Enough already!!!

This was the view Saturday from our front door:



What you don't see in this picture is the driveway, the sidewalk, the street and the neighbors driveway, all covered by snow. This was taken at one of the more clear moments. Most of the day there was LOTS of blowing snow that really effected visibilities By Sunday morning, John and I shoveled out about a foot of snow from the top and bottom of the driveway. The middle and sidewalks probably only had 4-6 inches due to the blowing. We are definitely ready for the snow to be gone and spring to begin!

Azalea Tree

John gave me this beautiful Azalea tree for Valentine's Day. It started like this:

And currently is in full blom:

And a cute one of Callie sniffing at the flowers while I was taking the above pictures:

She was really more interested in the dirt but I thought these turned out cute. Probably wasn't the smartest thing to let her do though, as John warned me. Now she keeps trying to get on the table to sniff it some more...silly kitty!

Week in Review

Not much new in this Kuberski Household this week. We had a very nice Superbowl party at John's parents as they had the best TV. We had lots of snacks and munchies and then did tacos and meatballs for the main course. John's mom had to work but was able to join us for the second half of the game. And my parents and my brother and his girlfriend joined us for the first half. Was a very nice way to spend an evening. I took pictures but they are nothing spectactular and I haven't editted any of them yet.

I must say though that I'm VERY happy with my new 50mm lens that John gave me for Christmas. It is quickly becoming my go-to lens. I took some flower pictures for a friend at work and was so happy with the way they turned out. And I think this has to be in my top 5 favorite shots of Teddy Bear. He doesn't look at the camera too often and usually when he does he looks scared, so I was very happy with this one:



So that's about all! Weatherman is predicting 40 by the weekend and we are keeping our fingers crossed. Spring might be in the air...or at least my allergies thing it is. :-)

Random Things

Okay, so I've been a very bad blogger again. Seriously going to try harder to get at least one new post up a week.

A couple weeks ago, we celebrated Dad's Birthday with the annual pizza party.

Finished a four week cake decorating class this past Sunday. I took the class with our nieces Karen & Rochelle. This was the second level and followed the class that we took almost a year ago. We had a great instructor and really learned alot. Here is my final cake. Please excuse the line of bad basket weave. My rows didn't quite line up and this was supposed to be the back of the cake, however when I put the flowers on I forgot to rotate the cake. :-(

I've been busy doing some paper crafting. I've started the Unity Tour Book - Part 2. I'm working with 686 pictures so this has become quite the project. So far I have 8 pages pretty much done...and many more to go.

Some projects that I have finished:

Thank You Card for a February Swap:

Mother's Day Cards to send to the Troops:

Coupon Book:

Half open:


All the way open with six dividers for coupons:

And two of my favorite pictures from this month:

Teddy Bear Cleaning John's Hair

John Cooking Bacon for BLT's. He makes two piles - one for him(soft) and one for me(crispy).

Christmas Pictures

I'm busy uploading Christmas Photos to my facebook account and supposedly the link below will let anyone look at the pictures. So let's see if this works.

Christmas pictures from John's family are posted at the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9727&l=45280&id=1450361928

They are yellow because they were taken by the light of the Christmas tree and I like the effect it gives. Also taken with my new camera lens. I'm really happy with how they turned out.

Enjoy.

October Happenings

I was just looking through my pictures and realized how far behind I am on postings. So for this entry, I'll cover our busy October.

In early October we took a trip to the East side of the state to use up some gift certificates that we had that were close to expiring. We had a free dinner at the Rain Forest Cafe where we had a great dinner and saw this guy:

Then we headed to our hotel, on the other side of Detroit. Have a few detours due to construction and got a little lost even with our GPS. Saw some seedier areas of Detroit but also got to see this:

It's the old Tiger's stadium. Picture is a little blurry as I wasn't expecting it so it was a really quick picture while moving.

We had a free stay at the hotel as well, from a previous bad stay a year ago for a wedding we were attending. This time was much better and we enjoyed two free drinks in the lounge while we listened to a great local band that I can't remember the name of and then had free breakfast the next morning. We went to Ikea and didn't get anything except a ticket for an illegal left turn. A major downer to our weekend. Thankfully, the officer wrote it so that while we still had to pay the penalty it won't show up on our insurance. After that we headed to Jackson to a cemetary that had some grave sites that John wanted to photograph for the Genealogy he is working on. The cemetary was HUGE which we didn't expect so we weren't as successful as we had hoped but still managed to find a couple that he was looking for. It really was a nice weekend get-away overall.

The weekend after was my birthday. I had a carseat check in the morning and then in the afternoon I was able to open the present John had been teasing me with all week. He had the wrapped box sitting on the kitchen table all week. He kept telling me I could open it if I wanted, knowing full well how tempting that was for me but that I like to open things the day of, so I waited. And the wait was worth it. John gave me a new camera!!! And not just any camera, a Canon Rebel xSI dSLR!! I've been considering one of these for a long time but was having trouble making a final decision and spending the mone. I was thrilled to see this one, plus a memory card, an extra zoom lens (which is wonderful), a carry case and probably most important for clumsy me, an extended warranty.

I've had lots of fun learning how to use it and taking pictures of everything...

The cats:




The plants outside (practicing aperture here..note the blurred background :-)):

My sweetest day flowers from John:

The cookies I made:

And even the kitchen sink! Actually I was trying an online photography challenge on the speed of the shutter. This was on a higher speed where you can see individual drops but you also need a lot more light. John, of course, thought I was more than a little crazy with this one.


Then at the end of October my mom, sister and I took our annual trip to Frankenmuth. We had a great time and found some wonderful deals at Birch Run. This picture is us at dinner at the Bavarian Inn, enjoying an AMAZING chicken dinner.

And at some point during the month, I knitted my very first pair of socks:

Phew! I think that is everything for October. November update coming soon! :-)

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Ours went very well. John was very excited to break out his new hat, that he bought in Petoskey back in September. He saw this hat at a little store downtown Petoskey and immediately decided he had to have it. He wore it to work the day before Thanksgiving and the day of, and then to both of our holiday dinners.

Here he is at Lisa's house with the hat on, having dinner. He never sits down to eat...always stands in the kitchen, close to the food. As Mark said on Thursday, it's a tradition now. :-)



I was hoping to get more of an update done today but it just hasn't happen. Watch for more updates coming soon. John bought me a new camera back in October for my birthday and I've been having fun playing around with it so I have a whole bunch of fun pictures to share.

Memories of Warmer Days

Some fun pictures of a Whitecaps game where the San Diego Chicken was there. We had a great time and definitely go back again if the chicken was there.

John and I at the game:

The chicken playing follow the leader with little chicks:

Trying to distract the pitcher:

Helping the base runner:



And John delivered me a pretzel with a bite missing. Wonder how that happened??

Treat Wrapper Tutorial

I found this tutorial on splitcoaststampers.com in their resource section. I’ve modified it a little as I found their example to be a bit narrow for my tastes. If you’d like to see the original tutorial it can be found here: http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/pull_treats/

Here is the finished result:

First a little math and a few measurements

Might be a good idea to write these down as you figure them out:

1. Measure how tall your candy bar is and add 1.75 inches
My Hershey bar was about 6.5 inches tall + 1.75 = 8.25
This will be the height of the main piece of cardstock

2. Measure how wide your candy bar is and add 1 inch
My bar was 2.5 inches + 1 inch = 3.5 inches
This will be the width of your final product

Everyone still with me?

3. This is were it gets smidge more complicated. Take the number you just figured out for the width of your front panel and double it. Have that number? Now add a 1/2 inch.
My example: 3.5 x 2 = 7 7+1/2 = 7.5 inches
This will be the width of your main piece of cardstock.

So to make the pocket I need a piece of cardstock that is 7.5 inches wide by 8.25 inches tall. If you are using a thicker candy bar, you may need to adjust the width of your paper to accommodate.

For the decorative band going around the wrapper, cut a piece of patterned paper or another piece of cardstock at about 2.5 inches tall and about a ½ inch wider than your main piece. So again for my example I made it 8 inches wide.

Alright, the worst is over!! Smooth sailing from here on out.

Step 1
We need to score the bigger piece of paper so we can create the pocket. On your shorter side (7.5 inches in my example), score your paper at the number you came up with in step 2 above (3.5) and then at double that (or the number in 3a). Turn your paper and score it a ½ inch from the bottom. When you are done your paper should look something like this (without the black lines of course):

Score the decorative piece of paper at the same numbers. It should look like this:

Step 2
To create the bottom flap on the larger piece, cut out the parts indicated below. You can corner round the edges of this flap if you would like. If you want to stamp or embellish your cardstock for the pocket at all, this would be a good time to do so.

Step 3
With the front of your paper facing you, add adhesive to the long ½ inch flap

Step 4
Flip your paper over, fold over the ½ inch flap you just added adhesive to and then fold other side over, thus creating an open bottomed-pocket

Step 5
Add adhesive to the small ½ inch flap and fold up, thus closing the bottom of your pocket.

Please excuse how crocked this looks. It's really not...just a bad angle:

Step 6
Create a slot at the top of your pocket for the ribbon to go through. You can either use a punch or I just punched two holes about an inch a part and then just cut a straight line across to connect the top and bottom of the holes. If you are using smaller ribbon, you might want to make your holes closer together.

Step 7
Now we move to the smaller piece of cardstock. Decorate your band however you please. I kept mine really simple. Add adhesive to the back of the 1 inch flap and wrap it around the pocket. While this is already scored, I’ve found I have to kinda play with it, to get it to fit to my satisfaction.

Step 8
Thread your ribbon through the slot you created on the pocket as shown:

Step 9
Place your candy bar between the ribbon and into the pocket. The ribbon will slide down with the bar.

Tie decortive knot or bow:

When the recipient of the pocket pulls the ribbon up the candy bar will come right out.