2010 Highlights

We jumped at the chance to take the girls to the Nickelodeon Kid's Choice Awards. And they loved it!
My friend Amanda and I went down to Disneyland to see the return of Captain EO, one of my favorite Disney attractions of all time. And we spent the day goofing off in the park taking fun pictures.
We spent several days at the park...
And searched for Easter Eggs.
Madison received the Citizenship award for her 1st grade class...
and Kaley received the Principal's award for her Kindergarten class!
Neil played softball with a church team and loved being back out on the field... he also turned 30! (I'm not admitting if I did or not!)
I got to meet the fabulous Laura Vegas while I was working CKC Riverside. I admire her work and what an awesome person she is!
Neil and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary at the Old Lahaina Luau...
while we spent an amazing week in the paradise of Maui!
I won a free family photo shoot from Rachel Clare photography and we had a great time. These are pictures that I will treasure forever!
We took the girls to the beach with the youth group and roasted marshmallows over a huge fire. The girls had a great time hanging out with Bethany and Candace.
For Halloween we had a Dorothy...
a Wonder Woman...
a Batman...
and a Robin. And yes, Zach was positive that he wanted to be Robin and not another super hero. So someday when he gets mad at me for letting him be a sidekick I will tell him that I tried!
We strolled through the pumpkin patch.
and took lots of pictures...
We tried to get a family shot just before it got dark but Zach was not wanting any part of it!
Nanny and Pop Pop took us to the American Girl store where we had a ton of fun.
My friend Rea had the most adorable baby boy this June and not only did I get to take maternity pictures of her but I took their Christmas pictures too! I'm so lucky!
Back in June I went with a group of friends to the midnight showing of Eclipse. The nice thing was that I had just gotten back from Maui so I was still on Maui time. We had so much fun that when the movie came out on Blu Ray I had them over to my house for a viewing party. We had red velvet cupcakes and Neil made us the most amazing pizzas. We had blast and I think that this will become a tradition, although I don't think that I can wait for the next one to come out so we might have to have some parties in between where we play Twilight Scene it or something!

Well, this was our year... plus moving out of Silver Lakes and into a beautiful house in Victorville. I don't have any moving pictures because we were just too busy that day but you will see it when I get around to posting snow pictures! We love living here right in the middle of everything and are now able to be much more involved with church and friends! God has blessed us this year so much!!!

New Years Resolutions

With 2011 comes two resolutions for me and one key word for the year. Resolution #1: workout at least four times a week. Resolution #2: Blog as often as I can and do it as if there are thousands of people reading it! My key word for the year is BALANCE.

Okay, now let me explain these things and let you know my progress (which I will continue to do throughout the year). My first resolution to workout at least 4 times a week comes from the large amount of weight that I have gained back over the last 6 months due to the fact that I stress eat, and the last 6 months of my life have been STRESSFUL!!! So hubby and I bought a nice elliptical machine from Walmart and we have been using it often. So far so good, I am trying to build up my stamina and it will take some time but I am keeping up with it every other day right now plus doing lots of sit ups and stretching. To me, this gives me a chance to go into my bedroom and lock the door while letting my hubby take care of the kids, and I get to not only watch whatever movie I want to but I also get to do something for me and improve the way I feel about myself. Happier me, happier hubby and family... everybody wins!

Resolution #2 starts with my dream job: working on a design team for a scrapbook company. I guess my absolute dream job would be to become a member of the Creating Keepsakes Dream Team or be a Contributing writer for them, but I have to start somewhere. Now I have applied to several design team calls and although I have been told that my designs are great the weak point comes with my blog. I don't do it very often! It has become a place for me to post my pages and enter contests and that is it. This is not good! I have so many ideas not only for scrapbooking and general craftiness but also for oraganization and I will be doing a lot of work on my new house over the next year making this home a place that inspires me on a daily basis. So here I am (even though it is now January 4th!) better late than never. I am starting this now so be ready to hear from me a lot!

The last thing is my word for the year. This comes from Ali Edwards one little word project here and I have been contemplating my one little word for a couple of weeks now. This morning I was washing some dishes when I washed the water bottle that came with the elliptical, it said BALANCE on the side of it. It hit me like a ton of bricks. That was it... my word. Balance is what I try to achieve everyday of my life and although I often fail at it, it's still something to strive for. I need to balance the things that I have to do on a daily basis: cleaning, playing with my boys, doing something creative something for me, spending quality time with my girls after school, time with my husband, my facebook/farmville time, reading, photo editing.... I could go on and on but you get the point. This is what I want to focus on this year, balancing my life. I once heard an amazing speaker who talked about us as women being like a 4 legged table. Those legs being physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional. Unless all four legs are balanced then the table is not balanced. So this year I am going to work on being a more balanced table!

Alright so this has been a very text heavy blog entry to start off the new year but I wanted to get these things off my chest and let you know the direction that I am heading in this year. I think that I will work on a Highlights of 2010 post with lots of pictures that I never got around to posting!

American Crafts Brads Challenge

The challenge on the American Crafts blog this week was to use two brads. Ha Ha! I don't know that I could ever use only two brads... especially if you are talking about their Elements brads. So instead of just two brads, I used lots of brads in two different ways! This page is about the picnic that Madison's first grade teacher invited the parents to come in for. I brought us sandwiches and yummy chips plus my Arizona Sweet Tea (oh how I miss it on this diet!) and her favorite drink from our little town's market, Mott's apple juice in a little can. We ended it with the best drumsticks on the planet... vanilla with caramel in the center! We did this to celebrate their class learning the long "I" sound like in Ice Cream!
First I used the brads as photo corners. These are the mini glitter black ones (one of my favorites!) They really make this photo pop off the page.
I also used the jewel brads from a couple of different sets to make the I for the title. It was really easy to do and makes the title really different from most of my usual ones. It all seems to go really well with the new Heat Wave collection. Hope you enjoyed!

Supplies: Blue- Creamy Coconut (back) (35107), Dot Strip- Tangerine Tidal wave (35113), Ice Cream/pink strip- Slammin' Strawberry (35114), Journaling sticker- Fork, Abode collection (42691), Ice Cream- Details Sandy (78032), Brads: Black mini glitter, Jewel : black, Earth Tones, Botanique. Thickers- Chit Chat Chestnut (42901), Niki Riki Yellow (53041). Flair- Heat wave (All products from American Crafts)

My New Adventure Into Me

So I still love scrapbooking and it is my #1 hobby, but I have always had this desire to paint. Sure I have done a few murals and artsy type projects but I have never just put a paintbrush to canvas and let my imagination take over. Finally I have decided to let all of my little fears go and do it. And this is one of things that has come out of that new adventure. The first ones that I have done have had more black silhouettes to them and so this one is much more colorful from the rest. I have been inspired by the fabulous colors that Becky Higgins has been posting on her blog and I would love to have her kitchen! I am thinking of opening an Etsy store to sell my paintings and make them customizable but that is another adventure that we are still working on! Here are some others, more to come!

Valentine's Day Decorations

This year I was inspired to make some Valentine's Day decorations. I fell in love with these coffee filter flowers that I saw on Elizabeth Kartchner's blog. I had to go and make them and this is what I ended up with.
I sprayed mine with Tattered Angel's Glimmer Mist in Brick Red and tattered rose pink to give it some extra color. I hot glued the flowers onto ribbon and added hearts that I cut with my MM slice. I then had the idea to hang this clear string across the window and hang things from it. Not sure if I will take the whole thing down after Valentines Day or leave the string up to hang things on it for all of the different holidays.
I hung these playing cards from Heidi Swapp on the string. I love the King and Queen ones!
These are MM shimmer alphas that I added to acrylic rectangles and then embellished them. This key is from Tim Holtz grungeboard that I painted with his crackle paint (I have to get more of that!) I tied it on with string.
Here is a shot of the king playing card. The garland obviously spells love and I added things like AC flair and punched scalloped circles cut from valentines paper. I am very happy with it and can't wait to do more if I have time!

Homemade Valentines

I gave the girls the option of either buying valentines with their favorite characters on them or making them. They both chose to make them and so of course my creative mind went wild! I pre cut most all of the paper and used a border punch at the bottom. All of the hearts I cut using my silhouette and let me tell you it was tired afterward! The girls had a lot of fun putting them together and they got to stay up late to do it!
These are Madison's valentines which she was very proud of! We added the suckers which was easy to do since I had already punched the border with holes!
Kaley did her own thing (of course!) and added the smaller strip on top of the other and had the circle and heart going off the edge of the card. She is more creative than I think even she knows!

Inspired by books

This weeks challenge on the American Crafts blog was to do a page that was inspired by a book. Now many of you might know that I love to read but rarely get the time to do so because of the whole having four kids thing. Except that last year I was introduced to these books, the Twilight Saga. Now I being a grown adult woman (barely!) thought that they were childish books and that they wouldn't hold my attention... HA! I immediately fell in love with them and read the first two that I borrowed from a friend and then begged my husband to buy me the boxed set for Christmas. He did and I read the last two each within a 48 hour period. I have seen the movies countless times and am currently re-reading the series because I find them that enjoyable. So needless to say I wanted to do a page that captured my current obsession with reading these books. Maybe if I had done this years ago I would have done it on the Harry Potter series but maybe someday I will dive back into those again, for now I am happy with these.

Materials used: Black Glitter cardstock #71414, Red Foil Cardstock, Black Zing! Embossing Powder, Red Heart Ribbon #92944, Thickers- Rockabye, Silver #43030, Cinnamon- Pomegranate #43048, Delight-Black #43061, Paper (Brown) Craft Fair- Elenore Battington #34719, (Grey solid) Halloween-Grimm #34782, All American Crafts. Other: Glimmer Mist- tattered Angels, Burnt Red, Black Ink.