My mojo has left the building...

Scrappin' mojo, that is... I just can't seem to do a layout that I'm 100% happy with lately. I actually finished one yesterday that I'm about 95% happy with, though!

Click on the image to see credits.

You'd think after almost a month of not writing anything, I'd have something exciting to say. Fortunately, I do, but I can't give you full details... yet. But I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. It'll give me another reason to blog... LOL!

To all of you celebrating Thanksgiving today, have a wonderful and peaceful day with your loved ones. To everyone else... have a terrific day!

Mmmmm... I'm hungry!

(Click the image for credits.)

LOVE LOVE LOVE these cookies that Caleb makes with the girls. They don't last long in our cookie jar, for sure! This layout was made with Sharon's Simple Sets #24. All I had to do was drop my pictures in and type up a few words, and voila... finished!

It's after midnight, so I better get to bed. Little girls will be waking up before it even gets light outside. You'd think they'd sleep a little later when it's dark in the mornings, but no... they have the most accurate internal clocks on the planet. Lucky us!

It's finally feeling like fall...

So I'm going to blog as if I just blogged yesterday... like it hasn't been forever since my last one. Caleb's sister and her family just left yesterday after a week-long visit. It was so fun having them here. They have two little boys: Seth is just about the same age as Taylor (three weeks younger than her to be exact) and Elijah is about 6 months younger than Lexi. Fortunately all 4 kids LOVE LOVE LOVE the movie Cars, so they played together all week long with Lightning McQueen and all of his buddies. I'm kinda bummed that they had to leave, but I had plenty to do today to keep myself busy.

I swear... I HATE switching out clothes for my girls. You know... packing away all the warm-weather clothes and unpacking and hanging all the colder weather clothes in the closet and/or putting them away in the drawers. Maybe the problem is that with four girls there are just SO. MANY. CLOTHES. I spent at least an hour just switching out Lexi's clothes. She's two. I did Hannah's last week. It was much easier because she's eight and can help. So now I only have Taylor and Gabby left to do. Tomorrow. If I drag it out any longer I will absolutely lose what's left of my mind.

On a totally random note, Gabby started solids a couple of weeks ago. Caleb has been asking me everyday when he can feed her something other than rice cereal. I let him feed her green beans today. He was so excited. For some reason he loves being the one to feed our girls new things. It was so cute.

OK... going to bed now. I meant to post a layout, but I told myself I was going to bed at 10, and it's 9:59. So I'll post one tomorrow. Or in a week. Or maybe a month... LOL!

Quickie post tonight...

So I can get to bed at a decent time! Check THIS out! This layout was picked as one of the layouts of the day at Hot Digi Picks:

Click here for full credits.

I'll post some more of my recent layouts tomorrow. I'm so tired I'm about to fall asleep while I'm typing...

A new blog feature...

I've decided to start a special little column over to the right. I'm sure in no time at all it will expand to a HUGE column, but for the time being, it will be small. It's a list of things I never thought I'd have the need to say. Mostly, things I've found myself saying to my children. I've often told my sister that if she could just hear the random silly things that have to be said in this house she'd laugh out loud for sure. I realize that some of these things might not be funny to others... but they are to me. And basically that's why I'm adding it... so I can remember the things that, at the time, might not be so funny but are comical in retrospect. The first one is today's "Get that sandwich off your shoe." I'm not even going to explain it.

I'm like butter, baby...

...on a roll... woohoo! I am blogging after only 2 days. I don't really have anything important to talk about, but I did do a couple of layouts today:

Click here for credits

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Click here for credits.

I completely neglected the three loads of laundry that need to be folded. Yep, they're still sitting in various places around my house. BUT... I got two pages done. So what's more important? Honestly, right now getting pages done is more important because I need to have a year's worth of layouts uploaded to Shutterfly by September 15th. That's a little more than a week before Lexi's second birthday, and I want to have her second year layouts printed up in a book to give to her. Anyhoo... on to more exciting news... I'm on Jennifer Howland's CT now! It was kind of a fluke because I honestly wasn't looking for any more CT spots. However, I totally love her papers (she ain't called the Texture Ho for nothing!) so I made her take me on! =)

OK... so now I'm tired. I'm gonna go to bed. But hey, at least I blogged a little! Nite!

So it's only been a month...

since I last updated my blog. Why do I even have this thing? LOL! I guess I keep thinking I'll get into a routine and start blogging regularly. I really want to have it going when My Babies' Daddy deploys again. It'll kind of give him a glimpse into our daily lives. At least that's what I hope. Oh, and I don't normally refer to him as that, but he does often call me his Babies' Momma, so I felt the need to reciprocate.

Maybe I don't blog very often because I feel like I need to type so much stuff. Maybe tonight I'll just keep it short and sweet. Yeah... that's what I'm gonna do! So... here's a few layouts that I've just added to my galleries. Scroll all the way down for a super cool YouTube thingy I saw on Miss Mint's blog. I LOVE it. So powerful!

This is from Kaye Winiecki's Clothesline Chic Kit at Pickleberry Pop:

Click here for full credits.

This one is from [ksharonkdesigns] at Pickleberry Pop, also. The kit is called Simple Joys:

Click here for full credits.

Another one with Clothesline Chic:

Click here for full credits.

And this is another from [ksharonkdesigns]. The kit is called Unadorned and is a freebie on Sharon's blog for about 4 more days:

Click here for full credits.


And here's the video:

I'll take random thoughts for 500, Alex...

You can click on any of these images to see a larger version and the credits:





I'm going to start this and future posts with a layout or two. Mainly because it's more fun to look at something nice rather than just read my mundane blog. I used to post every layout that I did, but that would require me blogging more often. I just can't make those kinds of promises... LOL. I should probably blog more than once a week. Heck, once a week is probably good for how often I've been blogging lately... LOL. For now, though, I'm gonna shoot for once a week and hope to do more.

Now... what to blog about tonight. Caleb just got back from a month long deployment to JRTC. Today was his birthday, so we celebrated by doing absolutely nothing except hanging out around the house and playing with the girls. He gave Taylor the choice as to what kind of cake to make, so she chose a blue cake with blue icing and blueberries in it. Can you guess her favorite color?

Hannah just got back from Florida yesterday, so we are finally a whole family again. She spends most of the summer with her dad, for those of you who don't know. It's hard to be without her for that long, but I'm learning to adjust.. There's always the phone and email, right? We played scrabble tonight. She loves that game, although she hates it that I don't let her win. Maybe that's wrong, but I want her to know that life isn't always perfect, and you don't always get to win. Do I always do my best when I play against her... probably not... but I'm not going to just flat out play horrible just so she can win. Anyhoo... it's always fun when Caleb plays. We get words on the board like "unwarned" and "zens." He's the master at trying to make up words that sound like they might be words.

Why do adults have to ruin all the fun in things for children? My two middle girls are Cars fanatics. I swear we watch that movie at least once a day. Every day. We have the soundtrack, and Taylor can tell you exactly what part of the movie is going on during each musical score. I used to pride myself that my children weren't big TV watchers. Now they just watch the same movie over and over and over. Anyhoo... I digress. My point in all this is that because they ADORE that movie, we have started getting them the little die cast characters from the movies. They are basically glorified Matchbox cars. But our girls LOVE them. So we start looking around online to find the ones that we don't ever seem to find at WalMart or Target. And guess what??? They are "collectibles." That means adults are ruining it for kids, and unless you want to shell out upwards of $20 per car, your kids aren't gonna have some of the fun ones. How sad. The only reason we want them is so the girls can roll them around on the floor and crash them into each other and squeal with delight. We're not gonna keep them in their original packaging and resell them later on for a higher price. I just think that's completely lame. Toys are for kids to PLAY with. They are not for adults to collect. If you are a collector of toys, I'm sorry to offend you, but seriously... are you kidding me? I'll stop ranting for now. I'm just sad that I have had to draw the line and tell Caleb, "No... we are NOT going to spend $35 for Guido and Luigi and the tractor." Even though I know my girls would love them.

I'm going to bed now. I'm sure the baby will wake up as soon as I fall asleep. She has impeccable timing like that. =)

A big fat YAY!!!

Check this out!!! I just found out on Friday that one of my all-time favorite designers (not to mention scrappers...) is letting me guest on her CT for a few months!

Sharon (ksharonk) creates amazing designs and layouts, as does her creative team, and I'm so thrilled to have a chance to work with them!

It's 8:00 on Sunday night and I am so exhausted I can barely keep my eyes open! I just put everyone to bed earlier than usual because I NEED SLEEP! So I'm going to post a few layouts I've done recently, and then it's bed time for this tired soul...

Here are my latest two layouts for ADSR. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can click on the "Scrappin Military Mommies" blinkie over in the sidebar and read all about it. (Click on the images for credits) For Challenge #3:

And for Challenge #4:

And here are a couple more that I've done in the last week or so:

OK... off to bed!

New stuff...

Lots of new stuff going on... I'll try to post it all in a few paragraphs, as I'm tired and need some sleep. Imagine that!

Gabrielle is smiling! Actually she's been smiling for about 10 days now, but I haven't blogged lately so it's news to the two people who actually read this blog... LOL. Oh the joy it brings to a mommy's heart when the little one who has been keeping her awake all night, every night, finally smiles. I have *almost* forgotten the nearly sleepless nights I've had for the last seven weeks. I haven't actually caught a photo of it yet, but I'll be sure to post one when I do. I also need to put up some photos of Caleb's family. They were here visiting for the last 10 days or so. I love them dearly. It was so great having them here.

On to scrapping related stuff... I'm on Kaye Winiecki's Creative Team (Blinkie's in the right sidebar. Click on it to get to her store at Pickleberry Pop.) LOVE her stuff. I'm super excited for the awesome opportunity to use her designs!

More exciting scrapping news... This layout

won the random entry drawing in last week's Digi-Dare. Doesn't seem QUITE as glamorous as getting my layout picked... but hey, I won't complain. I had fun doing it, and I won an INCREDIBLE prize. Wanna know what I won? Four gift certificates for $10 each. To four different AWESOME designers' stores. Amy Martin at The Lilypad, Karah Fredricks at Blue Flombingo, and Faith True and Nicole Pols (Windgefluester Designs) at The Digi Shoppe. To say I'm thrilled is an understatement! I can't wait to go shopping!

My online scrapping friend, Brynn, and I are partners in the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race 2. It starts on Monday, and I'm excited to get started. We have a team blog. You can click on the blinkie in the sidebar to see it. I'm sure we'll be posting our layout to it when we get started. I'm gonna have to be a better blogger. I won't be able to wait two weeks between posts... LOL.

OK. I'm tired and should really take advantage of my chance to sleep. This is the stretch of night when Gabby usually sleeps more than 2 hours, and here I am blogging. I have problems, I tell you! =)

Niters!