Scrapbook layouts

Here are a few layouts that I have done the past few months.

These are some layout I did of my nephews. Up until a few years ago I only had nieces and then the last 3 babies on one side of the family have been boys and the last four on the other side have been boys also. BOYS ARE COOL. It gives me something new to scrapbook.

This was of our day trip to the cool ghost town in Idaho called Silver City. Not really what my kids expected. Emma was thinking a bit more along the lines of Scooby Doo and his ghosts. Heidi was just plain car sick from the windy dirt road drive there.

Our summer vacation was to the Oregon Coast and Portland area. Here are two layouts one for Emma and one for Heidi of our trip. We had a great vacation and really enjoyed spending time at the ocean.

Christmas Gifts

Here are the Christmas gifts I made with my cricut for my daycare kids for their Christmas gifts. I didn't have a lot of money this year for gifts so these were great. I didn't need to buy anything for them I just used the scraps I had. They weren't a surprise because they have taken so much time to make and the kids have enjoyed picking out which character they wanted and then watching me make it.

2011 Bring it on!

Well we made it one week into the new year before taking someone to the Dr. So much for not aquiring medical bills this year. I took Emma in Thursday night after I could not get her fever down. She has strep again. We may be looking at removing those nasty tonsils. She keeps getting strep over and over. She is on meds and today she feels much like her old self.

For Christmas Greg surprised me with a Barnes and Noble NookColor. I love it. Right now I am reading The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan. It is a new series but it follows Percy Jackson and his pal in a new adventure dealing with the Greek Gods. So far it is great. I love the nook because I can adjust the print size so I can read in large print. It is easier on the eyes.

I don't think I mentioned on here that I am back in school. I am going to University of Phoenix through their on line program. I am going to get a degree in Business and Finance. So far I am loving the Home Loans, Mortgage Finances and Escrow stuff the best. I also like the tax stuff but it gets frustrating because they word everything so weird. I love school and it is like a little break from my stressful world to be alone and improve myself. I love the nook because I can down load my textbooks onto it and read them anywhere.

Anyway I figured out that this year's resolution is just to make it through and do it with a smile. I have such a large amount of stress in my life right now and no way to remove it so I am hoping to just deal with it. I still struggle with the whole "let go and let God" concept. I am working on it.

Why I haven't been posting on here

For Christmas the year I was 12 I recieved a journal. It was a great one filled with poems and thoughts and topics to write about in it. I dilegently kept a journal from that day forward. I wrote in a journal my entire teenage years, in to my young adult life and even after I was married. As I had kids the entries became less often. Then blogging came along and I used my blog as a sort of journal.

So why haven't I been writing on here? Because it can all get used against you...that is why.

We are in a lawsuit over Heidi's accident. The attorneys for the church now have acess to everything I have posted and do post on here. They have my personal calendars for the past 3 year and all the enteries from my old blog at the time of the accident. Nothing at all is private from them, and it angers me. The same church I was raised in, the same church I was told to keep a journal in is the same church that has taken it all away from me and made it exhibits in a lawsuit.

I have also encouraged my children to keep journals and to write in them. It angers me and frustrated the hell out of me that the attorneys have taken my blog, and my writing about Heidi's accident. More maddening and heartbreaking is that they took her journal also. If a thirteen year old's journal can not be a safe place for her private thoughts, a place to write her frustrations and her dreams, then no where is.

Friday I sat in a room and watched the church attorneys grill my child about things she wrote in her journal three years ago. They picked it apart piece by piece and not just about the time of the accident, they went through entries clear up to this year. The poor gal has no privacy left at all. You can not begin to understand the anger I feel right now. I could do nothing there, I could say nothing there. I had to sit quietly by and listen to them question my child for hours. It is highly frustrating.

My favorite author Richard Paul Evans has a new book coming out this week. He posted this quote from the new book Promise Me on his face book.

"Hate, resentment and anger, are parasites that feed off the heart, until there is nothing left for love to live on" Richard Paul Evans.

He really nailed this on the head. I have so much anger and bitterness eating away inside of me. I can't wait to read the book when it comes out Tuesday. Maybe in the book he will tell me how to get rid of this cancer of anger, that is eating away at me. Then I can work on the next big issue in my life, which is figuring out what is true. How can all the things I was raised to believe be so jumbled and messed up? What if any of them are true?

This is why I haven't written on here in months.

Last Night's Dream

In my dream:

I had just moved out of my crappy apartment and everything I owed was in a backpack on my back, and I had my son in a baby carrier on my front. I rode my bike this way and went to work, where I got fired because I was late and I couldn't bring my baby to work with me. I left the horrible job feeling overwhelmed and hopeless.

Then I was at a band competition. Back in high school, back on the bleachers, and back in maroon and gold with my high school friends. We were sitting on the bleachers listening to a famous preacher/motivational speaker. He told us to link arms with the person on our right and to link arms with the person on our left. "Lean on them, depend on them" he said," because some hard times are coming" "You will need each other, and you will need their strength to get you through."

One person, was not linked together, she was lying flat on her back on the football field. We thought she was hurt or something so we ran to her and the preacher asked her if she was okay.


"You tell us to link arms, to rely on each other," she said calmly, "but that is not what my grand dad would say." "He would say to look to God and ask God for his help to get us through tough times." She confronted the preacher, "you say you are a man of God and yet you don't acknowledge him or lean on him for understanding."


The preacher asked her, "and you know him? You know that he is real. How can you know this? How do you know that God exist and he will help you?"



She laid back down on the field and looked up stating, "I looked up at the Heavens and I asked him if he was real....and he answered me, " she said.


So then we all laid down on the football field and looked up at Heaven asking God if he was there. As we looked up we saw the most beautiful sunset. She said "look at that and tell me that God does not exist"


I woke up to my alarm at this point. But her words hung in the air around me. "God does exist and he is here to help us through the hard times"



I don't have a son, I haven't been fired or removed from my home. I have a wonderful family and good friends, but I think that as much as I rely on them, I need to acknowledge and rely on God more.



I have prayed long and hard about the choices I have made the past few years. Choices that have affected my children, my relationship with family members and friends around me. Choices that have caused others to dislike me and think badly about me. I stand by my choices and I won't back down from them. I believe in God and I believe that he is still here with me, I have not chosen against him or his teachings. I think the dream is a way of saying, yes God is still with me. Friends come and go, families have falling outs, but God, he is always there.

Emma Layouts

Just thought I would share a few more layouts that I finished this week. The first one is Emma's 7th birthday. I found the photos in with some other stuff, so I made the layout saturday night with my friends. I added a pocket page to hold her birthday cards, and I got to play around with my cricut machine.

The other layout is of swimming lessons a year ago. I found the paper and I loved it so I thought it would work great for these photos. Swimming lessons were really hard for Emma, first off she is tall for her age, so the teachers always expected her to act older than she is. She also has ADHD and the hyperactivity issue is something that causes problems in swimming class. The first time we tried lessons she was asked to leave the class. So I gave up for a year and then my friend told me of this wonderful place where she took her boys. Cathy's Lil'Fish is an amazing place to learn to swim. It was so relaxed and the teachers are so easy going that Emma just fell in love with them. She learned how to swim and bob and float almost instantly. They were so patient with her, when she threw a fit she was asked to sit out until she could join them again. This worked for her. Emma is not one to sit on the side and watch for long so she learned really fast. We have gone there two summers in a row and we are going back this summer also. Emma's favorite game.. Sharky Sharky What Time Is It? Check out Cathy's School for Lil' Fish on her site, summer is just around the corner and this is a great place for lessons.

Layouts with amazing photos

Last fall we had family photos taken by Heather Hillman. She is an amazing photographer and a great friend. She has a wonderful way of capturing my kids personalities and we were very lucky to get photos with her. I made a few layouts with those photos here are a few of them.


To bad the photos of the layouts are not the best. They don't do the pictures justice. They are so much better in real life.

My two favorite shots of Emma are the big one where she was hanging down from a tree branch and the little one above it where she was full on pouting. They totally capture the true Emma. Heather is great with working with children and getting them to pose naturally for the camera.

More Layouts

I was able to get a way for the weekend and scrapbook with my friends. Here are a few of the

layouts I did.

This is of a concert in the park that Heidi went to with her friends. She was able to get photos with the band members. She loves to listen to Reel Big Fish.

This is another layout of my vacation with Greg. I wanted it to be clean and simple like the photos and I wanted it to refect the time we spent together. I used paint chips for the color accents along the edges and some embellishments that have been in my stash forever.

This was a fun day at the zoo with friends last summer. I used stickers on this layout that I bought about 5 years ago. I bought them because I thought they were cute, and I finally had a chance to use them. using items from my stash makes me feel like I am acomplishing something very worthwhile.

More scrapbook pages

I figure it has been a month since the office scraproom was cleaned and organized, I better post a layout or two that I have done this month so you can see that it was well worth it.

The first layout is of our trip to California last Nov. This is the first layout I used my cricut on and cut out the title. I love seeing Greg so excited about something. It was like he was a little boy, he was thrilled to get to take a tour of the missile base.

The next layout was just finished a few weeks ago, but the photos are from last Easter. We are lucky to have any photos of Easter at all, with my surgery on my knee the week before. Thank you to who ever invented the DonJoy Iceman, what a life saver. Emma felt a little cheated out of a great Easter, but she got over it. Easter Bunny brought her a new bike. This was at the egg hunt over at our local Albertsons. Thankfully they still do it, even When "they paved paradise and put in a parking lot" Both my girls have loved it. Sadly Emma only has a few more years of Egg hunting and then she will be to old.

More layouts to come in the next few days and I get them uploaded from my camera.

My new office/scraproom

Here is the finished office, I still want to add a few homey touches but I love it and wanted to post photos.

Here is the floor and walls before we put the stuff back. The walls are Butterscotch sauce color in Kilz brand paint. That makes for easy scrubbing later on. I love the color most when the morning sun is shining in on it. The floor is by Konecto and is called rosewood. This is the window seat that I don't use to sit on. I still want to do some curtains. I painted the window seat the same color (Chocolate Indulgence) as the living room wall, to try the rooms together. The drawers hold all the glues, Stickles, and stuff I don't want kids into and the office supplies. The Iris cart drawers hold stickers, rub-ons and embellishments.
This is the office side of the room. The roll top desk is my new scrapbook area. The key board drawer makes for a perfect place to put layouts that I am working on in. The blue hippo is named Winston Belvadear and he is there to make me smile.

This is the scrapbook side of the room and it is all organized and ready for some serious scrapping. The ink pad case was made by my dad a few years ago and holds all my Stampin' Up pads. Everything else is all organized and labeled for easy access. With the new floors I just roll across the room in my chair, get what I need and roll back.

I love it. I'll have to post the dinning area later this week. That is where we moved all the games and preschool stuff to and it is working out great.

COED Updates

I have been doing these daily, I just haven't been getting them all uploaded every day.

Day 4- put some completed layouts in the albums they belong in. Did it!!! I got 10 layouts put away. Interview yourself. I didn't get this one done yet hopefully later on in the month I will get it done.
Day 5- Clean off a flat surface, dust it and put back what is important to you.

I got my scrap table cleaned off and washed down and set up nicely so I can work on it. Yeah! Do a layout showing fall colors all around you. I have the photos, I just have to finish up the layout for this one.
Day 6- Finish the journaling on a layout begging to be done. Here is the layout I finished of Emma at the science fair.

I also finished up out family trip photos of Yellowstone. Here are the finished layouts of them.

I feel like I am achomplishing something this month. It is nice to have something done and not just a stack of photos sitting on a messy desk.

COED days two and three

So the challenges for days two and three were:

Day two, Do a list of things to be thankful for or clean out a drawer.

I choose to do both again. I made my list of things I am thankful for and here it is.

1. My Family
2. My Husband, who is also part of my family, but I am thankful not only for him being my husband, but also my friend.
3. My friends...I have awesome friends who I can really depend on.
4. A Nice home, I love my home and although sometimes it seems small and crowed it is safe and warm and comfortable.
5. So thankful for my van. It is safe and reliable and I love it.
6. Thankful that I am healthy and happy.
7. I am thankful for my computer and they technology we have to stay connected
8. Books- I am thankful for the ability to see, read and comprehend the written word.
9. Freedom and the people who have sacrificed to give us those freedoms.
10. Food- I am thankful that I don't have to go hungry, or send my kids to bed hungry.

Part two was clean out a drawer, I think really it is supposed to be one in you scrapbook area, but I cleaned the junk drawers in my kitchen. They were bad.

Day Three's challenges were:
Do a Layout of a first. (first car, love, home) I didn't have anything that really fell into this category so I just did a layout, I'll post it later when I have time.
part two was to update your Christmas Card list, so I did that. I have a detailed list with who I am going to send cards to and their addresses.

Can't wait for the next challenge which will be later on today.

CO-ED Challenges

This month I am doing a Coed challenge for scrapbooking. Stands for Complete One Every Day. I will be listing the challenge here and how I completed it.

Day one:

Complete the missing journaling on a layout.

Anything on the floor that shouldn't be there? Put it away, or throw it away so you aren't walking over it or tripping on it.

The first part of the challenge was pretty easy, I have a ton of layouts that are almost done, missing journaling. I finished this four page one this morning.

These are the photos of Heidi's Trek, in 2007. So you can see I am a bit behind on the scrapbooking.

Part two of the challenge- I had two puzzles that have been on the floor all month, and they are now picked up put in their bags and put in the proper place. One less thing to walk around. I have also been working on image swap items today. Two down one more set to go.

First Day of School-- Summer is over.

So school is back in session and for today I am enjoying the peace and quiet of my home. What did I do over summer vacation. We only took one small trip out of town and that was to Utah to play at lagoon. We rode the big roller coaster. It was fun, I mean I liked it, My girls hated it. Scared the pants off them. So after that we stuck with Rattle Snake Rapids.

I also painted the kitchen this summer, it was a challenge reaching above cabinets and along the ceiling. The edger is my new best friend. I love the colors and how it turned out in the end. We replaced the old caca blinds with new 2 inch fake Wood ones. It also helped to cut down the amount of sun and heat in the dining area.

One day this summer, while Heidi, Greg and I had an appointment with a Doctor, Emma and Grandpa went to lunch at McDonald's and the Oscar Mayer Wienie Mobil was at Fred Meyers so the stopped and got their picture taken and got a wienie whistle. Emma had fun.

Most of the rest of the summer was spent driving kids to swimming lessons and camps and stuff like that. I started back to daycare in August, baby Noah returned as a little boy with a baby sister. We love having them come play. Below is the photo of a wall chart I made for my kitchen. It has an erase able calendar and a white board and the whole thing is magnetic. I love how it turned out.

Off to enjoy my quiet house.

How the Summer Flies By

I can't believe summer is already half over with. We had a very busy month in June. I spent a wonderful weekend in Hagerman with my friends. It was great and I could show the photos but what happens in Hagerman stays in Hagerman.

School got out and Emma graduated from Kindergarten. Heidi finished her first year of high school, had her 15th birthday and started Driver's Ed.
Graduation photo with her teacher Mrs. Ledbetter.

Stay off the roads.!!!!!! We also had Band camp, cheer camp, basketball camp and swimming lessons in June. I changed the name to vancation because we spent so much time in the van. I did get time for reading in all of this and I finished the Twilight series. Not my favorite but okay.

So now we are into July and celebrated the 4th here at home and have been enjoying sleeping in and staying home. We go to grandma and grandpa Beers about three times a week and go swimming at their house. It is fun and refreshing.

Yesterday we went to the zoo and played with friends. Next week I plan on doing a few other things with the girls. Bowling, movies, maybe a night at a campground or something.

I am getting a few more cards done and some scrapbooking.

Cards cards and more cards

I have been working on a lot of cards lately, so here are a few of them I have made.

This one is a card I made for the RMHS band. Actually I made 40 of them. They are sending them to all the wonderful people who donated to the auction we had last week.

I am in a card swap for Get Well Soon cards. This is for group 2 that I am in. The bear is a digi stamp. Well not really it is a digital coloring book page that I printed colored and cut out. Isn't he so cute. The card is sitting on a piece of blue paper, it is that big and crooked.

This a another coloring book picture that I changed into a card. I made this for my neighbor who hasn't been feeling well. I made it a bit more masculine for a male get well card.

Another card I made out of scraps I had left over. I just love this poor dragon with is neck injury. You just can't help but feel for him. I think I'll name is OSCAR.

I tried to turn this one the right way many times and I can't get it to work right. But you can get the idea. This is for another group in the Get Well Soon swap. I hand colored all the images. It is a Stamping Up image that I have had for a long time. She is so cute.

Emma's Science Project

So I have to back track a few weeks, we have been so busy. Here are a few photos of Emma's science project. She did her project on Capillary Action of Water in Plants. Basically she took white carnations and put them in colored water and watched them change over a number of days. There were only two Kindergartners in the science fair so she really did great. Of course they don't award prizes or anything now days because every child is a winner. (Don't get me started on that subject)



She had fun and she learned a little so that is what matters.


Here is her poster and her research. She did most everything on her own. I helped her with it a little bit.


Here are the end flowers. Most of the colors worked. Green and blue worked the best and purple didn't work very well at all. The yellow flower was in orange dye and it took longer than the other colors.

movie reviews

Since I really can't do much of anything but sit in bed and watch tv, I figured I better do a review on what I watch.

Australia- I have always wanted to go to Australia and the scenery in this movie is what made me want to watch it. It takes place in the early 1940's and is about cattle driving and WWII. It has a great story, good actors and wonderful shots of Australia. It is however very long...so glad I didn't see it in the theater. It was really good and I would recommend it.

Marley and Me- The girls got this movie for Easter and it is another one I am really glad we didn't see in a theater, because it makes me cry. It is funny and sad and great. I am not a dog person and I liked it. We hoped it was a good family movie, but Emma just didn't stay interested in it, so it is for a bit older. There were a few things not suitable for her age anyway so it wasn't too bad that she left and went to go play.

Other movies I watched this weekend were good Harrison Ford Classics:
Patriot Games
Clear and Present Danger
The Fugitive

I also watched the Sarah Plain and Tall movies 1,2, AND 3.

And the newest in the Love Comes Softly Series.. Love Finds a Home. Although these movies are great and I enjoyed them they are nothing like the books. I have the whole series of books and have read them many times over the years. The movies don't even come close to how good the books are.

I am also working my way through the Gilmore Girls Series and am on season 4.

Well that is this weekends movies.

Surgery

So last Wednesday the nurse finally called back to inform me I was a go for surgery. We have already postponed it once and it messed up a number of schedules. So when she asked when can you come in for knee surgery I replied, "I'm not busy this afternoon." She laughed and then scheduled it for Friday.

So Friday I went to the hospital got poked with an IV and counted backwards from ten. I woke up a few hours later and my knee was in it's amazing $600 bionicle brace. They gave me a choice because it was after 5. I could stay and be poked and bugged in the hospital all night, or I could go home and sleep in my own bed. I chose HOME.

Saturday wasn't too bad, I have used crutches before so I was able to get to the potty and back to the bed and I was on medicine. I also had a pain block in my leg that hadn't worn off.

GUESS WHAT...?

It wore off about 3 am Sunday morning and I was in horrible pain. I spent the rest of the night crying and watching the clock so I could take more meds which weren't doing anything but making my stomache upset. MY husband bless his heart was right there next to me telling me to just sleep it off, and he wouldn't let me call the Dr. in the middle of the night.

Sunday at 4 we finally contacted a Dr. and got another med to help keep down the pain meds. There is nothing like vomiting when you can't bend over a toilet. At this point I was getting rather discouraged and bummed, because my husband had to leave town in the morning and I felt like Caca.

Well my Friends showed up Monday to stay with me while DH left full speed to get away from the whiny wife. It was kind of like a friend chat party, only I don't remember anything we talked about. At 12, my friend took me to physical thereapy, where I continued to feel miserable and yucky and they unwrapped my bandage and started moving it. NOT FUN

I went home and went to bed and when I woke up my big sister was here to take care of me. I spent most of the rest of the week laying around in pain and with an upset (hurry hobble to the potty) stomache.

Thursday my friend Alex saved my life. She brought over a really cool machine:
http://www.dme-direct.com/donjoy-iceman-ice-man-cold-therapy-cryotherapy-1100-don-joy/
I totally recommend this machine to anyone in pain. As soon as she wrapped it around my knee and turned it on, it felt better. By the next day I was off the strong drugs and only taking a regular Tylonal. it is amazing. Now my tummy can start to recover from it's drug induced topsy turvery.

Friday my sister had to leave, I was so sad, she was such a major help and I didn't know what I was going to do without her. Then, my friends again, like angels from heaven, returned to assist me. This time it was more like a mommy lunch get together instead of come care for the sicko. They brought lunch and dinner and helped me out until the hubby could return.

Here it is a week since the surgery and I am getting around a little better, my stomache is feeling a little better, and I'm not in much pain at all. I am spending my time watching movies and coloring digital stamps. I can almost bend my knee 30 degrees, which isn't much. I am supposed to bend it 60. It is still going to be a long few weeks of recovery.

More cleaning and organizing

Here is Emma's toy shelf. We made it more kid friendly with labels. Now she can put everything away where it belongs.

There are nine baskets and they all have a photo and the words, so she can learn to read also.

Here is a close up of them. So Emma can see the dollhouse pieces belong in this basket.

Here is a photo of the linen closet also. I took Peter Walsh's advice and got rid of all the blankets and sheet we don't use. There is now two sets for each bed. I put the bedding in baskets also and labeled them so the girls can just pick out the basket and go make their beds.

I did keep a stack of quilts that my mom has made for the girls. I space bagged them and sucked them down really small with the vacuum. They are in my cedar chest. Now we only have two quilts in the linen closet.