Saturday, December 20, 2008

Sweet Baby Girl layouts

Here are my layouts using the Sweet Baby Girl designed by Twin Mom Scraps at Cool Scraps Digital.


This layout is of my niece, Bailey, the day she was born.




This one is the youngest in our household when she was still a wee little baby.





This layout is of our middle child when she was under a year old.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Living Without Water

Boy I tell ya. You've all heard the expression "When it rains, it pours.". Well, it's been one hell of a week that came way too close to that saying for my comfort.

First, all our pipes froze leaving us with no water. Later that first night, Steven had gone down under the house and plugged the heat tape in. Well, that can take quite awhile to work, so we were without water for 2 days. Right after the water came back on, the hot water pipes froze...and again into the saga of no water. By this time, we're all kinda starting to get a little rank as this is day 3 with no shower. We turned on all the heaters extra high in the hopes that it would help. On day 4 with no hot water (but at least we had cold, right????), I decided I just couldn't take it anymore. I don't yet know how smart or how stupid this decision was, but I took a shower....a COLD SHOWER. It was 4 degrees outside, so that'll give you an idea of how nasty that shower was. I think I could have won the gold medal for the quickest shower ever. I was in there for about 4 minutes. In that 4 minute venture into hell (cuz it had definitely froze over), I hyperventillated and almost passed out. In my dizzy stupidity, I got out of the tub and slipped, hitting my leg on something (I still don't know what it was) and got a small cut. But hey, I was the only clean one in the house *lol*. Everyone else was pretty rank, but not me. In retrospect, I think I should have just blended in with the natives cuz when in Rome and all. I told Steven about the torturous ordeal when he came home from lunch. I even showed him my owie and everything (of course fishing for some pathetic sympathy). He was such a sweetheart. He went to work and borrowed one of the space heaters and put it under the house to help thaw the pipes out. I NEVER go down there because the big, hairy, gnarly spiders live down there, and I'm askeert. So that night (still in day 4), we get hot water back. I made the two little ones take a shower. The 2nd kid, who I usually have to make get out after 20 minutes, was out and dressed in jammies in 3 minutes. She said the water wouldn't get warm. A few minutes later, the two youngest came running upstairs saying they heard water running, but Steven and I thought it was the washer (yeah, being overjoyed at having water again, I started some laundry) so we just stayed upstairs watching Netflix on the computer. Little did we know that they were right. Steven went downstairs for something and came back up saying he heard water RUNNING. We both looked at each other and said "crap" at the same time. The pipes thawed out allright, but a valve blew and the basement was FLOODING. It's not a full or finished basement or anything. It has a dirt floor. Dirt floor and water. Starting to get the picture yet? Steven came back inside, a little wet and a little dirty. He couldn't find the shut off valve for the water main (sp?). So here it was midnight and I'm calling the landlord. He comes over and they both pretty much had to wade through a foot and a half of water. Now remember the space heater under the house?? That thing sorta imploded on itself and melted. We're very very lucky that the house didn't burn down or all the circuits short out or something horrendous. Today is day 5 in the Great Drought of 2008. We got water back this evening but still have no hot water. Hopefully the landlord can find the new valve in the next town over tomorrow. It would be really nice to wash some dishes as it took 5 people 5 days to use every clean dish in the house...and there are no take out places in town...so if we don't get water back tomorrow, I guess we're all having peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner.

So we have all this drama going on with the water, right? Everyone's tempers are running a bit short because we can't do dishes or laundry or cook or shower (you don't even want the details about the bathroom). It's been a week I tell ya. This hits keep coming too. Tonight, Allie's hamster died right before she had to leave for their Winter Concert. She was heart-broken and had to go perform in front of a crowd. The poor thing. We are having the funeral for Sammie tomorrow, provided the ground isn't too frozen to dig the hole.

For the past month, we've been working out all the plans to surprise the girls for Christmas. We wanted to take them to their Grandmother's. Their Uncle and his fiance will be there. We've managed to keep it a secret so far. In order to do it though, we would have to take both cars because there's 5 people, two dogs, about 150 Christmas presents (most of them are small *sheepish look*...okay, so I went a little nuts this year), and clothes for a week. There's no way all that would fit in the car. Well, we're supposed to leave in 3 days, and his mom called him today telling him that part of the road we have to go on is closed and another part has made it mandatory to have snow chains. Well, we only have one set...so that means there goes the plans out the window. The only way I could figure to salvage any of it was for me to stay home and Steven take the girls. While it would kinda suck for me, at least the other 7 people involved would still get Christmas together. I told my sister what I was thinking. She said either all of us go or all of us stay. I didn't want everyone to miss out though. When Steven came home, I told him what I had thought of. He immediately said no, no way...we all go or we all stay. He had the same reaction as my sister. We talked about it back and forth, both having very valid points and neither one of us willing to budge really. His mom just happened to call and he told her. She said absolutely not was I to stay here alone. She's buying another set of snow chains for us so that we can take both cars and all of us go. How sweet is that? She's gonna order them and he just has to go pick them up tomorrow.

My Wish This Christmas layouts

These layouts were created using the My Wish This Christmas kit designed by Jewels P Designs at Cool Scraps Digital.




This first layout is of the girls' stockings in 2007. We had so much stuff in there, they were too heavy to hang on the wall. The girls get a Christmas Bear from their grandparents every year, so we kinda put a bunch of stuff together in front of the couch.







Poor John Wayne hit the catnip a bit too hard Christmas morning. He crashed and had a nice little kitty nap.






This is Trish opening her fuzzy posters. She loves the things, and I managed to find some with horses.




Monday, December 8, 2008

Colorful Thankies layouts

This was my first holiday season beginning with a family of my own. I've been incredibly busy with that, so it's taken me awhile to get these 3 layouts done. These are my latest 3. All were done with the Colorful Thankies megakit designed by Addie's Designs and can be found at Cool Scraps Digital


This first layout is of Allie and her Daddy, Steven. The kitten is Bob. I have no idea why she made the face she did, but it always makes me smile. She's so expressive in the faces and voices she makes.





This layout is of Allie again. She was playing around, and I just happened to have the camera handy.



This layout is of Trish and her kitten Seastar. Sadly, he simply never came back one day after going outside. He was so cute with her. He would hug her as she carried him around.


Saturday, November 22, 2008

Pickaboo Layouts

Both of these layouts were created using the Pick A Boo! kit designed by Arlene Toledo at Cool Scraps Digital


This first layout is the girls this year for Halloween.





This layout is the pumpkins they carved. The wolf was done by Trish. The hand was done by Shannon. The flaming face was done by Allie. Her pumpkin won second place in the carving contest.



Monday, November 17, 2008

Yellow Sweet

These two layouts were done with the Yellow Sweet element kit designed by Elyane Araujo at Cool Scraps Digital


This first layout is of Shannon & Allie.



This one is of me...during my early years at school.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Groovy Baby

Here are my latest two layouts. They were both created with the Groovy Baby kit designed by Shelley Moore and can be found through her blog and at Cool Scraps Digital.


This first layout is a picture of my niece and nephew while we were having dinner in the ballroom on our cruise to the Bahamas. The staff was AMAZING at helping to entertain the guests. They were simply wonderful with the children.




This layout is of my stepdaughters Trish and Allie. They were playing around outside, just being kids.


Monday, November 10, 2008

Gobble Gobble

Here are my latest layouts for the Creative Team at CoolScraps Digital. All 3 layouts were made using the Gobble Gobble kit created by QueenBrat Designs.




This is my niece, Bailey. She is growing into such a wonderful young woman who I am very proud to know.






This is my fiance, Steven, and two of his girls, Trish and Allie. They were fooling around with some funny face glasses, and I just happened to have the camera handy.




This is the youngest, Allie, playing with her "brother", Oscar. Her laughter was contagious, and he was so happy getting in some good play time with his "sissy".









Carve It Up!!

My girls all wanted to carve pumpkins for Halloween this year. The youngest two entered the pumpkin carving contest here in town. Sadly, the oldest was a year too old. Allie, the youngest, won second place!!! This was her first time carving a pumpkin. Her father and I gutted the orange globes and then they did all of the carving by themselves (had to per the rules of the contest). It was so much fun watching them...so much in fact that I forgot to take any pictures. I did get pictures of their pumpkins though.

Here is Allie's (the 2nd place winner). She's 9.



Here is Shannon's. She didn't place, but hers is still cute. She's 11.



This one is Trish's. She's 13. She wanted to enter the contest too, but was just one year too old.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Yay!!! I made the Creative Team!!



Wooooo hooooo!!! I made it to the final round of the CT Contest at CoolScrapsDigital. It's a very cool site, if scrapbooking is your thing. I've learned a lot through the contest and know I'll learn a lot more with being on the Creative Team.


Here are my two layouts for Round 3 of the contest. The first one presented quite a new idea to me, in that of using completely white space. I had never contemplated that idea before as I'm still new to the world of digital scrapbooking. I had a lot of fun during the contest, and I'm looking forward to being on the team and seeing what I can do!!



Both layouts were made using the Summer Funny ~ mini kit by Elyane Araujo.



Friday, October 31, 2008

WOOT WOOT x 2

Yay. Okay, so...now I'm in round 3 of the digital challenge. Round 3 is tougher than round 2...it brought in a whole new idea for me....WHITE SPACE *flails and looks around for Georgie*.




Here are my two layouts for Round 2. They were both created using the Charming Virus kit by Kakleidesigns.




Sunday, October 26, 2008

How many pancakes can you make in a day?

I got this idea awhile back of wanting to make up a bunch of meals in one day and freeze them...you know, for good wholesome home-made tv dinner type things. I figured it would be better for all of us than eating all that processed crap all the time. My fiance makes really good enchiladas. He made 4 trays of them today. There are quite a few things that I make that they all like a lot. Today, I cooked for about 11 hours. I made 3 full-sized spaghetti dinners with sauce made almost from scratch. I made up a bunch of egg salad (can't freeze that, but they all love it). Then I got a bright idea to make up a ton of pancakes and freeze them. That way, it would be an easy breakfast the wee little ones (okay, maybe not so little) could "cook" for themselves in the microwave. They love to cook, but they are DANGEROUS in the kitchen. I had a couple bags of frozen blueberries and a GIHUGIC bag of pancake mix. What could go wrong, you ask? Well...after about 90 blueberry pancakes, I got the bright idea to try and make apple cinnamon ones. So I make a big batch that was supposed to yield about 50 pancakes. I cooked one griddle worth (6 saucer sized pancakes) and had to tweek my batter mix a bit. Cooked up 6 more after that but the batter was a bit thin, so I tweeked it some more. I ended up with over 100 apple cinnamon pancakes *lol*. It's a good thing, a very very good thing, that we have two deep freezers. They did turn out very very very good though. Quite a few of them never made it into the baggies *chuckling*. So....I cooked almost 200 pancakes today. I'll be happy not to do that again for a few months *lol*.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

WOOT WOOT

Okay. I've plunged into the world of digital scrapbooking. Or rather, my sister pushed me into the deep end *lol*. She got me to enter an online contest where they give you the kit to use and the rules to go by. It works by round eliminations. For the first round, I had to submit two layouts....and then wait for the voting. Well, I'm really excited now because I just got the word....I HAVE MADE IT TO THE SECOND ROUND!!!! Yay. These were my very first two layouts ever, and they were good enough for me to make it to the next round. This is so cool.




I made these two layouts using the Sleeping Baby kit designed by Addie Designs.




Thursday, October 9, 2008

Gone are the days

So, my sister's NAGGING me to blog again. Okay, so I've been busy being busy and just haven't really had much to blog about. Or rather, there's been lots going on but it's stuff I can't yet blog about.

So I decided that just to shut her up, I'll put something on here. My poor garden. It's dead and gone. All the plants are brown and withered. We got a halfway decent yield for my first attempt in more than 20 years. I had lots of cherry tomatoes to eat. We got quite a few green beans and peas too. Oh, and the carrots took forever but proved to be quite yummy. The garden is a sad little skeleton out back now though. I almost feel the need to go rip it out so it'll quit looking quite so pathetic back there all brown and bent over and stuff.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's off to camp we go

I don't know about the soundness of this decision, or how much hair I'll have left when I get back, but me and the middle step offspring are heading to camp tomorrow. We'll be gone for a week. It's an environmental camp the 6th graders get to go to. They asked for parent volunteers, so I said I'd go. I'm a cabin boss and will probably need to help out in the kitchen too. Wish me luck.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Cards

Here's a few cards I've played around with. I usually keep my designs pretty simple, but there are a few that took considerably more time. I really like making cards.






















































This card I made with homemade paper that has rose petals in it. There's 3 pics for the card. It has a sleeve that the little card insert sets in.








Lions...raaarrrr raaaaaarrr

I figured that I'd post a few of the things I've made over time. These are going way back in the beginning for me. They are all cut out by hand with an exacto knife. I made them either for swaps, to use myself, or sold on ebay.























Monday, September 8, 2008

??????????

Who EVER heard of a post office running out of stamps?????? I mean, come on, this is America...land of plenty, right? I tried to buy stamps today, and the lady at the post office told me they were out. She said she was waiting on the postmaster general to send more and didn't know how long it would take to get them. This town is WAY TOO SMALL. I can't even buy stamps for pete's sake. I didn't even know the post office could run out of stamps....had never imagined such a thing happening....and then to not know when you'd have more. It just kills me. I need to get out of this dinky little one crippled horse town. *lol*

The White Weenie

Okay. *LMAO* I couldn't resist the title. You see....it goes a little something like this:

I'm in the middle of a project in the kitchen. I wanted to move the pantry cabinet (full mind you) to the laundry room and move the shelves that were in the laundry room where the microwave is so that the microwave stand could be moved to where the pantry sat. Doesn't sound so hard right??? It all has to be done in stages so that one area can be vacated and the carpet shampood because the moronic original owner of this house put carpet in the kitchen and laundry rooms. Who does that?????? I got the space in the laundry room cleared out and the carpet shampood yesterday (the shelves have now taken up temporary residence in the dining room with their contents all over the deep freeze and the dining room table). So off I go to move the pantry today....and that's where we find the white weenie.


How many times do I tell the kids things like "make sure that's closed before you move it" or "be careful, don't just grab that". Do you think I listened to my own advice???? That would be a HUGE resounding um...no. *lol* I went into the kitchen this morning, did up a bunch of dishes, and then looking at the pantry decided to take all the stuff off the top and move it without emptying it out. I took just about everything down, setting it on the stove and a nearby chair. Just about the only thing left up there was a harmless looking bag of flour. What could possibly go wrong with that, you ask? Well, let me tell you. One weenie dog and a careless grab of said bag of flour later, and I ended up with a used-to-be-brown-but-is-now-white weenie dog. *lol* I didn't know that someone had opened the bag of flour. I reached up, grabbed it, and swung it around to set it on the stove when it EXPLODED, showerring poor little Oscar who was at my feet as well as coverring the chair and stove. I miraculously managed to get none on me, but the poor little dog was history. He was a really good sport about it. Riley even ran in to help clean him up and of course discovered she loves the taste of flour and spent the next thirty minutes turning my kitchen floor into paste, weenie dog spit style.


So here's the pic of my little guy, all rolled in flour and looking just a little put out *lol*.


The pantry did finally end up getting moved and now safely resides in the laundry room. I've still to get to the paste that used to be the kitchen floor. I have to do that before I can move the microwave and then do the shelves in the kitchen. When all is said and done, this will have been a worthwhile project....I hope *lol*.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Wally World Nightmare

Don't ever go to Walmart on a Thursday night when you live more than an hour's drive away. It's not pretty. The youngest two had birthday money to spend, and they had been sooooooo good...so I told them that we'd try to go to Walmart last night if their dad got home from work in time. Mind you, it's over an hour drive one way. He got home and we left just after 8 pm. I wanted to just scrap it and wait until the weekend, but the girls had their hearts set on going. So off we went. We went to the dollar store (one of their favorites) and then went to Denny's for their birthday dinner (because that's where they chose). And then we went to Walmart. Since we live so far out, we always do our shopping for the entire month in one trip. Well, after last night, we decided that we will NEVER go to walmart again with just one car. Those poor girls were completely buried in the back seat. My honey was completely buried in the passenger seat as well. It was a nightmare. We were all tired and way past cranky. Everyone was fighting. And you know how time flies when you're having "fun"???? We left the house at 8, and it was past 2 in the morning when we got home. I didn't feel right making the girls get up at 6:30 for school, so I told them they could go in late or not go at all. I sent everyone to bed and then for the next hour, all alone I carried in over $ 600 in groceries and stuff. Then, I got the extreme pleasure of putting away all the refrigerated/frozen stuff. I didn't get to bed until right at 4 am this morning. All 3 of the girls woke me up at 7 something asking if they could go to school. *lol* They had permission to stay home, and they were all up...even the youngest one who ALWAYS drags her feet getting ready in the morning. I'm really proud of them for that. They all got up and went anyway, even after not enough sleep.....and there's not even a field trip or party today *laughing*.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Alterring

Well, here's one of my first attempts at alterring. I took some composition notebooks and made them into planners for the girls for school. They really like them, and I have to admit that I think they're cute.