THE OTHER NICE THING IN THE MAIL

So, yesterday, I mentioned that I had gone out to the mail and received some exciting things. I had only shared one thing. Well, today, I will show you the other nice thing.

First off let me tell you what it's all about. The 2012 Fall Pantone Fashion Color Trend is here! These are the new trendy fall colors, and I LOVE them!!!! So glad to see nice bright colors.

http://www.pantone.com/pages/fcr.aspx?pg=20948"

I am taking part in a bead swap again. I just love bead swaps. This time I was paired up with Kim Houston of The Pink Martini Boutique, ya, I know a pretty cool name. She also has a nice Etsy shop. Well, you know I was pretty stoked when I looked at her Etsy account. I knew I was going to be getting some pretty cool stuff; and that is just what I got!

First off Kim made me these stamped paisleys. I am showing both sides here. On one side you see the French Toast color, and on the other side is the Chartreuse, Pink Flambe',  and Rhapsody. As soon as I took these out of the bag, I knew what I wanted to do with them!

Here are some faceted French Toast glass beads.

Rose Smoke

Titanium

Sorry for these blurry pictures. I just love this gorgeous lampwork bead; and I just love the Tangerine Tango

I keep playing around with this. I've got to do something very special with it.

Sorry, another blur, but these represent the Olympian Blue, and in person, they are a GORGEOUS blue!

Ultramarine Green

haha! You can see my flash in these Ultramarine Green beads.

Well, Kim, you "done" good! I love everything, and can't wait to make some pretty stuff with them. I had planned to make some new pieces to take on my cruise in October, and these will be perfect. Not only are they in style, but are a very nice selection of beads.

THANK YOU

KIM!!!

NICE THINGS IN THE MAIL FOR A CHANGE...

I just loved going out to the mail yesterday! I had several very happy things in the mail. First off, I am a published photographer!!! Indian River State College in Fort Pierce, FL just published A Journal of Prose, Poetry, and Photography called The Indian River Review. 

I had six black and white photographs published in this journal. The following are the color version.

Stanton Hall, Natchez, Mississippi

(on page 18)

Black Bayou Lake

Monroe, Louisiana

(page 22)

Palm Trees 

In Nassau, Bahamas 

(page 40)

Path through Black Bayou Lake

Monroe, Louisiana

(page 49)

Waiting For You

Waverly, Tennessee

(page 56)

Springtime

Waverly, Tennessee

(page 64)

Not only did I receive this book, I also received something else very exciting, but you will have to wait for the next post....sorry....but I like to keep you in suspense. 

Foto Friday

RED

So, I have a few red photos

This one is of the tree behind our property. 

It is a dead tree, and I have taken several pictures of it since we moved here.

I remember walking by the window and seeing how nicely the sun was reflecting off of it during the sunset, so, of course, I had to snap a photo.

One thing I think of when I think of RED, are

CRAWFISH!!!!!

YMMMMOOOO!!!!

But neither of the pictures will do, since I took them before this past week, so the official photo for this week is..............

A little RED chair.

We bought this chair just before Miles, who is now 24, was born. My parents have a little red chair that was mine. Sure wished I could have taken that picture. It was old when they bought it when I was about two. We had been to a second hand store, and as the story goes, I saw that chair and backed my behind right into the chair. My parents couldn't resist and bought it for 75 cents. 

It was just my size!!!!

I had to add one more RED

I just love my bright frog with the RED tongue. 

Pantry #1

When we moved into our new home, I was hoping it had more room than our old home. As we started putting things away, we found that our much smaller home had a lot more storage room. Strange how that is.

I thought, since our kitchen area had not one but three closets/pantries, that things would be great. We had a coat closet in the entry, and a coat closet in the kitchen. Not sure why one needs two coat closets, unless you live someplace like Idaho where it is cold. I decided to make the coat closet in the kitchen into a pantry. 

We also had a pantry under the stairs. I started to put things in it as soon as I was unpacking the food, but.....the shelves collapsed on top of me, with the canned foods. My dad saved the day by putting his engineering skills to work.

If you look closely, you can see that he took my canned cream of mushroom soups and used them as braces. This, of course was temporary.

Worked pretty well, don't ya think?

For the past week, my husband finally got the time to redo the pantry, and I was able to pick out some paint. I really didn't know what I wanted, so I went searching on the net to get some ideas. I love bright colors, and would really like a yellow kitchen. I do think I need to be careful though, and not over do the color. I decided to put the bright, vibrant colors IN the pantry. 

Yep, bright Caribbean turquoise. Actually, even though the paint colors say turquoise, it looks more blue; but I LOVE IT! The white shelves just POP!

Instead of just having one side with shelves, he wrapped in all the way around.

Now, I have lots of room.

Here's one side.

And the other side. I might think about putting lazy Susans in the corners, but not sure.

Love it!

Wait til you see what color I paint the use-to-be coat closet...

Late Again on Foto Friday

Been a little busy with soccer, so sorry this is late.

The theme this week was JUMP!

I took this picture a few years ago of Ashley on the beach. It fits perfectly with the the theme, but since it is not a current photo, I set out to take more photos of jump.

Ready.....

JUMP!!!!

Ok....again....

Ready....?

set....

and......

JUMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YES TO THE DRESS

I can't believe it's been over 14 months since my daughter married her best friend. Seems lately I've known so many young couples to be getting married. Especially this past month! Receiving all the wedding announcements and seeing all the beautiful pictures on facebook of these young people starting their new lives together got me to reminiscing of all that we did to get ready for Ashley and Jeremy's wedding.  I was going through some of my old pictures and I came across all the photos of Ashley during her search for the perfect wedding dress.

I remembered how pretty my dress was. It had lots of lace and a really long train. I love trains!

So, she tried on my dress. She really looked pretty in it, but it just wasn't her. The only thing it did was make me real depressed....yes, folks, I too was a size 2 at one time. 

Anyway.................

Let's move on.

One thing Ashley needed was a temple ready dress. So you might ask, what exactly is a temple ready dress. Well, all that means is that it is not too elaborate, white, and most of all that it is modest, has some sort of sleeve that covers the arm. Not a wimpy see through thing. Do you know how difficult that is? Well, unless you live in Utah (which we do not), you will NOT find one; so anything you choose will either need expensive alterations, or a jacket.

Ashley knew she did NOT want a POOFY dress. I don't even think Jeremy likes poofy (I know I don't!). Also, Ashley has always been one to walk to the beat of a different drum, and so her dress had to be different. Maybe a short one. This one looked good, but the jacket would need to be lined. Nope, not this one, it's pretty, but not THE one.

Now this one is petty cool. Short, different, but maybe too different.  We liked it, but thought it looked too much like a business suite. NEXT!

This one looks cute. Fits good too! Not much alteration needed here. Just the jacket is a bit too big, but that's not hard to fix.

This looks a lot like what she had just tried on. Everyone liked it, but...............

The ribbon or tie, or whatever that is, well don't you think it was a bit much for her tiny little body? So we moved on.

Now, I liked this one! It has a train. did I mention I like trains? We would have to order this one, since this is not white.

Yes! Momma likes this one. Doesn't she look sweet? Ok, well, Momma might like, but the bride needs to too. Ashley liked it, but just still not THE one. So, we put this one on the short list and moved on.

Oh, another short one, and this is really cute. Maybe? She looks like she likes this one a lot. Hmmmm. 

You know, little people just look good in everything! We did have a problem, because she looked good in all of them.

I know, this looks kinda funny in the back, but it was a size 6...way too big, so they had to put giant clothes pin thingies in the back so we could see what this looked like. I love the train!!!!! I think we need to put this on the short list too. :P

Now this one reminded us of her prom dress, which we loved, well, at least the style reminded us of the dress. This gave me an idea.

Some prom dresses come in white (this one did, just was not in the store at the time. It would need to be ordered). Prom dresses are much less $$$$ than wedding dresses. So why not?

Ok, well, we pretty much looked at every dress in this store, so we moved onto another store.

This is pretty

Not sure the bride likes it too much.

Well, ok, so now time to head home and look at the pictures and decided.

Ashley had looked on line and saw a dress she really, REALLY liked. The only thing was, I was just too chicken to order a wedding dress online. We went back to the first bridal shop upteen million times, and time was running out, so she had to make a decision, so she made her decision.

Yep, the short fun one. So we  headed to the store and when we got there, we could not find it ANYWHERE!!!!!!!!  We had all the ladies in the store seaching, Ashley, my mom and I all searching. NOTHING. Ug! Well, we could order it, but thing was, Ashley wanted to try it on one more time before the final decision. 

Then......I decided to look one more time in the bigger sizes and came across a dress that looked very much like the dress online. It was a size 6, but maybe we could order a 2. Ashley put it one, and BINGO!!!!!!!!!!! She said YES TO THE DRESS!!!!!!!!  Funny thing was, no one in the store had ever seen this dress before. They looked it up on all the stores in the country, and this size 6 was the one and only in the WORLD! Well, maybe not world, but you know what I mean. 

Now the issue was, could they size it from a 6 to a 2? They said the could.

And they did!

Her yellow shoes showed very nicely with the short in front long in back style.

I think she picked the perfect dress for their perfect day!