And I'm Out!

Well guys, this has been an amazing year. I love this blog and the feedback I get from it, so thank you so much for all of your support over the past year.

But I'm taking a few weeks to do what I haven't done in a long time. Spend quality one-on-one time with my husband. Without school, without computers, without work, just us. Pre-Chris's schooling days, we were pretty inseparable. I'm so excited to take these next few weeks to go back to our place of happiness...being together with no stress.

Our friends Erin and Chris joke with us that we're Amish because we don't watch much TV. The next few weeks is going to be filled with very little electronics at all. Do you hear that? It's the sound of heaven...ahhh!!!

So, while I know you're not supposed to take 'blogging breaks' if you want to make your blog a success, I'm hoping that you guys will stick around to see what 2011 brings us.

I do have a promise though that hopefully entices you to stay tuned till I return next year. I promise I'll be back, on my one year blog anniversary (January 13th), and I'll post a BIG huge project reveal that you most definitely won't want to miss. We've been working on this one for quite some time, and I can't wait to share the big reveal with you guys!!

So here's hoping you a Merry, joyous, wonderful Christmas season, and a New Year filled with hope, inspiration, love, and joy!

See ya on the flip side!!!

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Cold Florida Winter

Dear Weather,

I think you're confused. I know you've got a great big job to do with weathering the whole world and all, so I understand some mistakes every now and then, but this is the 2nd winter in a row. Which makes me think I should probably bring it to your attention.

I LIVE IN FLORIDA. The TAMPA BAY area of Florida to be exact. It is NOT supposed to get into the 20's at night, and we're most DEFINITELY not supposed to not get above something in the 40's during the day. I think maybe you're confusing us with some other state. The only thing I like to do in the cold in snowboard, and since Florida doesn't have mountains, I don't really want it to get cold enough to snow here.

This week is better than last, but it seems to be getting cold again, so I thought I'd throw out a little note. Maybe that'll help. Good luck with the rest of your weathering duties! Merry Christmas!

Sincerely,
Kara Hart

Granted, this picture was taken two weekends ago, not this past weekend, but I still thought I'd share. This is how Chris and I sleep during the frigid Florida winters :

In our living room, snuggled up next to the fireplace.

Sorry for the picture quality, it was obviously dark when I took it!!  We actually moved the mattress a bit closer to the fire too...this was just all I could move it on my own...it's heavy!  Kodi sleeps behind us in the living room because he doesn't like the cackling of the fire, but he enjoys the warmth too.

Most Florida houses aren't equipped to handle 20 degree weather, but ours is even worse.  We have no heat pump.  Last winter, the warmest we could get our house was 64 degrees, and our heating bill was RIDICULOUS, so we've just accepted the fact that we don't have heat and deal with what we do have!  We've actually got two space heaters that heat up our bedroom and office quite nicely, but there's something cozy about still moving our mattress out to the living room in the winter.  It's like we're camping cozily.  Just my style!

Hope everyone is staying warm this winter!  I know, I'm a baby when it comes to cold...but I was born and raised in Florida...the central florida area, on the coast.  I think high 60's is freezing during the day...40's?!  That's just crazy talk!

Happy Monday!  Hope everyone has a great week!

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Home-made Christmas gift

With everything that's been going on the latter part of this year, I only had time to make one Christmas gift. I'm hoping to do a home-made Christmas next year, or at least a lot more home-made gifts, so hopefully with Chris's school now being done, I'll be able to focus more on that while still doing all of my other million projects I've got planned for 2011. Pretty soon, I'm going to have to start filling out my 2012 project list. The 2011 one is already getting quite long.

Onto the gift...

I always ask my sisters for ideas on what my nieces need or would like for Christmas. One of my nieces was adopted last year from China. She is such a special little girl, and we're so lucky to have her as an addition to our family. My sister's suggestion for her this year was "maybe you could do Chinese symbols that mean special things for Ashlyn or she really likes pretty princess stuff for her walls". So, I racked my brain and came up with my own DIY idea to incorporate both.

First up, I got this pad of scrapbook paper from Jo-Ann's. I only needed 6 sheets for my project, but I couldn't find 6 sheets that were princess related, so I just bought the whole pad. Besides, it gave me room to error (which I most definitely did...a few times!).

Next up, I got a 4x8 piece of wood from home depot and had them cut it into 12" squares.

Then, I found a website that translates English words into Chinese lettering, here, and came up with 6 different words that I wanted to put on my scrap paper.  I copied them onto a word document and blew them up, and then printed them out.

I traced over the Chinese lettering with a pencil, pushing really hard (like so hard my arms were shaking) so that I left the outlines of the Chinese lettering on my scrapbook paper.  Then I traced over that with a black sharpie, painted inside of my tracings, painted the side of my 12x12 board, decoupaged my paper to my board, and WALA :

Oh yeah, and I wrote the English version of what I had written in Chinese in the bottom right hand corner.  Yeah, I know, I skipped taking pictures step-by-step, but I'm on a time crunch here lately!

Here's a view from the side :

Of course, she needs to be able to hang these on her wall, so I picked up a pack of mounting hardware that you just push into the back of the picture to secure.  My husband came up with this solution after my fat fingers couldn't hold the silly little nails that come with normal hanging hardware, and the board is too thin to use mounting hardware with screws.  He's a genius, I swear!

And then I repeated this 5 more times, each with different sayings.  The next two were words that come to my mind when I think of Ashlyn.  If they would've had the word goofball or silly, I would've written that down, but since they didn't, I decided to go the more sentimental (yet still true) route.

For the next three, I love the live, laugh, love saying...and I think it especially holds true to how Ashlyn, even at only 7 years old, lives her life.  She's such a carefree and fun little person to be around!!

The laugh one is actually my least favorite with the way it turned out.  It was late one night when I was trying to finish this up, so I got a bit of bubbling, and one of the fans blew some stuff on top of it while it was still drying.  I'll probably try to do another one for her at some point, assuming she likes these, but this will just have to do for now!

And here's a shot of all 6 of them together :

I have no idea why I thought this would be a quick and easy project, but overall I'm pretty happy with how it all came out.  And I'm happy with the fact that I could give my niece a gift that I spent time thinking about and making...a gift from the heart.

What do you think?  Are you making any homemade gifts this year?

Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!!  Happy almost Friday!!!

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I'm linking up to the parties on my sidebar...go check out what everyone else is making!