A new LO, some sickness, and a new CT!

So I completely neglected to make my exciting announcement! The wonderful Minna of miradesigns fame has started selling her designs at Scraphead!! And that's not all, she's asked me to be on her creative team!!! I'm so excited because she makes the coolest, funkiest, freshest kits and I love scrapping with them. So be sure to go check out her store! Here is a LO I did using her Spring is in the Air kit:
Credits here.

I've run into another bout of the flu. This one seems to be more short lived than the 2 week version I had last time. I just need to be better by Sunday when we leave on our vacation. Being sick also kept me from running Week 1 Day 3 of the Couch to 5K program. But I'm determined to do it tonight. I haven't gotten to use my new shoes yet!

We've just been hanging out around the house today, making lists of all the things that need doing before we leave. Wal-mart is going to love us before we get done. So that's the news from my world. Hope you're all having a good one!

Shoes and scrapping.

I finally made it to the shoe store today and they were open this time! I got these:

Lots of good arch support for my rolly polly feet. I haven't gotten to try them yet because today is my rest day. But tomorrow they will get some runnin'!

I've spent a ton of time on this layout today. Another one of those where I just keep tweaking and it's never quite right so I just quit. Here 'tis:

Credits here.

We didn't do much else today. We've ammended our vacation plans. Still going to Orlando, but we're just going to stay 5 days and only do Disney. I was feeling too stressed about how much we were trying to do before. I feel much better about this. The thing I don't feel better about is the 90 degree weather forcasted. Yuck. We still have to find a place to stay. Any suggestions? I also have a fun announcement but it has to wait until I'm allowed to give it! Now you'll have to come back to see what it is.

A new LO!

I did another Weeds and Wildflowers layout. I used one of their older kits that is temporarily not in the store, but just you wait, it's worth having! Here's my page:

Credits here.

I got to use some of my recent purchases that hadn't gotten any use yet. Had fun with this one.

We went to a really fun BBQ today. Lots of fun people and even more yummy food. My family, hubby, kids and all, jumped in the river with their clothes on. I didn't have my camera so no fun pics.

Afterwards I drove into town to try and get some new running shoes, but the store was closed, even though they said they were going to be open. Argh. I was forced to stop at DQ and get a blizzard. I felt much better after that.

I ran tonight. Week 1 Day 2. It hurt a lot more than day 1, but I think that has to do with my cruddy shoes. That will be remedied soon.

Anyways, off to watch some TV.

A funny pic and some motivation.

So I found this website that lets you personalize church signs. Pretty fun, huh? I'm not Baptist, but there were limited sign choices. So you'd better listen to God and vote for me! :o)

I've started a program call Couch to 5K. It's a running program that is nine weeks long and gets you from a non-running state (aka digiscrapping 24/7) to being able to run a 5K. And since I didn't want to do it my self I invited people over at Digishoptalk to join me. You can see the thread here. I've done the first workout and now, 2 days later, my legs are still killing me. I desperately need new shoes but there are no shoe stores around here. But I'll keep going in my cheap ones for now. But here's the program details if you want to check it out.

Today we are heading to another BBQ. This time with people from Anton's class that he just finished. I've never met any of them so we'll see. Other than that we don't have much planned. Anton has the next 2 weeks off so we'd better plan something or we'll get really bored. Still trying to make up our minds about the Disney vacation. Are we going or not.

But time to go get going for the day. Happy Memorial Day!

A so-so page.

This LO is one that I messed with and messed with and had such grand visions of and I just couldn't get it to work like I wanted. But it gets to a point where you just have to quit. So here's where that left me:


Credits here.

It's not terrible. Just not my favorite. Oh well.

Yesterday we ran around town doing various things. For all of that, not much got crossed off my to-do list. Though, at Wal-mart we got a kiddie pool with a slide and a palm tree that sprays water and all sorts of toys for $20!! When we got home the kids played in there for a long time. I'll put up pictures tomorrow. We also went to a BBQ last night. Actually, I don't think I saw the BBQ getting used at all so I guess a social with food might be more accurate. It was with a bunch of the other flying Warrants. It was fun, except the part where one of the dogs decided my beef brisket looked like a good dinner for himself. Urgh.

Today was a typical Sunday. I butchered all the songs I played on the piano at church. Good thing I'm not getting paid for this or they might fire me! :o)

I think we've narrowed down our vacation choices to Orlando by car, since that's about what we can afford. The cruise idea sounded great, but it just cost way too much. I told my hubbie that if we decide to go on this vacation that I'd be guaranteed to get into the top 10 in the Queen of the Crop contest, just because I'll be gone when I need to be making the final LO. But don't worry, I'll take my laptop, which will guarantee me not to need it. I can just see myself skipping a day of Disney to scrap! You know you're obsessed when....

Anyways, off to spend some time with my hubbie (which equals watch a movie). Da Vinci Code tonight. Have a good one!

The Final Week

It's the last week of the Queen of the Crop contest over at Scrapbook Graphics. Well, technically there's one more week for the top 10, but we'll just see about that. This week's layout had to be about ourselves from someone else's perspective. I struggled on what to do on this one and this idea kept coming to me, so I finally went with it. Here it is:


You can see the credits and journaling and VOTE FOR ME here.

I was really pleased with how it came out. There were 107 people in this contest when it started, and now, by the fourth round, there are only 84. That means 23 people dropped out. Better odds for me, but too bad for them for not thinking they could finish.

Lots of sales this weekend. Gina Miller is having one and since I've been eyeing a kit and I still had my 20% off coupon from doing the Lifts with a Twist I decided to shop. I went ahead and got this kit that I posted about the other day:


Now I can scrap the piles of beach pictures I have laying around my hard drive. I can't wait.

We don't have any exciting plans for the weekend. We found out Anton has 2 weeks before his class starts up here so we are thinking about going on vacation. Maybe Disneyworld. We're not sure. We'd really like to go on a cruise since we are so close to all the ports here, but I'm not sure that would go well with the kids. Though we could combine the 2 and take a Disney cruise. Anyone ever done one and have an opinion? Let me know your vacation ideas since I seem to be lacking!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Stuff.

I've been in a funk for a couple of days. I think it's from spending too much time in the house. So this afternoon I declared that we were leaving. So we all hopped in the car with no destination in mind and started driving. We actually do this fairly often, but usually on a Saturday morning and we see how far we can get and find something interesting. But since it was later in the day we only made it as far as the mall. Not terribly exciting, but they do have restaurants. And if anything can get me out of a funk it's food. So we had dinner at Macaroni Grill. We splurged and got calamari appetizers along with our meals. I ordered the Chicken something or another. I thought I would remember but I guess not. But it had mushrooms, artichokes, capers, and proscuttio in a lemon butter sauce, with pasta of course. Yum. We talked of dessert, but our tummies decided otherwise. So unlike me. Then instead of going home we drove out to the beach. It was beautiful. The sun was setting and the temperature was perfect. The kids played in the sand and we all got our pants a little wet playing in the water. It was nice and relaxing and thoroughly did away with my funk.

I declared tonight a no TV night. So after bathing and putting the kids to bed we stared at our computers instead. So much more productive. :o) I tried scrapping earlier today and ended up deleting the page I spent over an hour trying to make look right. But tonight I did manage to whip something up. Sometimes it amazes me that a page that looks so simple can take so long to make. Here it is:

Credits here.

Can you tell I'm a lefty? My pictures have the tendency to hang off the left. Though I have made right hanger offer ones too. I cut right handed. And what sports I do make an attempt at playing I do right handed. In fact, writing is about the only thing I do left handed. Except raise my left eyebrow. There you go. Something you didn't know about me. But now it's late and I must be off to bed!

Not a great day.

Still feeling sick today. The sick thing is getting old. I was cranky all day and ended up running away from home tonight. I just couldn't handle the whining anymore and all I wanted was a smoothie. The only place in town that has smoothies is Sonic. So I pull up and ordered my smoothie and they inform me that their smoothie machine was broken!!! Argh!! So I went and wandered around Wal-mart and picked up the stuff I needed to make smoothies at home. But I didn't want to go home yet so I took the long way home. But I eventually made it home and finally had my smoothie. Yum.

I got a page scrapped earlier. Another non-journaling one. I go through phases with journaling or not. It all depends on the pictures I guess. But here's my page:

Used the Celebrating Color Collection by Gina Marie Huff of Weeds and Wildflowers fame again. I've been debating on purchasing that beaded alpha by Kimberly Giarusso (whose name I'm sure I'm spelling wrong but am feeling too lazy to look up), and I finally broke down. I figure if I use it twice I'll get my monies worth. And here's time #1.

The other kit I'm debating on purchasing is this one by Gina Miller:


I have a bunch of beach photos to scrap and I did last week's Lift with a Twist which earned me a coupon to her store (really had hoped to win the GC, but no such luck). I'm sure if I look through all my stuff I have beachy colored paper and elements, but sometimes I feel like being lazy and going the prepackaged route. We'll see.

But the kids are in bed so it's my time now!! I'm sure we'll end up watching more Alias. We're 1/3 of the way through season 4 and there are only 5 seasons so soon you won't have to hear about it any more.

Sickness, rejection, and some scrapping.

Yes, the sickness remains. You know that whole body ache you get before you get the flu? I've had it for almost a week now. Motrin helps, but for some reason any time I take it I get a fever. Strange, seeing how it's supposed to help fevers. Oh well, at least my kids seem better. If they had been sick today too I don't know what I would have done. I lived on the couch and in my bed. Luckily Anton came home early so he took the kids and I slept all afternoon. So nice.

As for the rejection, I got turned down for the Little Dreamer Designs creative team. They's posted on their blog that they wanted to email all those selected before posting the list and I checked my email and I had one! I was so excited thinking I'd got in only to find it was a rejection email. Sigh. Oh well, there's always next time. Besides, the girls at Weeds and Wildflowers keep me plenty busy. Also the sweet Sara Carling sent me her newest kit today to work with. It's so colorful and fun. Check it out:


It's called Late Blooms and it's available HERE at Scrap Artist.

Here's the page I made with it:

Dug back into the old photos for that one. It's different than the style I've been doing lately and it was a nice change. Plus I was using it to escape from my whining children so it was therapy too.

So I think that's about it for today. I hope you all have a lovely evening, or afternoon, or morning depending on when you read this and where you live!

A purple page.

I don't know what it is, but I have the hardest time scrapping with purple. I've tried using these pictures multiple times and just could never finish the page. This time I used a template and it went better, but still not thrilled. I guess I'm just destined to never be a purple scrapper. That's OK with me.

Credits here.

The pictures are my brother-in-law and his wife.

Off to tend my ailing sick family. With myself being one of the ailing. Achy, stuffy, yuck.

Sale at W&W!!

Weeds and Wildflowers is having a 20% off sale Saturday (today) and Sunday only. If you don't already have some of their stuff, trust me you want some, if you do have some, trust me, you want more. Here's one of my favorite kits:

You get all that for only $6!!! Go HERE to check it all out!

Time to vote for week 3 of QOTC!

That's right, the layouts for week 3 of the Queen of the Crop contest are up!

You can VOTE HERE.

Here's mine:

Credits here, and leave some love!

Journaling says: Today was just a typical day.We didn't
go anywhere, just sat around the house. Our
biggest adventure was going to get the
mail! It's a daily ritual for us and is much
more involved than just going to the end
of the driveway since our mailbox is down the street.
We'll load the kids in the stroller, or sometimes
Ella walks. We take our time along the way and Ella
finds plenty to distract herself with. But once that
mailbox in is sight she makes a
bee-line for it. She knows exactly which
box is ours and that it's the
same number as her birthday.
There is always that anticipation
as you stick your key in the lock. What
did the mailman bring us today? Sadly,
most days leave us disappointed with an
empty box, or worse, junk mail. But it is
a nice excuse to leave the house, even
if only for 10 minutes! Love, Amanda and family

I had lots of fun making this one.

Shrek the Third was cute. It wasn't as good as the first two, I don't think, but still worth seeing. Ella had lots of fun. We went out for dinner afterwards at a Mexican Grill. It was really good. I ate too much. We came home afterwards and watched some more Alias. Yes we are obsessed. We're almost done with season 3. Good thing there are only 5 seasons or I might not have a life forever! I don't know how I manage to get any scrapping done. In fact, we're watching Mission Impossible 3 right now so we can go turn it in and get more Alias. Nothing like a little MI3 first thing Saturday morning. I'll probably be back later!

A page and a movie.

I don't think I've ever gotten as much daytime scrapping done than I have in the last few days. I love it! Though it does leave more time for Alias at night. :o) Here's my take on Kim Weiss' "Pink Sunglasses" done for this week's Lifts With a Twist:

Credits here.

Journaling says: Some kids love to eat fruits, some love veggies, but mine loves toys. Any toy that is small enough goes straight into his mouth. He then crawls around with the poor hapless creatures’ little appendages dangling from his lips. He can crawl around like that forever. One never knows when they will see a frog leg,a dinosaur tail or a troll head hanging out of his mouth. I should probably be more concerned about him choking, but it really is cute!

All the pictures I had of Alex eating his toys were blurry and dark or overexposed, but I had to make a page anyways. But I've got to run. We are going to see Shrek the Third. We are all really excited, kids and adults alike. I'll let you know what we think!

Got another page done!

Managed to squeeze in some more scrapping today! Here's what I did. I'm not thrilled with it. But after moving things here and there and nudging and turning and deleting I've given up and here it is:


Credits here.

We didn't do much today. We made a trip to Blockbuster to get some more Alias (do you all think I'm a loser now for the amount of Alias we watch?) and to the bank to deposit our refund for moving from the military. Gotta love that. Other than that there was the usual day to day stuff. Made an easy dinner of chicken salad sandwiches. Love them, yum!! Anyways, in reference to the Alias thing, it's playing now so I must go!

Another day..

Nothing exciting going on today. But during baby's morning nap I did get some scrapping in:

Used Gina Marie's amazing Celebrating Color Collection again. So many colors, so many layout options. Isn't Alex a cutie in those pictures? He would much rather be pushing the stroller than riding, and he can't even walk yet!!

Anton survived through his training yesterday and today they got to go swim around in the bay. Jumping in and out of life rafts and such. Rough life. I swept and vacuumed, but that's nowhere near as exciting. Alex had a wretched cranky night last night. I've been trying to feed him more real people food rather than jarred baby food and it doesn't seem to be agreeing with him. Makes for long nights. Lots of rocking. Poor kid.

I've got a new job at church, playing the piano for the kids. However, I don't play the piano very well and I'm a bit nervous for Sunday. It seems like the hardest song in the book is the one they're singing on Sunday. Oh well. Practice, practice, practice. But it's a good excuse to improve my piano playing. I've been wanting to spend more time on it.

Anyways, the kids are supposed to be napping and neither of them are. So much for more scrapping!

I love nap time!

I can be so productive when I manage to get both kids napping at the same time. I got a bunch of my digi supplied tagged in PS and made a page! Here it is:


I used Gina Marie Huff's (of Weeds and Wildflowers) Celebrating Color Collection that you can get at Scrap Artist. This was one of those pages where I think the photos speak for themselves. There wasn't a particular event associated with the pics, nor a story. Just my cute baby. So why distract from the photos with a title and journaling? I think as long as you have a name and a date, sometimes that's all you need. I've been holding onto these photos for 2 years waiting for the inspiration to scrap them. I like how it turned out.

So of course, since we finally watered the lawn yesterday, it is raining today. That's OK. We didn't have any plans to do anything. Though I did take the kids to the library. A frustrating disaster as usual. Next time I'll have to try the new library that opened in the next town over. Anton gets to do the pressure chamber and "spin & puke" at work today. Such fun for him. It must be nice to have a job where you get to play and do stuff you love (referring to flying, not spinning and puking). I would be in heaven if I could spend all day scrapping with no distractions. Anyways, off to scrap more while the kids are still asleep!

Week 4 complete!

Yesterday I started to worry a bit about my LO for week 4 of Queen of the Crop. All the other weeks I'd had ideas for from the start, but this one had me stumped. I had a few thoughts, but knew they would be things other people would do. Then this morning I just sat down and started scrapping. By this afternoon (with child care breaks of course) I'd finished! I love it and wish I could post it right now, but that would be cheating. But it is very cool and you'll have to come back in 2 weeks to see it. I turned it in and it is out of my hands. But just to not leave you scrapless here's an oldie but goodie:

Credits HERE.

Life has gone back to its usual pace. Today's excitement was watering our lawn for the first time. We've lived here over 2 months and didn't own a sprinkler until now. Our neighbors were probably ready to petition the home owners association. Our yard is the blight on the street. It doesn't help that it has the WORST landscaping. But since it's not my house, and we won't be here that long I'm not going to waste money beautifying it. So I'll water the grass, but no pretty plants here.

I declare Ella fully potty trained! Today she pottied twice without having to tell me and tonight she's sleeping in her panties. She's been dry every morning for 2 weeks, so I figure it's time to go diaperless. I'm so excited. What a budget saver this will be! The only thing now is those moments when you are deep in the Louisiana woods and she says "Mommy I need to potty!" And the closest toilet is a nasty mosquito infested cess pool. Yuck. I had to hold her up so she wouldn't touch the seat.

Anyways, enough potty talk. It's still early enough to do some scrapping so I'm off!

Oh, that smile

Another page done today!


I used Karen Lewis' kit Contemplate available HERE at Digital Freebies. Great kit, love the colors! But season 3 of Alias is starting, I must go!

Another W&W LO!

Here's another page done for Weeds and Wildflowers:

Journaling says: Ella was playing with a magna-
doodle at the Aviation Museum and
I asked her if she could write her
name. And she did it! She had
never written her whole name out
before. She had done the letters
individually but this was a first!
Sure the “A” looks a bit like
an “H”, but it’s not bad for a
first try! She was so proud
of herself!

I used the new Celebrating Color collection by Gina Huff . It is being sold exclusively at Scrap Artist. So don't go to the Weeds and Wildflowers website expecting to see this 'cause it won't be there. But all of their other cool stuff is! Here are previews of the 3 parts of the kit I used:

There are also red, yellow, white, and pink parts of this. How cool is this!! You can find them all HERE.

Today was Mother's Day. My family didn't do much. I did get cake tonight though! I came back yesterday from Louisiana. I had the hardest time staying awake on the drive. When we got home I collapsed into bed and couldn't move for a few hours. But then Anton dragged me up because he had gotten the last 2 discs of season 2 of Alias and he was dying to see them. So we spent the rest of the evening watching that. Such drama and tension. We'll be getting season 3 tomorrow! I don't think we have anything exciting planned for this week. Anton starts the survival training of his course this week. Things like jumping from helicopters into the bay and pressure chambers and stuff like that. I think I'll try and get some more scrapping done tonight!

A LO and an awesome FREEBIE!

So it's time to vote for week 2 of the Queen of the Crop contest over at Scrapbook Graphics. Here's what the challenge was for this week:

Challenge #2 - Make a Wish

Do you have a secret passion, dream, wish or desire? Share it with us in a layout.

And here is my LO for it:


You can vote by clicking HERE or the blinkie over there <------.

Also have you seen the amazing freebie Scrap Artist is giving away for their second birthday celebration? It's HUGE! And as part of their celebration Weeds and Wildflowers will be joining their shop!! How exciting is that? They will still be selling in their own store and will will have different things in each place. They have an awesome collection coming out today in celebration. I'll post about that when I get a preview. Here's a looksee at the freebie:


You can snag it HERE in their shoppe.

So be sure to check back later to see the W&W kit! Have a great Saturday!

A W&W LO and some country fun!

Here's my first CT layout for Weeds and Wildflowers:


This was done using their Discovering You kit found here. I love all the grungy swirly fun stuff they have in all their kits! I'm so excited to be working for them.

I also got accepted to the Digital Freebies CT today. I'm excited about that too. I only have to do 2 layouts a month, so it won't add too much to my scrapping commitments. I love the challenge of taking a kit and finding pictures to match and making it unique and my own. So fun! That's what scrapping is all about!

We had a crawfish boil tonight. I am inept at peeling crawfish. By the time I'd get to the end of my plate they'd be cold. It was taking me so long. But they were good. And Ella and Alex got to ride the horse again. They had so much fun. Everytime the horse would stop Alex would rock back and forth to get it going again. It was so cute. Here are some pics of our adventures the last few days:

Riding the Lil' Chopper

Alex wasn't a huge fan.

Feeding little Bobo

Horseback rides!

Giddyap horsey!

Mmmm, crawfish!

Lots of fun! I think I'll put Ella in the rodeo on Saturday. How cool will that be. Anyways, I feel like I'm rambling so I'll leave off for now!

Livin' it up in Louisiana!

Here we are in hot and humid Louisiana. We've been keeping nice and busy. Yesterday we spent the day in "town" running errands and such. We went to a really cool flea market, but there were too many breakables and too many kids so we just did a lap and left. We haven't gotten much scrapping in yet. But yesterday Ella got to ride a horse! She was a little nervous to, but once I promised to hold her she agreed. She loved it. It was too dark to get pictures, but we'll be doing it again when it's light so I can get some good ones. We're having a crawfish boil tomorrow and going to a Southern Living party on Friday. Then Saturday to the rodeo! Between all this and all the kids running around like crazies we've been kept busy.

But last night after things calmed down and kids were in bed I did manage to whip out a page. I used the charity kit from Songbird Avenue. Here it is:



Journaling says: What is it about kids and their blankets? They must smell like magic candy because Ella and Lane are always sniffing theirs. But they sure do love their blankies, comfort and love in one easy package. 28 Mar 2007

It's just a simple one. I've been wanting to scrap that picture for a while, but it was proving to be a challenge because of all the different colors in it. But this kit worked perfectly!

We don't have much planned for today, just the regular everyday stuff. Maybe we'll get out the dirt bikes today! I'll post pictures later!

BTW, not that this is an after thought, but I'm so excited I was chosen as a member of the Weeds and Wildflowers creative team!! My sister saw it first and called me in hysterics! (She actually applied too, but didn't mind that she wasn't chosen.) I'm really excited to get to work with them and their amazing kits. I've already added their blinkie over there <--------. (Underneath the link you can click on to vote for me in Queen of the Crop!)

A short break.

I haven't had much of a chance to do anything scrapping related since yesterday morning. After my hurried post we headed off to a crawfish festival. It was a little bit disappointing. $5 per person to get in then $10 per 3lb plate of crawfish. Not exactly a good deal. But they did taste good. I was going to buy Ella a hotdog, but at $4 a dog I decided that listening to her whine all the way home was worth it, she could eat later. Also we left the camera in the car so not even any pictures!!

When we got home we sat down for an Alias marathon. We ended up watching 8 episodes!! Yes, sometimes I can be a loser that way. My poor children were very neglected. But I'm going out of town tomorrow and we had to finish them before they were due back! Besides, once you start watching Alias you can't just stop. We're halfway through season 2. Long way to go.

Today was the usual rush to leave for church, where the kids were so bad I was tempted to just turn around and leave. Plus my late night watching Alias didn't help my temper much. But we survived. Then back home for, yep, more Alias. But we finished in time to give the kids a little bit of attention before putting them to bed.

Tomorrow I'm taking the kids and driving to Louisiana to visit my sister Andrea. Anton is going to stay here to study and go to class. I'm excited. We're going to have all sorts of fun. Most of it involving scrapping. We spend hours on the phone each week playing on our computers and now we won't have to use cell phone minutes. We can send the kids out to play in the dirt pile and scrap to our hearts' content! Also we are going to have a REAL crawfish boil which will totally make up for yesterday. Also, if we can get Ella comfortable riding their horses we may enter her in a rodeo on Saturday! How fun would that be?!?

But that's all I have to ramble about for now. Remember, if you haven't voted yet for Queen of the Crop there is a link over there <------- that'll take you right to my page and you can vote!


PS Just in case you were thinking, "Man I came over here to see some scrapbooking, and what did I get? A weekend recap!" here's an older layout of mine that I love. Ella looks so little!

Credits here.

The voting begins.

You are all probably so sick of me asking you to go nominate me, vote for me, do a little dance for me. OK, maybe not the dance, but I have been asking a lot. So this time I will just be informing you and if you choose to take action, so be it.

Today the voting for Queen of the Crop begins over at Scrapbook Graphics. I have entered and here is the first challenge we had to complete: "Challenge #1 - My Many Faces or Moods Introduce us to the main character in your story. Create a layout that shares something about at least two (more if you like) very different facets of your personality or moods of expression."

And here is my entry:

If you are so inclined you can GO HERE TO VOTE FOR ME. Each vote costs $2 but you get a big goodie bag from their designers for voting. I don't know what's in it since I haven't voted yet. There are a lot of really good entries. So now you are informed. Have a great NSD!

Freebie heads up!

Got a couple new freebies I wanted to draw your attention to.

First off is another beautiful creation by mira. I love her stuff!
Isn't that so fun? You can grab it on her blog.


And here's another wonderful kit and it's not even NSD yet! This one is by Miss Mint over at Peppermint Creative:


Very fun! Go grab it here.

I'm actually feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the NSD heyday. I'm not dedicated to any one particular site so I don't know where to go or what to do. There's just too much! I'll probably just lurk around people's blogs and not do too much shopping. I'm backlogged on kits I need to make LO's from as it is! Hope to do some scrapping later. But right now baby is sleeping and Ella is engrossed with Jumanji, so I'd best take this chance to shower!

Got LO #3 done!

That's right, I've finished my third LO for the Queen of the Crop contest. I like it much better than my second week one, which I just can't make perfect. Oh well. But since I can't show you my page yet, you'll have to settle for an older one. How about this:

Credits here.

I actually made this one as a photo swap but loved how it turned out so much that I made a copy for myself with my own kid. I'm really into the bright color thing right now.

Today I was nowhere near as productive as I was yesterday. No housework got done, no hands-on projects. I did take the kids to playgroup, but no one else showed up. We didn't stay too long because it was really hot out. Yuck. Not looking forward to the heat of summer.

I'm really excited because on Saturday we are going to a crawfish boil. I've been craving them since I moved down here and there is nowhere to get them around here, well at least not for a decent price. It's actually a full crawfish festival so it should be loads of fun and I'm sure really expensive.

But that is about all I have to ramble on about. Time for bed for me!

Today's project.

I was so productive today! I actually did some housework and did a crafty hands-on project and scrapped a page. Though fixed a page is more like it. My hands-on project was sewing a curtain for Ella's room. It has a two-fold purpose, 1. to make her room look cute, and 2. (which should probably be one) to keep the sun from coming in and waking her up at 6:30 AM. Needless to say the curtain is black. I was just going to buy one from Wal-mart, but the heavy ones were $20. In the fabric section I found this really cool black silvery shimmery heavy denim-ish patterned fabric for $2 a yard! That makes it a $5 curtain. Though I did buy some pink ribbon to spruce it up with. And here is the final product:


Pretty cool if I do say so myself. I tacked the tie onto the back of the curtain for ease of tying and untying. The most adventurous part of the project was while sewing on the ribbons I took my foot off the sewing machine pedal and it kept going. It sewed right off the ribbon and onto the curtain and kept going! I quickly turned off the machine and looked down to discover Alex playing with the pedal! Lucky he didn't sew my fingers! Crazy kid.

Another fun thing I'm doing in Ella's room involves the clothes pins picture d 2 posts ago. I'm going to use them to hang black and white photos along this:


I bought 3 large white swag hooks and more of the lovely pink ribbon and tied it along the wall. Now I just have to choose the pictures I want and get them printed. Easier said then done.

I still have one more project to do in her room that involves spray paint, gerbera daisies and a camera. Intruiged? Well you'll probably have to wait a few months to see it.

In the scrapping realm, I did a rework of my week 2 layout for the SBG Queen contest. It was OK before but was missing something. It's much better now and very different. I would be shocked to see anyone else with a page like mine for week 2. So make sure you go vote for me! :o) I also got the great news that I won a gift certificate to Songbird Avenue given by Jessica Bolton! Isn't she the sweetest? I'm really excited because I was debating on whether or not to get the kit (scrapping on a budget, you know) and now I don't have to decide! If you haven't seen Songbird Avenue yet, got check them out. They will be selling one kit each month from big time designers with all proceeds going to charity. Here's this month's kit:


So fun! So now a million photos later and a bunch of rambling I think I've come to the end of my post. Have a great night!

Scrap Therapy

Well I feel better having scrapped (see below post for referenced not feeling goodness). Here's my page:

Credits here.

I made this with the free kit you get for signing up for the Little Dreamer Designs newsletter. Go check them out, they're new and cool!

Bad scrapping ego day.

Do you ever have one of those days that everything you look at that's scrapbook related makes you feel worse and worse about your abilities as a scrapper? Well today is one of those days. It doesn't help that I can watch the numbers for the voting over at Holly's blog and see what people think of my scrapping. Though in reality I know winning the vote would mean having groupies, and I just don't have groupies. Oh well. It was nice to have been one of the top nominees. The other depressing thing was seeing the previews for the SBG Queen of the Crop contest. I thought I had a pretty cool idea only to see that at least 3 other people did something almost exactly the same. So much for originality and creativity. Blah.

So to keep away from the computer and try and keep my spirits up I did some hands-on crafting. I've had a couple projects for the kids' rooms sitting around and thought I'd tackle them. Yesterday I worked on these little clothes pins:

They used to be plain wood and the flowers had yellow centers. I got them back when I had planned on doing Ella's room in pink, orange and yellow. However, I saw the error of my ways and switched that to pink, white and black. So I got to paint 22 mini clothes pins. Fun. The next project was coat hanger peg things with the kids' names on them. I got them back in Feb and had painted them but they needed assembled and varnished. I think they turned out mighty cute:


And just to round out the fun photos for the day here's one of my handsome hubby. Though he doesn't look like this now. He shaved his head yesterday in support of his Dad who is going through chemo right now and lost his hair.


But I'm going to go try and scrap and make myself feel better. Have a great night!