I'm Working On It!

Shopped til we dropped!!

2009-11-29T09:40:00.003-05:00

Ever since the outlet centers started doing Midnight Madness (opening up at midnight on Thanksgiving night) a few years ago, I've been going!!

My friend, Mimi, and I would head out to the VF Outlets for hours and hours. At around 2am, we'd get a $2 breakfast in the food court!! At the end of our "night", we'd redeem our receipts for a free Christmas wreath!! Can't beat a free wreath on top of tons of great deals!! Usually, I would have to be home by around 6:30am so Chris could get off to work. I walked in the house last year as he was showering! Chris did not have to work Black Friday this year, you know what that means!!

My besties Misty and Jen drove down from the Williamsport area to take part in the festivities!! Misty picked Jen up in Muncy around 10pm. I enthusiastically greeted them at the door around 12:30am and we headed off to the Philadelphia Premium Outlets this year!! We would meet up with Mimi, who, with her sister in law, went at 10pm. Seems as if the rest of the Philly suburbs decided to hit up those outlets! We got within a mile of our exit and into a standstill. As we finally made our way into the parking lot, we saw the creativity of some eager shoppers. Not only were cars were parked at ends of aisles where there were not spots, but they somehow got up over the curbs and parked in the grassy areas, some with their tires hanging partly over the curbs! I had my plan of attack, though. I just kept taking rights to get to the back of the parking lot. It worked. We ended up pulling up to a car as they were loading up to leave. We got a nice close spot too!

So, we shopped and shopped, made out with some really great deals and a few pairs of socks! Misty weighed in at 12 pairs of socks for herself! Columbia and Bass were the front runners, as usual! We fueled our search for deals with a stop into Lindt and their peanut butter Lindor Truffles (so NOT on the diet!) and a shared Nathan's hot dog! Mmmm, mmmm, good!! Got to see a high school friend while she was working at the Hanes store!! The news crews were there but we weren't lucky enough to be interviewed. That would've slowed us down anyway!!

We finished up there about 7 hours later, hands all cramped from carrying our bags. Biceps and hips just burning!! We headed back towards home and refueled at the Breakfast Hut (the best breakfast spot in Exeter/Mt. Penn area!), then headed into Boscov's for some more deals! Next was the VF Outlets. We scored a ton of deals including a $6.42 pair of jeans for the angel tree at Jack's school and a $4.42 soft flannel shirt for my dad! Spent a few hours there, Misty bonded with some of the mannequins while Jen bought her hubby some of his "dress" clothes!

It is now around 1pm ish. We headed to KMart for a bit, which was a bit of a disappointment. Everything that I wanted from there must've been a doorbuster that was not offered at that time of the day. Bummer!! We still made some purchases. Got a text from the hubby telling me that he thought I might consider heading home now! ha! I told him to order up some pizzas and we'd pick them up on the way.

So, we wandered in the house around 4pm, after 15 hours of shopping!! Gave the fam some hugs, had some pizza then went to relax in the family room! Misty and Jen were passed out on the couches at 6pm. Tucked the kids in bed at 7:45 then hit the bed myself and passed out while Chris was working on his homework!!

What fun!! So happy that the 3 of us could hang out!! Hoping the work schedule works out the same next year!! Glad that this is a once a year event as well. I don't know if my 35 year old hips can handle it more than once!! What a workout!!

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures! We were much to busy for that!!

Some new work

2009-11-19T17:36:00.005-05:00

The Fall Fest Crop at Scraptacular was a hit!! There was a ton of creativity goin' on over there this past week!!

Here is my Make N Take for the crop. It's a wallet picture frame. I love making these. They are so easy and would make for great gifts! If you want directions, you can find them in the online crop section on the message board over there!

I also hosted a scraplift challenge. I lifted a layout of Liese's. I just had to scrap about getting straight hair for 2 days!! I embossed the chipboard and rubbed some metallic rub ons over top to bring out the pattern. Gotta love Fancy Pants chipboard!!

Here are some projects I did with the November Scraptacular kit, featuring Cosmo Cricket Nutmeg.

Thanks for reading!!

Online Crop This Week at Scraptacular!!

2009-11-08T20:28:00.004-05:00

Scraptacular is having a big fall fest crop this weekend!! It's going on all week!! Lots of challenges, games, make and takes, fun and prizes!!! Come on over and check it out!!

I see that I have not fulfilled my goal of being a better blogger!! It's been over a month!! I must try to get better!!

October at Scraptacular spotlighted the new Fancy Pants lines. I challenged myself to use the Little Sprout line. I'm not much of a pastel kinda girl but it was fun!! Here's what I came up with!!

Thanks for reading and be sure to check out the crop!!

BOO!!!

2009-10-05T13:03:00.003-04:00

I don't usually decorate for Halloween. I'm a fall decorator. That way, I can keep it up for 2 months! The kids are always begging to put up some Halloween decorations, so I made my own door hanging and they made decorations for their bedroom doors this year!

I made this out of a sheet of corrugated cardboard and a bunch of other fun scrappy supplies!

I used this as the project of the week at Scraptacular this week. For some directions on how to make this, click HERE!

The kids like to make projects to hang on their bedroom doors, so we got out the Paper Dolls Cricut cartridge to make one for Halloween. We did this after baths one night last week, hence the jammies and wet hair!

Thanks for reading!! Have a great week!

Wedding!!

2009-10-04T16:22:00.008-04:00

I've been bad with my blogging lately, I know!!

Guess I'll start off with the wedding. As I said before, my last best friend from college got married last weekend. It was wonderful having the four of us back together again!! We are going to try our darnedest to have an annual girl outing!!

The wedding was all hunting/fishing themed. Where Misty got all of the stuff for it, I don't know. We're talking about:
an antler with a bullet pen attached to it for the guest book
a silver antler unity candle holder
a camoflage garter
a camoflage rehearsal dinner cake
a special candy bar for the kids at the reception with gummy bears, worms and swedish fish
mannequins dressed up in wedding attire and camo
a deer couple cake topper
beautiful brown/orange camo wedding cake
fish mugs and plates for favors
empty shotgun shells filled with Reece's Pieces for favors

I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot too!! It was all really well put together and just shouted Misty and Ron!! The reception was held outdoors at a pavilion by a river too. Really beautiful setting! Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of those things as I was too busy with the other wedding preparations.

Here are a few pictures. Luckily Chris got a few of the ceremony.
The new Mr. and Mrs.

Me and my groomsman. Don't know his name! lol

Here are some others:

Macy was the hit of the dance floor with all of her smooth dance moves!! She did the Thriller dance too!

Here is the view from the pavilion.

When the girls and I get together, we have this standard picture we always take. I'm not real sure how it ever got started but it seems each time we take one, we are all a little bit wider! The bench was so narrow they had to hold on to me really tightly!

Love these girls so much!!

Photo Op!

2009-09-22T13:32:00.002-04:00

Just about all of the main attractions on our Chattanooga trip took family pictures as you entered. Rock City on Lookout Mtn in GA had little photo op spots all set up for the visitors, which included the month and the year! What a neat idea!! I did this layout for the pic we had taken there. Thanks to our friends for taking it for us!

The fall weather has been continuing here. We can't wait to get out and do the hayrides, pumpkin picking, cider sippin', etc! As soon as October 1st hits, I'll be climbing up in the attic to get the fall decorations. I can't bring myself to decorate for the season until the first of October! Although, I did cheat yesterday and started burning my Yankee fall candles! Mmmm!! I was at the hairdresser this morning and she used pumpkin products on my hair, so I am really itching to decorate, not to mention, eat some pumpkin pie!!

This weekend is my friends wedding. There are four of us best friends from college and she is the last to get married. We are sort of spread all over the place now and don't get to see each other very often, except for when one of us gets married!! I just cannot wait to be with them this weekend!! I miss them so much! I'm hoping I can get some really great pictures! She had our dresses handmade and they are gorgeous! A lovely brown with pretty beading. Can't wait to show them off!

Not much other fun stuff is going on here. The kids are enjoying school and I am enjoying some free time again! Lots of coffee and lunch dates and scrapbooking time! It's amazing what a few hours sans kids will do for my sanity!

I hope everyone is having a great week!! Thanks for visiting!

Not much going on this week!

2009-09-17T12:09:00.002-04:00

It's been a rather tame week around here.

The days are getting shorter, which means less time for play outside. Not to mention, it's getting cooler. It's definately long pants and long sleeves weather again. Pretty soon the leaves will start getting some color! My favorite time of year!! I'd love it to be fall forever. I like the cool, crispness of it and all the activities that go along with the season!

I managed to get one layout done this week. I wanted to do something about how we are showing the kids (and ourselves) our great country! That was the purpose of us buying our camper! Here's what I came up with. I'm happy with how it turned out. Plus, I used a piece of paper (the background) from a Stack that I bought quite some time ago, probably over a year! Gotta love when you can use some of the stash!!

As always, thanks for reading! :)

Ocean City, NJ

2009-09-14T12:51:00.013-04:00

Amazingly, I've never been to Ocean City, NJ. Growing up, we would go to Wildwood or the Delaware beaches. I thought our September camping trip would be a great time to check it out, especially since it was after the summer season!

We headed out on Friday afternoon to Whippoorwill Campground in Marmora, NJ, which is only a few miles from Ocean City. It is a really nice campground. Gotta love camping in the sand plus being in the woods! We thought it would be the perfect place for a huge gathering of friends!

It seems like we find interesting mushrooms on many of our camping trips!! This trip was no different!

They had a really great playground there. Lots of fun things for the kids to clown around on.

And for me to climb around on!

After exploring the campground, we relaxed. The kids watched a little bit of tv before we headed to bed to get rested up for the next day.

Saturday morning went for a bike ride up on the boardwalk. There was also an antique car parade going on.

After that we headed back to the campground for the pig roast/luau! Mmmm, quite a yummy spread!!

After we pigged out, we headed back up the the boardwalk for rides, games and boardwalk pizza!!

Like I said, we had a blast!! I got a good shot of the Philly skyline on our way back home too.

I just have to post this picture of Jack and his birthday cake. Look at the joy on his face!

I haven't done any new layout since my last post, but here's a picture of a camping wallhanging I did a few weeks ago!

Thanks for reading!! Have a great week!!

Chipboard, oh how we all love chipboard!!

2009-09-09T14:15:00.004-04:00

Is there any more perfect scrapbooking embellishment than chipboard?

There are so many things you can do with chipboard!

My first blog post as a design team member for Scraptacular is up today! It's all about getting the most out of your chipboard stash. I show you ways how to "jazz it up" like on this layout I created.

Check out my post HERE to see what I did to the chipboard elements as well as some other fun ideas to try!!

Thanks for visiting!

Birthday boy in the house!!

2009-09-08T18:12:00.008-04:00

The little guy is 5 years old today!! Wow!! 5!!! I just think back to how terribly ill I was at this time 5 years ago! I do not tolerate anesthesia well at all and got SO sick after both of my c-sections! Jack was born at 10:47am and I didn't even get to hold him until around 2am because I was that sick! Thank goodness for an awesome husband! Chris took good care of baby Jack and me, even feeding Jack with a syringe so I could try breastfeeding when I was feeling better!

We celebrated most of his birthday yesterday because Chris was working 7a-7p today. We will be having the cake tonight!

Ripping into some of the loot!

Checking out his new siren/speaker for the gator and his bike!

The new RC truck.

Testing out the siren/speaker on the gator! Properly installed by Daddy!

Now, if celebrating a 5th birthday isn't enough, he also started pre-k today! Such a big boy!

After school, the two of us went out for lunch to Chick Fil A, where he saw one of his friends from last years class, as well as a new friend from this years!

And, what's a post without some layouts? I did both of these for challenges over at Scraptacular.

This one challenged us to dig into the stash and use some of our "older" product.

This one challenged us to use something clear on the layout. I also dug into the foam stamps, I felt the need for a little messy today!

As always, thanks for stopping by!!

Fun news!

2009-09-06T16:37:00.003-04:00

It's been quite some time since I've been on a design team. I gave them all up about a year ago. It was nice not having deadlines but when I saw a post from Beth looking for design team members for her store, Scraptacular, I just couldn't help but apply! Her store is local to me (and also online) and is packed full of great product. It would be silly of me to not try to get a spot on her team! Soooo, the announcement was made yesterday and I was chosen, along with three other talented ladies! You can see the announcement here and the links to the other members are on my side bar. I am super excited to be on the team and to start working! Be sure to check the store out! You won't be disappointed!

Macy had a great first week of school! It's still hard to believe she's in second grade already! Me, I've been having a hard time getting used to waking up so early! I'm hoping this coming week will be easier! Jack will start pre-k on Tuesday, which also happens to be his fifth birthday! That I cannot believe either! My kids are getting old, which means I'm getting old! Ack!! He's excited to start, too. There are five kids from his four year old class in class with him this year.

I've gotten a few more layouts completed this week. Here are some that I haven't posted yet as well. You can click on them to make them bigger!

Here's a wall hanging I made, too!

Thanks for looking!! Have a great Labor Day and rest of the week!

Follow me!

2009-09-01T18:52:00.004-04:00

I played around with my blog settings and added a "follow me" section. So, please sign up to follow me! It looks pretty pathetic right now with only 5! Now I just need to get a pretty background and I'll be set.

Yesterday was the first day of 2nd grade! Macy is in a different school this year, the elementary which is 2nd through 6th. I can't believe how big she is getting! I still remember Chris holding her hand and walking her up the steps on the first day of kindergarten! Here are some pictures of her. She's not holding a peace sign up in the pic, I had her do that to show her grade. I just wish I would've thought to do that from kindergarten! She was so stylin' in her little Justice outfit! :)

I still have my little scrapping groove going. I went to my first crop in months and months on Saturday. I just love cropping with the girls atScraptacular! We had a nice time and I managed to get 3 layouts done in 5 hours! Go me! Here's a little of what I've been up to lately! I'll share more with my next post!! I'm trying to get better at blogging again!

Thanks for looking!

A little scrapping burst!!

2009-08-26T22:04:00.003-04:00

We got back from Chattanooga on August 14th. I took about 1300 pictures from there, add that to all the pictures I took on the previous trips and that's a lot of pics! After a trip to Scraptacular and a bunch of new product, those pictures were just begging to be scrapbooked!! I sat down and did about 6 layouts in 3 days! Here's some of what I did!

Thanks for looking!

Wow!!

2009-07-24T18:24:00.003-04:00

I knew it was a long time since I blogged, but didn't realize that it's been over 3 months!

We've been so busy with summer vacations that time has just gotten away from me! We've been doing our monthly camping trips including a week long trip to the 1000 Islands in NY. In less than 2 weeks we are heading to Chattanooga, TN to camp for a week with college friends and their kids!! It is going to be a BLAST!! We can't wait!!

Needless to say, I haven't been scrapbooking much, but the last few days I've got a little scrapping bug! I did some layouts for Scrapbook News and Review (link in side bar) and some for me.

I'll attach my latest. Macy got a gift certificate for an etiquette tea from my Grandmother. We went on July 2nd and she took her 2 BFF's and their moms with her! We had a really fun time. We all got to dress up, learned proper etiquette and had some tea, hot cocoa and desserts. The girls loved it!! This picture is of her in her attire. As part of her birthday gift, she got to keep the dress she picked out.

A few layouts

2009-04-21T16:41:00.003-04:00

I haven't scrapbooked lately, we've been enjoying some wonderful spring weather instead, along with all the indoor and outdoor cleanup that goes along with spring!

I did come across these layouts that I don't think I ever posted though!

Hope everyone is doing well!!

Some new ones!

2009-03-27T21:21:00.003-04:00

Here are a few of my latest layouts. I went to a crop with some of my best gal pals at Scraptacular last weekend which gave me a jolt of creativity!! It was a blast!

Thanks for looking!!

2009 camping season has begun!!

2009-03-16T21:39:00.004-04:00

We headed out on Friday to Elk Neck State Park in MD to kick off the 2009 camping season!! We planned on going to Point Lookout in MD, but the weather forecast for that area quickly turned to rain/snow! So, we switched our reservations to Elk Neck instead. We were there back in October and always said we'd love to go back to explore the town of North East more. We got to do that this time around and had a really great time!!

The campground was full with the exception of maybe 2 spots. Believe it or not, there were quite a few tent campers out! The weather was nice. A bit chilly at times, but rain held off until the nighttime. We did lots of hiking, biking, lounging and exploring! It was a nice relaxing weekend!! There is nothing better than getting out having some great quality family time together!! We got home this afternoon. We can't wait to get out next month!!

Here are some pictures from the weekend!!

A few more

2009-03-08T20:21:00.004-04:00

Of course my mojo is returning, I need to clear out my scraproom! I'm giving Macy the bigger room, so I've had the daunting task of clearing out. It's going to take a lot longer than I thought! I've got SO much stuff!!

Here are a few new ones I did. I actually did 3 layouts in 2 days! Go me!!

The pics of Jack are from Mother's Day last year when we went to Daniel Boone homestead. The other layout is from our camping trip to Elk Neck State Park, MD last October.

Thanks for looking!

Snow day!!

2009-03-02T22:03:00.004-05:00

Today was a snow day. We got probably 4 inches or so, it's hard to measure because the wind is really blowing and making drifts.

It was nice sleeping in and just taking it easy. We had a great time playing outside with the kids. The neighbors came over to play as well. No pictures though!

We are going on the first camping trip of the season in less than 2 weeks, hopefully it'll warm up some and no snow!!

I was able to quickly sneak in a layout today. It took me about a half hour. The kids absolutely love this monster puppet!! They fell in love with it at Target, so we got Jack one for Valentine's Day. Macy got a sock monkey. Each night, this monster tucks in the kids. Chris does the best voice for it! For some reason, the kids love bonking him over the head, the monster, not Chris!

I used some of the new Jillibean Soup papers on here, along with October Afternoon and Daisy Bucket. Fun stuff!

I also did this one quickly, a few days ago.

I just LOVE this orange Pink Paislee paper!!

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Fastnacht Day!!!

2009-02-24T09:07:00.002-05:00

It only comes once a year! I made a batch of my Grandmom's famous fastnachts last night!! I've been making them every year since she died. I know she's smiling down on me when I make them!!

Now, today's task is to try and get as many as I can out of this house because "Fat Tuesday" is really ringing true for me!! Blech!!

Here's a pic of them with my Kitchenaid, who made a full batch possible this year!! I get so much use out of this!! I'm constantly making breads and all kinds of delicious foods with it!

While we're talking baking, here are some pictures of the kids from a few weeks ago. They love to bake, so we try to do it a few times a month. This time was making soft pretzels. So yummy!

Have a great day and try not to eat too many fastnachts!!

New layouts

2009-02-21T20:55:00.002-05:00

I'm trying to bust out some layouts, trying to get that groove going again. It's tough!! I did these for an online crop at ScrapGal.com today.

Thanks for looking!

Pretty Butterfly

2009-01-31T14:56:00.003-05:00

I got this [My Acrylic Album] acrylic butterfly album for my birthday. I don't make mini albums that frequently, so I wanted to come up with something else to do with it.

What I did for this project was take the front and back cover and adhere them together to make a full butterfly shape. I painted the back with pink glitter paint and white paint then stamped the flower image on the front. I added some Cosmo Cricket Blackboard and Prima bling. I cut Macy's picture out and used her as the butterfly body with some Loosie Fibers underneath, then added her name.

I had a difficult time getting a pic of this. I just couldn't get focused on her body no matter what I tried! This is my best attempt! I think it turned out cute! I added a ribbon to the top so she can hang it in her room!

We had some snow on Wednesday so the kids had off of school. We went to our friends dad's farm and sledding all afternoon! It was a blast!! I'll share pics of that soon!!

Have a great weekend!!

I think . . .

2009-01-27T14:12:00.004-05:00

my scrapping mojo is back thanks to my 3 bestest scrapping buds!!

Tracy, Mimi, Mary and her daughter and I got together on Friday night for a scrapping night. Get this, we all actually scrapbooked! Usually we bring our stuff and just eat and talk and laugh the whole night! Not this time!! We each got about 2 pages done and boy did it feel good!!

I just finished my layouts now and would love to share them but I'm saving them for a Memory Makers issue. I am still going strong with my goal of having at least one layout in each issue for 2009! I just had one picked up last week! Go me!

I will share this one. I did this back in October when I was trying to find my groove (not so successfully, though!). I just love this picture of Macy that I took when we all went to a fall fest. Very simple, just a Radiant Rain spray background!

I go pick up my new laptop tomorrow. A few weeks ago, I was surfing on my old laptop, picked up my coffee mug and the stupid handle busted off!! Yep, coffee all over my laptop, and me but I wasn't concerned about me! So, we all mosied on over to Best Buy and put the extended service plan to work again! They had to send it out for repair. Well, they called last week and heard back that it would cost $2000 to repair, so they were giving me a new one. Jack and I went over and picked one out. I'll be getting an HP this time instead of a Sony Vaio, they were clearancing out the Sony's. The great thing is that the new one will be about double the storage size of the old one, yay! That's one good thing about computers being upgraded all the time! The old one had the max amount of storage on it when I bought it less than 2 years ago and now it's hard to find one of that size!! Can't wait to get it and get everything reloaded!! Getting email contacts organized again is such a pain!

Hope everyone is having a nice week!! We are supposed to get winter weather tonight and tomorrow.

Baby, it's cold outside!!

2009-01-16T10:38:00.003-05:00

Sheesh!!! I haven't been able to get warm for the last 2 weeks! It's about 15 here today. I can't imagine living in Alaska and other super cold places!! Pennsylvania is cold enough!! I am ready for spring!! I want to see green again, hear the birds sing, let the kids run off their energy outside and most importantly, go camping!!!

We've had some dustings of snow here, but not enough to make any snowmen. The kids did go out and play in it a few days ago. They used Jack's dump trucks and diggers to tow the snow around. If it's going to be this cold, at least it could snow enough to make it worthwhile!

Not much is going on here. We've been staying indoors playing games, reorganizing and purging! I really need to get in my scraproom and clean up so I can create!! I've been itching to do it for the last week now!! I managed to get one layout done but can't share it just yet.

Here is a layout that is in the Jan/Feb issue of Memory Makers magazine. I did this back in July, right before I decided to go back to work. I had such strong feelings about it and this layout just flowed without any thought! It's like it made itself! Gotta love when that happens!!

This is actually a scan of the magazine page. The file is on my laptop, which interestingly enough, is at Geek Squad again!! I hopped on it last week, picked up my coffee for a sip and the stupid handle busted off and poured coffee all over me, the couch and my laptop!!! Thank goodness for the accidental handling plan I have on it! This is the second usage out of it! Definately paid for itself already!! While dropping the laptop off, we decided to buy a desktop computer for the "family computer". We've been pondering getting one for the kids to use anyway and the time had come!!

So, I'll leave you with this. Stay warm!!

It's a new year!

2009-01-09T19:46:00.010-05:00

2008 was great! 2009 should be even better!!

We had a wonderful Christmas! From the looks of it, the kids were extra good this year!!

This is the tree pre-Santa.

and this is right after Santa delivered!

Macy got her guitar and microscope she asked for and Jack got his red Dustbuster and Leapster he wanted. They got many other fun things and Santa added greatly to our Wii game collection!! We've been having a blast playing with everything!

I didn't take the time to get a good picture of them together, so this one will have to be it!

We rang in the new year with our good friends Ron, Andrea, Steph and Jen! They came over to our house. We were fully prepared to cut the night short to get the kids to bed, but they lasted all night and didn't go to bed until 1am!

We ate, played Wii, Mad Gab, LCR and a game involving beer caps! The kids were not involved in that last one!

It was really a blast! The kids made a band and had a concert for us right before the ball dropped!

Now we are planning out our monthly camping trips. We are so excited for the season to start and seeing much more of the country this year!!

I hope everyone's new year is off to a great start and continues to be great!

Hi

2008-12-15T22:02:00.004-05:00

Wow!! Almost a whole month since I blogged last!

'Tis the season! We've been busy doing all kinds of fun holiday activities!

Here is our Christmas card picture. I just need to get to the post office for stamps and then they'll go out in the mail!

The house has been decorated for 2 weeks, the tree is beautiful and is now surrounded by presents! We decided to put it in the family room this year, instead of the living room, so we could enjoy it more. It didn't feel quite right to not have any trees in the living room, so I went out and bought a set of 3 pine trees for in there! I still need to get some pics off all the decorating. It's so festive though!

It's such a special time of year. I hope everyone takes time to enjoy it and remember the real reason for the season!!

Friends!

2008-11-19T19:43:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago, me and three of my most favorite friends got together for our October birthday celebrations. My friend Mary and I both have October birthdays.

We went to Fancy That Scrapbook store in Hummelstown, PA, had lunch at The Wick and stopped at the Fractured Prune and picked up some of the most delicious donuts on the way home.

We always have such a wonderful time together. We made sure to set our next date already since we are always having a hard time coordinating schedules anymore!

I'd like to share the card I got from them. If only you could do this! It's totally us!

Mary's card had a picture of a lady in a lingerie store. The lady was holding a fancy bra and was saying "do you have this in a 34 LONG"! Ha!

Soooo, Twilight hits the theatres on Friday!! I'm going with a bunch of friends! I'm hoping they will not disown me when I show up with my TEAM JACOB shirt on!! They are all for Edward! I loved him in the first book, but after that, I just couldn't stand how possessive he is! Anyone else on TEAM JACOB? They seem to be rare!

I've finally uploaded the pics from our last camping trip of the season! I just need to go through them and I'll post them in a few days!!

Shockingly, I also have a half completed layout sitting on my desk now! AND, I am actually really liking it! Perhaps I'll have some artwork to share next time!

Have a great rest of the week!!

Halloween 2008

2008-11-05T14:22:00.006-05:00

This year we decided that we'd throw our own costumes together instead of spending $100 plus on store bought ones! That was so much nicer!!

Macy decided she wanted to be a witch - perfect! Jack wanted to be a train engineer, then decided a few hours beforehand that he wanted to be a banana! Well, it was too late to rig up some kind of banana costume, so we stuck with the engineer!

Macy had the usual school Halloween parade. There were a ton of witches this year! I went in to help out with her 1st grade party after I dropped Jack off at school. Let me just say that I am SO glad I do not have to do that everyday!! I stayed and ate lunch with Macy. We had the choice of eating in the hall at a special table or eating in the caf with the rest of the kids. She wanted me to sit in the caf. Oh. My. Goodness! Can you say loud??? Wow! I was glad to get out of there!! They have a traffic light in there. It's on green when the noise level is acceptable. They move it to yellow when it gets louder and all the kids put their hands up to hopefully make silence. Well, it got to yellow while I was there and I don't even want to know what red sounds like!! Here she is in the parade.

Here they both are, in separate pictures. Apparently it is just wrong for them to be in a picture together without one trying to beat up the other!

I totally forgot to put on Jack's red bandana! Chris was working until 7pm that night. If he was home, I know it wouldn't have been forgotten!

Here is our jack-o-lantern. We actually had another to carve but we ran out of time! Nothing fancy! We do it the old fashioned way like we did when I was a kid - with a paring knife!

Hope everyone had a fun night!! Thanks for reading!

No scrapbooking!

2008-11-02T21:05:00.008-05:00

I have no scrapbooking projects to do!! Still have no motivation for that! We've been having fun with our new camper still, so that has been occupying our time!

Last weekend we went to Elk Neck State Park in Maryland. We went with another couple. What a beautiful place! It is on a penninsula at the top of the Chesapeake Bay.

We had some heavy rains Saturday afternoon and through the night, but other than that it was beautiful.

Friday we went into town, North East, Md. It's such a cute little town that I wish we would've had a longer time to explore. It reminded me a bit of Jim Thorpe or Cape May. We ate at a cute crab place called Woody's.

Saturday, we got up and went for a hike to the Turkey Point lighthouse. It's a cute lighthouse, I think it's a 37 foot climb to the top. It's not your usual tall lighthouse. The kids got a kick out of climbing to the top!

Saturday afternoon and evening we stayed in and did crafts. The electric to the campground went out for about 5 hours. Yay for battery backup!

Sunday we went and explored the penninsula. We saw a ton of sailboats, a huge barge and a boat that looked like it could've been from Goonies! The kids enjoyed walking along the coastline and finding shells and old bones, climbing the rocks and getting through some six inches of seaweed!!

We'd love to go back and visit again for a longer period of time so we can explore more!!

Here are some pics. Click on them to make them bigger!
The captain and his ship:

On the way home, we stopped and got gas for $2.29!!! Then, we went down the road and spotted it for $2.17! I was happy when I got it at BJ's for $2.69 a few days before! It was still $2.55 when we got home!

There were also a ton of these signs on the way there!

We're heading out on Friday again for our last trip of the season!! Can't wait!!

I'll update in a few days with our Halloween pictures!

Hike pictures

2008-10-16T19:00:00.002-04:00

Chris and I went for a hike yesterday.

We went up on the mountain by our house. There are a bunch of lookouts up there as well as an old fire tower that they are restoring and the Pagoda. The Pagoda is also being fixed up, it had scaffolding all around it, so I didn't get any pics of that.

Here are some pictures. Maybe tomorrow we'll go get some pictures by the lake and waterfall.

Isn't this bird hole neat?

We love fall!!

2008-10-14T09:58:00.011-04:00

It's been so beautiful lately!

There are so many fun family things to do this time of year! We love going on hayrides, pumpkin picking, hiking, camping, hay jumping and anything that has to do with fall!

Saturday we went for a quick trip to a local farm and did their fall festivities. They have some great things for kids as well as for adults. Chris even did some scootering!

We'll probably go pumpkin picking and through a corn maze one day after school this week or next. I still need to get the corn shocks and hay bale for the front porch too!

We've got a week and a half until we go on our next camping trip! We can't wait!! We're going to Elk Neck State Park in Maryland this time around with some friends! All that family time is the best!! I wouldn't trade it for anything!

I'll leave you with a layout. I don't think I posted this one before. I did it for one of the September sketches for Scrapbook News and Review.

Have a great week!

Sadness

2008-10-08T12:04:00.002-04:00

A very, very dear friend of mine lost her husband yesterday morning.
He was 38.
They have two children, ages 4 and 7.
No words can express how sad I feel for her and her family.
I wish I could take away all of their pain.

There is a group of us that talk several times a day on a message board. We are all trying to pull together for her, to help her and her sons. Everyone has made such generous contributions.

Lisa Pace has an auction up on her blog now. 100% of the proceeds will go to our friend. I ask you to please check it out right here.

Thanks so much!

Maiden voyage and a new layout!

2008-10-02T20:10:00.006-04:00

Last weekend we had the maiden voyage with our new camper!! Tropical Storm Kyle was trying to ruin our weekend, but we didn't let him! It actually wasn't so bad, the heavy rain was at night and we just had some showers during the day. The clouds broke away for some blue skies and sunshine a few times too! I didn't take many pics, only 18 to be exact! I know I've said it before, it's so nice just enjoying the moment instead of trying to stop things and take pictures constantly! All I need are a few pics to go with the eternal memories!

We went to a campground called Spring Gulch which is in New Holland, PA. It's only about 40 minutes from our house. It was very nice there, we had a great site and were right in the heart of the campground. They had tons of activities including candy bar bingo, hay rides, ceramics, scavenger hunt and even a live band on Saturday night. It was 50's and 60's weekend. Because of growing up with a motown loving dad, I knew all the songs! I actually enjoy that music much more than what is on the radio these days! So much more danceable! LOL

Here are a few shots from the weekend!

We were in an area with a ton of walnut trees. The kids loved collecting them and then playing store!

I almost forgot to report that we had no incidents this trip! No falling out of the camper, no kid deserting another kid, no riding bikes off of a cliff! The truck handled the camper well too! And, of course, it's always a great bonding time!! We are so excited for our next trip out in a few weeks! This time we're going to Maryland!

No other news to report except for this:

Yep, that's our boy! Jack came home from school with this last week! Puts a smile on my face every time I read it!

I managed to get a layout done this week too! I snuck it in one day right before I went to work! I gave myself a time frame and stuck to it! It took me about 45 minutes.

That's all for now! Chris and I have a debate date for tonight! I need to go finish prepping the food!

Thanks for reading! Have a great weekend!

Happy Fall!!

2008-09-21T09:02:00.007-04:00

I know I've said this a lot lately, but I just cannot keep up with my blog postings!! We just seem to always have something going on that I can't find the time to write something up!!

I'm so happy that today is the first day of fall!! It is my favorite time of the year! Crisp air, gorgeous colors, so many fun family activities!!!

Jack celebrated his 4th birthday about 2 weeks ago! I can't believe my baby boy is 4! Wow!! He has grown so much in this last year. He's really matured, if you can say that about a 4 year old! He loves going to school and is so smart! He has also been put on monitor to exit status for his speech therapy. He tested in right at his age level, so in 4 months, his therapist will call us and see how he's doing. If he's still on the right track, he'll be fully discharged from the program! Here he is on his birthday!

Macy lost her 5th tooth on Sept 11th. It was the first top one she lost. We called her snaggletooth for a few weeks because it would just hang on, not wanting to fall out!! It finally fell out at school and she came home with it in a tooth container necklace!

We've been spending most of our days outside riding bikes, climbing in the tree and playing on the tree swing.

Macy also started Brownies this week and they both started AWANA, which is like a church based scouting program.

Our biggest family news is the addition of our "second home"! This came about a year earlier than we were anticipating, but we fell in love and couldn't pass up the deal!

It's a brand new 2008 Forest River 26ft travel trailer! It has everything we could ever need! We went from falling over each other in our pop up to having so much room in here that we won't know what to do!

We picked it up on Wednesday and have been getting it stocked full of the necessities! We cannot wait for our first trip out in it this coming weekend!! We're going with my friend Andrea and her family! We've got so many fun trips planned including Disney World in the spring of 2010!

Here is a layout I did a few weeks ago. I haven't been scrapping much at all. I don't really have the desire, plus there is just no time! These are the photo booth pics of Chris and I from down the shore in August.

Thanks for reading! Have a great week!

Life is good!

2008-09-07T09:36:00.004-04:00

It's been a great week here.

Jack started 4 year old preschool on Tuesday. He did great!! No crying this year!! I'm so proud of him, he's grown up so much over the summer!! I can't believe he'll be 4 on Monday! Wow!!

We signed him up for the 5 days a week program this year, instead of 3 days a week. We thought the extra socialization time would be good for him, since he did have such separation anxiety last year!! Soooo, that means that Mommy and/or Daddy have 2 1/2 hours of free time every Monday through Friday!! It's been great!! Tuesday we did some birthday shopping and just enjoyed the free quiet time the rest of the days! It's nice to be back on some sort of routine again after the craziness of summer! Maybe I'll actually be able to scrapbook again!

Today, Jack and Daddy went to a train show and will check out the hobby store too. When we asked Jack what he wanted to do for his birthday, he wanted to go somewhere wtih trains and go to the hobby store! Of course, getting a snack was also in that mix! So, that's exactly what they are doing. They left a little bit ago with my brother in law and his son.

So, today is girly day!! Macy and I will do a little shopping and get some lunch! Perhaps we'll scrapbook too! It's such a gorgeous day today, amazing since yesterday was so nasty from Hannah!

Jaime and Celeste were so kind to tag me for . . .

They are such super talented, nice, friendly gals!! I got to meet Celeste back around Christmas time! I swear, you meet the nicest people through scrapbooking!!

So, I am going to tag:
Tracy: She's such a great friend, I can count on her for anything!! She always comes up with the neatest idea for pages!
Mimi: Another wonderful friend, that I know will always have my back!! She can rock out a mini album like no other!!
Andrea: We've only known each other for less than a year, but she's become such a great friend and camping buddy! She's another one who can rock out an awesome mini album!!
Marlene: She's a crazy chick and I love it!! She's another fabulous friend!! She hasn't been scrapping that long, I think a little over a year, but she has caught on quickly and has gotten just as addicted as me!
Lea: Super, super sweet and an amazing scrapbooker!! She makes the most beautiful cards and can really rock out a great, clean layout!! I never tire of her layouts!

Here are the rules:
(1) The winner can put the logo on their blog.(2) Link the person you received your award from.(3) Nominate at least 6 other blogs. (4) Put links of those on yours.(5) Leave a message on the blogs of the people you’ve nominated.

Hope you are all having a great weekend!! Thanks for reading!

Catch up!

2008-08-25T20:44:00.005-04:00

I just can't stay on top of blogging these days!!

We've been having lots of fun here in our household!! We were trying to pack in lots of fun stuff before the new school year began, which was today!!!

We've done lots of bike rides! I'm so very proud of Miss Macy!! She did her first big "bike adventure" with us last week!! Jack graduated to the tandem bike (no more trailer - yay!) and she rode her bike along with me and Chris! She did the entire 8.5 miles!! It was only at the last 1/2 mile that she started to complain of being exhausted!! I'm so proud of her for going so far! We only did a short 4.5 mile trail this past weekend. She got tired out faster on that one, it had a lot more hilly areas!

Yesterday, we went to the Phila Zoo. We always have a nice time there! We even got to meet the Slowsky's! Here's a pic for all the Comcast commercial fans!!

Those commercials always crack me up!

Today, Macy started 1st grade!! She's been so excited for the last few weeks! She just loves school! I hope it stays that way! This year she'll have homework every night plus spelling tests weekly! They also get their very own desk instead of sitting 4 kids to a round table!! She made herself up some homework sheets last night! haha!!
Here she is this morning. It's good I got this picture, she was in such a hurry to get into school that I didn't have time to snap a picture of her going up the steps!

And, in scrapping news, I didn't make the cut for the Memory Makers Masters 2009 contest. It's all good though! I know they like me!! While we were down the shore, they requested another layout for their Jan/Feb issue!! One of these years the honor will be mine!
Here is my "I Believe" layout that I had to send in to them.

Work is going well. I am officially on my own now, done orientation! I had a total of 6 days of orientation! That comes out to one day for each year that I was gone! LOL It's all coming back to me now and I enjoy working the 2 days a week!

Have a great week!

Shore fun!

2008-08-16T21:29:00.005-04:00

Last week we headed down the shore for some fun.

We really didn't do much! We got out on the beach once. We tried to go a second day, but we aren't early risers and by the time we got around, the beaches were closed because of overcrowding! So, we went to the pool instead!

We had a nice relaxing time. I got hooked on the Twilight series! The only time I read is when I go down the shore! Now I've got to try and find time to read the last 3 books of the series!! I started New Moon today.

From the previous post, you know our trips can't be dull. I'm afraid that it was because of me this time!! On Saturday night, Chris and I went out to eat at one of our favorite restaurants down there. I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but I ended up with what I think was a case of food poisoning! I was so sick! I slept almost straight for 36 hours on Sunday!! I still wasn't feeling very good for our trip home on Monday either!! Blech!! So, no beach that day, but it was also stormy that day. Chris took the kids for some bike rides in between storms.

Luckily, I took the camera to the beach the first day and got a few pictures. I've noticed myself taking less and less pictures on our trips. It's so much nicer to just enjoy the times! I'm sure the kids are happy to not have the camera stuck in their faces constantly! Plus, when you go the same places year after year, all the pics look the same anyway!

Here's a goofy photo strip of Chris and I in one of those photo booths. So fun!!

It was back to the grind for us this week. I went to work two days and Chris started back after having three weeks off!! We've got a couple little trips planned yet through the fall, but prime vacation is over! Macy starts school next Monday. She gets to find out her teacher and classmates this Monday and she's so excited!! Jack starts on Sept 8th, I think! We have a meeting with his teacher on the 28th. Lots of back to school shopping to do too, we haven't even started buying new clothes or new shoes yet!!

Here's a layout a did about 2 months ago. I don't think I've posted it before.

I'd share a few more layouts with you, but I haven't rescanned any of them since I got my new hard drive! Hopefully I'll have some to share soon!

Have a great week!

Never a dull moment . . .

2008-08-11T21:17:00.003-04:00

That's what Chris and I always say about our camping adventures!!

We went camping to Keen Lake in Waymart, PA about a week and a half ago. Nice place, a little geared towards the seasonal campers, but it was beautiful there.

We got a great site way back in the far corner of the campground. It backed up to the woods and had a nice little creek running through it. The kids always enjoy that, playing in the water and woods! They found two 2 x 4's and made a little bridge over the creek and into the woods!

We went to craft night each night and rode our bikes. Daddy rowed us around the lake in a row boat. Macy and I went to ceramics one night while Daddy and Jack did boy things like exploring in the woods!

The campground was very hilly. Picture it sort of like the mountains you see in the cartoons. The ones with the mountain and the roads going up, sort of stacked on top of each other. Our campsite was to the left and to the top of the campground. So, that meant that we had lots of hills to climb. We rode our bikes to get everywhere, including the bathroom that was a bit of a hike away! Thank goodness I bought a little flushable porta potty for this trip. I just had a feeling we'd be farther from the bathrooms!

Anyway, our campsite was at the end of the road, right by one of these hills, that leads down to the next road. A hill that if, per chance, you didn't know how to turn your handlebars real fast, you'd go straight and over a cliff. Do you see what I'm getting at?? Yep, Jack did that! Or didn't do it, I guess you could say!! We arrived at the campsite and told him that he must get off his bike to walk it down the hills or up the hills. Does he listen? No, typical Jack! Within one hour of being there, we heard Jack's training wheels coming down the hill, yelling for him to stop and get off! We keep hearing those training wheels, then Jack starting to scream, we quickly run and hear big rustlings in the bushes that are on the cliff.

I hesitated for a moment, not sure if I wanted to go look! We started running over to the cliff, I heard him. Thank God, he's still alive, I thought!! I look over the cliff and there he is, bike helmet all crooked, his nose and left eye all scratched, walking up the cliff. His bike is tangled up in trees and brush. He's only worried about his bike, he wanted to get it! His brand new bike that he got just a few days before leaving now has a nice rip in the seat!

He quickly bounced back to life and was riding soon after! He never forgot to get off his bike to ride up a hill or down a hill after that! If you ask him, he will tell you what happened. This he remembers, unlike his little falling out of the camper in a huge thunderstorm incident on our first camper trip!

Yep, there is never a dull moment with the Chamberlain's!!

Here are a few pics! The first is of Jack's new bike, soon after we got it home!

I'm still here!!!

2008-08-03T13:10:00.003-04:00

Just been busy and we've had a string of bad luck here!

About 2 weeks ago, my hard drive died due to Jack abuse, so off it went to Geek Squad!! Thank goodness for service plans! That is one service plan that I always buy!! I got my money's worth out of it this time!! Luckily, we have 2 laptops, so it was not a big deal.

This past Sunday we had a nasty thunderstorm with marble sized hail. There was a lightning strike and guess what it fried? Our cable modem, which is for our internet AND our phone!! We didn't realize what happened until hours later when I went and picked up the phone and didn't get a dial tone! There is a 6 hour battery backup, so it was at least 6 hours later that we figured that out!

We left the following morning for a camping trip for 4 days. The cable guy came the evening we got back and replaced our modem but Comcast was having some sort of trouble and couldn't get everything back online. We had to call them and remind them on Friday morning and it went up about a half hour later.

I did get my laptop back when we came home Thursday, so that was one good thing! LOL

Friday and Saturday morning I taught [for the very first time] at a CK Convention. I had the first class time slot of each day, 8:30am. Boy is that rough for a girl that doesn't get up until at least 9am! LOL It went really well! I taught a 12x12 acrylic wallhanging. Everyone seemed to have fun with it! My friend, Mimi, assisted me on Friday and then my friend, Colleen, and little Miss Macy helped me on Saturday! Mimi and I shopped until we dropped on Friday. After class on Saturday, I met up with my friend, Andrea, and her daughter and we took the girls shopping there. They loved it!! Macy and I stopped and did some outlet shopping on the way home as well. I think I'm shopped out for a bit! It was a really fun weekend though!! I love hanging out with my friends and teaching scrapbooking classes! Chris and Jack did the "boy thing" and went to Cabela's while us girls were doing our thing!

Chris has off for 3 weeks and all 4 of us have been enjoying our time together! Lots of bike rides and general fun! Now, today and tomorrow I'm working 3p-11p. I decided to get my work days in instead of doing the whole vacation thing for 3 weeks. I've got a lot of catching up to do in the workplace and this will help!!

The job is going okay. I've been on the floor for 2 days total. I'm having a little bit of a hard time, emotionally. It's hard because when I left there in March of 2003, I was at the top of the skill level there. I could handle just about any situation that was thrown with me. Now, it's not like that, I have to dig deep down and pull all that info out. I know I'll get there again soon, but it's hard to accept that I'm not at the top of my game anymore!

Gotta go get ready!! Have a great day!! Thanks for reading!

All. Done.

2008-07-16T19:47:00.003-04:00

Yay!! Today was my last day of general nursing orientation!!! Getting up at 5am each day was really kicking my butt! I got home at 4pm yesterday and was seriously considering going to bed then! Of course, I wasn't able to, but I hopped in as soon as I got the kiddos tucked in! I didn't even make it through the first 10 minutes of Deadliest Catch! I tried, but no luck! Thank goodness Discovery and Bravo rerun their shows constantly!! I've got to catch up on Sheer Genius from last week too, I couldn't stay awake for that! Anywhoo . . .

I got my results back for that horrible 6 hour skills assessment scenario test and I did very well! It stated that I needed minimal orientation! What a relief! I challenged the arrhythmia course today too and passed that! Go me!! Not too bad for being out for 5 1/2 years! I've got one certification course to get through yet, in September, since that expired 5 years ago. Then, I should be good!

We got some yummy calzone, pizza and calamari for supper tonight as a little "yay, mommy is done orientation" thing. We all went for a bike ride down to the lake this evening too. It's so nice to have family time again!!

Project Runway starts again tonight!! Woohoo!!! Can't wait!!!

I'll leave you with this layout. I swapped pictures with my buddy, Tracy, for last month's issue of Scrapbook News and Review. This is her daughter, Frannie!

Have a great rest of the week!

5 down, 3 to go!!!

2008-07-13T10:19:00.004-04:00

Work days, that is!!

I started my general orientation last Monday and worked an entire 40 hour week this past week. I've got a bad cold on top of it and have pretty much been miserable!

I have 3 more days of full time hours, then I will go on my per diem schedule! I've really missed my kids and Chris this past week! By the time I got home and we had supper, there was only like 2 hours left to have "family time". That's rough!! I really admire those who juggle full time jobs and family, I don't think I could do it all the time!

I haven't really done anything exciting this week, this part of orientation is all the "fluff" stuff. I had to take a 6 hour test on Wednesday! It was a performance based evaluation used to evaluate what kind of things you need to work on in orientation. Let me just tell you how horrible that was!! For one, I had to take the medical surgical version of the test, I guess because I've been out for so long. Thing is, I've never worked a day of med surg in my life and was very unfamiliar with the types of patients they showed! I think I would've done SO much better had I taken the critical care version!! I was so happy when a cardiac scenario popped up on the video!! Heart and lung - yes. Orthopedics - no! I should get my results mid week and I'm not looking forward to it!! LOL

It is really neat to see the changes that have taken place since I worked there last in February 2003! Most of the paperwork is the same, except there is about an additional 20 sheets to fill out! LOL I've ran into so many people that I used to work with and they have welcomed me with open arms. That is such a GREAT feeling!! It feels good to be back and I know 2 days a week there will do me good!!

Not much else going on, I haven't had time to do anything else. We're all looking forward to our vacation coming up soon! We bought an air conditioner for our camper. Chris and a friend are going to install that today.

I'll leave you with a few layouts.
This one is in the July/August issue of Memory Makers.

This one is in the August issue of Simple Scrapbooks.

Thanks for reading!! Have a great week!

Cherry Picking!!

2008-07-02T12:22:00.004-04:00

We went cherry picking with Andrea and her kids on Friday. We've only ever been strawberry picking, so we were a little scared when we saw "please don't climb on our ladders, but feel free to use your own" signs going into the cherry tents!

Ummmm, ladders? I guess that would make sense since cherries grow on trees!

Luckily, there were plenty of ripe cherry clusters that all 6 of us could reach!!

We all enjoyed it, but I think we enjoyed the ice cream and milkshakes afterwards more!! It was H. O. T.!!!!

Okay, off to the pool!!! It's a beautiful day today, 83 degrees, it'll probably be too cold for me to get in! I think I'll watch from the sidelines!!

Have a great day!! Thanks for reading!

I guess it's safe to post!

2008-06-27T19:19:00.002-04:00

Since I am nearing the completion of my Memory Makers Masters 2009 entry, I guess it's safe to post last years entry now!! Last year was my first year entering and I really enjoyed the process even though you do get that little feeling of rejection when you are not chosen! But, I was happy with my entry and had fun doing it!!

It's funny to look back on last year and then look at what I've put together for this year! While my style is basically the same, it is also very different! I am MUCH happier with this years layouts!!

So, here is last years entry, with the exception of the "I Wish" layout, I don't have that on my computer anymore. That was my least favorite layout too!

Thanks for looking, have a great weekend!!

Lots of pictures!

2008-06-25T19:35:00.009-04:00

The kids are at VBS, the hubby is at work, time for me to catch up on my blog!!!

So, we went to Knoebel's (an awesome family amusement park) over Father's Day weekend. We went with a good friend of mine, Andrea (her blog link is to the right), and her family. We had a wonderful time!!! Lots of giggles, food, drink! It's always so much fun camping with friends!!

Knoebel's is camping that we've never done before! We've always gone out in the wooded campsites before. Knoebel's is wooded, but it is also tight! The place is always packed! They don't give you much room for maneuvering, but luckily Chris can maneuver the camper and truck like a pro!! See, he had to back in between those two trees there. Yes, it is as tight as it looks!

The kids had such a great time!! Aren't they the cutest things ever??

I want to send a big thanks out to Mr. Ron!!! He went on any ride that the kids wanted to go on that required an adult!!! I love amusement parks but my motion sickness is so bad that I can't do anything with circles, except the Whip!! Roller coasters I can do, but not all those circular rides that Jack wanted to go on!! That kid has no fear!! Chris is not big into rides at all. So, thank you, Mr. Ron, for making my kids' dreams come true!!!

Last week was chilly here, only in the low 70's, making it not so great for the pool. Yes, mommy was secretly cheering!!!

We made the most of it and had a lot of fun strawberry picking and going to the Lehigh Valley Zoo!! Such beautiful weather for both!!

We picked 4.97 pounds of strawberries. We made strawberry shortcake, strawberry pie and just ate the rest plain!! YUM!!

This was our first time to Lehigh Valley Zoo! I didn't even know it existed until my scrapping buddies brought it up!! It is a nice quaint zoo, not very big at all! We're used to going to the Philly Zoo, so this was a big difference!! We loved it though! The kids, of course, enjoyed themselves! Our favorite was the river otter! He was so cute!!! My favorite animal has always been the zebra, so it was nice to see one there!!

Thanks for reading!! Hope everyone is having a great week!

New layouts

2008-06-18T18:13:00.003-04:00

Finally, I'll share some layouts!! I haven't blogged about scrap stuff in a long time!!

I did these in the last 2 months or so for Scrapbook News & Review.

Thanks for reading!!! :)

Some fun news!!

2008-06-16T16:09:00.005-04:00

We just returned from a wonderful fun packed weekend camping at Knoebel's!! I hope to go through my many pictures later and hopefully post within the next few days!

Our exciting news that I talked about in my last post is that I got a job!! When Macy was born, I was working full time as a critical care nurse in one of our local hospitals. She came along at just the right time, I needed some change! So, I backed my status down to per diem (or casual as some call it) and then just totally resigned. I have been a full stay at home mom for almost 5 1/2 years and now I need some change from this!!

I've been thinking about going back per diem for a good 6-9 months, moreso over the last 3. I was just so worried that being out of the clinical setting for over 5 years would make me very unattractive to hospitals. I was convinced that I'd have to work my way up from the bottom and get a job [gulp] in a nursing home. Nursing home work is not for me! I was an open heart nurse, that is my passion, I just cannot see myself in a nursing home!! A week and a half ago, I was looking online at the job opportunities at the hospital I worked at before becoming a SAHM. There was a per diem position posted for the progressive care unit, which was the first unit I worked in when I started there back in 1997. I got a little spur of the moment going on and I sent my resume! I got an email back from the nurse manager almost immediately and was called for an interview the next day - an interview was scheduled for last Wednesday. Talk about things going fast - phew!!

I pulled up in front of the HR office and my legs immediately went to Jello! What was I doing??? I thought about leaving! I slowly walked in, praying that I wouldn't fall over because I couldn't feel my legs!!! I talked with the nurse recruiter and things sounded great. I then went over to the hospital and met with the nurse manager. By this time, I was starting to get feeling back in my legs and glad I didn't leave!!

Everything went wonderful!! I met up with her in the lobby, we went up to the floor and she started showing me around. I walked onto the patient care area of the floor, looked to the right and saw a good friend that I used to work with. She asked me if I was interviewing, started walking over and said "hire her" to the manager!! I then continued to look to my left and saw 2 other RN's that I worked with, they immediately came over and hugged me!! What a great feeling!!!! I think that suddenly became my professional reference, since I only had character ones from not being in the workplace for so long!

We went into the managers office and talked, she told me how things work, which is pretty much the same as when I left, which is great!! They are not all the way to computerized documentation yet, so one less thing I'll have to learn, plus, the paperwork is the exact same!! Woohoo!!

I left her office feeling extremely good! I knew I had made the right decision! The following day, I came home to a message of a job offer! I accepted, my start date is July 7th!

It's all working out perfectly!! Chris only works 3 days a week at his full time flight nurse job but has kept up part time (2 days a week) with his nurse educator job, so he would get his full retirement benefits. As of July 1st, he will be vested there, so that will be his last day!

I will pick up two 8 hour shifts a week, so we will still be a 5 day work week family, it will just be split between us. I am so excited for this, he is excited for this!! He gets more at home time with the kids, I get more adult interaction time! Both of our schedules are very flexible so that will make more family time and more fun time for all 4 of us! Not to mention my job will be paying more, which is a huge plus! Of course, with the way gas prices and just everything in general is going up, I'm sure that will even out soon!

Chris also just took the base manager job, so that's a little promotion for him! Everything just fell perfectly into place! We couldn't be happier!!

I promise to post some layouts for my next post! I haven't been scrapping lately, but I do have several that I did for Scrapbook News and Review, that I can now share!!

An exciting week!!

2008-06-08T20:52:00.010-04:00

We had quite the week in our house!!

Macy became very confident on her 2 wheeler.
She turned 6.
She became a Brownie Girl Scout.
She became a first grader!!

All of that within a few days of each other!! She's getting so big!!

Her birthday was on Tuesday but we did the family celebration on Monday because Chris worked all day Tuesday. We made homemade pizza (her and Jack's favorite!) and had a Cold Stone cookie dough cake for dessert! YUM!!

One of her presents was a ProvoCraft felt purse that I decorated for her and then filled full with Claire's goodies!

Wednesday night, she had her Brownie fly up ceremony complete with ice cream social afterwards!

Friday was her last day of kindergarten!! She is officially a first grader!! Her report card was great. Her teacher said she does work beyond expectations! (No pictures of that!). They had a different theme day this week; circus, fairy tale, and Wednesday all 4 kindergarten classes cooked out their lunch and had a picnic outside!

Macy's friend birthday party was today. She had 6 of her best friends come over and we had a tea party!! They all came dressed in either Princess dresses or pretty dresses!! They were so cute!! Everything went well!! We started off by decorating straw hats! We served pb&j, cucumber and cream cheese and ham and cheese finger sandwiches, homemade fruit salad, pretzels and "princess punch". The punch was quite a hit! For dessert we had mini chocolate eclairs and cream puffs!

(she's getting slightly annoyed at my picture taking!)

Here is a better picture of the hats. This is Steph, my friend Andrea's daughter! She was much more willing to pose for me!

Lastly, I must thank my dear, wonderful friend, Andrea, for helping me with the party!!! She was such a HUGE help to me!!! Love ya, girlfriend!! Please don't kill me for this picture!!! I think you look cute!

There's more big news that happened this week but I'll save that for another day! :)

I'll have some layouts to share too!

Thanks for reading!!

Lots of fun stuff!

2008-05-28T14:43:00.007-04:00

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day! We had a great time here!! Lots of fun stuff to do!!

Thursday, Jack graduated from 3 year old preschool and had the picnic afterwards. It was really chilly, in the low 50's, so everyone pretty much ate and ran! I can never get good pictures inside the church, plus we always manage to sit on the opposite side that he is at, so we just have video. Here he is with his teachers at the picnic. Without them, we wouldn't have made it through this year! They were so good with him.

Friday we had some really wierd weather in the afternoon. It was bright as could be out but pouring! There were double rainbows. I couldn't get great pics because I had the wrong lens on my camera, but if you look closely here, you can see the second one in the top right corner.

Saturday night, we had a spur of the moment GNO at my house. We played Boogie on the Wii, that was a HOOT!!!! Let's just say I kicked their butts!!! Karma Chameleon, baby!! LOL

Sunday, Macy went to a miniature golfing birthday party. It was her first time doing so and she did great! She tied for first place on her team!

Macy and I walked in the Memorial Day parade with her Daisy Troop. She really loved that!! It's totally her thing! We saw lots of people we knew. Jack totally missed us when we passed him and Daddy, but Macy missed him too! I didn't get any pics of them in the parade, I didn't feel like lugging my camera along! She was on the news though! Unfortunately, the news website has every other parade video for download EXCEPT hers!

When we got home from that, I ran to the store for good picnic foods!! We had ribs, chicken and hot dogs, plus salads, watermelon and brownies!! Yum!!! We set the sprinkler up and let the kids run through it.

Meggy also enjoyed the day. She loves her purple ball!

It was such a beautiful holiday!! The weather was perfect!

In exciting scrapping news, the latest issue of Scrapbooking and Beyond is now out (the summer issue) and it features 3 of my layouts! One of which told the love story of a good friend of mine, Marlene. (I need to add her to my links, along with many others! She's a hoot, check out her blog!).

End of the school year!

2008-05-21T14:39:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, I dropped Jack off at his last full day of 3 year old preschool!! He cried as usual. I should have been the one crying!! My last 2 1/2 hours of free time, time all by myself to do whatever I choose! No more of that until the beginning of September! Chris and I went out to lunch and then to a hobby shop for those last 2 1/2 hours.

My baby boy graduates his first year of preschool tomorrow!! Many times, say about 98% of the time, I wondered how he would make it through the school year! We had about 3 weeks of no cry days! The other days were filled with clinging onto my leg while I was dropping him off. He's the youngest in his class, he turned 3 about 2 days after starting. He loves school, but he also really loves his mommy. As soon as I'd walk out the door, he'd stop wimpering or crying. We were really lucky that he had a great set of teachers! They were so good with him and we're so thankful for that! He just loves them! It's been really good for him, he's grown so much and needs and loves the socialization! He's very proud of himself, and so are we!

For next school year, we've enrolled him in the 5 day 4 year old program. I'm hoping that he has this huge revelation over the summer and will not do the cling-on thing the whole entire year again!! A week or two would be fine, but please no longer!! What a wonderful thing it will be when I have 2 1/2 hours free to myself 5 days a week! Is there a huge bright light shining from your computer? That's me beaming at the thought of free time to myself everyday!! *giggle*

Macy is done school on June 6th. Wow, we'll have a first grader and a 4 year old preschooler soon! It's amazing! We've got lots of fun things planned for the summer!!

I've been busy working on projects for Scrapbook News and Review but had time to sneak in a layout for an art challenge I hosted for my LSS.

I painted the entire background paper for this. I kinda felt like my friend Kimberly. I think she would be proud of me! Whaddya think, Kimberly??

I'm going to journal on the arrows but not really sure where I want to go with the journaling, so I'll figure that out later!!

Gotta go get Macy at school!! Have a great day! Thanks for reading!!

Definately a big girl!!

2008-05-16T20:41:00.003-04:00

I always said that I would let Macy get her ears pierced when she was old enough to ask me to have it done.

She's been curious about pierced ears probably since about 4 years. I have pierced ears but very rarely wear earrings, so she didn't really know much about them until she started going to preschool. I've always told her the truth about them, that they are indeed holes in your ears and it hurts for about a second when they do it. She didn't want to "get holes in her ears".

About 6 months ago, the topic came up again. A lot of her school friends have pierced ears. I told her the same thing and said she could get it done if she wanted. Maybe 2 months ago, all 4 of us were at the mall and a little girl about her age was getting ready to have hers pierced, so Macy and I stood and watched. She didn't like that and ran out of the store saying she didn't want it done!

Fast forward to today. She's totally been into doing her hair all up, putting her glitter lip gloss on and just looking at herself in the mirror. I was packing her lunch this morning when she came downstairs. I looked at her and saw these things clipped to her ears. I had to hold in a little giggle! Upon closer examination, I find that they are some clip earring pieces from one of her bead kits with those little jelly rings attached. She had them totally clipped inside her ears! *giggle*

I looked at her and said they would probably really start hurting at school and she said that they already were!! We took them out and I told her to go to school and think about the piercing and talk to her friends about it and if she wanted to, I'd take her to get it done tonight.

She did just that and decided she wanted it done. After supper, her and I headed to the mall. I thought for sure she'd decide against it, but on the drive to the mall, I could tell she was serious!! We waited and watched a 7 year old and her mom get theirs pierced and then she went! She picked out the pink daisy studs, of course!! I had them do both ears at once and she was a trooper!! I knew she would be. Her and Jack never flinch when they get vaccinated either!!

She was so proud and was strutting around and looking in every mirror, telling all the store clerks that she had just gotten her ears pierced!! We did a little more girly shopping and had a great few hours together!! We don't get to do that much anymore, so we both really enjoyed it!!!

You know, she seems so big when she talks to us, but looking at her sitting in that big ear piercing chair, she looked so little!

Here she is in all her proudness!

Happy [belated] Mother's Day!!!

2008-05-12T18:58:00.004-04:00

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day!!!

It was very nice here!! The kids and I went to see my Mom on Saturday while Chris was working. Macy picked out the Mother's Day presents this year for the Grandmother's!

Yesterday, Chris and the kids took me to Daniel Boone Homestead. I have lived here my entire life and have never been there! So glad we decided to go there, it was such a nice day to walk around and play football, wiffleball, frisbee and bouncy ball! I'm sure we'll be going back more often!

After we were done there, we went for Chinese! I filled up on sushi! Man, was that yummy!! It hit the spot!!

After filling our stomachs, I was tired! The kids played outside with Chris for a bit while I crashed in the recliner!!

I watched more movies this weekend than I have in a long time! Saturday night Chris and I watched Juno. I really liked it! Then Sunday night we watched Evan Almighty. While I was crashed on the recliner, Macy and I watched Jumanji (I finally got to see the whole thing through!), some Yellow Dog movie and about 2/3 of Akeelah and the Bee. I haven't had relaxation like that in a long time! It was nice!

Ah, Friday night I did the first entertaining in the new kitchen! I hosted Bunko this month. We didn't quite get to playing bunko, but we did have lots of laughs and fun (and food) until about 12:30!

Have a great week!

Happy Anniversary to me!!

2008-05-08T09:10:00.004-04:00

Today is our 9 year wedding anniversary!!! What a great nine years it has been!! We've been very lucky that it's been a smooth ride!!!

I think we may go do something while Jack is at school and perhaps tonight we'll pop the cork out of the apple raspberry wine we picked up in Jim Thorpe!!

This is a layout I did for the premiere issue of Scrapbook News and Review. Make sure you check them out, it's really reader focused!

Weekend Getaway

2008-05-05T19:06:00.007-04:00

Our 9th wedding anniversary is coming up on Thursday! On our previous anniversaries, we would go away to Atlantic City but we decided to change it up a bit this year. We went to one of our favorite little Pennsylvania towns, Jim Thorpe. We've been going there several times a year both with and without the kids. This time, we stayed overnight for two nights at the Inn at Jim Thorpe. It was a fabulous time! We ate at our favorite restaurant, enjoyed the towns unique shops and did some hiking and biking. I had the best ever kahlua tiramisu too, at a restaurant called Moya! It's all about the food, ya know!

You can click on all of the pictures to see them bigger!

This is the inn (left) and our favorite restaurant in town, JT's.

It drizzled a smidge, or 50 drops as my friend, Andrea would say, on Saturday morning, but cleared up fast. We were able to climb to the Glen Onoko Falls and then ride our bikes through the Lehigh Gorge.

On our way out of the gorge, we stopped and walked across the newly restored railroad bridge over the Lehigh River. There were lots of whitewater rafters out that day! We didn't get any really good pictures of the two of us. I planned on ordering one of those Gorillapods, but forgot! So, we had to use nature as our tripod, which didn't work out that great!

Yesterday morning, we toured the Asa Packer mansion. We always wanted to do that and finally made the time! He is the founder of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. It sounds like he and his wife were overall great people too, not taking their wealth to their heads! They were very generous to the people that worked for them, including their live in help. What a gorgeous home too! The woodwork was so ornate and it was in really great shape for being 140 plus years old. I even got some inspiration to use on some layouts! The Asa Packer mansion is on the left and the Harry Packer mansion, his son, is on the right. The Harry Packer mansion was the inspiration for Disney's Haunted Mansion. It is now a privately owned hotel.

But, we are back to reality today. It wasn't too hard to get back into it since it was an absolutely gorgeous day! Jack and I played outside and did yard work until we picked Macy up from school, then we all went out! It's going to be a repeat tomorrow! I just love playing in the dirt!!

Have a great week! Thanks for reading!

Ta dah!!!

2008-04-30T11:38:00.006-04:00

Our new kitchen has been done for a whole week!! It is even more beautiful than I imagined! Chris and I still just stand there and look at it!! It really looks like it is right out of a magazine or kitchen showroom!! *smile*

We have so much cabinet room now!! There is even an empty one above the fridge and the others aren't jam packed like they used to be!

It has been wonderful having appliances again, especially a dishwasher!!! The microwave is about a million times faster than the old crappy one we had!! The stove and microwave have so many buttons, it'll take us forever to figure it out! The fridge is high tech with all it's little features on it! We love it!! It is so worth it!!

The stove came with a ding in the drawer, so they had to order us another. They are coming to replace that on Tuesday.

The cabinet to the left is where the old stairwell was! The cabinetmaker did an amazing job building this for us! It is huge inside!

This is my favorite little nook. It's great having the extra little countertop to the left of the stove. The cabinetmaker also built that little skinny cabinet as well as the skinny one above. The bottom is perfect for cookie sheets and the top one is great for the coffee and wines, etc.

Here's the main counter. The light really comes in those windows so it's hard to get a good shot!

We couldn't stand the thought of putting our old kitchen table back in there, so we freecycled that and bought this pub table. We ordered a piece of glass for the top too, so there is no gauging with forks by two little people that will remain nameless! That should be done Monday!

So, all we have to do yet is paint the woodwork (blech!) and put up the new baseboard behind the table. We have it, but forgot to buy the nails to put it up! We'll get to that next week!

It's been mostly beautiful out here. We got a lot of play time in outside. Jack finally learned how to drive the gator in something other than circles! Now they fight over who is the driver!

No new layouts or projects to share, we've been too busy and it's been too nice to do any!

Have a great week!!

CKC-Valley Forge class

2008-04-20T20:34:00.006-04:00

I'll be teaching for mlpa at the Valley Forge Creating Keepsakes Convention the first weekend in August! Registration begins this Wednesday! The class is called "Clearly Cool" and is a great clear scalloped wallhanging!
It'll be a really fun class!! Make sure you say hi to me and let me know you read about it on my blog!

Wednesday will be the day!! Our appliances are being delivered Wednesday morning! The counter top was installed on Friday and it's even more beautiful than I had imagined! The texture in it is so amazing! It's gorgeous!!!

As you can see, we have a sink! It is not a working sink at this moment, but it is so nice to have one there!! I love the undermount! Tomorrow morning at 8am, the whole crew will be here again. The plumber will hook up the plumbing and garbage disposal, all the molding will go in and the backsplash will go up!

The end is so close in sight! I can't believe the time has come!! It's been 3 VERY LONG weeks without a kitchen! I never want to remodel another kitchen in my life! I miss my sink and really dislike washing dishes in the kids bathtub!

I bought all of the necessary kitchen accessories on Friday. I just need to find a good valance or tier for the windows. I'll probably look for that tomorrow or Tuesday! We also need to get some stainless outlet covers too!

I'm sure I'll be updating tomorrow with some almost finished pics!

Have a great week!

Ahhh, spring!!!

2008-04-17T09:32:00.006-04:00

This week has been gorgeous and it's only getting better!! Today it is supposed to be 76!

All of us have been spending a ton of time outside this week!! Tuesday, Chris and I were out shopping and came across a consignment store while going to Rite Aid. There were some little kid bikes outside, so we thought we'd check it out. Jack doesn't have a 2 wheeler, just his Radio Flyer big wheel, so we thought we'd see if they had any little boy bikes! There was one for 10 bucks!! What a steal, we bought it! He. Loves. It! The three of us rode our bikes down to the lake and playground yesterday. Macy was a little sad to hear that we did this while she was at school, but we made up for it!! He really took to the bike well. I remember it taking Macy several months to figure out how the pedals worked! Not Jack! *giggle* He's a daredevil, taking the turns at full force!! He's had a couple of falls, but gets right back up!

Macy and Daddy playing football.

Our magnolia tree is just about to full bloom now! It smells so wonderful and is so pretty!! I wish it would look like that all year round (they are messy!). I also found some Bleeding Hearts peeking and the Spirea is in bloom! Looking forward to May 15th when I can plant more flowers and then mulch! Ahh, I love the smell of fresh mulch!

The countertop is slated to be installed tomorrow! Yay!! I put the first coat of paint on the walls last night, it is looking mighty nice!! If I can pull myself in from outside today, I'll put the last coat on!

I'll leave with a layout. I haven't scrapped much lately due to bronchitis, sinus infection, sheer exhaustion and prepping for my class this Sunday and prep for my next technique class! I managed to squeeze this one in a few weeks ago. It's the kids on their Gator!

Have a great day! I hope it's as beautiful where you are!

Back from the maiden voyage!!

2008-04-14T21:56:00.008-04:00

We returned yesterday from the maiden voyage of our pop up camper! Here is a little summary. There is some scary/funny stuff in the middle, grab a drink!

When we arrived on Friday, it started to rain, but it wasn't too bad, just drizzle mostly. We got it all set up easily. We actually went with a couple, Chris works with her and they have a 5th wheel camper, so we knew that if we had any problems, they had our back! Chris forgot the water hose, which they had a spare, so all was well!

The place was gorgeous!! It's a fairly big lake, when we called for reservations, we asked for lakeside but they were already gone. We ended up in a little loop that backed up to state forest lands and we had a nice creek behind us with this cute mallard duck couple that visited every day! We got across the creek on the rocks and explored the forest and climbed on all the rocks there. Gorgeous!

The first night definately tested out our new used camper! It poured and when I say poured, I mean poured, like buckets with thunder and lightening!! I didn't sleep that well the first night, worrying about if it would leak and I had this paranoia that Chris and I would be too heavy for the one bed and it would collapse in the middle of the night! That did not happen, thankfully, but I still worry! LOL

I put the kids on their bed the opposite way, I laid them sideways so they wouldn't roll out. About 4:30am, Chris hears Jack scream and cry! He gets out of the bed and goes to check, Jack is not in the bed!!!!! He comes and tells me and I was just speechless, ran over to look and he was not there. We could hear him though, but he was nowhere in the camper!! We looked at the door, it was still locked! Chris went outside and Jack was laying on the ground in his sleeping bag in a daze! His sleeping bag was soaked along with his head and his jammie pants. He carries him in and I wrap him up and get his pants changed, then collapse the table and set up that bed for him to use. He had no idea what happened and still doesn't recall it, thankfully!

When Jack sleeps, he always pushes himself up into the corner of his bed and against the wall, I really don't know how he does it, it can't be comfortable. When we checked it out on Saturday morning, what we saw happened is that he must've wedged himself up into the corner like he always does and continued to do it so much that he worked loose the heavy duty velcro that wraps around the mattress and the outside of the camper, then that opened up a gap and he fell out!

We can laugh about it and it will be told for generations, I'm sure! It was just scary at the time when Chris said he wasn't in his bed! Luckily, we both aren't the panic type!

So, that was that! Saturday was gorgeous 76 degrees! The lake was so blue! We flew kites and rode our bikes around the entire lake with our friends. Had a nice feast for supper and did the s'mores thing again. It really was great. We didn't even get to swim in the indoor pool, because it was just too nice to be indoors! The place had 5 playgrounds although we only found 2! The only negative was that there seemed to be a lot of trash laying around, which I can't stand litterers! Made me really sad, I just don't understand how people can be so inconsiderate!

We had to pack it in in the rain Sunday morning but when we got home it was dry here so we popped it back up and let it dry off.

We had fun, the kids had a blast and it's really nice camping with friends! We made dinner jointly, had some drinks and just had a great time!

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, Crocs are not totally heat proof! We got our campfire so hot Saturday night that the outer left front of my mammoth crocs must've melted a bit. You can't really tell, but I can feel it when I move my feet around!

Here are some pics of Otter Lake! www.otterlake.com

This was the back of our campsite:

On the homefront, the kitchen should hopefully be done next week at this time! We are hoping to be able to take delivery of our new appliances next week! I cannot wait!! I miss the sink the most! I've been washing dishes in the bathtub and it's not fun!!

Monday, Monday!

2008-04-07T09:20:00.004-04:00

It sure was tough getting up this morning!!

We had a great weekend! The weather on Saturday was pretty nice, in the mid to upper 50's so we were outside all day and did some cleaning up of the garage. We started to gather up our camping supplies, we're taking our inaugural camper trip this weekend! The kids are super excited, Jack wakes up every morning asking if it's Friday!

I bought paint for the kitchen on Saturday, I went with "bone white". If I can muster up the energy, I'll start on that today. I splurged on some new painter's tape called Frog Tape. It is supposed to be non bleeding, it better be for $8 a roll! I've got to take every precaution to not get paint on my new cabinets!

Yesterday we went to one of my aunt's houses. My Aunt Holly is in from California on business so all my aunt's on my dad's side (3 of them) and my parents and me and the kids got together for lunch. I haven't seen 2 of my aunt's since Jan 2006 when my Grandmom died. It was nice spending time together! Here are the kids with Aunt Holly, it's such torture getting them to look at me when they are together!

The kids came home with 2 old toys of their cousin's. Kristen gave Macy a magic set and Megan gave Jack a wooden marble maze set! They were in heaven! LOL

I did a quick layout Friday night. It felt good, it was too long since I've created! Hopefully I can do it again soon! I used the Noggin symbol as my inspiration, can you tell? I used some new Basic Grey and Fancy Pants papers.

Who is watching Rock of Love 2? I'm so happy to see Ambre in the top 2! Daisy drives me a bit crazy! I'm rooting for Ambre (although her name spelling bothers me!) but I'm betting Daisy will win!

Have a great day!

Getting closer!!!

2008-04-04T13:38:00.004-04:00

Yesterday they laid the tile.

This morning they hung all but one of the upper cabinets, put in the microwave and stove outlets and wired for the dishwasher.

The custom cabinet for the old stairwell looks awesome, even better than I imagined!! He really did a great job on that!!

The tile guy grouted and now the countertop guy is here getting measurements for the quartz. The countertop will go in 2 weeks from today!

It's really coming together and is so much more homey in there. I think I've decided on a different paint color too. Instead of a rusty color, I think we'll do a tan or beige, keep it in the earth tones. Hopefully we can squeeze that in this weekend!

Here are some pics I just took. Click on it to see it bigger.

I think I may do a mini album with all of this. I'm not a mini album person, but this may just call for one, plus I could put my barely used Bind It All to good use!!

I'm hoping to scrap tonight, it's been abotu 2 weeks and I'm really itching to do it, especially after the trip Mary, Tracy, Mimi and I took to memory lane, pa today!!

Hopefully I'll have something scrapping related to show next post!!

Have a great weekend!

Day 1 done!

2008-04-02T13:59:00.004-04:00

The fridge is out, yay!! Our contractor was able to get the wheels off!

The old cabinets are out and the new base ones are in!! The cement board for the floor is in!! The tile guy is coming tomorrow morning to lay the tile! Grout on Friday, I believe!

I can't believe how fast they moved!! It looks a million times better in there already!

All the cabinets and tile are sitting in the living room! The large custom cabinet for the old stairwell looks awesome!!!

Here are some pics. Jack insisted on being a part of them!

That's a skinny 6 inch cabinet there. There will be another above it too, I think. It'll be perfect for storing Saran Wrap, foil, etc. In the old setup, the stove and fridge were right next to each other. We wanted to put something in between them to make it more efficient.

No big treasures to be found although he found a ton of old junky papers and some old dog medicine! He did come across this which I thought was neat! 4 cent postage!! Must be from the 1950's!

Tomorrow is D (demolition) day!!!

2008-04-01T21:15:00.004-04:00

Our part is done! The cabinet guy comes bright and early tomorrow morning to demo the cabinets and start on his work! He is hoping to frame all the new cabinets out tomorrow too and wants the floor started by end of week! Wow!!!

Chris and I physically exhausted ourselves this weekend getting the floor out! The subfloor did prove to be stubborn as we thought it might. Many of the screws did not want to come out, so we had to use this big huge red bar to get underneath it and rip it up. Tough stuff!! It was actually kind of fun though, great workout! Once that was out, the old green stuff came up easily! Right now, the floor is black from the old adhesive. It is nice hardwoods like the rest of the house, just very black!

Here is what it all looks like now! Click on the pic to make it bigger!

We thought we were all over the hump after getting all that flooring out, until we went to move out the frig last night. It was too wide for the widest of the kitchen doorways. We knew that, it was a tight squeeze when we bought it 8 years ago! So, we took off the doors, still no go, there was a wheel that was getting caught up. Chris took out those bolts and could not get the wheel off! So, there it sits, still in the kitchen! The contractor is going to try and see if he can figure it out tomorrow. I talked to the appliance store today, all our appliances are in, so I told them of our problem! Our salesman was gone for the day, so he's calling us back tomorrow with more precise measurements of the new frig and how to fix our dilemma! If the contractor can't figure it out, we'll probably have the installers come and disassemble the old one first since the floor will be started sooner than we expected! Nothing ever happens quite how it's supposed to, does it??

On a neat note, while we were taking wheelbarrow loads of tile and debris out to the trailer on Saturday, we got to meet a previous owner of our house! Chris called in for me to come outside and there was a lady standing there. She owned the house 2 owners ago. She told us how they loved it and were sad to have to move, but her husband's job moved to NJ, but her mother lives a street behind us. They had 4 kids in the house. She told us of past owners too. It was once a parrish house. An owner of a wallpaper store lived here, which probably explains the wallpapered closets! I'm thankful we didn't have more wallpaper than we did have in here! The original owner was very wealthy, which we assumed would be, we knew the houses in our neighborhood were wealthy, upscale homes back in the 1950's. We talked for a bit and she loved what we've done to the outside. She was nice, we told her to come back in a few months when we're all finished and we'll give her a tour of the inside too, when it is not all ripped up!!

Did you ever watch the show "If Walls Could Talk"? It's on HGTV and is about hidden treasures that owners found in their houses. I was hoping we'd find something really cool, but my only treasure was a wheat penny!

Hope everyone's having a great week!! Hopefully I can get back to scrapping soon!

I will update with new pics probably tomorrow!!

Let the demo begin!!!

2008-03-28T17:09:00.005-04:00

We started ripping out our ugly ceramic tile kitchen floor on Wednesday! I am so glad to see that eye sore go!! The guy who lived here before us seemed to thing fake marbly looking white tile with black grout was the greatest! He did the same thing to the kids bathroom!! Yuck!!! I much prefer how it looks now with the tile out and the white adhesive covering the subfloor!! I am SO glad to get rid of the white kitchen!! It really is not nice especially when you have 4 little hands living in the house!! White cabinets, white floor, white countertop = YUCK!!!!

I've gotten really bad the last few months about caring for the cabinets and countertops! I've been cutting right on the formica (which did I tell you how much I hate white formica - it soaks up everything spilled on it and many times doesn't even come clean with a magic eraser!), not wiping down the cabinets, even tried to not mop the floor, but I had to stop rebelling against that!

So, we got the tile layer off except for under the fridge and stove, we'll do that tomorrow. Next up is the subfloor, then the circa 1950's lovely green and red floor. After that is up, we should find our hardwood floors. I won't say it was easy, I think we have the hardest part ahead of us yet, but it is a good stress reliever and thankfully our kitchen is only 11x11 square! Here are some visuals.

How I long for my lovely quartz counters, deep maple with a cocoa glaze cabinets and lovely beige glazed porcelain tile (which will not show a chip if it does somehow get chipped!). Ahhhhhh . . .

We bought all new appliances yesterday!! We got mar-proof stainless steel so they don't show the fingerprints! I'm amazed at the cost of appliances these days! Did you know it costs an extra $200 to get stainless steel sides (rather than black) on a refrigerator? Yep, it does, and we did it, it'll look SO much nicer!

We got all Professional Series appliances except for the stove as it had a warming drawer on the bottom (which I never use) and didn't have the warming burner.

We hope to have the floor all done by Sunday evening, then our part of demo is done!! The rest is for the professionals!! Kinda wish we would've had them do the floor too! LOL

Monday we'll go shopping for lighting, new faucet and a new garbage disposal!! Fun stuff!

Coming to a close!

2008-03-24T21:25:00.009-04:00

Easter break is coming to an end!! Tomorrow morning is back to the grind!! 7:15 sure is going to be tough considering we've been getting up at 10 and 11am the last six days!

What fun we had though!!

We painted eggs:

We had real bad winds here again. This time it managed to rip off the lattice trellis we have around our back patio. So, we'll have to replace that as soon as it warms up so my multiple clematis have a place to grow up!

Daddy gave Jack a buzz after the Macy beauty parlor incident! Now the two of them look exactly alike! Forgive the horrible pic!

We hung out with some of the mlpa gals and their kids:

Upon arriving home from Mr. B's, this was sitting in the driveway!

Chris went and picked it up while we were gone!! Here are the twins enjoying the interior! Jack brought out his toy level and tools to help Daddy get it set up!

Then, of course, yesterday was Easter!! Jack woke up at 7:15 and went downstairs and found Macy's basket, she heard that and had a breakdown, so I had to re-hide it! We went to Grammy and Pappy's for Easter dinner and the kids did an egg hunt there.

Jack now has a respiratory thing going on with a low grade fever. Poor guy, he slept most of today. Looks like he'll probably be missing school tomorrow.

We got word that our kitchen remodel is starting next Wednesday as long as there are no problems!! Our cabinet guy is working on putting the cocoa glaze on our cabinets right now!!! We now need to get our ceramic tile smashed out of there by Wednesday, we'll probably work on that this weekend during the day. I'll work on getting everything out of the cabinets this week! We have to go buy the new lighting, faucet and garbage disposal! Appliance shopping must be done too!! Woohoo!! Very exciting!

I managed to get one layout done during break too. I just LOVE the new Daisy D Wonder Years line!! It's so me, nice and bright!!

Thanks for reading!! Have a great week!!

Random nothingness!

2008-03-18T13:42:00.008-04:00

Not a whole lot going on here! Looking forward to 3:10pm today when school is out for a week!! We've got some fun plans for the days off!

We got a pancake puff pan last week. Have you seen that infomercial? The kids love it and have wanted one, so when we saw it at Boscov's, we had to buy it!

It does make a yummy puff, but definately better with plain batter!! The blueberry ones didn't get totally done all the way through.

My favorite Tastycake of all time is in the stores right now!!

I feel bad for the parts of the country that don't have Tastycakes!! Hippity Hops are to die for!!! Dangerous, I tell ya!!

Jack and I made Irish Soda Bread yesterday for St. Patrick's Day. I can never get a smooth disc out of the dough, so it's always lumpy on the outside but oh so yummy on the inside!

Here he is testing it out!

Notice his nice haircut? Yeah, that's courtesy of Macy's Beauty Salon! She takes walk-ins and is free of charge!

Jack had a modified preschool day today from 11-12:30. Chris and I went out for lunch while he was there.

Friday we are hopefully going to pick up our camper! Yay!! Then we can start planning our first long weekend in April! Super exciting!!

Still waiting on a kitchen start date!! This is such a long process!! I just want it to be done!!

I'll leave you with this layout. Didn't turn out quite like I hoped, kinda blah feeling to me so I'll probably end up scrapping these pics again in the future!

Have a great week!!

It turned out to be a gorgeous day!!

2008-03-14T16:43:00.005-04:00

Macy had off school yesterday and today for conferences. I didn't need to go to a conference for her, so that's nice!!

I decided last night that I'd take them to Hershey today since Chris would be working. Well, we woke up around 9am and it was raining pretty hard, so I had to think of alternative plans! The rain ended up stopping and it turned out to be a gorgeous day with a high of 60 degrees!! We'll try to hit Hershey during the spring break next week!

We went to IHOP for lunch. They have special Horton Hears a Who foods right now. Jack had the "who-cakes" minus the green eggs and ham! He loved them! They have some pink and blue boysenberry syrup on them plus sprinkles and a bubble gum lollipop! Can't beat that!!

Then we went to the mall for our yearly Easter Bunny picture!! Jack kept giving the bunny kisses! This is the best of 4 pics that they took.

We had to go to AC Moore too to get me a new heat gun. The little monster decided to play with mine and I think he burned it out!! grrr . . .

Came home to have some craft time. Since it was gorgeous, we did it outside! I bought some little dollar family shadowboxes last week, so we painted those. Jack's started out nice and colorful like Macy's, but whenever he paints, he smooshes all the colors together then and winds up with a lovely shade of gray!

I did some much needed yard cleanup while they painted, then they helped me after they were finished!! We've got one side of the house done, we'll work on the rest over the weekend if it's still nice out!!!

It was definately too beautiful of a day to be inside!!! We were out for hours and it was so nice!! Yay for spring coming!!!

Jack got his preschool pics back last week, so I'll leave you with that!!!

Have a great weekend!!!

A Hint of Spring!

2008-03-04T11:35:00.006-05:00

Yesterday was beautiful, it got up to 60 degrees!! We were all outside for most of the day! Today is warm as well. Jack and I got to sneak out for a few minutes before it started to rain.

The kids enjoyed riding their bikes and scooters yesterday and also swinging on the tree swing!

Later in the day, after Macy got home from school and after we ate, she and Chris went to the camping store and came home with a receipt for a down payment on a pop up camper!! Did I just say that? Me, buying a camper? Nah, we had a good camping experience when we went to NY back in August, much better than our local camping experiences, so it'll be fun! Being up off the ground will be excellent! Less chance of critters biting at my toes! LOL We went to an RV show at our local expo center last weekend and enjoyed looking at pop ups up to the $300,000 home on wheels! We decided we wanted to buy used (no chance for engine problems with these!), since this is our first, not to mention it would save a few pennies! We searched around and found a local dealer listing on Craigslist. We went and looked at it on Sunday and it's in great shape!! Chris and I thought about it and decided to go for it!! The dealer is at a big RV show this week, so when they get back next, we'll go and pay it off and get our lesson on how to use it! I'm excited, already planning a trip to Maine with stops in the other New England states on the way! We're also going to try to do a weekend every month! Should be really fun, camping is such a great family bonding experience!

I'll leave you with two layouts. I did these for the ScrapGal March newsletter. The theme this month is "inherit".

Thanks for reading!! Have a great day!!

I was heading to bed . . .

2008-03-01T00:00:00.002-05:00

but felt the need to make this instead!

I've been wanting to do it for a few days and decided tonight was the night!

It's a quick project. I cut the shape out of Hambly using my Expression, then cut the outline part out of a piece of Fancy Pants.

The hardest part was rummaging through all those felt alphas to find the right ones, and then creatively piecing them together if I didn't have the correct letter!

Of course, a project is not complete with bling and Radiant Rain sprays!! Added a little silver Glimmer Mist with the Rains on the flower.

No big plans for the weekend. I think we're supposed to get some snow tonight, but it's not doing anything outside right now.

In more scrapping news, I had 3 layouts accepted for the Making Memories Scrapbook Idea Gallery 2008! Super excited about that!!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Crazy Kids and a request

2008-02-27T17:12:00.005-05:00

Not much has been going on around here.

The kids are as crazy as ever! Here is what they did with their happy meal boxes over the weekend! Never realized that the little handles looked like glasses!

They're so silly!!

Now onto something more serious. My friend Katie could use any prayers that you can spare. Her dad is in very critical condition. He took a 20 foot fall from a ladder several days ago and shattered his skull. Things are not looking very good right now.

Katie is such a sweet person, I met her about 2 years ago at a class. She has a great little online scrapbook store.

If you are of the praying kind, please say prayers for her dad, her and her family. I know they will be very grateful. We all know how strong the power of prayer is!

You can read all the details on her blog. Here's the link again!

Thank you!!

We got some snow!

2008-02-23T14:24:00.004-05:00

It finally snowed here! Macy didn't have school.

We didn't get much, maybe 3 inches and I think that is pushing it! Nonetheless, the kids had a wonderful time out there!

Not too much exciting planned for the weekend. I did a bunch of cleaning this morning. Boy did it need it! I've had so much mojo this last week, that I really, really let the housework slide!! Gotta use it when it's here, right?

I don't have any new layouts to show today, but hopefully soon!!

I have to go back to that letter verification thingy on here when you post. I've been getting some spam comments. Sorry!

Have a great weekend!

A college student lives here!

2008-02-19T21:32:00.005-05:00

Big things going on here in our household!

Chris officially started his masters program yesterday! He is taking online classes to get his Master of Science in Disaster Medicine and Management! What's that you ask? It is FEMA related things. It is right up his alley!! I am so proud of him! He has been talking about this for at least a year and a half and now it is reality! I'm sure it can't be easy going back to college after being out since 1996! I can't imagine going back! I know he will do great though! He is determined and this is perfect for him!

We had a nice day yesterday. I picked up my friend Andrea and her 2 girls and we headed to an indoor playland McD's! We met up with another friend and her 2 boys and everyone had a blast!! The seemed to run off a lot of the steam that they've been accumulating this winter! Macy and Jack hit their beds hard last night!

We, of course, stopped at the LSS on the way back. Umm, yeah, the whole trip was definately for the kids! Yeah, we didn't plan the McD's around the LSS or anything! *wink*
Here are some pics of the kids outside the store!

Believe it or not, my mojo is still kicking! Here's a new layout I did yesterday with pictures from the above kid shoot!!

I also got a great email today! Simple Scrapbooks wants to publish one of my layouts in their July/August issue! I'm super excited! It will be my first time in their magazine and I just love the layout they picked!

Thanks for reading!! Have a great rest of the week!

It's still flowing!!

2008-02-17T22:04:00.003-05:00

Can you say 4 layouts in 2 days? Whoa!! Unfortunately, most are for assignments so I can't post them yet!

I'll leave you with 2 that I did featuring lots of the new Making Memories (and some older) goodness!! I just can't get enough of it!!

Sorry for the lousy picture, I took it at night in not the greatest of lighting! These are some pics from this past summer at Rehoboth Beach, DE. We enjoy going to the Seashore State Park.

This one is of 2 of my friends. They have such a wonderful friendship, it really makes you smile! A blog entry that Sarah wrote last month really touched me, so I snagged most of it and the picture and scrapped it!! Thanks Sarah and Colleen for the inspiration!

We're on a 4 day weekend here and have been taking full advantage of it! We didn't get up until after 11am today!! Boy does that ever feel good! Tomorrow the kids and I are going to lunch with a bunch of friends. We're going to a McD's with an indoor playland and then we're hitting memory lane, pa afterwards!! Can't wait!!

Have a great week, everyone!

Mojo finally strikes!!

2008-02-09T22:24:00.001-05:00

I tried to post two times yesterday and Blogger kept eating them!!! Let's see how this goes!!

The mojo fairy finally decided to stop at my house!! It's been SO long and boy was it fun!! I did 5 layouts in 3 days!! That is almost unheard of!!!

Here are 3 of them!

Taught my sheer album class at mlpa today. I had a great little group of ladies!! Everything went so smooth!

Just finished up working on my next installment of Technique Toolbox - Grungeboard! That stuff is so fun to work with!! Lots of possibilities!!

In other news, we found a used car for Chris to use on his long commute days. During his rotations that are an hour plus away, we'd spend $75 to $100 a week on gas for the truck!! That's $300-400 a month just for gas!! So, we decided it was time to find a "beater". It's not so much a beater though. We got a 1998 Ford Escort ZX2, silver in color. It feels really strange driving a car! I haven't driven one in over 3 years!! It runs well and looks nice too, just hope it stays that way, I get a little nervous about used cars!! I haven't bought one since I was 16!

Yesterday was also our 14 year anniversary!! Wow!! We started dating on February 8, 1994! That's a long time!! So worth it though, he's totally completed my life in those 14 years!! We'll celebrate our 9 year wedding anniversary on May 8th.

Hope everyone has a nice weekend!! It'll be filled with good 'ol family time here!! Can't get much better than that!!

Thanks for reading!! :D

Still truckin'!! Fun news!!

2008-01-31T14:08:00.000-05:00

I'm caught up on my scrapbooking assignments!! Yay!!!

Remember the Maya Road sheer album I posted a week or 2 ago? I entered it into their open call to take some consumer projects to CHA Winter! And, I was one of the lucky 15 people!! How exciting is that? You can see the announcement here! Congrats to all the other ladies! I can't wait until they show some of them!

I've also been working on a revised album to teach at memory lane pa! I got that all finished last night and will be teaching it next Saturday! Here are a few pages from the album. I used the new Cloud 9 line and some other great goodies (and glitter, yeah!).

It's a little challenging to scrap in that small size, it's 2 1/2 inches wide x 4 1/2 inches high, but it's much easier the second time around!!

Macy celebrated her 100th day of kindergarten yesterday! They had fun activities at school for them!! She's so very proud, so are mom and dad!!

Jack is at preschool right now and they are having a Super Bowl party! He's still giving me trouble when I drop him off, but stops when I leave. I had the yearly conference on Tuesday and his teacher says he's doing well. We'll be putting him in the 5 day program next year!!

Still truckin' on the kitchen!! Last night and today were spent scraping off the wallpaper adhesive!! YUCK!!! It's such a mess in there right now, not to mention most of the first floor, but it'll be worth it!! I can't wait!! They could call anytime now, it's been 2 weeks since the cabinets were ordered!! Woohoo!!

Hope everyone is having a great week!! Thanks for reading!

Hi

2008-01-24T21:07:00.000-05:00

It's been busy. I feel like I am saying that all the time!! So much to do and so little time!! Usually the business ends soon after the holidays, but not this year!

*Trying to ready the kitchen for the remodel, fighting with the wallpaper to come off, yuck!!!
*Class preparations and the brainstorming/making of new classes!
*Assignments
*Trying to find the perfect used car for DH, to use for his rotations with long commutes, that is reliable and not a checkbook breaker
*Everyday life

It is neverending, huh?

I took a little break from it all today and had lunch with my friend, Tracy. She has been busy lately too and we haven't had the girl time that we used to, I have missed her. Her hours are back to normal now and we took advantage of that today and went to a great restaurant called Ciabbata. If you live in the Reading area, you must go, everything is good, huge portions and very reasonably priced!! So, we got to do some much needed catching up and it was nice hanging out again, just the two of us!

I still don't have much mojo, but I did manage to get this layout done a few days ago. I've had it planned in my head for a few months and finally did it! I just love this picture, it's the second time I've scrapped it with the same topic too!

The background is done by using KI lace cardstock as a mask and spritzing with multiple colors of Radiant Rain sprays and Glimmer Mists. I just cannot get enough of that stuff!! I prefer the Radiant Rains but the Glimmer Mists are nice too, just more watery. I'm kicking off a monthly "technique toolbox" at memory lane pa and will be teaching Radiant Rain techniques this Saturday!! I hope to pass my addiction on to all of those taking the class!!

Have a great weekend!! I think I'll go do some blog hopping now!! I've missed that too!!

First written story!

2008-01-15T19:19:00.000-05:00

Thank you all for the nice comments you left Macy on her layouts!! They really made her day!! She said "I guess I'm really good!" She told me that she's a better scrapper than me! LOL

She's getting really good at her reading and writing!! It's amazing what kindergartners learn! I guess the days of naps and watching chicks in an incubator are over, huh? That's what I did in kindergarten!! I can still remember everything about my kindergarten room, from where the bathroom was, to where we napped, and where the incubator sat!!

Anyway, she wrote this story while Jack was taking his bath tonight. The first page is the title of the book and the second is the story.

Pretty good for a 5 1/2 year old!! She asked for no help at all!!! I'm a proud mama!!

The other exciting news around here is that our kitchen is finally underway!!! The cabinet guy took his last measurements last night and I picked out the grout color for our floor. We went with glazed porcelain tiles instead of ceramic. The check is written, everything is ordered, he headed back to his shop to begin work on our custom pantry cabinets!! Installation will probably begin in about 3-4 weeks! Woohoo!!! Now we need to work on getting some wallpaper down, fixing the ceiling and painting! We'll also be ripping out the old ceramic tiles ourselves. Here is what our choices are. I'm fairly certain this will be the wall color. I may get a few different quarts of colors to test out first though!

Haven't done a ton of scrapping. I am starting to get a little mojo back, so that is nice! I used an empty Maya Road tin to make this candy tin. I got the idea of wrapping the Hershey's Nuggets from my very talented friend, Mary!!

That's it for now!! Thanks for reading!!

Scrapper in the making!

2008-01-11T08:58:00.000-05:00

Jack fell asleep really early on Monday night and I wanted to finish working on a mini album. Macy asked me if she could scrapbook with me! Well, of course!!! I always give her my reject pictures, ones that I print and don't like them for some reason. She just loves having them!

I gave her one of my bins of ribbon, some markers, rub ons, stickers, and old patterned paper and let her have at it. She decided that she just wanted to use her construction paper, ribbon and markers!

She managed to do about 10 pages in an hour! Here are my two favorites.

Aren't they cute? Now I need to find some sort of album that will hold construction paper size! I think the sheets are 9x11. Maybe I'll just give her a 12x12 album.

This is what I was working on. I finally pushed myself to do a sheer album! I saw this Maya Road arrow album and immediately saw a house. I turned it counter clockwise and did just that, made it into a house! I used tons of fun goodies on here and am happy with my first try at one of these!! I'm not much of a mini book girl, but like this one!

I know Macy would just LOVE to hear comments about her pages, so if you could leave her a little praise, I'd be so thankful!!

Thanks for looking and have a great weekend!!

Oh What a Day!

2008-01-09T15:45:00.000-05:00

It's one of the worst nightmares you could ever have. Never did I think it would happen in our little community.

While I was getting Jack his breakfast this morning, soon to take Macy to school, I heard Chris's ambulance pager go off. Soon after, he came running down the steps. I thought he was going to a car accident, but instead he said "something's going on at the high school!" Gulp! The middle/senior high school is about 3/4 of a mile to the right of our house. Macy's school is about 3/4 of a mile to the left of our house.

I immediately turned on his scanner and listened for news. I heard "stabbing and possible shot heard". How's that for scary? My eyes immediately started to well up. I had to leave the room so I wouldn't scare the kids.

What should I do? I tried calling Chris on his cell phone, but he must've been in a bad spot. I called my friend who's kids go to school with Macy. I could hardly get my words out to her. We decided to keep the kids home until we heard more. I finally then got in touch with Chris and he said it was all under control at the middle/senior high and that it was okay for Macy to go to school. He couldn't tell me much at that time except that there was a bomb.

Sirens were screaming so loud, news helicopters were circling overhead (as I type this, the NBC 10 news van out of Philly went down my street 3 times). Police with bomb sniffing dogs came from the Poconos and Harrisburg, the bomb squad was here and the Haz Mat team.I tried to pull as much info as I could from the scanner and news websites. No one really knew what was going on yet. I was geting the best info from the scanner, of course. I always complain to Chris that he turns the scanners up too loud. Well, this morning, I had 2 of them up as loud as they could go!!

Chris got home around 2pm and I confirmed what I heard with him. A 13 year old went to school this morning normally dressed, apparently mad at the school for some reason. So, he took it upon himself to bring knives and chemicals into the school in a duffle bag. He was in his classroom, right as school was starting, jumped over some desks and tried to light a bomb on fire, a fight broke loose, he pulled out a knife and slashed 3 people. Luckily they are not seriously injured. A school official quickly detained the kid and the police got in there and tackled him. They found a bag of knives outside of the school as well as a glass bottle with a clear liquid in it plus a respirator mask in a bathroom. That's why the hazmat team was called in. It turned out to just be gasoline. The kids were evacuated quickly to the athletic association just down the street from the school and then bussed to Macy's school where their parents picked them up.

I also found out that we live in the block behind this kid. It could've been one of the many kids that walks by our house everyday. Maybe I've said hi to him, maybe I've seen him at the grocery store or at the park and playground. Why did he do this?

What is going on these days? Why do people do this? Is it really worth it? I can't believe this happened. It really can happen anywhere, can't it?
As we are sitting here and Macy saw the news van go buy, she asked what it was. I told her what it was and she said "hey, the news was at my school today". I was looking on one of the news websites and she saw it and said "that one, I saw the number 6 on one of their microphones". She said they didn't come into the school. There are just kindergarteners and 1st graders in her school and they seem to know nothing about it. I'm very glad for that.

Here is a link to the news story.
Local News Story

Here is to a calmer tomorrow!

Happy New Year!!!

2008-01-06T17:52:00.001-05:00

Finally back to the blogging world! Did Christmas break go fast or what? I had so many things planned, but didn't get to do any of it!

We all had a wonderful Christmas!!! Lots of food, family and fun!!

I did, however, have a great time meeting up with some friends!!

I was in a Secret Santa swap with some girls from memory lane pa. We had the reveal on a Saturday afternoon and it was so much fun!! There is nothing like hanging out with a group of girlfriends!! Andrea (in the top picture) was my wonderful Santa and I was Sarah's (bottom picture) Santa. I got a little crafty and made them each a hand felted wool scarf! I actually made 4 total, it was the December Creativity Kit from ILove2Create. I can't believe how fun and easy they were to make!!!

My gal pals Tracy, Mary and Mimi also got together for a little Christmas party, full of food and fun!! We always have a wonderful time together!! I just love those girls!! Unfortunately, for some reason, we didn't take pictures!! Bad scrapbookers!!

I got to meet up with my friend Celeste! She has family in my area, so we met up at Starbucks!! It was great meeting her, it was like we've known each other for years!!

Does anyone know how to edit out chins? 'Cause mine ain't lookin' so pretty there!!! That's some diet motivation!!

For New Year's Eve, we made it a family thing this year!! The 4 of us went out for a nice dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. We do the 4pm reservation, isn't that sad?

We then came home and played games, did puzzles and watched Chris rock out on Guitar Hero 3! He's so good!

The kids rang in the new year at around 9pm with milk cocktails and virgin appletini's!

Chris and I watched Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve, had some appletini's and then watched the fireworks outside!! Welcome 2008! Wow!!

I hope to be a better blogger in 2008!!

I hope you enjoy the new music! I {heart} Johnny Rzeznik!! I really enjoyed watching him every Friday night on The Next Great American Band!!! Speaking of which, did you watch? What a great show!! So happy that my fave, The Clark Brothers, won!! Wow do they show emotion in their music!! I would've been happy if Six Wire won too, but was secretly hoping for The Clark Brothers!! Can't wait for both of their albums to come out!! They'll be mine!!

I haven't done much scrapping this past month so I made myself sit down and do a quick layout last night. I just love KI's Pop Culture line!! The colors are so me!!!

Thanks for reading! Have a great week!!!

It's almost here!!

2007-12-21T13:32:00.000-05:00

So much rushing around for the past few weeks, the big day is almost here!! It always sneaks up so fast!! There is never enough time to get all the fun things done that we would love to do!! We managed to fit in a few of our favorites!

Decorating a gingerbread house:

Going to Hersheypark's Christmas Candy Lane:

And trying SO hard to get the perfect Christmas picture for our cards!!

Macy did several other fun things this year! She went to a little party with Mrs. Claus that was held at Boscov's, our local department store. She met up with her friend, Steph, there. They got their faces painted! Macy is a snowflake and Steph got a reindeer!

She took her first Daisy Girl Scout field trip. We went to Walmart where the girls bought clothing for a 6 year old girl whose house burned down in a bad fire. We bought some household items as well. She went to her first scrapbooking workshop and met up with her new friend, Steph! Here they are with one of their projects!

Jack participated in his first preschool Christmas program yesterday! He did so good!! I was very proud of him! He's been having separation problems again these past 2 weeks, so I was very happy that he stood up on stage and performed so nicely!! I don't have any pictures from that, I was videotaping for Chris (and Macy) since he had to work. My mom and I went to watch him. :)

I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year! I probably won't get to blog until after the big day!!

Some projects

2007-12-09T17:48:00.000-05:00

Here are some recent projects I completed.

I did this chalkboard easel for the Creative Cafe project at memory lane pa last Saturday. Such an easy, fun project!

I had a few leftover boards, so I made this little snowman sign. I will let the kids write "Santa Stop Here" or something like that!

I made this little cone Christmas tree with the ILove2Create December kit. It was inspired by the tag trees they have at Starbucks right now!

This ornament also used the IL2C December kit. I put some of the fantasy fibers inside the bulb and then used MM foil and flocking rub ons on the outside.

I hope everyone had a nice weekend. It is freezing rain here now. yuck!

Snow!!

2007-12-05T13:45:00.000-05:00

Some recent layouts!!

I took this picture way back in 2001!! Chris and I went to Atlantic City for our anniversary. That's what we did every year before we had kids! I remember this particular year, our room had a bidet! I have pictures of that too, but won't post that! LOL

I loved this picture I captured of the sea gull! I did the background with many different Radiant Rain sprays!! I just love those!! The cardstock started as pink!

This is the last layout I did before my mojo left me!

Here's a really quick one of Jack on his 3rd birthday in December. I added some texture to the background by stamping with a piece of plastic canvas. This didn't turn out like I had pictured in my head, but it's another one for the books!

And here's one I did with the December ILove2Create December kit. It featured DCWV papers, Making Memories foil and flocking kit and fantasy fibers. I made the "JOY" by ironing the fantasy fibers into a sheet, stamping the letters on them and then cutting them oput. These are pictures from last Christmas.

That's it for now! It's snowing here!! Have a great day!!

The tree is up!!!

2007-12-02T17:59:00.000-05:00

We went and got our tree today! I picked a different kind this year. I am usually a Fraser Fir girl and decided that I wanted to be different! So, we got a Concolor (white fir) this year!! It is so pretty! It's got a whitish color to it's needles and has a citrus pine scent . . . mmmmmmmm!!!

Chris put on the lights and the kids and I decorated it. I love how the lights really make it look white in the pics! I have to get pine roping yet tomorrow to finish our mantle. I need to pick up some fake snow for my village set too. The candles for the windows are somewhere up in the attic, so I'll need to brave that yet tonight!

We rearranged the furniture this year so we could put the tree right in front of the window. In our 7 1/2 years here, we've always put it to either side of the fireplace. But, I love seeing a full view of Christmas trees in the windows from outside and I wanted us to have that this year!! It looks a little funny since we're not used to it, but with the tree, it looks beautiful!!

I will be posting some new layouts this week sometime too!!

Thanks for reading!

It's done!!!!!

2007-11-17T11:08:00.000-05:00

I am done reorganizing my scraproom!!!! I love it!!! It is so inspiring in there now!! So clean!! I have moved things around so now my main desk space has so much more room!! Although, I will probably still end up working in a 6x6 inch space, that always seems to happen when I'm creating!! All sorts of stuff gets piled up on my desk and cuts into the work area! I think the room is about 15 feet x 15 feet.

So, here it is!!! The pics aren't that great because of the sun that comes in.

The view when you walk into the room. On the wall to the right, that you can't see, that is where my Expedit is.

More of the main desk area. I store my large files full of patterned paper under my desk. There are also extra ink pads and background stamps down there. I'm probably going to go back to Ikea and get the railing system to hang above my desk, to hang little pots of trims and buttons in. That will free up even more desk space!

Here's the kid area. That is their storage tower there. I have black tray tables that they pull out and set up when they want to do some crafting! I'm going to get a bunch of black frames to put pics in above the futon.

You also see my Cricut station there. I wanted the Ikea Sonne cart for this, but it was discontinued. I came across this corner tv stand at Walmart and I love it even more and it's black!! The Sonne was white!

More storage area, besides all the storage bins under the desks. I could easily use another Expedit, but it wouldn't fit!! I stuck an old dresser in the closet. It houses cardmaking supplies, Sizzix dies, completed projects and so much more! I had to keep the Scrapworks BayBox albums in there, they don't fit in the Expedit. I have more completed albums in my bedroom that I need to remember to bring down into there! I need to reorganize the shelf in that closet again! It's looking a little messy!

There is also a closet to the left when I walk in the door. It's a disaster in there right now! I need to clean that out and will store some more stuff in there!!

Thanks for looking!! Have a great weekend, we don't have many plans here!! A nice relaxing weekend!

Awful blogger!!!

2007-11-13T22:49:00.000-05:00

Ugh, I have been a horrible blogger!!

What have I been up to lately? Not too much!! We've started going to the gym several times a week, either just the two of us or as a family. It's been fun! I think I can finally say that Jack has outgrown his separation anxiety! He begged to go with me to the gym today, to play in their kid area! So, I gave in, a little worried, and he was wonderful!!

My friend, Tracy asked me if I could take some pictures of her and her family for their Christmas cards. So, on Sunday, the kids and I went to do that. We stopped at Daniel Boone Homestead first but they were closed because of it being Veteran's Day, so we hit our local park instead! Little did we know that the area we spent at least an hour in was private property. We got the hint when they sent 2 dogs out after us! LOL Nice dogs, at least!! I took 518 pictures!! All on AV priority mode!! Go me!!! We got some good ones! I can't take credit for the posing, Tracy did that, but all the camera settings were mine!!

Yesterday, she sent me some of her favorites, so I picked my fave and scrapped it! It was nice inspiration to scrap something or someone that I don't normally scrap!! Change is good!

She has such a photogenic family, doesn't she? Very patient too!

I did this one for my LSS as well. It's not my favorite, but the mojo was seriously lacking at that point!

And, I just did this one tonight. That cool circle felt trim is from the new Creative Cafe from Creative Imaginations! Fab stuff!
My layouts tend to be left sided dominant lately! LOL

Thanks for reading!! I've got a lot of catching up to do with my blog hopping!! I am seriously behind!! Hopefully I can do that within the next few days!!

PageMaps and ILove2Create

2007-11-05T09:02:00.000-05:00

Good Monday morning!! Did last week just fly by or what??

I've got lots 'o stuff to share this morning!!

First, I was asked to do a sketch interp for the PageMaps November sketches. I had a lot of fun doing it!! I just love this picture!!

The ILove2Create November kit features Websters Pages and velour!! What a fun technique!! The velour comes in sheets that you can run through your printer or do so much more with it!! I printed on it, put it through my Expression, embossed it with my iron, spritzed it with Radiant Rains, and stamped on it!! So much fun!! I'm definately going to need more!! It adds such a great touch!! Check out the website for more info!!
This first layout is actually my first sort of "hybrid" layout. The large scalloped circle is from the 2 Peas October Orange kit by Jennifer Pebbles. That kit is awesome!! I think I'm going to be using it some more!! It's so me!!

Here are a few other creations!

Thanks for taking a peek at them!!

So, we finally got all the model train stuff moved out of my scraproom!! Woot!! I rearranged a bit and am now going through my IKEA catalog to pick out what else I need from there!! I think we may try to head there on Friday!! Yay!! I can't wait for it to be all finished!!

Have a great week, friends!! Thanks for stopping by!

Halloween pictures!!

2007-11-03T11:31:00.000-04:00

I'm finally getting around to posting the kids Halloween pictures!!

Macy had a parade at school on Wednesday. Jack and I went to watch her. It was so cute seeing all the kids dressed up!

Macy went home with a friend that day, they had early dismissal, and Jack had a little friend over to play! Notice that they both have their Crocs on the wrong feet!

Halloween night we went trick or treating with the neighbors. Jack and I stopped a little sooner than the rest because his little legs were getting tired! Macy continued on with the neighbors!

I could not get a pic of the 2 of them together! Macy was Minnie Mouse and Jack was Woody from Toy Story. I guess he is being a tough sheriff!!

They had a great time!! I was so glad that Jack had preschool the following day!! I forgot to put the candy up high Halloween night, so Jack got up early and got into it and had a bunch of candy for breakfast!! I feel so bad for the teachers that day!!

Have a great weekend!! Not much planned here! I will post some new layouts on my next post!

Fall Fun!!

2007-10-30T21:38:00.000-04:00

It's such a wonderful time of year!! So many fun things to do!!

Saturday, I took a fabulous photography class with Karen Russell at memory lane, pa!! Wow, she was fantastic!! She explained everything in such an easy to understand manor!! I have been taking pictures on manual (well, aperture priority) mode since then!! I love it!!! I still have a lot to learn, but it's so fun!! Hey, I may even sit down and read my manual!

Sunday, the kids and I went to Wilcox Farms and did the kid corn maze, the hay bale maze and play area! They had a blast!! I've never gone in a corn maze without Chris and I must admit that I was a little worried if I'd be able to find my way out, but it was easy! There were only 6 check points and we got all of them but one. I let the kids start off and didn't realize that the first point was right at the beginning, so we past it and by the time we were done, they didn't want to go back in and find it! They were just busting to get onto the huge play gym!

Last night, we carved our pumpkin. The kids loved playing in the guts! We even roasted the pumpkin seeds for the first time. Mmmm, now those are yummy!!! We finished them off this afternoon!

I took the kids over to my parents in their costumes tonight. They looked so cute! I'm going to try to get a pic of them together again tomorrow. Jack will not stand next to Macy! LOL I will keep trying though and post my success!!

Macy's school is having their Halloween parade in the morning! So, Jack and I will watch that and take pictures!! They also have early dismissal and she's going to go home with her friend, Lydia, who lives 2 blocks away. Jack is having his little girlfriend over tomorrow to play too, while her mommy goes to her brothers Halloween party at school!! Chris asked him tonight if she was cute, he said "yes". LOL My little man!!

We had a few trick or treaters tonight! The kids are so excited to go out tomorrow night! We're walking around with our neighbors! We hope to get back in time to hand out some candy too!!

Have a great day!! Did ya notice I changed my music for the occasion?

Hi!

2007-10-25T09:07:00.000-04:00

Hi there!! Thanks for all the congrats on the previous post!! My aunts and dad were happy to see that, with both my Grandmom and me in there!! I think they went out looking for the issue!

Been busy here!! It's so nice having Chris home more often!! Tuesday the 2 of us went out for lunch and to Borders for some browsing and coffee. We have to be careful though, it could get really expensive having him home and Jack in school!! But, it is SO worth it!!

I've been busy working on the November ILove2Create kit! It features Websters Pages papers and some fun unique embellishments plus inkjet printable velour paper. I also did an example with the project kit this month. That is an 8x8 Maya Road chipboard album that I made into a 2008 calendar. Such a great idea for a gift, but I think I'm gonna keep mine!

I've also been asked to be on the design team for my favorite LSS, memory lane, pa. So, I've been busy creating for there and a class I am going to teach there next month.

We got our new windows in the kitchen on Tuesday. They look fabulous and make the kitchen look about 50% better, I just can't wait till it's all completed, it will be dynomite (said in my best JJ voice!).

Have a great day!!!

What I've been waiting for!!

2007-10-18T21:07:00.000-04:00

The Nov/Dec issue of Scrapbooks Etc finally arrived today!!! I have been waiting for this for the last 2 1/2 months!!! I was so excited back in August when I got a call for a layout I submitted to them!! It was one of my scrapbook goals for the last 2 years to be picked up by Scrapbooks Etc and it happened!!! Here it is!! I still can't believe it's in there!! It's not the best picture, but I was too lazy to scan it!

This layout is so dear to me. It was my way of coping with my Grandmother's death, she died in January 2006. She made sure I had my fastnachts every year!!! I betcha she is smiling down on me right now!!

In preschool news, I hate to say this fearing I may jinx myself, but Jack has been good for the last 3 class days!!! I hope we have finally gotten over the hump!! He has made some friends in his class now, so I know that is helping tons!! I picked him up on Tuesday and he was talking about Molly, she was the leader for the day, "Molly is my best friend" he was saying!!! Awwwwww, melts my heart!! I asked him to show me her today, but he said later that she wasn't at school today. He also has another girlfriend and one boy that he talks about too!! My little guy is growing up!!!

While he was at school, I did some shopping. I needed a new laundry basket and also decided I was going to do over my bathroom. It is time to switch to the fall/winter ensemble and I am getting sick of what I have, so I decided to get all new!! Everything is brand new, in the color scheme of brown and aqua. I even cleaned from top to bottom in there, scouring all the tile and the ceiling!! We have a closet bathroom, seriously, I don't think I can lay down in it, not even on the diagonal! I guess big bathrooms were not the thing back in the 50's!! But, it's so small and we don't have an exhaust fan in there, add in Chris's long showers and there is a lot of steam and then the mildew shows up on the ceiling, yuck!! So, I scrubbed all that off with a bleach/h20 combo and bleached my brand new comfy jammies in the process!! Silly me forgot to take them off the back of the door while I was scrubbing. There are a few spots of rusty orange on the brown now. But hey, the bathroom is sparkling and I like rusty orange!

We've got family night at Macy's school tomorrow. We're doing pumpkin painting. It should be fun, she's been talking about it for weeks!

I think Jack finally fell asleep, so I'm going to mosey up to my scraproom and see if I can find some creativity!!

Have a great weekend!!

Lunch date!

2007-10-16T09:12:00.000-04:00

It was nice having Chris home all day yesterday!! I was able to run to the store and just get in and get out, not having to worry about little Jack hands getting into things!

Jack has preschool today, so the two of us are going to go out for a nice lunch after Chris drops him off! Very excited about that!! If time permits, we're going to do a little shopping too!

I'm hoping Jack will do well at school. He did great last week, just about 2 minutes of crying on Tuesday and nothing on Thursday! My sweet little guy!! I went to pick him up last week and he must've spotted me. I heard him telling everyone "I see my Mommy out there". Too cute!! He's so little, yet so big!! I think he'll do even better with Chris dropping him off since he's not as attached to Daddy as he is to Mommy!!

Not much to say today!! I'll close with a layout that I did for ScrapGal. Our theme this month is pretend. I took a little twist to the theme and scrapped about my little quirks, which are embarrassing by the way so if you want to read them, you will have to squint!! No way I'm typing them out!! It was a lot of fun to do!! I love doing layouts about my self that I sort of poke fun of me!!! This is my last monthly layout for them, as my term ends this month! I was lucky to get 2 terms, and I will miss designing for them, but there is a great new inspiration coming in with the new team!!! :)

Have a great Tuesday!

It's the weekend!

2007-10-14T10:41:00.000-04:00

Happy weekend!!

Thank you for all of your birthday wishes!!

Just to let you know, I did cancel my dentist appointment and went shopping on my birthday!! I didn't find much for the kids. I was disappointed in the new Childrens Place lines and everything I wanted at Gymboree was out of size 6 and 3T!! I do have to hit the Gymboree in my mall today, I have more Gymbucks to use and they expire today. It is a sin if you don't take full advantage of your Gymbucks! LOL

I found 3 shirts and a pair of new jammies for me at Kohl's. Kohl's has the best jammies! So warm and comfy! I also got more makeup and hair wax (which I've desperately needed!) All that courtesy of my parents for my birthday! Gotta love them!

Now that Rock of Love is over, I need to find another reality show. While flipping through the channels the other day, I thought I caught a glimpse of my favorite rocker guy!! So, I researched it!! The show is called something like the next greatest rock band. AND, Johnny Rzeznik from the Goo Goo Dolls is one of the judges - be still my heart!!! How awesome is that!! I think it premiered this past Friday night on FOX but I was at Bunko, so I need to find a rerun and then watch it from now on!!!

Chris had his last day of work on Friday!! Yay!! He resigned from his ED nurse manager position and is taking a full time job (instead of per diem) on the medical helicopter. He will also be part time as ED nurse educator at the hospital. He will work a ton less hours now, get paid for any extra hours worked now that he will not be salaried anymore and be home with us more!! So exciting!! I am so happy that this all worked out so we could do it! It will also be nice that it will just be the two of us on Tuesdays and Thursdays when Jack is in preschool and he has off! Imagine that, just the 2 of us!!

The kids painted their pumpkins this week! We are going to get more hopefully today.

Check out these lips of concentration!! So cute!! Now I may have to do a duplicate layout like the one I did of Macy below!!

We were hoping to go do the whole fall fun things today, but all the good places are closed on Sundays. So, I'm not sure what we're going to do. Chris just left for a little bike ride. I would've loved for us all to go but my ears and nose would've been frozen solid by the time we were done, so I got out of it! LOL

I'm having a little crisis because I cannot find the battery charger for my camera!! I don't know how this happened because I have the perfect put away spot for it!! A kid must have walked away with it at some point. I hope I can find it, my power is getting low!!! ACK!!! I don't even want to think of what a new charger might cost!!

Alright, I need to get dressed and cleaned up!! Have a wonderful Sunday!!

Happy Birthday to me!

2007-10-10T20:33:00.000-04:00

Yeah, so tomorrow is my birthday. I'll be 33. How did I get to be 33? Didn't I just turn 21? Not that 33 is old, it's just that I never thought I could be that old!

So, what am I doing to celebrate, you ask? Hmm, I'm supposed to go to the dentist at 1:45 and have a filling done. boohoo!! Yes, a filling!! My 2nd filling of my entire life and I am to have it filled on my birthday! UGH!! But, we have a case of "the froat" as we like to call it, going around in the house. I have had "the froat" for the last 4 days or so. That's what Macy used to call it before she knew that it was really "throat", we've adapted it into our medical terminology!

I'm not sure if I can keep my mouth open wide for the amount of time it takes to do a filling. They tell me it's about 15 minutes, but I haven't had one (and my first one) done since I was 21. Do you know that I cried then? I am lucky that I have good teeth and never knew what the drilling, etc was! I sure hope I don't cry tomorrow. Maybe it's okay for a 21 year old, but a 33 year old? Ha! So, I may call tomorrow morning and reschedule, depending how the "froat" is in the morning!

Macy has already made me my present. It's sitting in on the living room table but I am not to look! My parents gave me my card on Sunday and it is all prepped and ready to be opened tomorrow! I told Chris I didn't need anything since I told him months ago when I bought my Cricut Expression that that could be my birthday present. It wouldn't surprise me, though, if he came home with some flowers. :)

Some new layouts!

2007-10-08T23:01:00.000-04:00

Hope everyone had a nice weekend!!

Saturday I got to crop with a great group of friends and Sunday Chris and I had a date day!! Can't get much better than that, huh?

Here are 3 of my latest layouts.

The last one I did for an ad challenge I'm hosting at ScrapGal.

Thanks for looking!! Have a great week!

Woohoo!!!

2007-10-05T14:55:00.001-04:00

Well, we signed the paperwork on our new kitchen today and it's on it's way to the cabinetmaker!!! So excited!!! :)

Here is the style of cabinet we picked out. I'm not sure if that's the exact color, but it is close. I think we also picked out a glaze to go over top, sort of like a chocolate color.

He is also custom building us a cabinet to fit into an old set of small steps that we have in here too. The doors will match the rest of the cabinets too.

We also decided on a quartz countertop over Corian. I'm thinking something like this.

We need to pick out the exact countertop color yet as well as the ceramic tile floor. They will all be neutral.

I'm hoping to paint the walls a nice lighter rusty orange color. We'll also be getting a new dishwasher and over the stove microwave.

The new windows for the kitchen were being ordered today. We will be getting replacement windows in the whole house when spring rolls around. We want to make sure there aren't any unexpected expenses that arise with the kitchen, plus winter is not a good time for getting new windows!

So, we are SO excited!!! I can't wait to pick out the rest of the colors and go shopping for a new light fixtures, faucets and handles! Woohoo!!!

Exciting times!!

2007-10-04T09:21:00.000-04:00

Lots of fun things going on here at the household!

Here are some pics from my cousin's wedding on Saturday. They aren't the best, but you get the idea!!

(clockwise from top left: Jack and baby Joscelyn - yep, he loves her!, my great Uncle and cousin (his daughter), Macy and Mandy (her cousin, the bride's daughter), my Grandmother and other great Uncle, my cousin Amy and the girls!)

The 3 sisters: my Aunt Jean, Aunt Barb and my mom. Man do they look more alike than ever! They would probably kill me if they knew I was posting this on the internet, but, they don't know I have a blog, unless someone rats me out!! Hey, they probably don't even know what a blog is! LOL

Me and the kids glittered pumpkins on Sunday. They may not be like Martha's, but they had an awesome time doing it!! I used my Making Memories glitters that I bought so long ago and never took out of the package! LOL

We also made pipe cleaner people that day!

AND, Macy has been practicing on the teeny tiny 12" bike without any training wheels!! She got it!!! She can ride the sidewalk and not touch down with her feet!! Of course, her knees almost hit the handlebars and the seat is cranked as high as it will go, but we thought it best for her to practice on this one first!!

Now we need to transition to her 20" bike!! That will probably be rough!! It is pretty big. I did put a wanted out on Freecycle to see if anyone has a 16" that they'd be willing to part with, but no bites.

Have a great day!!

Sniff, sniff

2007-10-01T20:52:00.001-04:00

Yes, that was me last night while watching the season finale of Rock of Love!! I was so happy to see that skanky butt Heather gone!! How nasty!! Ewww!!

I teared up with Jes and the diabetes scene.

I teared up at the end when Bret picked Jes.

I teared up after I went searching around the internet to find out that the whole thing was like a total set up and they aren't even together!!

How could I be so lame!! LOL I really thought they seemed perfect for each other!! If that was acting, dang they are good!

I am still looking forward to next week's reunion show to find out some more juicy details!

Yeah, I nixxed the Desperate Housewives season premiere to watch Rock of Love! Ha! I flipped a bit in between commercials and I know I can catch up if I decide to start watching again.

I heard, in my searchings for dirt last night, that Tommy Lee is the next Rock of Love guy. Goodness these guys get around!!

Any other watchers? Tell me your thoughts!!

I have yet to download the wedding pics from my camera. I really didn't get many, and what I did get, I'm sure they aren't very good. I don't even think I got a picture of Amy and Brian!

I did do a layout last night too, but haven't scanned it yet, but since I hate to post without pictures, here are my projects for the ILove2Create October kit featuring Friendly Plastic as the technique and American Crafts papers!

1st leaf pile of the season!!

2007-09-29T11:37:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we raked up our first leaf pile!! It was pretty small, but still a ton of fun for the kids!! Our yard manages to collect leaves from everyone on our street! In a few days, the pile will probably grow to about 10 times the size it was yesterday! Right now it is mostly leaves from our magnolia tree, they don't get real pretty like the oaks that line the street.

Can you guess what prompted this reaction?

They both wanted to rake at the same time, Macy won the rake getting contest and Jack was not happy! Needless to say, neither of them raked! LOL

The last pic will hopefully be the subject of my scrapping tonight!!

Hey, if you have a minute, go check out the ILove2Create blog. Melynda uploaded some of the DT projects for the October kit!! The latest post contains some of my projects with Friendly Plastic!!

Have a great weekend!! I'll try and share pics from my cousin's wedding tomorrow!!

I guess it's time for an update!!

2007-09-27T08:54:00.001-04:00

Almost a week has flown by since my last post!! I am really getting bad about updating!!

Nothing too exciting this week. I am working on organizing the toys and getting Jack's room painted. I was on a roll yesterday until I ran out of paint! I also managed to bust the handle right off of the roller! Have I ever said how much I dislike painting?

Jack did good at school on Tuesday! He said they had ice cream for snack, yum!!! I guess I'd love school if I could have ice cream for snack! Today should be a good day for him too! He has speech therapy this morning as well. Last week we started working on his "f"s. He usually uses p's for f's. Tricky sound!

Macy is doing good at school too! She is just about done with all of her upper and lower case recognition. It's funny, she knows them but still will not write her name correctly. She still uses all capitals even after having to do tracer pages for homework since the beginning of the school year! I tell her every morning on the way to school to make sure she writes it the proper way. She just grumbles!

Not too many plans for this weekend. My cousin is getting remarried on Saturday, so we have that. Chris has to work the majority of the weekend. We may try and do something Sunday afternoon as long as the weather permits. I think it's supposed to get back to fall like temps again. I've had enough of this almost 90 degree weather in the fall!

Haven't had much mojo lately. Hoping it comes back soon! I got the October ILove2Create kit yesterday. It is so pretty, filled with American Crafts goodness and a neat technique! I have to work on that tonight!

Here are 2 layouts that I did this week. Can you believe I did both of them in the same day? One while Jack was at preschool and the other after they went to bed!!

Have a great weekend!! Any fun plans?

More new layouts

2007-09-21T22:31:00.000-04:00

I don't really have much to report but I need to update so here are 2 new layouts!

The first I did for a challenge at ScrapGal and the second I just finished up tonight! I've had the design in my head for about a week and finally got it down on paper! The entire background is actually white, but my scanner does not care for white! The right side is also not snipped off like that!

OUT FOR PUBLICATION!

Have a great weekend!! Not a whole lot planned here, it is going to be hot again! I was hoping we could do some fall related activities but that just doesn't seem right when the temp will be in the high 80's!

And the saga continues . . .

2007-09-18T10:03:00.000-04:00

Ahhh, the joy of homeownership!! Are you sick of hearing about my house tales? If so, just scroll down a few paragraphs! LOL

So, we need to get some new piping in our master bath. Our bathtub drain is emptying SO slow and it seems as if the little drain mechanism thingy is stuck in the shut position and the plumber can't get it open. So, we need it replaced, that is not exactly easy with a 50 something year old house! The access panel is small and the piping is very tight with no room to actually get the small old piece out! So, that means he needs to go through our kitchen ceiling to get to it! We're also having him check to see if there is a leak in there, I have this kinda wierd sense that there is one. He's supposed to come do that today, so here I sit waiting! UGH!!! I'm good with it though! It needs to be done and what a better time to do it than right before remodeling the kitchen!! I'd be so ticked if we put a ton of money into the kitchen and then it happened!! Eek!!

We also got measured for the new kitchen windows last night, just waiting back for the full estimate on cabinets, countertop and floors to know if we can replace all the windows in the house!

It really is exciting though!! I just wish I could fastforward a few months to the completed project!!

Okay, enough of that!!

I've got some scrapping to do but have been feeling mojo-less. I think I may try to find a cool ad for inspiration and try to jumpstart myself!!

Jack has school today, I'm thinking it will go well at dropoff! Keeping my fingers crossed though!!

I also just want to put a plug out there for 1-800-contacts!! They are so good and inexpensive!! This will be our second year ordering from them and they couldn't be nicer!! They are on the ball, you can place an order and they'll call you within 5 minutes if something is wrong! There was a problem with Chris's prescription being expired, they called to let us know. I emailed them about 10 minutes ago to tell them to process my order without his, and they called me about 3 minutes later just to confirm!! Gotta love that!! So, if you wear contacts, check 'em out!!

I'll leave you with the 2 layouts I did for the ScrapGal September newsletter. The theme is change.

Have a great day!!