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.