In the Mail!!

Oh how I do love the beginning of the month! As soon as the first comes, I start watching my porch for that gorgeous white, blue and red package! So, low and behold, I pulled into the driveway this afternoon after running out with the kiddos, and there it was! My lovely August kit from Personal Scrapper! If you have never seen Erica's kits before, they are amazing! All this for $25 (shipping included!). Most kits come with complete paper ranges, and four sheets of perfectly coordinating Bazzil! She must love good paper even more than I do! That's hard to come by! This month's kit is another one of my favorites, Scenic Route. In addition to awesome embellishments, she also almost always includes Thickers by American Crafts. I tell you, these kits are to die for!!! Check out the site and sign up! (Don't forget to say that you heard it from me:) ) There's also a very great forum too, and all the girls are so very sweet, knowledeable and amazingly talented!

Well, obviously, I'm headed off to scrap now!

<3

Blog Savvy

Well, I'm slowly but surely getting things figured out around here! Thanks so much to Sam first, as I swiped her New Moon counter (see below!) Then I finally got a Photobucket account set up so now I have a slideshow all set up at the bottom of this lovely blog! I mostly just have my older stuff on there right now. I realized that the newer stuff is on my other computer, and, well, I just needed to be mobile right now!

Oh well, I'll post again later this week as I really want to show everyone the updates to my craft room! Paul helped me build an AWESOME magnetic board and now I have my very own version of a Clip It Up system! Can't wait to take some picks and show them off! (Man, my husband is good to me!)

Off for now!

Cybercrop and Wedding Stars

It's a busy weekend! Scraps of Us is having the first annual Winter Cybercrop!! Vicki has prizes, loads of challenges and fun games! Be sure to head over there! Along with that, here's a sneak peak of the projects I did for the crop!

Layout Challenge- Use only scraps or strips of paper to create a layout! Then embellish!

Use this sketch to create a winter card! (NO laughing at my sketches! I'm terrible with straight lines!)

Here's my version of the sketch!

Another card challenge!-

This one has step-by-step directions if you head over to Scraps of Us!

Lastly, I wanted to post some pics from the big event last weekend! My beautiful babies were in my little brother's wedding! It was terribly hot and was both outside and inside an unairconditioned event hall! My kids were AMAZING! I was soooo proud of them! I figured J would be good once he was ok with the monkey suit (reminding him he looked just like Grandpa and his uncles helped!). He just stood there like a trooper with the guys, with the sun beating down on him!

And then there was Miss A! Auntie was the crafty thinker and bought a Hello Kitty Pez holder and tucked it in with her bouquet! When Sissy got a little restless, Auntie and Pez to the rescue! It was perfect! The only small glitch was that J accidently "bumped" her on the way up and she spilled her petals. She worked hard to pick them all up with a little help from brother and the wedding coordinator! It was so sweet! I'm so proud of them both!

Welp, off to get scrappy! Wish me luck!

Top Secret Rush...

No pics to post as I need to keep them to myself for just a bit longer! Don't know if this little leap will get me anywhere, but we'll see!! The rushing part would explain the insane hour I'm up at right now! Not quite sure what I'm thinking, but I always like to put myself up against crazy deadlines! Pandora is playing in the background keeping me going, but hopefully, once I hit the bed, I'll be able to sleep soundly!

We are headed off to the other side of the state on Monday. It should be a great trip! The first part will be a family reunion of sorts with Paul's family. Very excited about the water parks! I did look on the map and we are just a bit too far away to do any vampire hunting! LOL!! (My Twilight love has gotten the best of me!) When we leave there after just 3 days, we head up to Seattle to my brother's wedding! Will have pics from all as J and A are ring bearer and flower girl!

Enough for tonight!
;) C

Woohoo!!

Well, although I'm still feeling like a total scrapping slacker, my scrapping sister Vicki from Scraps of Us has given me my first blog award! Maybe this was the little wake-up I need! Thanks so much Vicki! You're way too kind!

Guess I'd better get scrapping!

Feeling Productive!

It's been a great couple of days! I've finally gotten into my scrapping stash to do some stuff I've been wanting to get to! Not too bad for someone who's only been off work for a total of 3 days! Paul has become slightly obsessed with the Wii this weekend, so I can't feel too bad for keeping to myself.

The kids were in my craft room today, literally under my feet. They love to pretend they are in cars and their own little houses, so that's what they were doing. I was sitting on my stool when suddenly my foot was "beeped" by Avery. Jake told me that my foot was her steering wheel! LOL! I was laughing at them so hard and it wasn't especially a good thing that I had a craft knife in my hand at the time! Oh well, I did get the layout done!

Summertime!!

Wow! I made it to summer vacation!! My national boards work is done. The test completely kicked my butt! I have to wait until sometime around November to find out if I passed. If not, I have a much better idea of how to prepare myself and shouldn't have to redo the entire thing! :)

I've been home with the kids for a couple of days so far, and it has been great! Paul has to work until the end of the month so it'll be just the three of us for another week. It will be a busy one though. Jake has Mini-Hawk sports camp next week, Paul leaves for a golf trip with "the guys" on Thursday, and Avery's third birthday is the following Tuesday. We're having a Tinkerbell party here at the house! (Pictures to follow for sure!)

I have finally caught up with my SOU DT work and now can start using some of my Personal Scrapper stuff that has been piling up. I also got a few things from the Scrapper's Attic last week. I need to look through my pictures and find some good things to scrap-I know they're their, but where exactly... :)

Busy Times...

Busy it has been... I finished my writing entries for the National Boards process. Now I start the major studying for the math test in early June...Blech!! We are doing standardized testing at school right now, so it's a little bit quieter around there. So, I've been able to get a bit of scrapping done. I'm waiting on my DT kit from Scraps Of Us and can't wait to get started on that. We've got loads of new ladies on the forum, so that has been exciting. New folks means new inspiration for me! I LOVE, love, love looking at other people's work- they are just so amazing! I've found a few blogs to follow and hope they will keep me working!

The last few layouts I've done were from my new favorite source- PageMaps. I love this stuff. They give you ideas on where you can use different elements, not just what the arrangement is. That is a HUGE help to me. When I get stuck, that's the reason...

A Sick House

Well, I should be happy that I've at least gotten two posts within the same month!! I'm home sick today with the kids. Avery is the worst of us. She's got a temp of 102+ that barely seems to come down with Tylenol... So sad, though she's working to stay so chipper! She's such a sweetie when she's sick, but I just breaks my heart... I've been able to do a couple of things, but not any real scrapping or even any major school work. I'm figuring we'll be home again tomorrow and I'll see what I can get done then.

My favorite things for this post are my LOs for Scraps Of Us. Vicki should be putting them as kits or classes or something soon on the store, so be sure to stop by there- scrapsofus.ning.com

Should head out now and see if I can get anything else done!! Jake's got a movie in (nothing new there!) and Avery may be out for awhile... Ohhh, so sad! :(

Back to the Grind (maybe...)

Well, it is the 8th of January (I think!) and I've worked one day so far this week. For now, I should have to work tomorrow, but who knows! We've been snowed in, iced in, and flooded in so far... Not sure what else could even happen!! It's been kind of fun getting an extended break. God knows I needed to get stuff done! LOL! But I realize I also thrive on habits and having things be "normal." So, I guess it will all work out. A friend said we'll be using loads of expletives in June when we will probably have to go a little longer, but it was nice while it lasted!

We'll see how soon I can get back here and post again. I need to finish my Scraps of Us stuff and get it all loaded up. Plus I really, and I mean REALLY need to kick it into gear with my National Boards stuff. That will be my big stress for the next few months. Arghhh! What on Earth was I thinking??! Well, I can't let the team down, so, off to work I go!

Til next time...