Its been a while...

September has been such a crazy month and its not even half started! First in news is that we bought a new truck. We've traded in our van and got a more practical vehicle for ourselves. Seeing is how we are a one vehicle family this fit the bill. I absolutely *adore* it. School has started for these two, aren't they excited? My Abby is in 2nd grade and my Ethan is in 6th this year. Crazy.

Owen is just his happy self, even though he misses his brother and sister.

I've also embarked on a new career if you can call it that. I offically resigned from the school system and have started up my own government approved dayhome. Little Blessings Dayhome offically opened for business on August 28, 2009. I've got 6 part-time boys and its been fun. Owen loves that he has kids to play with and things seem to be going well. I have one little one who is having a lot of separation anxiety so we're taking things one day at a time for him.

I've also ran into a bit of a techie snag, my main and only computer is now in the process of going in for repairs. Something about a defective memory component and the computer wasn't able to read the dvd-rom drive. So with it being on warranty its being sent to California to be fixed. Luckily I picked up a laptop for myself and have been getting my internet/outside world fix through that. When my other computer comes back from the fix it shop I'll engage the wireless internet and the kids will mainly use the desktop. Its taken some time to get used to the laptop, especially the mouse pad but I'm starting to like it better. Thank goodness for external harddrives and the fact that I didn't loose any information or photos.

Just posting some of the last photos of the summer. Owen loved the pool and next year I hope he'll be able to go into it more. The pool is being drained as I type and packed away for the winter.

I'm hoping to be able to do more blog posts soon as things settle into more of a routine.

New scrapbooking (lots of pictures)

I haven`t posted in a while but over this weekend I was lucky enough to get to go scrapbooking at a local crop (thanks Anna!) I was able to get 6 layouts done and then decided to break out the August Memory Workshop kit :) The following are done with the kit which featured the Little Yellow Bicycle company. I`ve never worked with them before but I`m a sucker for orange so it was all good.

This has got to be one of my favorites, love the splash of orange and of course the photo is adorable. Owen makes taking great pictures so easy.

Playing with my new fiskars treading water punch.

this shield shaped paper was a real stumper for me but I`m happy with how it turned out.

yup flowers on a boy layout :)

August 10th is National Smores Day and also my sweet sister in law`s birthday :) we celebrated this year with a hot dog roast and of course smores.

I printed these photos onto 4x6 sheets and sized them smaller. It worked great to fit more pictures on a layout and created a bit of a photo strip.

Sandra included a new photo pen by Zig in this months`kit and it is amazing! It writes so well on glossy surfaces and as long as you wait a couple of seconds before touching the writing its smudge proof :)

I decided to make things simple in this layout and just create a huge photo block. I really love doing this and normally do it with 2 or 3 photos but stepped out of my comfort zone ever so slightly and did 4 ;)

I also used my Stampin`Up! punch that you can use to punch note book papers.

Just a little fun with my square shaped nestabilites. I cut the photos into the exact same size with my cuttlebug and lined them up.

adding a touch of sparkle with some stickles.

Ok this might be my favorite layout too. Love love love the new papers by Cosmo Cricket called Earth Love. Totally my colors and great striped papers. Plus the little birdies are too cute! I used my cricut to cut out the white chicks (Lyrical Letters cartridge)

How adorable are these little guys? I did a big one for Ethan, a middle girl for Abby and a baby for Owen.

This layout was also done with Cosmo Cricket's Earth Love using the reverse of the stripe paper. Ron took this photo of me on National Smores Day. We both took turns climbing up this huge tree in our back bush. It must have been about 15-20ft in the air. My journalling is about the fact that 5 years ago I would have never been able to do something like this. After loosing 60lbs before I had Owen, then loosing most of it again I'm still in way better shape/health than I have ever been. I'm quite proud of my accomplishment.

Just a cutie page about cousins. I seemed to have used a lot of chocolate brown cardstock that night :)

This is of of the new canvas tags made by Prima but designed by Donna Downey. I love how they look but honestly struggled with placement.

Yet another photo by Ron with me in it! Its blurry but totally ok. Shocking I know. Just Owen and I on the slide, yet again something that I couldn't do before I lost all the weight. Love the new Basic Grey June Bug paper.

Some new (to me) Hambly overlays, the paper behind is supposed to be black but the shine from the overlay makes it seem grey.

Love this page too. Isn't it great when you love so much of what you do? My scrapbooking makes me happy and isn't that the whole point? I used some Pink Paislee papers and some awesome riff raff designs laser cut chipboard.

I had this circle for a while and just found the perfect layout on Friday. I used some of my new Technique Tuesday stamps that were designed by Ali Edwards on quite a few of these layouts. The wording just works on so many levels. I got mine at www.scrapshotz.com where I do most of my shopping lately.

just thought I'd let you all know...

I get to go scrapbooking sans enfant on Friday!!!!!! Can't you tell I'm excited? I haven't gotten a night off in about 4 months and I'm just giddy :) Huge thank yous to my favorite sister and my fabulous husband for taking the kids :)

guess what I bought?

found myself a new cute camera bag for my birthday :) I saw it online and decided with exchange/shipping it was too expensive. Shocked to find it locally for a lot less than the online cost. It holds my dslr w/wide angle lens plus there it room for another lens, extra batteries/memory cards etc. Big enough for what I want to take when I don't need the entire collection.

Nicely padded and so cute in red :) Its by Acme Made and its called the red bowler bag.

just a quickie post...

Just wanted to share the little girl's purse that I made on Saturday for my cutie niece. It's her birthday on Tuesday but we celebrated on Sunday. I made up my own pattern and used felt from the $ store and added fun scrapbooking supplies. It was surprisingly easy to do. The only difficulty I had was creating some sort of closure for the top flap. So I sewed a ribbon loop around a button. The cute ribbon came from a package of Making Memories ribbon. It matched perfectly.

Hopefully Em likes it :)

We're starting off on a crazy busy week. The kids are in VBS every morning this week and I'm off doing errands and trying to finish up the details for my latest venture. Praying that things go smoothly for that.

We've also got family coming to visit this weekend and birthday/anniversaries galore in the next part of August. Plus I start working at the end of August (more on that later) I'm excited and a bit nervous hoping that I can get everything done.

And I'm off on my whirlwind week....

Recipe scrapbook

First off I want to say this isn't a new idea in anyway or form. I've been wanting to do something like this for a while and last year (I think) Stampin' Up! came out with this super cute recipe card stamp. I know that they had a different version before but this is the one that tickled my fancy. I've been trying to decide whether or not I should just put my recipes into a recipe file box or something else when inspiration hit! I was going to use a 2 or 3 up photo book so that my cards are protected from inevitable food splatter but also still be easily accessable. So I found a cute photo book in a local store for $4, then proceeded to stamp the recipe cards with red stazon (for faster drying, less smudging), then I added my recipes and matted them with 4x6 cardstock. I couldn't decide on which color to use so I used 4 to match up with my kitchen (kraft, chocolate brown, red and orange) Then I stamped the food categories and colored them in.

What I like about this style of album is that there is a little memo section that I can add hints or tricks about my recipes. For example which pans/cookware to use or freezing times. I also added the stamp with "from the kitchen of:" so that I could remember which auntie gave me which recipe (Turtle cake!) or which ones come from my grandma (strawberry pie!). There is also a yum scale stamp which I have yet to fill out. I also punched out tabs with the food sections on them to make it easier to find each section. Funny thing is I have more dessert recipes than anything, lol!

random post ahead...

So between finishing up the room reno, getting ready for birthdays, reunions, weddings and fall things have been quite busy. We were so happy to have Ron back from his trip, the kids and I missed him like crazy. We spent the next couple of days just being together as a family. One of those mornings we were having coffee out on the deck (our favorite summer tradition) when he casually mentioned that he saw a cool moth by the shop. So I went to take pictures :) Normally moths freak me out something terrible and Ron thinks its hilarious but after a bad camp experience moths and I just keep a respectable distance from each other. But this one was very cool.

It was huge and had the coolest fuzzy antennes, Ron told me what kind it was but I forget what the name was. He did say that they are pretty rare up here.

Look at how cool those markings are! Just click on the picture to see them bigger. I got quite a few photos before our cat started bugging it so Ron moved it to a safer location.

We also built a swing set for our kids. You would have thought with us having older kids that we would have had one by now but nope we didn't :) and will me starting my new venture this fall it will definately come in handy. We weren't too smart though, we put it together on the hottest day of the year. So instead of taking the estimated 4-8 hours it took longer because of building a sand box around the set, shovelling 10 yards of sand to a depth of 10-11 inches deep (for safety reasons), and taking swimming pool-food-water breaks, we didn't finish it until about 10 at night even though we started at 8 in the morning. Its not that easy to build something like this while watching 3 kids and do all that they need. But its done! And really what good is a swing set if it sits in the shop all summer?

And just a funny random Owen shot...this is his moose call. Which in actuallity is the center of my angel food cake pan ;)

Finally a scrapbooking post

So all my creative energy has been caught up in redecorating and organizing my house. I decided to spend the last day and a half scrapbooking. Its been so long! I took out my May kit from the Memory Workshop and went to town. I also decided to not reinvent the wheel and just do what I love to do :)

Love these photos of Owen, they are some of the new pictures that I have up in our room.

I had to look up what the word sublime meant and it fits Abby so well it means: adj. inspriring awe: awesome

Abby and Nadia fooling around at Great Grandma's cabin at the lake

Love this photo of Owen <3

some of my fun pictures of Ethan on the boat

Some new papers from Cosmo Cricket called Lil' man.