Loving the cupcakes!

I started yesterday and finished up this evening making 2 big beautiful cupcakes. My dear friend Heidi, found a lucious blog with a tutorial on making cupcakes from paper and ribbons. They do take a long time but they are so worth it! I want to take pics of them and share with you all. I think my cupcakes are not near as well done as the originals but they are definately Me...kinda lop-sided and messy but sweet!

A day late and a dollar short

For those of you that don't know, I used to be angel #403 in the Angel Company, a rubber stamping party plan company. I never had a party and rarely had customers besides myself. I even had a company website for a year and I think I sold 2 paper packs to an SU demo, the whole year. The best part was getting to know the people in the company. In 6 years and 3 seminar attendances, you get to know people! It's very fun. So this last weekend, I spent alot of time looking at blogs from friends that are still in the company. They toughed it out and now it looks like the rewards are coming! Over the weekend, they had their annual San Antonio winter escape and unveiled the companies new magalogue....part magazine and part catalogue...40 pages of stamps and stamping ideas and articles. Pretty cool idea actually!
So during their significant dry spell, I jumped ship and joined CTMH...No I don't regret it. I traded a company where I knew people, with one where I know my upline basically...I do love ctmh stamps and ink and paper packets and the whole thing with the clear stamps...I doubt I could go back to rubber now... Clear is just so much easier to design with...
When I quit TAC, I couldn't find enough stamps to color and now it seems there are more colorable stamps....good for them! But too late for me...I would have stayed if that magalogue had come out 6 months ago....I wonder if they are aware of how close they came to keeping me...what's a mere 6 months...just one, $100 stamp order to stay active...Did I quit too soon? Yep, probably....but I say that knowing what I know now....who knew that in 6 months they would actually find a good artist to work for them and put out a cute set or 3. I'll let you know if I can find $100 worth to order from their new book....but actually, I won't really order because I am spending all my stamp money with ctmh now. And the prices went up too and they still don't have a new comp plan after saying they were getting a new one over a year ago. And the prices went up so that the so called "change in the plan" could happen. So still finding themselves after 11 years in the business. Good thing they have some loyalty because some of the consultants bailed and I know that was part of the problem some had. Me, it was just a lack of good stamp images to buy and some negative nellies that convinced me that I should go if I didn't like the new direction...Funny thing...I think, they stayed...probably still griping too,lol. Well I just had to say, congrats on the new magalogue idea and some really cute stamps. Great job! I am happy for you! Just a day late and a dollar short, for me....

Love the size of my house!

Today, I dustmoped and spongemoped my whole house! It's days like this that I really am grateful for my little house. It took a few hours but it was easily done. You know, it's only 1100 sq feet and that is small by some standards. I also tackled the bathtub which has been needing a good scrubbing. Today, the sunshine is pouring in the bathroom window and showing off my handiwork...Most of you don't know, I used to clean houses. Sometimes, I'd come home from cleaning a house and think....am I glad, my house doesn't have any stairs...or am I glad....depending on what the people's major drawback with their house was. Most people's houses could be cleaned in 3-4 hours but a few were so huge that it would take some juggeling over a few weeks to get to all of it. One family actually hired another person to clean the upstairs while I was cleaning the downstairs. This was the house that grew fur on their dishes,ick! I think you can imagine what I said when I got home from that house...and I was happy when they let me go...I'm guessing the upstairs cleaner thought she could do both up and down. I love to imagine, the first time she saw the furry dishes....the first time the kids tracked mud on her newly mopped floor....Things she didn't have to deal with when she cleaned the upstairs. There was another house that I couldn't wait to quit cleaning. It was a house where the son moved his family back into his mother's home while she was still there. This job actually cost me money because I needed "retail therapy" as soon as the house was finished every single week. First of all, there was always some crisis between the two women that had "just" happened right before I arrived. The air was so thick, you could cut it with a knife. They both were so "nice" to me and so hateful to each other. Kinda like, they used me to talk to each other and get a few more diggs in. One neat thing though was that they both tipped me without the other one knowing it, so I was collecting double the tips. It was not my place to bring this to their attention and I tried very hard to remain non commental about their whole wacky relationship. The house was kept dark as well as acidic and so I had to clean without being able to see it. The dil sprayed tons of hairspray in her bathroom, so the floor was sticky. The mil thought the dil's bathroom was dispicable. In her bathroom, I wasn't allows to use water as that would wreck the finishes. I could however dust everything. can you imagine how disgusting, that was. The son was a huge wuss for not taking his wife and child out of that situation. She(dil) had MS and I do believe, staying in that house under those circumstances, did not help! I'm sure she was waiting for her mil to die so she could start living. Anytime, I needed to take off any time for any reason, I chose that day to do it just so I didn't have to go to that house. Finally, they let me go....and I was overjoyed. I did take my michaels's coupon after work every week and bought myself something fun just to make up for the ickyness of that situation. Once I lost that job, it wasn't long before I decided to quit working for the maid service and get my own clients. Afterall, there was no way to give myself a raise thru the company. I was left on my own to ask the people for more money at the same time the service was raising their prices for themselves. I ended up cleaning houses for 2 more years and then retired altogether from cleaning other people's houses. I still had crazy customers but at least I was getting more per hour. It's been almost 4 years now since I retired and I still get calls asking if I can come clean someones house...No thankyou, I'm not in that business anymore....