craziness of the season

I can't believe that it's been 9 days since I posted last. Where has the time gone?

Hubby arrived home a few days earlier than planned, although he did get stuck there overnight. The driver that was supposed to arrive to get them wasn't allowed through because of a road closure (or the fact that he didn't have chains on his tires, I can't remember). He did get home on Tuesday though, which made us all really happy. Now, if the people at work would give him the same benefits as the other 2 guys that went with him he might have actually been able to be at both boys holiday events at school. Maybe next time.

Our Christmas shopping is done. Well, with the slight exception of some stocking stuffers. Our gifts for family back in MI have been wrapped, packed and shipped out. Now I just cross my fingers and hope that UPS gets them there sometime before Wednesday. Tonight the hubby and I sat in our room and wrapped gifts for the boys. We are all done with what we bought for them. There is still a stack of things to wrap that my grandma had shipped directly to our house though. Our Christmas cards were mailed out as well.

Nothing at all intriguing has happened though. Just waking up to the same stuff day in and day out. The boys are out of school for the holidays though, I'm hoping to take them to the San Diego Zoo. Our landlords gave us free passes and they expire at the end of the month. I bet when the day comes to go the boys won't want to. lol They didn't want to do anything on our drive out to CA. Wish me luck. lol

I did have a chance to get a couple layouts done. I want to try to get some of the big events of this past year scrapped before I forget the details. I suppose if I don't get a chance I should get a journal and write it all out.

Our trip out to AZ.

Anthony playing in the snow in MI.

Anthony's 5th birthday.

Thanksgiving 2008.

Digi-Dare #104

I was finally able to do a layout for the digi-dares. You can find this weeks challenge here.

Getting down to the last details of the move. Of course, as luck would have it, I have a horrible runny nose and have been sneezing up a storm. I'm not sure whether it's allergies or a cold, either way I'm miserable.

Autumn Blossoms

A new collab from Amanda Heimann & Pineapple Plantation Designs is available at The Digi Chick today and it's 20% off today only! For good measure, here's my latest layout using Autumn Blossoms (plus a few other things), click for full credits.

Rain, rain

Tommy's soccer game was canceled due to all the rain we got from Hanna. His playdate with L was also canceled, I guess she had wanted to have a picnic, so they will try next weekend.

We ran out to the store today and of course the commissary was super busy, doesn't help that they were running the case lot sale this weekend. Thankfully we only needed a handful of things and got done fairly quickly; going there give me a panic attack.

We've successfully sold our large Fisher-Price toybox and Hummer Power Wheel on Craigslist in the past week. Now for the stroller & car seat. I also have a few things that I need to get listed on ebay, a couple of I Love Lucy barbies, my old iPod and some video games.

I finished this layout yesterday. It took a while to figure out the look I wanted, I changed the layouts to black and white, but struggled with out to set it up on the page. Then I came across Nikki's Stripped template and I immediately knew that was it. So, using Amanda & Melissa's Autumn Pop kit and a few other goodies, I have another cute layout of my favorite middle man. :)

I'm also a guest for Karah Fredricks this month. I love her stuff, I have an overflowing folder full of her stuff. I wish I had some motivation to scrap though! lol The layout I just did took me all day to get the way I wanted it - and I used a template! lol Maybe tomorrow. I've got to knock some things out though...near the end of the month I'll be busier and might not get a chance to just sit & scrap.

a new week ahead

A new week starts tomorrow. We had a pretty busy weekend with my MIL, SIL and nephew arriving Friday evening. Saturday we went to the National Marine Corps Museum, to eat at iHop and then on to Target. MIL and SIL left this morning before I got up. So we've been relaxing inside today. It's really hot here lately and I can't bear to go outside, tomorrow it's supposed to be hotter.

I got some new layouts printed out from scrapbookpictures.com...it's always so cool to see my stuff in print! I do wish though that I had tried a different type of paper, something with some texture and depth to it. Now I need a few more pages for my 12x12 book. I hit up Michaels after Target yesterday and grabbed some refills, but when I got home I realized they are for the wrong book. Figures, lol.

I'm on Blythe Evans CT as a guest for this month. She has a great new spiral bound alpha out in her store. I also just finished a layout with her Iced Mocha Latte paper pack.



How did my boys grow so fast?! If you are looking for a some new goodies, check out her stuff! She's got two stores, one at OScraps and one at Blythe Evans.com.

So, I need to go get dressed. I'm headed back to Michaels to return those refill pages...it doesn't help any that they threw in an ad that said today from 4-6 present the coupon and get 20% (or was it 25%)
off your order, including sale priced items. So, I think I'm going to go and get the right refill pages, look for another 12x12 album and some cute embellishments that are hopefully on sale to add to my stash. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

{100}

This is my 100th blog post! Wow...

So, I haven't been on here as much as normal, I didn't realize until Monday that my MIL and SIL would be here this weekend to bring my nephew to stay with us for another 2 weeks. I haven't been able to get into a routine with getting the housework done so I've tried to put off all my online activities until I get some of that done.

Currently I am taking a break from cleaning. I just finished cleaning up my bathroom. I hate cleaning bathrooms, I will take a mountain of laundry or dishes over the bathrooms. I would even be willing to cut back on some of our fun spending if it meant I could have someone come in to clean my bathrooms. Yuck! What can I say...my hubby didn't get a housewife. lol

I've been trying to find a place to get a logo designed that won't cost me an arm and a leg. Holly McCaig Designs has some nice pre-made logos that I like. They are less than $100, so I figured that I could get by with that for now and once I started making some money get a new one designed. But...there's this part of me that thinks I should just get the one I want designed from the beginning, I'm just afraid of the cost.

I got another layout done. :) 2 in one week, I must be on a roll. lmao I really like the way this one turned out, it took me hours to finally decide that a clean look was best. It was even posted in the Gallery Standouts Thread at DST! Which is a first for me, I wish I had seen the comment on it before the thread disappeared so I could thank the person who posted it in there, it really meant alot to me that someone noticed my layout.

Well, I feel like there are a million things left to do so I should remove myself from the pull of my computer and go get something accomplished. Plus the grocery shopping is waiting too, man I dislike grocery shopping too. We always spend too much money and never have enough food.

Relaxing Saturday

So, today is Saturday. We spent the day doing nothing. We watched Definitely, Maybe and played games. Tom left on an infomercial that made me want to order the Malibu Pilates chair. We picked what we could out of the pantry since no one wanted to go to the store.

I took some time to start cleaning off my laptop harddrive. I need to get my photos all backed up along with my layouts and kits. Once I have a fresh back-up to work with I am going to try to run the EHD through the router and see if it works the way it's supposed to. If it does I'm going to do the same thing with the printer.

My goal for this upcoming week is to find enough South Beach phase 1 recipes as I can and make a grocery list that hopefully won't break the bank. I wanted to start it this week since J isn't staying with us this week, but I just can't get everything together in a day.

I did do a layout today. I was nice to lose myself in scrapping again. Tomorrow I think we will do much of the same things we did today, though I think I will do a load of laundry, get everyone a bath (or shower) and try to run to the grocery for some fresh fruit and things for the week.

{slip 'n slide}

So, Tom & I agreed a few months ago that while the cheapo pools are fun for the kiddos we just don't take care of it like we should. Besides we don't have any time to fix the grass that would inevitably die underneath. So, we agreed on a slip 'n slide for this summer. We finally went out to get it on Friday afternoon. Target only had 2 kinds and we weren't in the mood to go running around anymore so we bought the inflatable raft style with the little "lagoon" at the end. Jason and Tommy were a bit disappointed since they had hoped for the shark pool or something like that. Once we got it to the house and set up they all had so much fun.

Anthony is unsure of running & sliding down it, but he will crawl to the end under the shower of water. Alex doesn't have the balance or grace to run & slide, so I'm glad that he doesn't attempt it, he likes to crawl don the slide and dive into the pool. I took over 300 photos that afternoon, I deleted quite a few, I think I'm down to 270 now. There are still some more I need to go through. I did get a chance to edit some of them so I will try to post those in a minute.

On the digi side of things...I created my first layout as a team member for Amanda Heimann. I used the Tiki Tiki Boom Boom kit for it. I've been really good on not spending money on supplies too, only $1 since payday! lol I think that's a record for me, but I really do have more than I have used. So, until I get a bunch more layouts done, no more hefty spending on digi supplies; but who can resist the $1 days some shops have! lol :)

And, now onto the photos...I will post them as thumbnail size so that it won't take the page sooo long to load. Hopefully they will look good enough to click on and see the larger version. Once I get my new watermark/logo done up I will begin to post them on my photography blog too.