Guest Designing in February at Scraptastic Club

Hearts A Flutter

 A Boy's Life

These kits are on their way to my house right now!!! I cant wait to get some time to play with these great kits. I have my pictures and sketches all ready to go. They also have an add-on kit that coordinates with each kit. I will keep you posted with my projects and in the mean time go check out their blog!

I LOVE THIS PICTURE! I just had to share it :-)

Yes, I have jumped on the Project Life band wagon. But, I am going to do it my way. I am using a mixture of the divided page protectors along with standard 12x12 ones. I tried it with just the divided ones and then I tried with just 12x12 pages and I didn't like either. So, a combo of the two is what I will use and I love it. Above is week 1and week 2 is currently on my desk ready to be completed. What I love about this project is it is forcing me to get out my camera more and really focus in on the little things in life.

 My day in 12 photos.

My hope is that on the 12th day each month i take 12 photos. We shall see if I can keep up with this.  

Good morning its time for coffee.

Its starting to snow, we are supposed to get 4-6 inches by the end of the day.

 Time for breakfast for Livie.

 Grocery shopping.

 Gracie finished her beautiful autobiography.

We met her at school to celebrate

Nap time.

 Its still snowing.

 Id like to scrapbook...but its just one big mess on my table.

 Trucks work best on hard wood floors.

 I love her crazy hair when she takes out her bows.

 I dislike folding socks! I think I will head back to the scrapbook table.

 Top 11 Crafty Projects of 2011

Olivia's Crocheted Flower Hat

 Baby Love Layout

 First Birthday Wreath

 Reverse Applique Onesie

 Love That Smile Layout

 Vegas Mini Book

 Thanksgiving Place Cards

 Stay This Way Layout

Smash Book for kids

 The Luckiest Layout

2011 December Daily

Is it Spring?

Last week when we had a tiny bit of snow it made one little boy very happy. He played outside for hours in the course of the two day time span that the snow stayed in my yard. There was not much there to play with but he made due. Now this week he has no snow anymore and it is almost 50 outside. 49 degrees according to the weather app on my phone to be exact. While I am relishing in the no snow factor this season there is one little boy who is really hating it. He asked me today if it was spring. When I replied with a no, but it sure does feel like it, he got a little weepy.

Meanwhile I am plugging away at getting my house tidy, finishing up that December Daily that has become a thorn in my side and starting on my very first Project Life Album. Crafty projects keep me sane. I have many more I'm working on and look forward to their completion so I can post them soon.

 Just so you know I'm Real

I try really hard to keep my blog on the positive and focus and all that is good in my life. But, that leaves a lot of me out. I bet that there is a lot of "me" that some of you out there can relate to so I am letting go for a minute and giving you some reality in my life that isn't so super! Below you will find pictures of our playroom and our island in the kitchen. After all the gifts were open and the kids were home for a week my house got a little out of hand. I am not even sure were to put all this new stuff. My scrapbook table is even worse. It looks like a December daily explosion. I am extremely anxious to get myself dug out of this mess so I can get to crafting more. I hope that it will get cleaning up soon, but in all honesty it will probably take me a while to get it done. I will do a little each day until it is all back in order. It gets me wondering How do others do it? How do they keep it all under control around and after the holidays? Are there lots of people out there like me or are there more people that can keep it all together no matter what gets thrown their way? Just makes me wonder. I would like to think that the "me" type people are the norm but its the ones that keep it all together that just talk about it more.

December Daily So Far

There truly isn't a project that I am more proud of then my collection of December Daily's. You know how people always talk about what they would take besides their loved ones out of the house if it were on fire? This would be what I would be grabbing. They are not the most beautiful pages or mini books I have ever made but they are definitely the most meaningful.  So here is what I have completes for this year so far. Spelling mistakes, you bet! Not the best pictures, of course! But, its the memories made that matter and that's what makes it perfect!

Epic

December Daily Day 2

Today I have some funny Q stories from the day. 

Everyday when we leave school he says "Peace" to his little buddies and flashes a peace sign.
Today he says "Peace.....on earth, goodwill towards men"
I asked  "where did you learn that?"
He responds " Mom, its Christmas, thats what you say now....like in the song" In a very Duh! Mom voice

After we get home from school Q pulls out my camera "To take pictures for the December Daily" and he walks around the house taking pictures and with every snap of the camera he says "Epic!"
I ask "Why are you saying that Q?"
His response "Becasue its gonna be an Epic Christmas Mom!, Epic means the same as cool."
 (Once again he says it in a voice as though he believes I am very out of touch with his lingo)
Mind you the things he was taking pictures are NOT Epic, they are things like our tile floor that desperately needs to be mopped and a close up of the toys spread out all over the Scrapbook room floor.
Then, he comes to take a picture of me and I say "Cheese"
He says " No, no Mom say EPIC!"

Over dinner Q tells the family he is going to share a song he has made up for us.
He shovels in a bite before he stands up and says "I have to stand up for this one"
He starts to wiggle his body like a  cross between a worn=m and one of the Blues Brothers grooving to the music.....

"Stand up,
Hit the lights,
Touch the sky,
Get your credit card,
Everybody goes outside,
Livie stays in here with me,
Oh yeah!"

We were all laughing so hard, as we have no clue where he got this from. To be honest with you I didn't even know he knew what a credit card was. In fact, he still may not but for some reason still said it in his song.


Mind you all of these things are from one day. He is really this funny all the time. I could make a blog of all the funny things he says. Hes a lot of work and very high energy but he is a blast and super funny. We love it!

Its Here!!!

December Daily Day 1

All day I was excited to begin our Daily, but I knew that at the end of the day we would be having dinner with my grandparents from Florida so I waited to take a picture with them. Not smart Mommy, not smart and here is why. Dinner started in a very lovely way. All three kids were wonderful! Behaving well, choosing their own food and able to chat and wait without the dreaded- "I'm bored" Then 3 quarters into dinner Gracie starts to feel sick. She was red as a tomato, hot and just all around yucky. So I quickly bundled everyone all up got our leftovers wrapped up and got out of the door as soon as possible. I never got took a picture. All the way home I drove thinking about how I could remedy this snafu. I thought of going back and taking a picture of the restaurant sign, no to cheesy, I thought about taking a picture of our leftover boxes, kinda weird. I thought about taking a picture from the internet of the inside of the restaurant, but nothing seemed to fit. Then as we got home Gracie started to feel better ( I think she got overheated as the place was super warm!) we all got in our jammies and talked about how it was fun even though we had to leave so abruptly. As we are sitting on the couch Olivia feel asleep like this....

 

So, it just goes to show you that even though there can be a snafu and it wasn't perfect does not mean that it wasn't fun, so fun that it was exhausting.  

(In fact Q just said to me " Mommy, remember that place we ate dinner last night? It was a lot of fun! But, I was really sleepy when we got home" Then I said "and so was everyone else, Buddy")

December Daily Eve


OK, I cant sleep. This might sound really really nerdy.......but....I'm gonna go out on a limb here and tell you its because I cant stop thinking about all the things I want to put in my December Daily for this year. This will be my fourth one. After the first year I thought-this is crazy I will NEVER do this again. But....then my kids loved it so much and I did it again just for them on year 2. Then year 3 hit and I was excited but it was more about creating a legacy for my kids. And now here we are at year 4 and I am honestly giddy at the fact that we have created all these beautiful memories together and now we have the opportunity to create more. How cool is that? Plus I write it all down so no one can ever forget. :) I love it. Its become one of my favorite holiday traditions. I'm so thrilled with it that I even made some as gifts to give to friends in hopes that they to will get into it with me. They are not scrapbookers so we shall see. Any-who here are some pictures of my books in 2009 and 2010 to tide you over until tomorrow. 


Here is 2009- I LOVE how it turned out.

 And here is 2010- I don't like this one as much but we cant love them all can we? I just try to remind myself that I had a newborn baby and still was not sleeping very much.