Warning: I'm emotional...

Earlier this week a man came home from work, changed his clothes and went out for a run while his wife and two young children remained at home. While on his run a car swerved to avoid an accident and instead of hitting the car, the driver killed the jogger. This hits a little closer to home than the average accident because he was the husband of a member in my MOMS Club.

What this has me thinking about is how important it is for me to not only document the childhood joys and achievements of my girls, but their relationships with each other and with their dad and me. Meaning I need to journal more and I need to include more photos of the two of us in my pages. So this is my new goal. Feel free to hold me accountable, LOL.

For further inspiration I am looking to Sarahbcmc's gallery. If you are not familiar with Sarah, she recently lost her husband to illness. She is left with two young boys; a toddler and a baby. She has been putting together an amazing gallery of layouts documenting the relationship her husband had with the boys and how much she and her husband loved each other. Her layouts are very worthy of shedding a few tears.

Ok, moving out of the blues and into...

The relationship between my own husband and oldest daughter!

My husband is a wonderful father. He knew that Elizabeth loved to play tether ball at school, she plays it during every recess. So he decided she should be able to play it at home too, and together the two of them proceeded to build a game for her to play any time she wanted.

The first page, Together, documents how they constructed the game together. Click here for journaling and credits (Together). The second page has photos of their first game. Since then they have played numerous games and I'm sure many more are just around the corner. Click here for credits (First Game).
















A couple of fun things...

Sylvie Wagner (Sausan Designs) is one of the sweetest designers! She treated me to this wonderful paper pack this week called Altered Artistry: Artificial Flavor available at Scrapbook Graphics. While I was in her store I couldn't help picking up the new Kidoki element pack too, it's very cool. Can't wait to use them! Thanks again Sylvie!













And my fun news of the week is that Nancy Comelab invited me to be on her creative team, yippee! She is another one of those designers that is just beyond nice. And she is fabulously talented. I love her! And you wouldn't believe the talent on her team, amazing scrappers, all of them.














Ok! Well, I could probably think of more to say, but I've already talked your ear off. LOL Have a great weekend!

Get out in the garden day!

For us President's Day means Get Out In The Garden And Work Day. We pruned all our rose bushes and Elizabeth and I got to work cleaning up the fairy garden.

This will be the summer that the fairy garden blooms! We have roses, clematis vines, hydrangea, ferns, an apple tree, snap dragons and various bulbs. I had more, but I made the mistake of buying from a mail-order catalog last year. The plants were fine, but they were small. And my sweet husband killed them thinking they were weeds, LOL. So we will buy more mature flowers to add to our garden this Spring.

We also have a fairy house made of sticks and twigs and we have three logs for seating. And various little pieces of art. And the whole area is fenced in with a picket fence, right off of the play yard. I really want an arbor over the entry, but I am having trouble convincing my husband why it's a necessity. I will paint the inside of the pickets lavender, lime and turquoise before we add more plants though, so we have some fun color year round.

Well enough about my garden, LOL.

Have you seen this new kit by Corina Nielsen, so full of spring-time fresh colors? It's called Spring Chicken, click here for this design at FPD.











And here is my layout using the kit, New Sister. Click here for full credits. These photos were taken when Rachel was one week old. So sweet!















And here is a birthday layout from Elizabeth's 6th birthday. Click here for full credits and journaling. But the page uses these wonderful frame clusters that make doing multi-pic pages so stinking easy! I love them. They are by Nancy Comelab at My Digital Muse.










And I wanted to tell you about my friend Tracey Monette who sells her designs at Scrapbook-Elements! First off, she is one of the nicest people in the world and I love being on her creative team.

Second, she is a great artist, she is always available to me for constructive criticism on my layouts. Every time she gives me a suggestion and I try it, and it always looks much better. She has a wonderful eye. Her digital creations are full of fun, color and creativity. She's very eclectic, which I love. Check out her gallery and her store.

And she is a digi designer in need of a few more people on her creative team! Here is her announcement at Digi Shop Talk for details. You should definitely check her out!

Here are a few pages I created for using Tracey's products.

More school clothes shopping in February!

Do your children wear out their clothes as quickly as mine do? I bought all new clothes in September, and the jeans are already all getting holes in them. Not to mention they are almost too short and too tight now.

Why do they have to grow so fast? It's so sad! I miss my baby, but I love the stage where she is now and I can't wait to see the person she'll be next. Oh, parenting is so full of weirdness. LOL.

So we went to Old Navy tonight to buy new jeans and we couldn't find anything that fit. She's between sizes right now and it's so frustrating, lol. So we bought t-shirts instead.


I guess we'll hit the mall tomorrow and see if we can find something that will be long enough without being so long she'll trip. Something that is not too tight in the waist yet not so big that it's falling off her hips. Oh, wish me luck!

New Products!!!

Have you seen the new Sing Spring kit by Sausan Designs?

Oh, I just love it. I was thinking of a few specific photos when I bought it but I ended up scrapping something completely different with it. I ended up doing a zoo page! LOL

Anyone who knows us knows that we love the zoo, that is one of our favorite places to go. So I have tons of zoo photos from throughout the years, and in this page I used one of my favorites.












Wish (Click here for full credits)

Journaling: "As a pre-schooler, you’ve already determined that the ideal location for your wedding is at the zoo. Since you plan to be a veterinarian at the zoo, you might as well get married there too! 2004."

















This next layout uses several new products by Tracey Monette. I really enjoyed creating this page; doodles are totally fun to work with.

Here are a few previews of the products I used, all available at Scrapbook-Elements.















Silly (click here for full credits)


Basically, it's Elizabeth being completely silly during a road trip a few years ago. My sweet girl is full of personality!

Happy Valentines Day

This year for Valentines Day we have very romantic plans. A candlelit dinner, just the four of us. :)

This year I bought Elizabeth the new Cinderella movie. I didn't really care for the second one, but the third one sounds interesting. (The evil step-mother goes back in time and changes the glass slipper so it fits one of her daughters.) And I think Elizabeth will totally dig it because it includes the issue of time, and she is a big fan of time travel stories!

Elizabeth was really cute last night as she finished her valentines cards for her classmate. When she got the card of the boy she has a crush on she drew a few hearts and then signed her name. As soon as she finished she looked at me and said, 'Oh no! What have I done?!" LOL

Digi News
Corina has created a beautiful tribute to her father, in the form of several paper packs and one coordinating element pack. You really need to check them out, available at Funky Playground Designs. It is beautiful.

And here is my layout using the 'Courage' paper pack. For full credits click here.
















And here are a few layouts that I haven't posted to my blog yet. Click on the page title for credits and to read journaling.

Lunch with Disney Stars
(Oh and this uses the coolest frame clusters around. They make getting multi-pic pages done a snap! The designer is Nancy Comelab and the store is My Digital Muse)









The Charming Captain Hook















Well I have more, but I'll have to get to them later. It is now time to make breakfast for the kiddos.

Have a great day!

This week

Well, I don't want to be a complainer, but I am so tired of the sicknesses that keep running through my house. Ugh!

Ok, cheerier subjects?

Rachel's talking just keeps growing by leaps and bounds. She's only 21 months old and she counts to five, she says the basic farm animal names and their sounds, and she just keeps amazing me every day with new words. Of course her favorite this week has been 'yee haw' as she plays with the cowboy hat that belongs to Jessie (Toy Story 2). So cute!

And Elizabeth's friend told the boy she has a crush on that Elizabeth loves him. Oh, she was mad! But she played it cool, she told him, "I may have a crush on you, but then again I may not." LOL Oh, the boy troubles that first graders have! I think I'm in trouble in later on down the road, lol.

New Product Alert

Check out the cute things that Corina put in her store this week. I am loving, loving, loving the heartstrings. You will probably see them on a lot of my layouts in the near future. (Click here for Corina's store.)

Oh, and I was just over there and noticed she has added a bunch of templates, the first ones she made a while back. Cool.











My Art

This is the layout that I created using Corina's new products as well as Corina's cool doodles. These cute photos were taken by my friend Tracey as Rachel sipped her first taste of cow's milk. She wasn't too thrilled with it, lol. (Click here for page credits.)
















And this was a fun page to do, because I don't normally get to do boy pages. (Click here for page credits.)

So much for healthy

So much for healthy.

Elizabeth came home from the superbowl party complaining of being itchy and she was covered in little bumps and itchy like crazy. So we took her to the doctor and she has a viral infection. Fun, fun. Maybe next week we'll all get healthy and stay that way, lol. Maybe...

My new favorite layout:

First Street
This is a photo of my mom (in the middle) and two of her three siblings. The three of them were born in the little white house pictured in the second photo. In the background of the paper I blended a street map of the city that they lived in, Roswell. The journaling is only a work in progress right now, I have to get more information from my Mom before I can finalize it.

Journaling:
The little white house on the corner in Roswell, New Mexico is a place of history in our family. It is in this house that Frances (Cady), married to Leo Wheeler, gave birth to three of her four children; Elaine (1938), Jeanine (1940) and Ronny Lee (1942). Only Dan was born in a hospital.

Credits:

IOD (Iron Orchid Designs): Orange paper is from Oogelie Boogelie (which is half off right now at ScrapArtist). The blue paper is from Little Miss Lola Britches. The tape and staple are from their element essentials. The white brad is from their Heirloom Enamels element pack.

Linda GB: lace (Ophelia). Amy Martin: Stitched ribbon. Natalie Braxton: Thingz on Stringz. Pinned ribbon. Nancy Comelab: Curled frames (skinny). Michelle Coleman: Paint strokes. Stamped alpha. Lisa Whitney: Ric rac (SA Wintersong kit) JBOLT: stitched ribbon from the DST friends kit.

Ack!

Blogger is driving me nuts. I have been trying to post photos and it won't let me. So.... argh. ok.

We are all healthy finally! Will it last though? LOL

Well, it has been a sick free week in my house! Yeah, I feel like one of us has been sick almost every week since November. Oh gosh, it feels good to have everybody healthy.

And then this morning my daughter tried to kill herself by falling and landing on her head. And scaring everybody, herself included.

She landed, grabbed her neck, began to cry, then became unconscious. From start to end it only lasted about 45 seconds, with her unconscious only about 10 of those seconds. But during those 10 seconds her eyes were open and she was making weird gurgling noises like she was having trouble breathing. Scary.

The doctor said basically what had happened was that with the shock of the fall and pain her blood pressure dropped severely and she fainted. But she is ok. Thank goodness.

Well anyway...

In April I am going to my first scrapbooking retreat, and the best part about it is that it will be all digital! LOL We're all bringing our computers... since I don't have a laptop, I am actually bringing my whole computer, lol. But I am looking forward to going. I will not only get to scrap all weekend long, but I will be on the beach, and I get to meet some of the people I see online all the time. How fun will that be? Totally fun!

New Fun Kit

All you scrappers know that Corina has been missing lately due to the death of her father. But she is making her way back with the debut of this new kit which is very fun.

You can pick it up here: My Funky Valentine at Funky Playground Designs















Here is my layout using this fun kit. Pictured is my sister's son and my brother's daughter. Basically, my nephew is trying to eat my niece's face, LOL.



















Credits:
This is Corina Nielsen's new Funky Valentine kit at Funky Playground Designs. Also used purple ric rac from Arsenal 2, staple from Arsenal, and strung heart from the I heart ribbon pack.

Additional: Curled frame from Nancy Comelab. Edged curled frame from Katie Pertiet as well as the stamped mixed alpha. Paint from Nancie Rowe Janitz. Sequins from Amy Martin. Fuzzy swirl and additional paint strokes from Meredith Fenwick.

Disc Talk Radio News

They are making changes over at Disc Talk Radio. It used to be that only one of the radio shows was free, the rest were only available with paid subscription. But that is not the case anymore! Now we can all listen to all the shows for free, how cool is that? They still have a paid membership which includes all kinds of other goodies including a cool monthly kit by one of the great designers around digi town.

Well, I'm listening right now, and I am enjoying the show!

More of my Art

Here is another layout I did recently for a challenge at Designer Digitals. The challenge was to find a photo and scrap it with just one word, the first word that comes to mind when you see it. I used the new Valentino Valentina kit by Sausan Designs, which is such a fun and eclectic kit.. I loved it. So here's my layout:

Dirty

But I still need an introduction, lol. Rachel playing in the crushed gravel we bought for the patio we were building. She loved it, and you would not believe how dirty she was afterwards! The kind of dirty that requires a shower before the bath, lol.


















Credits:
Sausan Designs: Valentino Valentina paper pack 1. Valentino Valentina element pack.
Linda GB: Cardboard overlay. Lace (Ophelia).
Nancy Comelab: Curled frame.
Meredith Fenwick: Paint strokes.
Syrin: Loose stitches.
Ida: Flower Cut-out.
Katie Pertiet: Pinned tag. Stamped alpha.
Amy Martin: Stitched circle w/ sequin.
Natalie Braxton: Thingz on Stringz.

Creating Art

This was my third entry into the Designer Digitals guest CT contest. Of course I didn't win, I didn't really think I would, but I had to at least try! LOL The fabulously talented 'Christinas' won, and she totally deserved to win, I have been a fan of her pages for a long time. But I had fun doing the pages that I did create.

Create Art

A few photos of Elizabeth finger painting in the backyard during the summer of 2004.


















Credits:
Everything from Designer Digitals.
Jackie Eckles: Altered paper pack number 5. Whimsicality Doodles. Altered embellies journalers. A lot of buttons.
Katie Pertiet: Pinned Tag. Mixed stamped alpha.
Anna Aspnes: brushes from ad challenge 9/17.
Kelly Mize: Paint strokes.