Monday Night

Just thought I'd post my layouts that I worked on tonight. This first one is actually one I did this weekend. John, Natalie and I spent Friday night and Saturday out at Daniel and Telah's. Us gals scrapped while the guys played their computer game. I'm finally to my December pictures, so this was the first pictures of Natalie for Christmas. I used Basic Grey rub-ons for the first time and I really like them. I like the fact that with rub-ons you can overlap onto the picture.
Our circle journals are scheduled to rotate this Friday night at our monthly craft night, so I had determined to get those pages done tonight. I had Kim's book this go around and her theme is "What Makes You Happy." This was a really easy one for me and didn't take long to put together.



And last of all, I went ahead and did a layout for the newest Pencil Lines sketch. When I started this one, I didn't think I was going to like it, but it turned out ok. John took these pictures after we had taken Natalie for her first shots. She had some tylenol and it immediately knocked her out. I love that sweet face more and more every day.

One of Those Days..

Ever had one of those days when you think it might have been better just to stay in the bed? We started off the day with a visit from the plumber. Our sink was backed up. Apparently I'd let to much grease get down there. Now I know grease isn't supposed to go down the sink. I don't pour my grease down there, but I guess I need to wipe out my pans a little better before rinsing off the residue.. Meanwhile after the plumber takes care of that he discovers our electrical hub, for lack of a better term, is coming off the roof. (The place where all the wiring comes in the house.. ours is through this pipe looking thing attached to the roof.) We had already planned to go to Sam's club, so we added Lowe's to the list for some roof cement and shank nails.

We get the baby all fed and ready to go, load up in the car, and it won't crank. Just a week ago today the passenger side window fell while driving down the road in 30 degree weather. At this point John and I both were wondering what else could go wrong. After a failed attempt to get it jump started, my father-in-law came over to help us get it started. Once he and John managed to get it running we headed to AutoZone and ended up purchasing a new battery. Between the plumber bill, the part to fix my window, and a new battery, that's a WHOLE lot of scrapping supplies I could have purchased. LOL

On a good note, Natalie sleep 10 hours last night and has taken her naps like a pro today. I think I may have figured out that my caffeine intake could have been the cause of her not sleeping well. It may not have a thing in the world to do with it, but when you're nursing I guess anything you eat or drink could affect the baby.
Here's some pics of her and her animals. Gotta love the pink monkey!Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Latest Pages

I've really started using a lot of sketches for my pages. I thought it would help me get more done in less time, but I'm not sure if that's working or not. This first layout is for one of the recent sketches on pencillines. I had it all planned out, cut out my paper and everything and then decided to go with completely different paper. It also took me forever to get the pictures arranged in this half heart shape. Chronologically, I'm in November of last year, but I jumped ahead on this one. I just wanted to go ahead and use these pictures from last week.

Natalie's baby book is only going to take her through her first month. These 2 pages wrap up that book.
And then these 2 are from sometime in November. I still need to look up the date in my digital album and ad it to the pages.

I'm having trouble keeping my eyes open... goodnite all!

Score!!

I just won 2 tickets to go see TAYLOR when he's here in town next month. I *heart* EBAY! John's already in the bed, sawing logs so I just had to share the news with someone! LOL I'm sure he's gonna be so thrilled when I tell him *dripping sarcasm*. He'll go with me just because I want him to but he's just not the biggest American Idol fan. His birthday is actually the same day as this concert, so I guess I just made our birthday plans. hehehe.. I bet he'll be a fan after this concert. The guy puts on such a great show! The odd part about my purchase is that I got them for $35 LESS than what I would have paid if I had bought them from ticketmaster before the show was sold out. I don't get that.. the guy lost money.. of course I don't have them in hand yet, so keep your fingers crossed for me.

Soul Patrol! Soul Patrol! I'm just a little bit excited..

Baby's First

Natalie girl had her first Valentine's Day and her first Cereal this week. She had to go for her shots and well check on V-day. While she did pretty good at the dr. she was so fussy and just didn't feel good the rest of the day. Her Pa Pa brought her a pink monkey which was so cute and she loves it. I took some pictures of her with it today that I will post soon, I just haven't downloaded them onto my computer yet.

Then on Valentine night, she got her first taste of cereal. She was so funny because she had this strange look on her face, almost as if she was thinking "I don't know what's going on but I think I like it!" Of course by the time we were done, she had it all over her face, her bib, clothes , sleeves and hands.
Tonight we are going out to eat with some friends of ours that we haven't seen in a while. It will be good to catch up and spend some time with them. Then I plan on spending the rest of the evening scrapping and I'm sure John will play WoW. The new scrapjacked challenge is up.. so got to get busy on this one. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Challenges and a Personal Note

Here's my sweet Valentine baby. That is a whole lot of red! My best friend from High School was here in town this past week and she has a new baby too. Her baby Elizabeth is about 7 weeks younger than Natalie. We went to visit them briefly on Friday and then spent a little more time with them Saturday. In the picture above, I'm holding Elizabeth and she's holding Natalie, just in case you were thinking Natalie shrunk and looked different. LOL It really hits home how much she's grown when I held a baby 2 months younger than her.

Originally I had Natalie dressed in this Valentine outfit on Saturday before we left the house. I took some pictures as soon as I got her dressed and it's a good thing because she decided to poop all over it before we got out the door. I'm not a big fan of Huggies.. they just don't hold it all in... maybe more info than you wanted to know, but if you happen to be expecting a baby, that's useful information! :) Pampers are my diaper of choice. Enough about poop.. here are two layouts I did tonight. The 3week old one is for a challenge over on 2peas and the Halloween one is for pencillines.
Lastly on a personal note.. my mom is having some health issues and is going to have to have surgery in a few days. She's suffered a couple of mini strokes and they've finally found the cause. She has a hole in her heart that needs to be repaired. Your thoughts and prayers would be greatly appreciated. The good news is that once they fix this, it should solve a lot of the problems she's been having.

I'm off to bed.. gotta quit staying up so late, but I just have so much scrappin I want to do!

My girl, and why I blog

One of the main things I love about being a SAHM is getting to see all of Natalie's "firsts". While I'm pretty sure I caught a giggle several weeks ago.. today there was no doubt. She laughed several times today when we were playing. It's amazing how exciting it is to watch her reach milestones and discover the things around her. She turned 4 months on Tuesday, and as I've said so many times before, the time just flies by.

She has really starting babbling so much lately, but it seems whenever we go out with family, she's too mesmerized by everything around her that we can't get her to talk. So I've tried to catch some video of her talking..



Jolene is having a RAK in celebration of her 1 yr blogging anniversary. So after answering her question about why we blog, I thought I would post something about it here. A year ago if you would have told me that I would be a blogger and make time to read other blogs daily I would have said, "yeah right". Especially knowing that I would have a new baby in the house. I always wondered where people found the time. But one thing about having a new baby is that you spend a lot of time sitting down. Whether it's to feed her, hold her while she sleeps, or just simply letting her play on the couch or floor while you keep an eye on her. So it's very easy to find the time with a laptop and multitask :). So why do I blog?

I'm so glad I started blogging for several reasons.

• It allows me to share pictures of our family easily, for friends and family that we don't get to see that often. It's nice to know so many people take the time to come by and read.
  
• It helps me remember the little things that go on in our everyday life and is helpful in preserving memories. One thing I do need to do is back up everything I've written. If blogger were to crash I would be so upset that I lost everything I wrote. So there's a freebie tip.. back up what you've written.
  
• I have "met" so MANY people. I have come to know people all across the country (and even not in this country) through the blog world.
  
• So much of my personal scrapbooking style is what it is because I am constantly inspired and motivated by so many bloggers and fellow scrappers.

So thank you to each every one of you that come by to see what's new. I love reading my comments, so if you've been just a reader up to this point, branch out and let me know you were here!

More Scrapbooking.. Surprise!

They've already posted scrapjack #2. This time we're lifting Elsie Flannigan. You can see the target layout over at the scrapjacked site. I wasn't sure what I was going to do for this one, but decided on some pics of me and John. I can also use this layout as half of my circle journal entry when I get Julie's book. Her theme is "My Prince Charming", so this goes perfectly with that.


The scan of this doesn't do it justice. I think it looks so much better in person. But I had fun putting it together. This "style" so to speak, is not typically something I would do, so it's fun to try something different.

Our All night crop this past weekend was great.. a few of us went almost the whole night and finished up about 5am Saturday morning. I got home about 5:30am and I have to say, even though it was a lot of fun I don't think I'll be doing that again any time soon. I need my sleep! LOL Here are a couple of my favorite layouts that I got completed that nite.
Natalie went with me to the all night crop and did really well sleeping in her Pack N Play.. of course this was after I finally put her in the dark. I had her out in the room with us, but she just wasn't gonna go to sleep with all the action going on at the crop. She likes sitting in my lap while I scrapbook. I'm training her early!

Scrapjacked

I'm a little late getting my scrapjacked layout posted on my blog. If you are a scrapper you've probably already heard of this because it seems to have swept over the scrappin blog world. For those not familiar, each week a talented scrapbooker is chosen and the gals at scrapjacked choose a target layout for everyone to lift, reinvent, and give our own twist. This week Ali Edwards was the chosen target. Here is her layout as seen in a recent issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine: And here is my scrapjack of the layout:
I am so glad I ran across this site and I'm already looking forward to the next challenge. It's a good way to get ideas and put pages together in ways I ordinarily wouldn't think of.

In other news, we've enjoyed just hangin out at the house this week We had snow on the ground this morning! It didn't last long, but was pretty while it lasted. It's been so cold! Enjoying the simple things like hot chocolate and heating blankets!