Happy holidays!

Whew - can I rest yet?? Between Chloe's birthday, Hanukkah and Christmas, our December is always crazy!! It's been a wonderful week, though, full of Hanukkah presents and Christmas trees. Our Christmas Eve tradition is to go to my brother and SIL's to spend with the fam, and then we hung out at home all day Christmas day and relaxed (and the kids played with lots of new toys!). We ended the day with a lovely Jewish tradition of Chinese food on Christmas (hey - I have to bring some of my childhood traditions to our home, right? ;-)

Oh! And did I mention that Tony totally spoiled me?? He got me a new DSLR! I can't tell you how excited I am about this! My Canon Rebel XT just turned 6 years old, and it was definitely dying a slow death after years of abuse. So my honey surprised me with the Canon Rebel T2i - it is amazing!! It has way more features and capabilities than my old one did, and some of my favorites are the 18 megapixels and 6400 ISO (my old one went to 1600!). I'm having SO much fun playing with it, but I still have lots to learn! So, without further ado, here are some of the very first pics taken with my new camera, depicting our holiday week:

My Chloe bear, on Xmas Eve (wearing fake earrings that I made out of faux pearls and glue dots LOL!):

Me and my mama:
Weeeee!:
My beautiful niece with Chloe:
Me and my man:
Love this shot of Tony and Chloe:
And me and my girl:
Me and my bro lighting the menorah with our kids:
Having fun messing around with the new cam on Xmas day ;-)








And, just because it's cold and I feel like remembering the warmth lol, here is a LO I made awhile back that I forgot to post about the annual outdoor concert that my girlfriends and I go to every summer:
Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, no matter what you celebrate!! :-)

A letter to my girl...

Today this sweet girl turned five (picture of Chloe and daddy taken at dinner out tonight). Five! I remember when Noah turned five, and it hit me hard. Five seems, well, so old. Yes, I know that may sound a bit dramatic, as I am well aware that five really isn't old (now 36 like me, that's another story ;-), but it's definitely "big girl" status. In celebration of my Chloe's birthday, I wanted to write her a letter, which I hope you don't mind that I share here.

My dearest Chloe,
It's so very hard to believe that you are five years old now. It seemed that for so long, we were stuck in the phase of you being my little shadow, attached to my hip, never wanting me to leave you for one second. Though that phase lasted for several years, it now seems a faded memory. You are now so independent. Sure, you get a little wary in new situations, but for the most part, you jump right in. You work hard to keep up with your older brother (I have a feeling the motivation for you to get your training wheels off several months ago was to be like Noah!), and you definitely work hard to take care of your little brother. You are SO kind hearted. You are constantly making gifts for people, always wanting to share a little piece of yourself. You are a helper, always wanting to do things around the house for me. You are artistic. You love to paint, draw and create. You have made some of the most creative, unique things all on your own - I love to see how your brain works. You love to bake. I try to have regular baking projects with you because it makes you so happy, and I enjoy that time spent together, too. You have a thirst for learning. You are such a good girl at pre-school (your teachers rave about you!), and you ask a lot of questions, regularly trying to figure out how the world works. Now, because i'm keeping this real (here it comes! ;-), I have to mention that you can also be, um, how should I say this.... difficult at times. You are very strong willed and stubborn. These are qualities that I have no doubt will serve you well later in life. You will not be the child who lets herself get pushed around by others. However, at home, that can also lead to a lot of butting heads and frustration. We are working on it, and it's a learning process for both of us. No matter what, though, I love every single bit of you, strong willed-ness and all! As you and I always say, we are the only girls in this house full of boys, so we have to stick together! I love you with all of my heart, Chlo-Chlo, and you will ALWAYS be my girl Happy fifth birthday to my "big" girl.

Love,
Mommy

Teresa Collins Guest Designer and major catch up!!

Ok, so it's been a *little* while since i've updated here (hanging head in shame ;-) The truth of the matter is that life has just gotten really busy, and, unfortunately, I just haven't had the time to keep up with scrapping and blogging like I used to. I'm trying hard to manage my time so that I can get back to scrapping regularly like I used to - I really miss that creative outlet! I did manage to get some layouts done recently for my guest design gig for Teresa Collins. She sent me the GORGEOUS Christmas home collection, and I made these 3 layouts:





You can see the blog post here.

A super big THANK YOU to Teresa Collins for having me as a guest designer - what an honor! :-)

Now, onto some photo catch up! During my blogging hiatus, I missed Halloween:



And I missed a trip to the airport park with the kids. Lucas LOVED seeing the planes fly by! My mother-in-law was also here for a visit then, which was a great treat for all of us. Unfortunately she had to cut her trip short, as Tony's grandmother is sick, but we loved having my MIL visit while she was here!





And then, most recently, I missed blogging about Thanksgiving. We hosted, as we always do, and it was great to have some of the family together. Love this pic of us ladies - my mom, me, my SIL, my niece, and my Chloe :-)

The 5 cousins:
And this year's family photo (yes, this will be gracing this year's holiday card soon LOL)!
So, in recent months, Noah finally lost his first tooth, Lucas started walking (he is all over the place!), Chloe learned how to ride her bike without training wheels, Tony completed the Tough Mudder (a 10 mile obstacle run), and I signed up for the Iron Girl triathlon (.6 mile swim, 17 mile bike ride and 3.4 mile run). What was I thinking? Good question!! Thank goodness I have until August to train. I've started with the running, and although I still hate it lol, at least I feel like i'm going to die a little less each time - I guess that's a good sign hehea.

Yes, life is definitely busy here. But very very good. And we truly have so much to be thankful for. Happy belated Thanksgiving, friends!

Thank you GCD Studios!

Ok, ok, I know I've been on a teeny tiny bit of a hiatus here recently ;-) Super busy month and not a whole lot of scrapping. Still working on that whole balance thing! I did have the honor, though, of Guest Designing for GCD this month, as you can see here. Here are the first two projects I did (the other two haven't been posted yet) with their awesome September kit. I had a blast working with it - thanks GCD :-)

I also got a gorgeous box of Teresa Collins goodies the other day to work with for a Guest Designer spot - super excited about that, as well! Can't wait to play :-)

Things have been good here - the kids are loving school so far, and work is going well for me. Noah turns 7 next Sunday, so we are having a birthday party for him which he can't wait for. I got away last weekend for a girls weekend for the first time since Lucas was born - I love those weekends to refresh and recharge! Thanks for bearing with me during my absenteeism ;-) Happy fall, my friends!

First birthday and First grade... oh my!

Lucas turned ONE last week! I still can't believe it - this year went sooo fast (too fast!). I've always had a hard time with my babies turning one, but knowing he is my last made this one that much harder. But, alas, we had a wonderful birthday party celebration for him, and that helped his sad mama embrace the exciting times that lay ahead ;-) He got two ride-on trucks for his birthday that he LOVES. I just had to get these photos scrapped right away, of course :-)
Some of my favorite pics from the party (we had a Sock Monkey theme :-):

Not only did we have a first birthday, but we now have a first grader! Week one has been going well... no complaints. Let's hope it stays that way!

No firsts for this girl lol, but she is excited to be starting her second (and last) year of pre-school in two weeks.

In addition to the big birthday and the start of school, we had quite an eventful week last week! Last Tuesday, Lucas' actual birthday, we had an earthquake that measured 5.8 on the Richter scale. Not only do we normally not get earthquakes out this way, but the one we did have before was very slight. There was no denying this one! Things were falling off shelves in our house left and right - I even had a vase break! The two younger kids were freaked! Then, only 4 days later, Hurricane Irene made her way up the east coast and brought crazy storms over this way. Luckily, we did not lose power (LOTS of people out here did, and some people I know first got their power back today - 5 days later!) and there was no damage, but others were not so lucky. I feel very lucky! We did have to postpone Lucas' party from Saturday to Sunday, but it all worked out ;-) I sure hope all my friends out there who were also visited by Irene also fared as well as we did!

Let's hope next week is not nearly as exciting! ;-)

Family frame

One of my favorite things to alter is plain wood frames as I love finding unique ways to display photos around the house. This is a recent frame I had lots of fun with :-)

I'm working on a printer's tray right now for an assignment...love those things!

Speaking of assignments, I got my goodies from GCD for my guest spot - love the gorgeous stuff I got! Will share when I can :-)

Going to take Lucas for his very first haircut today... the boy's hair has exploded! Can't believe he is going to be one in 8 days, ack!!

Happy Monday, friends!

I'll blame it on mommy brain...

Yeah, these would be two more projects from when I was the guest blogger on the Jenni Bowlin blog a couple of months ago. I had previously shared the two layouts I had done, but I also made this little mini-album:

and this butterfly mobile (which is hanging in the doorway of Chloe's room):

I used the JBS butterfly stamp on transparencies with watermark ink, and then I heat embossed the images with different embossing powders. I then attached them to the little tart tins from JBS - Chloe loves it :-)

Tomorrow the kids and I get to celebrate the birthday of one of our favorite people... Daddy! Well, their daddy, anyway ;-)