Sneak Peek

A little sneak peek at a new product review that will be up at The Scrap Review on Monday, June 17th. 

Review Preview & Chance to Win

Here's a little peek at the projects for my latest product review over at The Scrap Review. Check out The Scrap Review today and leave a comment there for a chance to win a mini collection within the Collectable line by My Mind's Eye. 

Studio Calico Review over at The Scrap Review

Check out my latest product review and layouts with Studio Calico's State Fair line over at The Scrap Review. Leave a comment on The Scrap Review post for a chance to win some Studio Calico goodies!

sneak peeks of layouts and life

i've been playing with some cosmo cricket goodness & have a few quick sneak peeks of layouts that will be up on the scrap review on monday. keep an eye out for the review on their new togetherness line.

real life has been rolling on, making more and more opportunities to put memories on paper and in our hearts. on friday stan reenlisted in the military. the girls and i got to watch, proud as can be, as he was sworn in. i think back to when we were first married, never thinking the navy would end up as a career. but here we are with complete peace that this is the very place God has us to be regardless of the trails that sometimes accompany it... perhaps exactly because of that.

i've been on a sunburst kick lately for my daily pictures... so i figured i'd try it through our japanese maple, since the color of the leaves is so beautiful. perhaps funnier is that torrey was all hunched up because she had to go potty, and i kept say... "just one more picture!" :)

Faith can move mountains, 

but don't be surprised if God hands you a shovel.

motherhood and other nonsense

a few years ago, when torrey was in first grade, each kid in her class would write a paragraph every monday morning about their weekend. now i'm pretty sure this was just a ploy by her teacher to take an otherwise gloomy monday and fill it with hearty belly laughs. and man, if i'd been a thinker, i would have had the kids do this for me every week, too!

so flashback to  2006... i'm in the classroom correcting the spelling on the monday paragraphs filled with juicy tidbits of weekend fun. then i come to torrey's paper. her paper says, "on sunday we went to church and learned about how Jesus died on the cross for our sins and we learned that He saved us and to be kind to others. after all of that nonsense, we went home and had a party." now, i'm not going to lie to ya, i might have just burst out laughing right there in the middle of class. i think i even startled the teacher. you just never quite know what they're going to say next, do you?

incidentally, the party was stan's birthday party with our family... 'cause we're crazy partyers like that... lol. i asked torrey what she meant by nonsense, she said, "you know, the stuff that we do all of the time." so i got to explain that wasn't exactly what nonsense meant, while enjoying one of those magical motherhood moments where you try to keep a straight face.

i have this monday paragraph stored in a box of mom treasures. treasures like hand print frames, kindergarten crafties, random little love notes, sweet drawings... heck, i've even got the apology notes (given back to me) the girls wrote to my former neighbor for breaking their window during a "rock throwing contest" in their yard a few years back. treasures that i wouldn't trade for all of the flowers in all of the world. it is precisely these mom moments that make my life so very rich, and so very humorous all at the same time.

in other nonsense... i've been chugging along on my second year of project 365... mostly trying to document the girls on a daily basis. it's always hard to believe how much they've grown and changed over the past few years. it's fun to flip through the daily happenings and see it progress a little at a time, although i'm sure to others, it's a bit like watching grass grow...

the girls seem to be coming up on the next big block of change, and i'm thankful to have these daily baby steps toward the wide world of adolescence. i'm enjoying the ride, and savoring every moment of every stage the best i know how... one at a time.

next comes the scrappy corner of the world. or if you're at my house... the hobby whose supply stash is slowly taking over my entire house. (one more thing to get all cleaned up before stan gets home!) i've been working on projects for several different venues. i've made a couple more albums for the fabulous folks at punky sprouts. you can check them out here and here and here.

then, of course, there is the fabulous fun with all of the glitz goodness. love, love, love their vintage love line!

for the scrap review this month i got to play with the wonderful line my from very sweet friend liz. you can check out the review, along with a few other projects here.

for the sake of those that have actually made it this far down in the post... the rest of these bad boys are gonna get the super condensed speedy commentary. 125.365 emma looking serious & cute and seriously cute on the front porch. {more may daily life shots here}

124.365 torrey lost her first tooth since second grade walking home from the bus.

123.365 my little reader doing what she loves most... snuggling up with a good book.

138.365 emma sporting a flower autie kaori sent her from japan. {more pics here}

137.365 inspired by a friend, i pulled out the lensbaby & its star aperture disk and shot up my rhodies.

135 & 136.365 torrey looking sweet as candy, and emma sporting her pre-bath undone hairdo that looks simultaneously like she's from early 90's and in her mid 20's. {more here}

134.365 this past week i went with emma's class on one of my very favorite field trips... to the state park. i love, love, love our state park. it's amazing, beautiful, diverse and only about 5 miles from our house. we camp there bunches in the summer time, and visit all year round. all of the second graders get to go to the state park where the UW beachcombers come and show them tons of our natural wonders. so super cool! {bunch more pictures here}

133.365 what it looks like when you spend a couple of hours playing in 2 acres of freshly cut grass. i however, will not show you what my bruised hip looks like after falling on my brick steps trying to carry the dirty little bodies into the house. ouchie!

the rest are fill more bits and pieces of our daily life in may... {more pics here}

i {love} my life

i {love} my life. i was sitting at my kitchen counter this morning, drinking my morning coffee and talking to my laptop (my dear husband via my laptop) thinking LIFE IS GOOD. not always ideal, but it is good. ideally i'd be sitting at the kitchen counter, coffee in hand, with my handsome husband rather than with my laptop... but i love my life... long distance love and all. ideally there wouldn't be dirty dishes in the sink or a month's worth of laundry downstairs, but i love my life... messes and all. ideally my sweet girls would always get along and never get in trouble... but i love my life... bickering, sibling rivalry, discipline and all. despite the nonexistent ideal life, i love my life.

i love surprising my kids. we rarely go to the theater... i'm just kind of a cheap skate when it comes to spending bunches of money on something i can have shipped to my house via netflix in a just few months. but nonetheless, every now and then, it's fun to surprise the kids with a trip to the movies. we went to see how to train your dragon. very cute, sweet & funny family movie - we loved it, although i wouldn't recommend spending the extra to see it in 3D.

i love my second born. we went in for week two of ballet/tap class for emma. she's still in love with it all, though i think her favorite part is the free danicing in the beginning before you actually have to pay attention. hee hee. after watching emma the past couple of weeks torrey asked if she could try her hand (or feet) at dance, so the teacher let her stay on for the next class to give it a try. she totally rocked it, so we'll be picking up another set of shoes for her this week. :)

i love my first born, half days and sunshine. i love half days (half as much as i love days off, but still i love them. lol) and this week we had three. yahoo. wednesday we had the perfect combination of half day and sunshine. at our house 68 degrees = swimsuit time, at least for those well under 30. the girls and i had a picnic, rode bikes up and down the street and played some backyard baseball. torrey pelted me in the leg with one of her line drives, but i was able to limp my way over to tackle her and implement some tickle-torture.  i added a few more pictures of our little game, ballet & a few others here.

i love my hobbies. how lucky am i to have the opportunity to invest time in a hobby that helps you find the zillions of blessings that fill your everyday life? answer: pretty dang lucky! this week i made another album using the fabulous punky sprouts mixed media albums. you can check out the rest of the album here on their blog. (i did a review on the albums over at the scrap review... here.)

i love being a mom, watching my kids learn and not having homework. rather than homework, i have housework... the difference is you could theoretically pay someone to do your housework without getting busted. but really, i {usually} love helping my little ones with their after school work. watching little minds bloom and grow is a wonderful job to hold.

i love my life.

memos from a messy mom

first off, i thought i'd share a couple of sneak peeks of a mini album i made for a the scrap review article, that will go live wednesday, on some fun new albums by a new company called punky sprouts. i'm pretty sure that was a major run on sentence. (my friend susan is probably busy typing me up an email about my poor grammar as we speak!) check out the article on wednesday for the all of the details on this fun new company.

 

 

 

last night i was flipping through my march issue of real simple magazine, and came across a great little article on working moms. i generally skip over these types of articles because i generally consider myself a stay-at-home mom, although staying at home is rarely a part of it. i guess it's that the term "working mom" conjures up images of women in suits heading out to their professional-type job. so in my own little world i haven't been what i considered a working mom. all that to say, i read this little article. (that took a lot just to say that! i don't blame you if you quit now. lol) focus noel, focus! this article 10 secrets of an unflappable working mom struck me as sweet, funny and oh so true.

how many times a day to i look at the amazing moms i run across and think... man, if i could only accomplish half of the things she does, i'd be set! enter: secret #5 getting out the door in the morning (without anyone in tears) is the only thing you have to achieve before 8:30am. i have a dirty little secret i'd like to throw in (whatever condition you were in when you got out of the door) no one gets everything done before getting out that door in the morning. i cannot say that i get out the door without anyone in tears everyday - i'm shooting for about 50-50 right now. there are almost always dishes in the sink, laundry piled up and unmade beds. often it's a mad rush, and i hope to head out with two of each backpacks, lunches and kids. however, i only seem to notice these super shortcomings in myself, while projecting perfection on others. funny how that is.

but when it all comes down to it, we're all in roughly the same boat. women who wear lots of different hats, who are great successes in one area while falling short in others. while arming myself with some new found secrets, i'm trying to keep in mind that i am blessed to be surrounded by many amazing perfectly imperfect "working" moms who are just trying to get out the door without anyone in tears - just like me.

still, i am ever inspired by my friend jennifer, who is able to juggle so many things she should be in a circus. she is a wonderful mom to her three kids, a great wife to her husband, has both vegetable and flower gardens, helps at youth group, hosts a bible study at their house, home schools her kiddos, hosts a fabulous bbq's and even finds time to make super cute crafties. she has a tender heart, an unbeatable sense of humor and can work a comical movie quote into almost any conversation. she has more motivation in her pinkie than i have in my entire being. we have been friends long enough (10 years, i think) to have seen each other through the highs and lows of accomplishment and defeat, with make up and with bed head, and through many sizes of jeans. through every phase, she's been someone i aspire to be like. i am blessed to have a real mom, to share the joys of motherhood over coffee whenever time and sniffly noses permit. thanks for being a daily inspiration jennifer, not to mention the laughs when neither of us get out the door without anyone in tears!

 as for being famously and regularly behind on getting my 365 pictures up, i have only myself to blame (and perhaps netflix for providing me with a project runway marathon of movies this weekend.) but we did get out in the great outdoors via our backyard this weekend. the thermostat kicked up to somewhere in the low 60's which was apparently just enough for emma to believe that shorts, tank tops and bare feet were warranted. i would have frozen my tush off, but then i wasn't running around having a stick-sword magic battle with my sister either. i'm not sure my sister would go for that, i've got a pretty mean stick-sword swing. :) 

quite possibly the best part of spring is what happens with all of the blooming flowers outside. kid bouquets! torrey made me this little arrangement all by herself in a little recycled plastic container. it's one of the best mom gifts of the season!

it's certainly easy to tell which of the girls is still eating up having her picture turn up as the 365 shot of the day. funny how it changes from year to year. lately she's been into wearing scarves like uncle jason. she has a couple of her own, then pillages my room for more options.

last night, after procrastinating until after bedtime to get a picture of the day, i borrowed a picture of the day idea from my friend may. i grabbed my current favorite perfume and snapped a few shots. i quite often enjoy the irony of spritzing this on while getting ready for church. hee hee. they make one called saint, too... but this one smells better! lol.

oh! i wanted to add, thank you so much for all of the tips added on my tired post. as per suggestions, i picked up a bottle of vitamin d, and so far, so good. thanks again!!! :)

to finish i wanted to share the last line in the article i enjoyed so much...
"you are one person, indivisible, who just happens to wear many hats. and while i get that the weight of all those hats can wear you down, at least be happy you've got something important to do."