A Little Submitting...

It's a love-hate relationship I have with submitting for publication. Of course, I love the idea of having my work in people's hands all over the world. But, man... the work that goes into it. I am a slow scrapper to begin with, so by the time I'm done with a project, the last thing I'm thinking about is all the product I've used. I was really good for awhile and wrote everything down on the backs of layouts. Maybe because I've done such little creating for me in the last year or so, I simply have slacked on that part. So, with the new year upon us, I'm vowing to scrap for ME, which will hopefully mean I'll have the time (and motivation) to get some of the other details like supplies taken care of. I've also thought keeping some sort of a log of all my projects, along with my supply list. If anyone out there has an idea to share, PLEASE! I'd love to hear it!

In the meantime, here's a project I finished (and submitted) just today...

October PersonalScrapper kit featuring Jilllibean Soup

I submitted this for the stitching call:). I'm not sure how well you can see it, but I stitched across each of the rows of stars. This was also for the December sketch challenge at Jillibean Soup, and almost all of the layout was using my October PersonalScrapper.com kit. It felt SO GOOD to just scrap something I wanted to scrap! And my munchkins are adorable too! I also added a piece of flair from Bossy Joscie (love that lady!) 

Another great thing about this layout was the picture came directly from my camera! As luck would have it, I forgot to check my battery on my dSLR before we went up to the tree farm. There was some luck for me in that I was able to snap some Instagram shots that I could send directly to my home printer. Using my phone so much isn't gonna help my case for a newer, faster dSLR, that's for sure! 

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It truly is, you know! I feel so blessed as I sit and write this little post. Christmas was very good to us. Loads of gifts. Tons of family time. Even a little FaceTime (newly discovered cool tool for us!)

Techie gadgets certainly did play a big role around here. Hubby got a new Kindle Fire to read and play on. Miss A got herself a lovely new DSi (even in pink,). As for me, this post is being brought to you via my gorgeous new iPad :). Yep, a happy, techie group here. I will need to figure out the whole piece of transferring and/ or uploading pictures, (and I do need to get a fancy bluetooth keyboard) but its pretty cool to just got on and go. Hoping this will help me make my way to this poor little blog every once in awhile...

I hope each of your holiday seasons was a blessed one!

It's That Time of Year :)

Yes, it is definitely C-R-A-Z-Y busy, but, strangely, it's the time of year that allows our little family to settle in together and truly enjoy some "us" time. Even though I'm working a second job at my LSS, I can consider myself officially on vacation for 2 entire weeks! Happy dancing here:) We are nowhere near ready for the holiday season, but I really do just feel at ease. I didn't even bring home a drop of school work with me (not to say I won't regret that come the New Year and school's return) but for now, I can sit back and enjoy my gorgeous family.

I have a little project up on the Punky Sprouts blog today. I made some of these as gifts for some of my teaching colleagues. I couldn't believe how easy they were to put together.

There's a bit of a tutorial as well. Hope you'll go over there and take a peek!

Tomorrow morning is J's friend party. I need to remember to bring my camera and get some good pics. It took quite awhile to decide, but finally, he chose to go to the movies and then pizza. Arthur Christmas and Pizza Hut with a dozen 7 and 8 year olds should be a blast, don't you think? :)

Thanks for stopping by,
<3 C

Monday?? Hmmm... Yeah, Monday

I'm pretty sure it's Monday :) That's one of the funny things about having the summers off. You often aren't quite sure of what day it is. I haven't completely decided if that's a good or bad thing! It must be Moday though, since yesterday was church and our first meeting for our mini book club on the book Grace Based Parenting. It was a great day yesterday, filled with friends and conversation. We didn't get too far into the book, but it was so nice to talk about our own upbringings and how those affect how we are/did raise our own children. I'm truly looking forward to where this all heads. I know it won't give me all the answers to millions upon millions of questions I have, but having something to force me to slow down and think about what and why I do what I do will totally help.

The patio work continues... I don't know if it looks like much work has been done, but it certainly feels like we've been working non-stop on it.

This is where we began- cutting about 20 square feet of sod, relocating some, and bringing some to the dump.

Then the retaining wall started going up. LOTS of leveling going on here. Blechh... so time consuming! And talk about feeling like you're getting nothing done!

Then all the walls were up and packing gravel started going in. (This is where we are currently- we didn't get enough gravel ordered, so working has stopped for now since the local landscape material place is closed today.)

Since the patio plan included a firepit, the kids had been asking for days when they'd get to make some s'mores. So who would we be to deny them of that treat when the pit itself was finished?? We simply put the camp chairs on the dirt and roasted away :)

Wish us luck that we can finish it all up by the big party Thursday! I'm off to do some more party shopping. Patio or not, I should probably feed and water these people who must love my dear hubby!

Thanks for stopping by and leaving me some love- it makes my day to read your sweet comments!
<3  C

Some Randomness for Wednesday

Not a ton going on around here... P has already headed back to work for the school year. And me... Well, I'm just in complete denial that we are now less than 1 little bitty month away from the first day of school. Wow. It always goes SO fast. Camping trips have been put on hold the last several weeks, and it appears as if it may stay that way until Labor Day. We've started a rather large yard project that's sucking up a good amount of time and a HUGE part of our cash flow. (Do you even know how much $$ it costs to take sod to the dump?? More than we thought!) In hopefully under a week, we'll be the proud owners of a beautiful brick patio, complete with firepit. We're having a big "40" birthday extravaganza next week for the old guy, er... my beautiful husband, and we hope to have it all done by then. We'll see how it all goes. Some of our family may have to be sucked coerced bribed into helping a bit to make it happen.

There's a ton of cleaning to be done today. I think we're going to have someone out soon to clean the carpets, so I figure I need to get a few rounds of vacuuming in before the appointment :) Once P gets home, it'll be back to the patio work. The temps are a little cooler today and tomorrow, (low 80s) so that will bring huge relief and make the work loads easier. Once the first round of vacuuming is done, I'm hoping to get a lil' scrappy again. I'm still waiting on my latest Punky Sprouts box to come, but in the meantime, I figure I'll play around a little with some Jillibean Soup and Bella Blvd.

Speaking of Jilllibean... Here are a couple of layouts I did recently.

This one is extra special, as it was one for my PageMaps assignment for July. I love Becky's maps, and it is such an honor to design for her. Once again, I was especially honored as one of her top picks for the newsletter! The background is Punky Playground (currogated cardboard) that I exposed and then painted. The rest of the papers are Jillibean Soup Watermelon Gazpacho from my PersonalScrapper kit for June.

I love this one too! Something about those papers just makes me swoon and think of everything summer. I'm going to have to buy some more of this paper soon, cuz I'm not sure how much more of my PS kit is left :(.  This was based on a Sketchy Thursdays sketch. Since we'd been on vacation, I missed the deadline to qualify for the week, but I'm planning on spending some more time over there soon!

Well, the vacuum is not magically turning itself on (anyone got one of those cool Roombas?) so I suppose I should go take care of that. I just need to remind myself that I can play, er-um. work, in my craft room when I'm done :)

Thanks for stopping by! Make sure to say hello! (I'll go surfing some of your blogs tomorrow, I promise!)

<3  C

Home Again...

And it feels so nice! We realized once we made our way home, that we've never been away from home (vacation or otherwise) for this amount of time before as a family. We had an amazing time in the beautiful state of Oregon, so much that we said we could easily imagine ourselves living there. I don't think the rest of our family would be very encouraging, but it's still a gorgeous place...

My scrappy endeavors are going to need to wait for a few days, so I thought I'd post a few of my favorite pics from our trip instead...

I've still got a ton of editing to do, but I wanted to share a few anyhow. One of those pretty blondes doesn't belong to me, but the expression on her face when I took the pic of her and the sea star was just too cute! (She belongs to the family we always camp with!)

It was an awesome trip, but it really does feel great to be home. Now it's back to the normal grind... Sometimes normal is good :)

Thanks for stopping by!
C

Scraptivations Challenge 6!

I feel so happy when I get to play along at Scraptivations! I always have high hopes to join in all the challenges, but since I have a spectacular DT to help out, I guess the pressure to create is off a bit... This LO is all the more exciting since I made it on a little getaway I went on this weekend. Some friends and I went up to a cabin on a lake just outside of town and had our own little scrapfest :) I got a  few other things done (and I also have some pics to share from the last several weeks) but I just have a minute to share this one for now! Be sure to head over to Scraptivations to see the challenge, the other girls' projects, AND to check out the fabulous June sposor! *happy dance*

Here's my LO...

This gorgeous Echo Park paper from the For the Record line is from the PersonalScrapper.com April kit and the pics are from our first camping venture of the season.

Alas, I can almost taste summer... 9 school days. 8.5 since the last day is a half day. Scratch that... 8 and a third- we only go for just more than 2 hours... not that I'm counting or anything... :)  Hopefully blogging will be less of a chore then. It's not that I think of it as a chore. It's just not been priority for a bit. Well, we'll see if a touch more free time will fix it :)

Happy summer to all of  you!
~Til next time <3

Tme Flies Fast...

and I guess I'm having fun! Today was a pretty fantabulous day at work, I have to say! Just some stuff that has been going on has sort of been dealt with. It's crazy, but this has totally felt like a ton of bricks has been lifted off of me... *major sigh*  Now I just hope and pray the rest of the pieces fall together well, and that we don't end up with a bigger problem than we started with.

I've been working on tons of scrappy fun lately, but I've only been able to take pics of a few things. So I'm just gonna share my Sketchabilities layout with you tonight. We've had a dreary last several days (including a major dumping on of snow - blech!) and it's just been so dark to take pics.

Karan's sketch #42

and my take

Funny, because this seems quite a bit busier than I normally do, and I struggled with it (the perfectionist in me just can't let go sometimes!). But I think it's fun! We were able to spend an entire day at the San Diego Zoo this past summer and had such an amazing time. It's really hard to believe that there were things we weren't able to see :( Hopefully we can make it back in a few years. We all loved it, and the entire trip was well worth it! 

Needing to head out and to bed!

~Til next time <3