Memories & Discoveries

Growing up I spent a lot of time with my grandmother and most days we went over to my great grandmother's house just a few minutes away. Almost every time that I walked through her door I would walk right past her as she sat in her rocking recliner as I said "Hi grandma, bye grandma" and I continued directly to the kitchen to see what was in the fridge. The best days were when I saw this sight...
Red Jello in these glass cups and tubs of Cool Whip. This was always the best snack and just one way that my great grandma showed me how much she loved me. I now own her glass dessert cups and I love to make red Jello and line them up on the fridge shelf for my kids. I want this sight to mean as much to them as it does to me.
This is something that I discover every morning. About five minutes after I give my boys their cereal, I am picking it up off the floor and the table. Just another routine of my days right now.
And these are pictures that I found on my camera recently. I do remember Kaley asking me if she could play with my camera one day and apparently this is what they did. They are actually really cute photos of them.
My girls are sweethearts and love taking pictures of each other and themselves. Neil often finds videos on his iPod touch that the girls have taken of themselves just walking around talking about random things, but they're adorable.

It's Train Time!

For their 3rd birthday the boys received a whole set of trains from Grandpa Korn. And most days they bring me the bin full of pieces and want me to put it together, and so I do. Everyday it's a different set up and some days are more elaborate than others. One day I decided to get down on the floor with my camera and take some fun shots of them having fun. I am finally getting to those layouts now although I still haven't done their birthday page because of some mysteriously missing pictures that I still haven't found!
Here is the first page. I really try to create two page spreads for my twins with pictures of one on one page and pictures of the other for the other page. With some pictures of the two of them together on both pages. I also try to journal on both pages and have some sort of title, this way, some day when they are older and want these pages (or their wives want them!) I can easily split them up.
All of the supplies are from Echo Parks Little Boy collection except for the brads and the Thickers on the first page. I absolutely love these pictures but my favorite is the one of Zach's little toes.
These train stickers I put on white cardstock and then cut them out so that I could adhere them with pop dots. I added the little brads in different colors to make them look connected.
I love the sheet of journaling cards and labels that come in the Echo Park collections! Although, what's not to love about Echo Park?!
I cut up a border sticker to jazz up the title block a little and I loved this "Boys will Be Boys" sticker. But it looked a little weird just floating on the page like that, and the same with the journaling blocks, so I cut up these label strips that came in the collection and they really helped to ground the element to the page.

I have definitely been getting better at taking pictures of my layouts and editing them but my pictures seem to be coming out darker than they actually are! I'm still learning!

What's been going on...

I know that I haven't blogged in a while so I decided to show you what we've been up to that has kept us so busy.

This is our side yard. My kitchen window looks out to this area and there is a brick path that goes around in a big "O" shape for the kids to ride their bikes/scooters. But that sloped part on the side was covered by all of those rocks and full of weeds. So I spent a lot of time moving those rocks and it helped that Neil found chicken wire under them so he just pulled it back with the rocks. Then he weeded it all and we got it ready for these 6 beautiful rose bushes! Neil has run irrigation under the path and along this side for each of the bushes (all different colors of roses including a Disneyland Rose!) I can't wait for them to start blooming... maybe I will enjoy doing dishes a lot more!

We of course had a lot of help from these two, or should I say that we constantly had to re-find our tools because they had taken off with them!

Kaley was helping the boys play in the dirt and water the pumpkin seeds that she and Madison had planted.

Does everyone do yard work in a dress? Well, Madison does!

"Look Mom, I have dirt!"

Our strawberries are coming along nicely...

And we are trying to acclimate these goodies to the outside world before we plant them in the boxes. We have corn, and sunflowers, and zucchini and pumpkins, and I'm sure some other stuff too.

We have also had a lot of this going on... Girl Scout Cookies sales! There has been a lot of driving back and forth to the different places that they have been selling and the girls usually end up freezing the whole time, but they really enjoy it. We are just very excited for them to start doing the fun stuff soon! But for now I have been surrounded by lots of these...

I think that I lost count as to how many cookies I have personally eaten. They are all so yummy that I have to give each variety it's due attention... right? We will definitely be stocking up on Thin Mints for our freezer before we are done and Neil has plans to try to make Thin Mints homemade ice cream!

And we are about to redo this room. Those arrows that I added are where "stuff" collects. All of the mail, schoolwork, bible study books, toys that we have taken away from the boys, pencils and crayons, cookbooks, girl scout cookies, gardening stuff and random tools, and lots of other random things. Because they are all out in the open for everyone to see, it drives me crazy! I want something pretty and functional... is that too much to ask? So we are working on it, starting with this baby that we picked up in Riverside on Sunday for $85.

This is my current project and the reason why no scrapbooking will be getting done this week. I'm painting it Lincoln Cottage Black and it is going to look amazing against the color that I am going to paint the wall. Can't wait to get it all done and show you all!
Tomorrow I will be sharing a layout that I did last week. We have another really busy week this week so lots going on for me to share!

Kaley's Birthday

Here is the layout that I did recently about Kaley's birthday. She wanted it to be purple themed which this year meant that we had purple cupcakes with purple frosting and purple sprinkles on purple plates and napkins. And she wore purple... that was pretty much it. But like I said about Madison's birthday, we promised them a much bigger and more thought out birthday party this year.
Here is the first page. I used some dotted swiss cardstock in this aqua color that I love right now. The patterned papers are all from Me & My Big Ideas again and so are the diecuts. I punched out some circles and added buttons. The cupcake tape is something that I found last year at the Del Mar show and finally found a reason to use it!
I added lots of stitching to this layout and used a border punch on the pink cardstock. I created that larger scalloped border using what was originally a fiskars corner punch that I accidentally broke off the guards to. So now I just use it to make borders.
I cropped the pictures down so that I could fit more on my layout except for my favorite two photos of my big 6 year old.
And I pop dotted some of the die cuts to make them stand out a little more.

One more birthday layout to go for the year! Then on to Halloween... finally!

Oh yes... I Went Shopping!

This past weekend my mom and I worked the Scrapbook Expo at the Anaheim Convention Center. Normally this show is at the Orange County Fairgrounds but after they sold the fairgrounds it was moved to the convention center and we were very happy about it. It's always a long weekend for us but we enjoy the people that we work for and the opportunity to be surrounded by scrapbooking products is really a plus. I taught the make n take all weekend and laughed so hard I cried and met someone with such an amazing heart that I hugged her and cried out of love. It's amazing what compassion and adoration can come out of you even after knowing someone for only a few minutes. And, of course, there were a few people that I just wanted to punch in the face, those people that no matter what they will never be happy!

Overall, we had a great time and did lots of lightning shopping. We have learned a few tricks over the last two years of working these shows, and this time I think I did really well. This is what I came home with...
Oh yes... I did go shopping! Usually I come home with a lot of stuff from our clearance booth and it's all nice stuff, but it's usually products that I have no idea what I'm going to do with I just think that they are cute and it's a great deal. This time I went knowing the products I wanted and tried to stick to those, with a few little extras here and there. It also helped that they no longer had the clearance booth!
I got products from companies like: American Crafts, Studio Calico, Echo Park, SEI, Teresa Collins, Imaginisce, Tattered Angels, Heidi Swapp, and lots more!
See that stack of paper? I can't wait to get in there and start using some of that awesome stuff!
I bought lots of trims and things with texture... I am all about texture right now!
I FINALLY picked up this baby, the Tiny Attacher from Tim Holtz. I am daydreaming of all of the things that I am going to staple!
And best of all, I got this awesome new machine. The Spellbinders Grand Caliber. It runs dies up to 9 1/2 inches wide and I can't wait to get some of the big dies. I can just see all of the mini albums that I can make. I love Spellbinders because not only do their dies come with several sizes, but they are thin and don't take up much room!

I am one of those weird people that love to organize so I can't wait to start putting all of this away. That also means cleaning some things out. Out with some of the old and in with lots of the new!

Have a Great Weekend!

Neil and the girls brought these roses home for me the other day and I really enjoyed taking pictures of them.

I am off working the Anaheim Scrapbook Expo but I hope that you are all having a great and blessed weekend!

Project Garden

We decided to try our hand at gardening this year. We get so tired of having to go to the store for fresh veggies and herbs that we thought it would be fun to just walk out the back door and get our own! So after lots of digging by Neil...
And a little help from this cutie...
And of course lots of tongue-sticking-out concentration!
We have this!
We already have onions and carrots planted out there and everything else is being started in the house and growing really well. Now if these storms would just stop coming, it's supposed to snow again this weekend!