My final words on the best RV trip ever!

Alight kiddie kats, I'm going to wrap this weekend up (because I've got a few more posts to share with you and they keep piling up)!

So, to recap, Friday we did some hiking, Saturday some biking and boating, and Sunday and Monday we did some driving.  You might remember from this post that it took us about 8 hours to get to our final destination.  Since we had to all be at work on Tuesday we decided we'd drive part of the way home Sunday and make the final leg of the trip on Monday.  I'd heard great things about Sturgeon Bay and Door County and suggested that we make our stopping point for Sunday night. 

Of course, the fact that it would mean a stop over in Green Bay only sweetened the deal for Brenna and I.  I knew it wouldn't be a tough sell to convince the rest of the crew to take a "break" from camping for a few hours and hit up a bar to watch football.  Both the Bears and the Packers played at noon on Sunday so we packed up our campsite in the UP early and got on the road to Sturgeon Bay.  We made a stop over in Green Bay to watch the games and have some burgers and fries.

Of course, I've already spoiled the surprise, you know we convinced the rest of the crew to make a quick stop over at Lambeau...I couldn't resist just one more shot for ya'll.

After we left Green Bay we made our way the remaining 30 or so miles to Sturgeon Bay.  Of course after 4 days of beautiful, albeit cold, the rained all evening Sunday.  We had enough time to get ourselves set up at the campsite, get a fire built, and get some tents up before the rain started.  It surely didn't stop us from hanging out though.  These pictures are pretty terrible but I blame the rain, the cold, lack of sleep, and well, lets be serious, beers!

I love these guys!!!

How could I not??  I dont' think words even explain what these wierdo's are doing....

I got the nickname Grubby on this trip...apparently I look like a grub worm with this hood on?? 

The rain sure didn't stop our parade.  Besides, it was our last night of vacation, we had to make the most of it!

The next morning we packed up all of our wet stuff.  And cleaned up after the raccoons that got into all the stuff we left outside (jerks!).  We still had to get the RV home, and cleaned, and back to the rental place by 5pm so we work up on the early side (hey, early for those who stay up til 2 am partying in the rain!), and made our way home.  Sturgeon Bay is probably beautiful.  We didn't get time to see much but I'd definitely make our way back there to experience it all in full. 

On our way back we decided to make a stop by Mars Cheese Castle.  Ha!  Anyone that's crossed the Wisconsin boarder from the Chicago area has probably seen it along the highway.  None of us had ever been so we decided to make it part of the road trip.  Truthfully, I think none of us were ready for the trip to end.

If you've never been, you aren't missing a ton (unless, of course, you LOVE cheese as much as Ryan does!).  I'm surprised how busy this place was on a random Monday at 1pm.  There were tons of people there buying cheese and other crap.  They had tons of Green Bay stuff, which B and I loved, along with cheese and a full bar.  We stopped for one quick drink, a few snicky snacks and some cheese.  I think all of our tummies regretted our choice to stop, but it seemed like a great idea when we did it!

Don't mind my gigantically huge sweatshirt.  I was still cold from the two nights without heat!

Oh and, I forgot, I've got to include a picture of Chris's project from the trip:

Elliot!

Topher spent the entire vacation whittling this little guy out of a piece of firewood.  In fact, this past weekend he bought himself his very own whittling knife.  Sorry B, I feel like this is a messy hobby your hubby has taken on.  Family, don't be surprised if you see this little guy again.  I have a feeling he will be around for awhile (I hope!).

Ug! That's such a crappy pic!  Sorry it didn't come out better.  But, like I said, I have a feeling we will see this little guy around again. 

I'll end with these thoughts:

1. I said it more than once, but we ended up with a very special group of people that could spend 5 days in close quarters without heat, electric or hot water, and still all remain friends!
2. I can't wait for the official T-shirts
3. I'd vacation with any of you again!  (And I'm pumped for Cabo with C&B in April)
4. Pure Michigan.org
5. Where's the 409?
6. He's on the $5 bill - Allen Jackson of course!
7. Pinto

 Keep on coming back!  I've got posts galore for you all!

The RV trip keeps going.....

When planning the RV trip we didn't do a ton of prep for the activities we would do when we got there.  We sort of figured we would just work it all out once we got there and play it by ear.  We'd done a little poking around and knew that the only real way to see the actual rock face was to look at it from the lake.  That meant that we either needed to rent a boat, do a boat tour, or rent kayaks. 

After we got the lay of the land on Friday we planned that we would have an activity packed Saturday.  Our plan was to take a boat shuttle of sorts across to a smallish island where we could do some biking and hiking.  There were 3 shuttles, one at 9, noon and 3pm.  If you missed the 3pm home well, you were stuck there.  For real, they weren't coming back to pick you up.  One cool thing about the island was that they allowed "open" backpacking.  Meaning that you didn't need to make a reservation for a specific site.  You could simply take the shuttle over, walk around and set up camp wherever you'd like.  Such a cool thing!  Don't be surprised in a year from now when I'm blogging about our backpacking adventure there (Jamie and Zach, I'm looking at you!). 

Our plan was to take the 9am shuttle to the island and stay there until 3.  Then, we had roughly 2 hours to get to the dock where our boat tour left from.  We'd signed up for the sunset cruise, more on that in a few.  At 8 am when Ryan's alarm clock went off and he was trying to convince me to get out from under the warm blankets I told him he was a NUT!  I'd gone to bed earlier than the rest (who's surprised) because I had gotten a pretty bad cold the following night.  We thought we'd fixed the heat and it ran perfectly for about 2 hours.  When the rest of the group came to bed around 2am we realized that the heat was no longer working.  Toph figured out that it worked on the car battery, so we turned the car on, let the heat run for 10-15 minutes and figured we'd have to tough it through the second night without heat.  So, like I said, when Ryan was all ready to get the crew moving to make that 9am boat to the island we were less than motivated.  I can't tell you how happy I was when the rest of the crew vetoed the 9am tour and Ryan climbed back in bed.  We slept for a few more hours, woke up, scrambled some eggs and bacon and had a nice relaxing morning. 

While we were cooking breakfast I made another (maybe the 10th) phone call to Cruise America to either try and fix our heat, or at least start talking refunds.  Long story short, after another hour or so of Toph on the phone with the company, we figured out how to fix the heat.  THANK THE LORD!!  I couldn't wait to sleep in a nice warm camper, but first we had a ton of fun planned.  Enough with all these words right?  You guys came here to see pictures so pictures are what you are going to get.

Here is Lindsay (ie. DT Chalupa) and I posing while we wait for our shuttle boat to the island.  We took the noon shuttle so we had 3 hours to explore the island and see the sites before we needed to head back.  Since we had plans for the evening and not a single piece of overnight gear we knew we needed to be back in time to catch that 3 pm shuttle home. 

We decided on a 12 mile bike trail and were on our merry way.  The trail was not well marked and we ended up missing our turn at one point but we figured it out.  It cost us about 2 miles but no biggie.  I think the highlight of the trip was when we hit an actual mountain biking section.  I think Sarah and Lindsay are officially in love.  DTC was actually pricing out mountain bikes on the way home.  We had a ton of fun and it was great to show some of our friends some new experiences.  Sarah had a much more enjoyable ride once Ryan raised her bike seat for probably the first time in 10 years.  It was like a whole new riding experience for her. 

Anyways, we were of course extra aware of time as we didn't want to miss that boat so we didn't do much exploring aside from our bike ride but we had a great time.  And, like I said, Ryan and I are super excited to go back and backpack that island again next year.

Check out the cool rock formation Ryan made while we waited for the boat to take us back home.

We had less than an hour to get back to the RV and get dinner made before we left for our boat cruise so we were glad we'd cooked up some meatballs the night before.  We tossed some noodles in the pot, warmed some sauce and had a nice dinner of Spaghetti and meatballs before our boat tour.

The tour said we could bring our own snacks and drinks (non-alcoholic of course), so we filled our water bottles with mint lemonade (plus Vodka, of course), packed some chips and snacks, and we were on our way.  The boat trip was amazing and we so glad we did it.  The campers next to us convinced us that we should do it.  We weren't sure because it wasn't super cheap ($35 per person) but they told us the sunset cruise was amazing and we decided we were on vacation so why the heck not.  TOTALLY worth every dollar we spent and more probably.  One of the coolest parts was they had a live bluegrass band on our boat.  They were trying it out for a few days to see how people responded and we were so glad we were the lucky boat they choose to test it out on.  I know you're all sick of listening to me talk so sit tight, lots of pictures and very few words follow.

This is probably one of the most true to life pictures I got.  It's impossible to capture the beauty of film, but you can certainly see all the colors and beauty of it.  I'm serious guys, put this on your bucket lists.  It was amazing!

I wish I could share a quick video with you all from the boat tour.  It was a little snip of the bluegrass band with the rocks in the background.  Alas, I can't find the file right now.  But, luckily I uploaded it to facebook when I shot it so if you're interested feel free to check my facebook page, the video is there for you.

I've got one more post to do from the RV trip and I promise it will be up for you tomorrow.  For now, enjoy and check back tomorrow for the last part of the story. 

Best RV Trip Ever!

Sorry for the radio silence lately! The good news is, it hasn't been for the lack of posting opportunities.  It's rather, the lack of time to actually write, proof, and add pictures to the posts.  I've got a pretty good backlog of "bloggable" moments and this weekend will have it's share of moments to share.  So, I'm finally carving out an hour or so to dedicate to blogging to get you guys all up to speed. 

Last weekend (well, Thursday actually), we spent 4 days in Wisconsin and the UP of Michigan.  This morning when my mom commented that she had been patiently waiting for a blog update I knew it was time for me to get to writing. 

Let's start with the most important moment of the whole weekend:

Yep, that's right.  The two lonely Packer fans in a RV full of Bears and Steeler fan's begged and pleaded for long enough that we convinced them to take us to Lambeau field for a quick photo shoot.  I suppose it was like salt in an open wound when we pulled into the parking lot just a few minutes after the Packers won their game (away) and the Bears lost.  There was plenty of heckling from the RV as we stood there and got our fill of the stadium.  But hey, who knows when I will be able to convince Ryan to visit Green Bay again?  The Packers play the Bears tomorrow so I will keep the trash talking to a minimum (but, check out my updated Facebook profile pic *wink*).

So, maybe I should rewind a bit and explain just how we got to to this moment.  A few months back Chris suggested that we look into doing a RV trip to the UP of Michigan and the Pictured Rocks State Park.  The "we're all in" campers the Ryan and I are, meant that we were super excited to plan this trip.  We recruited Lindsay and Sarah and Dan (another set of Ryan's cousins) and we were all set.  We rented an RV that held 7 so we were packed to the max and ready to party!!

We left Thursday night after putting in a full day of work.  Actually the three men took half day's and went to the RV store to all get "certified" to be drivers. We left Wheeling around 7 pm after getting dinner and getting the whole RV packed.  It was roughly an 8 hour drive to the campsite meaning that we finally arrived around 2 am.  And yes, we were "those jerks" backing into our campsite 3 times with the annoying back-up beep.  I'm sure we woke the whole campground but we were all pretty dang tired and just wanted to crawl into bed.  We drew straws for the beds for the night and agreed on rotating through the trip.  Sarah and Dan got the master suite in the back, Ryan and I were on the couch, Lindsay on the table (which laid down) and C&B were above the drivers seat.  See in the picture above that there is a little window above the driving area?  That's where C&B ended up that first night.

All that is important because around 4 am when the fire alarm started going off when the heat kicked on, Brenna freaked out!  She was stuck up in that super claustrophobic bed, behind Chris.  When the alarm started going off, Sarah and Dan didn't even move to see if something was wrong.  Ryan said "Don't worry about it" and we went back to sleep, but Brenna spent the next two hours worried that we were all going to die in the camper.  That was just the beginning of the camper issues.  The heat only kicked on once that night (that queued the alarm), we didn't have electricity and the hot water never worked.  After about 10 phone calls to the help center we finally got the heat working but not until we spent two nights freezing our butts off. 

Oh, I forgot!  After about 15 minutes of driving we realized that a little vent in the ceiling (above C&B's bed that first night) was open.  We couldn't close it from the inside because the screw was stripped so we pulled into a gas station to see if we could fix it.  These rental RV's don't put ladders to the roof because they don't want people to climb up onto them, so we improvised.  I've not tried embedding a video into a blog post before so here goes nothing:

I hope that video works for you all because I've got a few more I'd like to share with you.  I really need one of those Flip camera's (hint...hint...Christmas present anyone??). 

I wish I had a picture of our campsite but I just checked through my files and I don't have a single one.  It was amazing!  We were literally 50 feet from the shore of Lake Superior.  It was quite amazing to wake up and stumble out of our RV to make breakfast with a beautiful view of the lake.  It made me wish I was retired and able to travel the country aimlessly with an RV. 

Friday morning after we finally woke up and got moving we decided we were going to "pack up" the RV and head over to Pictured Rocks State Park to do some hiking.  The only downside to having the RV was that we didn't have an actual car.  If we needed to drive somewhere it meant that we had to sort of pick up, disconnect, and drive the whole shebang whereever we needed to go.  We spent the afternoon hiking around the park.  We agreed on doing a 6ish mile trail and there were tons of beautiful things to see.

 

Check that out.  It's a little hard to see, but that tree is growing on top of a huge rock structure that isn't connected to anything.  You can see the roots reaching all the way across to main section of land.  We learned later on the boat tour that this piece of land used to be connected but years of waves and erosion caused the rock to carve out creating this little island.  The tree survives on the water and nutrients the roots transfer from the main land.  So amazing!  See, here is another shot for you

We also found a really cool beach.  It was completely deserted and we spent maybe a half hour or so exploring and enjoying the sunshine (and warmth, after a night of freezing our butts off in the camper). 

See that water rushing behind Ryan?  We learned on our boat tour the next day that this was called the Lower Falls.  It wasn't very big at all, and Ryan even climbed up it reminding me vaguely of him "surfing the rocks" in Brazil.  But, what was cool is that this rushing water carved out a small bank in the sand of the beach.  It created a roughly 2 foot tall ledge of sand that the boys and Lindsay found super fun.  Lindsay decided to see how close she could get to the edge, jump, and then jump back without crashing down into the water.  Ryan enjoyed crushing the sides down like Godzilla and Dan nearly crashed into in when he nearly slipped on the slick water and tossed his shoes into the water to save himself....I guess you had to be there.  I nearly peed in my pants when this happened.  Followed almost immediately by Chris hopping his way across the skinniest point in the water trying to keep his feet dry.  Again, I almost peed.

Alright, that's a pretty picture to end this post with.  And, well, I've been working at this post for about two hours.  We are at the lake and the Internet is pretty dang slow here, and, we are about to take a boat ride.  So, for now, this post will have to suffice.  Check back again tomorrow and I'll continue the story.  I've got 2 more days of adventure to share with you plus all the stuff we are up to this weekend so come on back.

Ladies weekend 2011

Almost exactly a year ago, Chris was celebrating his bachelor party at the lake with all the men in the family.  They roasted a lamb, had too much to drink and spent the weekend hanging out in a "man only" zone.  They had so much fun last year that they decided to make it an annual event so, the ladies decided to have our own little "girls only" weekend.

Brenna did some looking around for fun activities to do in the city and we ended up at Bottle and Bottega located just a few short blocks from their apartment.  Such a great idea!  Basically for $35 per person you got all the supplies you would need (and a canvas) to paint for 3 hours.  They had a "painting of the day" which an instructor would detail how to paint, but if you didn't like the one they chose then you could paint whatever you'd like.  On top of that, it was a BYOB event so the 6 of us came armed with 5 bottles of wine.

Here is the picture we were supposed to be painting:

After we hemmed and hawed for a bit we all decided that we would paint this painting.  I knew I would need all the help I could get so I wanted to take advantage of the instruction that came along with the painting of the day.  Lindsay and her sister Sarah did different ones, which I will show you later, but the rest of us decided we would just stay on the safe side and work this one. 

Here is a picture of my painting about 1/2 way through. 

Looks just like the real one right?  hahah!  Give me a break!  First, I'm not an artist, and second, it's only half way done.  What we cool is that they had us block out the picture before we even started.  We folded our sample into 4 quadrants and then used those smaller sections to start sketching a rough outline of our painting.  We first used pencil to lightly trace out what we wanted to paint, and then started with the colors.  They taught us how to layer to give the painting depth and how to mix the primary colors to get the color you wanted.

Before I do the big unveiling of our finished works, I want to give you a sneak peak of what Lindsay and Sarah were working on.  Theirs turned out SO cool but they painted right up until the end of class so I didn't get a finished shot of their creations.

Lindsay's is a branch and after this part she added little white flowers all over.  I can't wait to see the finished work!

Sarah's is tall skinny trees with mountains in the back ground.  She doesn't even have the trees painted in yet, but if you look really close on the table under her painting you can get an idea of what it will look like when it's finished.

Alright, now for the moment you've all been waiting for....the finished product:

Hahaha....do you love it?  I don't know where I'm going to hang it.  We joked that we were going to take all of our pictures out to Koontz Lake and hang them all out there.  Who knows...maybe!

And finally, one big group shot with us all holding our creations.

It was pretty cool to see that even though we were all painting the EXACT same thing, every one came out a little different.  We had such a great time on girls weekend.  After painting we went to Cafe BaBaReba and enjoyed some great tapas.  Then we topped off the evening with a few stops at the bars along the way home and ended to evening playing Catch Phrase at B's apartment until about 1 am.  Such a great time!  Can't wait to do it again next year ladies.  Hey, if the boy's get an annual weekend, then so do we!

Happy Birthday Mom

Mom's real Birthday is on Tuesday the 13th (actually, she was born on a Friday, but there is nothing unlucky about her) but I celebrated with her tonight instead.  Which meant that she got her Birthday present early.  Actually I'm not sure it's really fair to call this a Birthday present since she did buy the yarn herself, but I put in the blood, sweat and tears so I'm counting it.

I'm unhappy with the way the colors came out in the photo but it's the best that I could do with my little camera.  These mittens turned out exactly how I had wanted.  They are all wool and will be super warm this winter.  The colors are perfect for fall.  With a tweedy yarn in two shades of green, orange, purple and plum they would look great with a jean jacket or anything khaki.  I hope mom thinks of me often when she wears them.

I remember the day I sent her a picture of my newest project.  She was immediately in love and said that they looked like heirlooms.  I knit one pair, which you have already seen here to practice and see if I could really do them justice.  Then, once I knew I could knit them, we bought some amazing yarn and I got to work on this pair.  I have to admit, I'm a little sad to be leaving them with mom.  But, I know she will love them just as much as I do.

Love you always Mom!  Enjoy them.

A facelift

With all the activity on this post I know that you all know we recently got a camper.  Ryan and I are pumped to try it out, but first there are a few things we'd like to change and fix.  We created a list of things we'd like to change and you can view it back on that original post.  So, on this Labor Day Monday, Ryan and I decided to hike up our sleeves and get our hands dirty.  The projects we wanted to concur were to install the additional hitch to the back of the camper so we could haul bikes and to get the outside repainted and looking nice and new!

I don't know why I'm surprised, but of course it took way longer than we expected.  So, I will start with the easy project first, the hitch install.

See, see?  See how easy that was?  Ok, it wasn't quite that fast.  But after maybe an hour of work and a little ingenuity on Ryan's part we had a new hitch for the back side of our camper.  See how it has those two silver metal holder pieces?  Yep, that's the technical term for it!  Anyways, Ryan used those to make sure that the hitch was stable enough to hold up heavy loads.  The rear bumper of the camper isn't super heavy duty so we added those for some extra strength and support.  Want to see how it looks in action??

Look at that holding power??  It's holding a whole pint glass WITH beer.  Hehe.

Alright, onto the harder project; repainting the outside.  From this picture, or these pictures, it's hard to see that it needs a new coat of paint, so here is one to give you an idea of what it looks like close up.

See how it's all flakey and ucky looking?  We weren't in love with this gently used look so we decided we'd try our hand at repainting.  So I started scraping.  And peeling.  Any acetoning.  And mineral spirting.  And goof-offing.  Basically I pulled out every chemical and tool I could find to try and get this paint off.  It took forever!  I scraped and scraped and rubbed and rubbed and it got me to here

Not great right?  So, you know what we did?  We broke out the big guns: the Grinder!!  I was excited because it was literally the first time Ryan's ever handed me a power tool to use.  Funny right?  He works with power tools all day every day and in the 3 plus years I've known him he just now trusted me enough to use one.  Hahaha!  See, I've even got proof.

Don't you just love my outfit? 

It was still slow work with the grinder.  You had to go over it very very lightly because these surface of the camper is bumby.  If you hold the grinder too close or leave it in one spot for too long it quickly makes that section completely flat.  After about 5 hours of scraping and griding we finally had a camper that was ready to be painted.

You can still definitely see the lines of the paint, but it's a far cry from where we started.  And that, unfortunately is where I am going to leave you ladies and gentleman.  Because, well, that's about all the farther we got today.  We've got the camper washed and taped and we will probably start with the primer tomorrow.  But for now, we are going to make hamburgers, pour a glass of wine and watch some TV.  Because, it IS Labor Day and we are going to enjoy the rest of our day off.

More on the painting later!  Enjoy your last few hours of the holiday weekend.

Making Heartfetti?

A few months ago while poking around Etsy I found some pretty cool art work that I fell in love with.  But, it was $50 and I thought to myself, "Self, you could totally just make that yourself".  So, now, a few months later I've finally gotten around to creating my version of the cool art. 

See:

Do you love it as much as I did?  It's ok if it's not your cup of tea, but I couldn't resist a try at it when I saw it.  So, since we are friends and I'm in a sharing mood, I'm going to detail out just how I made it, and, probably more importantly, some things I learned the hard way.

First I started with a trip to Michael's.  Well, two actually, because I couldn't manage to remember everything when I was there the first time.  Like my daddy always told me "What you don't have in brains, you make up for with your legs".  So, two trips later here is what I was armed with:

1. Seven sheets of colored card stock - 2 in white because I didn't want to wish I had an extra, and then the rest in shades of red and pink
2. One shadow box frame
3. Zip Dry glue - its works great for paper because it won't wrinkle your paper when it drys

Then, I googled "hearts" to find one I liked.  I wasn't sure which size I'd want so I printed a whole bunch out and experimented a little.

Once I picked the size I wanted to started tracing and cutting.  Well, that's a lie, the picture clearly shows that I went into the garage and grabbed myself a beer for the cutting process.  As you can see below, I traced the heart I choose over and over again and then started cutting.

It took a LONG time.  Like a really long time to get them all cut out.  To give you some perspective, it took me 1 episode of the Bachelor Pad (2 hours) and 1 episode of Game of Thorns.  So yeah, a long time.

I hadn't really shared my vision with Ryan before starting this extravaganza, mostly because it was hard to explain.  So he spent the evening making witty cracks like "Are you trying to tell me that I missed Valentine's Day?"  or "Did I miss a memo about making Heartfetti?"  He's a funny guy that Ryan, a funny guy.

Anyways, after a few television shows, a few beers and a cramped hand from cutting I ended up with this:

Pretty right?  I'm not sure why my picture came out all blurry but it's the only one I've got so it will have to do.  The problem was that since I'd hand cut each and every one of these cut little hearts (with Love I might add) each of them was slightly different.  A little squared off end here, a shorter point there.  Basically, it wasn't the look I was going for.  UG!!

So, I called it quit for the night, finished my beer and went to bed figuring I'd come up with an idea the next day.  I can't take credit for the idea.  It was all my friend Patty, but she suggested getting a punch.  Like for scrap booking.  Of course!!  Why the heck didn't I think of that first??  I told Ryan my plan and here is how that convo went:

• Sadie:  Hey guess what my friend said.  She said I should get a scrapbook punch instead of hand cutting them.  Isn't that a great idea?  Why didn't I think of that?
• Ryan:  Oh, yeah, I thought of that last night when you were cutting.
• Sadie:  Wait.  What??  Why didn't you say something?
• Ryan:  Because struggling is half the battle G.I. Joe!
• Sadie:  Jerk!

So, I spent the next night like this:

Ahhh!  So much better.  And faster!!!  A few minutes later I had all the hearts I needed and then some!  Again, why the heck didn't I think of that?  It pays to have smart friends.

After I had my pile of hearts ready I started gluing.  I really like this stuff.  It worked great and did just exactly what it said it would do.  Buy it if you've got some paper gluing to do...you won't regret it!

Partly through the gluing process I decided to add this:

It's our anniversary date.  But, you could do anything.  Your name, your honey's name, you get the idea....anything.

So, after a two nights of work (although I'm not sure you can call it work since I was watching TV and drinking a beer) I had a great new piece of art.

I'm not sure this is it's Forever Home, but for today I like it here.  Also, it looks pretty with our redish walls.

Just for kicks, here is the breakdown of the costs for you.  Remember, to buy it I'd have spent at least $50 plus shipping.

• Frame: $10.19 - on sale at Michael's
• 7 sheets of cardstock paper: $1.50
• Paper glue: $4.59
• Heart punch: $4.68
• 3 trips to Michael's:  Free?  Not sure it's totally "free" but well, it didn't cost me dollars
• Total: $20.96

What do you think??  Want me to make one for you?  Have you made any DIY projects lately?  I'd love to hear about them.