Beautiful Monday! & some scrappy news

It's not often that the words beautiful and Monday come out of my mouth together. In fact, I've probably never said those together. I am NOT a Monday person. I don't like getting back to having to get up early and get the kids off to school, especially in the cold, wet and, lately, very foggy weather we've been having. It's been pretty much nonstop fog for about 2 weeks- some days not burning off at all making it rather dreary. But today we woke to bright sunshine, and it's relatively warm out there. For the first time in many months, I actually walked up to the school to pick up Justin from school rather than drive, and it was very nice. It even feels like a touch of Spring, which I am so looking forward to. Here's hoping that the groundhog is wrong in predicting there's 6 more weeks of winter. I hope that this BEAUTIFUL MONDAY is the start of a great week.

In other news, there's lot going on in the scrappy corner of my life.

First off, I want to remind you that Scrapdango's Crowned contest started yesterday, but it is not too late to join in on the fun. The first challenge has been given, and it's a great one involving bling on your layout, and you have until Sat., Feb. 7th to do a layout and post it. If your layout is chosen as the best by the DT for the week, you will be sashed and win this wonderful prize:

Yes, it a full Lemongrass kit by Crate Paper. Wish I could win it. :) There are games going on during the week, a Miss Congeniality contest for the person who keeps the boards rawkin', there will be a new challenge each week with more wonderful prizes, and the overall winner who is Crowned will win a guest design spot for April with a full kit along with another full kit (choice of 2 from February). How awesome of a prize is that?!!!!!! So join us for all the fun throughout February.

In addition to Scrapdango's contest, I also just found out that I have been chosen to be on the design team for Scrapperie, another wonderful scrappy site with great kits each month. I am now a Très Chic Girl and am so excited to join another talented bunch of ladies and start creating with their wonderful kits. They are also having a contest over there called Fantastic February, and the theme is Love is in the Air. If you want even more games and challenges and prizes, this is the place to be. There will be 4 project challenges each week that you have all month to complete along with games and even classes where you can earn points. At the end of the month, your points can win you prizes from the prize pool consisting of gift certificates to the boutique, tons of mini kits, mini-albums, acrylic albums, stamps sets (with inks) cardstock packs, cards kits, Essentials, Extras and Trimmings monthly kits- and someone can even win a Pièce de Résistance kit! Here is an example of the last Pièce de Résistance kit:

Now who wouldn't want that?

So get out there and get scrappin' Hopefully I'll get some scrapping done soon and post some layouts for you all to see.

TGIF!!!!!!

I've probably had that exact same title before because by the time Friday rolls around, I am always exhausted and very glad that the weekend is near and I will have constant reinforcements for a couple days with Dale being home. This week has been very long and somewhat difficult for me. First off, Owen came down with a pretty bad cold on Saturday, which is still lingering. His runny nose was so bad for a few days that he ended up getting what Dale referred to as a red Hitler 'stache because the area between his nose and top lip was just raw and bright red--poor little guy. As a result of his cold, he has been extra clingy and cranky this week. He still wakes up happy, but as the day goes on, if things do not go just his way, he gets very irritated and nothing that I do seems to help. Happily right now, he is napping, but there were a couple days, he didn't nap, and he was EXTREMELY cranky by evening.

Next up, on Tuesday, we woke up to surprise snow--at least it was a surprise to me since I never watch the news or check weather forecasts. It actually snowed quite a bit. Of course, the kids instantly hope there's no school. Given our school district's propensity to cancel classes even without very much snow, I thought that might be the case, but there was school. I actually wished they had been 2 hours late and we could have a little more leisurely morning, but I got them off to school in a hurried rush as usual.

Wednesday, Hannah woke up complaining of her head and throat hurting. She had no fever and I couldn't see anything unusual in her throat, so I figured it was just the start of a cold, but I was not going to be able to get her to school, so I let her have a sick day. I always love it when the kids stay home sick and then after a couple hours of lazing around, they're up and running around like normal. I think I said, "You should be in a school." at least a half dozen times. My worry was that she was either on the verge of getting strep throat since she continued to complain about her throat or that she would milk this and try to get Thursday and Friday off too. Thankfully, she felt better the next day and neither of those happened. Having her home along with a grumpy Owen made for a long day.

On top of various illnesses, our house has been inundated with flies. I know, Ewwww, gross!!! It's the middle of winter. Why do we have flies? Shouldn't they all be dead? You will be sitting there trying to watch tv and there will be half dozen (2nd time I've used that term this post) swarming in front of it making it difficult to focus on the show. Then you go to the kitchen, and they seem to follow youand swarm all around in there. Now mind you, my house is usually messy with toys everywhere and papers piled all over the counters, but it is not that dirty. All these flies though makes me feel like my house is very dirty. I've even resorted to hanging one of the sticky fly tape things like you usually see in barns. Here is where people would use that term. "What, do you live in a barn?" It's "caught" about 3 but for the most part they just fly all around it. I was even trying to vacuum them up this morning with the vacuum hose. I think I may have even got a few although I'm probably just dillusional. I don't know if they would even die in there or just crawl back out. Here's hoping our uninvited house guests are gone soon.

Well I guess that's all for now. It's almost 5:00, and I need to figure out what's going on for dinner and such. Hope you all have a great weekend.

TTFN - Ta Ta For Now

Hannah's 8!!!!!

Wow, how did that happen? How did our little girl--our first child--get to be 8 years old? I would love to post a photo of what she looked like when she was still in the hospital like I did with Justin, but unfortunately we did not have digital camera capabilities back then. Heaven forbid I should have to go find an actual real life printed from film photo and scan it so I can upload it on this blog. I am currently sitting in a recliner with a heating pad on my back while typing this, and I am not going anywhere. Anyway, I digress. I can't show you a photo of young Hannah, but I can show you a photo of beautiful, 8-year old Hannah.

Her hair is especially pretty because her party was a spa/makeover party. We painted finger and toenails and each girl had their hair done complete with sparkly glitter spray. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my dear friends Heather (also our family hairdresser) and Annaliese for doing all the hair because that is something I definitely am not good at. My sister, Sara, also helped me do the nails. The girls had fun, although time between each girl having their hair done was not well planned and there was a lot of sitting around, which turned into running around acting like crazy girls. I thought Justin's party with 8, 5-6 year old boys was bad. These girls were hyperactive.

After all the makeover activities, we just did the usual presents and cake. I made a purse cake, although I have to say this is my least favorite cake of all the ones I've made over the years for the kids' birthdays. Hannah wanted a purple purse but the color turned out all wrong--way too dark and the purse looks much too grown up. I did liven it up a bit by adding the lipstick and makeup bottles that I made by molding softened Now n' Later candies.

Make a wish, my sweet girl.

Here are the girls all made up and rarin' to go.

Now, I am officially done with birthday parties for quite awhile. Whew! It's fun, but a lot of work.

Get "Crowned" at Scrapdango

Wanna meet some new friends, get lots of scrapping done, win prizes and have fun? If so, join us at Scrapdango for our Crowned competition starting February 1st. Here are some details:

Scrapdango is celebrating 3 years, and we are doing it in style again with our very own “Crowned Pageant” contest.Okay, have you heard of the CW’s new show “Crowned?”…..Well if you haven’t you can come check out our version of “Crowned” ScrapDango style! Come join us for 4 weeks of Crowned Competition ScrapDango style! There will be weekly pageant competition challenges that will challenge your creativity. Each week someone will be SASHED Princess of Scrapdango. (Prizes involved too!)Is there a catch….well of course…it wouldn’t be fun if there wasn’t a catch. NO ONE gets sent home. You all have to live/scrap and experience PAGEANT LIFE with each other for the 4 weeks for the month of February. You will be competing for points. Each week the DT will award points 1-10 for each contestant’s creation. The contestant with the most points at the end of the competition goes home with an awesome prize package! (Including a Guest Design Spot that includes a full kit)

You can sign in here at the official sign in thread. We'd love to see you over there.

Scrapdango January Reveal

We just recently did our mid-month reveal for the January kit for Scrapdango. Here is the photo of the kit, which you can see has already sold out.

It was a great kit to work with. I loved the bright, fun colors. Here are the creations that I came up with this month.

Justin's 6th Birthday

It's already Jan. 16th, and so far the month seems like a blur. I have been very remiss, as usual, in blogging. One week ago was Justin's 6th birthday. I can't believe that six years ago, this was the photo of him in the hospital:


and now, this is the photo we have of him.

Justin had a Star Wars party complete with an R2D2 cake made by yours truly. I was going to attempt a 3D upright version with about 4 round cake layers and a dome layer on top, but I just did not have time to make all the cake layers required. Plus we would've had tons of cake left over. Please don't comment that R2's arms/legs were not correct and need to go all the way up the side. Hannah already let me know full well that R2 did not look like he should. We had 8, 5-6 year old boys, including Justin, which is always crazy. It was fun, but I was glad when it was over. Now, we will be doing it all over again next weekend with a bunch of 7-8 year old girls for Hannah's birthday.

And here is clone trooper, Justin, on his big day.

Happy New Year and some Scrappy Stuff

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

It's already January 2nd, but I wanted to wish everyone a Happy 2009. I hope you had a safe, fun and festive end to your holiday season, and I pray you all have a blessed new year. It will be an interesting one with a new president and to see where things go with the financial mess.

We rang in the New Year with a very small, casual party at our house with our friends, the Goves. They have 3 kids almost the exact ages as our 3, and they all played so well together and had a great time. Their youngest, Evie, and Owen were so cute together. The two oldest, Hannah and Gabby, weren't to be seen almost the entire night, up in Hannah's room drawing pictures, and Justin and Ian played the Wii and other boy things. Amazingly, all the kids made it until midnight and couldn't have been happier. I thought for sure, Owen would've melted down by then, but he was happy as could be. It's funny, because had we been in our respective houses alone, the guys wouldn't have even made it to midnight, nonetheless the kids. We watched the ball drop and did some poppers, and then the Goves headed home to get their kiddos to bed while we did the same.

My friend, Annaliese, and I

New Year's Day and today have both been pretty lazy. Now begins the dreaded teardown of all the Christmas decorations. Everytime I have to do it, I claim that I have way too much Christmas stuff, but I love it all and enjoy it while it's up. I just don't enjoy packing it all back away. Although, starting from a nice clean slate again is refreshing as I put the old decor back out. Over the past few years, I have definitely gained more of a minimalist approach to decorating and seems like I get rid of more stuff each year. In fact, my goal (not resolution because I don't do well at those) for this year is to purge of all the unnecessary stuff and get organized. I'm going to do it by taking it in small chunks. Hopefully by the end of this year, I will feel like we only have those things we really want or need, although I know the kids will always have too many toys--a lot of those will be going soon.

As for the scrappy stuff, I never did get around to posting the Dec. kit for Srapdango. Due to manufacturer shipping delays, we were late in getting it, but it was a great one and sold out pretty quickly, so unfortunately you can't even order one. The January kit is up now. I don't have it yet, but I can't wait to work with it. Here is a photo of the January kit (which I think they are almost sold out of already) and photos of the layouts I did with the Dec. kit.

Scrapdango January kit

Celebrate Each Day with Coffee

Little Cowgirls

Read

In other scrappy news, over at the blog for Leah Killian, you can enter to win $150 worth of Cosmo Cricket products, which I always love their stuff. Who wouldn't want to win that? Well, all you need to do is post a comment on the blog to be entered. Unfortunately, that comment needs to be posted by Jan 2nd (today). In fact, I need to go post my comment. Good luck if you enter.

And finally, I have a layout in the January issue of the Pagemaps newsletter. This is a site done by Becky Fleck who does awesome sketches (or Pagemaps as she calls them) each month and has people do samples for each map. I got an email last month, asking if I would like to contribute, to which I of course, said "Yes!" I even have a book of the same name (Pagemaps) that is one of my favorites. She gave me a 2-page sketch to work with, and I came up with this layout. I was extra excited when I saw the newsletter and saw that she pointed my layout out as one that caught her eye this month. You can see the newsletter here.