In the mood for...

WINTER!!!!!!

Okay, and some love!!

It's been such a crazy winter season here in good ol' KY, as well as most of the continental US.  At least Alaska is getting some snow, or ALL of the snow!!  (lucky ducks)  I mean really, can us snow lovers catch a little break?!?!  Our winter so far has been mild, which has totally, and I  mean totally messed with my body.  Every spring, like clockwork, I get sick.  Starting mid-April and lasting about 2 weeks, I'm down with sinus infections and all the fun that goes with it.  I had to go on a Z-pac to get through our wedding (going on 10 years!!  Wow!!).  So, why am I going through all this now?  THE UPS and DOWNS of this SPRING like WEATHER!!!!!  It's nuts.  Seriously, the zombies are coming my friends!!  Haha!

Okay, so onto the LOVE!!  Here's a little secret...  I've never, EVER, liked Valentines Day.  Always hated it in fact.  Well, except maybe when I was a child.  Mom would always get us a little chocolate heart and a cute little stuffed animal.  And then the picking and signing of just the right valentine to give to your BFF's, your teacher, and your secret crush.  Oh pitter-patter of the child's heart!  But then enter into the teen/high school years.  That's when my hate, and yes, it was total hate for "V-day" came in to play.  Each and EVERY year I got to see all the beautiful girls in my classes get the Whatever-they-were-called-Grams, and I'm talking these girls got a ton of them.  It was like, okay, just stab the rest of us in the heart a little bit more. Each. And. Every. Class.  SEVEN CLASSES, SEVEN times to feel like the loser that I was!!!!  Oh but wait, it got better!!!!  At the end of the day, they would all get called to the office to come and collect their Valentine bouquets (usually from their parents and or if you were one of the super-duper girls, you got them from your boyfriends too).  Do I sound bitter?!?!  Ha!!  Heck yea!!!  I was so jealous and every year I felt just a little bit more loser'ish.  I so hope they don't do that stuff today.  But, I'm sure they do.  I'm sure I'll get to go through the hurt and pain all again with my daughter.  *sigh*  Not looking forward to my babies growing up.

ANYWAY, I regress...

Onto the LOVE!!!

As an adult, I LOVE VALENTINES DAY!!!!!!  I finally have every reason to love the day!!  I have the love and respect from a funny, sweet, and totally amazing Valentine all rolled into one sexy, amazing package!!!  Then, one, by one, by one,  we were blessed with three little funny Valentines!!!

My love, my best friend

Always leading us the right way

Nothing like watching a big strong man with  a baby

MY MAN (hear Rachel from BB here) and our oldest offspring.

Us with our latest funny valentine

 Okay, okay, okay...  Enough pictures already and on to my project du jour:

GAUDY VALENTINE WREATHS!!!!

(At least that's what Kris called them!!)

One of my final products!!

Up close with the KISS

Someone took a bite out of my LOVE

Here's the set-up:

FINALLY, after searching every closet in this house, I came up with two matching wire coat hangers.  I'm a plastic kind of gal.

2 wire hangers made into circles, one roll of deco mesh
and one Lucy!!

I used 2 sizes of cookie cutters to make my "candy hearts" (oh how I think those candy heart are disgusting. makes my teeth hurt when I think about eating them!! Ugh!!)  

I mistakenly "hoped" that the cutters would slice right through the styrofoam.  YEA RIGHT!!!!  ha.  But, they did make a good imprint, with plenty of brute force, to cut them out.  

Used a little hand saw for the first one....

Then, I remembered!!!  My Pops gave me his band saw for Christmas!!!!  Que the chorus of angels!!!  

AAAHHHHHH!!!!!

Yes my friends, the saw works on styrofoam too!!!!  (Hope Pops never hears of this tho!!!)

Cuttin' the foam

candy 2 down in  seconds!!!

Allie girl helping me paint our 'candies"

Logan thought they were marshmallows!!  

I used the ABC stamps my wonderful Mimi passed to me.  I thought they made the 'candies' look authentic! Well, as much as painted Styrofoam candies can authentically look.  But you know what I mean!!!

 So, if anyone out there in blog land ever wants to try this, make sure you hang your wreaths BEFORE hot gluing your hearts, or stars, or whatever you choose to decorate your bad boys with.  I got some hearts hanging low.  Poor little fellas!!!

Something I didn't want to know

Shew!!!  Been a LONG, crazy holiday!!  I feel like I'm finally back to normal. Although my Christmas tree is still up.  Yup, little, well big, baby isn't going into hiding until we get at least one good snow.  So far, no luck.  What a crazy winter!!

 I finally got back to some projects today.  Nothing fun in the craft nook, but fun as in cleaning goopy, gloppy, hard soap scum, yuck.  I decided to tackle our dishwasher.  I ran across a link on pintrest a while back about cleaning out your dishwasher.  I was like "say what?!?"!  Cleaning a dishwasher?  Hmm.  When I see/read stuff like that it sits up there in my brain and festers.  I can't get it out of there so...  Our home is almost 11 years old.  The thought that kept rotating around in my head (usually smack dab in the middle of the night) was "there is 11 years of something in my dishwasher".

OH MY DIRTY, DISGUSTING, GOSH!!!!  There WAS 11 years of something, everything, yucky, in my dishwasher!!!!

Let me give you a visual...

BEFORE

AFTER

My only snag was that I didn't really pay attention to what filter went where, so I had to problem solve for a bit.  But, I think we are all okay.  

I then ran it empty, on the hottest setting with a dishwasher safe cup of white vinegar on the top rack.  

I happened to be in the kitchen when it went through the first drain cycle...  Holy moly it was FAST!!!  I'm quite excited!  

And on a funny note, you should have seen Kris's face when he walked in and saw the tool box, vacuum and dishwasher open .  Straight up questionable fear!!!  Poor guy!!

So in conclusion...  I'm glad to say that my dishwasher won't be on my mind during my wakeful moment tonight, but "sigh", something will replace it.  Hmm.  Wonder what?  Guess I'll find out tonight!