Luxe-a-licious

Luxe is offering an awesome deal right now - they are offering free shipping on all orders over $25 from their online store, shipped within the United States through Monday, November 10th. The new lines are out, as are some new transparencies and new stamps, and you can check out the new lines and read more about the deal here.

Speaking of Luxe, I had fun mixing older and newer lines to create this layout. Not the best action shots ever, but they are of Tony and I playing around at Noah's birthday party a few weeks ago, and they make me smile. PP, transparency (arrow), label, letter stickers and stamp are all Luxe. I added a bit of ribbon and a few Prima flowers. By the way, Luxe stamps are sooo nice! They give off a very crisp and clean image - I was even able to stamp on the flowers, and you can still see the image perfectly!

So, who is getting excited for Halloween?? What do you all have planned? Our festivities start on Thursday, and I can't wait! Noah has his preschool Halloween party on Thursday, and Tony, Chloe and I will join in too. Friday, we're going to watch the nearby elementary school parade and have a fun night of trick or treating. And then on Saturday.... we are hosting our first annual Neighborhood Halloween Party! Should be fun!!

Happy Tuesday everyone!

More Fancy Pants...

Wow, did I ever have a happy mail week!! First I got the Spooktacular album kit that I won from Teresa Collins' site - it's so awesome, and it was so nice of her to send me it!! Then, the next day, I got the brand new releases from Fancy Pants and the newest releases from Luxe (along with some Ranger and Maya Road goodies, too!)!! Wow, I am a happy girl and can't wait to play with my new stuff :-) A big thank you to FP and Luxe!

I'm dropping off another Fancy Pants layout I just completed - the black and blue papers are from The Daily Grind line, as are the chip flowers and word. The pink paper is from the Happy Holidays line and the chip letters are from both the lines. The colors of the chip letters didn't work with my layout, so I decided to do the fabulous Leslie Ashe's challenge at CMK and use beads on a layout. I painted my letters white and then covered them with beads - so fun!! The felt, ribbon and rub-ons are also Fancy Pants (I covered the flourish rub-on at the bottom with stickles).

I took these photos just last week when we went to the zoo. I love how happy Chloe looks, and is she a natural with the camera or what?? Journaling reads: These are my favorite recent photos of you - I love how your joy and your supunk is radiating from you. Chloe, you are gorgeous on the inside and out!

Hope everyone is having a great week - happy Friday!!

Yawn....

Oh boy, I am tired this morning. I'm not much of a coffee drinker (although I do love those french vanilla gas station machine cappucinos - yes, I go all out, lol!), but I'm thinking today would be a good day to start :-)

Yesterday was one of those days in which Tony and I just wanted to trade the kids in, lol. Fortunately for them, they came with a no return policy. It was just one of those days in which they were tag teaming us with whining and not listening, and the day ended with Noah marking up chloe's walls with crayon. Ahhh, but today is another day, and it's already started out with me deciding that i'll keep them around, after all. :-)

I did get to go to a 12 hour Kreative Junkets crop on Saturday which was sooo much fun! It's always nice to have a "me" day to spend all day long doing something I enjoy. Not to mention that Lisa (next door) went with me, and I got to catch up with some of my old Recollections friends, so that was a treat, as well.

I finished up two more DT layouts for Create My Keepsake using Scenic Route's gorgeous Sonoma line:


Journaling reads: Always respect each other, protect each other, be kind to each other, love each other as fiercely as you do today. Love, mommy



These photos were taken just a few days ago, and I thought it was so funny that my daughter was playing in leaves while wearing short sleeves and a skirt - not your typical fall weather! Journaling reads: You've got to love Maryland - playing in leaves in 80 degree weather!

And two more Fancy Pants layouts:

Journaling reads: You have always loved reading. Whether you're "reading" the books yourself or being read to, books will capture your attention for a very long time!

Noah was so little in these photos - he was only 16 months old! Journaling reads: Your love of apples started when you were a toddler. It took you a long time to get through an apple, but you were persistent!

I've got to stop playing online now and finish getting myself ready for work. Hope everyone had a fabulous weekend!

Lots of fun stuff going on!

Fun thing #1: I am excited to let you all know that I am part of a brand spankin' new challenge blog! My friend Ellen came up with the idea that it would be fun to look to the future more in our scrapping...to scrap the future, our dreams, challenges, changes, especially since we find ourselves scrapping the past so often. I'm really excited about being a part of this, and I love that it will give me the motivation to scrap more about myself, as I think it will be cool for my kid's to look back and read what my goals and dreams were, etc. So, without further ado, the new site is called Forward Progress. The blog has officially launched, but we're still in the setting up stages - our first challenge/prompt will be coming mid-November. So, stay tuned!

Fun thing #2: Luxe is doing 13 Halloween projects in 13 days on their blog. In addition to getting some cool Halloween inspo, you can also purchase the mega value Luxe Limited Kits (for just $13) that they've created. Last but not least, they'll be doing a big giveaway on Halloween. You can check all this out here.

Fun thing #3: Fancy Pants is releasing two new lines, and they are awesome!! I can't wait to get my hands on these! The new lines will be shipping out starting November 1st, and you can win some of this yumminess on the Fancy Pants blog.

Fun thing #4: Speaking of Fancy Pants, this is the first DT layout i've made for Fancy Pants. I so love this line - I used the All Fall line (chipboard, papers and buttons) and also used their Spooky Tree glitter cut and their rub-on alphas. The tree was actually a little shorter then I needed it to be, so I chopped off the bottom and added it below my photos.

Fun thing #5: I was pleasantly surprised to see that it is the Featured Layout over at Two Peas today :-)

Hope everyone is having a great week - the end is near!

What a great weekend!

My weekend was such a blast, I wish I could have another right now :-) It started out on Friday evening by going to my neighbor's house for a happy hour. I know I gush about my neighbors a lot, but boy are we lucky!! We have all become good friends and really enjoy hanging out together. We had some appetizers and drinks and enjoyed getting to wind down after a busy week. I came home around 9:45 as Chloe just could not make it any longer, but Tony and Noah stayed out until midnight! I know, we get parents of the year awards for letting our 4 year old stay out that late, but he was having a blast and not acting tired at all, and we don't do this very often.

We went to Dutch Wonderland the next morning, and now I know why everyone raves about it there! Since it's a family amusement park, it was so clean and pretty, and it was a blast! I thought the rides would all be really tame, but there were plenty of rides that we went on that gave us quite a thrill!! And let me tell you, my son definitely takes after me and not his wimpy daddy in his amusement park, thrill-seeking ways, because he never once got nervous or felt dizzy, sick, etc. He is hardcore! Even Chloe and my 2 1/2 year old nephew had plenty to go on, so it was a great day for everyone!

Yesterday we stayed in and relaxed. Tony worked on building the wooden playhouse my parents got Noah for his birthday, and I had to go to Noah's preschool to clean. Since it's a co-op, we are assigned one weekend day a year to do a thorough cleaning, so I worked hard yesterday :-)

I have another Scenic Route layout to drop off. I'm really loving this Sonoma line - the colors are gorgeous!

Journaling reads: By 18 months, you already had quite a decent vocabulary, although you didn't say all of the words correctly. Oatmeal was one of them. In a quiet and sweet tone, you said "eat me." I used to joke that given your temperament, it was quite possible that your mispronunciation was planned! :-) At 21 months, you now say oatmeal correctly , but I must confess that I miss hearing "eat me"!

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend, too!

I've been a bad blogger!

Yikes, it's been a whole week since i've updated! Noah's birthday party went great! Everything went off without a hitch, and most importantly, my baby had a great time! I won't inundate you all with photos, but I do want to share a couple. My favorite part of the whole party (and Noah's, too) was when they brought him out in the wagon, complete with a crown and a wand. He looked SO excited and so proud... it was the coolest thing to see. Still can't believe my little guy is four!!

Our never-ending quest for a good family photo... sigh....

We've had a busy week, but we ended it tonight with Happy Hour at our neighbors' house. It was so much fun! The kids had a blast, and we enjoyed some grown up time!

Tomorrow we are heading to Dutch Wonderland in PA with my bro, SIL and the kids... can't wait! (For those who don't know, it's a type of amusement park for kids). We've never been before, and I have heard many times how wonderful it is, so I can't wait to check it out first hand!

Lastly, I'll leave you all with a layout I did for CMK this month. Our sponsor is Scenic Route, and I had so much fun playing around with the goodies they sent us. Can't wait to play some more!

Oh what a night...

So, my baby turned 4 yesterday! Happy happy birthday to my dear, sweet Noah! We had a great day - he had school in the morning, and I was the co-op mom, so I got to be there with him. We got to have cupcakes and his friends sang to him. After school we had lunch and a playdate with Kaylee next door and then after naptime, we played outside until it was time to go out to dinner. We went to Red Robin, noah's favorite restaurant, and we were having a great time until the end, when Chloe all of a sudden threw up. All over herself, and all over me. Oh yes... fun times :-)

We got out of there as quickly as we could and got ourselves home so that Tony could bathe her and I could shower myself off! We got her to bed and then opened presents with Noah. Poor chloe ended up getting sick three more times throughout the night! Thankfully, although she does have a fever today, she hasn't gotten sick since the middle of the night, so i'm hoping it is a 24 hour bug that's on it's way out. I'm really hoping and praying that whatever she has stays far away from Noah, as his party is on Sunday. So, his 4th birthday is definitely one we will remember!!

This has been a great scrappy mail week for me. On Wednesday, I got my Fancy Pants box, and WOW, is it amazing!! I have seriously loved their products since I bought my first chipboard big board box a couple of years ago, and I am seriously SO excited to get started designing for them! Getting the box made it seem more real. The box was jam packed with all of their newest collections - lots and lots of FP chipboard, rub-ons, glitter cuts, transparencies, buttons, embellishment boxes, transparent mini album set, chipboard mini albums sets, paper, etc. A big THANK YOU to FP!!

I also got my Scrapbook Trends box - there is some yummy stuff in there, and it felt really good to get my layout back... it's nervewracking having my layouts away in someone else's care!

Before I sign off, I wanted to share some pics of my 4 year old -

I told Noah he could have whatever he wanted for breakfast - I told him i'd make him waffles, pancakes, eggs, etc., but no, he wanted Lucky Charms since I don't normally let him have sugar cereals, lol! Here he is happy with his cereal, showing me how old he is:

Dinner out (before it got interesting, lol):
Opening up presents when we got home:And I couldn't post pics without sharing some of my little girl, too! Here are a couple of Chloe before we left for the restaurant (when she was still feeling ok!):I hope you all are having a wonderful Friday and enjoy your weekend!!