Black Friday

Who doesn't love a good black Friday sale? Go to Pretty Scrappy or Inspiration Lane to take advantage of the savings...

Birthday Sale

I just wanted to let you in on a great sale....Teri's birthday is this weekend, and all of her designs are 25% off!! If you haven't found just the right Christmas kit, you should check out Teri's kit "Merry and Bright." I've been making cards and album pages with it right and left. And at 25% off...you can't beat it!

Also, some of Teri's retired kits will be less than a dollar each during this sale! Some of my favorites are Hometown USA, Weekend Getaway, and Somethin's Fishy.

Go to Pretty Scrappy and check it out! Stop by Teri's blog and wish her a happy birthday......

The Beginning of my December Daily

For a few years, I have watched with creative jealousy at Ali Edwards' December Daily album. She always does such an artistic job of telling her life story. I want to try to make a December Daily album. I loved the idea of documenting the little things that make up the holiday season. The first step, according to Ali, is to gather your materials. I've gone through all my scrapbooking materials in iPhoto, and tagged all my Christmas kits with the Keyword "Christmas." (For more on keywords and organizing in iPhoto, click here) After doing this, I realized that I had a big variety of Christmas and winter kits, and if I used them all, I was afraid that I would lose a cohesive look. Then Teri Mayo came up with an amazingly huge holiday kit called Merry and Bright. It's awesome, full of traditional and not so traditional colors and textures. It feels totally festive. This kit is huge too - 20 papers, 65 elements, a plain and an embellished alpha, felt and glitter styles......Check it out...

So here's my first page of my December Daily album. I'm hoping that each page will have room for 1 focal picture and a spot to tell the story of what's going on. Keep coming back to see more pages...

I'm Losing It!

A few weeks ago, Teri challenged those of us on her CT team to join her on a weight loss challenge. I had been thinking (read: postponing) starting a diet because I really needed it, and she was just the kick in the pants I needed to start. And in Teri's style, she made a kit to help her document her journey.....

Here it is....

She's also included all sorts of add ons, from blog wear to pieces of flair to hybrid journal pages to organize your day and keep track of your progress. I've had so much fun making my journal this week. The pages come in 5x7 format, which is a typical size for lots of organizers, but I wanted to make mine out of a 5.5x8 3 ring binder. It was easy to modify the pages Teri designed to fit my format and customized to my needs. The guy at Office max showed me plastic page protectors that fit this size binder, so my pages slide right in! No holes to punch. On the daily pages there's a spot to record what you ate, things to do, and a spot to write an inspirational scripture or quote. There's also a cute monthly exercise tracker. Here's a preview of some of my pages

I'm also trying to make some mini scrapbook pages to record my thoughts along the way. Here's one about how I feel about myself at the start of this weightloss journey.

So far I've lost 8 lbs! Can't complain!

Speed Scrap Tonight!

Hi everyone!

I'm hosting my first Speed Scrap at Pretty Scrappy tonight! It's at 9pm eastern (8 CST, 7MST, and 6 PST) Please come!! Here's how it works....Log into the forum at Pretty Scrappy. Then at the top of the page there's an icon that says "Chat." Click that, and it will take you to the chat room. Starting a little after 9, I'll give the first instruction for you to build a scrapbook page, and every 10 minutes after that, you'll get another instruction. By the time the hour is done, you'll have 7 instructions for a completed scrapbook page. You'll have another hour to finish your layout and post it in the gallery. The ones who complete the challenge within the 2 hours will receive my kit "Preschool" as a reward, and you'll get Pretty Scrappy points (good for goodies in the store). You don't have to use Pretty Scrappy products, anything goes.

So, please come!!! Invite your friends! I'll post my layout tomorrow!

WORKS FOR ME WEDNESDAY!!

My kids are paper collectors. Every time they come in the door from church, or a friend's house, or from visiting a friend, they have a picture they colored or a craft they made. They are constantly coloring and drawing. Now that #1 has started Kindergarten, he brings home papers daily, and he gets a folder of weekly work every Monday! The memory keeper and teacher in me doesn't want to throw away a single paper or drawing, because when you look at them all as a whole, you can really see a progression of skills, and you can see the things the kids are "in to" at a specific period in their lives. The clutter-hater in me wants to shred it all and recycle it!!!! What to do?!? So I consulted my buddies..... One said she keeps them all in office file boxes, no order, she just dumps them in there, and just stacks them in her garage. Simple enough, but I think that my garage isn't big enough for that! Another friend said that she sits with her child once a week and they decide together which papers to keep and which to toss, and they put them in a file box. Then at the end of the year they go through the box again and try to whittle it in half, so hopefully they can fit 2 or 3 school years in one box. That seemed a little better to me, but the problem was, when I went through the papers each week with my #1, there were no papers he was willing to part with! They were all too important!! And I didn't really enjoy "negotiating" with him like that every week. So here's my solution. I bought an expandable file for each child.

Every time a child comes home with papers in hand, we look at them and talk about them. I'll trash ones that I know can be trashed (parent announcements & reminders- I transfer important info to my calendar then trash the paper), then I put everything into the file. I'm amazed at how much they hold! We're only halfway filled the file from everything from church and school this year. When we fill it, I plan to go thru it with #1 and ask him the things we can keep and trash, and tell him we've got to only have filled halfway. That way he can see his progression over time too. And having 1 file on my credenza is much neater than a stack of papers....

Now, if I can only convince my Husband of the same thing....that's his stack in the back!!

October Roundup

What books and/or magazines did I read this month?

I'm still reading The Mentoring Mom by Jackie Kendall. Reading it slow on purpose. Trying to apply some of the things I like...trying to digest what she has to say.

As always, getting inspired by my Creating Keepsakes Magazine.

and I'm a very vaithful reader of Ali Edwards blog, along with Katie the Scrapbook Lady

What movies, television shows, plays, etc. did I watch this month?

We've watched a lot of Gator football this month, and my MIL is a huge fan of #15 Tim Tebow.

Everytime they show a close up of him on TV, she had my DH pause it, and she takes a picture of the TV with her camera. She has over 40 pictures of him like this. She admires him b/c he's good looking, a good quarterback, and a good Christian - now only if he was 65, then she'd make a move on him! J/K

#1 is really getting into Scooby Doo - the old ones - thanks to Boomerang channel. And we've started watching Electric Company. His school teaches reading in a very traditional phonetic way, so Electric Company is right up his alley.

We rented Tinkerbell, Monsters vs Aliens and Surfs Up for the kids. We rented Grand Torino - loved the plot and characters, hated all the swearing and racial slurs. And we saw The Invention of Lying at the theater. I was disappointed at how sacrilegious the movie was, and it wasn't really that funny.

What fun things did I do with my family and/or friends?

On the 29th, a friend of ours let us stay for a few days at their beach house. It was the best little vacation we had in a while. We played on the beach for 3 days, rented movies, and chilled. The beach is close enough where we were still able to go to #1's football games. We made a sand snowman and took this funny picture....it's for my Dad and Mom's Christmas cards. No, it wasn't cold at the beach....we all got sunburnt.

Speaking of football, he is getting so good at it! Remembering and running complicated (for little guys) plays!

My family visited to see #1 play football and to celebrate #3's birthday. It was a "YoGabbaGabba" themed party. We made all sorts of fun crafts and played great games. We had about 30 people in our house! Yea for big birthday parties!!!!

We also celebrated the fall festival at our church with jumping on big inflatable obstacle courses, slides and bounce houses, as well as kid carnival games....More on costumes below in "accomplishments."

What gifts did I give and/or receive?

My sister made the cake for #3's party. It's Brobee, a character from YoGabbaGabba. Very cool to have her help like that. #3 got more presents than he knows what to do with. One of the coolest ones was a picnic basket with plastic gardening tools, a flower pot, seeds, watering can and children's book about gardening. We've had fun planting our plants just like the kids in the book.

My kids also got fleece blankets from G&G. At first, I wasn't too impressed, but they have latched onto those blankets like they are their best friends.

My M&D said they were going to send me a check to cover the cost of the Tamiflu (see below), and they ended up sending us a check for $700! The letter attached said that my mom found some letters from when we first got married that I sent them with payments for a car we bought from them. My mom kept the deposit slips with them. She said that they felt so badly at the time that they couldn't just give us the car, and now they could, so she added up the deposit slips that she found and sent us the check for $700. We're calling it the M&D stimulus package.

What special or unusual purchases did I make?

Bought #3's birthday present online...that's not a usual thing for me, but I liked the convenience. I'll have to shop around for better shipping deals next time though.

What illnesses or health concerns did I have?

We finished up H1N1 in our house. #3 had the worst case. The worst symptom was a high, hard-to-control fever. I took him to the doc, and she prescribed Tamiflu, and 1 dose did the trick! He still acted like he didn't feel well, but the symptoms were much less severe. Missed some work and church as a result. #1 got a preventative dose of Tamiflu b/c of his heart, but never had symptoms, never missed a day of school. #2 started having symptoms, and I started her on the Tamiflu, and she never got very bad. All in all, we survived.

What were my accomplishments this month?

I started CTing for Teri Mayo again, and I'm getting back into the swing of deadlines and forum posts again.

I have been very crafty this month....Homemade masks, puppets, goody bags, food, hand-painted backdrop for #3's birthday party. I made #1 a rocket jet pack out of 2 liter bottles, glue dots and duct tape. I also handpainted a superhero logo on a red teeshirt and made a belt out of duct tape too. I made #3 a plex the magic robot costume for Fall Festival, and I managed to find pink clothes and a pink wig so that #2 could be Stephanie from Lazy Town.

I completed 13 layouts this month, and my first full kit called Preschool, that I'm going to be giving away at a Speed scrap that I'm hosting this Friday 11/6 at Pretty Scrappy at 9pm

What were my disappointments this month?

I had another student quit taking lessons......

I didn't have much time to work on playing guitar....

I got on the scale and weighed the highest I've ever been (not including pregnancies), which has prompted me to start a diet and so far so good....

Anything else noteworthy to include?

#1 really enjoys the water at the beach and has started body surfing at the beach...

Another Layout with Freshly Picked Fall

Hey everyone! I'm loving Freshly Picked Fall by Teri Mayo! I made another layout with it yesterday. Check it out!

My #3 gives the best hugs! He'll grab me and we'll rock back and forth and one of us will start humming "Big Baby! Big Baby!" It makes my day! If you like it, you can check it out at Pretty Scrappy!

Snapfish Coupon Code

I got this in my inbox today from Snapfish.com and thought I'd share the love......

As a special thank you for being one of our best customers, you can get a FREE 8" x 11" custom cover book when you buy one! Just place two 8" x 11" custom cover books in your cart and use coupon code FALLBOOKS09 at checkout by November 6.*