I know it's bad . . .

when Chris calls my scrap area a mess!! He is Mr. Not Neat so I know I need to get in there and clean up!!

I'm going to blame the huge mess on the Cybercraft Weekend at ilove2create.com! There were so many great challenges and prizes that I just couldn't resist!!

I have also just recently done a little reorganize of some embellishments, so I have a ton of CraftMates containers just sitting on the floor until I can find a new home for them!

This week I will conquer and reorganize! It's always so great to have a nice clean room, except I frequently forget where I reorganized things to!

So, here is one of my creations for the Cybercraft. Like many, I love Hambly and have been having a great time playing with the stash I got at my LSS, Memory Lane! I snapped this pic of Macy this week after she snatched a magnolia flower off the tree. That tree now has no flowers on it. It is beautiful when it blooms and it smells so good, but once the flowers open, they stay there for a day or two then they drop. Now we have old dead magnolia flowers tracked through the house! We need to work on getting them all raked up this week! So much to do . . .

Macy had a virus last week and poor little Jack got it today. He never wants to crawl up on Mommy and take a nap, well he did that today! Poor guy was burning up. He fell asleep around 6pm on the couch! I hope it's a quick one! Macy's lasted about 72 hours but she still has the residual cough. Hopefully Chris and I will be spared. I have the scratchy throat and sore ears, but no fever. Let's keep it that way!!

New layout and blog challenge #21!

Tonight starts the Ilove2create.com cybercrafting weekend!! The festivities start at 6pm EST. Be sure to come check it out! Lots of fun challenges and great prizes!

So, I was saying how much I was impressed with the new Martha stuff. I also had a challenge layout I wanted to do over at ScrapGal. The challenge was "confession is good for the soul", Kimberly wants us to dig down deep! I decided to bring some Martha into it!

I always worry. I worry constantly what people think about me! This is what I came up with . I broke out some Hambly (yum), Martha (the orange paper), a Prima flower and a Mod button! I'm also on this half a face layout kick! I really like how this turned out!

Now onto the blog challenge! Today is Truth or Dare Friday and Lisa's wants us to blog about our most embarrassing moment! Hmmm, I've had lots!! I guess the most embarassing was in college. I think it was my freshman year, I had just returned from Christmas break. Not many people were back yet. My friends and I went to the caf for supper. I was wearing my great new stylish boots that I got for Christmas. During my walk back to the table I slipped and fell right on my butt! I landed holding my tray out straight in front of me. I saved my food!! LOL I was SO embarrassed but luckily not many people were in there. Needless to say, I didn't wear my super cool boots again until I got slip grips for the bottoms. Even after that I was a little scared walking across that floor!! LOL

Have a great weekend!! I am hoping to get some good scrapping in!

Impressed!

I had to take a trip over to Michael's today to see all the hoopla about the new Martha Stewart papercrafting line.

I have to say I am very impressed. Now I am not a Martha fan, but this stuff is very elegant, she did a "good thing". She thought of everything! Scrapbooks to fabric stickers to tissue paper to mini envelopes to scissors, punches and trimmers, acrylic stamps, you name it, she's got it! Even kid craft kits for just $3.99! Very reasonably priced. I bought a 24 sheet pack of her patterned paper for $10.99. That is less than 50 cents a sheet.

I've read on some message boards about people complaining about not being able to use the 40% off coupons on her stuff. You know what? If her stuff was at an LSS, you wouldn't be able to use a coupon anyway and would pay full price. It's definately well priced! Never thought I'd say this, but thumbs up to Martha!

Meanwhile at the ranch, Macy is recovering from a virus. She was febrile and complaining of a sort throat and cough for 2 days. I took her to the doctor yesterday. They swabbed her for strep, which was negative. I was kinda hoping that it was strep so we could treat it with antibiotics and knock it out fast. No such thing! Just gotta wait it out, but she is feeling much better today and went to her friends birthday party. Tomorrow should be back to normal and she can go to preschool.

Been crazy busy here! I finished up some layouts a few days ago for the May ScrapGal newsletter. Last night I finished up all of my ILove2Create projects with the May kit, which is beeswax.

ILove2Create is also having a cybercrafting weekend this weekend! It all starts at 6pm EST tomorrow night and and runs until 6pm Sunday night. We have been working on some great challenges and games for it!! There will be prizes too! Good prizes!! Gift certificates to the store!!

So, if you feel like crafting this weekend, hop on over and check it out! There is a link over to the right there! :)

I've been neglecting the blog challenges too, since I've been busy! I hope to hop back on board with them tomorrow!

Beautiful weekend!

What a gorgeous weekend!! It was in the high 70's and even got up to 80 today! Wonderful for lots of outdoor playing and weeding! We bought a new grill and cooked out both days! YUM!!

My magnolia tree is blooming, it smells so wonderful. The smell fills up the entire block! It looks beautiful!

Macy had 2 birthday parties yesterday! Chris and Jack hung out, took a bike ride and went for some ice cream while the girls were partying!

Today, Chris went and bought wood to make the kids a new sandbox. They had a sand and water table, but it was such a pain to get hooked together and it was really small, so we got rid of that this week. He built them a 4 ft x 4 ft pit! It took 600 lbs of sand! They played in it for hours!!

Another cool thing, we got new neighbors behind us. The people that lived there before them had 3 kids and had a big playset for them. They didn't take it with them when they moved, so the new neighbor came over this afternoon and asked Chris if we would want it for the kids! All we have to do is take it apart and move it over to our yard! So, we're going to round up some friends and have a playset moving party soon! Very exciting! We have been wanting one for the kids but didn't know how long we would stay here, so we held off buying one! Good thing! :)

Fearful Friday

Today's blog challenge is to talk about a fearful time. Some of the other girls playing along have had some really scary moments. I can't really recall any really scary things that happened to me. Maybe there weren't any or maybe I've just supressed them.

When I was little, I would have recurring scary dreams that I would actually scream out loud to and my mom or dad would come in to check on me! There are 2 that I remember pretty vividly.

As a child, I used to poke at the screen in one of my bedroom windows. My mom would tell me repeatedly to stop doing that or else I could poke a hole in them and bugs and stuff could get in my room. As a result of this, I had the same dream several times: I would awake at night and there would be bats flying around the head of my bed!! That was scary!! I'd wake up screaming!!

The house that I lived in up until the end of 4th grade was an older house. The cellar was pretty creepy. It was old and cement and there was this crawl space up towards the ceiling at the bottom of the steps. That area really creeped me out. I didn't like to go down there by myself. I had these recurring dreams that an older man would make me go buy his lottery tickets. I was always in charge of picking the numbers. Of course, I would never pick the winning numbers. He was down in the cellar, I had to go down and tell him that he didn't win. He would get mad and he had this really scary deep voice. He would yell at me for not picking the right numbers. I would try to run away from him, trying to run up the stairs and it was sort of like a Flintstones moment, I would try to run, my legs were going, but I wasn't moving. I'd be yelling for someone and they couldn't hear me, then I'd wake up.

Odd, yes!! I have no idea where these dreams came from! LOL Very strange! But, they were super scary as a kid!

Feeling like I'm not doing what I should!

I put a ham and string beans in the crockpot this morning. Now I am feeling a little lost because I don't have supper to prepare!

If I did that everyday, just think of all the extra time I would have!!

It turned out to be a really nice day today! It got to mid to high 50's. I got a lot of cleaning done, mopping and then we all went outside. The kids played and I got the patio cleaned up a bit. The weeds are out of control in my flower beds! Luckily they weren't too hard to pull out because of all the rain we've been having. It needs a complete overhaul back there! It's so hard to keep up with with 2 little kids! It is supposed to be nice up until Tuesday at least so I'll probably get a bunch more done! Only 22 more days until planting season begins!!! Yay!! I am really looking forward to fresh tomato sandwiches!! YUM!!!

There is also a waterproof mattress pad hanging out on my clothesline. Yep, Jack wet his bed last night, but he slept through it! So, I'll be heading out to buy some nighttime diapers. That's okay though, at least he is potty trained during his waking hours!! I can deal with diapers at bedtime!

Looking forward to scrapping tonight. I have an idea all planned out, just need to print out bigger pictures and pick out papers and embellies! I haven't scrapped in about 3 nights! ACK!! The mojo hasn't been so good!

Nervousness! (and blog challenge #16)

I put Jack to bed tonight without a diaper! He's been potty trained for about 2 months, I guess but I've been putting a pull up or diaper on him at night just in case! I don't particularly like getting up in the middle of the night to do a sheet change!

I think he will be fine, he usually wakes up dry. Macy never wore any at night, once she was trained, that was it! Another boy/girl difference I guess! So, here is to a dry, sleepfilled night! :)

The blog challenge today was to list your to do list for the day. I will recap my list and state whether or not I actually got it done!

1. Download Norton Internet Security - my 60 day trial expired. It took me one whole hour to do this! I kept getting errors and having to restart! Darn Vista!! All seems well now, so hopefully we are fine! What a waste of an hour!

2. Go to Michael's for a brown Versafine pad - CHECK! They are revamping our store and it finally has some things that I might want to buy! I never go there because it's so crappy! Maybe Martha is helping them get their rear in gear!

3. Go to store - CHECK! Needed milk. You know you just can't go in and buy what you went for! I managed to get out with less than $30 though!

4. Clean the kids bedrooms - CHECK! So nice to be able to walk through them without tripping over all sorts of things!

5. Fold and put away kids laundry - Ummmmm!! Hey, at least I got the rooms cleaned!

6. Mop kitchen floor - Ummmm!! It really needs it but I was tired from cleaning the kids rooms!

7. Scrap - hopefully!! Just waiting for Chris to get home from his presentation, then put Macy to bed and maybe get a little in. I want to try to complete the page a day challenge at ScrapGal!

That's it!! I will be adding #5 and #6 to the list for tomorrow!

Random Useless Facts

Today's blog challenge from Shandy over at ScrapGal is to post any random useless facts you know! I can't think of any off the top of my head so I did a little search.

Here are 6 that I stumbled upon:

1. Honeybees have hair on their eyes. I bet that is a funny feeling!

2. A man was arrested and charged with the robbery—of vending machines. The man posted bail, entirely in quarters. Hmmm, wonder where he got those quarters.

3. Americans eat an average of 18 pounds of fresh apples each year. The most popular variety in the United States is the Red Delicious. I prefer Royal Gala or Jonegold!

4. Your thumb is the same length as your nose. Gosh, my thumb looks bigger than my nose, but it really is the same size!

5. Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants. Awww, come on!

6. In Saudi Arabia, a woman reportedly may divorce her husband if he does not keep her supplied with coffee. Coffee is a must!

Mom always says . . .

stay away from the stove!!

Jack is obsessed with the stove. I can't keep him away. I'm so worried that he's going to burn himself. I make sure I only use the back burners for fear of him putting his little hands up in the front.

Thursday night I was making some chili. I had a large open can of petite diced tomatoes sitting on the stove ready to be put into the pot.

I was cutting up onions and peppers and saw Jack reach for the can. It felt like I was in slow motion. I yelled "no" and started towards him, now this is only like 3 feet away!

I was too late and we had this:

He was SO upset but, the scrapbooker that I am, had to get my camera and take several pictures!! :) I'm sure you'll be seeing this on a layout soon!

Regifting

So, today is truth or dare day with the blog challenges.

You pick one or the other. Truth is to tell what items you've regifted. Dare is to tell about your favorite present ever.

I cannot think of a favorite present so I will tell you about the only gift I have ever regifted, and it just so happens to be one of Macy's that she got.

Warning, this is definately not exciting! LOL I will tell of her party just to make it a bit more exciting!

I admit, I try to do really cool birthday parties. I don't want to do ones like her other friends have done. I want her party to be cooler than anyone elses, and will spare no expense! Now, I am not proud of this fact, but [stomping my feet] I just can't help it!! LOL

So, I had her party at this really cool kids cooking place called Young Chef's Academy. I highly recommend it! She had 9 of her friends there and they were taught how to make pizza. They were taught the proper ways of measuring, etc. It was really cool, I think everyone had a great time!! They all got little goodie bags with their very own set of measuring cups, a neat measuring spoon, the pizza dough recipe and they also got to keep their chefs hats.

Macy received a Hullaballoo game from one of her friends. She already got that game a few months earlier, so I regifted it to one of her little boy friends who had a birthday party in July. That is my extent of regifting! LOL

Macy's birthday is on June 3rd and I've been feverishly trying to figure out the next cool birthday establishment! Can you hear my evil laugh? :)

Rachael needs . . .

Lisa's blog challenge today is to google our names plus the word "needs" then post 10 of the results!

Most of my results pertain to Rachael Ray!

1. Rachael needs to learn to accept things even if she doesn't like them. Hmmmmm

2. Rachael needs to get a life and there is nothing funny about her, she is just simply annoying and too loud. Gosh, I hope people don't feel that way about me!

3. Rachael needs to limit her coffee intake. This could be true!

4. Rachael needs to eat a little less of what she cooks. I suppose this could also be true!

5. Rachael needs to offer Martha an EVOO enima. Now that is funny!!

6. Rachael needs a boob job. Umm, SO untrue, quite the reverse is true!

7. Rachael needs a late night dessert snack. Now that would be yummy!

8. Rachael needs a new hair stylist. Well, I haven't liked my last several cuts.

9. Rachael needs some management that it doesn't sound like she is getting! Umm, okay.

10. Rachael needs to tell you that there is this really annoying kid on her bus and his name is John (she doesn't know his last name. I haven't been on a bus in a LONG time!

Photo contest finalist!

I entered 3 pictures in the Serendipity Scrapbook Designs photo contest and found out that 2 of them are finalists!

Both of the pictures are of Jack! One of them is the one a few posts down where he is sitting in a playground plaything and the other is one of him walking along a river!

If you feel like voting, go to http://www.serendipityscrapbookdesigns.com/ and scroll to the bottom, there is a poll there. I think you can vote for more than one picture at a time, but only actually vote once.

Forrest Gump blog challenge!

Lisa is in charge of the blog challenges this week over at ScrapGal!

What does the quote "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get" mean to me?

To me, this would mean to live each day to it's fullest. Live like there is no tomorrow because you never know what life is going to throw at you.

The other part of the challenge was to post who the 2 people are that have said this quote. I know Forrest Gump is one of them and I cheated and saw the second answer on Celeste's blog, Forrest's mom. LOL

I am not very good at remembering movies, especially not movie lines! Once I see them, I usually forget. Chris, on the other hand, has a good memory for movie lines! He could probably recite Napolean Dynamite back to me now and he's only seen it in it's entirety one time!

Happy Easter!!

Our Easter here has pretty much come to a close! The kids were up at before 7:30 this morning. UGH!!! They found their Easter baskets easily, the bunny left a jelly bean trail this year!! Took a few pics and then Chris and I went back to bed for a bit! They played with their new stuff and watched some cartoons. I couldn't keep my eyes open! 7:30 is way too early for this house!! Usually we are 9am or later people!

They were high on chocolate by about 10, then we got all dressed up and headed to my parents for Easter dinner. We left a little later than planned. Never fails that someone's house burns down on a holiday! Chris went to help fight the fire. Very sad!

We had ham, chicken cordon blue, scalloped potatoes, carrots, succotash, yummy bread and of course dessert! My mom made coconut custard pie and I made sour cream poundcake with strawberries and vanilla cool whip. It was mighty tasty and we are all now stuffed! Jack and Chris are up taking naps!!

Now it is time to clean up all the Easter grass that has been thrown all over the house! I think it will be an early to bed night! I'd love to scrap, but I think I'm gonna be pretty tired, too much food!

Here are a few pics from today!

What's in a name?

Blog challenge #12: Tell us about your NAME! yep, that's right... your name. How did your parents come up with it?... is there a story behind it?.... Do you like your name?... if you could have named yourself, would it have been the same or something different?

No big stories about my name. I was named after Rachael from The Bible. My parents thought RACHAEL was the spelling in there, but it turns out there was no second "a".

Yeah, I like my name, I don't think I ever disliked it. The only thing that really bugs me about it is that people are CONSTANTLY spelling it wrong! I mean, even when I spell it for them or I have typed it in an email or whatever. So many documents have had it RachEL, can't you read people? LOL

I know it's a different spelling, but really, it's just like Michael, but with an "Ra". :)

So very proud!

This sweet little guy here counted to 10 this morning! Last week, he counted to 8. He is speech delayed, so it makes it extra special for us! He has a 25% speech deficit, which finally qualified him for free speech therapy through our county! We were denied therapy through our insurance company. Last Friday he met his speech therapist, also named Jack, and will get therapy in our home once a week. Looks like Fridays will be the day!

I'm amazed how much he's improved this past week. He is really, really imitating now! Finally putting 2 words together! I just love to hear his little voice and not the grunting that his speech used to consist of!

He calls himself a big boy and that is definately what he is! So proud of him! Also proud of Macy for trying to help him to talk as well. She may be moody and very high maintenance, but she does try to help her brother out, when she's not beating up on him! LOL She was an early talker, speaking in complete sentences at 18 months of age. In fact, she was always ahead on all her milestones, so it has been hard not to compare Jack to her!

Do you think I'm a bad girl??

Well, it's time for the reveal! Most of you seem to think I was a bad girl in school!

Here are the results:

1. Yes, I have never, ever had detention!! I was a good girl in school, kind of a teachers pet sorta student!

2. While I was on the local news as a child, I was NEVER in a commercial.

3. Yes, I'm an RN but should have probably been some sort of mathmetician because of my super math skills! I was treasurer of my high school's FBLA chapter! In fact, I advanced to state competition 2 times, once for Parliamentary Procedure (placed 3rd in the state) and once for Entrepreneurship. Maybe I should try out for The Donald!

So, Tracy, Kimberly and Celeste called my bluff! The rest of ya were WRONG!!!

Confessions!!

Confess is the theme this month over at ScrapGal!! What a fun, fun, fun one!! I had a blast with it and the layouts from the DT were extra amazing this month!!

Me, I confessed my addiction to exclamation points, however, if you took a look at my posts, you would see that's a given!

Also confessed is my addiction to the Disney Channel! Yes, I love Disney, my favorite is Hannah Montana! I wanted to do something a little different than having a picture of myself on the layout, so I used a picture from our wedding and brought Chris into the equation! Fun!!!

Say it isn't so!

We've got a great blog challenge today!!

Today we are going to tell 3 statements about ourselves. 2 will be TRUE and 1 will be FALSE. In the comment section, everyone votes on which one they think isn't the true statement. On the next blog challenge we'll reveal the truth of things!

Here we go!

1. As a student, I never, ever had detention
2. I was in a local tv commercial as a child
3. I was treasurer for my high school's Future Business Leaders of America chapter

The Scrapbooking Society's April kit

Head on over to www.ilove2create.com and check out the great April kit! It features a great

technique using Stampbord. At first, I didn't think I would like this technique, for one, it requires you to stamp and I am NOT a stamper!! But, after trying it, it is SO much fun!! Stampbord are these little tiles that are a pressed board with clay layers on top. You color the tops with either paint, ink or twinkling H2O's and then stamp an image, word, etc with Staz On. You then use this little tool to scratch certain areas, giving it a great dimensional feel! Very pretty. Very cool!

Meet the Robinson's/collections

Chris took Jack to a train show this morning with his brother and his little boy so Macy and I had a nice girl time out. Look at that, 2 girl times for me this weekend!

Macy and I had lunch at NY Bagelry and then went to see Meet the Robinson's. It was a really good movie, some of it was a little confusing for kids, but once I explained, she got it!

We have a Disney Rewards card and got a flyer in the mail this week, go see MTR, take a quiz, be one of the first 500 and get a free MTR soundtrack. Surely I thought I'd be past the first 500, but I wasn't! I got all 8 questions right and will have the soundtrack in about 3-5 weeks - BONUS! Macy will like that. Can you believe that they don't play that Jonas Brothers song that is on Disney Channel all the time, in the movie? She was asking why they didn't play it!

Blog challenge #10: Tell us about something you collect

Well, I don't really collect anything! I am not into "knick knacks". The only things I collect would be scrap supplies and dustbunnies under our bed!