Merry Christmas

Dreams & Wishes for 2008

-Teach Callie to use the potty - sooner rather than later.

-Take a camera course so I can more effectively use my new camera.

-Continued good health with a clear scan in the spring.

-No more braces!!

Catching Up....I wish!!

This month, I was able to scrap some photos of the girls that I've had sitting on my desk for awhile now. These are some of my favourite photos of the two of them together.

Learning to eat cereal

We started feeding Julia cereal in late November. The above photo was taken December 6th and as you can see, we are still trying to learn the art of not getting it all over EVERYTHING and EVERYONE. This is because she has to suck her thumb after every bite to swallow the cereal. Brett and I were talking about how we could curb this one evening and his solution was to just not let her suck her thumb as she eats. So, I let him give it a try and see how he made out. The pictures really don't do the mess justice. Her hair was totally matted with cereal. It was by far the worst mess yet!! Like all good ideas, sometimes they work much better in theory than they do in practice.

It's Official!!!

The Winter issue of Scrapbook & Cards Today has been released and you will find my layout, "Baby it's Cold Outside", on page 67 of the print version or page 25 of the online version. This is my first layout publication and I couldn't be more thrilled!

3 Bugs & Rick Rack

I used my 3 Bugs kit from Scrapbook Doodle to create this card for the {Caardvarks} blog challenge this month - to use rick rack. Notice the rick rack flower I made to complete the topper on the sentiment tag. These are a piece of cake to make. All you need is a needle and some thread.

3 Bugs Projects for Scrapbook Doodle

When I opened the "Seeing Stars" kit by 3 Bugs in a Rug a couple of days ago, I wasn't sure how I was going to create three projects with a kit geared for boys and me with all girls. Well, I need not have worried. I whipped these layouts up in two days flat and had so much fun doing it. Blue and green are two of my favourite colours anyway so I don't know why there was any hesitation. You will see "1st Halloween" on the homepage of Yvonne's store, Scrapbook Doodle, right now. Thanks so much, Yvonne, for the opportunity to design for you this month. I trust you are as pleased as I am with these projects.

Cosmo Cricket's "Be Good" Line

This month at Scrap Lovers we got to play with Cosmo Cricket's holiday line, Be Good. I absolutely love their style. Here are my projects for the first reveal. I used the die cut page tabs to create the ornament topper in this layout.

I was inspired to make this project by a tutorial I saw on the blog Taylored Expressions, not to be confused with Tailored Pages. I just love how the file folder has been transformed into this neat little pocket folder. This is a project I will do again.

Just like mom??

My daughter does not miss a thing and she imitates her father and I often. One day I was telling Brett a story about something and I was talking using my hands and the next thing you know she's imitating my hand motions. That was when she was just over a year old. Now that she's two, she's getting more and more daring. Today, she decided she needed a little lipstick on to brighten her complexion!! If nothing else, she's got good taste. She used a whole tube of OPI for this makeover.

So far, the only place I found lipstick (besides all over her) is the mirror she was using to paint her face. Here's hoping there are no more surprises!

What was I doing while this was going on? You guessed it, feeding the baby. I just never know what is going to happen everytime I sit down to feed.

In other news, today was the first real storm of the season. Schools were closed and the works. It's hard to say how much is on the ground but there is no more grass peeking through and the plow has been around several time over the last two days. This is the kind of weather that gives one the Christmas spirit.

The winner for the Iron Chef was announced yesterday and it went to Katie. She made some amazing projects over the past 6 weeks. It was definitely a well deserved win. Congrats, Katie!!

Final Round - Iron Chef III

I made the final round of the Iron Chef at Scrapper's Haven and we had to work with three different "ingredients" - fabric, ghost shapes and fasteners - and create a layout, card and an altered item. So, here they are. Wish me luck!!

Photoshop Magic

Rick (fellow design team member at Scrap Lovers) has bailed me out yet again from Christmas photo mayhem. He took a couple of the better individual pictures, worked a little magic and VOILA!!

So what do you think? Is the hand in the mouth photo still the reigning favourite??

Guest Designer

I just got some great news today from Yvonne at Scrapbook Doodle. I was chosen to be a guest designer for the month of December. I couldn't be more pleased.

Christmas Photos - Bloopers

Christmas Photos

I started early this year trying to get a photo for our Christmas cards. Here are the best pictures I have so far after three different photo shoots. Which photo of the two girls do you think we should use? Or maybe I should keep trying!!

It is so much easier to get cute shots of them individually!!

Conversation with a 2 year old

Me: Let's go brush your teeth!
Callie: NO!
Me: Why not?
Callie: Guys

About 80% of her vocabulary starts with the letter 'G'. She gets alot of mileage out of "guy". You have to read the context clues for it could mean "fly", "bye", or "because" if she pluralizes it like she did in the above converation.

Cardstock, Transparencies, Stitching

Image removed for publication

I made it to the final round of the Iron Chef III at Scrapper's Haven with the help of these two projects.

What a difference a year makes!!

Since we just built our house two years ago, we are continually working on the landscaping. I decided that with each child we have, we would plant a tree. Each year on or around their birthday, we take their picture with "their" tree. I had no idea how much difference a year would make, nor how much difference there would be in the weather!!

November, 2006

November, 2007

Birthday Girl

It doesn't seem possible that Callie turned 2 yesterday. We've been practising saying the word "two" and holding up two fingers for the past few days. She can say, "two" quite well but she holds up all of her fingers instead of just two. Wouldn't you know that she wouldn't answer the question, "How old are you?" once when everyone was here. Isn't that the way?

Holding Julia and "reading" her stories has been the new favourite past time this week. All that got replaced though when Callie opened her gift from Grammie and Grampie. Her new dolly, "Rosie", has taken the place of her sister and of her other doll, Lucy.

She had absolutely NO interest in opening any other gifts once she got this one opened.

I love fall!

This is the wonderful view I was greeted with when I got up this morning.

Here is another view I wake up to every morning - this cute little face.

Cheese & GayGoo

We have been working for a long time trying to get Callie to say, "Please" and "Thank you". She's been saying, "Please" for a week or so now and just yesterday said her version of "Thank you". She's quite pleased with the whole thing, too, as she gets much better service when she says the "magic word".

Happy Sunday!

Last night tropical storm Noel passed through bringing lots of rain and very high winds. My clothes line didn't make it through, but everything else doesn't seem too worse for the wear.

I finished another Christmas gift last night. I made a modified version of a journal jar for my grandmother. The journal is full of questions designed to document one's life. I hope she likes it.

Here is my round five Idol layout. Unfortunatley, I didn't make it through this round. I am not disappointed though. I am really pleased will my interpretation of the challenges and have some wonderful pages because of it. Thanks again to all those who voted these past few weeks.

That's all the news for now. I hope you all have a WONDERFUL Sunday!!

It's almost time to vote again!

Round five voting is a few short days away - Saturday, November 3rd from 10 am - 10 pm EST. After this round, there will be two contestants remaining and the winner will be determined next weekend. Last week I narrowly missed elimination so this Saturday is sure to be another nail biter. LOL

Here is this week's challenge:

"For Challenge #5, Cre8 a layout based on my version of the following popular Christmas song: On the Just Cre8 days of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
8 different manufacturers
7 any-sized brads
6 chipboard letters
5 gorgeous blooms
4 different stamps
3 patterned paper
2 cardstock colours and
an enlarged photo (in a pear tree)! "

My layout is called "Sometimes I Wonder..." and uses one my favourite fall photos we took a couple of weeks ago.

Thanks again for you continued support!

Happy Halloween

Can you tell what she's saying? CHEESE, of course!! She says this everytime she sees the camera. Too cute. This was her first Halloween trick or treating and she quite likes it. What's not to like? You put on a fun suit and go door to door and people put candy in your bag.

New use for a doily

I'm not one for using doilies when decorating my house but it sure looks great on a layout!

A Night of Firsts

FIRST SNOW!?!

What a surprise this was considering we've had record breaking high temperatures this month.

Another first for us last night was having the baby stretch out her night a little more. She's been sleeping 6 - 8 hours on average. Last night, she was in bed at 8pm and didn't get up to feed until 5am. She went back down and slept until nearly 9am. What a treat!

Third, the Canadian dollar closed at nearly $1.05 yesterday. That is the highest it's been in my lifetime. This is quite a climb from the all time low of $0.62 in January, 2002. This new rate is good news for me as I am going on a shopping trip to the states in a few weeks.

One more scrappy first will be posted later today. You will never guess what I used as an embellishment on my layout.