Little Tidbits

And I'm immediately thinking pineapple! 

I'm already off topic. :)

Anyway.......We've been working on our basement for...um...2.5 years now.  A huge part of the hold up is deciding what to do with the ceiling in the craft/laundry room.  It's a mess of all kinds of pipes and wires, most of which aren't tucked up neatly between the beams.  Shudder...My mom eventually volunteered my handy man dad to come put up a suspended ceiling for me (thereby clearing up clutter from her house since he had the supplies laying around).  We also had to wire a light in.  There was an existing feature in the laundry portion of the room, but my craft area was a dark corner.  Lots of time hanging with my dad and a week later:

Ta-da!  We have light!  And a ceiling.  Wahoo!!There's still a bit to be done, like sheet rocking one wall, taping and mudding another wall, painting, adding a door to the bathroom and flooring throughout.  It'll get done.  Eventually.

I also (partly in thanks to my wonderful new lighting) finished my first goal of the year.  I finished scrapbooking our Disneyland trip (from 07).  The goal was to have it finished before this coming weekend (as in the 22-23 of Jan) before my big scrapbooking crop that I'm attending.  Honestly, I'm done with 07. I just need to get a few holiday pictures out of the way and that year will finally be history.

Last, but not least.  The kids talked us into a game or two of Uno attack the other night.  After the first round Sophie had the hang of it enough (with help) that I could have my own hand. We were all having a lovely time.  Then I looked over at my darling baby girl and nudged Jeff.  We broke out in hysterical laughter.  Sophie was holding her hand with the cards fanned out between her toes!  The big and second toe to be exact.  Jeff grabbed the camera and we caught this for posterity.  Love it!

Scrapbooking Randomness

I hate scrapbooking with yellow paper and straight-from-the-8-pk-crayon-box violet paper. (Not together. Either on it's own)  It just doesn't look good and I have such a hard time adding cute embellishments.  Not that I'm very great at that part either, but when it comes to yellow and purple-it is near impossible for me.  I'm not so happy with my layout right now and will not be posting a picture of it at this time.  Will someone please come finish my layout for me?

On the upside-this page layout has a title and journaling something most of my pages are missing.

I made the top 10!!!

I recently participated in a card swap at one of my favorite craft blogs Little Birdie Secrets. A week or so ago they announced they were going to have bloggers vote for their favorite out of LBS's top ten favorites. Guess who made the list??! I did!! I was so excited! So, if you don't mind, would you please go vote for me? Mine is #4 "always." http://littlebirdiesecrets.blogspot.com/

I Heart Free Stuff

Like this:

And this:

And this is what my kids are doing and have been doing all morning and a good part of what they did yesterday:

The first picture is all the free stuff I got at the Get Down With Scrapbooking charity crop last weekend. Of course that doesn't include the make and take projects and a few embellishments that I had already put away when I took this picture. It was a great weekend and my hubby was awesome to let me have that time to myself. Thanks Jeff! I can't wait for next year's crop.

Next is my can rotator shelving system. Free. My mom found this deal for me. One of the big concerns I have about this current house is where to put well, first my family and their things but a close second is where do I put a one-year supply of food? Not that I have that yet, but we are trying to work on it. My mom food these great shelves and it will work beautifully. A lot of my shelf space in my current food storage area is taken up with cans and cans of things we've purchased at caselots. Now I can fill that space with other good food storage things.

Lastly, my kids have been quite taken with McKay's collection of hot wheels cars and this little loop-de-doo track thing. They group cars by families. Then they rearrange them and group by gender. (I didn't realize cars and families or genders either.) Then they put them in straight lines. Now the games on hold till Lyndsi gets home from school. (Currently they're putting their basketballs down for naps. I am living with creative geniuses here.)

Digital Scrapping

A little while back I decided I want to try a little digital scrapbooking. I've been looking around for some free software and found some at http://www.scrapbookflair.com/. It doesn't come with much and what it does come with isn't that great. I did figure out how to use my cute kits from over at Shabby Princess, though. That was helpful. I'm still figuring out if I can layer paper with this software.

Anyway. Here are my first two attempts at digital scrapbooking (and yes I realize McKay is sideways):

Feelin Groovy

Feelin good today, despite staying up too late last night (again). What can I say? I was happily crafting with no hubby reminding me that my body needs more than 5 or 6 hours of rest a night. What kept me so happily entertained? Well, it wasn't prime time/late night TV. That's for sure. (Although, WE had a fun show called Amazing Wedding Cakes that was sort of interesting.) I was learning how to make bows. A few years ago one of the little girls Lyndsi danced with always had these super cute bows that her mom makes and sells (Google Bows and Bobbies). She ended up making all the girls in her tap class bows for their Christmas recital because the ones that the seamstress made to go with the costume were hideous. The new bow was so stinkin cute, I had to figure how to make them. Well girls. It's been almost 3 years since then that I've been on my quest and I think I finally figured out how to make them. I found a website that had some easy to follow instructions and voila! Beautiful bows. (I also just figured out how to add text to my pics. So cool.) BTW-Sophie's cute Halloween bows are some I bought from Bows and Bobbies.





















Also, I was going through some photos on my camera and realized I had a couple of fun pictures of the expo. This is me and my sweet niece, Gabby. Then comes Ranae, me and my "edward" stamp, Cami, and then my SIL Lisa, Gabby, and me. It was a very fun day spent with the best girls.

Little Book

My good friend from high school and college just lost her dad in a car accident about a month ago. A few of us decided to give her something to remember her dad by. Here's the book that we'll give her. Each page has a place for her to record information about her dad, like his favorites, basic info about his family, a fun story from his childhood, things he was strict about, his funny guy habits, favorite holiday, vacation, etc.