Holiday fun and mini project

Here are a few pictures of the favorite presents from Santa. Star Wars for him and a kitchen for her.



And the little princess really likes her Little People castle. She calls the princess her "girlie." It's only six days after Christmas and the prince is missing already.

I've been trying to clean out the office and my scrap closet. I'm a slob and it's just amazing how truly messy I can make everything. Well, I took a little time out from cleaning to make two micro-mini albums with these cute little Bazzill chip board tag packs I purchased when my favorite LSS went out of business. Just really fun little books about what the kids like and do right now. Blue for him since it's his favorite color and pink for her since she loves pink (and so do I).

Halloween Princess Layout for BPS Class

I'm taking May Flaum's Seasons class at BPS and wanted to share the Halloween Princess layout I did with the pre-class handout. I love May's style and she's such a fun and informative teacher. You should take the class! I love how my layout turned out! May's style is very different from what I normally do, so taking some of her classes has really helped me branch out. I love the results!

It's been a long time...

since I've blogged. I am a bad blogger. So I thought I'd show you what we created at our house. Last week, we made a Wilton gingerbread tree. It turned out pretty cute considering I can't work one of those fancy icing bags.

Apparently, though, I have to stick my tongue out to use a spatula for icing. Not sure why that is.

Some of us just liked the sugary icing.

Monday night is my daughter's gymnastics night. I snapped a few pictures. This one is my favorite.

By the way, have you tried the Gingersnap Latte at Starbucks? I had a card for a free one. It's yummy. Little bits of crystalized ginger. Mmmmm. I would have another. The nutrition information confirmed that I shouldn't have one on a regular basis, but it's better if you make it non-fat. Best thing about it is that for every(STARBUCKS)RED EXCLUSIVE beverage purchased, Starbucks will contribute five cents to the Global Fund to invest in AIDS programs in Africa. They offer three RED EXCLUSIVE beverages -- Peppermint Mocha Twist, Gingersnap Latte and Espresso Truffle.

This is on my holiday wish list

The fabulous Lain Ehmann has compiled her witty scrapbooking essays into a great little book. She's a great writer and she will have you laughing and saying, "That's totally true and I do that too!" You can preorder the book and also check out some exerpts. I'm telling you that this is a must-read for any scrapbooker.

I just adore Lain. She's exceptionally creative and she's very generous. She posts projects and shares step by step instructions. She fields scrapbooking questions. She podcasts. She makes scrapbooking fun. Let go of the guilt of being "behind" and scrap because you love it! And laugh at the things we scrapbookers do. Get yourself a copy of Snippets!

Truth be told -- it doesn't need to be on my wish list because I preordered it!

Swimming lessons, cute outfits, Cub Scouts and Veterans Day

Saturday mornings this November, my son has swimming lessons, so here's a fun picture of the kids together before his lesson on November 8. We went to lessons and then to Sam's Club to pick up necessities like diapers and to get supersized snacks for hospitality at church on Sunday. The 2-bite brownie are so good!

Sunday we hosted hospitality at church and I worked in the nursery during the service. Our church has really grown this year, which is great. However, I needed to get one more package of brownie bites. I'll know for next time. After church, we went to my aunt and uncle's house. My brother was in from Ohio,my aunt and uncle from Chicago, and my cousin was here from California. It was fun to hang out with family. My daughter looked super cute for church and the family get together in this outfit I got from JC Penny's.

I took Monday off to do a little Christmas shopping with my friend. We had lunch and did some shopping. It was fun. After school we did some quick homework and then headed to my daughter's gymnastics class. We had dinner as a family at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants. After that, my son and I went to his Cub Scout Pack meeting. It was a crazy meeting that included the ceremony for his Bobcat badge. When we got home, I took some pictures of us with the paint on our faces.

And finally, Tuesday was Veteran's Day. My son insisted on wearing camo even though the tops and the bottoms didn't match. They had a program at school. Since it was yuck outside and we had been running around like crazy people since Saturday, we relaxed at home. My son enjoyed lounging and playing Playstation 2 FIFA 2009.

I've been tagged

I've been tagged by Heather and I'm really surprised because I only thought a few family members looked at this blog. Here's 7 random things about me:

1. I waited 2 hours to vote this morning. I read part of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle while I was waiting.
2. I have a mini van and I absolutely love it. Seriously.
3. I have a crush on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
4. When I brush my teeth, I wet the brush first. Then I put the toothpaste on. Then I have to wet the brush and toothpaste again. Weird, but it's how I do it.
5. I was crushed on Saturday when I found out my favorite LSS is closing. And it's the only one left in my area. All the rest are chains. I almost cried.
6. I like Diet Coke a lot. Not Diet Pepsi. Diet Coke.
7. Gone with the Wind used to be my favorite book. Thanks to the ScrapHappy Book Club, I read Water for Elephants. Now it's my favorite.

Soccer player and princess with a black eye

My son was a soccer player for Halloween. He was really annoyed that I wanted to take a picture. He just wanted to go trick-or-treating.

My daughter was a princess. She went out trick-or-treating for a while, but came home to eat candy and help Grandma Janet and Grandma Marilyn pass out candy.

I think you can tell in this picture that she has a big old shiner. She got hit in the eye by a flying toy at day care today and she had a pretty swollen and cut up eye. She still looked pretty cute though.

I really tried to get the two of them to pose together. Quite frankly it wasn't that easy. With all the excitement of Halloween, neither of them wanted to stand still even for a minute.

Hope you had a great Halloween!

Happy Halloween Eve

Doing some last minute pumpkin carving the night before Halloween. We had 5 pumpkins and had only carved one, so we were very busy carving this evening. The kids were cute and even posed for me while Daddy emptied out a pumpkin.

She smiled big like a jack-o-lantern for me. She calls them punk-a-lanterns. How cute is that?

And he liked to scoop out the pumpkin guts. He even took a picture of the inside of a pumpkin. Sort of weird looking from the angle at which he took the picture.

I did actually get one picture of them looking at me posing with the "punk-a-lantern." Mommy's need for a picture was directly competing with the kids' desire to watch television.

Hope you have a Happy Halloween tomorrow!

New layout for Recipes Class

I'm not much of an embellishment user, so I was trying to follow May Flaum's journaling recipes (combining a few) and see what I could do. What do you think?

Next Season on Dancing With The Stars!!

Now I'd watch this!

Yes, I am a dork

I am my son's co-room mom and I needed to make a ballot box so that they can vote on the name of their new mascot. It gives the kids a chance to have an election too. Being a paper-crafter, I couldn't just leave a shoe box blank. Now, this isn't perfect. I didn't use the paper trimmer too much and I used a lot of scotch tape, but I think I did a decent job with a quick and dirty decorating job for the old Stride Rite box. Old scrapping supplies really do come in handy. But, after thinking about it, I think I might have dorked-out on it a bit.

Really, though, I am excited about the election and about my son learning about elections. After all, I do have a political science degree and I had planned at one time to work in politics and government. I just never did. That doesn't mean I don't get into it a little bit. Anyway, I hope you exercise your right to vote. And I'm glad I found a use for old dot letters!

Recently we've been busy

Since my last post, we've been very busy finishing the soccer season, starting gymnastics, going to parent-teacher conferences and doing our daily routine. We also had our first Cub Scout outing. We even managed to carve a jack-o-lantern. We need to get busy because I think we still have four more pumpkins to carve.

I went on my son's classroom field trip last Friday. The weather was perfect and the kids had a lot of fun. I was exhausted afterwards.

While my daughter napped on Saturday, my son and I made a Holloween castle from a pre-made cookie kit I bought at Wal-mart for around $10. We usually make one at Christmas, and this was fun to do. Boy, is black icing really gross, though. I got it everywhere and it's hard to wash off.

And not to leave my daughter out, I wanted to post a funny picture of her. We have a Melissa and Doug wooden shoe for learning to tie shoes. She decided to wear it. This is her cheesy smile. She's a character.

I've even managed to do a few layouts. This one is titled, "Big George," which is what my daughter calls our backyard. I was experimenting with various size pieces of patterned paper. I'm taking May Flaum's recipes class at Big Picture Scrapbooking right now.

I also did one with paper scraps about the kids loving to each chocolate kisses. My daughter calls it "cho-loc-late." It was also for my class.

Be present

I get very caught up in the busyness of life and sometimes days are just a blur. Most of my days are hectic days, racing from one place to the next. And so I took Stacy Julian's challenge to make myself a present.

She says it best on her blog entry, "We and our surroundings are constantly changing (even when you don't see it or believe it) and this little challenge/project is designed to STOP you, in the throws of your busyness and show you in an instant ALL that have and can choose to be grateful for -- ALL that is here NOW and very likely fleeting..."

So I froze October 2, 2008. I took pictures here and there during the day and then uploaded them to be printed. I did this project quite simply in a mini-album from Close to My Heart with some patterned paper from Scenic Route, a black pen, and some stickers from Sweetwater. Nothing fancy. I wrote right on the page protectors with a Slickwriter and just cropped the pictures to fit into the little page protectors. I did this in about 40 minutes. I'd encourage you to do it too. Life goes by really fast. This will be a project to treasure forever.

And since the economy is not that great, I did it all with stuff I had on hand. The paper was from scraps and I've had the mini book for a year and a half. You can do a lot with your stash!

Anniversary, birthday and some new layouts

Saturday was our 11th anniversary. Chris sent me these beautiful fall flowers and we went out to a new restaurant at the new mall by our house. We had a great meal and it was nice to have dinner as a couple.

I turned 39 today. It's weird. I can't really believe I'll be 40 in 365 days. Time does fly! It was a pretty good day. The kids and I had a good morning and work was good. Then we all went out to dinner. Chris and the kids got me a pink I-pod Shuffle. So cute! Kate was good until the end. Then we had to leave because she was screaming. Oh, well. She had a rough day. She fell and got a nasty scrape at day care today. Oh, and Jack stayed on green today! I even got to do a scrapbook page tonight. I had a really great birthday!

I'm taking the Recipes class at Big Picture and I'm taking Red Letter Days too. This layout did double-duty for both classes. It was for the personality revealed assignment in Red Letter and Recipe 1 in the Recipes class.

This is the other layout I did recently for the personality revealed assignment in the Big Picture Red Letter class.

If you are in the market for a scrapbooking class, I highly recommend Big Picture Scrapbooking. See the link over on the right.

Making stuff is fun for everyone

After seeing the cool "fright night" sign I had made, my son wanted to get in the act too. So we gathered supplies after school the other day and he made this adorable welcome sign for Halloween.

And I promised to show you my cute vintage jars. Here they are. They are now filled with Hershey's kisses (cha-loc-late as my daughter says), twixit clips, and Splenda packets. I love them. They match the green in my kitchen curtains perfectly!

Making stuff makes me feel better

I mentioned before that Jack, Kate, Chris and I all had rough days today. Well, we did. But we ended the day laughing and playing on our bed as a family before bath. It was fun. Made me thankful that we have each other.

After the kids went to bed and I checked my work email, I decided I'd finish the project inspired by the great Lain Ehmann. Did you know she has a book coming out? It's called Snippets and you should check it out. She's hilarious and she's a scrapper. Her essays are so true and funny! I'll let you know when you can pre-order.

Rough day

All I can say is that everyone in my family had a rough day today. Hoping October 2 is much better for us!

Pampered Chef, dress up and green

Last night I had a Pampered Chef party. Five people -- friends and family -- came. Even though it was small, we had a lot of fun. The last few years my annual fall party has been packed, but this year it was more low key. I love their products and the recipe for mini cheeseburgers was great! Such a cute idea for a snack to have while watching a football or basketball game on TV.

My girlfriend brought over some of her daughter's clothes and shoes for Kate when she came to the party last night. Kate and I went through them today and Kate played dress up. It was way too cute!

I also bought the prettiest vintage ballerina paintings for Kate's room from this adorable woman in my neighborhood. I also got some cool vintage pyrex canisters. I'll have to take pictures and post them. You can get some cool vintage finds at her store Stinky Toes Designs. Seriously cute stuff. You should check it out!

And on the green front...Jack has had 3 this week and had 4 last week. He's doing much better. I'm so proud! And much like his father, he's getting really good at holding out the camera and taking pictures. Here's one from Monday night while we were reading books before bed.