Help for Heather!!

My sister-in-law, Heather, is expecting her first baby!! (WOO HOO!!)) And she posted on her blog with questions for all mothers out there. And since I don't have kids (and people rarely appreciate when I relate their children to my dog....he is just a baby!!) and I like to think that tons of people come look at my blog....I've decided to post on my blog about her post on her blog! If you can help her, check her post here. I really want to help her out on this. Thank you all so much!

Love Mark&Bry

KNIFE ME!!

So I posted earlier that Mark has been making a sheath for his new sword, wait, it's a knife. So when I stole his camera from work (which is still sitting on my desk here by the computer dock...) I took pics of his snife...(I totally just made that word up!) I also took some pictures to show the SIZE of said snife, in relation to one of my shoes (size 7-8, its a flip flop...) and also in relation to one of my hands. I'll see about getting a picture in relation to Mark's hands. It's neccessary to note that Mark has MUCH bigger hands than I do, therefore, it doesn't look like a sword when he's around it, it looks like a knife. When I'm about it, it looks like a sword. But he made it so his belt can go thru the top metal loops, and then it'll latch around his leg like Dirty Harry, which I think looks way good! And I like his design. When he first started whittling the wood for the sheath, he said he might want a plastc sheath, and he asked me (I'm very oppinionated!) I said NO, keep what you got, you like the wood sheaths better. And he did and he likes it! :)





Mark works for a pest control company, and had a "stinging insects" job this past week. The job pertained to Yella Jackets. Well, Mark has a bee suit (I know, right?!) I have never seen him in it, but can only guess to how studly he makes this suit look. (ooh baby!) But he said he was kneeling down to spray the foundation, and had a gap between his boot and the elastic of the suit, and 3 Yella jackets got it, and apparently got trapped between his boon and his leg. The boot didn't feel pain when they stung that, so they went for flesh. He came home in so much pain! He must have gotten stung at least 20 times! He said couldn't squash them by hitting this ankle, so he had to find them and take them out and squish them individually. I put an ice pack on him after a while of him limping from pain, which is totally understandable because he swelled up so much! He said he had pain all the way his leg for a whole 2 days!!


Lately the Bandit has been going completely nuts when we leave! He has chewed up the straps on my laptop backpack (the one we had to search out for because my laptop is so freaking huge!!), he's chewed 2 purses, 2 pairs of flip flops, 1/2 of a craft, and (1) 25' long CAT-5 cable - that hooks the Wii to our router, the corner of our sofa, 1/8 of a bag of chocolate chips, 3 cables from Mark's work camera, my camera - the one we got at the wedding, and tons of carboard paper rolls, socks, and his toys. YAY for teeth! But we love our little bearded pup anyways!!

PS: Angie and Gerrit stopped by tonight (after a game of Bombay!) and Gerrit hooked up our wireless internet! Thank you so much! No more cables for the pup to chew! and it's so easy and nice to turn on the computer and web search rather than turn it on, hook up all 16 cables in back, check to see if the internet is working, wait 10 minutes... Thank you!! The first they said when they walked in was "Woah! Bandit DOES have a beard!! And he's huge!!" LOL! It was pretty funny. But after getting Bandit used to Kai and Ryker, he stopped running everywhere and settled down. Of course it also helped that we put him in the kitchen. Ryker was getting terrorized by the Bandit, and Kai was next on Bandit's list! Thank you again for stopping over!!

A sleep deprived theif!!

So I know I really should be sleeping right now, at least for another 20 minutes, I have Bunko tonight... But I can't sleep, I've got all these ideas in my head (see last post!) and I stole Mark's work camera and took pictures of the crafts I have been doing this weekend.... Sshh!! but here is one picture of Mark that was on the camera when I stole it... LOL!

So I have only partially discovered my love affair with Mod Podge, I think this site will help me explore more of that affair!! But so far, I have gone nuts, just a little... Here are the latest things.

I recently got my wedding pictures on a CD (they look amazing!!) And I went and bought a bunch of frames at DollarTree, and I had fun picking out which pics to put in which frames, which frames to take to work and which frames to hang at home. I finally finished my living room wall, and evened out the pictures around our picture of Christ. And, I picked out 2 cute little white frames to hang in the bedroom, to contrast our blue wall. I think this wall looks way freaking cute now!! (as if I didn't before!) I Mod Podge'd the little stars on, and even filled in the center of the one star with paper that matches the "C" and the "Love One Another" sign (See posts below.)! It looks so darn cute!!

We picked out a picture to go in our Signed Frame, and I MP'd the picture in, and MP'd the signatures so they don't smear anymore!! (It was getting so darn annoying to have them smear everytime I touched it!) I had this silver frame that I had either got as a wedding gift or bought cuz it was cute (sorry I can't remember!) and we FINALLY put a picture in it. And I hung it below out THE COLLARDS EST 2008 window sign and that wall looks cute and finished now too!!

And, since we have 10 (possible 12) little 5 year olds in our CTR 6 class, and Mark nor I can ever remember who prayed last week or who was leader last week, I decided to take a page out of the Primary Prez's book, and I got a bottle, MP'd paper around it, wrote the kids' names on popsicle sticks and now we draw to see who prays and who is leader on the bathroom run (Yes, we need a leader every week because we do a bathroom run EVERY week!) And the bottle is just an Excedrine bottle (and yes, it is the big one, and yes I have another one, and no, the headaches have NOT gone away!) But it's cute and it works for our class.

I have a few more projects in the works, but the Bandit got into my craft room yesterday while I was at work and ate half of one! So, I've got to start part of it over. Oh well... :) I'll get pics of those up as soon as they are done. :)

Oh, and here is a link to the wedding pics I posted on Facebook, no, you don't have to be a Facebooker to look at these. They are the ones that I really really liked. :) Enjoy, you know I have been!

Love mark and bry!!

Chewing gum!

I love love love gum! Bubble gum, chewing gum, flavored gum, novelty gum, you name it, I love it. I recently bought some of the Zebra Stripe gum, beacuse it still has the Tattoos on the wrappers. :) Well, I've been expirementing with gum lately, they have SOO many different flavors now-a-days. I bought Orbit MIST Watermelon Spring gum. I LOVE this gum! And not just for the HYDRATING SENSATION with microbursts, but...hey...it's watermelon! And I love watermelon!! As soon as you put this piece in your mouth, instantly, your mouth FILLS with so much flavor, it's pretty awesome! This gum is pretty delicious, but also! The wrapper the gum comes in is SOO freaking cute! It's really just a bunch of red circles, but it is so cute, and as soon as I saw it, instantly I starting thinking of how I could use this cute wrapper in my crafts. (I folder an origami heart with this cuteness, and I'm still thinking of ideas.) But I recently fell deeply in love with Mod Podge too, so we'll just have to see what I come up with.... I'll be sure to keep the posts coming... :)

Love bry and mark

Crafts and a realization...

Ok, I have been crafting tons lately, well, tons in the past 2 days! And I have some way cute new things around the house BUT I cannot post pictures right now. On Tuesday (I think it was Tuesday...) I couldn't find my camera, anywhere. I looked and looked. Wednesday I found out : Out in the yard. Apparently Bandit liked the strap that was hanging off the stove, snatched it, got a camera with it, and had FUN out the backyard, tossing it around. So, the camera won't open, it won't even turn on. I've changed the batteries, no luck. Mark and I are going to go to a camera place and see if it's fixable, if not, then we'll get another one eBay or something,I really liked that camera. So, sorry, no pics. But I will hopefully get some sooner or later. I'll ask Ang if she'll take some pics of my new crafts! :)

Oh, and I realized something this past week. My truck registration is up this month, so I got that taken care of, but as I was putting the sticker on the back license plate, I tried to think of how many times I'd had to replace that sticker... Pretty sure this is the first time I've put a new sticker on the back license plate of any car. Just goes to show how transient I am, I move around alot! Or at least, I used to, now I've gotta man, and responsibilities. :) I thought it was kinda funny how I'd never had to put a new year sticker on any car I've owned.

I'll try to get pictures soon. Love to all - Mark and Bry

Desperate times call for desperate measures....

Lately, things have been going crazy! You can tell that these are desperate times we live in! Here are few reasons I believe the times are desperate: When all the Cup-o-Soup Ramen is gone from Wal-Mart (yeah all of it, even the Cheddar flavor). When Farve signed on with the Vikings ( I didn't know they offered AARP). When the traffic lights are shut off, well blinking, from 12-3am, on the highway! When all the Transformers notebooks are still in the school supply eisle, but the Twilight notebooks are on backorder and raincheck. (Sparkly vampires over fighting robots?! Never in my life!) When the guy next door is tearing down his "sheds" for scrap metal (Not sure if he's got bodies in there or what!) When the dog is more excited to see a cardboard roll than to see a rawhide bone. (What's a rawhide bone?! Give me cardboard!! MMM!) When I've reduced myself to trying EVERY formula for heachace medicine (Right now, I'm trying Excedrine Tension Headache, so far it worked once, we'll keep trying. For all I know it could be tension, or maybe just hallucination/imagination... yeah, one of the two, maybe.) When the *free* coffee at work, isn't free, even though you still bring your own cup. When you see a billboard at the high school saying "CHURCH MEETS HERE AT HIGH SCHOOL". Yeah, those are just a few of the "signs of the times that I've noticed...

But anyways, I was serious when I said I have started using the Tension Headache Excedrine. I just want the headaches to go away, and I have tried everything, even random ideas, trust me, EVERYTHING! So, i'm going to be going thru the "PAIN RELEIF" shelf at the local Wal-Mart, just to see if something works better. I have been writing all the headaches down, I'm not sure if that's good or bad. I used to be able to just work right thru them, but I'm not sure if having me write them all down has made me think about the pain more. Who knows. I have an appointment on the 3rd, so we're waiting until them. Some days are just better than others, even though better still means I have a headache, I'm learning to deal with it. :)

I did go to the Flea Market with Angie, she sold some of her vinyl lettering, and I sold some of my flip flops, it worked out pretty good. It was loads of fun, even though we just sat there all morning. It was nice to just sit there and relax. :) Thanks Angie!

Love to all, Mark & Bry

Convience and success!

I bought a whole bunch of flower bulbs this Spring, in hopes that they would some day bloom and be cute little flowers in front of our cute little house. Well, the daffodils bloomed (nothing stops daffodils!) and I've had some of those big huge blossoms with all the bugs pop up. But, heading to church on Sunday, I noticed there were a few (ok, 2!) Lily blooms just ready to go!! And today, one was ready!! And it is so pretty, I love love LOVE lilies! (Hello! The wedding flowers!!) So, since I'm trying to take more pictures and be "all up on that" - I took out my camera and snapped some pictures. Ok, it is just ONE flower, but I was so excited that the bulbs actually blossomed, I had to show off just a little. And, since we can't let the Bandit in the front yard (he likes people, see last post) I left the solid front door open, but the full glass storm door closed, so he could peek out at people. He at least likes to watch people as they go by. And I snapped a pic of him too, it's not a good pic cuz of the glare, but it's still a picture and it's still our pooch. And of course, the whole garden thing is just to prove to everyone, that Mark and I do grown-up things too! Not just going to Chuck E. Cheese's and win fabulous prizes!! Ooh! And another feel-good moment: I did ALL the laundry today! Everything we own was washed/already clean/being worn! Of course, that means the dishes didn't get done, but hey, small acheivements in the path to the big goal, right! (Washing laundry was necessary, alas, Mark took half of his work shirts to the office for the dry cleaner two weeks ago, and took the 2nd half last week, but forgot to pick up the 1st half, so he had one shirt for the past Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, today and tomorrow! So yes, we NEEDED to do laundry!!)

So I'm pretty sure my computer just randomly picks an input drive just for convience, not because it really is the drive. Example: I hook our external hard drive up to one of the USB ports on the back of my computer, it (usually) reads H:// drive; I plug my SD card into the card drive on the side of my computer, it (usually) reads E:// drive. Not today! Today the card is the H:// drive and the external hard drive is the E:// drive. Yes, so, I think the computer is just making stuff up. Oh well. :)

All the love - Mark and Bry

Churck E. Cheese's and a goofy pup-a-lup

So, Friday was Lydia's birthday (yeah I still have to finish her present, I'm so lazy.... Sorry!) And we got invited to go to Chuck E Cheese's yesterday! And, we had some coupons (Thanks Angie!) so we had tons of tokens and it was a lot of fun! Just an idea of HOW much fun we had, check out how many tickets we got. Mark and I combine tickets, but still.... We are THE lamest people ever! I was telling the girl behind the prize counter as I handed her our ticket receipts, she said, No, you'd be surprised. Then I said, No, we are the lamest, we don't have any kids... She laughed... But it was alot of fun to be there. Happy birthday Lydia!!

And, the pup.... yeah... I took him to the vet yesterday, not for anything, just because I've missed his last 2 months apointments and figured we should get him in. He rode in the back of my truck and LOVED it! So, from now on, I get the passenger seat in Mark's truck, and Bandit gets the bed. (We might change that when we go to Utah, but we'll have to see...) We got to the vet, and he went nuts, not cuz it's the vet and "dogs hate the vet" but he could smell everything! (We go to the vet in PetSmart.) And there were people! And not just any people, but people who wanted to pet him and show him attention, because, of course, Mark and I don't supply enough attention for one pup. So his butt was shaking the whole time cuz his tail was wagging! And EVERYBODY came up to pet him, and Oh, he's SOO cute, Look at his feet, His ears are so big!, He's got a beard!, He's so handsome, What a good looking hunting dog, He's such a good boy. Way to stroke his ego guys! Now he'll never leave! He liked looking all the different "toys" (meaning other animals) he sat and watched the birds in the glass cage for a while, and would jump around when they flew off, and he jumped around when the mice and rabbits went running away from the glass, oh yes, it was a jolly ol' time! The vet stuck him with a needle to do the heartworm test, he's negative, so they decided to give him the Large Dog heartworm meds, why the Large Dog meds you ask, oh because Bandit weighs 48.5 lbs! That's why!! HOLY MOLEY!! They told me when we dropped him off in June (for the snip) he weighed 34 lbs, they didn't tell us that in June, the last weigh in was in May, and that was 25 lbs, I figured he wasn't too much bigger than that, I certainly was NOT thinking 23 lbs biggers!! Holy crap! No wonder it hurts when I left him into the bed of the truck!! I should have noticed when I had to buy him the Medium size dog collar a few weeksa ago, and now the medium is maxed out in lenghth... dang it!!! But, I can still tie his ears over his head, and he still lays like a chicken-wing dog, his back legs are longer than his front legs (that's why he runs sideways, his back half goes faster than his front half) and he's beard is getting longer, soon we'll have to trim the hair from in front of his eyes.... He's a cute pup, and pretty soon he'll be a dog, but his feet are still huge and he still trips over them sometimes (he missed his doggie door last week cuz he tripped on his feet) but this "gangly teenage" phase will soon be done... right? We're happy to have the Bandit, he's been alot of fun... I swore I would never dress up my dog, ever, but I'm starting to think of what he could be for Halloween... we might just tie some red fabric in is collar and he could be SuperDog, we'll have to see what he can stand and not tear apart.... That's a ways away, so we've got time....

Lots of love, Mark and Bry

Cute Craftyness - C!!

More ta da!! I saw this blog post about Mod Podge on an inital! (For the life of me, I honestlty cannot find the original posting!!)! And, I am so very much in love with my new last name, I wanted to try it! So, I went thru all my scrapbook paper and picked out some cute paper (of course it is in our wedding colors because I am still in love with the colors, don't beleive me? What color did I paint the rooms in my house?!) and I bought some Mod Podge (I am now in love with that too!) And went over to Angie's house. She just got back from Utah, and she was visiting someone (sorry I can't remember) and this someone had TONS of cute wall hangings and crafts around her house. She had a cute LOVE ONE ANOTHER wall hanging, and Angie decided to try it. So, of course she made some for me too! So I Mod Podge'd the extra paper I had, onto these wood blocks and then put my vinyl on top. I just finished with the ribbon and hung it up today. And I am so happy! They look so cute, and it all matches! I'm so glad this turned out as cute as it did, it was an impromptu craft project, and it really is cute!! Thanks a tons Ang!!

Oh, and Mark has a project coming up soon! He's making another knife (if you know the Collards, you know this is not unusual!) And he's making the sheaf right now, the knife is getting tempered. :) I'll post about that when it's done :)

Love always, bry and mark