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!