Pixie Dust

I can't believe it is already Thursday again. You would be surprised how fast a week goes by when you are having fun. I will start with some official business. Who was my Pixie Pick of the Day?...(drum roll please).... Leggs79! I have a soft spot for pages about flowers, so her page jumped out and said "pick me!" Congrats! I hope you enjoy the little gift.

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On to other scrappin' news. Did you notice that ADSR season #3 had started? This is my first season racing. The scrapping ladies of Twinstuff have joined forces with each other to have a great racing season amongst friends. My fellow leader of the ladies and I have joined forces and are running as The Mod Squad.

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Here we are together. This was actually done for the second challenge of the season. We had to figure out how to mesh our 2 scrapping styles into one. Lisa let me take the lead on this one, and paid the price with my indecisiveness...lol. I finally got something worked out and she got the go ahead to start. I think we did very well together. If you want to watch the rest of the ladies of Twinstuff race, come visit our group blog Here

Our first challenge was to use a template, show our favorite color, and repeat a favorite element 3 times. I can't say I have a favorite color, but my daugther seems to think it is purple so I went with it. I had just found a new designer I couldn't wait to try out and this LO was the perfect oppurtunity. Jen Ulasiewicz Designs just opened it's doors, and I have already bought 3 things. That never happens. I just love how realistic her elements are. Remember at the beginning how I said I have a softness in my heart for flower pages.. here's one of mine. My entry for ADSR challenge #1

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That flower bouquet was created with the realistic elements I was talking about. Beautiful work huh? I can't wait to see what else she comes out with.

Even with all the race scrapping I have had to do this week I have managed to squeeze in another page. Monday was DSO's scrap-n-chat, so I got a cool template to play with and a bonus for using it within 24hrs. Here is my poor scrap neglected child William.

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To everyone that has downloaded my little kit since friday...Thank you! You don't know how good it makes someone feel to know the preview looked good enough to give it a try. I am new to the whole designing bit, and I am glad to know some people like what they saw. If you use it to create something, link me up, it will make me well up with pride. Until next time, happy scrappin'

Finally another freebie!

One of these days, I hope these freebies come a little more regularly, but for now here is something new. This is my first attempt at something more than a mini kit, so please give me some constructive critism.

Alpha
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I hope everyone has a great weekend. My next scrapping task is to update a ticker I have had for over a year . Although still very functional, I just want an update. Hopefully I will get to it today. For those that are participating in the ADSR I wish you good luck and hope to see you at the chat tonight!

Pixie Pick and a Lunar Eclipse

As promised here I am with my Pixie Pick of the Day. My little gift for the week has a bright personality to say the least, so when I saw this page in the DSO gallery I just new she could appreciate it. The page is "Groovy Love" by kimscrapping. Make sure you stop by and leave her some love here.


So how about that Lunar Eclipse? It was totally cool here. We couldn't have had a better view. One of the benefits of not living in a city is a great sky on a clear night. DD was amazed at the moon as it changed. At least we are CST so the time wasn't to bad. She stayed up a little past her bedtime to watch it go from full moon to total eclipse. Unfortunately I didn't think to bring the camera out until it had gone to a total eclipse. Here are a few pictures I snapped of the moon last night. Some were at 24x digital zoom so they are very grainy.





Check back tomorrow for a possible freebie. I just have to figure out what to give you.

I have been a bad blogger

My blog is still a baby really, and I have already started to neglect it. I really haven't had much in the way of excitement since Valentine's Day. On Sunday we had some really nasty weather come through. A tornado hit in the area. We weren't directly effected, but my SFIL sustained a lot of damage to his car. I don't know if they are going to be able to fix it or if they will scrap the car. Either way I am sure he will be selling it as soon as the get it fixed, he isn't the type to keep damaged goods. Other than that, it was a boring weekend. I would love for it to have been completely boring as 200 houses (I think that was the number)were damaged or destroyed in the tornado.

I have been in scrapping mode the last couple of days, which is good and bad. I need to be saving my creativity for the ADSR starting this weekend. I guess I can consider it warm up practice. I am going to have to keep my camera on my hip for the next few weeks to make sure I have new inspiration for all those pages. Between race pages I am still going to have to find time to do some designing. Hopefully I won't get burned out to early. Anyways here are a few of my recent pages.


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and one more


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That's it for now. Hopefully I will be back tomorrow with my Pixie Pick of the Day.

What a Valentine's Day

So I woke up yesterday with the plans to go out shopping with my mom in the morning, and spending the afternoon primping for going out with DH in the evening. Well DH decided it was time to go back to the eye doctor for the stitches in his eye were really starting to bother him. Since we were really hoping they would go ahead take the remaining stitches out, I had to go with him. His appointment to get them removed was this coming Monday so we were pretty optimistic. Mom ended up being the babysitter for the day. Unfortunately DH's doctor is a little more than 1.5hrs away, so we didn't get home until 3ish. Mom went on her way, and I started my primping process. About 4 my FIL showed up as babysitter #2 for the day. I'm still trying to get ready. I found my pantyhose that I haven't woran in years, my black skirt and blue shirt. The blue shirt just didn't look right with the skirt since I had lost so much weight it just hung down. I tried a red shirt but it looked to manly for the flowing skirt. I switched back to the blue shirt cause i had no other options at that point and started the shoe hunt. Let me fill you in on a little detail, I don't wear skirts so my shoes are all designed to be worn with pants, not to mention my feet really like their crocs so shoving them into enclosed shoes was not a good thing. First pair, no go, second pair, same result, 3rd and 4th shoe, don't match and no idea where the mates are, I finally found a pair of boot that my feet weren't going to be screaming at me. Unfortunately the boots didn't look right with the skirt. So now I am off on a wardrobe change. I looked at all my dresses, most I haven't worn since before the big boys were born, and decided to depress myself and try one on. IT FIT! I don't even think it looked to bad around my waist which is still my trouble area. Bad news, boots didn't work any better with this outfit. So back to the shoe digging. I finally found both shoes to a of a comfortable pair of flats and I was ready to roll. DH looks at me and said "should I dress up any more?" After all that work on my part he just had to brush his knees of a bit and go (men!). We had a pleasant dinner at Applebees without the kids and did a little shopping afterwards and headed home. I know you guys are thinking Applebees isn't the most romantic spot in the world, but hey we walked in and were seated immediately on Valentine's Day, and that was our goal. Overall even though my plans went seriously astray, I had a great day.

Did I mention before I could begin on my whirlwind of a day, I had to still do my Pixie Pick of the day for DSO? As I have mentioned before this includes rewarded the pick with a little gift from me. Well as of Thursday morning I had nothing. So before I could take off for the day I had to figure out something to create. I actually find alphas pretty easy to make, now that I have a wonderful action that cuts the sheets apart for me, so I went that way. As I was fiddling with my alpha I got ready for the day as actions ran. I finally got it just right, uploaded to 4shared, and posted to the Pixie Pick right as my DH got home and Mom showed up. I hope she enjoys it. Here is a nice couples page for a Valentine's Day Pixie Pick of the Day.

Congrats to Lei for being the Pixie Pick of the day! Leave her some love and see the credits here. Next week I will not procrastinate on creating my freebie (lol, I say this every week).

In other scrapping news, I found out who got my pictures in our secret picture swap at Twinstuff. Jackie did a perfect job with the pictures she was given. She has been doing a ton of extractions recently and these pics screamed extraction. Even still I probably wouldn't have thought to do the extractions. I gave her a couple of pictures of William who for some reason seems to be my neglected child when it comes to pages of just him (lots done with the twins together). Here is what she did with it...

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Thanks Jackie for such a great page. Now if only I could find time to finish the secret page I am working on. Hopefully I will get to it today, but since it is our day at the park, the chances are low. Until next time have a great day.

Scrap-N-Chat

Last night DSO held the first of their bi-monthly Scrap-N-Chats for the month of Feb. Darlene Haughin provided us an awesome template to scrap with. I must admit I never seem to be able to scrap and chat at the same time, but I manage to get it done in the 24hr period to use it and get the posting bonus. This chat's bonus was a very cute St. Patty's Day QP. Chat wasn't as crazy as the last one, but still fun. Here is what I did with the chat template.

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Don't you love all the fun boyish colors. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to find boyish kits. Dielle has gone through and revamped her "Backyard Explorer" Kit and re-released it.

It is available at both Designs In Digital and Digital Freebies. A little birdie told me that Digital Freebies automatically puts their new stuff on sale for 30% off for the first week, so hurry over there and pick it up while it is still on sale. I already have another page in my head for William using this kit. Hopefully I will get a chance to scrap it soon.

On none scrapping news, my driveway is finally FINISHED! It has been a hard few weeks without it. We still have a few more days before we can drive on it, but I know it is coming so soon. Unfortunately it is going to downpour tonight and I don't know how that is going to effect the driveway. Hopefully it won't damage it to badly. Until next time... happy scrappin'

Picture day

We had a blast since the last post. On Friday we went to our Homeschool Sport and Art day. Weather was beautiful at 60 degrees and sunny. We played with balls and a big game of Duck Duck Goose. Afterwards the kids had juice and granola bars for snack. The onto the Arts part of the day. The kids made Valentines Day cards. They tried getting the kids to make pop-up cards and although I must admit I think the design was really cute, it was a little comlex for the age group that was there. We had fun glueing paper down anyways. The favorite part of the day is the playground equipment. The big boys have really started to blossom in this department. It used to be as soon as other kids got on the equipment they were back at my legs. Now they run around playing with them. They still tend to stick together, but even that is getting less and less. I am just so glad to see them growing up in that aspect. Alexis also has a blast running around playing on the equipment. Her new thing this week was learning how to hang upside down from the monkey bar like contraption. Last time I tried this with her she freaked out. Of course none of them were happy when I told them it was time to go, even though the sun was almost gone and the temps were dropping rapidly (well it sure was feeling colder). They got over their being hurt with a bribe of going out to eat. Here are a few pics of the kids enjoying SpArt day (yeah we're cheesy enough to call it that).









On Saturday our zoo had an Animal Enrichment day. Pretty much they go through and set up unique ways for the animals to get their food. Most consisted of putting it in something they would have to figure out to be rewarded their food. The idea is to keep their mind and forgaging instincts working. Unfortunately with this being the first nice weekend in weeks, everyone and their grandma showed up for this event. We only made it through watching the Spectacle Bear, Squirrel Monkeys, Spider Monkeys, and Jaguar. After that it was just to crowded to actually see the animals, so we thought we would be smart and just skip a few animals and instead go to the overlook for lunch ahead of everyone else. Yeah that didn't go so well. Apparently everyone else had the same idea. It took 10mins to order the food and over 20min to get it. That was for 2 salads, and 2 orders of chicken fingers and fries. It was horrible. At least we were able to snag a table as we first came in and Chris was the one dealing with the cranky hungry kids. After we ate, I decided my back was hurting just to much to continue on, so we headed out of the park. On the way we stopped and looked at the gold fish pond and another fish area. The little fish were hillarious. You could walk to the one side and they would all follow, then to the other side and they followed back. Think they are well trained? I found it amusing. We will have to go to the zoo again soon (we are members), and see all the animals we missed this time. Here are some zoo fun pics.






Here are 2 of the boys being Diego as they claimed.




Sunday wasn't quite the same for the kids, but I had a good day. The kids spent most of the morning outside playing and having fun. Alexis got to go spend the night with her LuLu, who took her and her friend ice skating and shopping. They love having a girls only day. I also got some girl time. My lil sis came over and we got to escape for a movie and dinner. It was very nice. We went and saw "27 Dresses," which is a complete chick flick. It was really good albeit a little predictable. Afterwards we went and had sushi. She gets vegetarian stuff, and I get carb friendly sashimi, so it all works out. I miss being able to have the ones with rice. Since I have no pics from that adventure, I will leave you with my page from this weekend. I absolutely love how it turned out.

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I can't believe it is Thursday again!

Thursday means it is time for my Pixie Pick of the week. I saw this beaty of a LO in the DSO gallery and the little girl's eyes captivated me.

Congrats to LoriJ for being my Pixie Pick of the day. Leave her some love and see the credits here. She got a cute little QP from me from a little kit I hope to finish and have up for grabs in the next couple of days.

On to my scrapping. I finished out the 7pages in 7 days challenge from PixelGypsyDesigns. It was a really fun challenge and I got a bunch of goodies while participating. Here are a couple of my last pages.


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This one was a fun lift. The next one was hard for me. I was supposed to be fun, funky, messy, and bright. Just about everything my normal scrapping isn't...lol.


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Now I have to switch from scrapping mode to designing mode. I had started my March contribution to the DSO mega kit before I got distracted by the scrap challenge, so I have to finish that up. I think all I have left is my quick page. I don't normally make QPs so it is a challenge for me. I try to leave them open enough that people can embellish them if they want, but the basic layout is done. I am also working on a blog freebie. I want to really work on developing a full kit, so it will probably take a while to get it done.

Yesterday I took Nathan for a speech evaluation. He is going on 4 and 90% of people have a really hard time understanding him. He performed wonderfully for the tester. I thought for sure he would clam up. His speech rated at the 3% of boys his age. That means 97% of boys would have scored higher on the test than he did. Needless to say he qualifies for state funded speech therapy. I have already started the process through the school to get his services started. I also decided to go ahead and have William tested through the school. His speech is a little better than Nathan's but not by much. Hopefully with a little speech therapy they will both be speaking clearer shortly. My break from the public school system was short lived. Now for the AWW.. picture of the day...



Aren't they they sweetest thing ever?

It's my birthday!

It's offical, I am now 29 years old. I am now working on the last 364 days before I have to turn 30 (shudder in horror). I wish I could say I have some great plans for the day, but right now all I can hope to do is survive. Apparently no one told my kids they were supposed to be well behaved on mommy's birthday, and I have already fielded a few meltdowns. I have a feeling they are carry overs from yesterday's napless day and the colds they just can't seem to shake. We had a 1st birthday party for my nephew yesterday, and the kids were wired and over stimulated. Nathan doesn't take well to large crowd stimulation and the party was a big one. Usually it ends in meltdown mode. I wish I could say I enjoyed the party but I can't. To many people, and an emergency run to Walmart for clean pants for my nearing 4yo who had an accident 5 minutes after I asked if he needed to potty, to enjoy. I must admit Logan was a cutie digging into his cake.

My birthday is a cool day. Not only do I get to celebrate it, but so does my brother and my nephew (son to BIL not brother). My big brother (2yrs my senior) and I also share wedding anniversaries. They were both my doings...lol. Here I am with each the people I share this special day with.

Me and Logan

Will and I at my wedding

I am hoping the kids decide that really really long naps are needed today. I feel we both need it. I have received some nice birthday gifts from the scrapping community so I think I will repay by posting a present for you guys. It isn't much, and I am to lazy to find a preview, but it is my blue-green mini kit that failed to develop past a mini kit.
Blue-green Mini .
That's it for now. I hope to come back tomorrow with the joys of my birthday stories, and not more horror stories of it.

My 5th Anniversary

As of yesterday I have been married for 5 years. In some ways it is hard to believe it has already been that long, but others it hard to believe it has only been that long. Chris stayed home from work yesterday to try and spend some quality time with me. It was a sweet gesture, even if it wasn't very successful. He played with the tinker toys with the boys, played out in the new shed for a while, and in the afternoon I took off with Alexis to Walmart for a few things we needed. With 3 kids sick still we were going through cough medicine like it is going out of style. Of course when I got there all my choices had changed and I had to search everything to decide which one to get. Then as the bad spouse I am I hadn't gotten DH anything for our anniversary (yes this is usually the guys thing but my DH is good to me), I spent another good 10 minutes trying to find the perfect card for him. Luckily DD was standing there with me because she reminded me to get a card for me nephew's birthday party tomorrow. So with cards in hand we headed back to the toys to find a present for said nephew. Crossed the store to get to them and just as we start looking the infamous "I gotta pee" comes from DD. Realize she is nearly 8 and still insists on having to pee pretty much anywhere we go, so this is an annoying request. "Can you wait a minute?" "No, I really really need to go." So back across the store we go to the potty and come back to the toy section. I finally selected a couple of toys that he probably doesn't need, but hey that's what you do for birthdays. I made it through the grocery section pretty painlessly and called DH to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything. Just the 9V batteries that are up by the checkout so no biggie. I headed back to the photo lab to fill my sister in with the details for the night and as I get there, dh goes "well can you pick up some collards" (that's greens like spinach for you non southerners). I was JUST at the produce section when I asked him if he needed anything else. So back we go. I finally escaped Walmart nearly 2 hrs into my "quick" run. DH got a bag of beef jerky and a card for his anniversary present. I got a beautiful bouquet of flowers, some chocolates, and a card. Here's a couple of pictures of my flowers. The pictures behind it are of the church we were married in, and one of us at the church.


See aren't they just beautiful? Yesterday DH also gave me my February gift. Now before you guys get all jealous thinking I get a gift every month, rest assured I don't. I just have my anniversary, birthday, and Valentine's day in the first half of the month, so since DH went all out with my bday gift I told him he was off the hook for the rest of the month. He got me an upgrade to PS CS3! I have already scrapped a page in it. I can't say I noticed to many differences, but I'm sure they are there. I am going to go looking for a comparison chart and see what kinds of goodies it has that I don't know about yet. Here is my page from this morning that was scrapped using it.

You can find the credits here.
I am in a 7 pages in 7 days challenge over at PixelGypsyDesigns. The page above is day 3. Here is day 2. The challenge was to use less than 7 elements not including a title font, your pictures, and 1 background paper. I think they were going for white space, and I just don't handle white space well. I think this was a good interpretation of the requirements and my style.

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Unfortunately I have fallen behind a day, so now I have to find time to scrap today to play catch up. This challenge has really helped me get out of my scrappin' funk. Maybe after this challenge is over I will have a chance to keep working on the design of this blog. I figured out how to do a personalized topper, so I figure that is a step in the right direction. Until next time.. ciao.