Alice in Wonderland Tea Party

This project was commissioned for a girl scout troop's Alice in Wonderland Tea Party. Sounds like such fun, doesn't it?! And in sunny Florida!! The set includes tags that say "Drink Me", "Eat Me", "This Way", "That Way", "I'm Late! clocks", and creped medallions with the characters from the book. What fun I had making these. I even had to watch the movie! I'm kinda sad to see them go, but the girls are waiting for their arrival. My apologies for not being a better "after dark" photographer! Click on any photo to enlarge.

How Does My Garden Grow?

Maybe a more appropriate title would be, "Why WON'T My Garden Grow?" Because, in the words of Elmer Fudd, there's a wascally wabbit living here! Last year I planted the most scrumptuous dahlia bulbs that I bought at Historic Biltmore in Asheville, NC. They were amazing colors and sizes up to 13"! I was so excited! I planted the bulbs and they began to peek through the soil very quickly. They continued to grow, and when they would get about 8" high, this little pest would sheer them to the ground again. I tried repellants, to no avail. Each time the flowers would recover and start sprouting again, this little fella would show up. I tried EVERYTHING!! Nothing worked, and I truly realize how Elmer Fudd felt! He and his partner are so brave now that they actually come right up to our back door. Isn't he adorable?

My New Storage Cabinets

This post may be quite long, so please scroll down to be sure you see all the pictures. I'm so excited about my new custom made cabinets. There is a group of extremely talented men in my church (one of which is my Dad), known as the Pout House Gang. There or 5 or 6 of them. They are all retired and all extremely talented craftsmen. In fact, they recently built new chancel rails and altar for our church and actually won a national competition sponsored by Sears for their work! They are constantly doing good works for our church family. And they are always looking for new projects to keep them busy. What a stroke of luck for me, huh?!!!! I began talking to them about the fact that my crafting space needed a better system of storage. Yes, I AM A HOARDER. There, I said it! I explained the kind of storage I was in search of, and they did the rest.
Each cabinet is about 4 1/2' tall and about 30" wide. In each cabinet there are 16 drawers, each drawer about 14" x 27".


The cabinet on the right holds all my rubber stamps. I was able to organize them by holidays, birthday, backgrounds, etc. The other cabinet holds all my Spellbinders dies and my stash of crepe paper.



I LOVE working with crepe paper and a few years ago, I lucked up on a stash (about 40 packs) of vintage Dennison crepe paper. Crepe paper folds are so hard to store because of their size. They're too long to fit into a regular drawer, so I was always moving them around in search of a good home. Well, now they have one! The bottom drawers in this cabinet hold all of my paper as well as all my crepe paper streamers! Oh, I think I'm in Heaven!




The drawers are all mounted on glides which allows them to be pulled all the way out to see their contents. The drawers are very shallow - only about 2" deep - so that everything can be placed in single layers, thus allowing me to see everything in them. NO MORE DIGGING!!!! The drawers remind me of a fine department store that we used to visit when I was a child. The men's shirts and the ladies' gloves were stored in these wonderfully, smooth gliding almost tray-like drawers just like this!




My disorganized craft room is rapidly being transformed into a beautiful "studio"!!!! Only because of these wonderfully talented, generous men!

Alice Tags

Alice in Wonderland Tea Party anyone? Yes! A fantastic group of Girl Scouts in Southern Florida. These girls have the most awesome leader who is constantly planning wonderful events for them. The next one up - an Alice in Wonderland Tea Party. It sounds like such fun! These tags will be used on their food tables, attached to their drinks and snacks - in keeping with the Alice in Wonderland theme, of course! The "Eat Me" tags are about 3", the "Drink Me" tags are a little larger, maybe 3 3/4". They are stamped, embossed, and distressed.