the moments in between

*someone* has been rather two-ish lately

is it bad that i'm looking forward to scrapping this?

some projects to share =)

summer is flying by here....  and my poor blog is getting neglected.  i'm using twitter more and more - it's easier to update on the fly. =) there's a link to my feed on the right

i've got a few minutes this morning and then i get to go out in the rain and to take the boys to their school's library program and get sam and i to bagels. yay.  i'm needing some girl time, it's been a while. 

pink!!!  this is my neighbor's sweet little girl - isn't she the cutest?  lots of ac paper + embellies and some studio calico stamps.  linda barber asked me to help out on a sketch challenge over at write.click.scrapbook and this was my contribution. note : i'm sketch impaired. i really did start with the sketch, but then started futzing to make it work for me. go check out the site and play along, there will be prizes involved, and there's lots more pages using the sketch by some fab artists. =)

this might be my most favoritest fiskars project to date.  i did it for a purse article over at fiskarscrafts. we won't talk about how many tries it took me to figure out the best way to make it - i did it without a pattern and while on cold meds.  lol.

i also made a little tic tac toe game for the july project a day feature.  lots of summer fun projects, i have a few more going up this month. 

we had a fabulous 4th.. lots of friends and fireworks. i still need to sort through photos of all of our summer fun so i can share some - hopefully in the next couple days?

happy 7.8.09! =)

july at jbs mercantile

the july gallery went up at jbs mercantile.  one of my favorite parts of guesting with a kit club is the reveal and seeing what the other designers did w/ the same materials that i worked with. it never fails to amaze me how differently a kit can look in the hands of each person.  and this gallery is extra special since i've got a few close friends on jenni's team - i always look forward to seeing their work.

i had a little performance anxiety over this kit - the galleries for jenni's kits are always top notch, and i had stage fright. thankfully, i got myself past that, and loved working with it.  i ended up doing 2.5 of my last 3 pages in one day - once i got rolling i just couldn't stop!!

there's a little description of each my pages over at the site, so i'll just share the images here.  if you have any ?s feel free to comment here or on this post at the jbs inspiration blog.

when i do these guest spots, i always feel like i need to get each of the boys onto a page.  i managed that this time, plus one w/ all three and one w/ my neighbor and her sweet little girl.  kinda nice to have a girl to scrap, even if i have to borrow her! ;)

these pages wrapped up my crazy june - july is looking to be much quieter, scrapwise.  which means more playtime.  i *cleaned* my room and got some pics, so i'm hoping to post those in the next week or so.  and i started a fun page tonight - if i'm not too lazy, maybe i'll get it done before the holiday.  i'm kind of enjoying being lazy, though. =)

a psa and a sneak

first of all...

 

check your carbon monoxide detectors.  our neighbors, the grandparents of alex's best friend annie, sent the street into a tizzy by having not one but TWO firetrucks in front of their house the other night.  their carbon monoxide detector had gone off so they called the fire department, who sent guys into the house in full gear to check it out.  luckily it turned out to be a malfunctioning detector, but EEPS. so glad it malfunctioned by going off when it shouldn't have versus not going off when it should.

and a sneak...

click here for more info =)

looking for inspiration and what we've been up to

but first - i have a tutorial up at the kenner road blog. here's a peek at the layout, click over for the full writeup. =)

after i finished that project, i cleaned my desk and tried to move on to the next thing on my to do list..  but i was stuck.  mind was blank, nothing was coming, i kept flipping through a stack of pp and wondering what the heck i was going to do.  and then i gave up and went outside w/ the boys, and took along a stack of books.

some scrappy, some not.  and my ipod touch, so i could bounce around the web.  i randomly flipped through books and watched the kids. i took a break to talk to my neighbor. we had dinner and put up shelves in the boys room and did the evening routine.  and then at bedtime, i let my mind wander, and it finally starting putting together pictures and stories and shapes and finally i had some ideas to chase.  i put together a page today based on one of those ideas and am hopeful my other projects will come together nicely.

saturday morning after ben's last teeball game we loaded up the car and headed to le mars, ia, for a weekend celebrating matthew's grandma's 90th birthday.  there was an open house sunday afternoon and the sheer amount of people there was amazing. at one point there were people lined up all the way down the hall of the church waiting for a chance to chat with the birthday girl. all seven of her children made it to town for the party, and a decent amount of her grandchildren and great grandchildren did, too. it was an amazing day for a wonderful woman.

le mars is also home to wells blue bunny, and for the first time, we stopped at the visitor center on our way into town.  the highlight of the tour was the ice cream shop at the end of it. ;)

good ice cream, bad lighting. ;)

there was a free concert in the park on saturday night, and the boys spent the time getting dirtier than i think they've ever been in their entire lives.  how?

by attempting to dig to china.  and then burying each other.  oy.  after the concert we had cake and  ice cream to celebrate one of matthew's cousin's graduation, and then hit the hotel pool with another cousin and one of her kids.

hotel math - 2 adults + 3 kids in 2 double beds = not enough sleep.  enough said.  we usually get a suite, but didn't have that option.  boo.

we came home sunday after the party and have had a lazy week.  it's been 105-115 w/ the heat index - too hot to do much of anything! =P  we have made some progess in the bigs new room.

we hung shelves for each of them next to the bunk beds, so they have somewhere to put their clocks and reading lamps.  i picked up a couple of these baskets that we are going to attach to the wall near the foot of their beds to hold misc stuff - they came today but we haven't had a chance to put them up.  we plan on replacing the short bookshelves with tall ones so that they have sam-safe storage.  i also want to get a new rug, some prints for the walls and some other odds and ends - i'm waiting till target brings out their dorm room stuff.  they always have funky fun stuff w/ a decent price tag, and it should be out in the next few weeks.  the cube shelves are empty for now - i am working on going through all of their toys and getting them purged and organized before we move anything in. it's coming together nicely and they're loving the bunk beds!!

kelly went up to ikea in mpls recently and was nice enough to pick up these jars for me - perfect for little boy collections.  we have 2 empties and are trying to figure out how to fill them.  any suggestions?

happy father's day

to all the wonderful dad's out there..

like my sweet husband, who is an amazing father to our three boys.  love you. =)

i'd like to go on the record and say -

this wasn't MY idea.

i love how sam has the "wtf" look on his face.  HA.

so.  this afternoon the bigs were already  w/ ethan & mason. it was hot and humid. sam took a short nap.  i was tired from coughing too much and sleeping too little (i'm mostly over this cold, but the cough is hanging on.  ugh.)  around 230 i called melissa and told her i was thinking i was going to break out the sprinkler as a way to kill this afternoon.  we usually make these "courtesy calls" because once 2 kids are in the water all 4 want to be - so we check in and make sure it's not going to be a problem. she mentioned that rita's, aka grandma rita to most of the kids on the block, birthday was tomorrow, and she thought it might be fun to have the boys paint her a sign. and that sprinkler-ing would be a good activity in case they got paint-y.  IN CASE.  hee.  yeah, they were painting, she and i started talking and stopped paying attention and looked up to see THIS.  and this is just where it started to go downhill, they got a lot more paint-y before all was said and done.

on a totally different note : 

denise tweeted about 26olivestreet a couple weeks ago and i peeked at their etsy shop.  and had to buy these for sam's room, because they're too fitting.  they have some fun vintage goodies, and i love their packaging.  i'll definitely be keeping an eye on their store and shopping again.

summer school!

so.  my bigs are in summer school this week.  and it's only fitting that it's MY turn to teach summer school over at fiskarscrafts!

if you haven't heard, fiskars is hosting a whole summer full of fun craft lessons, brought to you by the fiskars design team and other inspiring designers in the industry.  there's a new lesson up each tuesday and thursday - you can find all of the lessons here.  be sure to check out susan's awesome tutorial on using fabric scraps on a layout - i will definitely be doing that soon!

my lesson is a step by step guide to making these fun patchwork circles.  i love taking quilting ideas and adapting them to paper - so much easier. ;)  click here for the whole lesson.  if you use this technique, i'd love to see what you do with it! =)

kenner road

the june kenner road kit went live last night - and it's beautiful.  i worked with the main kit and the salmon creek addon. the whole thing is bright and playful and happy. =)

i used fiskars punches for the border - and left uneven spaces so it would be gappy like his grin. ;)

this page gave me fits.  i actually had to scrap version one and this is what happened when i started over.  so glad i did.  i wanted the punched butterflies to look like they were flying out of the glassine bag.

hee.  as soon as i saw the chip utensils, i thought of this pic of little sammy.  this one is fairly simple, but i love it. =)

and a mini - this wood album from the salmon creek addon is AWESOME.  love it.

i masked off the "09" and the side and then sprayed it with turquoise maya mist.  the letters were painted orange and then i misted them w/ orange maya mist.  the sun is just punched circles + strrips of paper.

here's a couple of the interior pages - i'm creating an album here - summer09mini  - to keep adding pages as i do them. i'm planning to keep this up all summer.  i've been mostly doing a weekday / weekend format for each 2 page spread, but there will probably be vacations and special days that get their own pages. i need to print 2 more sets of pictures and make 4 sets of pages to get caught up to current on it.

the gallery is beautiful - kl has some of my fave scrappers on her team. my absolute faves were this one and this one and this one, but there's lots more to look at there. =)

my bigs are off to a quest camp through our school district every morning this week - so i'm enjoying the quiet this morning.  well, in between sneezing and coughing. i've got a bad summer cold and i am NOT happy about it.

one crazy week

baseball for both, skating for ben, a soccer clinic for alex.  three mornings at the school library program. a trip to the public library, where the bigs got there level 1 and level 2 reading club prizes, and sam got his level 1 prize.  lots and lots of running around outside w/ the kids on our street.  

and a monday, we made an impromptu trip to the mart to see if they had any good bunkbeds.  they did. and the one we liked was on sale. until tuesday.  snap decision time. we bought them.  they were delivered friday.  and we SO should have paid the $35 to have them assembled, as matthew spent the afternoon putting them together.

we had talked about bunkbeds and moving the bigs in together last winter, but decided to wait to make the transition till this summer.  and i had *intended* on doing it in about a month - we were going to move both beds into ben's room so i could deep clean and organize all of their stuff before getting bunks and putting them in alex's room.  and then this sale came along..... eeeps.  we are currently shoving everything into ben's room and will sort and purge and organize it back into alex's room.  we need to buy a couple of tall bookshelves before we can really get going.

here's ben and sam's room before : 

sam's never slept in here - he's been in our room.  we moved his crib into our room so he can start sleeping in it and will eventually get moved back into this room.

alex's room, before :

alex's room is smaller - but ben's room had no wall that would fit the bunkbeds.  also, alex's closet has the stairs that access the attic - and we'd like to finish it someday & use it as a sleep space for the bigs, with alex's room being a study / playroom.  i'm not 100% sure i like the bunkbeds where they are... but we shall see.  we need to get alex's old bed all the way out and move the other furniture around.

and, i spent a lot of time scrapping.  here's a little peek from the kenner road newsletter :

the june kit and gallery will be up june 14th at 9pst.  the kit is absolutely gorgeous and was a total joy to scrap with.  i'm really happy with my projects and can't wait to share them. =)