School is kicking my butt!!

Wow!! How long will it be before I get used to this schedule? I have never been a morning person and luckily my kids aren't early risers either. Well, you know that all changes when they start going to school!! My alarm has been going off at 6:45 and I've been dragging myself out at around 7:05. It is killer!! I've been walking around in a daze all day, not able to get any motivation to do my daily household duties! I laid on the couch a bit today while Jack played Thomas trains. I think I've decided to try to catch up on the Young and the Restless! It's been years since I've watched and there are some pretty odd marriages on there now!

Macy is also feeling the tiredness today. The meltdown that I feared would occur sometime this week, occurred today! She got some dirt on her dress after we got home and it just set her off. I had to send her to her room and just let her scream it off for about 15 minutes! I'm sure the neighbors loved that! LOL

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day and we can all get adjusted soon!

How are those of you with new Kindergartners doing?

I haven't posted any new layouts in a few days, so here ya go!

This one I did for a challenge at ScrapGal. This month's theme is connect so I challenged everyone to connect with yourself, since most of the time we scrap about others and not ourselves. This is me probably at 5 or 6 at a petting zoo. I let the llama loose! I bought this Karen Foster animal paper several months ago and found it perfect for this layout. Hey, it even has a llama on it!


This one I just did tonight for the Bring It On challenge at ScrapGal. It was to do a layout with lots of white space, using at least 2 pictures and a black pen! The top pic is of me and my brother and the bottom is a recent one of Macy and Jack. Jack and Tommy are probably about the same age in the pics. Can you tell we are related? Many times I think Jack looks more like my brother than my husband!


Have a great Wednesday!! I'll post some of the September ILove2Create kit sneak peeks tomorrow!

Exciting day!

First off, I forgot to post this picture of me and the kids. Chris took it from the top of the fire tower in my previous post.


Here is what our house looked like when we got home! See the nice clay colored siding on the side of the house and the horrible old yellow stuff on the front? Well, it still looks like this! The guys had another job they promised, so had to halt ours and go do the other one! They should hopefully be back this week to finish! I painted our porch posts to match and need to put a second coat on the front door. It will be lookin' so nice once it's all done!


Now with the excitement!!

Here is Macy's toothless grin! Can you see how proud she is?


This is her putting her tooth fairy pillow under her pillow. This is the pillow I used when I was a kid! As she was putting it under her pillow she said "Mommy, I think I saw a light sparkle outside", she was thinking it was the tooth fairy!


So, teh tooth fairy came this morning and it was also her first day of kindergarten!! How exciting!

She was so excited to go!! We all dropped her off this morning at 8:40. Chris took her in and he said she didn't even say goodbye until he prompted her! We, of course, thought about her all day!! We all went back at 3:10 to pick her up. She loved it and had so much to tell us!! I had no doubts she'd be fine, she loved preschool and is always eager to learn about everything! She is also a social butterfly!! I was sure that she'd have a class full of friends by the end of the day and sure enough!

Vaction, final part! Tooth fairy comes tonight!

Adding the rest of the vacation pics and story!

On Wednesday, we decided to go to the Farm Sanctuary which was just 8 miles from our campsite. It looked like a nice place in the ads, showing kids petting sheep, etc, looked like a nice little petting zoo type place.

We arrived at the place.

We thought that was cute. We went inside, paid for our admission and started looking around and reading about it before the tour started. While we were reading, we found that it is a vegan run sanctuary and they were really against any type of farming. There were traps and all sorts of displays and they showed a video about factory farming, which was a little graphic for kids. Now, I do not having anything against vegans, nor do I support any type of cruelty to animals, but I think they should have advertised their place as such. It could really be upsetting to some visitors that were in the farming industry. Farmers are hard workers, they do what they do to support their families, and I just felt like they were really put down at this place. I felt a little uncomfortable there, wondering if we were the only people that weren't vegetarians! I was just waiting for Macy or Jack to start talking about hot dogs or hamburgers! LOL Luckily, they did not! Little did they know that we stopped at the grocery store on the way back to the campsite and picked up some steaks and shish-kabobs!

Nonetheless, we had a good time, even feeling a little uncomfortable. We got to go into the cow pasture, somewhere that I've never been before! LOL We pet sheep, turkey, and pigs! The kids enjoyed it and so did I.


Do you remember the silly joke as kids "pig fell in the mud"? I hope so, because Chris thinks I'm strange because they never said that in his hometown!


So, after we left there, we stopped at a state park called Sugar Hill, way, way high! They had a fire tower there that you could actually climb to the top at your own risk.



Chris climbed all the way to the top and talked to some guys on his amateur radio.


Once he came back down (it started to get windy up there!), him and the kids played chase and hide and seek. We also stumbled upon another geodetic survey marker! I think we're going to start hunting for these now!


That's pretty much it for our camping adventure! We had a great time and there was a ton to do! Our night was topped off with a swim in their indoor inground pool and hot tub! :)

In other news, Macy's tooth finally fell out while we were at Staples today! It'll be an exciting morning for her tomorrow, both a visit from the tooth fairy AND the first day of kindergarten!!

Kindergarten pics to come tomorrow!

A first

Not a good first, but a first.

We went to McDonald's today with Tracy and her kids. We decided to eat outside in the playland area for a change. Well, that was a mistake!! Bees just started coming out of nowhere and before you know it, Macy says, very calmly, "Mommy, I think something hurts". Darn bee flew up her shorts leg and stung her right on the thigh. She handled it so well though, very brave girl I have!! No screaming or yelling. I held my drink cup on it while Tracy went to get some ice. So, we moved back inside and just went to the playground afterwards.



I think she got it before it really stung her deep. It didn't swell at all and now she doesn't even realize it's there. The first bee sting!

Nothing much more exciting today. I've been sorting through piles of magazines and just posted them on Freecycle, so hopefully someone will want a bunch of scrap mags and home/family mags! I was going to chuck them but then realized I could try Freecycling them first.

A bit tired today, I was up last night creating. I didn't go to bed until 2am and boy did I not want to get up this morning!

I found out that my Cricut Expression will cut through the new SEI velvet like buttah!! YES!!!! I bought the velvet with that intention and I am so glad that it worked!! So, the title here is cut out using Plantin Schoolbook and some SEI velvet. I also added in some new American Crafts, Dream Street and Prima paper. It's a layout about Macy's outgoing personality and how she makes friends in an instant! It's a very cute story!! There is actually about a 1/2 inch of the cream cardstock at the top of the layout too, the scanner didn't want to detect that, I guess!


Thanks for looking!! Have a great day!

Kudos!!

I have to put a plug in for my pal Mimi!! Her Survivor layout was chosen as layout of the day on the Memory Makers website!! Check her out here!. Yay, Mimi!!!!

It's another yucko day here, just trying to get the kitchen cleaned up. I have actually found the refrigerator door!! It was covered with art projects and just miscellaneous flyers, etc. It's so nice to see the white again and have it all cleared off!! I also managed to find the countertop, imagine that!

Tonight is Macy's tour of her school!! I still can't believe that she will be starting kindergarten in less than a week! She is so excited! I know she will do well, she's such a little social butterfly!!

I've been in a sort of scrapping funk, not feeling too creative. When that happens, I like to print off a picture that I totally love and just go for it. I couldn't resist doing that with this picture of Chris and Macy from our vacation last week! It is a cirlce layout, the majority of it done using my Cricut Expression (have I ever told you how much I love that machine?), some 7 G's goodness, Fancy Pants chipboard and a bit of plastic canvas!

Sorry for the bad pic, it's hard to take one of a circle layout and I couldn't get the scanning quite right either! LOL


Rescue Me is on tonight. It's one of our favorite shows! We usually watch while enjoying some yummy homemade bruschetta and an ice cold Yuengling Lager!! Can't wait!! I'm going to try to squeeze in some scrapping between the kids going to bed and the show!!

Have a great day!

My boy!!

I went to the memory lane pa crop on Friday night and all I got done was this layout! What a great time was had though!! I finally got to crop with the crew!! Hoping I can do it more often! Although it is so darn hard to pack for!! Can you believe that I forgot to take along my two favorite things? Yes, I forgot my ATG and my Thickers!!! How on Earth could I forget those? Luckily, the very nice (and wonderfully talented) Colleen let me borrow one of her ATG's and it wasn't too bad having to shop for more Thickers!! You can never have too many Thickers!!!


So, the Memory Makers Masters calls went out yesterday. Unfortunately, my phone didn't ring!! But, I am okay with that!! Like I said before, I am just proud that I (and my friends) pushed myself to enter. That, in itself, is a huge accomplishment. I love my entry, that is what really matters.

It has been a horrible 2 days. The weather is awful, cool and rainy!! It's that depressing weather! It also probably means that the rest of the siding installation will be put off about a week or so! Bummer!!

Happy Tuesday, all!!!

Vacation part 1

Vacation summary part 1!

We arrived at the Watkins Glen KOA around 4pm on Monday.

We were assigned campground 103 so we got all setup.



Macy, of course, quickly made friends with the people in the cottage next to us. They were from Ontario, which was easily noticeable by their accents! LOL

We took it easy the first night and checked the place out. They had a great 44 foot pirate ship playground for the kids! Can you believe that I didn't get any pictures of that? By the second day, Macy knew the route there (which was about a minute from our tent) so she would take Jack over and they'd play. We gave her one of our family radios, so we kept in contact with her the whole time.

Our first meal was hot dogs and baked beans! We kept it simple since it was the first night.


The one really great thing about going camping is that I don't have to cook! Chris is in charge of the meals! Can you believe that we were the only people there that made their food over the campfire? Everyone was using propane stoves. We have one of them for backup! We actually had to use it on Tuesday night to make our corn on the cob, since their wasn't enough room on the campfire grill.

I didn't sleep too bad the first night, it wasn't good though! Train tracks were across the street and a train would run through every night around 1am. Imagine our surprise the first night with the loud whistle! That was okay though, it was that darn barking dog that was awful!! Every single night that dog would bark, bark, bark!!! I cannot believe the owners just let it do that! UGH!! The second day, new tent campers pitched behind us, the guy snored loudly, so we had that for the last 2 nights, which wasn't too bad! I'll take that over that annoying dog!

Tuesday we headed down the road to the Watkins Glen state park and climbed the 800+steps to the top of the gorge. It was beautiful, but so hard to get decent pictures. I was worrying the whole time that Jack was going to cataplut himself off the wall and into the gorge. That boy has no fear!!





Once we got to the top, we rode the shuttle bus back to the bottom and went shopping in the gift shop. Macy, Jack and I got sweatshirts since I forgot to pack some, and Chris got a t-shirt.

We hit the grocery store on the way home and got shish kabobs and steaks for supper. We were starving and bought way more than we needed, but it was yummy!!

Thanks for reading!! Final installment in a few days!!

Have a great week everyone!

We're back!!

I survived!! It was actually fun!! We hiked all the way up the 800+ steps at the Watkins Glen Gorge!! Jack did too!!

I will post about it more tomorrow probably. I'm just exhausted now. There was a dog somewhere off the campground site that barked non stop every night!! Yes, every night!!! It just echoed!! Chris and I wanted to get up and go find that dog!! Very annoying at 4am!! I can't believe the owners didn't take it in the house after about 5 hours of nonstop barking!!

Anyway, I'll post some fun pictures tomorrow!!

Here's a layout I did at 11:30 on Sunday night! I went into my scraproom to clean up before heading up to bed and more of the new American Crafts papers were staring at me. I couldn't let them be sad, so I whipped up this fast layout! This is a pic from Hershey Gardens when the kids and I went a few months ago!!

Reading Fair!

Today was the last day of the Reading Fair. The hospital has a picnic there for employees and their families. It's always a fun time but so stinkin' hot!! Why are fairs always held in August when the temps are in the 90's? I never really understood that. But, the good thing was that today was in the mid to high 80's so it wasn't too terrible. The kids enjoyed the rides as usual. Macy was bummed that she couldn't go on the swings. The height minimum was 49 inches, which she is, but the guy wouldn't let her go on. She just about cried, poor thing!!

Jack was in all of his glory in the John Deere tent!! He LOVES tractors!! He had to come home and ride his motorized Gator too! Which, he still doesn't quite get the steering down. He almost took out a bush, flipped it, and hit 2 pedestrians! Then he was all upset when we told him he had to take a break! LOL



Tomorrow we have to pack and shop for our vacation. We are going camping for 3 nights!! Wish me luck!! I am not of the camping variety, I guess you'd say! Chris loves that stuff, and I love him, so I do it for him! We went one night last year and I did not sleep the entire time, until he got up to make breakfast in the morning!! So, me being the girl that I am, made sure to get us a campground that is sort of "divafied". There is an indoor inground pool with spa and exercise room! Free wi-fi! Our tent site has water and electric, therefore I can take my hairdryer!! There are nice bathhouses, so I can shower, wash my hair and face and pee in a toilet! I think I may make it this time! I decided if I don't sleep the first night, I am going to go buy some Tylenol PM or something else to help knock me out the second night!! All of this in the Finger Lakes of New York!! Supposedly the campsite is across the street from Seneca Lake. It will be beautiful, I'm sure and I'll get lots of pictures, but will I survive? LOL

If you don't hear from me by Thursday, you know why!!

Tagged and a Toot!!

I was tagged by the talented Amy! Thank you!!


Now, it's my duty to tag 5 rockin' girls!!

Mimi
Tracy
Paula
Kristi
Melynda

I have to share my excitement!! Scrapbooks Etc is my all time favorite magazine!! I wrote it down as a goal this year to be published by them. Imagine my surprise when I got a call from them today asking for a layout for their Nov/Dec issue!!! I had to squeal when I got off the phone!! Macy wanted to know what was going on!! I am just so excited and honored that I will be in my favorite magazine!!

Have a great weekend, everyone! We've got a busy one!!

LOVE the new American Crafts!!

Can I just tell you how much I love the new American Crafts papers? They are so me!! The colors are fabulous!! I got them yesterday and was itching to do a layout with them and finally was able to today (with a little help from the Pinky Dinky Do show!).



Look at how big Macy looks here!! Wow!! Just 2 1/2 weeks and she'll be in kindergarten!! I'm also thinking that the Tooth Fairy may be visiting us on vacation!! Hope she can find us!! We'll have to remember to pack the Tooth Fairy pillow! While we were at my parents this past weekend, my Mom gave her the pillow that I used when I was a kid!! Very cool!!

Not too much today. We haven't been to the pool in a week, so we went today, only to be forced out by a downpour an hour and a half later! Did I mention that I also had a load of wash hanging on the clothesline? There went that attempt at saving some money on the gas bill! They ended up in the dryer anyway!

Hope everyone had a great day!! Thanks for reading my blog! I'm heading off to scrap some more!!

It's much more laid back

here in the Chamberlain household today!!

The Orkin guy was here and treated for the carpenter ants!!

The roofers were here and finished the garage roof. They will be back next week when Jack's window is in and replace that and start on the main roof!

It looks so much better out there already!



The kids and I are now doing some painting. I bought some flat hinged wooden boxes at The Rag Shop several weeks ago and told them they could paint them. I think it will probably take a week for them to dry with the amount of paint they used on them!

We're just going to take it easy today since yesterday was so crazy!! We'll probably just go outside to escape from the adhesive fumes and then maybe watch a movie. I don't feel like packing up and going to the pool. I think I've had enough of the pool for the season!

I'll leave you with this cool little chalkboard easel I made using Junkitz Coverz, chalkboard spray paint and loads of American Crafts goodies!!! I had this idea in my head since March, sprayed the chipboard about 2 months ago and finally decided to execute the idea before I get the new American Crafts papers (which should be coming from ScrapGal!



Have a wonderful day!

The joys of homeownership!!

If you follow my blog, you know that are in the midst of planning a remodel to kitchen because of a leaky roof. This morning we awoke at 7:15, the roofers were here to start on the garage roof, which we are also replacing because it wasn't fixed properly when we moved in 7 years ago and it still leaked with moderate rains.

At about 9am, the head roofer guy came to the front door and asked me to meet him out on the garage roof (there is a door that goes out Jack's bedroom onto the roof), there was something nasty! Uh oh!!

I opened up Jack's door and there were holes in the roof (they took all the rubber off already). That apparently is not a problem to fix at all, they just replace it with new plywood. The problem was the gigantico ants that took up residence in the wood plank closest the door and under the door. They were just eating that wood!! He picked up a handful of their dust that they leave after they are eating!! We knew we had an ant problem and we've been getting treated by Orkin every 4 months. The house has been ant free, but the garage roof is not. They hang out there because of the moisture.

I am seeing $$CHA-CHING$$ here!! So, what to do? The head roofer guy said the best bet would be to just totally close off that door and seal it in, pull off the siding, insulate it and replace the window! We don't have much siding on our house, it is 80% brick, but the siding that is there is this horrific yellow that we have hated forever!! When we decided to do the remodeling, we said we'd replace the siding anyway, but then decided to paint it instead since there wasn't much of it, save a few bucks, ya know!! So, this little problem sealed the deal for new siding! I chose Weatheredwood shingles with clay siding.

The morning was filled with phone calls for me! Calling Orkin to see if they could treat the ants while the roof was off, calling Chris to get the go ahead to seal off the door. He actually came home from lunch to check it all out! Then, most importantly, calling the bank to get more money! I have to say I have the nicest people working at my bank!!! She helped me greatly, researching to see what the best way for us was to go with our line of credit! She spent so much time on the phone with me, figuring numbers, getting info! She made it so I didn't have to go into the bank with 2 high energy kids to fill out a ton of paperwork! She did it all on the phone with me!! It's hard to find good service like that these days!! I also had to run to the township office 'cause guess who forgot to get a permit? Yep, us!! That's the last thing we were thinking of! So, that is almost taken care of now!!

ETA: Yes, they are ants, we had them "evaluated" last year. We thought we had termites but they are, in fact, carpenter ants!

I'm so glad I can sit now!! A busy day!! Macy's Bridge to Daisies program starts tonight and Chris and Jack are going to National Night Out.

Here are some pics of the damage and now the progress!! They will be back tomorrow to adhere the rubber. They probably won't get to the main roof tomorrow, but I pray that they don't find such problems there! He sait it's rare for that to happen up there because of the slope. Let's hope that's true!!

Do you know what though? I'm not stressed about this!! I actually feel good and am excited! I know we've got a great company working for us, top notch quality!! They busted their butts otu there today in this horrible humidity!! They put in a 10 hour day!!

The holes:



Ant problem:



The door coming down!



Sealed up!


Done for the day!


And here's a recent layout to brighten the day!!

We live for Fridays!!!

Chris works evenings on Mondays so it is just me and the kids for supper. The 3 of us love breakfast!! We have made it a tradition that on Mondays when Daddy is at work, we make pancakes for supper!! YUM!!!

Tonight, for the last batch, we decided to kick it up a notch!! We added chocolate chips to the batter!!! YUM again!! We had 2 plates of plain pancakes and then chocolate chip ones with whip cream for the last plate!! Delicious!!! Take a look for yourself! [Yes, Jack is dressed as Peter Pan!]







I am a cousin again today as of 1pm!! My cousin, Jackie, had her first baby today!! Jocelyn Marie is 6lbs 10oz and 18 inches long and has dark wavy hair!!! Congrats Jackie and David!!! I can't wait to meet her!!

Since I don't like posting without pictures, here is a layout I did for my challenge at ILove2Create. I challenged everyone to do a layout with vacation pictures, paper altered with the Radiant Rain sprays and also in a size that you don't normally scrap!! I chose to do 6x12!!!



Hope everyone had a great Monday!!