Excuses, excuses....

Last post: March 13th?!?  Ouch.  But at least I have some excuses.

1) We're updating our house.  It's about twelve years old and we've lived in it for seven, so we decided to do some upgrades.  Like our dining room, which went from this:

 to this:

I don't even like yellow, but for some reason the original color never bothered me.  But now that it's gray....ah, I love it!  The color is Eddie Bauer "Beach" from Lowe's.  The lamp was a Lowe's clearance find.  The artwork?

To paraphrase Mark Twain, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and craft blogs."  Ok, that's kind of harsh.  But seriously who are these magical elves out there where everything works on the first try?

I got the inspiration and print files from The Cre8tive Outlet whose tutorial was GREAT except for the tiny fact that it didn't work for me.  At all.  One big, soupy, inky mess. With tears.  So I went with the thousand other tutorials out there about using laser prints and gel medium.  It worked like a charm!  Except for the "rub off the paper 3-4 times" turned into "8-12 times."  Every time I thought it'd be the last rub-down, but then that evil haze would come back.  I also didn't modge-podge it because I wanted to be DONE with this project.  Anyone know if that's really bad, or just kind of bad?  Is it going to suddenly evaporate?   

We're working on a few more projects, but I'll save those for another post.

2) We celebrated our fifth anniversary by taking a big vacation to Ireland!  It was fabulous.  I can't say enough about it!  I want to go back ASAP.  Here are just a few of our 1,400 pictures:

 We did four days in London first (I think the horse was making some sort of "I'll get you, my pretty" movement when this picture was taken.)

 Hey, did you know the Olympics are going to be in London?  Because nothing was mentioned about it while we were there.

Just a view from our first night in Ireland.  What's that you say?  It looks like a castle?  Oh, maybe because IT IS.  Waterford Castle to be exact and it was AWESOME.

 Yes, all of County Kerry is this beautiful.

 Really, it is.

 Plus what is up with their speed limits?  We started calling them speed "goals."  Also, this road is crazy-wide by Ireland standards.

 Seriously, you can't go two feet without a new photo op.

 I mean it.

 They even make big fields of rocks look awesome.  IRELAND IS MAGICAL.

I WANT TO GO BACK!

Ok, I think this post is long enough for my first one back, don't you think?  I hope the past few months have been good to you!