Thursday, January 31, 2008

Pixie Dust

In part of my digi scrapping life I am a Pixie over at DSO. Being a Pixie is a cross between being a site cheerleader and a site designer. Generally the Pixie's get to contribute to the site challenge kits, help run challenges, and pick out Pixie Picks once a week to share a goodie with. Well Thursdays are my day so I thought I would share the layout that got my nod week. It is called "Grandchildren" by O2BNGdHope.

Go leave see her credits and leave her some extra love here. I love giving out Pixie presents, even though I have a hard day remembering what day of the week it is.

This is going to be the first month I am hosting a challenge at DSO. I am taking over the "Scrappin' on your Desktop" Challenge. Pretty much I give you something to use on a layout for your desktop background. This was a great challenge for me to take over since I am bad about creating one and leaving it up for months at a time. Now I have a reason to change it every month. This month the piece that will be getting used looks like this...
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With it being February how could I pass up a reason to use pink and hearts. February is also my anniversary so love is in the air around here. Here is what I did with the element.
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Isn't it so pretty. Even better if you participate in this months challenge you get a great thank you gift created by me. Wanna see what you are playing for?
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See I told you love is in the air...lol. If you complete every active challenge for the month of February you get awarded the Mega Kit. Let me tell you, it is HUGE!!! You will have to stop by the site and see the preview (might not be posted until tomorrow though). It is definitely worth the work! This mini kit should work nicely with the Mega kit.

I have sick kids right now. 3 out of 4 (all 3 boys) are just miserable to be around. They are congested and coughing. They are so cranky! I sure hope this passes quickly. Since they are so not happy campers, here is a page I did for yesterday of DD. She has managed to not get this cold, let's hope it stays that way.
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Credits can be found here. I am off to fight a website that is having issues with downloading so that hopefully I can scrap with what I bought. Wish me luck!

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

My baby is growing up

Brandon is 21 months old and he is getting so big. He has few words, but has learned how to communicate what he wants for the most part. He is learning how to use his utensils when he eats, although it is still 50/50 at this point. Yesterday we had another milestone. We made the move from crib to toddler bed. The twins skipped going into a toddler bed and went straight to twin beds. I still had the old toddler bed from when Alexis was little and felt I should use it since I made my parents store it for the last 5yrs..lol. It took a lot of scrubbing to get the bed clean and ready. Then I tackled the chore of putting it together. I layed out all the pieces and made sure everything was there.
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Amazingly enough after it was all there, except the hex screwdriver needed to put it together. I could have sworn I had one in my little tool kit, but alas there wasn't one in there. So a quick call to DH and I was out to the shed. Let me tell you something about this shed, it is brand new and totally disorganized at the moment. So he sends me on a needle in a haystack search for his toolbox. Once I found it he claimed it was in either the top drawer or the bottom. Not in the bottom, and I couldn't for the life of me get the top drawer open. Never fear he has a second set that he has seen.... somewhere. Good news, his first guess is right next to his tool box, but no hex set. Second guess was a bust too. On his 3rd and final guess I hit pay dirt. Took a little digging in a box I could barely reach, but there they were a nice big set which was bound to have one that fit. It only took 3 tries to find the perfect one and on to constructing. Now as to why I just didn't wait until my DH got home to put it together, but I was feeling handy and I figured how hard could it be to screw in 14 screw with clearly marked holes. Yeah first challenge, there were 2 sizes of screws, 6 small, 8 large. Using deductive reasoning I figured there were 6 holes into the bed rails and 8 holes into the main frame that it must mean that's where they went. I was right. Of course I over tightened some of them and had to go back and loosen them up so all the holes would line up right. When all was said and done we had a frame for a toddler bed.
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A quick rearranging of the room and a swap from of the mattress from the crib to the bed and we were almost ready to go. We still needed a good toddler sized pillow. Knowing we only had big fluffy pillows in reserves I went in search for a flat pillow. I had a choice between stealing William's or Nathan's pillow. Unfortunately Nathan is very particular about his bedtime routine and he would notice a thicker pillow in a heartbeat, so his was out. William's it was. He is pretty oblivious to changes like this and barely sleeps on his pillow anyways. A quick switch of pillow cases and we're good. Time for a test run.
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It's a fit! He crawled right up into his new big boy bed and laid down. Of course he popped his head right up, but he was game for this new adventure. With the bed constructed before lunchtime, naptime was going to be our first test. What was I thinking, I always make the switch at bedtime. At night it is so dark in the bedroom, no one dares step out of bed. But alas we will have to tackle nap first. Luckily Brandon likes his sleep. After lunch he crawled right into the bed and we turned on his music maker and he went straight to sleep.
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He took his normal length of nap and was happy as a lark when he got up.
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Bedtime was a success, as was naptime today! All we can do is cross our fingers and hope it continues. I know as he gets a little older he will realize he doesn't actually have to sit in his bed until Mommy comes and gets him, but I am going to enjoy the period between now and then.

Enough about the baby, this is supposed to be a scrapping blog. Yesterday there was a Scrap-N-Chat over at DSO that I joined in with. Let me tell you those ladies a funny at a chat. We talked a little about scrapping and more about melons *wink* and weight loss. Our host generously gave away a template by Lynn (aka lpand3dogs design). The challenge was to get something created with the template within 24hrs to get a scrapping bonus. As I was in designing mode last night, I had to wait until this morning to tackle the template. Here is what I came up with...
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(credits can be found here )
I wasn't willing to give up designing though and ended up creating most everything on the page using some of my CU stuff. I had fun with it. Alexis of course said "why purple? just because you like purple doesn't mean I like purple. why didn't you use pink?" She is a back seat scrapper at times...lol. I used purple cause I wanted too, so there! Tonight I have to get back to designing. I am trying to get ahead of so kits I need to create. So family events and scrapping in one day's blog, pretty good for a newbie huh?

Monday, January 28, 2008

My very first post

Okay it was said I needed a blog. I don't know why, but I felt the pressure and caved. I won't promise it will be either exciting or regularly updated, but I can try. For first time readers that might not know me, I am a SAHM mom to 4 wonderful kids. DD is 7.5, twin DSs that are 3.5, and the baby of the family is a 21mo DS. My biggest hobbies are photography and digi scrapping, which conveniently go hand in hand. Some of the major projects going on around my house is a new shed being built, a new driveway being laid, and my garage being converted to a new room. I am sure all the pictures and pages will be part of this blog eventually. As a test though I am going to try adding my most recent scrapbook page as I have no clue how to do it...lol.

Credits for the page can be found at http://www.digishoptalk.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=252808&cat=all&ppuser=3528