Happy Birthday Taylor!

My nephew celebrated the big 1-0 on Monday, so technically this is a little late, but I wanted to wish him a Happy Birthday here. Natalie loves her big cousin Tay! She loves to give him kisses and adores any attention she gets from him. I've always thought she favors him, especially when he was younger but just looking at these pictures of them side by side, there's no denying they are kin!
So in honor of birthdays, here's a fun meme I saw over at Cheryl's blog. She's having a week long celebration! That's the way birthdays are meant to be celebrated right?

IF TODAY WAS YOUR BIRTHDAY.
1. What kind of cake would you want to eat? I'm a simple gal. I love just some plain vanilla cake with white icing. Throw some sprinkles on top and I'll be that much happier. I also love strawberry shortcake. So either of these would suit me just fine.

2. How old would you be? I still haven't quite come to the grips that I'm not in my 20's anymore. My next birthday I will be 32.

3. And someone gave you $100 to spend just on yourself (no groceries! nothing for your kids! no exceptions!), what would you buy? Well Scrapbook supplies immediately come to mind, but aside from that I'd love to have a new outfit or two. I try to shop cheap, so I could probably find a few outfits with $100.

4. Where would you go to celebrate?I typically celebrate with my family. But it would be nice to leave the kiddo with the grandparents and do dinner and a movie with the hubby.

5. Would you make a wish when you blew out your candles? You know, I haven't done this is a long time. Maybe I need to make a point to make a wish next birthday!

Tagged

Ok, so several days ago Dawn tagged for a little fun. I had to give this one some thought but I'm finally gonna get it posted. The deal was to take your middle name and use it to come up with some things about yourself or ways to describe yourself. So here goes..

R - Really obsessed scrapper. I've been scrapping for about 2 and a half years but the major obsession didn't start until right around a year ago and got progressively worse after N was born. After those first couple months of newborn exhaustion, I really dived into the whole online community of scrapbookers and haven't looked back. Jolene asked me in my last post how I got so many pages done. The little one goes to bed at 8. So from 8pm til way too late I scrapbook. Not always every night, but quite often.

E - Easy-going. I'm a go with the flow kind of gal. I try to take most things in stride and most of the time it really takes a lot to irritate me. My husband is like this too, so sometimes it makes decision making a pain. "I don't care" is the most common answer to, what are we gonna eat? What do you want to do this weekend?, etc. etc.

N - Not very organized. I mean this in the sense that my house is not in the state that I want it to be. I want to be one of those people who doesn't have "stuff" all over the kitchen counter tops, or the coffee table. I can not stand clutter, yet I seem to struggle with it, and can't seem to overcome it.

A - A Christian. A wife. A mom. A sister. A daughter. An aunt. A friend. That pretty much covers it!

E - Emotional. I cry at the drop of a hat. Commercials can even bring me to tears. I even cried when SpiderMans Uncle died and everyone saw that coming! LOL.


And because no post is complete without a picture, here's a page I got done over the weekend for the One Little Word challenge. This is also using a sketch from Pencil Lines.

Some Layouts

Just a quick post to share some layouts. Using more of my stuff I got from Sweet Spuds.

This one's for scrapjacked.

I love Mara-May's pages and decided to scraplift one of hers. I loved the design.


Natalie really loves her Baby Einstein video. I had to get a picture of her watching so seriously. When I showed this page to John he told me I need to learn how to spell before I start writing on my pages. LOL.. as you can maybe see, I spelled Einstein wrong and then had to correct it. What happened to that i before e, except after c rule??

I had purchased some foil mailbox stickers a couple of days ago and really wanted to use them, so this is what I ended up with. I'm not happy with the picture of this one. It looks much better in person. I still have trouble sometimes getting decent pictures of layouts. I've tried taking them outside, but there's so much light outside they often look washed out. For those of you that post layouts, what do you do? Scan, take outside or something else?

Weekend in Pictures

Just some random things going on in our household over the weekend. We almost always use the rocker chair to feed Natalie. Now that we can sit at our table without being surrounded by scrap stuff, I figured I'd put our high chair to use.


Playing and singing.. she bangs those rings together and gets really excited.



She pulled up for the first time this weekend. I was snapping pictures one right after the other and when you look at them all together, they make a mini-movie! Even caught her in mid-fall. But don't worry, no babies were harmed in the making of these pics.

"I hit my head" she says, "but I'm ok!"

And then today we were playing with a tube. I would talk into one end of it and she didn't like it one bit.



Is this not the most pitiful face. Look at that nose, she was so mad it was red. As long as I didn't talk into it though, she was happy as could be. And how you like those smashed cheerios all over the front of her clothes?
Happy Monday!

Where there's a Will...

There's a way...
A gave Natalie an empty water bottle today in an attempt to entertain her for a few minutes. She dropped it underneath her chair, and this is what she did.



I guess now I can't even leave her for a second in that chair..much further and she would've toppled right over. She was bound and determined to get that bottle.I did get a chance to work in my new space last night with my new kit from Sweet Spuds. Got the latest OLW challenge done using the word "seek". Actually, the first thing that came to mind with this word, was Seek first the kingdom of God, but several people seem to be using that, so I did something different, with a similar message. The journaling at the top says "If there's one thing I hope to teach you, it's this. He is the source of all knowledge and wisdom. This page means a lot to me because this is my number one job as a Mother, to teach her to always seek God.

Also got this one done using the latest Pencil Lines sketch.


Hope everyone's having a good week!

Miscellaneous Monday

Sometimes the days just seem to go even faster than usual. This past week has been that way. John's schedule fell to where he had the past 5 days off. I love having him home with us during the day, it just goes entirely too fast.

So this weekend I finally got my new scrap space! I have been scrapping in my foyer for the past 6 months. Not such a pretty sight to be greeted by the big ole mess I had piled up in there. I had all my stuff spread out on our dining table and a card table I set up. And that was the first thing you saw when you walked into the house. Anyone that would visit us at home knows what an obsessed scrapper I am, so I didn't worry about it too much, but it was an eyesore and I'm so glad to have it cleaned up. Friday night, while I was at our monthly crop, my brother brought over a media center that my aunt wasn't using anymore. I set this up in the corner of my living room and it has doors! So I can close up the area and you don't see all the stuff. So here it is! Doors closed, just a pretty piece of furniture. Doors open, everything I need for a night of scrapping! The doors have corkboard on the inside which is really handy for hanging small packages of stuff.


As soon as I finish up this post, I plan to spend the rest of the night using this area for the first time. So, Friday night I got quite a few pages done. Here are some of my favorites. I love this picture of John and Natalie. Her facial expression makes me laugh. Sometimes she doesn't like to be kissed. This next one is my scrapjack of Meghan Dymock. Not a style I would typically do, but as I've said before, that's a big reason why I do these challenges.

And this one is for UnPubbed. Another one of my favorite pictures I've taken over the last few weeks.

I did quite a few more, a lot of you have probably already seen them if you're a member over at SISTv, so I'm not gonna repost them all here. If you'd like to see them, you can see the rest here.

And then, total change of subject.. if you remember a few weeks back after the release of the 7th Harry Potter book, I decided I would give the series a go. I just finished up book #4. I am really enjoying them, but also a little disappointed knowing that there will be no more to read soon. Only 3 more to go. At this point, I really feel like Hermione is going to end up being Harry's twin sister, given to Muggle's as a baby. I know I could be way off, so all you HP fans, don't say a word. I don't want to know! LOL Guess that thinking is a little too Star Wars-ish, but it just keeps popping up in my head.

I Scream, You Scream

We all scream for..


ICE CREAM!!
Saturday Night my bro-in-law and sis-in-law treated us to some homemade tacos. After which, for dessert there was cake and ice cream. Natalie had her first taste of ice cream, thanks to cousin Taylor sharing with her. You think she liked it? It was also getting late and you can really see how tired she was getting in one of these pics. But not so much so that she wasn't going to eat as much ice cream as we would let her.

After 5 or 6 licks, I cleaned her up and bit and said that was enough, but she didn't think so...
Also got one layout done over the weekend. This is for the srapjacked site. They are doing a challenge a week this month with some extra prizes and happenings. Check 'em out if you're into scrapbook challenges.

Have a great week!

10 Months Old

I started this blog one year ago this month. Initially the entire reason for starting it was to share pics and everyday happenings with family and friends that lived out of town. I have been amazed at how many blog friends I have made that share a common interest of scrapbooking and/or raising a family. So, I just want to say a big THANK YOU to all of you. Thank You for taking a few minutes out of your day to come by. Whether I know you in real life or in "virtual" life, it means a lot that you visit.

Natalie will be 10 months old on Monday. Her 1st birthday is quickly approaching. Any tips on how to slow time down? :) So here's what's going on with her: Her 2nd tooth is coming in. Cousin Taylor spotted it when he was with us earlier this week. She's trying lots more table foods and beginning to not like her baby food so much. Some of the surprising things she's liked are mushrooms and olives. She really likes mac and cheese, especially the EasyMac microwavable kind. We discovered last night she loves peas, which is odd because she just won't eat baby food peas.

She's moving around like a champ. She still crawls around on her stomach, but she's gotten a lot faster at it. And if I go into the kitchen from our living room, it's only a matter of seconds before she's followed me in there. She even figured out how to crawl through/underneath her rocker chair that I had put up as a barrier.

In the mornings I usually put her in her exersaucer so I can grab a shower. She loves watching telletubbies, Little Einstein, or Mickey Mouse clubhouse while she plays in the saucer. She's the most interactive with the telletubbies though. She laughs and babbles back at them and even reaches for them. She had just started saying uh-oh right before she saw telletubbies for the first time. Uh-Oh is about the only word I understand from the telletubbies, and she repeats it everytime one of them say it.

She likes being read to, but usually bangs on the book while you're trying to read it. Funny how babies like to pat everything. And she also wants to turn the pages before your done, and sometimes we read the book backwards, depending on which way she turns the page.

I knew I always wanted to stay at home whenever we had children. I just never knew how rewarding it would be.

Have a great weekend!

I can't believe it!

Would you look at this!! I won all this stuff from the new kit club Sweet Spuds. They just came out with their first kit today. Head over and check it out. Especially if you're into retro, funky stuff. Lots of fun bright colors.

I'm so excited about winning this RAK because I really love this line of product. In fact, here are 2 layouts I did last night using some of this very stuff that I had already bought.
Automatic Bond is for the latest challenge over at One Little Word. And the bubble Trouble is using one of the recent sketches from Pencil Lines.


Hope everyone is having a good week!