Octagon Basket...

Hello there! It's Monday? What the heck happened to the weekend? LOL I can't believe how fast it went. I was busy, busy, busy, but don't have a lot to share for the stuff I did, darn. I meant to post this last night, but got side-tracked. Well, actually, we ended up going to Sweet Tomatoes for dinner (we got a buy one adult meal, get one free coupon and it expired yesterday, so heck yea, we had to take advantage of it). And then it was time to get the girls ready for bed because they go back to school today. Then I watched/listened to Celebrity Apprentice while I fought with some yarn. Seriously...worked all evening and still haven't finished the small piece I'm working on (grrr...hate it when that happens).

So what did I do? Well, on Saturday I was all excited to create, really I was. Only I think I had a 3x3 inch square open space on my desk. Yes, it was that messy. So, I thought I'd clean up a bit before getting to create. Um. Yea. THAT clean up a bit ended up taking a couple of hours. How in the world I could make such a mess in such a small corner is beyond me. But it looked so pretty when I was done. So much so, I didn't have the heart to mess it up so quickly. I had to admire the cleanliness for awhile, so no creating was done. Then I worked a bit on organizing some digi stuff and worked on a yarn project. Made progress on all fronts, but nothing to show for it. Sigh...

Then yesterday I did my Sunday stuff and decided to print off some tutorials and patterns for creating. That took a bit longer than I planned. On a good note though, I learned/discovered that I CAN indeed adjust my printer settings to enlarge and reduce a copy to a specific percentage. I didn't know that before. I thought I had to use the presets on the printer. But I scrolled through the options and way down at the bottom was a custom setting. Really, that should be the first option, but I didn't design the thing. Getting the percentages figured out was key to my creating the project I DID get done yesterday and here it is...

I love this basket. I had plans to make several different baskets that I've seen in the blogosphere, but this is the only one that got finished. I got the idea from this basket made by Claire Brennan, of the Waltzing Mouse Makes blog, here. You can find the template here. I needed to print one at 100%, one at 99% and one at 101%. And yea, I know how to do that now! Yippee skippy!

I used an EK Success Inspirables paper called Seasonal Flowers (I think). I bought it a couple of years ago at a scrapping store that just closed down earlier this month. I remember liking it for some holiday pages I saw there and of course, I never made them. But it sure looks pretty on this basket, doesn't it? I just followed the notes on the template while making it. I used a Martha Stewart border punch on the footer. It fits almost perfectly to punch once. Then I snipped off the excess and used a corner rounder to round off the corner pieces. The cardstock is Vineyard Berry from CTMH. I punched the flower using an EK Success punch and a Martha Stewart punch for the leaves. The button was in my stash...I got the bright idea to separate all my vintage-y looking buttons and put them in a glass jar a couple of months ago. It sure looks pretty, but I can't remember the company names! Oh well. I used a tiny narrow scrap of Vineyard Berry cardstock for the center of the button. I was too lazy to look for floss, to be honest.

I'm thinking of giving this, filled with some candy or something, to one of the girls' teachers...

And there you have my only project to show for this weekend's efforts. I am working on another project and am almost done with it. I hope to finish today when Jessica is in school and it's actually quiet around here, but we'll see. I've got a house to clean up (again...the girls have been home for a week and you can tell)!

And what's up with Mother Nature? Did she get her seasons mixed up? We had a nice, warm weekend and all that snow from last week's blizzard was melting so well. Woke up this morning and it's cold and snowing again. Sigh...it's not a blizzard, which is good, and I know we need the moisture, but it's spring! Shouldn't we be getting rain by now and not snow? Not if you live in CO...where it can snow in April and March is actually the snowiest month on average. Now you know why I can't plant anything until Mother's Day...LOL...by then we should be past any freezing temps...

Okay, I'm done blathering...thanks for stopping by! I hope I'll have something to share a little later this afternoon, but if not...tomorrow for sure.

Jeanne