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!

New Computer!!

Ok, so I kind of bailed on the blog, but for good reason. Ok, not good reason, but for a legitimate reason! My poor laptop kicked the bucket…with all my pictures and everything else not backed up. It made me want to cry!

Luckily the man was in the city and was able to bring me a new computer home in a week and a half! So I am now the proud owner of a lime green Sony Vaio! It also came with a nice upgraded version of Photoshop Elements and a few other programs I really wanted. I also now have ACDSee!! I am beyond stoked. I will be able to speed scrap again, once I get more scrap stuff downloaded that is. I already have tags set up and have the first scrap kit I have downloaded tagged and ready to go! Yay! That was my one pet peeve with speed scraps, I’d get all set up with a kit and it wouldn’t have something I needed. Now I can just search it by tag, before I had to frantically try and remember a kit that had that item so I could go and find it.

I’m still in the process of getting everything set up, and definitely haven’t been able to get all my files off my dead laptop yet, but I am trying to keep my hopes up that they will be able to get at least my pictures off of the old one for me. Everything else I can replace, re-buy or re-download.

We were supposed to be in our new house now,  but there were problems with the people who were supposed to install the carpet getting it done. So now I’m stuck in the old house, with 90% of our stuff out of it packed up in our trailer and 3 kids. There are like 2 plates, 2 glasses and a bowl. No cooking dishes, no small appliances like microwaves…it’s not fun. At all. They are supposed to have the carpet fully installed by tomorrow but now the man has gone back south for school, so unless his friends are around to help me move things and hook the big enclosed trailer up to the truck and back it into my new driveway, we are stuck this way until the weekend.

To make matters worse, his mom came up to help us with whatever we needed, whether it was packing or keeping the kids out of our hair, and her brother had a stroke the Friday night. She didn’t find out til Saturday morning, but they said he was ok just in the hospital. Well Sunday morning came along and she got a call saying no he wasn’t doing so good, so man had to take off earlier than expected with his mom to drive her the 8 hours home. This morning I got the news that he passed away, so I’m glad that they left when they did.

We are at war with our landlady. She is ridiculous. I am glad that by the weekend we will be through with her, though I heard from the people we bought our house off of that she has been doing drive-bys of the street trying to find the house we’re moving into, because we refuse to give her our forwarding address. She doesn’t need it. The day she shows up at that house will be the day I call the police on her. We have officially served her through the proper channels over her lack of actual landlady-ing. She sure liked to take the money, but didn’t like to deal with any of the problems. 2 years of this house has been more than enough!

I however should go. The baby is starting to stir, and the girls are both in bed which means that after I feed and change him I will be able to scrap and watch the movie I rented! Today was a stressful day to say the least, but tomorrow is another one and hopefully it will be a better one.

September Long

The September long weekend was relatively uneventful here at our house. We did some more packing around the house and a lot of cleaning as well. Sunday afternoon we went out to buy some groceries and got a pizza and a couple movies to make the weekend somewhat special. The girls sat down with some pizza and watched Horton Hears A Who, which they hadn’t seen yet, but loved! They were both quiet for the entire movie, didn’t bug me once! I got The Runaways for myself and I really ended up enjoying it. I can’t believe how grown up Dakota Fanning is, but she did a superb job of losing the little girl vibe.

I also managed to find some time to scrap a layout, but I can’t post it yet because the kit has not been released. It’s such a cute kit though and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to scrap with it! I assure you that you will like it and can’t wait to be able to openly post my layout! I even managed to get a bit of designing started…working on a new kit that hopefully you will all enjoy. I am warning you though that it may be slower going because of the baby, the other 2 kids and the big move. I can’t wait for things to be settled back down to normal. I also have a new template set in the works as well as a few other things that I just can’t wait to share.

I’m looking for some good creative teams to apply too as well since I’ve actually got my scrapping mojo back and have a great desire to scrap for the first time in a long while. I had to take a break because I felt like I was doing layouts just to get creative team requirements done. I had taken my scrapping in different ways and was trying new styles out and some of the designers I’d been working with just didn’t mesh well with my new scrapping style. It was my own fault because I found it hard to say goodbye to these people who’d taken me in when I was so inexperienced! I know now that was not what I should have done and am avidly searching for designers who I think my style would now work well for! I love all styles to look at but some I can just not for the life of me pull off in my own layouts.

There is a lot of buzz, with all sorts of things coming up, so stay tuned! As for me, right now I have to go. I am in the mood to scrap and watch The Ghost Writer before the baby and I head to bed. We have his first doctors appointment tomorrow so it will be nice to see how he’s doing! He was 8 lbs 3 oz and 21 inches at birth, so it will be neat to see how big he’s gotten in the last 6 weeks. I have a guess but I don’t want to say because I’m certain I will be way off! I used to be really awesome at guessing weights of things, but kind of lost accuracy somewhere along the way. Anyways, I will update you all tomorrow as to how my little man is doing! Night everyone!!

This is My Life

Honestly...this is how my life is. Trying to write my first blog post and I already must go because one of my kids needs me. I promise that my next post will be better, well better is debatable. Longer is a definite!