Tammy Tutterow

If you can ' t remember your password. . .

to your own blog, then you are a REALLY bad blogger!  That is what happened to me today.  *sigh* Well, I intended to post a "vacation part 2" post a few days ago, but that was before I got a nasty head cold.  How did I make it through the whole winter without a cold only to get one in the spring?  I don't get it.  I spent the last three days feeling terrible.  I think today I am coming out of the fog a bit. Okay, so if you wondered about the last part of my vacation, here goes: Each morning I sat on my front porch and enjoyed my breakfast while enjoying the spring.  I live in an old house with a huge front porch with to big comfy rockers on it.  It is perfect for a nice relaxing morning Dr. Pepper.  The dogwoods in our front yard are in bloom.  They make a nice backdrop to the flag on the porch post. I have a bird feeder in one of the dogwoods.  It is neat watching the birds there in the morning.  One morning I noticed this birdie watching me very closely. Then I noticed this: on this: That would be a birds nest in the climbing *very thorny* miniature rose bush on the porch post closest to my rocking chairs.  I am nosey and wish I could see what is in the nest but it is too high. On Wednesday, David and I had a date night.  After getting a bite to eat we jumped on the train and went in to the city to go to the Santana concert.  I think David was annoyed by my picture taking. I don't hardly ever take pictures of me, yikes I am very unphotogenic.  I may be in denial that how I look in pictures is how I really look. . . but anyway, here is my feet in my new favorite shoes.  Love these. At the concert we got an unexpected surprise.  They closed the section where our seats were and moved us down another level.  We had really good seats.  Okay, not as good as the picture would imply, that is the zoom lens, but still great seats.  The show was rockin' good. On the home front, I got a ton of work done in my flower beds.  We also dug out and made a bed for Emma.  She planted flowers, strawberries, and tomatoes.  She is so excited to check on it every morning. On another day, David, Jacob, and I cleaned out the garage.  It wasn't exciting really, but very long overdue.  We had a ton of stuff that got put in there when we had the fire that never made it to be cleaned or put back in the house.  Tons of junk and building materials.  I am proud to say that we finally can use our garage again and that David has a nice little workshop like space set up.  My potting table and tools are finally back in use too.  It was kind of like Christmas discovering long forgotten things. I didn't make it down to my mom's like I planned.  I just couldn't get enough of the "must do" things done in time.  I am hoping to make it there soon. I did a few scrappy things which I will share in another post. All in all, a pretty productive vacation, well, until the cold set in, but anyway. . .

True Love frame

I actually made this frame in February for the Pink Paislee booth but forgot to photograph it before sending it off to the show.  I have been meaning to share it for a while since getting it back. This photo is probably one of my most favorite ever.  It is from the family photos Holly took for us before Christmas.  I think it captured such a sweet moment between my two daughters. The frame is one of the Bare Elements frames from Creative Imaginations.  I built it up with several layers of extra chipboard.  Except for the fuzzy brad, everything else is Pink Paislee.

Ah, sweet vacation!

I usually don't post anything here except for scrappy stuff, but I am wanting to start being better about posting other things.  I don't know if anyone will be interested, but maybe some one will.  So here is my first post in my effort to be a better blogger. . . Ahhh, I love vacation.  I am taking a little vacation from my job this week.  I have so many things on my to-do list that I am hoping to get done.  Even though it will be a jam packed week, it will all be stuff I love doing so it won't be like "work" at all.  I have all kinds of fun scrappy and home things planned as well as a trip home to go flea market shopping with my mom and even some rockin' concerts. Yesterday was just beautiful outside.  I spent the whole entire day working on my flower beds.  I have huge flower beds in my yard that wrap around the whole front and one side of the house.  I really enjoy flower gardening.  Last year I was really sick with something that was diagnosed as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue.  It really sidelined me from doing much of anything physical.  I don't think I touched my flower beds even once.  With being sick and trying to get settled back in from the move home, I just didn't make it out to do anything all spring.  For the past several months I have been in a remission of sorts and been really motivated to get out and garden, of course wouldn't you know that mother nature wasn't as motivated as I was! Not only did I clean out and weed almost half of my garden, I also dug out and started a second bed that I have been wanting to start forever.  Emma and I also started work on a small bed in the back yard that will be her garden.  Finally I have one of my children wanting to garden with me! Saturday David and I went in to St Louis to attend the Bob Costas benefit at the Fox Theatre.  We saw Kathleen Madigan (so funny I cried), Chuck Berry, and The Goo Goo Dolls.  It was a great show and such a good cause (the cancer center for one of children's hospitals here). The Fox is absolutely amazing inside.  I borrowed Anna's camera since it is small so I really didn't get any great photos inside.  I would love to go there sometime just to wander about and take photos. Emma, David, and I took a walk earlier this week.  Emma and I were looking for signs of spring.  She found a pine cone that she decided would be the start of a new collection.  Our neighborhood is full of forsythias.  I think they are one of my favorite signs of spring. Also earlier this week we attended a dinner hosted by the local rotary club honoring 16 local high school seniors with their Young Women of Achievement awards.  The choose one girl from each of the city's four high schools to be honored in one of four categories.  My oldest daughter Anna was one of the four honorees from her school.  She was awarded a community service award. This is Anna receiving her award from the local Rotary President and the publisher of the local paper.  We are very proud of Anna and her commitment to community service.  It is hard to believe that she will be graduating in a month and on her way to college.  I just don't know where the time has gone.  It certainly goes too fast. Okay, that is it for today's vacation log.  I plan on scrapping this evening so I hope to have a fun scrappy project of two to share tomorrow.

Young Woman of Achievement

Anna was given an award last night by the Rotary Club of Belleville. This award is given to four girls from each of the High Schools in Belleville, with one award in each catagory. Anna's award was for Community Service. Here is a link to the story, although it seems the article was written more about the key-note speaker. Never the less, I am extremely proud of her.

http://www.bnd.com/news/local/story/310742.html

Yes, I am a terrible blogger!

Admitting it is the first step though, right? I had another turn on the Pink Paislee blog on Tuesday. This project was about journaling and inspiring words. Journaling has been on my mind a lot lately as I have been doing some very amateurish genealogy work lately. I believe that every photo has a story but sadly with many vintage photos, the details are not written down and they are lost forever. I was inspired to create this journal as a gift to my mom in hopes that she will use it to save some of her stories and memories of family. The patterned paper are from the Pink Paislee Spring Fling line.  The calendar paper is an image that will be available at Fairy Davis.  The photo is my mom at about age 5, too cute, huh?

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to Emma!

Pink Paislee tag-

Just a quick post to share with you a tag I made for the Pink Paislee blog yesterday.  Every other day a member of the design team will be posting and sharing a tip, project, inspiration etc.  My post yesterday was for a quick tip on using word stamps to create individual letter strips, like shown on the tag.  Check out the Pink Paislee blog to see the tip along with additional photos. And don't forget to check in there regularly to see the fabulous projects by the team. t

Well I said I was closing but not that fast!

 If you have come here wondering what is happening on the HHS site today, the answer is I don't know.  It seems that there is some time of server problem and half of the site is crashed.  Yes, I announced that we were closing but didn't mean like that!  Hopefully things will be resolved soon and the entire site will be running as usual soon.

A kind of sad thing-

Well it is official, I just posted on the Heart In Hand site that I will be closing it in May.  It is a hard thing to do, to make the decision to let a dream go that you really believed in.  There are many factors that went in to the decision to close, lots of attempts to make it all work, and lots of highs and lows.  In the end, the choice to close the site is the right and practical thing, even though it is a bit sad. I don't know about the other teachers from the site, but I plan to still write up classes now and then.  I enjoy doing it.  I imagine I will just post them here, more on that later when the time comes. There are some really great classes available at HHS so if you have been thinking about getting any of them, you should, soon.