Here's why ...

... I've been so inactive.

Aside from two active girls and a newborn of course, things have just been a bit more busy than normal. It's the holidays, we have been renovating here and there in the house again, more and more.

Allen did buy me some new organizing stuff for my scrap area, and I've put a few things away. My New Year resolution is to get the Scrap Corner put back together and to get back on the saddle and do some scrapping in January. Wish me luck!





Happy New Year! I hope you take time to listen to all the beautiful music in your life during the new year!

Travis Chip is here!

He arrived Sept. 26 and weighed in at 9 pounds, 9.4 ounces (both of my my girls were barely over 7 pounds each)! Here's some photos. Most of you reading this know that there was a complication (Erbs Palsy). Here's a link to find out what it is exactly. I'm glad to say that things are looking up, and I'll update everyone later this week. Prayers are appreciated even though we believe he will sail through this without any long-term complications!

No Baby Yet, But Scrap Area Is Getting A Facelift!

40 weeks along now. 40 long weeks. Oh, bother! I walk 56 miles a day and drink hot salsa like water, and nothing!

On the other hand, I packed up all my scrap stuff today in preparation of it being re-painted. It's been too long since that room was painted, and I am very excited!

I'll show off pictures when it is finished and everything is put back in place!

Setting Some Goals and the DOODLEBOPS LIVE!

Ok, it might be a little silly to start setting goals knowing that I can go into labor any second, but I guess I've got the last "burst of energy." Today I will begin to clean up and re-organize my scrap corner. Over the summer I let it become the place where I just dumped all the things that I didn't know what to do with. In other words, it is a MESS!

After that, I'd like to at least organize the many scrappy projects that I neglected over the summer. If I can get them set up in "kits" then it might make it easier for me to find a few minutes here or there to scrap after Travis Chip Smith arrives.

In the meantime, enjoy some photos I took (and will eventually scrap) at the Doodlebops Concert at the County Fair:


Pure joy and excitement on Audrey's face! Her first concert (that she remembers)!



Excitement for Callie, but a little bit of wondering if she's just a little "too old" for a Doodlebops show!



Absolute bewilderment upon seeing the Doodlebops for the very first time!

We're going to try this again

I've just gotten myself so overbooked right now, that I am afraid hand-making birth announcements will be too much. So, I'm once again asking my friends in blog-land to help me out by voting for my two girls in a contest that will award a $50 gift certificate that I can use for birth announcements.

You can vote for each girl as many times as you want using different email addresses each time. So, if you can use (for instance) your home email and your work email, that would endure you even more to me!

Last week's winner was a runaway with about 150 votes (my girls got about 40 each). Clearly, that person was a lot more forward about asking her friends to vote. Oh well!

Here's the links to vote for each girl:

Vote for Callie here!

Vote for Audrey here!

Thanks to everyone who voted last week, and thanks in advance to all who will vote this week!

If you're so inclined, we could use your votes!

I entered my DDs into a photo contest, and I'd appreciate anyone who likes their photos enough to vote for them. The prize is a $50 gift certificate for this website that does cards. I'm thinking (just thinking) about going that route for the birth announcements. I'm just getting a little overwhelmed as the summer is winding down and Baby Travis's due date approaches.

Anyway, if you want to check out their entries and maybe throw a vote (or five) our way, I'd appreciate it! Here are the two links:

Vote for Callie Here!

Vote for Audrey Here!

You can vote up to five times from your IP address, but you need to use a different email for each vote.

Thanks everyone!

Summer Scrapping

It's exciting now that my girls are in organized summer sports. I didn't realize it, but in previous summers, I had done a lot of LOs about water play, sidewalk art, pony rides, etc. I haven't gotten them scrapped yet, but here's a preview of some photos and products I hope to work with in the coming weeks:


In case you're wondering: Our league requires that catcher and pitchers (even in t-ball) wear helmets. They often put Callie at these two positions, and her hair is so sweaty at the end of the games. I need to get a photo of that to scrap too! Good story, don't you think?

I'm hosting a challenge on All Moments Remembered

Here's the skinny on the challenge:
You're Not the Photographer LO Challenge:
1. All of the photos in the LO must be taken by someone other than you. You kids have been itching to use you camera, haven't they?
2. LOs may have any number of photos from one to infinity, the sky is the limit here.
3. LOs may be any size.
4. LOs may be one- or two-pagers, even a mini book will do.
5. If you are using photographs taken by a professional photographer or any copyrighted photo, please give proper credit when posting on the internet. In most cases, I would not post them on the internet without the photographer's permission. I come from a line of professional photographers, and believe me when I say violating a federal law brings stiff penalties.
6. Use whatever embellishments you want. The challenge here is using someone else's photo(s).
7. Because some of you may not have photos on hand for this, I'm going to give us all until July 31 to complete this challenge. That should give everyone time to locate the photos from a friend's stash or to have someone take and print new photos plus do the actual LO.
8. I'll offer up a nice little RAK to one winner to be chosen at random after the deadline ends.
9. Post your entry in the AMR gallery and then link it here. You post as many LOs as you choose, but each entrant will only get one chance to win the RAK to keep it fair for all.

The most important part of this challenge is to HAVE FUN!

If you're interested, jump on over to the All Moments Remembered Message Board and join in on this challenge. If you're not a member, it only takes a moment to register. Once you've registered, here is the link to the challenge post.


This challenge is open to AMR members only.

Happy July 4!

I hope you all enjoy your holiday weekend! Here's a patriot LO that I have to share followed by a few photos of my youngest daughter (3 years old) all decked out in a patriotic leotard at her gymnastics class!

And ... I'm out!

After a great deal of soul searching (aka reality checking) I have decided to not enter the Memory Maker Masters contest after all. With a baby due and two others settling back into their fall rotation of after school classes and practices right about the time that the MMM winners will be announced, how much sense does it make to be in the running? On the off chance that I was a winner, I don't think it would be fair to anyone for me to be so over-busy. I can handle busy, but over-busy is too much.

So, I'm back to scrapping for the pure joy of it for now. I'll still enter the occasional page calls (I have to catch someone's eye sooner or later), and I'm most certainly open to any design team opportunities, but no more big contests for me until the kids are all walking (and maybe even potty trained).

I offer my support and appreciation to all those who are still entering. MM is still on the top of my list of publications, so what an honor the winners will have IMHO.

Good luck remaining entrants (now, quit reading and get back to work)!

Red, Orange or Yellow Challenge

Today's challenge for the scrapbook.com blog challenge is to post a photo of something red, orange or yellow. I chose a photo of the van from the National Tour of Annie that carries the lovable pooch, Sandy (who answers to "Mickey" when not on stage), from city to city for the tour. I also added a photo of my girls with some of the cast. I figure Annie's (Amanda Balon) red hair counts!

Avast Ye! Me's got the Treasure! Plus Blog Challenge

Ok, I'm really milking this pirate thing, but I found the papers at my LSS in Swartz Creek, Michigan, Capture-A-Memory! I was able to order most of the embellies online between scrapbook.com and scrapbookpal.com too! What you see above are the chipboard pieces that I nabbed. I can't wait to show you all what I make of all this stuff!

Blog Challenge Update - We're supposed to visit three blogs today and leave some love. I've been trying to visit at least five each day, so this should be easy!

Ahoy! I gotta get me hands on this loot!

The big dance recital is coming up. Callie is in 4 dances, Audrey is in 3. They're in one number together - tumble to a pirate song! I have to get my hands on the Pirate Princess colletion from Rusty Pickle! Take a look:




These are just a few of the products in the line. I want them all! I'm on the verge of eating my own words and actually referring to this line as "yummy." Maybe not just yet though.
Ahoy and Arrg!

Monday Blog Challenge: Water Photo - From October in Michigan!

This was truly a once in a lifetime photo op. In Michigan, we're in sweaters and fleece jackets in October, but last fall we had a very unusual few days were it shot up to the 80s. My daughter got home from school and made us dig her pool out of the garage so she could swim! Nope, I still have not scrapped the event. The next day, she and my younger daughter had a picnic outside. Haven't scrapped that one yet either!

Sunday Blog Challenge - Greatest Summer Memory

So ... my greatest summer memory. My greatest memory is just the freedom and excitement of it being summer as a kid. You had no worries. You woke up, maybe had some cereal, played, at lunch, played, came in for dinner, played, took a bath, went to bed, and repeated everything the next day. I remember looking at the sky a lot back then. I was in deep wonder about how big of a world we lived in, but still felt so secure about my little part in which I lived.

Want to hear something weird? I love the smell of skunk. Want to know why? It's because it immediately reminds me of summers when I was a kid. When I was young, our house was surrounded by fields. Yep, there were a lot of skunks out there. Our little dog even got sprayed a couple of times. To the rest of the world, it is a horrible smell, but to me, it takes me back to a much simpler time.

Now, how does one scrap the smell of skunks?

Target Customer Service Sucks!

I try to always keep this blog scrap-related, but tonight I'm going off topic a bit. I do know that a lot of you do get a lot of your scrapping supplies at Target though, so it's kind of related. Anyway, here goes:

Ok, so I've always know that Target is not user friendly when it comes to returns, but the "service" that we received at our target in Flint, Michigan tonight was beyond horrible.

My Mother stops in at this store at least once a week and buys outfits for each of my girls. She's just that kind of Grandma (and customer). Anyway, the shorts for my oldest that were purchased earlier today were the wrong size. We took them back to the store just to do an even exchange (the wrong size for the right size). Seems simple enough right? So wrong!

The fault on our part was not checking to make sure the receipt was in the bag. My girls had been so excited to see shopping bags at Grandmas, that they tore through the bags not knowing that some things had to go back. So, it was our bad that we did not have the receipt when we walked in the door.

However, apparently it is Target's policy to not allow even exchanges without a receipt. Keep in mind that we were not trying to return them for cash or credit, we just wanted to switch the size. What they could do is let us return the wrong size at the penalty of the sale price and then go through the line and purchase the right size at the full price. That, or we could drive home, get the receipt and go back, but with gas $4+/gallon, who wants to do that?

Top that with the way they handled it. Now, when I started in retail 20 years ago, I was taught to apologize, apologize, apologize any time a customer was upset. Had we heard at any time, something such as, "I'm really sorry about this, but the store policy has our hands tied," we probably would not have gotten so mad. However, nothing even remotely close was even said. Instead, they were rude and even had the nerve to talk down to us (as though working at Target makes them far superior to those of us customers to whom they depend on for their jobs). The "clerk," actually said, "Do you understand that you don't have your receipt?" Can you believe that? When I said, "So at Target, policy comes before service?" she answered, "Yes it does."

So, long rant short, we are lucky to live in an area where we have many choices of where to shop. Sorry Target, you fail in customer service, you fail to get our business any longer.

Great LO Idea - Favorite Summer Eats

So, today's blog topic challenge is your favorite summer meal. Just one? I'm pregnant! So many things come to mind from the light meals you make that do not require any cooking on those unbearably hot days, to fair foods (especially if it comes on a stick), to meals for the grill, to snacks, to all those yummy summer fruits!

I'm going to make it a summer goal to photography all my favorites this summer and do a LO about them. My LSS (shout out to Nancy, Pat, Mickey, Anne, and the rest of the crew at Capture A Memory in Swartz Creek)has some great papers and embellies to go with them for this, but here are some things I found online to help get everyone's juices (punny) flowing. Note that I haven't purchased any of these, so please don't expect me to post LOs using these items just yet! Ok, here's just a few things that caught my eye while surfing this morning:

My Dream Vacation

The scrapbook.com blog assignment for today is to blog about vacations, so I'm going for the gold: my dream vacation!

I would be the happiest girl in the whole wide world if I could take the Las Vegas strip (or just build a whole new strip) and place it right in the middle of Hawaii. I'm not particular on which island of Hawaii, but I'd prefer Oahu so I could take a break from the tables and go walk Waikiki Beach for a bit.

The question is, how would I scrap this? Suggestions ... comments ... sketches? Someones got to have an idea!

Better late than never!

Ok, we just bridged our Daisy troop up to Brownies, but I'm just now getting our investiture (when the became Daisies last fall) ceremony scrapped. My Daisy is the shorty in all of the photos wearing the headband. That's me in the top left corner of the group photo(I'm the leader).

The focus is way off on the photo of the LO. I have to check that, so please pardon the blurriness. The bummer is that you can't see the machine stitching down the side of page one. That's the absolute straightest line of my life!

Meet Ally

The blog challenge today is to link to something or someone that we love. It did not take long for me to decide to link to Ally's Allies a site started by dear friend of mine to honor her daughter, Allison, who was born with cystic fibrosis. Paula, my friend, has worked tirelessly since Ally's birth to raise money and awareness to find a cure for cystic fibrosis. In fact, the entire family, including Paula, Ally, big sister Kira (not afflicted) and husband Rob, has inspired me from day one. I do hope everyone who visits my blog will take a moment to stop by and check out Ally's site and see what a precious little fighter she is!

Being a military family, we have a lot of photos of "tough guy," soldiers, but let me tell you, the photo of Ally above is a photo of a true fighter!

That's Refreshing

Today's assignment for the scrapbook.com blog
challenge to is post a photo of something "refreshing."

Here's two photos of my oldest daugther taken a few years apart. The ice cream photo was taken at a local ice
cream shop when she was about 1.5 years. The photo with the man-made springs was taken at Downtown Disney two years later (that's Grandma looking over her). Both were hot, hot, hot July days!

I haven't scrapped either photo ... yet.

It's Hot!

Scrapbook.com has a challenge for members to blog each day. There is a specific topic for each day, and today's is to blog about something hot. Well, for once, it's the weather. Temps have been below normal here in Michigan, but today it will reach 80 degrees. Here's a LO I did from an even hotter day last summer.




The photos were taken at a an outdoor splash park. It's a ton of fun for kids, and nice for parents because we can sit in the residual spray!

The title of the LO is "Perpetual Fun." The circles and the lines (the orange specialty paper that goes across both pages and the line of circular sun stamps along the bottom) are meant to enhance the perpetual theme.