All is not abandoned

Although it may look it. I swear I have been so busy but doing what I am not sure. You know how that goes.

Friday was the chat at scrapbookdoodle.com. I just have to say a huge thank you to Yvonne for letting me come and chat it up with an amazing group of ladies. I had so much fun. We talked alot about scrapbooking all about me layouts. And well one thing led to another and I ended up challenging the ladies to scrap a layout about themselves and can I just say that they turned out fantastic. Here is my layout from the day:

We had a busy weekend here at home. Zoe had a soccer game this Saturday and her team won :)

I can't say enough how proud I am of my lil soccer player. She blocked an incredibly hard goal shot and you should have hear the crowd cheer and the look on her face. If I would have had my wits about me and not been jumping up and down acting like the crazy soccer mom I would have had a picture to show you but alas.....insanity took over and I missed it.

Sunday was a scrappy day. Zoe and I went over to my friend Marcie's where we all made some super cute invitations for my friends baby shower. We had a great lunch, even better gossip and well it was great to get out of the house :) So thanks Ree. She also got me hooked on hummus!

On the scrappy front: There are still a few more days if you would like to enter the guest designer contest for Paper Trunk. Here is the sketch to follow:

Entries are due on May 2nd at 8pm PST. Email your layout to info@papertrunk.com along with your contact information and blog address if available.

I smell my yummy roast chicken in the oven and it is calling my name. See you all soon!

Chatting live in five!

Well more like 10...but you get the hint.



If you stop by my blog today and have nothing else to do, head on over to scrapbookdoodle.com where I am the guest designer for an online chat. I will be there from 9am-2pm PST, so come talk it up with the girls from Trunk.



Here is the thread:

http://scrapbookdoodles.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3917



Hope to see you there!

Five Faves Friday

Woooops! I umm kinda sorta forgot that today was Friday. The half day of school in the middle of the week kinda threw me for a loop. And without further adieu...my five fave things this week:

1. What not to Wear- Stacy and Clinton freakin crack me up, the show is just beyond funny and I soo want Nick Arrojo to cut my hair!

2. Chatting with old friends-Today I had my best friend for almost half of my life down and visit and we chatted over homemade cranberry orange scones and I was lucky enough to take pictures of her little preggo belly!! Thanks Jamie for the gossip and pics!

3. Izze sparkling grapefruit juice- as if the taste isn't enough, the design on the bottle is awesome!

4. Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child books- I have read 5 of them now, 2 of which were this week and they are FANTASTIC! Suspenseful, scary and an incredible and quirky main character. My momma got me hooked for good!

5. making cards- now normally I am not a card-maker but the past 8 or so projects I have done have been cards. I have found it a fun change of pace.

Ok girls. I have a super early soccer game tomorrow! Now you all better leave me a fave or two or three ;)
Have a great weekend!

At long last... I am a COVER GIRL!

Ahhhhhh!!
I just now was cruising over to Scrapbook Trends to see what their recent calls were and lo and behold....there was my layout cover up on the site!!!!! I am so excited to have my first cover! The layout is a digi one and the first digital layout to be on the cover of Scrapbook Trends mag and features Kim Garofolo's beautiful daughter. Thanks so much Kim for sharing your precious Olivia with me!
Check it out :)
http://www.scrapbooktrendsmag.com/
It's the first mag on the left hand side :)

Getting Trunky with it!

nah nah nah...nah...nah nah nah Getting Trunky with it.

Did I seriously just sing Will Smith? LOL

I think I need a cup of coffee ASAP!

Today the new issue of Trunk Times came out. For those who are not in the know, Trunk Times is the monthly newsletter for Paper Trunk. Carrie has done a great job putting it together this month and switched it up a bit. It reads like a little online mini-book and it is adorable. This months theme was using Jellybean paper.So head on over and check it out. Let us know what you think!

Here are some more Trunky Projects for ya!

Goooo Blue Vipers!!!!!

So this weekend was my official start as a soccer mom, and well I think I am probably well-suited for it LOL! Being a former cheerleader and all.

And my little Zoe girl. I can NOT tell you how proud I am of this kid! She has come so far this year and I was bursting with pride watching my lil niblet out there on the field playing soccer with kids twice her size. I swear the opposing team were a bunch of 3rd graders LOL! These kids were tall and fast.

Our team got creamed and it was very hard to watch them get scored on repeatedly but they did an awesome job and played their hardest and had FUN. Well most of the time I think :)

We arrived a half hour before our game started and watched the teams before us play and I was sitting back watching the parents (Dad's especially!) and kinda giggling to myself as they kept yelling GO SON, GO SON! Every Dad there referred to their child as son not by their names.

Well when it came time for the Blue Vipers to play, pfffffttt! I guarantee half of the neighborhood could hear me yelling. The momma's on our team are quite the cheering section. Just picture me camera in hand, jumping up and down, yelling my head off when Zoe came out of the field as the goalie and BLOCKED!! YES BLOCKED the first kick in.

Here are a few pics of her anticipating the ball, I missed the block because I was freaking out LOL!

Despite her petite size, this kid is a WONDERFUL goalie. She watched that ball like a hawk and was anticipating everyone's moves, it was adorable to watch. So she blocked the first ball and then got scored on about 3 times and BOY did she not like that. The tears came and she cried in the corner of the goal post. The girl that scored on her came over and apologized and said "Don't worry, you will do better next time!". I think she met a kindred spirit in the other little red headed girl out there.

So there is my cutie pie and her first game. She rocked! I am a very proud Momma indeed!

And there is her new "DO" too! I think this is the first pictures of her with her short hair :)

I shall leave you with a few pictures from the game. Thanks for listening to my soccer mom diatribe ;)

Five Faves Friday

I thought I would post my five fave things of the week on Fridays. Just added incentive to keep me actively posting. So here are a few of my favorite things this week :)

1. Men In Trees- I simply adore this show. Hot men galore, fun plots, it has it all. Did I say super hot men yet LOL. If you haven't watched it yet, you had better start ASAP! Wednesday nights on ABC at 10pm PST



2. Debbie Macomber books- I just finished reading Back on Blossom Street. This whole series of books is what really sparked my interest in wanting to learn how to knit. Check out her fun website that has lists of books along with knitting patterns, recipes and more!



3. Guitar Hero III for the Wii. My family can not get enough of this game. I am trying to finish up the medium level and move on to hard. Wish me luck ;)


4. Threadbanger.com-This site is filled with some amazing inspiration of all sorts. I can't sing its praises enough. They have the coolest videos every Friday as well. I know if you give it a shot you will be hooked too :)

and last but not least

5. Making Memories Blog- I am sure most of you already go there. But this is one of my fave manufacturers blogs. Always updated, so many wonderful layouts and ideas and the give-aways,
do they have amazing give-aways or what!

So there is a quick rundown of some of my faves for this week.

Tomorrow I am officially a SOCCER MOM, if you can believe that. I know I can't. Zoe has her very first soccer game tomorrow. So I shall update with how it went some time this weekend. Wish her luck :) She is very nervous.

Have a great Friday and feel free to share some of your fave things with me!

Everything but the Kitchen Sink...stamps that is :)

A few months ago I was wandering aimlessly around the internet, as per usual, and somehow stumbled across this adorable stamp site called Kitchen Sink Stamps. Now I am not a huge stamper by any means, I am mediocre on even my best of days. However I am a sucker for acrylic stamps and this site caught my eye immediately. The site had some really fun designs and I wanted to learn a little bit more about Kitchen Sink. So I headed on over to my fave site Create My Keepsake and posted a thread asking if anyone had ever heard of Kitchen Sink or used their stamps before.

Fast forward a month or two. I am updating my resume blog and I see that there was a comment left on my blog (I didn't even know I had my blog set up for comments LOL) and it was from Maria at Kitchen Sink Stamps asking if I would like to try out a set of her new stamps!

Well HECK YA I do! So after several friendly emails back and forth, Maria gave me my pick of stamps and I fell in love with this beautiful set Playful Frames and Journaling. I have been on the search for a set of stamps that had strictly journaling lines on it. Just nice straight lines. This stamp set has not one, not two but three. Once again my poor mailman was going to be stalked until they arrived ;)

When the stamps came several days later, I was not disappointed one bit! I took them over to my friend Pam's house where we get together and scrap once a week. Pam has a never ending supply of inks, so I grabbed several different kinds and set off to putting these stamps to the test. They were so easy to use, the images came off beautifully and they cleaned up like a dream. The only ink that didn't want to come off (which you aren't supposed to use on clear stamps anyways but I always do LOL) was Colorbox cat eye inks. I loved the look of Versamagic Brilliance inks the best.

Here are a few cards that I made using the Frames and Journaling stamp set.

To make this card, I started with a base of Fancy Pants True paper. Layered a coordinating piece of True paper over the bottom half of the card. Inked the edges. Then using the half circle floral stamp, I stamped twice to make a cute circle flower wreath for my diecut sentiment. I used a circle cutter to trim out the wreath and inked the edges and repeated the steps using the memories sentiment stamp. Using the smallest sized journaling lines stamp I mimicked postage type lines in the upper left hand corner and then used a cute little trip stamp in a coordinating color. The final stamp I used was a tiny flower stamp which I punched out with a small size circle punch. I used them for my Prima flower centers. Finally I added a little strip of ribbon to give the card a cute homey touch.

For this card, I used these super cute circle stamps, but instead of making a complete circle with them, I only stamped one time to make a fun little back ground for my diecut and flower accents.

I used the large journaling lines stamp on the bottom half of the card and decided to use my handwriting for the sentiment of the card. I inked the edges with black ink to help everything pop out.

And last but not least.

I wanted to make a simple card using only cardstock and a couple of die cuts.

I folded my cardstock to make the base and then tore about an inch off the front fold of the card. I stamped the floral border on the inside of the inner part of the card.

Not only does this stamp set have journaling lines, sentiments and borders but it has cute photo corners as well! I added a few to each corner of my card.

A quick addition of die cuts and buttons and my card was done in only a matter of minutes.

So a huge thanks to Maria at Kitchen Sink Stamps for giving me the opportunity to try out her fun and unique acrylic stamps! I had a great time experimenting and playing!

A quicky card

Ahhh to sit at a nice clean desk that you can actually see the top of! Nice, so very nice.
I was sitting here blog hopping and was looking at Dani's blog Homespun with Heart, (check out her super cute work on there!) anyways, she had a little card challenge on there to make a card using polka dots, chipboard, paint and a butterfly and I thought what the heck I am going to make a card. Not as cute as hers, but it was fun nonetheless.

Take a crack at it and see what you can come up with and don't forget to link your card to her blog :)



I used a piece of MM Noteworthy cut in half and then folded in half. Some cute Fancy Pants polka dotted paper from their Celebrate line and painted the edges of that. Layered a Heidi Swapp damask sticker over the top. Added a Fancy Pants felt butterfly and photo corner a few stitches and some yummy Noteworthy dimensional flower stickers and velvet SCALLOP edged ribbon.

A Bit of Spring Cleaning

Well, I finally did it. Cleaned this pit of a scraproom out. It only took me 5 hours and multiple garbage bags of junk to get this place looking ship shape. It's not totally perfect but looking ohhh so much better and making me actually want to sit down and scrap something again. Ahhhhhh!

While I was cleaning,I tackled my enormous PILE of layouts that I have just been stacking one on top of another (instead of going with the right and organized way of ohhh putting them into scrapbooks LOL). I counted 158 layouts! Yes,that is 158 layouts that are in need of a home! I knew it was bad but I didn't think it was that bad. So I am thinking I need to go get some more albums. I was lucky enough to run across an Am Crafts album at Big Lots for only $5. But dang it if there was only 1 left. But I snagged it up and had some fun reminiscing on my floor looking at a years worth of layouts. Seeing how much Zoe has changed over the past year, how much my style has changed. It was funny how I could see where I started scrapping 8.5x11 because there was a pile of about 10-15 layouts in a row that size. I thought I would share a few that were my faves from the past year-year and a half.







Now to make the trip up to Ikea to go get some Expedit shelves. I can't wait to get them and have them put up in here and have this room user friendly!

Also..I have so much chipboard and felt that I am having a crazy hard time trying to figure out how to store it all. Anyone have any tips on how you store these large chipboard and felt pieces? HELP!!!

ok a few new do pics.

I have yet to take some of Zoe's hair but here is a few snaps of mine.
But here ya go. I think I am going to go get it recut.
Go figure the one time in a year that I go to the salon to get my hair cut,it turns out poopish LOL!

Winding down from Spring Break.

Phewwwww!! I can't tell which has been a busier week...Spring Break itself (which was last week) or this week. EEK!

A quicky update on our Spring Break which didn't turn out quite as planned but was fun nonetheless.

Zoe and I had our annual Spring Break haircuts and both ended getting a ton of hair chopped off. I had 12 inches taken off and she had about 6 inches, which for her tiny frame was a lot of hair. Now where are the pictures you ask...well I am being lazy and haven't taken any "after" shots yet.

We spent 4 days of Spring Break driving up and down the whole state of Oregon looking for a new vehicle and FINALLY ended up buying one. THANK GOD! This has been at least a year in the making. So we are now the proud owner of a 2006 Mustang GT. John is loving it and that makes me happy.

During one of the car searching trips we stopped at Build-a-Bear and Zoe bought a cute little pink sparkly bear aptly named Pinky Sparkle LOL. She cracks me up with her choice in Build-a-Bear names. This kid has 7 bears now. She could practically start her own dang store.

As for the rest of the weekend, I spent quality time with a bald man...MR. Clean to be exact. Please don't mind my little rant about the BEST cleaning tool EVER! Now whoever decided tile was a good material to build a freakin shower out of..well I hate that person LOL. Our house is an older house built in the early 50's and this tile has to be from then. It just basically sucks and cleaning grout is my LEAST favorite chore ever.

Let me back track a bit for ya...trust me it's worth it. I love the Dollar section of our local Albertson's and I happened upon a huge box of Mr. Clean cleaning supplies and brushes and I just grabbed one of each, thinking heck I could possibly use one sometime.

Fast forward to me Saturday morning,old toothbrush in hand scrubbing like a madwoman trying to get my grout clean, not a pretty sight. Then I remember that I picked up a
TILE AND GROUT BRUSH. I was skeptical at first how it was going to work but I was BLOWN away at how clean it got my grout and how easy it was to use. YOU MUST PICK ONE UP! Trust me you will thank me later!

Ok so that was my cleaning rant.

Now as for the week after Spring Break I have been busy with taking the kiddo to the dentist (which I am proud to say she did an incredible job!), soccer lessons started this week and I scrapped at a friends house yesterday. I actually got a few cards made too, which is pretty darn good for me these days. I am pretty excited about the cards as well because I got to use some fun new stamps from KITCHEN SINK STAMPS. I will make sure to post them later this week.

Now onto cleaning up the house. Zoe is having one of her little buddies over after school today. She is really excited about it.

Have a great day whomever is out there reading :)