's like magic and keeps them busy for a long time without the TV going on. It only takes a small amount so even one sheet goes a long way. If using it I would suggest having a toaster oven just for crafts. The wire I used is 19 gauge and is also what I use for leg armature in some of my free standing dolls. I will never buy another button to use on the inside of a doll.

Instructions for homemade Shank Buttons

My Grandma & Me

Today my husband and I went to my Grandmas new home and had lunch with her. They specialize in Alzheimer's Disease and she is very happy there. The Staff is completely AMAZING and I can not say enough wonderful things about them. The facility is called 'Alpine View Lodge'. Today the owner asked me to show some of my dolls there so I am very excited about that :)

Landscaping

This is my parents house and the house where I was raised. While working on Grandma's house which was built by my Dad in back of this one, my Mom decided that the front of her house was 'ugly'. She asked me to plant a flowering bush for her under the bedroom window. Weeelllll.... here I go again!! Except for the five large bushes this is all new landscaping. It will look better when the grass comes up some more but shaping up the hedges and making a bordered flowerbed with bark and stepping stones did make it look much better. I also planted her a small flower garden in the backyard. She has Multiple Sclerosis and is not able to do this for herself. I does make her happy and that's all that matters.

It's FINALLY Done!!

Grandma's house is finally complete! It's hard to believe that this all started with my volunteering to 'CLEAN' the house.
Well, if you know me then you also know that 'Cleaning' would never have been enough! I asked if I could redo the bathroom because there was so much neglect and damage. When that was done I wanted to do the kitchen. After a while I think my parents just threw their hands up because they said I could do whatever I want :) The house, patio and yard have been completely redone. New paint, fixtures, utility plumbing and landscaping.
The house will be rented to help pay for Grandma's Alzheimer's facility and Steve and I are managing the rental. We already have the perfect person to move in next weekend.

Before & After

Working on my Grandma's house is part of the reason I have not been working on dolls lately. Here is just a small example of the work that went into it.

It was hard to get good pictures and of course I neglected to take 'Before' pictures of any of it. The dark picture was taken almost ten years ago before the neglect took place. The entire house was this dark paneling. Every inch including the ceiling had to be primed, all paneling was scrubbed, sanded, primed and painted. The tiny bathroom alone took me over 100 hours to complete. I literally spent 12 and 13 hour days 7 days a week in that bathroom.

Beach Camping

I've been having a hard time getting these pictures to come up right so I put it away for awhile. The beach wasn't showing off for these pictures like it did the next day when I didn't have my camera with me. Normally the waves are big and the water is beautiful and in the morning when I like to walk, there is know one else on the beach! (except for these two playing in the water at 7:00 a.m. bbbrrrrrrrrr...)

HELP!

Does anyone know why my blogg is showing just one day at a time?
It didn't use to do that and I don't know how to fix it :(
If you do please email me at abracreations@cox.net
Thank you

Crochet and Soccer

When my daughters were each four years old we got them playing soccer. Well after a few years they were both very good so they were excepted on 'Hotspurs' which is a more skilled set of players. We literally spent all weekend and four week nights on a soccer field until they were sixteen years old. While sitting on the sidelines I have to be doing something so I would crochet. I'm not good! and I have no idea how to follow a pattern. Weeelllllllll.... One of the girls Mothers saw me crocheting all the time and asked if I could do her a hugh favor. It turns out that her Mother had made a crochet blanket for everyone in her family. Unfortunately by the time hers was being made her Mother died. She was left with a blanket that had been started with just four rows and a sheet of hand written instructions. She asked me if I could finish it for her. This is the result. I can not take credit for the first four rows.

Yard Art with Dad :)

Being who I am, I am ALWAYS looking for something new and different that know one has ever done. Well, I'm not sure but in this area anyway I was the first to create standing wood 'Yard Art'. I actually made pretty good money too and they were fun to make. The best part was that I got to do a project with my Dad :) I would draw the pattern and he would transfer it onto the wood, cut it out with a jigsaw and paint the whole thing with a good anti weather primer. Then I got to do the fun part. Here are just a couple of them. They stand at full height (Santa in 5.5' tall). The part that makes me angry and made me stop creating them is that they were being copied. The people would buy mine and actually trace the pattern from the features and recreate and sale them themselves! That's not even cool!!! :(

A Family of Rino's

Long ago I had a friend that commissioned me to make this Family of Rino's. She was absolutely obsessed with them and wanted to make a family like her own. Soooooooo, I had to make one that looked like a Dad, a Mom, a boy and a younger girl. These were all cut separately, painted and then glued together to make a 3D version of the family.

On my way

After that first painting I guess I was inspired to try painting other things. I would LOVE to paint portraits of people but I'm just not very good at it. Animals seem to be 'my thing'. Here are just a few of my personnel favorites.

Starting to paint

The very first thing that I ever painted was a flag for my nephews boy scout troop. I don't know what made my sister think that I could do it but it did turn out pretty good. This was all painted in Acrylics on a cotton sheet.

(This picture and the others you will see are scanned from paper photos so they don't look as good as they should.)

Inspired to post

After looking at Rosie's blogg from FOCD I have been inspired to share some of the things I have made in the past. There are ALLOT of things that don't have good photos so I won't share those but I will share a few others.