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!

An Art Project

Since Monday was a holiday and all six of us were closed up in this house for the day, I decided to do a fun little art project with the girls that will help me out later on.
I picked paint colors that matched the accent colors that I'm going with downstairs and colors that match the girls' bedding.
I cooked up some fettuccine noodles and cut up some extra yarn that I had and even grabbed some little craft puff balls that I had in my room.
I let them go to town with this stuff giving them each a couple of pieces of paper and then when they were done with those I had them switch and create a few more.
Kaley got a little crazy with some designs and created a giant X on one with all of the colors and a huge happy face on another, but at least she had fun creating her own masterpieces.
Madison understood a little more what I was asking them to do, create some abstract art that I can then frame and add to the walls to add color.
She did a really great job and I can't wait to use them. I just have to be on the lookout for cheap frames since I don't have a trip to Ikea planned any time soon.
Most important of all, we had a great time doing this. I really should let them do creative things more often but we are still having the "keep your room clean" battle with them. I can ask them to go and clean their room quickly so that we can do something fun and three hours later I go in there and they have done nothing but play, watch shows on their TV and create inventions. I have a plan for their room to create more storage and space for them and all of their stuff I just have to put it into action!

I will share what I do with these pieces of art when I get it done!

My Room is Done!

I have posted pictures of my room before but never any wide shots or pictures of the center of my counter because up until Friday I had a Princess flat sheet push pinned over the window! Well here it is and I am so in love with it!...
I kept going back and forth on what I wanted for the window. At first it was a roman shade, and then something else, and I finally decided on these honeycomb type cordless blinds and a pretty valance over the top. I went and bought this fabric for $5.99 a yard and bought two yards and my grandmother (the sewing magician) made two valances out of it. The matching one is in my kitchen and I'm loving it there too. She used some unbleached muslin to make the pocket for the curtain rod so that the patterned fabric could all be used for the curtain itself. It looks so good against the blue wall and with the green lamp that almost matches it.
On the right here is all of my papers from this post here and above it are the three clipboards for favorite new pages, I like to see them for a while before I put them away!
The post about my island is here although I just recently moved a few things around and have now put my cricut and silhouette stuff in there along with the Xyron and label maker.
I had my wonderful husband put up my inspiration board to the left of where I usually sit. It is just a white 12x12 frame that I took the glass out of and replaced with a corkboard sheet. On it are just little things that are memorable to me and make me happy. And my Slice storage post is here
This is where I usually sit because I love this tractor chair. I want to get another one for the second work station, maybe in Pink! This tool caddy was an outdoor silverware piece that I got on clearance at Target. I love it!
The mirror was given to me by my friend Kristina, she painted it this pretty color and then didn't have room for it so she gave it to me! I love it here in my room. The shelf has my Cloud 9 mini album and a Partylite tealight holder on it.
The post about my Expedit shelves is here I love this unit so much and highly recommend it to everyone! And back there on the wall is the square clock that I made from a picture I took at Disney World. It says "Remember the Magic in Every Moment" it's a great reminder of why I do what I do.
My wonderful husband also installed these adjustable shelves for me this weekend and it feels great to have more things up on the wall instead of cluttering up my counter. On the bottom are stamps, wooden ones on this tiered shelf unit and my favorite acrylic stamps are in this little crate that I painted purple, plus my ihome which I have to have nearby. On the middle shelf are these jars that my grandmother just gave me and were perfect for all of my ribbon. I love to make organization pretty, it adds more color to the room. The top is just some stuff that makes me happy!
The post about this area is here plus a few extra things around my room. I definitely have more plans for prettying up my room and will share as I create them. I want to continue to make it a statement of who I am.

Madison's 8th Birthday

This two page layout I spent quite a bit of time on and I'm very much in love with it. I started with a design that I found in one of my Creating Keepsakes magazines (by Laura Vegas) and then I altered it as I needed to in order to fit what I had. I love this paper pad that I picked up from Me & My Big Ideas in their clearance booth at one of the Expos. I got it for like $5.00 and it came with 6 die cut sheets inside! What a bargain!
I sewed a lot on these pages and I think that it really finishes it off.
Here is the first page with my beautiful little girl. The difficult thing was that we had this party a week after we moved so the few friends that she had invited from her old school had apparently forgotten about it in the week that they didn't see her. So it was just family, but she was really good about the whole thing (and I promised the girls one really big party this year for the both of them with all of their friends!)
Here is the second page, the papers coordinated so well with everything, it was like... magic!
I have been waiting for an excuse to use some of this rose ribbon that I have been hoarding from American Crafts. It is the perfect touch to go with her Pinkalicious birthday. I also punched a few circles out of that Happy Birthday paper and then adhered it with dimensional adhesive.
I sewed around each section of paper and used these die cuts for the title and I pop dotted a couple of the pieces.
And this has to be my favorite new technique, outlining my photos with a Sharpie fine tip poster paint pen in white. This was an idea that I got from Ali Edwards and I bought the pen from Amazon, I was a little hesitant to try it but now I am hooked! It adds just the right touch to the photos as if I had spent tons of time and cardstock matting each of them.
These embellishments are so cute grouped together. The presents are from a set that I got in a dollar booth at an Expo, and the cupcake is from SEI along with those star borders. I really like their birthday collection.

Can't wait to share photos of my finished room tomorrow!

School Pages

While we have been busy getting things done around the house I have also been busy scrapbooking. I try and get as much done as I can in the morning so that when naptime rolls around I have no problem spending a couple of hours in my room (which is just about done now! will share on Monday). For some reason though every school page that I do never quite turns out the way I want it to, I'm really hoping that American Crafts or Echo Park come out with a school line this year to make my life easier!

Since the girls started school in Helendale only 7 weeks before we moved to Victorville, I had two sets of First Day of School pages to do. Here is the first set...
Madison's actually came out okay, although the pencil paper is a little preschool looking for my big 2nd grader. I used a Queen & Company felt border but cut it up to make my title and the little accent on the right.
This one just didn't come together the way I wanted it to, but I'm still sharing it. More to show you the pictures than the page.
After doing those first two pages and not feeling it from those papers, I decided to not use school themed papers at all. The only thing I did was hand cut out these two apples. The border punch at the bottom is one that I just got, it's from EK Success and I am absolutely in love with it!

I did both of the girls pages at the same time because they will go into their separate albums so it won't matter that they match. I did create different titles for them. All of these papers are SEI except for that apple. The date stamp is American Crafts and I wrote a little letter to each of them on the shipping tags and stuck them behind the photo. This was their first day at their new school and it was kind of a rainy day (and picture day, although I didn't know it!)

I did realize a couple of things while doing these pages: #1 I work better from sketches or some kind of idea that I come up with before starting. #2 I don't work well with school themed products. #3 I create better pages that I am happier with when I take my time. I flew through these and got 5 pages done in 2 hours but don't love them as much as I do the layout I have currently been working on for 2 hours. When I slow down and add the little touches like sewing, or working out the design ahead of time then it creates a much better page... No More Hurrying!

Bunk Beds

I have come to really love working with Echo Park collections! They are so easy to use and I always love what I end up with. Here are some pictures that I took when the girls first got their bunk beds. This is in our old house and so the girls had fun looking at this and remembering the full wall mural of Mickey and Minnie that I had done.
This is all the Summertime collection because these were taken last July so I thought they would fit well. I am in love with this background paper! It is always nice to have a scalloped square to use as a base and to not have to work to get it! More tomorrow, school pages are finally getting done... yay!

Our Valentines Day Trip

Neil and I thought that we were oh so smart on Monday. We thought that because the girls had Monday off and it wasn't a day off for everyone, that Disneyland wouldn't be that busy. We knew that next Monday (President's Day) would be crazy, but never thought that those people that didn't have Monday off would take it off! Now maybe Disneyland just wasn't expecting it to be as busy as it was, but when the parking structure line went all the way back to the Ball Rd. signal, we knew it was bad! So we went around and parked in their additional parking on Harbor and took their bus. We have never had to do that before. But still we were determined to have a good time and at that point were very grateful to not have the boys with us. We wanted to go on Indiana Jones but it was broken so after we got Madison's new pass we went on Pirates of the Caribbean. My family will get a kick out of this picture of Kaley, I really should find the school picture of me with my hair like this so you can see the ridiculous resemblance.
She liked that her "growing out" bangs weren't in her face. And my sweet Madison, I had to cut her bangs before we left so that you would be able to see her face in her annual pass picture. This poor child has had the same annual pass picture since she was 3! She was very happy to have a new one.
One of the things that the girls and I were most excited to see for ourselves was the Tangled addition in Fantasyland. I had seen an amazing picture on my friends' blog Disneyland in HDR of this and we had to check it out. It turns out that this is a place to meet Rapunzel and Flynn Rider and if the line hadn't been an hour long I definitely would have done it. Tangled is my favorite Disney movie now of ALL TIME!
Once we realized that Disneyland was really crowded and we were not going to get on many rides we decided to head over to California Adventure. And if there is any ride that I am willing to stand in line for an hour to get on it's Toy Story Midway Mania. We are a gaming family I guess you could say, so this is one of our favorite rides. The girls are so cute in their 3D glasses!
Neil and I get a little competitive on this ride and I am getting much closer to actually beating him now... I must practice somehow! They even changed one of the games on the ride, I love how they try to keep things fresh for those of us that go there pretty often.
Madison really wanted to go on California Screamin' the crazy fast upside-down roller coaster but Kaley was about a half an inch too short! So Neil took Madison on it and I took Kaley on her favorite ride King Triton's Carousel. She has always loved this ride! She wanted to sit on a dolphin and so I got a really cute purple otter.
Can I just say right now that I hate temporary tattoos! The girls decided last Friday to put about 10 of them on and they just look like they haven't bathed in weeks! I tried to get them off that morning but I was getting closer to rubbing off their skin than the tattoo.
My one "have to do" for the day was going down Downtown Disney and getting these little bits of heaven from the Jazz Kitchen Express. Their Beignets are amazing!
We had powdered sugar all over us... but it was worth it!
I tried to savor each and every bite of those wonderful little fried doughnut squares and it was very difficult for me to share at all, but I did!
It took us way too long to get home but we had a very fantastic Valentine's Day together.

Tomorrow I will share some scrapbook layouts! Yesterday I got a couple of really productive hours in my room while the boys napped and I got 5 pages done! That was amazing for me.

Nubi... how I love thee

After going into the girls' classes last Friday for their Valentine's parties, I took them to Nubi as a special treat and time with just me and them. I have come to realize that these places are all over just called different things. It is ice cream heaven! Well, it's actually frozen yogurt but it tastes like soft serve ice cream.
After the girls sample a couple of flavors they make their choice of ice cream. Madison tried cupcake and coconut but then got chocolate. Kaley tried strawberry but then got cupcake, and I got cupcake with a little bit of peanut butter! Then we went on to the toppings, Madison is a lot like her Daddy and goes for the fruit, Kaley gets sprinkles and some candy, and I get different candy bars plus cookie dough and then we all added the whipped cream... yyyyuuuummmmm!
We sat at the bar counter and had a nice time talking about their day and enjoying our yummy ice creams. And yes, Madison made that hat in her class party, it says "Madison the Queen" and she wore it to Nubi, Lowe's and Winco. I guess that I have been kicked off the throne already!

Things I Love...

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!!!
Although I am still in the middle of a couple of little projects to finish up my new Valentine's decor, I will share with you some of the things that I have finished and things that I am just loving right now. First off is this wreath...
I saw this in the back of the Scrapbooks Etc. magazine and knew that I had to make one for myself. It wasn't until I went to buy the stuff for it that I realized that theirs was only an 8" wreath (too small for me) and it used 1" wide strips of paper (too bulky). So here is my version, a 12" wreath form covered in 1/2" strips that are an old SEI collection called Twitterpated that I have had in my stash for over a year.
The lollipop is just a felt scalloped circle glued behind a circle that I cut out of matching paper and then used a rubon from Making Memories that I have had forever (I love to use up old products in my stash), I added a lollipop stick and some ribbon and glued it on!
The time consuming/pain in my rear part of this was hot gluing all of those strips on. I think I may have burned off my fingerprints from all of the hot glue burns! But I do love how it came out and I finished it off with some glue and chunky glitter. I am loving turquoise and pink this year, as you can tell...
I am loving jars lined up on my mantle right now, filled with little love treasures. I will definitely have to get more Ball jars for next year, maybe even some blue ones!
I whipped up some of these super easy ribbon flags using American Crafts valentine's ribbon that I picked up for a dollar a spool last year at Michael's. There are little buttons that I hot glued onto the ends and then I just placed them in this jar on my mantle.
I really love these Valentine's Day kitchen towels that I picked up at Target the other day. I am definitely noticing a turquoise theme everywhere I go this year.
I just couldn't resist picking up some red & white spice drops at Winco to fill up one of my Apothecary jars. The heart candies I have had for a couple of years now from another candle holder.
And most of all, I love these roses that I picked up at Vons on Friday. I bought them for each of the girls and then took them into their classes to tell them how much I love them and to make them feel special. They were very surprised and kept smelling these roses all afternoon. Now they are filling my kitchen with thoughts and smells of love.
Well, I am off to Disneyland today with my hubby and the girls. The girls are out of school today so we are going to take advantage of it. Can't wait to spend the day with them, the boys will be here at the house getting love and attention from their great grandparents, and then we will spend a quiet evening at home watching a movie on the couch as a family. I love Valentine's Day!
Hope you all have a great one!