Katherine’s Corner

Marilyn-Marilyns Treats

Bev-Eclectic Red Barn

Angelina- Petite Haus

Theresa- Shoestring Elegance

Linda- Crafts a la Mode

Pam- An Artful Mom

Favorite Things: September is just around the corner!

August 30, 2018 by VintageMama 3 Comments

Hooray for me! I’ve been working hard on several creative projects, with RUBY magazine being just one of them. I always create a fun calendar to share with you all here at Vintage Mama’s cottage as well as in the RUBY magazine each month, and I try really hard to get it finished early enough so that you can have it before the first of each month. I’m not always able to get it done on time, but this month it is ready before September 1st!

You can upload this pretty calendar to your blog or website, or you can print it out to use any way you want. I always print mine out to use in my art journal calendar so I have them all in a book throughout the year. I also like to use mine here at Vintage Mama’s Cottage, as well as in the RUBY magazine and on the RUBY blog. If you want to use this calendar for your blog or website, just right click on the image and “Save as picture” to your computer. Then you can have fun with it!

I’m also finishing up the September issue of the magazine this week so it will be ready by the first of the month, AND . . . . I have one sick kid home from school (happens every year, about two weeks after school starts) and the other one is starting to sound rather congested, too. So, I just might end up with both girls home from school for the rest of this week. That’s my life, though, and I love it! I’m so glad I get to work from home so that I can be here when they need me. I am also grateful that I have the opportunity to participate in some blogging parties each week! I hope you can join us for this week’s Favorite Things Blog Hop and Linky Party, sponsored by Katherine’s Corner and some of her bloggy friends. It really is great fun! Would love to see you there!

Welcome to this week’s Thursday Favorite Things Blog Hop and Linky Party!

Please subscribe to ALL of your hostesses blogs

Katherine-Katherines Corner

Marilyn-Marilyns Treats

Bev-Eclectic Red Barn

Angelina- Petite Haus

Theresa- Shoestring Elegance

Linda- Crafts a la Mode

Pam- An Artful Mom

Scrapbooking the Old-Fashioned Way

August 23, 2018 by VintageMama 3 Comments

I’ve been scrapbooking for a really long time. When I first got started, I thought I would never be able to get everything organized and I honestly felt really overwhelmed by it all. That was back in the day before the girls came home, and I was quite content to work on my quilts. You know . . . taking pieces of fabric and cutting it all up into little pieces and then stitching them all together to make a new design. I love quilting! I especially love the part where I can sit and hand stitch for hours. Well, that didn’t last long once we had a toddler and a preschooler running around the house again!

But I do remember that one of my friends, Joy, was really enthusiastic about scrapbooking, but she was pretty sure that she didn’t have the patience for quilting. And I was convinced that scrapbooking would make me crazy. So we talked about what we really, really liked about each of those crafts, and before long . . . Joy was a quilter and I was a scrapbooker! That was many years ago, and scrapbooking was WAY different back then. Well, actually, many years before that, if you were making a scrapbook it was just that – a book that you filled up with scraps and bits and pieces of paper, letters, tickets, and other momentos. Kind of similar to what junk journals are like now.

If you had a book for photos well that was a photo book. But the idea of combining photos with words and other fun momentos was not something I had ever thought about. Until Joy showed me her scrapbooks. I was hooked. So for a few years after that, I was taking pictures of EVERYthing. Every event, every family activity, every holiday gathering, every, every, every thing that happened. And I filled up a whole bunch of great big scrapbooks. Which my big kids love to look through every time they are here. So it was worth all that time, money, and work. Plus it was fun. It was a good diversion for me at a rather difficult time in life.

Well, now that our girls are growing up, I’ve been kind of busy. Just doing the regular mom stuff, plus working, and all the other activity that comes along with family life. So I haven’t been keeping up with their scrapbooks for quite some time. One of my goals this fall and winter is to get caught up with their scrapbooks, but here’s another thing that is WAY different from when I was making scrapbook memories back then . . . . we used to have to take a roll of film into the pharmacy or other store and have our pictures developed. That way you never really knew how they were going to turn out until you got them back. So our supply of photos was somewhat limited by cost as well as just the fact that they didn’t all “turn out” good enough for the scrapbook.

Nowadays we have about a gazillion pictures on our phones and computers, and we have the ability to delete the ones that didn’t turn out, edit the rest, and then . . . .leave them sitting on our phones or computers for years and years and years. Too overwhelming to even know where to begin. So, today I decided to start. Just start. Get them organized by year in folders on my computer, and then I’ll do one of two things: I might do it the old fashioned way and have them printed so I can play around and make my own page layouts OR I could try to figure out this whole digital scrapbooking thing. But I probably won’t do that because I don’t have time to mess around with all that fancy stuff.

Since I had so much fun doing it the “old fashioned” way, I think that’s what I’ll do! Get started organizing the photos on my computer, and then upload a batch to Walmart and have them printed out. It’s pretty cheap that way, too! Then I can use the stash of scrapbook paper and embellishments that I’ve collected over the years and set some goals for getting caught up this winter. After all, I will have a graduation party to plan in the spring and having those scrapbooks ready by then will be a good motivation for me to get going. Right away!

Do you have scrapbooks of your family? I would love to hear about how other people are doing this these days. Sometimes I think that the “old fashioned” way is still OK, but if you know a better way, I’m open to suggestions. In the meantime, I hope you can join us for this week’s Favorite Things Blog Hop and Linky Party. See you there!

Welcome to this week’s Thursday Favorite Things Blog Hop and Linky Party!

Please subscribe to ALL of your hostesses blogs

Katherine-Katherines Corner

Marilyn-Marilyns Treats

Bev-Eclectic Red Barn

Angelina- Petite Haus

Theresa- Shoestring Elegance

Linda- Crafts a la Mode

Pam- An Artful Mom

. . . and then the internet broke, too!

August 16, 2018 by VintageMama 1 Comment

After the anxiety-producing events of the previous week when I tried to update my plugins on my blog and having my whole blog disappear, I finally was able to get it fixed and back up and running, but it cost me $80. It’s a good thing I have been working at my online teaching jobs to help pay for stuff like that! But then . . . . last Thursday when we got home from our little day trip before the start of school, our internet was out. No problem, I thought. Usually if we just do the “modem regeneration” (or whatever they call it when they tell you to unplug the modem, wait 10 or 15 seconds, and then plug it back in) it comes right back online. Not this time.

I decided to call our internet provider and see what was going on and see if they could fix it. That usually works, too, because they can remotely do the “troubleshooting” and figure it out. After being on the phone until almost 10 p.m., we had nothing. Except a tech repair ticket scheduled for Friday. The NEXT Friday, more than a week out. Really? I can’t be without the internet THAT long, I told them. I work online. I teach online. If I can’t go to work, I might get fired, I told them. I wouldn’t be able to pay my bills or feed my kids, I told them. A week from Friday. That was the best they could do.

Friday morning I called again to see if anything had changed, and they told me that they had discovered an area-wide outage in our neighborhood, so the canceled my tech repair appointment for a the following Friday. Great! I guess that means they are going to fix it right away since it is affecting lots of people. I canceled my Friday morning and Friday night classes, and remained hopeful. Saturday morning we called again to see what was going on. Well, now it is the weekend so no one is working and we won’t know anything until Monday. Great.

We finally figured out how to use my phone as a hot spot so at least I could get online . . . but that meant a massive drain on data, which bumped our data over limit, so we had no choice to upgrade to unlimited. Except we discovered that “unlimited” (at least with Verizon) doesn’t REALLY mean “unlimited,” it means that you can use data to around 22 gigs and then the system will slow you WAY down. Well, that won’t work if I’m teaching online. Plus it was adding $35 to our monthly bill. Which is already more than a car payment.

But at that moment I had no choice – I HAD to teach my classes or risk losing my employment. So I taught my online classes by hotspot on Saturday night and it went fine. Sunday I received a text from the internet provider that my tech repair appointment had been rescheduled for Monday. Not the next day Monday, but a week later Monday. Really? A company this size can’t repair internet service for a week and a half? I was rather annoyed. Or worse.

I taught my Monday morning classes via hotspot, and then called again. By this time they had apparently figured out that a whole bunch of people in our area were without internet connection and they might just be almost as annoyed as I was. They told me that a repair tech would be out to fix my internet by noon on Monday. THAT VERY MONDAY! Yay!!!! I was so happy . . . until she got here and told me that they had determined that there was nothing wrong with our modem or our connection, but a cable had been cut at the other end of our neighborhood when the utility company was working on some water pipes. Great.

But, she said, they had a call into their cable repair department who would have the cable repaired by noon that same day. OK! We were on our way out the door to do some school shopping, and I was really hopeful that it would be back online when we got home. Finally, around 8:00 on Monday night we finally had our internet restored. That was five days of exasperation, annoyance, frustration, and a bit of anxiety over losing my jobs. Unfortunately I didn’t even get to relax and read a book or sit in the sun or walk in the rain or play in the puddles during those five days without internet . . . because I was so busy trying to figure out the problem, figure out how to work, and figure out when it would be fixed.

What would I do for five days without internet connection? Well, if I planned for it and rearranged my schedule so I didn’t have to worry about all of the things I wasn’t getting done, I probably would do some other stuff. But this time – it was rather stressful. I’m back online now, and hope to stay connected so that I can do what I need to do every day. How about you? Have you ever had to go without internet connection for a period of time? How did you handle it?

For now, I’m grateful to be able to participate in this week’s Favorite Things Blog Hop and Linky Party. I hope you can join us too! It’s lots of fun and you’ll meet new bloggers, learn new stuff, and you might even make some new friends along the way. Hope to see you there!

Welcome to this week’s Thursday Favorite Things Blog Hop and Linky Party!

Please subscribe to ALL of your hostesses blogs

Katherine-Katherines Corner

Marilyn-Marilyns Treats

Bev-Eclectic Red Barn

Angelina- Petite Haus

Theresa- Shoestring Elegance

Linda- Crafts a la Mode

Pam- An Artful Mom

I broke my blog today . . .

August 9, 2018 by VintageMama 5 Comments

Do you ever wonder what might happen if you just “click here” when you are working on your blog? I didn’t really give it much thought, because every time I had ever “clicked here” before things just always did what they were supposed to do. I think. But since I’m not a tech genius, I assumed that whatever happened was what was supposed to happen. And then I could go merrily on my way, doing all the fun stuff that many of us do in a day, fixing up my blog, creating new posts, uploading pictures and new little “widgets.” I like to make my blog pretty, and since I’m not a professional blogger or even a blogger who really cares about all of the statistics (I really just do it for fun), I’ve never really given much thought to all of the tech talk that is out here.

Well . . . yesterday when I decided to “click here” to do some updates to the plugins (see, I kinda-sorta understand elementary tech talk), I suddenly see a completely white screen that gives me a string of indecipherable words, supposedly explaining to me exactly what happened. Of course, I can’t even figure out WHAT happened, much less HOW to fix it. So that ended my adventure in blogging for that day. Too bad, because we had to be out of town two days in a row which didn’t leave me very much time to try to sort it all out.

Last night when we got back home, I called GoDaddy to see if they could help me fix it, and of course . . . . they COULD fix it! Yay . . . except it would only cost $80 to hire one of their tech gurus to go in to the back side and sort out all of the broken code, that apparently broke when I “clicked here” to update on of the cool new Twitter plugins. It wasn’t compatible with some other code, so in order to fix this problem, they had to update the code for the whole blog. Which of course means nothing to me because I couldn’t find the “code” to update even if they told me how to do it.

So I paid the $80 (which actually gives me two additional “tickets” that I can use the next time something like this happens), and overnight the technology magicians fixed my blog! I’m grateful to have it fixed, and I’m also grateful that I had the funds to hire them now that I’m working part-time from home. So it’s all good, as the kids say, and we’re back in business. So even though I actually tried to get ahead of my schedule by having this blog post written and scheduled on Tuesday night, here I am on Thursday morning at 6:00 a.m. trying to get this ready to go . . . while I’m waiting for my first student to show up in my little online classroom.

Then we’re off again for the day, taking a few last minute fun outings together before the girls go back to school next Wednesday. It will be fun, and I’ll feel much better knowing that my blog is no longer broken. I hope this has never happened to you, but if it does, just take a deep breath and call someone. Just call someone who speaks tech-ese (“That just means ))&*)Y )_(^^^ __%%% . . . it says right there )(*&^ @%%$#$@) and if necessary, hire someone to fix it for you. It’s worth it!

In the meantime, I hope you can join us for this week’s Favorite Things Blog Hop and Linky Party – I’m getting in here at the last minute, but at least I’m here! Hope to see you at the party!

Welcome to this week’s Thursday Favorite Things Blog Hop and Linky Party!

Please subscribe to ALL of your hostesses blogs

Katherine-Katherines Corner

Marilyn-Marilyns Treats

Bev-Eclectic Red Barn

Angelina- Petite Haus

Theresa- Shoestring Elegance

Linda- Crafts a la Mode

Pam- An Artful Mom

Favorite Things: RUBY magazine for August has been published!

August 2, 2018 by VintageMama 1 Comment

The August 2018 issue of RUBY magazine features inspirational articles, poetry, devotionals, book reviews, recipes, and kids’ activities that will be a great resource for you and your family on these late summer days. Thinking about the changing seasons that is just around the corner, the August issue of RUBY includes an article on back-to-school saving strategies by Jehn Kubiak, a collection of great blueberry recipes, a book review of Forgotten God: Reversing our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit by Francis Chan, reviewed by Carol Peterson, and an inspirational poem, “My Daughter Gave Me the Moon,” by Joan Leotta. And so much more!

We are now accepting submissions for the September 2018 issue of RUBY magazine, and we would love to hear from YOU! Send your submissions or inquiries to us at editor@rubyforwomen.com for all the details, or visit our submissions page for more information.

And don’t forget . . . . you are invited to join us in the RUBY online community, too! Come on over to our Facebook group where you will discover groups where you can share prayer requests, tell us about your latest blog post or your current work in progress, share a recipe or a craft project with us, or just hang out in the RUBY cafe! We would love to connect with you there . . . come on along and join the conversation in the RUBY neighborhood.

Remember you can add three links until midnight on Saturday. One each day or all at once.

Please invite your blog friends and social network to join us.

Katherine-Katherines Corner

Marilyn-Marilyns Treats

Bev-Eclectic Red Barn

Angelina- Petite Haus

Theresa- Shoestring Elegance

Linda- Crafts a la Mode

Welcome to TFT aka ( also known as )The Thursday Favorite Things Blog Hop Link Party!

A party for Blog Writers & Blog Readers.

Start sharing your blog links on Thursday’s at 7 am (MST) continue until Saturday at midnight (MST).

Please read the rules before participating, it will be a much more satisfying party.

Please follow All of Your Hostesses

Please link to your post not your blog main page
You can link three blog posts all at once Or one on Thursday one on Friday and one on Saturday

Please leave a comment with your post number, most features are selected from the comment list.

Please go to the source of a photo to pin it so that the original blog gets credited.

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By sharing your blogs and blog images with us you are agreeing that the photos are yours or that you have permission to use them and that we may use your photos to feature your post on social media, pinterest or as a feature on our blogs.

Have fun and thank you for joining in the party!

DIY Birdhouse from Delineate your Dwelling

Favorite Things: Summer Crafts for Kids

July 26, 2018 by VintageMama 1 Comment

It’s hard to believe, but my girls only have about three more weeks of summer vacation before school starts up again. We’ve been busy having fun and getting tons of projects completed around here, but I still can’t seem to find a craft project that really, really, really fits the specifics that I’ve been looking for. We made some of the cute little painted jar lanterns, but Miss Perfectionist took three days to get around to painting polka dots on an empty jar with a QTip . . . . because they might be the wrong color, or they might not be perfectly round, or they might be too close together, or they might be too far apart. FINALLY, I convinced her that we were really striving for the “shabby chic” look and the polka dots are not supposed to be perfectly round or exactly the distance apart.

They actually turned out pretty cute, but now I need to get a bag of sand from Hobby Lobby to put in the bottom of them. We actually bought some of that new yogurt that comes in those really adorable little glass jars, just so we would have a few for making our lanterns. Well, the yogurt is pretty good, too, so I guess we’ll have a few more cute little jars in the near future. I also found a package of those tiny battery powered tea lights at Walmart, and along with some twine I had in the sewing room for the handle, they will be perfect for decorating her room this autumn. If she ever finishes painting those polka dots!

So the first requirement for a craft project around here is that it needs to be something that this particular kiddo can do on her own. With her Cerebral Palsy, her left side is much weaker than her right side, so I’m always looking for something that will get both of her hands working together. It can be a challenge, as she would rather use just her right hand, but then that doesn’t work out very well for doing crafts. Or most other things, which is why we are always on the look out for opportunities to get that left hand involved.

Another requirement when looking for craft project ideas is to find something that she will actually use in her room or at school or really anytime at all. So we typically stay away from the paper plate, popsicle stick, or construction paper projects. We’ve already got about a hundred or more of those kinds of projects from elementary school days, so now we are on to more “grown up” kinds of DIY projects. That’s what I was looking for this week and I think I found a few that we might be able to do together, and maybe we will gradually stop worrying about everything being perfect and just have fun! Here are a few that I found that are “kid approved” for fun as well as for decorating her room. I actually can’t wait to get started tomorrow . . . as soon as we take a quick trip to Hobby Lobby!

We already have a lot of pretty scrapbook paper that we could use to embellish a little cardboard birdhouse. This would make a really cute decoration for her room which happens to be painted in the colors on this birdhouse: coral and turquoise. This looks easy enough that I could make sure the base of the birdhouse is sturdy and then she could cut and glue all kinds of fun stuff to it.

Popsicle Garland from Play Ideas

OK so I said no more popsicle stick crafts – but this one really is different. I’m thinking she could spend a whole afternoon cutting, gluing, and embellishing these cute popsicle cutouts. Then with some string or ribbon, we would have a cheerful and bright garland to hang across the top of her bed or over her dresser. This just might be the one we do first!

Pineapple Button Necklace from Raising Whasians

Well, we already have jars and jars filled with buttons of all shapes, sizes, and colors, I’m pretty sure she could spend another afternoon sorting through them all to find just the perfect buttons for this cute pineapple necklace. A few snips of green felt and some yellow or green yarn . . . and this is so adorable she might even want to wear it to school!

Embellished Flip Flops from DailyWT

There are about another million ways to use flip flops to make cute summer DIY projects. I’ve seen them strung up on ribbon to make a colorful garland, or just decorated for the kiddos to wear outside, or even a summer wreath / door hanging. These bright colorful flip flops have been embellished with all kinds of fun stuff and would make a great wall hanging inside, as well. So many different ways to use the plain, ordinary flip flop!

DIY Twinkling Flower Light Garland from Inspired by This

I know, I’m pretty sure that making a DIY project using cupcake liners wasn’t at the top of my list, either . . . . until I came across this idea. Since we already have a string of little paper lantern lights in her room that she uses as a night light, it didn’t occur to me to make something – until those tiny lanterns burned out. Now no more pretty pink lantern night lights for her! But look how cute these are! They are just made from a string of white lights (like Christmas lights or summer outdoor lights) with fringed cupcake liners tucked in behind each little bulb. The tutorial is HERE if you want to make your own Twinkling Flower Light Garland.

DIY Decorated Birdhouses from Ye Craft Ideas

When I came across these cute birdhouses I couldn’t resist adding them to this collection of fun summer crafts for kids. These designs are a bit more “kid” friendly and could be painted, with designs drawn on with markers, or painted, or even glued on gems or other embellishments. It could even be as simple as using card stock which is really easy to work with, and then make a whole little village of baby bird houses to display on a shelf in her room.

Well, now that I’ve found a bunch of fun projects that might (just might!) keep the creativity flowing for the remaining days of summer, I guess we’ll get busy tomorrow working on something – which one should we do first? I still think we’ll begin with the popsicle garland because I already have everything we would need to make that one. I’ll be sure to let you know! I hope you are having a good summer and that you will take time to join us this week for the Favorite Things Blog Hop and Linky Party. Hope to see you there!

Remember you can add three links until midnight on Saturday. One each day or all at once.

Please invite your blog friends and social network to join us.

Katherine-Katherines Corner

Marilyn-Marilyns Treats

Bev-Eclectic Red Barn

Angelina- Petite Haus

Theresa- Shoestring Elegance

Linda- Crafts a la Mode

Family Photos: Keep the Memories Alive

July 19, 2018 by VintageMama 2 Comments

Who knew it would be so challenging to find creative ideas for displaying family photos??? This is another project that I’ve been trying to figure out for a rather long time . . . . almost a year actually. We painted our living room late last summer, and before I could do anything at all with that room, we had the flood in our laundry room. So, with everything jumbled all together and piled up wherever we could put things to keep them out of the water, that’s where they stayed for several weeks while the damage from the flood was being repaired.

We just got that mess cleaned up the day before Christmas, so all last winter we were still trying to figure out where things were, whether there was any more damage, and what to do with all that stuff that was piled up. Then it was spring and it was time for all of the HUGE outside projects, which we did manage to get most of those tasks accomplished before it got really, super hot outside.

In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about all of the family photos that we have, and how best to display them. I have two walls in mind that I want to use for family photos, but I just can’t decide how to do this project. I’m wanting it to be creative but not cluttered; simple but not boring; artistic but not to far out there. You know what I mean?

One suggestion from our design diva daughter was to do a wall of all black and white photos in either black or white frames on the wall in the living room that is painted a light gray. That would look great, I think, but it might be too . . . . white . . . and black . . . without any color at all on a gray wall in a room that is all gray and white. Maybe we need a LITTLE bit of color?

Another suggestion was large color photos in black frames with white mattes on the wall in the hallway by the master bedroom that is painted a very, very soft shade of (I think it’s called) Vintage Wicker. Kind of a coffee with lots and lots of cream color. I’m just not sure I want everything so non-colorful. But I do want simple, so I guess it’s worth thinking about.

Then, when I decided to check Pinterest (where else?) for some ideas, I was kind of surprised by what I found. All of the images in this blog post I found on Pinterest, but most of the ideas I found were either (obviously) from architecture digest type magazines or interior decorator companies, and that’s just not really the look I’m going for. There were pictures of photo display walls with like a hundred framed photos all perfectly lined up, vertically and horizontally, looking like no one ever actually lives in a place like that.

Then there were the ones that had about a million things hanging on a wall, all shapes, sizes, and colors, including strange gadgets, weird words, and oversized letters along with maps, street signs, and old movie posters. All really cool stuff, but that just really wasn’t what I was looking for either.

So I finally found a few that seemed like they might be similar to what I want to do, and I even found a few that might inspire to to paint one wall lime green. Maybe, but probably not. But still, I do like the simplicity of the all white frames of different sizes and styles along with just a few “extra” details included in the display.

I’m still not sure what I’m going to do, but this has given me a few ideas to work with. I guess the first thing I need to do is decide which photos we want to include in our display, and work on one wall at a time. The groupings that are most compatible with our home are the displays that are primarily neutral colors, but maybe have one other color as a focal point. Like the gray, tan, and white combination with a touch of turquoise, or maybe even lime green. I don’t know, but as soon as I figure it out, I’ll be sure to take some pictures. Right now I’m just trying to get a grip on how to get this project started. I’m feeling inspired, so we’ll see how it goes.

In the meantime, I hope you can join us for the Favorite Things Blog Hop and Linky Party this week. Maybe I’ll find more inspiration somewhere out here in the blogosphere and that will get me moving in the right direction. Which display of family photos do you like best? Any of these? None of these? How do you display your family photos? I’m open to suggestions! Hope to see you at the party!

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Please join us for this week’s

Thursday Favorite Things Blog Hop and Linky Party

Katherine-Katherines Corner

Nina-Vintage Mamas Cottage

Marilyn-Marilyns Treats

Bev-Eclectic Red Barn

Angelina- Petite Haus

Theresa Begin – Shoestring Elegance

Tamaki-Bubbling with Elegance and Grace

Pin-Tastic Giveaway!

July 14, 2018 by VintageMama 2 Comments

This is going to be one AMAZING GIVEAWAY! Come on along and join the fun of the Pin-tastic Giveaway . . . .

It’s time for a new giveaway! I’m joining Katherine, her giveaway sponsor Simple Nature Decor and some of Katherine’s blogger friends to bring you the Pin-Tastic Giveaway!

One winner will receive a $150.00 CASH!!

The prize is provided by Simple Nature Decor, Katherines Corner, Keepsakes by Katherine, and ALL of the lovely giveaway Hostesses.

Please remember to follow Katherine and ALL of the giveaway hostesses so you can get all of your entry opportunities.

Katherine-Katherines Corner

Maria- Simple Nature Decor