Gettin' By

Over the long weekend...

We got the house ready for hosting the big feast:

We baked and cooked and roasted and basted and sauteed and steamed...and then ATE lots of delicious food.

We celebrated, laughed, and toasted with family.

We gave thanks for the blessing in our lives.

We washed and dried lots and lots of dishes.

We put together four jigsaw puzzles.

We watched many, many hours of football games.

We went to see a movie (kid's pick - Planet 51).

We got a majority of our Christmas shopping completed.

We decorated our Christmas tree:

 

 

We gathered every extension cord in the house, preparing for the hanging of the exterior lights.

We untangled strings of lights.

We untangled more strings of lights.

We used some choice swear words while untangling more lights.

We wondered who the idiot was that put the lights away last year all tangled.

We thought drinking a beer might help us untangle the lights.

We hung lights. We drank beer.

We almost fell off the ladder.  Twice.  (Beer companies might want to consider adding hanging Christmas lights to the list of activities to avoid while drinking beer.)

We decided the second level of our house is way too high to hang exterior lights. Especially when you are holding a beer.

We called it quits on hanging lights and decided to go out to dinner instead.

We wrapped up the weekend with another feast at Rock Bottom Brewery.

We let them wash the dishes.

And what did YOU do this holiday weekend?

Giving Thanks 2009 {Project 3}

The big day is almost here!  Around our house, we are baking cornbread (for the stuffing), dusting & cleaning, and getting the dinner table set. One element I am incorporating into the table settings are small tags featuring "thankful" quotes that will be on each guest's napkin:

 

I printed the tags on kraft cardstock, cut out the tag shape, and lightly inked the edges with brown ink.  After punching a hole on the end, the tags easily attach to the napkins with a bit of raffia.

 

Here are some of the quotes I used:

For today and its blessings, I owe the world an attitude of gratitude.   -Clarence E. Hodges

The thankful heart will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings.  -Henry Ward Beecher

Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.  -William Shakespeare

Thanksgiving Day comes but once a year, but to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.   -Edward Sandford Martin

Let us rise up and be thankful.   -Buddha

It isn't what you have in your pocket that makes you thankful, but what you have in your heart.   -Unknown

You can find more quotes by searching for the keyword "thankful" or "gratitude" at sites like thinkexist.com, quotegarden.com, and quoteland.com.  Enjoy!

Giving Thanks 2009 {Project 2}

Since the Giving Thanks Blog Hop is celebrating the season of gratitude, I thought it would be fitting to feature my little thank-you card project:

patterned paper (KI Memories) + faux twigs (Hobby Lobby) + baker's twine + font (Fling)

This set uses the KI Memories Heirloom line, and you can download the template for the leaves and tags right here.  A bit of twine and some foam adhesive, and they are done!  They would be make a perfect hostess gift, or keep them for yourself to write thank-yous for your holiday gifts!

Now go check out these other blogs for more inspiration!

Debbie Hodge
Kelly Purkey
May Flaum
Patti Milazzo
Stacey Kingman 
Stephenie Hamen
Margot Potter
Lain Ehmann
Margie Romney-Aslett 
Rhonna Farrer
Wendy Smedley
Jodie McNally
Liz Hicks
Becky Novacek
Jennifer McGuire
Elizabeth Kartchner
Allison Kreft Abad

Giving Thanks 2009 {A Blog Hop}

I am so excited to be participating in the Giving Thanks Blog Hop! For the next week, some amazingly talented ladies will be featuring projects on their blogs that center around gratitude. This diverse group of artists will be sharing layouts, cards, projects, recipes, and inspiration that celebrate the Thanksgiving season. I encourage you to hop around each day and see what you can find!  You'll likely see something that sparks your creativity, but more importantly, you'll be inspired to reflect on the blessings in your own life. {A complete list of the participants and their websites is listed at the end of this post.}

The first project I wanted to share with you is a simple layout that documents my gratitude for a particular day this fall when I got to spend the morning with my kids at our local pumpkin patch. It was one of those perfect outings with beautiful weather, cooperative siblings, and lots of great photos as a result. :)

 

perforated tickets (sei) + letters (K&Company) + flowers (Making Memories) + font (Traveling Typewriter) + buttons

Now go check out these other fabulous ladies, alrighty?!? Clicking on their name will take you directly to their blogs.  Happy hopping!

Debbie Hodge
Kelly Purkey
May Flaum
Patti Milazzo
Stacey Kingman 
Stephenie Hamen
Margot Potter
Lain Ehmann
Margie Romney-Aslett 
Rhonna Farrer
Wendy Smedley
Jodie McNally
Liz Hicks
Becky Novacek
Jennifer McGuire
Elizabeth Kartchner

It was for a good reason, you know.

I know with the exception of a few scrappy posts, my blog has been neglected lately,  But I had some pretty good reasons for going AWOL for awhile.  It involved a little of this:

 

And possibly some of this:

 

And many, many attempts to get a family photo for Christmas cards:

(Which, as you can see, Riely was not one bit happy about.)

Yep, we bumped our typically February vacation up to November, narrowly missing the tropical storm of Ida as we landed in Cancun last week.  We made the trek south down to Akumal and spent many days doing a whole lot of nothing.  And it was marvelous. :)

We got in very late Monday night, welcomed back to Denver with the reality that winter has arrived, in the form of several inches of snow and a sizzling 19º.  Ack!  I'm spending the week bundled up in sweaters and scarves, sipping my new found coffee love, Honey Nut Drizzle by Archer Farms, and attempting to focus on the 276 emails that landed in my inbox while I was on vacation.  If I owe you a note, please bear with me.  I'm still on Mayan Riviera time.  Happy Wednesday, my friends!

I've been busy as a bee....

...Lily Bee, that is!  And I wanted to share some of the pages I did as their guest designer for November.  These goodies were wonderful to work with and were amazingly versatile for so many page themes! 

patterned paper, die cuts, rub ons (Lily Bee Designs) + chipboard (American Crafts, All My Memories, Autumn Leaves) + date stamp

I traced some simple flower petals onto patterned paper and cut them out, adding in some vines and a few of the Lily Bee rub ons as well.

patterned paper, die cuts, rub ons (Lily Bee Designs) + ric rac (Melissa Frances) + tags (DMD) + button + twine

The small die-cut papers are perfect for creating a home for small photos.  I added a rub on sentiment to the bottom edge to serve as my page title.  I loved how easy it was to mix and match papers and patterns from these lines!

patterned paper, rub ons (Lily Bee Designs) + stamps (Studio Calico) + punch (Fiskars) + font (DIsproporz)

Simple strips of patterned paper make my background here. I added stamped letters + a Lily Bee rub-on to create the title.

patterned paper, rub ons (Lily Bee Designs) + stickers (American Crafts) + ribbon (Jillibean Soup) + font (Arial Black)

Can you tell I loved these rub-ons?  I think I used them on just about every page!  The circular text rub-on was perfect to add some curves onto this page.  I cut the title from the blue polka dot paper and lightly chalked the edges to add a bit of dimension.

patterned paper, flowers (Lily Bee Designs) + font (Standard Cursive, Traveling Typewriter) + stitching

These tulle flowers are so pretty - and they were perfect for a page about my daughter's tutu.  To create a textured background for the flowers, I stitched imperfect circles on my sewing machine in a dark pink thread.  (You can click on the photo above to get a larger view.)

patterned paper,  rub ons (Lily Bee Designs)

I cut apart this rub on and rearranged it a bit before adhering it to my card.  A simple square of patterned paper (mounted on a foam square) and an accordian-folded strip of paper make up the present.

Thanks to Steph and Kristen at Lily Bee for giving me this opportunity to play with these wonderful products!  Hope I've inspired you to go do the same! 

Who doesn't love a little cocoa?

I was thrilled to be asked to be the guest designer for Cocoa Daisy this month and even more so when I got my kit:

The November kit is called Autumn Glow and it's a lovely mix of papers from Basic Grey, Prima, Crate Paper, Melissa Francis and Jillibean Soup. Yum! Totally got me in the mood for fall. Here's what I did with the goods:

I mounted the die-cut Making Memories paper on foam squares for dimension, and added the flower cut from the 7G paper.  A swipe of pink paint makes the perfect background for my title letters.

I used a variety of the papers to make a patchwork background, stitching around the edge of each piece.  I traced some Heidi Swapp acrylic butterflies from my stash onto the pink paper and cut them out, adding rhinestones as embellishments.  The title is a mix of letter stickers and the font Arial Black.

I used the Making Memories letter stickers as masks, misting over them and them and them removing them when the mist dried.  I then wrote the word "happy" above the title and stitched two hearts with my sewing machine.  That velvet trim was my favorite part of the whole kit - it's so lovely and rich!

 

I knew these photos of Riely and her cousin Ava would work well with the Basic Grey papers.  I used the pink pattern, adding in a bit of red with the strips and the cut-out roses.  To add just a bit of texture, I sewed over the roses with random stitching and added two small glitter brads in the top left corner.

So if you've got some gorgeous fall photos, go grab this kit and make plans to scrap!  Add in a warm mug of cocoa, and you've got a perfect afternoon.  Thanks for stopping by today - hope you have a wonderful Monday!

If this post gets weird, blame it on the Sudafed.

I've spent this past week stoically attempting to NOT get sick. Because, really, I do not have the time or patience for this flu stuff.  I had felt the beginnings of a scratchy throat and sniffles and immediately began a regimented dosing of Zicam, herbal tea, Emergen-C and chicken soup.  But yesterday, I finally succumbed to the fact that I have a sinus infection and no amount of homeopathic remedies were gonna fix it.  So I headed to Walgreens, plopped my request card down on the pharmacy counter, and turned over my firstborn child for the right to purchase Sudafed.  And within 30 minutes of taking the pill, I no longer had the desire to shove a pencil into my eye socket to relieve the throbbing pressure.  Sometimes, drugs are a good thing.

Of course, in exchange for ridding me of my excruciating headache, the Sudafed left me with the feeling that my head was floating a few inches above my body, a disconnected sensation that proved to be less than conducive to performing normal mommy tasks.  So I napped.  A lot. And possibly reacquainted myself with the daytime programming on MTV.  Shhhhhh!  Let's keep that between us, ok?

Today I'm feeling much more normal and wanted to post my layouts from the November Jenni Bowlin kit.  It's chock-full of the newest releases from the JBS black & red line and will work fantastically with all those holiday photos you are going to be taking in upcoming months.  Here's what I did with the kit:

 

 

And with that, I'm signing off.  I need to run over to Walgreen's and try to bargain with that pharmacist about the whole first-born agreement.  I've got too many scrapbook pages with that kid on them to give him up now.  :)

Happy Friday!

A Rip-Roaring Halloween

Whew.  The weekend's over and I'm officially in need of a break!  We managed to cram plenty of activities into our holiday weekend, kicking things off Friday night with a trip to Boo at the Zoo.  Despite the cold temperatures, it was a festive atmosphere with plenty of activities and candy to keep our minds off the chill.
 

 

Hayden opted to wear last year's costume of a skeleton zombie because it allowed for more layers underneath than his more fitted oufit as Wolverine.  Riely had no choice but to go as Tinkerbell the Skier, because there was no way this mama was allowing her to brave the elements with no parka.

Saturday morning dawned bright and early, and we headed downtown for the annual Eerie Erie 10K road race.  Alison and I were able to catch a few extra minutes of sleep by carefully selecting our costumes for the race:

 

Pajama party, anyone?  We thought it was appropriate attire, since really, we would have rather been sleeping than running. I did, however, realize one disadvantage to buying your pjs in the girls' section of Target:  the crotch will probably be too short, and you are quite likely to rip out that seam the first time you bend over.  Oops.

The more serious runners in our group chose to forgo the costumes in favor of speed (which may have had something to do with not wanting to be seen running with the crazy Pajama Women).  Mike finished the race (his first 10K ever) in a highly respectable time of 57 minutes:

He looks thrilled, huh?  His attitude improved greatly later that day, when we cracked open the Sam Adam's Octoberfest to toast our running prowess.

Continuing the family tradition of speed, Hayden made a clean sweep of the Goblin Run, winning first place.  The sleek Wolverine costume may have attributed to his speedy finish:

 

Later that day, Ryan and Ali visited with cousins Darth Vadar and Kitty Cat in tow: 

 

 

The kids had a blast trick or treating, consuming their yearly allotment of sugar, and learning new phrases for the word fart.  ("Fluffing the lilly" became the new favorite, hands down.) Ah, good times.

Here's hoping your Halloween was a gas, as well.

 

The all-hallowed snow day.

Yesterday a big storm rolled into our neck of the woods, and while most of the surrounding school districts had a snow day, my kiddos had to go to school.  The snow continued throughout the day and around dinner time last night, we got the recorded call stating that school would be officially closed today.   Which was, of course, cause for celebration with extended bed-times and sugary desserts.

We woke up to lots more of the heavy, wet snow as well as freezing temps.  Our poor pumpkins are hibernating under a thick blanket of snow and will probably not get carved, as we will be too busy building a snowman (we'll have to add a witch hat or something in honor of Halloween.)  This was the view from our front porch this morning:

 

And the backyard, which has significant drifting.  Both dogs looked at me like I was crazy when I opened to door to let them out this morning. But I strapped on their St. Bernard keg barrels and sent them out anyway.

 

I'm sure you're wondering how my ficus tree manages to stay so green and lush in this winter weather. To get these babies to survive the frigid temps, you'll need highly-honed gardening skills.  Or about $79 bucks and trip to Home Depot.  Take your pick.  :)

Today, after the requisite time in the snow, we'll be snuggling up for movies, popcorn an possibly a little scrapping.  I'll leave you with a few sneaks from the November Jenni Bowlin kit.  For a closer look at some of the contents, check out Jenni's blog post with the new product lines - swoon!

 

 

Have a fabulous Thursday my friends - stay warm!