Week in the Life -Day 1

I'm really excited to be doing Ali Edward's A Week in the Life project. I've wanted to do it before but never did because my house was too messy or our week was too boring or too busy. This time, I just decided to do it. It has made for some creative shots, hee! Seriously though, the perspective I've gained since Mickey's accident has made me realize that if I wait for the perfect time, it will never be the right time.

So, here's some photos from Day 1!

It poured down rain this morning, gotta love late July in Oregon!

My normal breakfast. I'd already taken my vitamins so they didn't make the shot.

Mickey's first day of soccer. He did it last year and is loving it even more this year.

My niece Claire came to watch and she and Audrey shared a snack. In other words, Audrey at all her cantalope!

Afterwards, Mickey requested playground time. Last year he wouldn't participate in soccer the first day and the second, he'd only do it if I was sitting out on the field. On the third day I told him that if he wanted to play on the playground afterwards, he'd have to not be shy and do what the coaches wanted. After soccer today he ran up to me and said, "I wasn't shy at all, Mom! Can I play on the playground?". It's so funny that he remembered that from last year!

After soccer we ran errands and Aud fell asleep on the way home as it was way past nap time. So, I caught a shot of us in the reflection of our car's window. Yay! I'm in a pic!

We ate dinner outside, it was Breakfast for Dinner and the kids helped make it.

After dinner we had some clean up time. Partly because if the house is going to get photographed I ought to at least try and clean it and partly because we're hosting my niece's college grad party on Sunday. Fortunately, Mickey still loves to vacuum.

Story time for Miss Aud. I had Mickey go get Daddy and tell him to bring the camera. This is how we sit every night for story, unless Daddy is reading both of them a story. I'm sooooo glad I have this pic!

And, The Bachelorette! Andrew and I watch it, even when it's lame, and it's kind of become our thing. It's two hours long so I always try to find something productive to do during it. Wether it's scrapping or like last night, catching up on my blogs and doing a Studio Calico blog hop, I gotta do something!

I'm so excited that I've done so well, so far! It's only been a day and a half but I'm hopeful I can keep it up. :)

Are you doing Week in the Life???

Still Lovin' My iPhone!

I love the size of the Instagram prints, so fun to scrap with!

And, I've found that the very best place to print them is http://www.scrapbookpictures.com/!!! I'd always known that they had lots of square options for pictures. 3x3 is my current favorite for printing the majority of my Instagram photos and I get a 4x4 of ones I really love.

The thing I didn't know is that they carry the 4x5.33 size! Now, why is this important? Because it's the size that my regular camera on my iPhone takes! Woot!!! If I was going to order them at Costco I'd have to either place each photo on a 4x6 white canvas in Photoshop (time consuming!) or crop out part of my pictures (not acceptable!).

My current plan is to order my iPhone pics from http://www.scrapbookpictures.com/ monthly. I did that with June's iPhone pics and four out of the last five of my layouts have used them. Love that!

I'm still trying to get better about blogging the everyday stuff with these photos. I may start e-mailing the photos to myself or just figure out a schedule of uploading.

I like schedules.

I'm on a running training schedule, the Couch to 5K program and I have only one more training run left (Monday) until my first 5K on Tuesday. I'm pretty darn excited! :D I took a pic of myself with my iPhone while running. Couldn't resist! LOL!

I've done most of my runs on a treadmill in our garage. It's just easier with the kids.

We tried to go for a walk the other day and Aud wanted to ride her tricycle instead of get pushed in the stroller.

It was fun but it only lasted 10 minutes.

Here's a shot of the kids sleeping in the bed with me. Andrew had left pretty early that morning and both the kids had woken up with him. After he left, they decided to come sleep with me and actually fell asleep! This never happens, normally they just giggle and scuffle and make noise until I kick them out.

I wouldn't have been able to get this shot before because I would have woken them up getting up to grab my big camera. But, with my iPhone right there on my nightstand, I was able to get this sweet shot.

I love my iPhone!

Pink and Yellow!

Just poppin' in with some paper goodness in pink and yellow!

First up, my congrats card that I entered in the Paper Crafts Gallery Idol contest. There were over 1600 entries and shockingly, ;) mine didn't get picked as one of the 20 finalists. Hee! I still love it anyway. A gal commented on it in Flickr and said it was innovative. That made me soooo stinkin' happy that I really consider it a winner in it's own right. :)


My next little goodie is something I made with the new Authentique paper I picked up at Craft Warehouse the other weekend. I was at a Saturday crop with some of the Punky gals and we made a food/scrap run and found a big display of Authentique. It's Margie Romney-Aslet's new line and while I'm going to miss The Girl's Paperie (her old company) I'm thinking that Authentique will be able to make the pain a bit more bearable. Hee!
One of the coolest things about this line is the little die cuts. I have to admit, at first I was a bit bummed that they were die cuts and not stickers. Until I flipped them over, that is. She put a coordinating pattern on the back of her die cuts! So, lets say that you won't be able to use one that says "sing", well flip it over and you have a super cute base for another of the die cuts. This is just brilliant as it makes these so much more versatile!

I got a few papers from each line, some die cuts and the cute word stickers in each color. You'll be seeing more Authentique around here in no time. :)

Well, I'm off! I'm taking Mickey and Audrey to the local airport to meet and thank the LifeFlight crew that helped save him. Combine seeing a helicopter with watching the last space shuttle take off this morning on the news and my Little Man is one happy little dude.

Have a good one!

Happy 4th of July!!!

It's a great day to celebrate today! Not only do are we thankful for those who serve our country and keep us free, but there are a few other reasons we are celebrating around here, too!

~My nephew, Phillip and his wife, just welcomed a little girl to their family! Little Paige was born yesterday! It's very cool because Phillip is in the military and was able to come home for her birth!

~I made a fresh strawberry pie from scratch yesterday!!!

~I also ran 3.5 miles without stopping yesterday! This will be helpful when it comes time to eat the previously mentioned pie! ;)

~It's been two months exactly since Mickey's accident and every day I feel so very grateful that he's still here with us.

~The four of us went to Molalla to watch their parade this morning. Molalla's won out over Canby's because their parade is bigger and earlier in the day so it's a much more comfortable temperature!

The kids loved it! Audrey's favorite part was "tractors" and "gettin' candy". Mickey liked the boat and he thought the clowns were pretty funny too. They got a ton of candy but wouldn't go very far out to get it. Andrew and I would either walk them out into the street or toss it to them from the street if they wouldn't come with us. Too funny!

The funniest parts for me were the clowns, the Shriners cruisin' on matching four wheelers, the motorized port-a-potty (so freakin' funny!) and Mickey, seeing Ronald McDonald on a float, yelling out "He's real!!!". Couldn't stop laughing over that one! :D

I hope you all have a safe and happy 4th!!! :)

Dixie Pieces---Tropical Paradise!!!

Hey guys! This month the kit at Dixie Pieces is called Tropical Paradise! It is so bright and colorful and it just made me happy opening the box! :)

There is sooooo much in this kit (one of my favorite things about DP is how Sherry packs the goodies in there) that this time I thought I'd post the list of what's included.

Papers
(single sheets of 12x12 unless otherwise stated)
Basic Grey Lauderdale Rose Colored Glass (double sided)
Basic Grey Lauderdale SPF (double sided)
Basic Grey Lauderdale Sound Wave (double sided)
Fancy Pants Beach Babe Beach Bound (double sided)
Fancy Pants Beach Babe Fish Farm (double sided))
Pink Paislee Soiree Trellis (double sided)
Harmonie Vintage (double sided)
Echo Park Summer Days Rainbow (double sided)
Echo Park Summer Days Big Dots (double sided)
Bazzill Basics Cardstock -Intense Kiwi, Watermelon Sensation, Artisan Pool, Yam

Embellishments
Bella Blvd Black/White/Grey Alphabet Stickers
American Crafts Thickers Rocketeer Black Alphabet
Pink Paislee Printed Tissue Paper Lime Dots
Maya Road Watermelon Coaster Album
Zva Creative Pink Bracket Rhinestones
Cat Eye Pigment Ink in Surf
White Shipping Tags
Buttons Galore White
Maya Road Zipper White (1/2 Yard)
Teal Grosgrain Ribbon (1 Yard)

Tons of goodies!!! Here are the layouts I made with my kit this month. First up, a two-pager!!! I'd been wanting to scrap these pics of Aud trying to crawl forever and the striped Echo Park paper just screamed out to be used! It matches the onesie she's wearing almost perfectly!

Next up, I finally documented my love of Diet Mtn Dew in a can. If you've ever been cropping with me, you know that I always bring a little stash along with me. (Or not so little if it's going to be a few days!) I don't like coffee or tea so my normal way of getting caffeine in my system is to Dew it! LOL! I love, love, love the Pink Paislee tissue paper and I had such fun with making my buttons look like bubbles. :) I also loved how the Basic Grey paper looks so much like the pattern on my Mtn Dew can, meant to be I tell ya!

The last layout I made is another monochromatic one but it's all pink baby! My niece, Claire, was playing Candyland with Audrey over Spring Break and they were having so much fun. Aud can't play by the rules yet but with Claire, you don't need rules anyway! (Love that niece of mine!!!)

Finally, here are the cards I made with this kit. I love the cards I made this month. They are very simple (shocker, I know) but sooooo fun! This first one I wanted to do from the moment I opened my kit. The idea just popped into my head and it drove me nuts that I had to finish my layouts before I could start this card. I had to make sure I wasn't going to be punching any hearts out of what might become the center of a layout! LOL!

Finally, this card is my favorite. I love the zipper trim that was included and I wanted to make a sort of lollipop flower with it. I'd seen a lot of the twisty, spiral ones but I thought that the zipper would make a great edge for the circles of the lollipop flower. I am soooo happy with how it turned out. (However, I need to quit photographing my white backgrounded cards on white paper! Hee!)

So, there you have it, my creations for July using Dixie Pieces Tropical Paradise kit!

Oh, and I wanted to tell you guys, in lieu of specific challenges this month, the design team is going to be posting a layout made from a past kit every day for you to scrap lift! We're rotating days and my first day is tomorrow! :) For every one of these creations that you scraplift, you will receive an entry into the drawing this month for a store gift certificate! It's that easy! Just post your lifts to the gallery and link them to the appropriate threads by July 31st at 11:59pm PST! So, get scrappin'! :D

iPhone Love!!!

So, I finally talked myself into getting an iPhone. It's been something I've been thinking about for quite a few months now and with the $50 iPhone 3 offer, I finally jumped!

I love it! I've gotten quite a few apps, photography, games for me, games for the kids, facebook, pinterest, all sorts of goodies! I love it and my only regret is that I didn't get it sooner!

I really wanted it for a C25K app that I'd seen and more importantly I wanted it for taking photos. I was pretty sure that it would not only increase the amount of photos that I took of me and the kids but also increase the amount of photos I printed. I was right! It's so much easier to use. I still adore my big camera but when I use the Instagram app, I can take a pic of the kids, put a funky edit on it and then it's ready to print! They also take up less room on my computer. Bonus!

I also found a food/exercise tracker that I'm really happy with and I'm back on my way to losing weight.

It's really been helping me to keep track of stuff too. I'm one of those who forgets stuff if I don't write it down. It's especially bad lately because my sleeping is not doing so hot. I still wake up worried about the kids and have to go check on them and it takes me a while to get to sleep in the first place. No fun!

Anyway, now that I've figured out how to get my photos from my phone to my computer, I'll have more day to day blog posts. Yay!!! :)

Punky Sprouts & Best Creations!!!

We swapped with Best Creations this month! So much fun. I've got a soft spot in my heart for Best Creations for a couple of reasons. One, I've worked with two of the gals on their DT before (hi Kim! hi Nicole!) and I love those two! And two, when I worked at the Portland Scrapbook Expo doing make-n-takes we used Best Creations paper!

Here's my layout (it's actually going to be a wall hanging for Little Man) in it's entirety!

I started off with a piece of Punky Playground and I went all nuts on it! I traced a half inch border around the edge and sketched a circle in the upper left hand corner. Then I cut through those lines with my craft life and pulled off the first layer, exposing the corrugated portion and leaving a border and a moon.

I masked off the moon with scratch paper and misted the Playground with a dark blue shimmery mist.

Once my night sky dried, I used a pearlescent white paint and dabbed it on the moon to create a lumpy, craterous look.

I also sprayed the page of the album with green mist to create an earth.


I then used Best Creations’ awesome glitter paper, shape stickers, journaling spots, border stickers, and letter stickers to complete my layout.

Punky Sprouts items used: Punky Playground and the large cog page from the Trunk Punky album. (I saved it from Aud's 2nd b-day book!)
Best Creations items used: Robot Line
Other items: Pens-Le Pen, Mists-Maya Road, Creative Imaginations, Studio Calico, Tattered Angels, Paint-Delta, Ink-Colorbox