Mojo finally strikes!!

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!!

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

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!

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!

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!

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!!!

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!!!