The First Christmas 2010 Layout!

Wow, I almost feel on the ball. Almost! I have actually completed a layout from this Christmas…yay me! It is also the first year I’ve tried to get nice pictures of the kids by our tree, it of course didn’t work out quite the way I wanted given that kids are looking in all sorts of directions in all the pictures, but hey I tried. I used a super cute Christmas kit called Merry and Bright from Colie’s Corner for this layout and I ended up getting Layout Of The Day and a nod in Gallery Stand Outs at Gotta Pixel for it, so that was a very nice thing to wake up to!

We’ve spent the last few days trying to get back into regular day to day mode, but since the kids father works for the government, he got 2 days off to deal with the fact that Christmas and Boxing Day were on the weekend. That made it a lot harder to try and get the kids back into their normal routines. He is however back to work today, and since I have no big New Years Eve shenanigans planned, we can work on getting back in routine now! As much as I love the holidays I’m always glad when they are done, seriously, sometimes they are just too much for me. I worked on cleaning the bedrooms and living room yesterday, though you’d never know the one room was cleaned because the man went on a mad rampage for a tv remote last night. Oh well. Once the baby goes down for his nap it will be back to cleaning, the kitchen and bathroom are on today’s agenda, as well as laundry and re-cleaning the now torn apart bedroom! I’m making some plans for projects for 2011 and I’m really excited about them as well, so stay tuned for more information on those goings on. But for now I should go, the girls and I are watching Space Jam on tv while the little guy plays with toys and whines a bit.

Hope everyone had a fantastic holiday!!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I really hope that everyone’s been having a great holiday season so far, and I’d like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas tomorrow (or today depending on where you live!!) The mans work treated employees and their family to a pancake breakfast this morning, so that was nice for more reasons than you can imagine. Morgan has literally been whining for pancakes for breakfast every single day for about the last 2 weeks haha.

I still have a few things to wrap and apparently get to brave the stores to go buy milk and cranberry sauce this afternoon of all things, but I’m waiting til the man is off work at noon so that I don’t have to worry about having the kids with me! I don’t know how all these presents are going to fit under the tree, but I will make them! Tomorrow is going to be insanity in this house I’m sure, I need to take pictures of the kids with or opening certain gifts so that I can send them to the person who gave the kids that gift! But the girls are pretty excited to open things, and it will be nice to have them opened so I don’t have to chase the little guy away from them all the time. He’s poked holes in a couple and chewed corners on a couple more, drooled on some, and even tried to eat a tree branch (fake tree.) I thought I’d be on the lookout for the 2 year old, not for the baby!

I’m finally able to share the other layout I did!! I have so many layouts just waiting for the products to be released right now it’s insane, haha. I literally get so excited to share some of them that it’s agony waiting. The one I’m sharing today uses a kit called Courage by Geek Chic Scraps. This kit is bright colors and fun elements and I had a blast making my layout. I used a template by Scrapping with Liz to work from as well, because I fell in love with this set of templates when I saw it!

I love the way it turned out, I’d thought about using a plain paper as the background and rotating through patterned paper strips, but I’m really happy I went the other way, I think it makes the heart shape stand out really well! I’m hoping that since man doesn’t return to work until Wednesday that maybe he can keep an eye on the kids a bit and I can get in some major scrapping because I have some serious creative energy right now and some great things coming up for 2011!!

Merry Christmas again!!

Been a Long Couple Weeks

Oh I’m so happy to say that my kids are all mostly better feeling now. The baby still has a bit of a cough, but the other 2 are great and I’m starting to feel better too. Yay! I have a literal ton of crap to catch up on so I will try to do so slowly over the next couple days. I hope everyone is having a great holiday season so far, I know we are doing well with ours. It was our youngest daughters 2nd birthday on Sunday night and it was a blast to see her so excited for things. I can’t wait til Christmas now for her to open all those presents and be even more excited!

I’ve joined a couple new digital scrap creative teams, so that is exciting. I’ve joined on with 2 of my fellow ESS designers as members of their CT’s and I’m already enjoying working with these fun ladies. I also was happy to be chosen as a member of the Log Your Memory 2011 Challenge team so I will be working with them from January to June of the quickly coming year which is very exciting on it’s own! I’ve been scrapping some layouts but just not had time to post them, and there are a few for things that aren’t released yet so they have to wait. I love being able to scrap with new stuff before it’s been released, but I really hate waiting to post layouts, I always want to share them right away, especially if they turn out to be ones I really like, which is a category the last 3 fall under. I can share 2 of them today, but the 3rd one has to wait for a bit longer yet!

This first layout is using a kit called Remember Your First, which is actually a collaboration between the 2 designers at ESS who’s teams I’m a member of now. I had a lot of fun with this layout, and loved the idea of the kit. I’ve been wondering what to do with these pictures for ages, and how to scrap them but now I’m glad I waited, because this kit was perfect!

The second layout I can share today uses a really pretty kit called Happy New Year! Since I did this layout before my old computer got here I had no pictures that would work, not even birthday, so I came up with an idea for a photo less layout and went with it. I love the way it turned out. I’d become such a minimalist when it came to using embellishments on my pages in the last little while, so it was nice to play around with lots of elements and layers again.

Now of course I have birthday pictures to scrap from Sunday, but we’ll see if they end up being done with this kit or a different one, a lot of the colors would work well with the pictures, but there are so many kits out there waiting to be used!

The last few days have been the big transformation to Christmas in our house. We had a tree before, but it was so old that I never bothered to put it up, so over the weekend I decided my big gift to the family this year would be to buy us a new tree. I managed to find a really nice one too, and of course I went for pre-lit LED. If you’re going to buy one you might as well go all out. Fake Christmas trees are expensive, but I know it will last us years so it was worth it. The kids love it, all of them. Even little Mr. Kale seems to squirm his way over to it to drool on all the wrapped gifts and pull their tags off!

I have a bunch of Reverb10 prompts to post too, I’ve been writing my answers down for some of them but again, just not posting them, so I’ll share just a couple here today in hopes to slowly catch back up to date, haha.

Dec 8

Prompt: Beautifully different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different - you'll find they're what make you beautiful.

There are so many things that make me different, just as I’m sure that everyone has so many things that make them different. While most people my age are out on the weekends drinking and partying and listening to whatever new music is hot that weekend, I stay home with my kids cleaning, baking, scrapbooking and normally either listening to cartoons or 80’s hair metal. Some people might think I have to because I have kids, but I think that most weekends I would choose to. I still like to go out and have fun and what but I really do prefer to stay home and be with my kids playing or making crafts or watching cartoons. I also think I’m different because I’d rather learn how to make something with my own 2 hands than just run out to the store to buy it. This is something I hope to bring more of into my life next year. I have a sewing machine that hasn’t been unpacked since moving, so it would be nice to get that back out so I can make up some cute stuff. I like my soap handmade, I like my treats baked at home, I like looking for neat things to make to furnish this home that don’t come mass produced from Wal Mart (basically our only store where I live.)  I’m that girl who even if I only get to go out once every 4 or so months will 9 times out of 10 stay sober so that everyone gets home ok, so that people can remember what they did and so I can drive our sitter home instead of send her home in a cab. I’m the girl who wakes up early every morning to make sure the man gets up and off to work on time because he sleep really heavy and the alarm isn’t always guaranteed to wake him. I like to read, I love to watch documentaries, I would live in plaid flannel pants if I could get away with it. Compare me to the majority of people I went to high school with and I’m definitely one of the odd ones out. It doesn’t really bother me though. Yes, there are days where I’d rather buy myself new clothes than buy baby clothes or diapers or pay bills, but I deal with it in my own way.

Dec 9

Prompt: Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans.

There really weren’t any sock rocking parties in 2010. Most of the parties I went to were for kids birthdays. Morgan’s 4th birthday was pretty fun, well the parts I got to partake in, since the baby was born only a month before I had my hands pretty full with him so I didn’t get to do the boating or anything, but it was a camping birthday so the kids got to have all sorts of fun and that is the main point. I went to a housewarming party for friends that involved fireworks and police, haha, but I was still severely pregnant at that point in time, so I was tired and ended up leaving pretty early. We had a grey cup party here with lots of yummy snacks and it was fun until 2 of our friends started arguing, then it lost it’s appeal a bit. We just had a party here for April which was super fun for her. Lots of the adults seemed to be hung over from some Christmas party the day before, so it ended pretty early. That was really about it for me. It will be nice to spend some of the big holidays not pregnant so that I can maybe have a little bit more fun at the few social events I attend!

Dec 10

Prompt: Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?

I think the wisest decision I have made this year has been made far too late in the year for any idea on how it’s played out. I have decided that even though I do have to take care of others I can’t just totally disregard myself, so I need to start taking better care of me and doing things I like and I want to do. We’ll see how this plays out as 2011 approaches because it really wasn’t decided until mid December, and hasn’t really had any time to take form in my life yet.

Catch up!

So I’m a bit behind on posting my JYC/December Daily pages. I have a few things left to tweak on some of the pages before I post them. It was a very busy weekend full of Christmas parties and pre-wedding socials, so needless to say I had no time to do so over the weekend. But right now I can post my layout from Day 3 and Day 4 of my album, so yay!

This first page is from December 3rd. The prompt that day was about Christmas cards, which I admit I am horrible at! One year I will be on the ball and actually get cards and have them sent so they can be out before Christmas Day.

I love the background paper, it was so cute that I really didn’t have to add a whole lot in the way of embellishment. It was nice to have a page come together so quickly. You can see a credit list for this layout in the Log Your Memory gallery here at Day 3.

The prompt for day 4 was about dreams for Christmas so I created this layout about my perfect Christmas. (Even though I am well aware it doesn’t exist!)

I really like the way this page came out. I love the cute doodled kids, they are adorable! You can view the credits for this page here at Day 4. I’ve been having a lot of fun with this album and it’s helping me to be in the Christmas spirit which is nice since we haven’t been able to decorate or do anything overly Christmassy yet, aside from the kids party on Saturday.

I’m hoping to be able to get another 2 pages up tomorrow, which will put me another step closer to being caught up!

Reverb 10 Day 6 & 7

Prompt: Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?

The last thing I made was actually just this past Friday. I was going to a fancy Christmas party and had nothing fancy to wear that fits me post baby yet. I turned a maternity skirt that I’d bought and never actually worn into a halter dress. I also made a fabric flower to put in my hair since I was doing it somewhat fancy but needed a hair clip of some sort and didn’t want to use one of my kids. I just used stuff I had in the house because I had no time or money to go out and buy something fancy (on top of the fact that it’s hard to find dressy clothes where I live. In the land of sweatpants and hoodies.)

There are lots of things I want to make, but I never have the time. Or I never seem to have the time. I spend a lot of the time I could be using to make things being a big old procrastinator, so it’s my own fault I don’t get more done I guess. It would also be nice if some of the time I could have kid free time to make things, it’s hard to be all gung-ho to make something when you know you’re going to have to stop at least every 10 minutes to deal with the kids. I think that is another reason why I don’t bother starting a lot of the time. I hate being interrupted and I know I will be.

Prompt: Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?

I think I have discovered more of a sense of community online this year. Through all the digital scrapbooking sites, crafting blogs, blogging here, and all the art or other things I take part in through the internet I have “met” some great people who I obviously have common interests with. It would be awesome if in 2011 I could connect more with people who actually live in the same area as me, but there just don’t seem to be a lot of people here who share my interests, or have the time to get together. We all seem to have way too busy of lives on our own to ever manage to work anything out. I have been able to spend time with the man’s friends and their wives/girlfriends this year, and some of them are ok. But some of them aren’t. Some of them are people who I wouldn’t choose to be around if I had other options, but I suck it up and deal with it because at this point any contact with other adults is better than none. I’m hoping in 2011 to just continue to grow and maintain the connections I have already through my interests and hobbies, etc.

Reverb 10 Days 4 & 5

Prompt 4: Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

I don’t know that I’ve directly done this in my life but I get to feel the sense of wonder that my kids feel through them, so I make sure that they always have an opportunity to wonder about things. I guess in my own life this year I’ve taken more of a step towards not stifling the creative urges I get. For awhile now I have because there always seem to be more “important” things to do. I realized however that not giving in to my desire to create has not really made me very happy and has just made me kind of resentful towards whatever it is that may be more important. I would really like to continue on with that next year and of course continue to experience or re-experience the wonder of things through my kids eyes as well.

Prompt 5: Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

I haven’t been able to fully let go of anything this year, but I have made some pretty big strides towards letting go of certain things. There are some that are harder than others. I’m still constantly working at letting go of the idea I had of what my life would be like because when I made my “life plan” it didn’t include kids, and lets just say what I’d planned is not something that is completely possible now! I’m also working on letting go of that desire for everything to be perfect. Don’t get me wrong, I know that things can’t be perfect in one part of my brain, but there is still this whole other part that gets so upset about the fact that things aren’t perfect. I’m not a size 2-4 anymore, my house gets messed up probably within 2 hours of cleaning it (because I have kids and my house is lived in), I don’t have the nicest newest clothes or insane well maintained hair and nail. My kids are bad sometimes, they act out in public. These are all things I understand, I get that these things are part of life, but I still get upset. I freak out when the kids dump the clothes I just washed and folded all right back out of their dresser. I get mad when one of them does something that is remotely rude or mean in a public place, like screaming or pushing or taking a toy or whatever. I get upset with myself when I try on something that fit before I had our last kid, and it doesn’t fit. This one I think will take a while to work on because like I said, I know it’s ridiculous to attempt perfection, but there is a much larger part of me that still thinks I can and gets mad at any aspect of my life that isn’t. Letting go is definitely something that isn’t easy for me, so I am happy that I have even started to try to let go of anything.

Reverb10 Day 3

Prompt: Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).

This prompt is a hard one for me because at first I really couldn’t even think of anything. Then I remembered the feeling I had after my car accident. I think the accident may have scared the life back into me in a way. It made me realize just how easy it would be to have your life end in a blink, or to have the life of someone you love end. In May this year we were driving back from my mom’s wedding. We’d been camping so I was pulling the camper with us. The camper caught wind and started to sway bad, and I’m not an inexperienced driver or anything but I had never had this happen while pulling a camper before. I looked in the side view mirror to see the camper had swung right around sideways. It snapped the hitch, rolling itself completely over once and landing on it’s side blocking off both sides of the highway. Our truck rolled twice,ending up in a ditch on it’s wheels. It happened so fast that everything was a blur of trees, highway and vehicle interior. I knew it was coming about a split second before it did. My first thoughts of course went to the kids. Were they ok, were they bleeding, were they scared, did they stay in their car seats? Thank god we had them in car seats!

The man jumped out of the truck pretty fast and ran up to the camper because the propane tanks had been jeopardized and you could hear the one hissing away leaking propane everywhere, which could be a very bad thing in an accident. There were instantly people everywhere helping me by watching the kids and making sure I was ok (I was almost 8 months pregnant). The camper was officially blocking off all traffic so after the propane tanks were closed off, he jumped into the truck, started it and miraculously drove it out of the ditch, he used it to push our trashed camper to the side enough that the traffic that had backed up could get through before the police sealed the road off. We were about a kilometer out of the nearest town, so it didn’t take long to hear the sirens from the police cars, the fire trucks and the ambulance coming. I remember hopping into the ambulance and having them check out the cuts down my arms, and check my blood pressure and all my vitals and thinking to myself how it was so weird to be in that position when we’d ben just so happy and carefree 2 hours earlier when we were in the city shopping, or the day before when we left a nice weekend of camping with the family. One instant, one mistake was all it took to wipe all those nice happy memories out of our minds for days.

It reminded me how fragile life is, and how all those things you want to do in the future but keep pushing off might never get the chance to actually happen. It made me live more in the now, made me want to actually LIVE more. Not just sit around and wait for something good to happen to me by magic, but to try to make things happen, to have more fun, to do more. It made me feel very grateful to be alive, and helped to remind me that you shouldn’t waste the life you’re given.

JYC/December Daily Day 2 Layout!

Using the prompt today from Shimelle I came up with this layout about the weather. I even hopped outside at 8 this morning when it was –26 still to take pictures of outside my house. That right there is dedication if I do say so myself! I liked this prompt because I find I will whine about the weather while it’s happening one way or another. It’s either too cold, or blizzarding in the winter and then in the summer it’s too hot or too stormy or whatever it happens to be. I am never satisfied by the weather in the moment! When I step back and actually look at it though my attitude changes. Even just now when I said it was dedication to go take a picture in –26, really that is an above average temperature for us. We spend a lot of winter with temps in the –30 and beyond category! We also have a lot less snow than normal, so really I have nothing to complain about, but I’m sure I will anyways!

I am posting all my layouts for my December album in an album in my new Log Your Memory gallery *here* so if you want to see the credits for what I’ve used you can check there, I will also be loading them to my gallery at DST, which you can always view from the link in my sidebar as well. I’m not using one set kit for these layouts, I’m taking bits and pieces from a bunch of different kits, so the credit list sometimes gets pretty long and I’m too lazy to retype it all out on my blog. I love seeing the other JYC layouts and seeing what the people doing Ali Edwards December Daily album are doing too, there have been some really great pages so far!

Reverb 10 Prompts 1 & 2

So I found this through the twitterverse and blogoshpere and thought I would try to keep up as well as my December album. I’m hoping it will work, but we will see! If you want to read about Reverb 10, just click the link and check them out.

Prompt 1: One Word.
Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?
(Author: Gwen Bell)

I didn’t choose an official word for the year 2010, but I am already thinking about what I want my word to be for 2011. I guess if I had to choose a word to sum up 2010, it would be change. There were so many changes made this year, big and small. We had another child, and on top of that it was a boy. Three kids is a big change from 2. A boy is a big change from girls! We also became home owners instead of renters, which is probably the biggest change of all this year. A very welcome change at that, renting always felt like such a waste of money and energy. My body has changed, though this is an unwelcome change and something I hope to work on in the future. The girls are changing as they grow up. We’ve had vehicle changes, outgrown friends who weren’t able to grow up with us. We’ve changed into more responsible, adult versions of ourselves. There have been lots of changes.

I’m not 100% settled on my word for 2011 yet, but I am actually thinking about it and trying to figure out what I want it to be. I really like the idea of having a word to focus on for each year.

Prompt 2: Writing.
What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?
(Author: Leo Babauta)

I do like to try to write in some way most days, whether it’s through blogging or through journaling on a scrapbook layout. I haven’t given much formal writing a shot because I just never seem to find the time. I attempted to do NaNoWriMo this year, but after the first week of diligently writing, I managed to procrastinate and make everything more important, from googling random things, to facebooking, to chatting on messenger. Anything imaginable I could use to block myself I did. Of course, this isn’t just a problem with writing, this is a problem with lots of things I want to do or should be doing. I am a procrastinator in the biggest way possible. I am working very hard to try to be more focused and to eliminate so many of the distractions that keep me from doing everything I really want. I think somewhere deep inside I’m afraid that if I do it and succeed at it that something good could happen. As weird as it may sound, I do believe I have a fear of succeeding at things and so I thwart my own opportunities to succeed. I doubt I will ever fully be able to eliminate my distractions, but I believe I can limit them.

I’m looking forward to what the rest of the prompts bring and to seeing what others have to say!

JYC 2010 and A Letter to Me

This post will actually be 2 different layouts inspired by classes from Shimelle.com (if you need a journaling or inspiration boost, I highly recommend stopping by to see what she offers!

This first layout is based off a prompt from True Stories, which I am still working through as I find the time. The prompt was to write a letter, so I wrote a letter to myself as a young teenager. I used Forever and Always by Geek Chic Scraps and I also used one of her newer alphas, Frosty Morning, because I felt it went perfect with the colors and feel of the layout! I really like the way the page came out, and have got a few nice comments on it in the galleries, which is almost unheard of in most galleries!

And since today is the first day of December I also managed to get my first page for my December layout done using the prompts from Journal Your Christmas (another class from Shimelle). I am really looking forward to creating this album, it’s exciting to have a real project that at the end of the month I can upload to have printed. I really need to have a finished project, there are far too many unfinished ones laying around.

I am really looking forward to the holiday season this year. I don’t know why but it feels like our first real holiday season as a complete family. I think it’s got something to do with the fact that we are now home owners, we are now done with kids, we now are more like responsible adults. I don’t know for sure, I just know it feels full of possibility and excitement and fun and I will be here to document it for years to come!

November Roundup!

Okay so I’ve seen this around on a few blogs, including of course the blog of Katie the Scrapbook Lady! And I’ve decided that maybe I should start to do it so that I forget less of those things I normally forget! So hopefully this becomes a monthly addition to my blog.

1. What books and/or magazines did I read this month?

This month I didn’t get a ton of reading done for myself, but I did manage to read a book called Baby Love which has a ton of recipes for home made baby and toddler food. I think I am really going to work on trying to make Kale’s baby food for him. One reason is because I’m really sick of going to our local stores and finding most of the baby stuff sold out. I also got to read this months issue of the Rachel Ray magazine. I don’t know what I would do without our library!!

2. What movies, television shows, plays, etc. did I watch this month?

I’m not a big TV show watcher, but I do try to keep up with How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory, so I managed to watch them. I also watched a couple episodes of Conan, but he is on so late that sometimes I fall asleep halfway through it, or make myself tired trying to stay up for it.

Movies on the other hand are a huge deal so I watched a couple. Grown Ups was absolutely hilarious and definitely worth watching. We also caught Jonah Hex which was a good movie, lots of action and it was like this insane weird mix of old western and super hero/villain ha, so it was up my alley and the man’s.  We also watched How to Train Your Dragon which our oldest daughter is now in love with and asks to watch all the time! We got some other movies too that were older, or we just hadn’t watched when they first came out, that we watched this month such as Up! which is always awesome. I think my oldest daughter and I both like it for the same reason (talking dogs…come on!!) We also watched MacGruber, The Lion King and some of the old Charlie Brown movies (ok we watched the Thanksgiving one, even though our Thanksgiving was in October.) We also watched Shrek the Halls which doesn’t really count as a movie, and the Flintstones Christmas Carol. They put Toy Story 2 on tv one day so we watched that but I got really annoyed with explaining to Morgan how there is more than one Toy Story. She kept saying this isn’t Toy Story mom because all she’s seen is the new one of course.

3. What fun things did I do with my family and/or friends?

We had a few dinners this month. We invited people over for supper the first Friday of November and did some BBQ steaks and all sorts of other things. It was pretty good!! Two weeks later we went to a friends for supper on the Sunday night and they had just got the Xbox Kinect, so the adults had some drinks and played some silly games, then we taught Morgan how to play and she bowled the night away! Thursday (Nov 25th) we had my pre maternity leave boss and his new wife over for supper. It was fun but a little strange because she is Thai and though her English is better than I had thought it would be, it was still hard to remember to slow my speaking down for her. The girls wrangled her down to the toy room to play with them before I was even introduced to her, and she was in love with the baby so she held him a good part of the night. Then on Sunday the 28th we had a bunch of people over for the Grey Cup party. I don’t watch a ton of football, but any excuse for people to come over, finger foods and a few drinks is fine by me. So we had a rather busy month with friends. I’m hoping that keeps up though now that most of us have houses that we just bought or have fixed up and can have people in.

4. What gifts did I give and/or receive?

I didn’t really give or receive any gifts in November. I guess we got the girls one of those mini skidoos, but it was very used and we only got it because the place it was at thought it was going to be insane to fix up enough to run. I think Kurt had it going in a week. It’s not the nicest looking thing in the world, but it runs and the older kids that belong to our group of friends have fun on it.

5. What special or unusual purchases did I make?

Christmas presents of course!! Can’t talk much about them yet! I guess the skidoo counts here too! We also ordered a new projector and an actual screen for it, so I’m pretty excited for it to arrive.

6. What illnesses or health concerns did I have?

I personal had none, except the ever impending bleh too large size of my body right now, hahaha. All 3 of the kids were sick with some pretty bad colds that are still trying to linger around now. The man also got sick and had to take a day off from work, sick men drive me crazy. They are so whiny!

7. What were my accomplishments this month?

Accomplishments this month were small, but good enough for me! I managed to keep the housework under control and also get the insane laundry pile caught up. I managed to get all my Christmas shopping done as well!

8. What were my disappointments this month?

Trying on a pair of my nice dressy jeans for a Christmas party only to realize there was no way I could even suck in to get them on. Then having our sitter not show and not being able to go to that Christmas party anyways.

9. How did I do on my goals for the month? (Or any current short or long term goals)

I didn’t really have any goals last month. I do have goals for December tho. I want to exercise at least 3 times a week, keep up with my December album and try to stay as stress free as possible for the holiday season.

10. Anything else noteworthy to include?

The littlest kids got another round of vaccinations this month, don’t have to return until January. The baby very quickly picked up rolling this month and can also scoot himself around on the floor now by digging his toes into the floor and pushing with his feet while pulling with his arms. He was a nice 15lbs 4 oz at his appointment on the 29th. April is still smaller, she’s 23 or so lbs but they said I have nothing to be concerned about because she’s still in the normal range with all her measurements and everything. She is getting much better with words, which is awesome. Every day is a little less babble-y, and she also finally is getting better with calling me mom instead of daddy. She tries to sing along with some of her favorite cartoon songs too…do do do do do Doeda. (Dora). Morgan has been making crafts (and giant messes) on a much more regular basis. She has a couple pictures she has made of giraffes that are actually pretty decent. She has not stopped wearing the crown that came with her Halloween costume since Halloween, every day claiming she’s a princess and has to wear it. I am teaching her how to fold, and while I have to re fold most of it, she thinks she is helping. The threat of Santa not coming has got her to help clean up her own mess a little more as well. She still has her bad days though, where nothing I do makes her listen or be good, but they are lessening.

And, I think that is it for this months round up. I must now go back up all my pictures and get a few other things out of the way before lunch (Oh, I got the good news yesterday that they were able to fix my old laptop and save all my pictures!! It will be getting here on the 17th or so of December with our dog.)

A Few Good Layouts

So since I'm insanely tired right now this is just going to be a quick post with 3 of my more recent layouts! Then, bed. Sick kids are taking an insane toll on me.

This layout uses the absolutely adorable papers and elements in the Mischievous Mr Monkey set from Colie's Corner. I could not resist this kit. The monkeys and themed elements are just far too cute. Luckily I have a few monkey's of my own that I can scrap, so it works out well!

This layout uses the Stolen Moments paper pack and element packs also from Colie's Corner. I can not tell you how in love I am with the heart scatter! I'm pretty happy with this layout, and pushed the boundaries of my own ability to scrap a boy and a girl in the same layout. I do like how it came out with the pink, blue and brown. There are also hints of green here and there, so it managed to not look too girly!

And finally, my Halloween 2010 layout. I think this is the most pictures I've ever used on a single page layout, but I really do like the way it turned out. I also like the fact that I don't have 10 or so different Halloween pages for this year! I may do another one with a few of the other pictures and some more intense journaling, but this is the main page. I am in love with this adorable kit called Smell My Feet from Geek Chic Scraps. The alpha is the Recycled Dictionary Alpha from Geek Chic as well. It worked very nicely with this layout. It is seriously super cute and I was so happy when Halloween was over and I finally had Halloween pictures to scrap!

That's it for tonight. I can feel my eyes slowly closing so I must be off. I can't wait for these kids to all be not sick already.

Some Sneak Peeks and Catch Up.

I have a couple new product sneak peeks for this coming friday!! So be on the lookout for my new products (they will both be 30% off for a week once they are released!)



and

I'm excited for these to come out!! So look back on Friday for the full reveal. Also, don't forget that tomorrow is $1.00 Fairy Finds day at Enchanted Studio Scraps, I will have two products on sale for $1.00 tomorrow only so definitely stop in and check that out.

I have been so busy the last week, busy creating new products, busy crafting with my oldest daughter, busy realizing Christmas isn't as far away as I thought and that I need to start getting ready. My back has also really been bugging me. As it stands right now I can't lift my arms too high and my shoulders and neck hurt worse than they ever have before. Of course, because I'm in pain my kids are being bad so that I can't just relax ever. Hopefully I will be able to update a little more often but we'll see if it gets any better :(

Hope everyone had a decent Tuesday!!

For Sale:

One child. Female, blonde hair, blue eyes, boundless energy. This is a 2006 model but still in good shape. Comes with a healthy appetite for life (and food). Must be fed three square meals a day and two or three snacks as well. Needs regular exercise and interaction with the outdoors. Must be washed at least every two days in order to be kept remotely clean. Has minor problems with attitude but they should be able to be corrected. You will never have peace or quiet again! Willing to negotiate on terms of sale. Serious inquiries only please.

 

I’m having so much fun with the prompts we’re being sent in the True Stories class! It’s always neat to write something out in a different style and that is just what prompt 11 was about! I have done a couple of different versions of journaling for prompt 11 that I am pretty happy with! I can definitely see them becoming scrap layouts. The piece above will most definitely be turned into a scrapbook page. It’s nice to do some journaling that is more light hearted and not so serious every once in a while. I’m getting a little sad that this class is almost over, so I’m hoping to be able to continue on with classes that Shimelle puts on. She is taking registrations for Journal Your Christmas right now and I’m hoping I’m able to take part in it as well. It looks super fun!

I can’t believe how quickly Christmas is going to be upon us. I have done no preparation for the holiday season at all. Haven’t even really thought about it, but I guess now I must start. But I should go and feed my kids some lunch and deal with the baby they just woke up. Have a great Tuesday!

Post Digital Scrapbooking Day Weekend

So November 6th was DSD (Digital Scrapbooking Day) and this weekend was insane with scrapping activities everywhere! I was so exhausted last night that my eyes were definitely closing by 10 pm. I hope all the other digital scrappers took advantage of some of the awesome deals that were out and about this weekend!! I know I sure did. I managed to make a handful of chats, win some coupons, buy some new kits on insane sales and attend a couple of speed scraps. Yes, aside from eating and taking a break to sleep at night, I lived and breathed digital scrapbooking this weekend. Now, however, it is over and we must get back to reality and the reality I came to is “Oh my god, Christmas is coming.” Scary. I am not even slightly prepared :( But to keep this post slightly brief and to allow me to go off and work on some more necessary things, such as the overflowing pile of dirty laundry and loading my dishwasher, I will just post the last couple layouts I did. Tomorrow I am hoping to be back with a more substantial post. It is Art Every Day month and I have been working on things in between layouts, just don’t have pictures of anything but my layouts right now. So tomorrow I will be a better blogger!!

This layout was created for the 3rd week of Battle of the Creative teams. We had to make a monochromatic layout and we either had to switch pictures with our team mates or scrap ourselves. We decided to scrap ourselves, in purple. The actual scrapping had to be mostly in 2 corners of the layout too. I am not a big corner scrapper, so I’d like to try another monochromatic layout one day, but without the corner scrapping restriction. All the products used are by Geek Chic Scraps.

This layout was done for the final challenge of Battle of the Creative Teams. I must say as much fun as I had I am sort of glad it’s over. It really stressed me out for some reason! And most of the time when I sat down to scrap I wanted to just scrap what I wanted and not follow the challenge directions. But I am still very happy to have participated! This challenge we had to have a list of 10 things on our layouts and we had to use 10 and only 10 different products from our designers. Each member of the team had to use 2 of the same products on the layout as well. I had some fun coordinating the colors from 10 different products and figuring out what my 10 things to list would be. Eventually I settled on a list of 10 reasons why I rock. I am happy with this layout mostly, so yay! Again, this layout contains only products from Geek Chic Scraps. You can check out her pretty awesome blog HERE. It has her new releases, some recipes and all sorts of fun tips related to digi scrapping, photography and life!

This layout I did for a DSD speed scrap. It’s a picture from my mom’s wedding this spring. I used an action on the photo to give it kind of a neat blue-y tinge. Then I cropped it in real close to them and went about with the speed scrap instructions. I hadn’t participated in a speed scrap for so long, and it was nice to do one and have fun with it and just scrap! This isn’t even a creative team kit, I used one of my newly acquired purchases from the day to scrap with. This kit is called Eternally by Victoria Feemster and I just couldn’t pass it up. I fell in love with the colors and could see myself using pieces of the kit for so many different layouts! I was not disappointed, it was a very good purchase!

So there you have it, some of the art I’ve been working on lately. I have been working on some real art/craft things too, but DSD totally blew me out of the water this year so I have been scrapping a lot. Hope everyone has a fantastic Monday!!

Candy Corn Colors!

I adore the colors of candy corn (the orange, yellow and white original stuff.) I just think it’s such a fun color combo and seeing them together always makes my sweet tooth start up! Unfortunately I didn’t see any candy corn in my kids treats this Halloween, so I decided to satisfy my sweet tooth by sharing some awesome candy corn inspired things that are much better for my waistline.

1. Candy Corn Loofah Soap 2. Candy Corn Flower Hairpins 3. Candy Corn Hand Dyed Yarn 4. Candy Corn Braided Ribbon Barrettes 5. Candy Corn Teddy Bear 6. Candy Corn Duct Tape Rings 7. Candy Corn Crochet Tutu Dress 8. Candy Corn Bobby Pins 9. Candy Corn Sock Monkey 10. Candy Corn Shot Glass 11. Candy Corn Striped Crochet Hat 12. Candy Corn Votive Candles

Whew! Now if that isn’t some yummy candy corn inspired goodness than I don’t know what is!

The Orient! November’s Blog Train Freebie

This month for the blog train, the theme was “the orient” it was a tough theme, but I decided to push myself anyways, so here it is:

What you get with my part is:

3 papers

1 frame

1 flower

1 fan

1 fortune cookie

1 uppercase gold hand doodle alpha

I had fun making it and loved the colors and seeing everyone’s contributions. There is some awesome stuff on this train everyone, so have some fun and get downloading!!

Download at 4shared or box.net and enjoy!! Comments to let me know what you think are greatly appreciated!

Previous stop: Pretty In Green

Next stop: Rebecca PSP Designs

Visit the Blog Train Blog for full list of participant blogs and a slideshow of some of the previews.

Thanks for stopping by!

Spooktacular CU Templates

Well I finally got a new product in store. These are my Spooktacular Halloween layered templates. They come in photoshop files with all layers in tact or also in png files for those who can’t open up psd’s. There are 5 different Halloween templates that I drew up with my Wacom tablet and there is also a bonus doodled word phrase included. The regular price is $3.00 but right now I have them (and other products) on sale in my stores 31% off for Halloween! This sale will go til Nov 1st before prices are changed back to regular. So if you grab them right now you can get them for $2.07. They are PU/S4H/CU OK and have been quality checked by both the stores I sell at.

Grab them at either my ESS store or my Digiridoo store! While your in either store, check around my other products too, there are lots of other 31% off deals going on this weekend.

Here Goes Nothing!

So I’m taking a journaling class at Shimelle.com called True Stories (you can see the button in my sidebar!) And it’s all about journaling. I’m behind already, though I’m trying real hard to not look at it that way since technically I should blog and journal all the time, not just for the 3 weeks I’ll be getting prompts from this class!

The first major idea was that of doing a FAQ type of journaling for the questions you find yourself being asked. So the 5 questions I came up with that I get asked a lot are (in no particular order):

1. What do you do at home all day?

2. You knit?

3. When are you guys tying the knot?

4. Are you guys having more kids?

5. Is there anything you don’t have?

Seriously these are questions I have been asked more times than I can even care to remember. I came up with my answers and I’m certain that at least a few of these will end up on layouts, though maybe not in their entirety.

1. I don’t know that there is any sort of typical day in my house, so this of course varies from day to day. I do know that most of the people who ask this question assume that I sit on my butt all day and that being a stay at home mom must be the easiest thing in the world. But, I beg to differ. I can guarantee that most days I do more work at home than a lot of my working friends do at their jobs. Most of my days involve power struggles with at least one of my kids. My days also seem to routinely involve cleaning and re-cleaning certain areas of our house (read as kids bedroom, playroom and kitchen!) Yes, those 3 rooms have to be cleaned at least 2 times a day, sometimes more. I try to keep up on laundry so every day seems to involve at least one load of laundry and usually some re-folding of clothes in the girls dressers when I go to put new clothes in. It’s also expected of me to actually entertain my kids, which is some days easier than others, while I’m maintaining the cleanliness of the rest of the house, doing the laundry, figuring out what’s for supper, making sure that kids get meals and snacks, feeding and playing with the baby and making sure he naps, and making sure that girls are at least kind of clean during the day. Night time brings on a whole other struggle to get all the kids bathed and in bed without insane amounts of screaming and fighting by either myself or them. Not to mention that in and amongst these daily tasks I also attempt to find some time for myself to do anything not related to kids or cleaning. Not the easiest thing in the world. Some days my “me time” might be the 5 minutes I had to shower while other days I might have time to actually sit down and do some scrapbooking or browse the internet. I am also a digital scrapbook product designer so I try to fit in time to work on new products for my stores. It’s a struggle to find time to get much of anything done that is just for me. Don’t even get me started on attempting to relax or socialize!

2. Yes, I knit. I LOVE to knit. It is yet another one of those things that I rarely manage to find time for even though I thoroughly enjoy it. There is just something about it that helps me to relax and calm down, even if only for a few minutes. I have yet to attempt anything more intense than a dish cloth but they seem to be the perfect size at the moment. I would love to make some of the cuter, more intricate things I see on sites like Ravelry and Knitty, but I can’t keep up with large patterns due to child interference. I am also working on my horrible crochet skills too since it seems larger projects take less time to do when they are crocheted.

3. This question is always a tricky one to answer. We have 3 kids together and have been together for a while now, but I honestly can’t give a straight answer to this one. I’ll be fine either way. If we stay together unmarried it would be fine, if we end up married that would be fine too. Neither one of us has ever really made a big deal over the whole marriage thing. Even if we ever did, it wouldn’t be a big ordeal. It would be us in Vegas, or us on a beach somewhere. Yes, we are that couple. I don’t want a big frou frou wedding. Thank you very much.

4. I am not planning on us having anymore kids. I’m pretty certain that 3 kids by age 23 is plenty, especially when they happened basically in a 4 year span! The man has however, (jokingly I hope) talked about a 4th kid already. He was talking about a 4th kid before the 3rd one was physically born. The last pregnancy was pretty rough on me considering how nice and easy the first 2 had been and I think that’s my body going “Oh. My. God. Please stop having babies now!” However, this is how things worked out and how it played out so far. I wouldn’t trade any of my kids for the world, although some days I think kids should come with mute buttons or ear plugs at the least! I guess I’m saying and hoping that there are no more kids in our future right now, but of course if it happens, it happens. (DO NOT FREAK OUT MOTHER! Re-read the part about hoping it doesn’t happen!!) I also guess that if it happens again I am going to go after the company that makes Alesse, because it obviously can’t work if I end up pregnant again!

5. The question of stuff is one I really detest. I think mostly because 90% of the people who ask it also use it as a statement and mean to make me feel uncomfortable. Yes, we have a lot of stuff. More than most people we know, more than most people our age, more than most people in general. So what?! There are lots of days where I would trade the stuff in for more time together as a family. The man works lots of hours at his job, plus is a volunteer firefighter (yes, they get paid) and also owns his own business so that we can afford to have this stuff. That leaves very little time for relaxing as a family and just being. There are days where I see the stuff and shake my head at the insanity of having it, but there are lots more days where that stuff comes in handy for us or for our friends. There is also a great deal of it that allows us to do fun things as a family, so I can’t be that against it. The good part of having it always outweighs the bad. Always.

I have of course edited some of the answers for blogging since I originally just wrote them all out in my notebook and they were messy or not ordered properly. I think that is the main thing I like about physically writing things down. I can just write and then look back through it and edit and move things around when I do type it up. I guess I could just type my rambling up but I would probably end up printing it out and editing a hard copy anyways. I think this class is going to be awesome and I can already see how it’s changing how I look at my journaling, which is one of the things I wanted to work on so that I could make my scrapbook layouts more me and more personal and more important to the people who will get to read them later.

But for now I should go, the baby is awake and I have to figure out what we’re doing for supper yet. I really just want to order pizza but we will see! Have a wonderful day all!

A Couple Things!

Ok, well today I have a couple things to let you all in on!!

First off, I have a sneak peek of a kit coming out tomorrow from Geek Chic Scraps. I am in LOVE with the colors she used in this awesome kit and I can not wait to be able to work with it!! So keep an eye on Tara’s blog to see the reveal shortly!!

Oooo…pretty right?! RIGHT?! Yay!!

Now, for some more “Oooo pretty” I have my layout done for the second week of DSA’s Battle of the Creative Teams!! I love this weeks layout! We had to “scrap lift” 2 of our team members layouts into 1. Scrap lifting is always fun, but combining elements of 2 layouts into one is not normally my strong suit! I managed though and came out with a layout that I have no real problems with, which is not easy to do as I like to be highly critical of everything I do. For this layout I used the kit Sweet Daydream from Geek Chic Scraps. I was a little worried with the pink in the kit that it would be too girly for my layout since I wanted to put all the kids on it, but I was wrong (again) and it worked out fantastically! I also used her Just Say It Vol. 1 for the little word strips, and I fell in love!! They are awesome and I’m looking forward to being able to incorporate them into more layouts (and maybe snag her other sets of them too!) So without further chatter from me, here is my layout this week:

My third piece of business here today is just a nice reminder that right now you can get the awesome Halloween Collaboration kit that all us ESS designers created by going to the ESS blog every day and downloading a portion of it from now (well yesterday) until the end of the month. Seriously this kit is huge! And what can be better than free?! I am in love with the part that I did for it and am just waiting til it’s all been handed out before I show it off here, but yes, seriously in love with it!

I have a few other things to share, but those will have to follow in the days ahead! For now I just thought I’d give a little update while I’m taking a cleaning break! Hope everyone’s having a fantastic Thursday!!!

More and More Back to Normal

So things are slowly becoming more normal in the new house, and I’m slowly trying to get my life back closer to normal. I believe that as of today I have unpacked and half organized all my art supplies, so yay for that!!! I have enrolled in a couple workshops for various things because I have realized that being creative is such a huge part of my life and the past few years I’ve just been too focused on work and the kids to do much of anything for me.

Well that is now over! I bought myself some new clothes last week for the first time since the last time I went maternity clothes shopping. I can’t even begin to describe how much better I feel now that I have some normal non-maternity clothes that are newer than about 6 years old. After I realized how nice that felt, I thought that maybe it was about time I did something else for me, something I enjoyed in the past. So here I am, with unpacked art supplies waiting to work on some of the projects and techniques in the workshops I signed up for. I really think it will help me feel more like myself again and help me be a better person, which of course helps me be a better mom and a happier more whole person. I will be posting the things I work on here and talking about them as well, so be on the lookout for that!

I am in the Battle of the Creative Teams for Geek Chic Scraps and our first round entries were due last night. I had a layout all nice and mostly done for it, but then hated it and redid the whole thing with a new kit. I’m still not fully happy with the layout, but it was a vast improvement on the original!

MOST of the supplies I used came from the kit Thankful for You which was just released at Scrap Matters yesterday! I did however also use some other products by her as well, I used some parts of Book Worm and Falling for You which I’ve done full pages with in the past. I also used an alpha out of Kind of a Big Deal and 2 alphas that are sold alone (Recycled Newspaper and Ohh Shiny) and the white stitches came from Scrappers Toolbox Vol. 1 by Tara (Geek Chic Scraps) as well. We had a “recipe” for this first challenge and the hardest part of it for me was probably using 10 ribbons. I’m still not happy with the ribbons, but I am my own worst critic and others have told me that they aren’t as bad as I seem to think so we’re ok! I am anxiously awaiting the results of Week 1, and looking forward to the challenge for week 2 to come out.

But for now I must go, lots of things in the works for the next week until the man is done school!

Lovin Life

That’s right, at this very moment I’m loving my life! We’re pretty close to being completely unpacked now, furniture we have is in place, furniture we need has been ordered in. The baby has nicely transitioned to his crib and the girls bunk beds are only a week away. Halloween candy has been purchased, we have the babies costume. The girls costumes have been found, but not yet purchased. The man said he’ll do it right away, and bring them up for the girls to wear. We managed to get most of our “ready for winter” yard work done, lawn was mowed one last time, leaves raked and blown, I got about half the flowers cut back and we tilled the garden. The garages have been mostly organized and the trucks, lawn mowers, etc. have all been washed. I’ve been able to do some designing in my new, more me style. I’ve also been able to do some scrapping! Things are just all falling back into place and it feels wonderful!

We’re doing our Thanksgiving supper tonight, even though Thanksgiving is really tomorrow. The man and his mom have to head back south tomorrow so he can be back for school Tuesday morning. Since it’s an 8 hour drive we decided just to do our big meal tonight. That means 2 things. 1) Deep fried turkey!!!! 2) Stretchy pants. We’ve got our turkey deep fryer all found and ready to go, we have brand new oil for it and a nice full propane tank. It will be nice to do it on a cement driveway instead of trying to find a flat spot in the grass, so yay! We’ll also be having salad, vegetables, potatoes, biscuits, cranberry sauce, stuffing and pumpkin pie for dessert! I’m pretty excited and so is my stomach.

I’ve been able to scrap a bit lately and have 2 new layouts. The first one is a milestone because after scrapping only girls for the last few years I finally tackled my first boy layout! It was nice, different and not as scary as I made it out to be in my head!  I’m glad that I did it too because with a baby boy around there will be a lot of layouts to scrap of him. The second layout I made I can’t share just yet, because the kit I used hasn’t been released but it was a fun kit to play with too! Both pages are made with products from Colie’s Corner, her design style meshes well with the way I like to scrap, so it’s always fun to play with new things.

Isn’t he adorable!!!!! The kit I used for this layout is called Serenity and it worked perfectly! I loved that plaid paper right off the bat and knew I had to use it. I also used a template set by Colie for this, For Starters template set 33. I flipped it because I wanted to and changed some element placement and removed some elements as well. I love the way this page came out though and I love that I was still able to use flowers on a boy layout (that was a major concern for me!)

I’m looking forward to being able to be productive this week, hopefully get some designing done. I have another collaboration contribution in the works as well as the very starting of an actual kit! I’m hoping I can get a few smaller things done this week too, so hopefully everything goes well and I’m able to get some actual work done! With all the leftovers I’m sure that we’ll have I shouldn’t have to cook for a week, so that saves a whole lot of time right there. The sheer fact that so much stuff is now set up and organized helps a ton too, it lowers my stress levels tenfold.

I, however, am off for now. Lots of things I want to finish up today and lots of things to get ready for tonight. Hope all my fellow Canadians are having a fantastic Thanksgiving long weekend, and of course that all my American friends are having great weekends as well!

It’s Coming!

The staff at Enchanted Studio Scraps have been planning some Halloween fun for you! Come check us out in the forums for all kinds of Spook-tacular activities! The Scavenger Hunt starts this Friday, Oct 8th. If you find all 10 of the pumpkins that are hidden you will win an ESS Mega Kit of your choice. Also for the whole month of October the regular ESS challenges are all Halloween themed as well, so there is tons of fun to be had! If you need some new Halloween scrap supplies there are a whole lot of Halloween themed products in the store right now too, so stop in and take a look around.

In other news, I am in fact designing again, so yay! I have been working on a few things here and there, but I’m going with as little CU as possible and have been adding in a lot of hand drawn doodle elements. Once I find my scanner I’m going to be in fighting shape because I’ll be able to add handcrafted elements as well, which will be super fun! So be on the lookout for some new products from me (finally!)

The house is coming along. I started to unpack kids clothes today but didn’t get too far. I got the babies stuff all set up, and started working on the girls clothes. Man do they have a lot of clothing, it’s going to be an insane feat of organization to get it all put away! Tomorrow I think I’m going to tackle me and the mans clothing first, then find any other unpacking I can do that will put off getting their clothes out as long as possible…ok, I know I shouldn’t. If I’m good then I’ll just get their stuff out, sorted, organized and put away.

It’s Thanksgiving here this weekend coming up, so I need to have the house as organized as possible by Friday. Not an easy task, but I will give it all I can. The man is coming home for the weekend from school before heading back for his last 2 weeks of it. I can not wait for him to be done. Can not. He will, however, hopefully be smart and hook our satellite dish up this weekend while he’s here because if he doesn’t there’s a good chance he will be doing it in the snow when he gets back from school! I really don’t think I can go much longer without having the TV all set up. I don’t watch it a ton, but I do have certain shows I like to watch and of course I got to see the 1st episode of the new seasons and then have been tv-less since. I also enjoy listening to the radio station and DJ programmed stations on the satellite because we have it hooked up to a nice sound system and it’s much easier than rifling through CD’s. (We have no good in service radio station in our area because we live to far north to have one that isn’t news or doesn’t have the evening church hours cut in.)

But since the little guy has calmed down a bit I’m off to do some more designing for awhile! Hope you all have a wonderful evening!!

Woo Hoo! Could This be THE Return of my Scrapping Mojo?!

I scrapped a layout completely template and scrap lift inspiration free last night! Go me! I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I felt the desire to go above and beyond and do a layout on my own from scratch, but it’s safe to say it’s been a while. I had fun, really enjoyed the process. Cut irregular squares and layered and layered and layered them!

I used a super cute and fun collaboration kit by Sweet Mesquite and Berry Sweet Designs called Messy Girl. I wish I’d had some of my old pictures because I have some great ones of our oldest daughter playing on her quad and in many other messy situations. I found these pictures to be quite suiting too. These girls sure do know how to make one heck of a good mess! Of anything and everything.

Today we did a ton of running around. I finally found the box I was looking for so I was able to deposit a check and return a movie (both of which had been packed inside it!) I also managed to get down to the post office and do our change of address/mail forwarding form with them. A few other errands were run out of the house as well as some more downstairs organizing and cleaning.

The house is very slowly getting unpacked. I can’t wait to be done and back in normal routines again! It will make things so much nicer and so much easier to deal with. Tomorrow I’m taking a slight break from unpacking to do some normal tidying up. Clean bathrooms, laundry, clean up kitchen, vacuum and wash the floors. Then after that I’m going to keep on going with the unpacking. I want to haul the rest of the Christmas stuff down to the basement to put in the storage area under the stairs, unpack the last box (that I’ve found) of kitchen stuff and get the girls clothes unpacked and sorted and put away. That is my goal. I rented myself a movie to watch tomorrow night when I get all that done and have the kids bathed and the girls in bed. My incentive for hopefully achieving a good chunk of my overall weekend goal.

But, I have a cranky, upset baby right now, so I’m off! Hope everyone has a great start to their weekends.

Just One of Those Days…

Yup, we all have them and for me today is one. You know, one of those days you wish you could just go back to bed and not wake up til it was over? That is definitely today.

Why? Well, the kids have been whinier than normal, which would be ok if we were in a house that was completely unpacked and under normal circumstances. But we aren’t. I think I have unpacked a grand total of 5 boxes today because it seems every single time I start to unpack a box there is a kid crisis of some sort. It doesn’t help that I am looking for a specific box because it contains our bills for this month, a check for me and the case from the movie I rented a week ago. Do I know what it looks like? No, because I didn’t pack it, the man and his buddies did. That means who knows where it is, what the box looked like or whether it was all packed in the same box. It should have been since it was all in the same location, but that never means too much.

I am however slowly getting boxes out of the living room and out of the house, there is walking space now so that is a good start. I know that about 4 or 5 of the boxes out there are packed of Christmas stuff, and that can go right downstairs, which will also help out a lot. I’m hoping to have everything unpacked by Monday. Maybe not all organized, but unpacked at least! That is my goal. That and to not go crazy while unpacking.

I have managed to scrap a layout in the evenings when I’m trying to wind down and relax for bed, so yay! I used another kit from Geek Chic Scraps called Book Worm because it was too cute to not use with these pictures! Our middle child can’t quite read yet, but she likes to pretend she can and she loves to look at the pictures. She also likes to try and flip the pages too quick when you are reading her a story. She will pick up anything that looks like a book. One day I caught her sitting on the couch “reading” an information book about business loans! Yes, it was upside down, and French but it was still a pretty cute sight. I frequently catch her with her books upside down and a big goofy smile on her face!

I had a lot of fun editing pictures and creating this layout. One of the other things I’m working on in regards to scrapping (I mentioned shadows 2 posts ago) is the photo editing aspect. I used to take my picture as is, yes maybe I would turn it black & white or do selective coloring on it, but that was really it. I never played with curves, levels or my brightness/contrast. If I used an action on a picture I never went through and played around with all the layers to make it work better for my photo. There are many things I would like to learn about photo editing, so I’m happy to be playing around with it and learning new things from various tutorial and photography sites!

I must say though that I am getting mighty jealous of all the Halloween layouts I’m seeing. Since all our pictures were on the other computer holiday kits are going to be a sore spot for me this year I think. I mean of course I’ll be able to use them after the holiday has passed and I have pictures from this year, but it sucks to see everyone else have tons of fun with them right now!

But I guess that’s all for now, must figure out what is for supper and attempt to unpack some more. Fun stuff.

We’re in!

So we managed to get all moved into the new house this weekend!!! Man flew home Friday night, we moved 2 loads Saturday, 2 more on Sunday and then he had to fly back south Sunday night so he could make it to school yesterday morning. Now, the fun begins. Unpacking with 3 kids, 3 kids who got vaccinated yesterday and were horribly upset about it. They seem to be doing fine today though.

Yesterday I found the important stuff…you know, kids toys and most of the kitchen related items. I also have the bathroom upstairs set up enough that its usable and the kids had their first baths in the nice, new, bigger tub last night!! They had a blast! I can not tell you how happy I am to have a real bathroom. One with shelves and drawers and places to store all your bathroom stuff. A big mirror and proper lighting, oh, and a window that isn’t in the shower. There’s also a downstairs bathroom with a nice big corner shower in it.

My kitchen is fantastic. We have a dining room, which of course means we now have to buy a dining room table and chairs because at the other house we had a small table stuck in a corner so the kids could sit and eat, but we always just ate in the living room. They also left us with their basically brand new appliances! I did the first load of dirty dishes in the dishwasher last night…a dishwasher that will let me put them through without having to heat dry them. The old dishwasher I had to pay attention to when it stopped washing so I could go and stop it from drying them. The fridge is so much nicer than the old one, it has shelves that slide out, you can adjust the humidity levels of both crispers and it has a hanging egg carton shelf! The built in microwave above the stove is a fantastic thing too. The less appliances I have on kitchen counters the better!

In non house related news I also had to take the kids to all be vaccinated yesterday. Because I was a bad mom and never took our youngest girl, she has to play catch up and that poor girl had to get 5 needles yesterday while her older sister and the baby both only needed 2. Her and the baby have to go back in 2 months time for another round, while the oldest is now good for 6 months. I tell you it was sure quiet in the house when we got back, they were all cried out and sleepy from the Tylenol! It was lovely to have a few hours silence. So far no nasty side effects, which is good, I couldn’t handle all 3 of them ending up with fevers.

We also got to eat food yesterday that didn’t come from a restaurant! I am sure I gained 5 lbs in the last week and a half because we’ve had to eat out since everything was packed up. I feel all blah and sluggish and gross. My body hates me, as do my jeans. Once everything is all unpacked and set up I’m going to have to start dragging my sorry butt up to exercise again, because this will just not do!

Anyways I must go, I have a little girl who apparently hates pajamas running around in only a diaper and it’s a bit chilly today. Also must continue with the unpacking and organizing during the day so that I don’t feel too bad about sitting around at night scrapping once the kids are asleep. Oh and I also have to find a movie case for one rented DVD and the DVD I rented the kids (which I found the case for) because someone, not me, packed them up and they need to be returned by well, probably today! UGH!

Falling For You

You must check out this gorgeous new fall kit from Geek Chic Scraps!! I am in love with the colors and the fun fall elements. It is seriously the perfect kit for all your fall pictures! You can check it out at Gotta Pixel (image linked):

Even though my computer died and all our pictures were lost, I had the perfect use for this kit. This is the last fall we are spending in our rental house, so I took a picture to celebrate us getting out of here! (Which is happening this weekend. Yay!!) It was fun to scrap again, and I did something different with my shadowing, slightly more realistic. I still need practice and some tweaking but I like the effect a lot more than my previous shadows!

This layout was done using the kit above “Falling for You” by Geek Chic Scraps and also a blocked partial template by Libby Weifenbach from Sweet Shoppe that I duplicated to make a completely blocked background. I wasn’t so sure about it at the beginning, but I am happy with the layout now that it’s all shadowed and everything. I did some editing to my photo, which is shocking since usually I just black & white it and slap it on. This time I used some actions and even a photo texture from Paint the Moon. There are some gorgeous photo actions and textures available for purchase there!

Now, I must go, the kids and I are having cold pizza for lunch. I never thought I’d miss a microwave so much but this week has been hard to deal with food wise because everything’s been packed up. I still have some last minute packing to get ready for the move tomorrow! Hope everyone has a great weekend and I will most likely be back Monday!