Scrap Attack Challenge

I'm using this layout in a challenge for Scrap Attack Scrapbooking.  The "challenge" part is that my page has to be made of at least 75 percent  Crate Paper products.  A bonus entry is earned if you can spell out CRATE with what was on the page.  I used:

C - cardboard, chipboard, cardstock, clip
R - Ribbon, ruler (I had a hard time holding back the rick-rack!  It's that addiction, and all)
A - Apple (Good thing I had that little button!  It's the only A I could come up with)
T - Tag, thread, title, triangles
E - Eyelets, embellishments

For this challenge I used the infamous first-day-of-school picture from this year. {Gotta love those sincere smiles!} It went perfectly with the school themed Crate Paper  paper and chipboard accents that I had.  I'm still loving orange, and paired with aqua blue or green is a great combination! 

Shabby challenge...

This is an old picture, I'm guessing from the 70's (?) of my grandparents on my mom's side.  Grandpa and Guacs sang constantly together and with their kids.  Grandpa played the guitar beautifully, too.  Family legend has it that Grandpa joined the school choir only to have the teacher tell him to mouth the words because he couldn't sing.  Apparently Grandpa took that as a challenge, because he taught himself how and had a rich baritone voice.  One of the songs I particularly remember him singing is Galway Bay, which is a hauntingly beautiful song.  The music on this page is from another Irish song called "Peg o' My Heart"

This sheet music is from a box of music that I got from Guacs.  It was in pretty shabby shape, but I thought it would be perfect to use on a page!

The quote at the bottom says, "Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, and the things you never want to lose"  (Only they spelled lose as loose.  Funny!)  That quote is from "The Wonder Years".

You can see other inspiring pages at Let's Get Shabby.

He really is ruggedly handsome...

I'm looking forward to the new season!  Not great acting, but I love the whole premise of author working with detective and basing his main character on her.  Now where are they going with this storyline?






Also can't wait for this one!




The jury's still out on this one, since I haven't seen all of the episodes.  I liked the beginning of the season.  And Anna the Visitor is just amazingly creepy!

Leftovers...disguised and served up warm.

I know a lot of people who don't do leftovers, but I can't see dumping food that we paid good money for down the drain or in the trash.  90% of the time I eat leftovers for lunch.  Sometimes I pack them in lunchboxes for the kids.  My high-schooler has open campus at lunchtime and comes home to leftovers.  He usually just raids the fridge and heats it up in the microwave.


Since I volunteered to make fried rice for the third graders, I made a huge batch of rice and ended up with a lot of plain white rice.  Sometimes I add milk and some sugar and simmer it on the stove for rice pudding.  Today I added some other leftovers and some canned veggies to make a baked rice casserole.  There's a can each of green chilis, black beans, corn, cream of chicken soup to add some moisture, a cup or two of salsa, and the last of my taco seasoning from the Amish store.  (Sigh) 

It'll go into the oven for about 30 minutes and I'll probably serve it with shredded lettuce, sour cream (cuz everything is better with sour cream), maybe some cheese, more salsa and chips or tortillas to make it a whole meal.

 

And for dessert, some cupcakes baked in cones.  Just make a regular cake mix and spoon it into cones instead of cupcake wrappers, and bake for 15-20 minutes.  Then they can be frosted or put a little scoop of ice cream on top.

Oh, no!  There was some cake batter left!  Whatever shall I do with it?


Yeah, I'm putting it in a mug and popping it into the microwave for an afternoon chocolate fix.  Not to be confused with my morning chocolate fix.  Can't play favorites, you know.

Cute back-to-school stuff to craft

I Love

1. Etsy
2. back to school anything
3. office supplies
4. fabric
5. lunch
6. sending my kids off to school

I've stumbled on some fun back-to-school themed crafts and ideas, so I'll share them here.  That way I have them all in one spot, too.

Etsy has a How-Tuesday blog that features some fun things to make, and this week incorporated lunch bags, ice packs, pencil wraps, book covers, you get the picture.  Cute stuff!  And most of it is pretty easy.

Sew, Mama, Sew has some adorable embroidery patterns from Sarah Jane Studios.  They're so cute!  Could someone please embroider something for me?  Please?

And how could I leave out these adorable banner stickers by Jenni Bowlin?  They're the perfect little ending.

A Post Title I am Proud Of...

I am not very creative when it comes to titling my blog posts, usually just giving a little blurb about what I'm writing about.  Which is exactly what this one is.

Fried Food and Chicken Poop

So, yesterday I made an 8 hour round-trip drive with Andy. Well, 3/4 of the drive was with Andy and the other 1/4 I drove a mini-van back to his place of employment. This drive was made in the afternoon and evening, so the kids arrived home on the bus from their place of education. When they left for said place of eduction that morning, I didn't know that I would be gone when they came back to the home-base, so I didn't have dinner made for them.

Their Auntie Tara (sometimes know as Auntie Booby) came over and made cookies with Nattie, so I called her up to tell her that the kids could cook up some hamburgers and throw some salad on their plate and call it good. She took me up on it, and when Andy and I arrived at home-base the smell of fried food hit us like a brick when we opened up the door.

Andy's way to solve the problem of the smell was to open up the window in our bedroom. Whoa. Fried meat is not pleasant. The chicken barns are not pleasant. Add them together and you have downright biological warfare possibilities. I'm thinking about bottling it and contacting the Pentagon. There are possibilities here, I'm telling you.

The SITS girls are hosting a week long Back to Blogging event, with a washer and dryer set as a prize!

The contest is sponsored by Standards of Excellence, Westar Kitchen and Bath, and Florida Builder Appliance.

A post I wish more people had read...

Let's face it, a day doesn't go by that I wish my children would listen to me.  I feel a teensy bit the same way in my blogging world, too.  It's not that I need a pat on the back for what I write, and I don't mean to get on my soapbox, but a little bit of affirmation is always a good thing.

The post that I wish more people had read, that I wish I could have sent to everyone in the ENTIRE USA, is this one.  I wrote it the day after election day in 2008, and I still remember the way my heart felt clenched up like a fist in my chest.  The words went straight from that clenched up heart and onto the computer screen, just as if I had a USB cable connecting the two.

God Bless America

After the election results last night, my little corner of the country was not celebrating. I wasn't doing a victory dance or high-fiving Andy. I sat and watched John McCain give a very touching, dignified and gracious concession speech, calling for the support of his victor. I sat and contemplated what Barack Obama's election to the highest office of our beautiful country means to me and to my family, my community, our state and the United States of America, and I'm worried.

Don't get me wrong, I have hope-

I have hope that everything will be OK, that the economy will turn around, gas prices will stay down, and that we can grow and prosper. I have hope that President-Elect Obama will do what is best for this country, and not bring us to a liberal, large government, "don't you worry, we'll take care of you now" mentality. I have faith that my Father in Heaven is watching out for me and for this choice country, for which our forefathers fought and brought to freedom so many years ago. I am grateful for a democracy in which everyone has a right to let his or her voice and choice be heard, and I hope the right choice was made.

I guess I will wait and see, just like the rest of the world. I will wait to see if Joe Biden's speculation that the rest of the world will test President Obama will be verified.

I will wait to see if he will reach across the party lines and try to work together with those he views as the enemy.

I will wait to see if he continues to include in the circle of his associates William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and others on the left fringe of politics. Maybe he will keep his distance from them. Maybe he has learned his lesson. Kind of like the straight-laced kid in school who likes to hang with the dangerous crowd. He got in trouble for it (although most people don't seem to care much who he surrounds himself by) and maybe he'll toe the line from now on.

But, like I said, I am hopeful. I'm hopeful that this will stay the land of the free and the home of the brave. And I hope that my doubts will be unfounded.

The SITS girls are hosting a week long Back to Blogging event, with a washer and dryer set as a prize!

The contest is sponsored by Standards of Excellence, Westar Kitchen and Bath, and Florida Builder Appliance.

Happy Birthday, Stinker!

Nine years old.  Wow.  I know I say this all the time, but I can't believe how fast the time has flown.

Saturday night we were sitting at Nonni's watching a special about the 9/11 attacks on the History channel.  It brought so many memories back.  September 11, 2001 was your due date.  Grammie was flying in that day, and we were just waking up when the telephone rang at 6:00 a.m.  It was your aunt Emily telling us to turn on the TV because there was something wrong in New York City.  I turned on the news, and there it was.  The north tower of the World Trade Center had a gaping hole in it and was burning.  An airplane had hit it.  Was it a freak accident?  A small plane that the pilot had somehow lost control of?

Then, still confused and watching the building on the TV screen, we see the second plane.  It looks like any other commercial airplane, only it is circling around and slams into the other tower. 

It felt so surreal, like we were in a movie, or we were watching a movie.

Then a call from Grammie at the Kansas City airport; she was just boarding her flight to California when they shut down all of the flights.  She wasn't going to be leaving.  She ended up getting the first available flight as soon as planes were able to fly again a few days later.

The next few days were full of watching and waiting, tears for the fallen and the lost, and hunkering down with family, and waiting for you to arrive.

Then in the middle of all of that chaos and sorrow, there you were.  Like a little light shining in the darkness.

Grammie arrived just minutes after you were born.  We weren't going to let those damn terrorists stop us from living life to the fullest.

So that day will forever be tangled up with the day you were born, but you were my lifeline toggling me to the present and the beautiful miracle of life.  Happy birthday.  I love you!

My first post...regurgitated.

The SITS girls are hosting a week long Back to Blogging event, with a washer and dryer set as a prize!

The contest is sponsored by Standards of Excellence, Westar Kitchen and Bath, and Florida Builder Appliance.

Since I am such a HorRIBly inconsistent blogger, I'm going to participate in Back to Blogging Day to get myself in the groove.  Goodness knows I don't have any kind of groove, not anything even resembling a groove, but maybe I'll get a little bit of a beat this week.

So, I'll start by regurgitating - uh, I mean revisiting - my very first blog post on April 25, 2007.  Wow, that seems so long ago!  There were no pictures because I didn't know how to load them yet, and I didn't have anything to write about, but I had two comments!  Woo-hoo!  My husband, who critiqued the post, and my friend who called him a stinker for critiquing my post.  It's been a fun, if often sporadic, journey since then.  Here it is, freshly regurgitated just for you:


Birds of a Feather...or the Early Bird gets The Worm!

I woke up before sunrise this morning to the most amazing sound of dozens of birds twittering back and forth to each other. I couldn't believe how loud they were! I'm not sure why they were all out there, but my best guess is they were after all the little wormies that might be above ground after the big storm last night.

We had lots of lovely thunder and lightning, had to even make sure the computers were all unplugged-just in case! My parents have had a couple of lightning issues with their computers in the past.

Emily had her house ready in case of frightened family hunkering down in her basement during the tornado watch until 2a.m. this morning. We didn't end up over there, but it's nice to know we have an alternative spot to the smelly basements of the Presbyterian or Baptist churches in town. Not that I wouldn't be happy to be in those basements in case of actual tornadic action, mind you!

Thought I'd take this early morning time to actually start my blog that I've been threatening to start for a while now. Also thought this could be a good way to keep in touch will those of you far away. Keep checking back! I want to update this often, and maybe I'll have some surprise guest bloggers on once in a while!

***It's me in real time again.  So, maybe I didn't keep the "I want to update this often", but I have had a guest blogger, my daughter "Nutella".  She writes a pretty good post, too.

So buh-bye for now, I'll be write back tomorrow!

The honeymoon is over...

I'm not talking about MY honeymoon with my honey, but the honeymoon of the first days of school.  You know, when a child is still well-behaved because he doesn't know quite what to expect from his teacher.  When he doesn't want his fellow students to know just how darn mule-headed he really is.  When he still cares what people think of him.  Oh, yes, I'm mourning the loss of the honeymoon period of 1st grade.

Yesterday I received my SECOND call from the school:  I had an uncooperative child.   A child who snuck a mini-maglite in his backpack and began to tap it on his desk.  A child who then wouldn't quit tapping it when his teacher asked him not to. And when his teacher took the flashlight away from him, he then used his fist to pound on his desk instead.  This led to another teacher being asked to come help, and then snowballed into having the principal come get him for a nice and cozy talk.  Thank goodness for her that the office is two doors down from his classroom; it will save a LOT of time this year.  {Last year his class was at the opposite end of the school.  The principal had a hard time and a great workout trying to wrestle him down to the office.}

Today he went to school with a note in tow..."Dear Mrs. G_____,  I'm sorry I was bad."  That's a direct quote.  Short and to the point.  Then he drew himself with a happy face.  I'm assuming that's how he's going to be looking and acting today, but you know what they say about assuming.

Scrapbooking With A Budget In Mind

If you are a regular reader of my not too regularly updated blog, you probably know that I dabble a bit in the art of scrapbooking. Well, I'm now the Scrapbooking Expert at Experts123.com.

Read my first article here and tell me what you think: Scrapbooking With A Budget In Mind