Happy Birthday to my BIGGEST Girl!

Today my biggest girl, Sedona, turns 8 years old! I am amazed at how quickly time flies. In honor of her big day, I thought I'd post a series of photos spanning her 8 wonderful years with us. Enjoy!

4 weeks old - look at that baby Buddha belly!

5 weeks old - Check out those paws!

7 weeks old - She loves her Grammy-D!

January 8, 2004 - The day my mom and I picked up Sedona at Grammy-D's house. Travis couldn't come because of work.

9 weeks old - Our first family picture taken in her crate!

10 weeks old - Outside and looking oh-so sweet!

11 weeks old - Her favorite toy was her pinky binky.

4 months old - Puppy training at Petsmart.

5 months old - Practicing our good manners in the backyard.

5 months old - Still sitting on her mama's lap.

6 months old - Ready to go on her first hike!

10 months old - And bigger than her mama!

1 year old - Poor thing was battling what we thought was an ear infection, but it turned out that she was allergic to chicken. I remember I was sick, too, so we were comforting each other.

1 year old - While waiting for the "infection" to clear up, we had to hold off on getting her fixed and so she went through her first heat cycle. UGH. Yeah, those are human Depends on her!

1 year 10 months old - Sedona graduates from advanced training. My smart girl!

2 years 2 months old - Daddy lets her sit on the couch...bad daddy!

2 years 7 months - Our biggest girl loves the water!

3 years old - Sedona graces the cover of my friend's new book. She's only 3 months old in that picture.

3 years 8 months - Playing fetch in the back yard.

4 years old - Walking near the sound with her mama and her papa.

5 years old and looking good!

6 years old - She loves her papa!

6 years 8 months - Lounging with my biggest girl.

7 years 1 month - Christmas presents!

7 years 6 months - Positively beautiful!

8 years old and loving life!

My NEW Craft Room!

Hello everyone and welcome to my NEW craft room! This space has been in the making for months now, and it's finally at a point where I can share it with everyone. As I explain in my video, we recently moved and the house that we moved into has a very large bonus room. With a lot of hard work and sweat and tears (literally) we transformed this space from a dark, peach-colored cave into the light and bright room that you see here. I could have never completed this room without the help of my wonderful hubby, so here's a shout out to you hon! Love you!

Enjoy the videos, and if you have any questions please feel free to ask!





Here are some still photos of the room:







Thanks for stopping by today! Have a wonderful weekend, and I'll be back next week with some fun Christmas cards :)

Gems, Minerals and...Burros?

This past weekend, Travis and I attended the 70th annual Gem-O-Rama held in the tiny town of Trona. Every year the local plant in conjunction with the city puts together a gem and mineral festival. The plant allows people to mine for crystals such as pink halite from the dry lake bed where they've been pulling boron for the past 90 years. We didn't participate in the field trips to excavate for crystals (it's messy and we needed to be more prepared), but we did enjoy ourselves at the vendor booths set up at the event. Believe it or not, I actually didn't take any pictures of the many fossil rocks, gems, crystals and beads that were there, but I did get a really nice picture of a butterfly!

Pretty, right?

After enjoying ourselves at the festival, we decided to go to visit our local BLM field office where they house wild horses and burros. We're fortunate enough to have a facility not too far from us that adopts out these wonderful animals that are captured through the wild horse and burro herd management program. This was my second visit to the corrals, and I have definitely come to the conclusion that I want a burro. They are so cute and very sweet and they make excellent companion animals.




BLM just finished up a big round up of burros this past week, so there were lots to see. They even had babies! Oh, they were so cute.




One day, I know I'll have a burro or two...and a few llamas, some goats, definitely chickens, oh and tons of Danes. A girl can dream, right?

Thanks for stopping by!

Bead Table Wednesday

Happy Wednesday! Happy cold, windy, rainy Wednesday, and NO I'm not being sarcastic. After what seems like an endless summer of 100+ degree heat and uncharacteristic humidity, our incessant oppression appears to be over! Today, for the first time since May, I pulled out my jeans and rocked a long sleeved T-shirt and a blazer. YAY!

As if the cold weather wasn't enough to brighten my day, my local bead store was holding a trunk show for a northern CA bead artist named Gaea. She makes the most wonderful ceramic beads! You can visit her blog here and her Etsy store here. I've known about the trunk show for a while, so I saved my duckets and bought a few items.


I knew she sold owls, but I had no idea she made hippos, too! SCORE!

I also bought a kit with a bird pendant and some beads.

I can't wait to start playing with them, but before I do that, I'll have to clear my craft table. I've been working on some Christmas tags and having tons of fun die cutting and stamping. I LOVE making tags. They're my new fav.

Here's my first completed tag:

Thanks for stopping by today!