Two new layouts

I'm not a very good blogger. I thought I'd share two layouts I did last night. Both are 8.5 x 11 and both are about my daughter.

This one is about the cute umbrella my mom bought for her.

For this layout, I found some cheesy cupcake stickers I had. They worked with the story and the colors, so I used them. Easy and fast layout!

Hey, Aunt Carolyn, Don't I Look Cute in the Outfit You Gave Me? and Bendaroos

It's finally warm enough to wear all the cute summer clothes that we have been stockpiling during the winter months. Today my daughter wore the cutest brown, pink and orange outfit that her aunt gave her for her birthday. I found the cutest shoes to match at the Carter's store for $3.99. Look at the adorable little miss! She even let me put barrettes in her hair which is completely unusual.

And recently we've been copying from Amy Bell and family and having fun with Bendaroos. Her blog post made me decide I should just break down and buy some since my son has been asking for them since last November. You should check out her etsy shop! So, thanks, Amy for inspiring hours of fun at our house. By the way, the box says that they don't take paint off the walls. Well, that's not exactly true.

Bendaroo tiara and sunglasses.

Bendaroo cowboy.

Bendaroo castle with knights in battle. And, yes, this is the wall where there's a little less paint than before I spent $19.99 on the Bendaroos. Oh, well. The child had so much fun and got seriously creative, so it was worth it.

Tagged by Lain! 7 x 7

I missed a tag from Lain Ehmann on April 2nd. Better late than never. I had to go to my seventh photo folder and select the seventh photo and post it here:
It's a picture of my son from last April. He was making a boat with his father. My dad had gathered a bunch of wood to make stuff with Jack and my mom gave us some when we were cleaning out Dad's stuff after he died.

I edited to pull the picture since I realized it had some info in it I didn't really want on the internet. For some reason, I can't crop it out. I'll try again!

Egg Hunt

We went to an egg hunt at my Grandma's apartment complex this morning. Kate was excited because she had seen Dora's egg hunt on TV. She only managed to get a couple of eggs. It was over in about 30 seconds. Guess one kid in the 3 and under category got most of them. Jack, on the other hand, did pretty well. He found 10 eggs.

Happy Easter!

My little Irish kiddos

Here's a picture from St. Patrick's Day. Both in their green!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I took pictures of the kids wearing their green this morning, but I'm too tired to download and post them. Maybe later this week. Anyway, we had St. Patrick's Day plates at breakfast this morning and wore green today. It was so nice here that we played outside after school and after I picked Kate up from day care. Since I didn't have dinner ready when Daddy got home, we went to Paradise. They had yummy green sugar cookies to sample. The kids ate about 3 each! I enjoyed the St. Pat's Day reuben and potato soup. Not healthy but yum! Hope you had a great St. Patrick's Day!

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

If you have visited Google today, you saw the image above. Today is Dr. Seuss' 105th birthday. I love Dr. Seuss! He did while I was in college and I totally remember that day. I have to say that I analyzed the political content of Green Eggs and Ham for the Politics and Literature class I took as an undergrad. It's an anti-prejudice message as I am sure you figured out.

For today's celebration, my son's class brought a pillow, blanket and book to school so that they could read a little on Dr. Seuss' birthday. My son took Green Eggs and Ham.

My favorite Seuss stories:
Green Eggs and Ham
How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
My Many Colored Days
There's a Wocket in My Pocket!
The Zax and The Sneetches from The Sneetches and Other Stories
Horton Hears a Who!
Horton Hatches the Egg
Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?
The Foot Book
Oh, the Places You'll Go!
The Cat in the Hat


For the record, I like the new movie Horton Hears a Who. I think it's a good adaptation. I, however, do not approve of the remake of the Grinch or the Cat in the Hat. I'm a purist for those. Only the original cartoons will do.

What are you doing to celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday?

Layout a Day Layout Progress

Well, it's day 27 and I have created 27 layouts. One more and the 28-day Layout a Day Challenge is complete. I wanted to share some of my creations with you. I've been having a blast completing the layouts for the challenge and working on stuff for my Big Picture Scrapbooking Seasonal Scrapbooking class taught by May Flaum.

Jack loves Star Wars features some pictures of my son with his Star Wars toys. He got a lot of Star Wars stuff for Christmas. He's obsessed!

Swim is for my BPS class and is based on a May Flaum sketch. We have fun going to the pool in the summer.

J&J is a picture of the boy and me after his Bobcat ceremony. I'm not in a lot of the scrapbook pages I do since I'm usually taking pictures so I did one of me and each of the kids to tell them that I love them. I love this picture with the goofy paint on our faces. I based this on a layout designed by Heather Bowser from the Feb/Mar issue of scrapbooks, etc.

K&J is a similar layout of me and my girl. I splurged and bought some Making Memories paper and embellishments and couldn't wait to use them. They are such fresh, spring colors!

My boy - Just wanted to tell my son what I love about him right now. Love the simple design and brown and teal together!

Kate my love is a layout telling my daughter what I love about her personality right now. Totally tried to "junk" this layout up with lots of hearts and love embellishments.

And finally, Unseasonably Warm is a layout about some warm weather we had last March. We got outside and enjoyed it!

Have a great day!

Bad news

We knew it was coming, but the Obama administration's budget wants to eliminate the loan program that I work in. I work for a great non-profit that supports student's in FFELP program. The budget bill has a lot to go through before it gets into place, so I hope that the final budget ends up much different than what is proposed now.

What I don't get is that the current administration is trying to pump money into banks and car companies to keep them afloat but they are willing to eliminate an entire industry (the student loan industry) and all the jobs that are a part of it. Doesn't make sense to me.

Recent layouts

Taking an online class right now and participating in a layout a day challenge, so I'm getting some pages done. Here are a few of them.

Easter 2008 - The kids with their Easter baskets.


Lucky - St. Patrick's Day 2008


Clownin' Around - The kids playing at the mall a few weeks ago.


Birthday Bling - My daughter and the necklaces she got for her birthday. She loves them!

Snow layout, facebook and turning 40

This is a layout I did for my Big Picture Seasonal Scrapbooking class. I love its simplicity!

I joined Facebook just to be able to send a friend request to Cathy Zielske after her brilliant blog post about joining Facebook. She's an awesome scrapbooker and her blog cracks me up. Well, I haven't done much with Facebook, but it seems like it could be a huge time-waster. And while I've been tagged by scrappers for a few random facts, the 25 random facts on Facebook seems like a little bit much. This article completely cracked me up! Hopefully what I shared in my November 4th blog post isn't as goofy as some of these items.

A friend of mine forwarded me a link to this article that I had to share. I turn 40 in October and we've been discussing all the things that are going wrong as we age. You don't even what to hear my list of stuff, but I'm falling apart and I'm not even 40 yet! The nurse who prepped me for my Bravo PH study on Monday couldn't believe I was 39. She said she figured I was 32 or 33. I love her.

Be my valentine layout

The glare on this is terrible. I totally need a working scanner! Anyway, wanted to share my latest page. It's my son filling out his valentines and making valentine cupcakes last year. It's inspired by a page May Flaum created for our Seasonal Scrapbooking class at Big Picture Scrapbooking.

LOAD and BPS Class Layout

I'm participating in Lain Ehmann's LOAD (layout a day) right now and I'm also taking May Flaum's Seaonal Scrapbooking class at Big Picture Scrapbooking. This 2-page spread was made over a two day period (so I could count each page as a layout for LOAD -- sounds like cheating, but it's legal) and it is based on a layout from my class. Killed two birds with one layout! I love May's style. She talks about adding "junk" to your layouts. I have a lot of embellishments, but normally I don't use a lot on a layout. May's inspiration has me experimenting and out of my comfort zone. And Lain's LOAD challenge has given me my scrapping mojo back. Thanks Lain and May!

Banana Bread Recipe

Banana (or zucchini) bread
3 eggs beaten (or egg beaters)
1 cup oil (or applesauce)
2 cups sugar
2 cups mashed banana (or grated zucchini)
2 tsp vanilla
3 cups flour (I use whole wheat)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 pinch allspice

Grease 2 loaf pans. Mix dry ingredients. Add wet ingredients. Mix well. Bake 1 hr at 325 degrees. I add some Pampered Chef cinnamon sprinkle to the tops before baking.

A foot of snow and yucky bananas

This is the view from my back door. You can't really tell how deep it is, but it snowed about a foot in the last 24 hours. No school. Thank goodness it's sunny, though. Makes the snow not seem so bad. It's kind of pretty, but it's totally a hassle when it comes to getting around. They've done a nice job plowing the streets and my driveway is pretty clear. My husband kept up with it last night and this morning and I shoveled once after that. I've been trying to work from home, but now my work computer is not cooperating.

This picture shows the view of my driveway and better illustrates just how much snow is piled up out there! It also shows the big shadow that our house makes on our driveway. Even though the sun is out, it hardly touches my driveway and it never melts!

My son is at a neighbor's house playing. I drove him there, but I think that I'm walking to pick him up so that I don't take a chance getting stuck and so we can play out in the snow a little bit. It's pretty cold, but there's no wind now, so it's not too bad.

I had some yucky bananas, so I whipped up a quick batch of banana bread. The recipe I have makes two loaves. We like the bread around here -- my daughter loves it -- so we go through two loaves pretty quickly. The house smells so good! If you want the recipe, let me know and I'll post it. It's really easy. Do you have a favorite bread recipe? If so, please share!

Latest layout - Ode to my Simple way of scrapping

This layout titled "All tied up" was a quick one but I love how it turned out. It's made from just two pieces of cardstock -- the 12x12 background and a scrap for the photo mat -- two scraps of patterned paper, some ribbon, and letter stickers. I love it when all the elements come together just perfectly. I captured the memory of my son tying his shoes all by himself for the first time in under 30 minutes. And even though he wouldn't smile for the picture to commemorate the occasion, I love the layout anyway!

I start a BPS class next Thursday with May Flaum. I'm hoping it will get me in the scrapping mood. I haven't done much lately.

2nd Birthday and "Snow" Day

It's hard to believe a week has passed already since we celebrated my daughter's birthday. She turned two last Sunday. She really liked the balloons and all the presents. I think the presents got a little overwhelming for her, but she had fun at her party. It was a good time with lots of family and friends. I really need to get the thank you notes done!

It was so cold here that school was cancelled on Friday. My son's best friend came over to play and we made hot chocolate. You can tell from the picture that I also did exciting stuff like empty the dishwasher. Actually, I worked most of the day in the office while they played. They had fun and it was nice for the day off to include a play date.

Looking forward to having time off on MLK day. Then back to work. Need to get running and working out again. Training starts soon!

Sad news in the scrapbooking world

I know the economy is bad and lots of people have lost their jobs, so in the scheme of things, this isn't that bad. However, it's all related to the economy. A few months ago, my favorite local scrapbook store (and the last one in my area) went out of business. I felt at home there. I knew the people. It was one of my happy places. Now, my favorite scrapbooking Magazine, Simple Scrapbooks, is going to cease publication. Again, I felt at home with its philosophy and I felt like I knew the people. I guess all good things must come to an end. I have every issue ever published and I'll hang on to them. I hope that Creating Keepsakes really does incorporate the Simple philosophy into its content. Simple is really what got me into scrapbooking. I had done a few things prior to that after buying some stuff at a local scrapbook store that is long gone now. But Simple gave me the basics and then their philosophy inspired me to really stick with this hobby. So, I say good-bye, Simple. Glad I was along for the ride.