Warm Summer Sun

My first try at using an extracted photo in a scene. It was a lot of fun to create and I'll definitely be trying my hand at it again!

Small & Sweet

Another layout for a Sunshine Studios challenge. The pictures are of John when he was three weeks old. I can hardly believe that he'll be eighteen months old in another week. Where has the time gone?

Memorial Day Picnic

The church we attend usually has a picnic every Labor Day, but since for the past two years it's been over 100 degrees at that time in September, they moved it to Memorial Day this year. The high was around 68, so sweatshirts were in order. What a nice change! Here are a couple of the pictures I managed to take. The boys had a wonderful time (in fact, there are no good pictures of James because I couldn't get him to stay still long enough!)

John trying to keep up with James. This is actually pretty representative of how life usually is for Johnny!



Like I said, hard to get this kid to stay still! Here he is with his snow cone, off to find his cousins to play with.



John and the football. He had so much fun playing with this and could always find someone willing to run around with him!



Last, but not least, here's Peter, bundled up in his blanket with dad because I put him in shorts and a short-sleeve shirt so he could match his brothers, never mind that it was pretty chilly for someone without a lot of body fat! He spent most of the day being passed from one person to another, and of course he greatly enjoyed that. I think he looks a lot like his daddy in this picture!

Fun Challenge

I just discovered another fun challenge at another forum, the Scrap Shanty. The goal is to copy a paper layout as closely as possible with digital supplies. Here's the layout I did for this week (and here's the original.

Happy Girl

I made this layout as a "Show-off" for Brittney of Britt-ish Designs. (She kindly gives each person who uses her designs on a page a little gift.) The little girl is the daughter of a friend. Isn't she too cute?

Friendship Bread?

Two weeks before my sister left on vacation, someone gave her a bag of Amish Friendship Bread starter. She really enjoys things like that, so she follows the direction, bakes the bread, and then off she goes on vacation, leaving me a starter so that when she gets back, she can have a starter back from me. (After all, the directions say, and I quote: "Only the Amish know how to create a "starter" so if you give them all away, you will have to wait until someone gives you one back to make more bread!" Now, personally, I highly doubt the veracity of this statement. Surely, some Amish woman somewhere spilled the secret.) Anyway, I have been faithfully following the directions (I did make one mistake, but apparently the dough is very forgiving!) so that I can fulfill my one and only duty while she's away~keeping this starter thing going.

I've discovered why they call it Friendship bread though; not because giving it away is a sign of friendship; no, it's because after trying to pawn off the starters on everyone you know, you'll have no friends left. And here's where I've run into a bit of a problem. Each starter makes two loaves of bread, and four more starters. Out of the original batch I was given, I managed to give away ONE starter. So, now I have three starters sitting on my kitchen counter, doing their thing. Each one of those will make four more starters, and assuming I'm able to get rid of even four of them, I'll have eight starters sitting on my counter next week, each of which will make four more... I think you can probably see where this is going. (It kills me to throw them away, but I'm going to have to, either that or buy a bigger house to put them all in!) So, if anyone would like to have an Amish Friendship Bread starter, just let me know!

Dinnertime Drama

Is it just my kids, or has anyone else noticed that you can serve something for dinner one night and the kids devour it and ask for seconds, but try to serve it leftover the next night and you get major drama? It doesn't matter how many times you try to explain that just last night they thought it was delicious; they won't go for it! Frustrating! :)

On a cheerier note, I picked up this adorable kit when it was on sale for $1 at Little Dreamer Designs and I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do with it (it is mostly pink after all, and I do have three boys) but I couldn't pass up such a good deal! :)

Fortunately it did have a couple of blue papers, and it was the perfect color to go with the shirts the boys were wearing this day. (The layout is linked to a bigger version if you want to read the journaling.)

Brotherly Love

All right Mom P~here are your promised pictures! Just a few more weeks and then you'll be able to see these boys in person! James is already telling me every day that we're going to see you. He's pretty excited!!

Here's Peter with the "wave" hairdo. :)

And his first time in the Bumbo. He wasn't too crazy about it, so we'll have to try again when he gets a little older.

John

The last two are my favorite from the day. The boys both love little Peter (even though we have to keep an eye on John. Apparently "gentle" doesn't mean much when you're not quite 18 months old yet!!) :)

Another Layout

I finished another layout for the Snap & Scrap monthly challenges, and I think it's one of my favorites so far. I just love this picture of Peter; how often do you see a baby with enough hair to do this? ;) I took some more pictures of the boys yesterday, so as soon as I sort through them all I'll put up some new ones for you Mom P!

Two More Layouts

I finished a couple more layouts the past couple of nights that I thought I'd share with whoever reads this (I guess that's assuming someone actually does!)


The first was for a challenge that gives you a list of things that must be included on your page. I love these pictures of John, so it was fun to scrap them!

























The second one is a picture I took of my niece Chloe for a project I made for my mom and Simon's mom for Mother's Day. [I still haven't mailed out yours Mom P (reference previous post regarding my inability to get anything out on time!), but I promise it's on its way!)] I love the way this turned out and the photo is one of my favorites of her.

I just wanted to say

Happy Mother's Day to you Mom and Mom-in-Law. You've been so instrumental in my life and Simon's life respectively and we appreciate and love you both! Consider this to be your on-time Mother's Day card!

*May 14 Edit ~ Well, I guess even when I have a card made, it uploaded to the site, and the blog post already written, even then I still can't get anything out on time!! So, the Mother's Day wishes are just as sincere, even though they're late. :) Happy Mother's Day Moms!

Good News! (and a layout)

Well, the good news is that after a day of eating barely anything (due to tummy trouble), I've dropped two pounds! It could be that I've discovered the next miracle diet! Now all I need is some clever marketing and dh and I can retire to Hawaii, rich, happy, and twenty pounds lighter! LOL What? You don't think it'll catch on? Oh well, back to the daily grind for him, and back to the pantry for me!

Finally finished a page this morning that I've been working on all week. I just couldn't seem to translate my mental picture of what it should look like onto the computer screen. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out now.

Just when you think it couldn't get worse...

...it does! Well, unfortunately, the spilled cup of water was not the end of the day. Oh no, not even close! At eleven o'clock, just as I was halfway through feeding Peter, we heard a horrible noise coming from the boys bedroom. Simon went to investigate and I heard him say "oh no!" When I asked if he needed help he said that James had gotten sick. So, I put Peter down (who apparently wasn't full yet since he started to scream!) and went to help. Sure enough, the bed was a mess, his clothes were a mess, well, you get the idea! After getting everything cleaned up, the sheets changed, and Peter fed, we got ready for bed. By this time, I wasn't feeling so good either. I spent the whole night alternating between sweating and freezing, and fighting off the urge to vomit. The boys and I spent Thursday camped on the couch in our jammies. I only ventured off to make them breakfast and lunch, and to change diapers and feed Peter. I was afraid I'd given us all food poisoning, but I talked to my sister and she said they had it too, so I'm guessing it was just a nasty bug we picked up somewhere. I'm not eager to repeat that experience again!!

What a Week!

It was a week of ups and downs. Down because our pomeranian puppy Boo got underneath our fence into the neighbor's yard and his pit bull killed her. The same thing happened to the pomeranian that I'd had for nine years just six months ago and we thought we'd taken care of the problem and secured the fence line, but apparently not. The neighbor refuses to even consider getting rid of the dog, and needless to say, with three small boys we are concerned. We asked a friend at church who's a lawyer to see if there's something we can do, but since our dog got into his yard, I'm not too hopeful. I just don't understand what kind of person would want to keep a dog that he knows is dangerous. Our dogs were under five pounds, not really a threat!

On the up side, Saturday was National Scrapbooking Day and I was able to shop, chat with others who enjoy scrapping, and even finish a couple of pages! It was so much fun, and I'm already looking forward to Digital Scrapbooking Day in November.

(I just knocked a whole cup of water off the desk, luckily it missed the computer, but it seems like a fitting end to a long day! The boys were fussy, John was sick, and I still feel terrible. I sound like a bullfrog :( Oh well, I'm sure a good night's sleep will work wonders! )

I'll exit on a positive note: the layout I finished tonight for a Snap & Scrap challenge:

























Night all!