Saturday

I've got a few things for today. I finally got my pictures off my camera and wanted to share a few.
They are entirely unedited, because I just had to restart the computer and don't feel like waiting for PSE to open again. And I guess sideways too. Oh well.

Alex started walking and I got some good action shots. (Of course with a toy hanging out of his mouth. See this LO for clarification.)



My stitches, which I have since pulled out. I can't feel the tip of my finger around the cut and the skin is really tough. It's weird.

And even though my children tried their hardest to keep me from finishing a LO today, I did manage to thwart their efforts. Here's the result:

Credits can be read and love given here. (Until tomorrow (Sunday) when the link will change and we'll see if I remember to update it.)

On another scrapping note, I have resigned from my position on the Weeds and Wilflowers CT. It killed me to do it since I love their stuff. But since joining they changed the LO requirements from 2 a month to 6 a month. I know I would never be able to keep up and I'm totally bummed about it. Sigh. But there will be others I hope.

My sister, Andrea, and I are joining in the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race! We've named our team the Southern Scrappin' Sisters. You can check out our blog for it here. Of course there's nto much there yet since the race doesn't start until the 16th. But it sounds like a lot of fun and scrapping with my sister will make it all the better!

Last night I decided to be adventurous in cooking dinner. I was craving Pad Thai and I had bean sprouts in the fridge so I set out to make it. This involved a trip to a sadly small Asian market then Wal-Mart to get what they didn't have. I scoured the internet to find the perfect recipe, then combined the 3 I found. Then a bit of smoke and some quick stirring later and I had a plate full of yummy Pad Thai. I wish I'd taken a picture of it. It was good, but not as good as restaurant kinds. I'll have to keep working on it since I now have all the ingredients for it. Yum.

Last night Anton and I finshed the first season of Lost. Everyone keeps saying the 3rd season is really disappointing, which make me not want to spend time getting involved in it now. But it's good for now so I guess I'll keep watching.

I could ramble on about a few more things, but I'll leave it for another time. I've been neglecting my family long enough!

What else...

I was going to post all sorts of pictures today, but my computer is not cooperating. So you won't get to see my stitches, nor Alex walking for the first time. Sigh. We've been busy this week which accounts for the lack of posting and scrapping on my part. Ella's been doing swimming lessons. She did really good the first day, it got a little shaky the second day, and yesterday and today were tears the whole time. I feel bad for the teachers. Unfortunately she'll have to miss tomorrow because Anton is going on his first flight in the morning and it overlaps with swim time.

And yes, Alex started walking willingly on his own today. He's taken steps here and there before but never with the intention of getting anywhere. But today he just took off cruising! He'll walk 5 or 6 steps before falling down and crawling. It's so cute.

I'm supposed to get my stitches out tomorrow but never made an appointment. So it looks like I'll be taking them out myself. I actually already took one out today because it came unstitched yesterday. It hurt a bit, but not unbearably.

I've been having the hardest time scrapping lately. Multiple times now I've gotten a page significantly done, only to turn around and completely re-do it. The one below I've been staring at for days and could never get it right and finally quit. I wanted it to look like a page from a wedding album, but.... Here it is:


You can read the journaling, see the credits and leave me some love here.

I helped another friend get started in digiscrapping today. Here's the page she made:

It's her first page ever so please go here and leave her some love!

Well, since I have no photos I guess that'll be it for today. Have a good one!

Some scrapping, a trip to the ER, and more scrapping!

So this weekend has been pretty good, besides what this post's title might make you think. On Friday I spent the morning picking up the house a bit because my friend Stephanie was coming over for some scrapping fun. She recently got into digi scrapping and I offered to help her out. We made the cutest page of her little girl:


It's her first page ever posted in the digi world so please go HERE and give her some love.

So then Saturday. Saturday was a busy day. Some of Anton's cousins came over and we all went to lunch. Then straight to a birthday party for a kid of one of the other Flying Warrants. We couldn't stay long, though, because I had to go play the piano for the Primary activity at church. Back home to have some dinner. Then I sat down determined to finish Ella's kitchen that we got for her birthday. The missing pieces had finally come in the mail. Well, as I was extracting the handle to a measuring cup from the plastic sheet it was attached to, the knife I was using slipped and collided with my finger. OK, collided might be a bit soft, let's say impacted. There was blood gushing everywhere instantly. Anton grabbed me a paper towel while I did my best to keep blood off the carpet. I knew the moment it happened that I'd be going to the emergency room.

So we piled the kids in the car and off we went. It actually only took about 2 hours to get me in and out, and 3 stitches later and a lot of gauze and tape and here's the result:

Here is the nasty weapon with the incriminating blood still on its blade.

And even with my wounded appendage I was determined to finish the kitchen, and I did it this morning. Ella has already made pancakes and made me drink a lot of orange juice.

I did some scrapping this afternoon. Here's what I came up with:


I haven't done a crisp, clean LO in a while. If you want you can leave me love here.

I used Jess Volinski's really cool Wild Flowers Paper Pack available here at Scraphead.

And last but not least in this really long post, my hubbie got his helmet the other day and has been wearing it around to get it nice and fitted to his head. He thinks he looks really cool, so I figured I'd better put him on my blog so you all can see how cool he looks.


What a cutie. Hope you all had as exciting of a weekend as I did! (Except for without an ER visit.)

Another LO, finally...

This LO took forever. I had it practically done and decided I didn't like it and re-did it all. Much better now. Here it is:

You can leave love and read journaling here.

I used Gina Marie Huff's Being Me kit from Weeds and Wildflowers. Great kit.

So lately I've been having trouble sleeping. It seems like it takes longer and longer to fall asleep at night. And Ella continues to get up sometime in the 6 AM hour which of course wakes me up. I do OK most days, but sometimes it all catches up with me. Today, for example. Thankfully my hubbie was home this morning and when we left for work the kids went down for a nap. And now that I think about it I'm going to do the same thing. Naptime here I come!

A Suspicious Package, A LO, A Kit, A Freebie, and more!

So the other day the UPS guy dropped a package off at my door. It wasn't very big, about 6x3x3 inches or so. It was address to Anton and was from some random printing company. It was fairly heavy and sloshed a bit. Odd. I didn't open it because I didn't know if maybe Anton had ordered something as a surprise and I didn't want to ruin it. When he got home he said he had no idea what the package was. Then it struck me. What if it was a bomb? Heavy, sloshy, unexpected package? Sounds suspicious to me. However, what would someone want to bomb us for? So Anton carefully slit the tape and pulled open the lid with the package held at arms length (like that would make a difference if it exploded). He was going to slow for me so I grabbed it and ripped it right open. Phew! Not a bomb. Just a taste testing kit from 7-UP. It had 3 cans of soda in it, which was why it was heavy and sloshed. We had a good laugh about that afterwards. By the way, we did the taste test and both agreed that Diet 7-UP has a better flavor than Diet Sierra Mist or Sprite Zero. Though I think if I had to drink the whole can I'd probably be liking the Sierra Mist better towards the end. The Sprite was just nasty.

Anyways, got a LO done today. Here it is:

If you feel so inclined you can leave me some love here.

I made this page using Minna Rajala's newest wonder Aqua Breeze. I love the bright colors in this! Makes me think of swimming pools.

You can get it from her store at Scraphead. And right now they are having a 30% off sale. You have to use the coupon code that you can find on their homepage.

Also, Minna has a matching freebie on her blog.


That's it for now on the scrapping front. Alex has still been running a fever. This is day 3. I haven't taken him to the doctor because I've been keeping him on Motrin which brings his fever down, so by the time I'd get him to the doctor they wouldn't see the fever. Though, as my track record goes, as soon as I make him an appointment he'll get better. Always works that way. Anyways, Anton just got home so I'm going to go spend time with the family before he heads back for more studying! Have a great day!

A Plethora of LO's.

So it's raining outside, which means I'm stuck inside on the computer! (Not that I would've gone outside anyways since I hate heat too.) I've done more vacation LO's but first I want to show off the LO I got done last night:


I used Kate Rietz's American Dreams kit available here at Scraphead. That kit has the coolest realistic elements. Check it out.

I was actually productive this morning before the rain started. I got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed my kitchen/dining floor. Lots of back breaking fun. It desperately needed it though. Now I can ignore it for another month or so. :o)

Alex is not doing so well today. He woke up cranky and crying with snot flowing everywhere and a fever. I've drugged him, but he just keeps fussing. Poor kid. But he walked today for the first time!! He's taken random steps here and there before, but today it was a full sequence of 5 steps in a row on purpose!! I don't have pictures because the camera wasn't handy. I'm sure I'll get some later.

And to end this, I promised a plethora of LO's, and I always keep my promises. Here are the rest of the vacation LO's that I've gotten finished up to this point. I'm just under halfway done. I think when I'm all done I'm going to turn them all into templates and maybe give them away as a freebie? We'll see. But here they are:

A fun weekend, so far...

Usually we just sit around, but this weekend has been really fun! On Friday afternoon I went and got my hair cut and highlighted, in anticipation of going on a hot date with my hubbie. Here's the new do:
You can't see the highlights too well in the picture, plus they are really subtle anyways. I like it. I feel like such a weight was taken off my head, even though she only cut off 3 inches or so. I feel much less frumpy too.

For our hot date Anton and I went out to dinner at a restaurant called Chet's. It's a fried seafood place and was surprisingly good! We got a marinated grouper and some popcorn shrimp and lots of side. Yum. We were so stuffed. Then we got the kids from the sitter and came home and put them to bed. Then to conclude our date we finished off the last disk of Alias. The ending was so disappointing. It seems like they were gearing up for another season and then all of a sudden found out they were being cancelled and had to wrap everything up in a hurry. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. Now we'll have to find another show. Maybe 24 or Lost. We'll see.

Today we attempted to assemble Ella's kitchen that we got for her birthday. Around step 3 we discovered that we were missing a few doors and couldn't continue assembling without them. So I emailed the company and hopefully they'll get here soon because Ella keeps talking about making pancakes! Here's the kitchen we got:


It's got all the accessories of the more expensive kitchens but was only $38 from etoys. The catch is you have to pop all the pieces out of the molded plastic sheets and assemble it yourself. I'm a do-it-yourself kindof gal, especially when it saves me half the cost of the other kitchens.

Anyways, this afternoon we went and saw the movie Surfs Up. It was really cute and really funny. Very kids friendly and adult friendly too. It's made kindof like The Office, where they follow people around and have interviews interspersed throughout. We all really liked it. You should see it if you've even half thought about it, or even if you haven't!

Is this post long enough yet? No? OK good, because I want to show a couple more of my vacation album layouts:

This is the intro page to our day at Magic Kingdom.

Oh, the terror that is Mickey Mouse (according to Ella).

The way our kids spent their vacation.

There are other things I could ramble about, but I think this is long enough. If you made it this far you must be related to me, no one else puts up with me this long. :o)

A LO, Cool products and a freebie!

I want to show off a couple pages from my upcoming vacation album. I've finished 7 of the 40+ pages it's going to have. Here are 2:

I would love to give you credits, but I've been doing so many and I just grab the first thing I see that matches so I haven't kept track. So if I used something of yours, thanks!! I'm trying to keep it simple, 3 papers per page, no embellishments, same fonts, etc. The album is going to be an 8 1/2x11 Shutterfly book that I won. I'm so excited to get it done and printed!! It's been fun working on.

So I've got a few cool things to show you!! First off, have you seen these awesome stars by Gina Marie of Weeds and Wildflowers?


You create any combo you want! How awesome is that?!? You can snag them here.

Next up in cool new things is this fab alpha by Minna of miradesigns:


It's got a cool grid texture too it and I love the modern feel of it!! You can snag them at Scraphead! (The site wasn't working to put a direct link, sorry!)


And then there are these super cool little rip off calendar date labels also by Minna!! Fully customizable too. I'm going to be using these so much!

Also available for snagging at Scraphead!

And Scraphead is having a 30% off sale! So you can get Minna's cool new stuff and the rest of her stuff for cheap! They also have some cool freebies over there. Check out this great glitter set you can get, and all for free!!


So head over to Scraphead and check it all out! Has this been enough advertising for you? :o)

A LO and such.

Got another LO done today. I haven't posted one in a day or so because I've been working on our vacation album. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to post them all here or not since there will end up being 40 pages! We'll see. But here's today's:


I used Heidi Williams' cool kit Coming Home. It's a Weeds and Wildflowers creation and the kit can be found here.

Today has been a stay at home slow day. Spent some time reading to Ella and playing with the kids on the floor. That's unusual for me. Usually I just let them fend for themselves. This cold/flu I have has me all stuffed up so I can't taste anything except smoothies, Marshmallow Maties, and birthday cake. Darn. I made an appointment to get my hair done tomorrow. But shhh, don't tell Anton, I'm going to surprise him. I'm going to surprise me too because I have no idea how I want it cut. I'm getting highlights too. Should be fun. I got a babysitter for the occasion and everything! But my family is begging for food. And of course they can't find anything without my help. :o)

Birthday Pics and a LO!

The birthday party was a rousing success. Ella was so excited about her Shrek party and purple presents. All day long I kept catching her trying to open them but I made her wait until Daddy came home. We had one of her favorite meals for dinner-pancakes and vienna sausages (sounds gross, tastes REALLY good!!) then we did the presents. She loved them all. The looks of joy on her face with each new present were classic! She wanted to play with them all right then and there. But again I made her wait until after the SHREK CAKE!! That is my favorite part of birthdays. I love making the cakes. (And eating them isn't too mad either!) She had a little trouble blowing out the candles but got them all in the end. We ate and Ella played with all her new toys. We even let her stay up late to watch her new Little Mermaid video. She just keeps saying "I love my Little Mermaid." It's so cute. Pictures of all this are below.

Opening Presents.

Loving her new Dora game!


Elmo Mr. Potato Head that talks!


The cake!!


Getting ready to blow.



Eating the goods.


Alex was lovin' it too!


The aftermath. Poor Shrek.


Shrek family photo. (I couldn't resist buying these fun headbands!)

We had lots of fun and I'm sure Ella will remember this for a while yet.

And as if this post wasn't long enough I've got a LO to share too.

I used Bannerwoman's kit Unconditional available here at Digital Freebies.

Have you seen this contest at Snapfish? You can enter everyday and they give away random prizes!! Yesterday I won an 8 1/2x11 photo book! I'm going to use it for our Disney vacation album. I made 2 pages for it already. Only 38 more to go!! But they are quick pages so hopefully it will go fast.

I think this is long enough now. Have a good day!

Southern Swamp Funk

I've given it a name, this sickness that keeps plaguing me. This is my third time being sick in a month and a half. My sis who lives in Louisiana said it took her out when she first moved here too. Therefore I've dubbed it the Southern Swamp Funk. I hope none of you ever get it!!

But even through all the drugged, snotty haze I managed to scrap yesterday. Here's my LO:

I used Minna's awesome Summer Fun kit available here. So colorful! I was bummed I couldn't work the stitched birds into this LO, but they will show up somewhere, I promise.

Today is Ella's birthday. She's 3!! I can't believe it. For a couple of months now she has declared that she is having a Shrek party with purple presents. And who am I to deny this? She last night while she was sleeping we decorated the house with green and purple streamers and green balloons and Shrek accessories. I even made sure to buy purple wrapping paper for her presents. I'll have pictures of all this after we've partied tonight. Too bad the main gift won't be here for a week or so. that's what I get for ordering it so late. We got her a play kitchen. But she's got plenty of other gifts to keep her going until then. Can't wait for the party! I'm making a Shrek cake, but I've got to go to the grocery store first to get the eggs for the cake. Nothing like leaving everything to the last minute!