Do you make resolutions?

I don't normally. But I did two years ago, and it's interesting to me that many of my resolutions for 2008 are things that are still important to me and high on my list as we are about to enter 2010. I'm happy to report, though, that I have been doing many of these... but not all - I need something to reach for, right?? ;-) Although this layout is two years old now, I still love it, and I love the reminder to keep striving to be a better me. (If you'd like to read what my resolutions were, you can click on the layout to see it enlarged.)

As promised, I wanted to share some recent photos of what we've been up to. These are some of the pics that were taken during our blizzard last weekend when we got 23 inches of snow!
And some of Chloe at her b-day party last week:
(Noah was too busy hanging with his friends to join in on the family shot here ;-)
Well, my friends, I will not be around for the next few days, so I want to wish you all a VERY happy New Year! May 2010 be kind to you all!!

Have you ever danced in the rain?

I have, and it was one of my favorite nights ever. I wrote about it here. It was very hard to photograph this layout because I cut out a section, backed it with a transparency and added raindrops. Transparencies don't like my camera too much ;-)


This layout was done for a member lift over at AMM. We lifted the awesome Sasha Holloway who now happens to be an AMM DT member, lol. The parts of Sasha's original layout that I used for my design were the popped up circles and the journaling strips. Everything here is Fancy Pants, mostly from the Kraft Kuts line.
We've been super busy here the last few days! We ended up getting 23 inches of snow!! We've had a lot of fun playing in it :-) We ended up rescheduling Chloe's b-day party for last night in our home, and she had a lot of fun. I've taken a ton of photos over the last few days, and i'll be back to share some of them another time. For now, i'll leave you with two of my recent favs.

Noah wearing our "build a snowman" accessories:
Chloe showing off the tutu I made for her to wear to her b-day party:
Happy hump day, everyone! I hope all of my friends that celebrate Christmas have a wonderful holiday!

Three years ago today...

she was born.
she, my sweet precious Chloe who, despite her intense clinginess to her mama over the last 3 years is finally becoming more independent.
yet she still loves to come over to me and give me hugs and kisses out of nowhere.
and tell me how much she loves me.
I love this girl so very much, and I am so thankful for the privilege of being her mama.

Quite a while ago, I got a very awesome deal on this pony S'mores. Have you heard of her? She is over 3 feet tall, and she neighs, whinneys and moves her head and tail when you pet her. She makes chewing sounds when you feed her, and she makes walking sounds when you sit on her (although she doesn't actually walk... bummer ;-) I put S'mores away and have been saving her until Chloe's birthday. She was a very excited little girl this morning :-) The funniest part, though, is after sitting on S'mores for a few minutes, Chloe said to me, "mommy, I think I need a cowboy hat for this!" Apparantly all pony riders are cowboys and cowgirls lol.


Eating her favorite breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes...
My mom came over to join us for a day of birthday celebrating. We took the kids to Chuck E Cheese. Yes, every parent's biggest nightmare, lol, but it is so much more tolerable during a quiet weekday morning when they aren't very crowded! I LOVE this photo of Chloe and her Mimi.
We took Chloe out to her favorite restaurant for dinner. Don't you just love my tough guys? (See that cool watch Tony is wearing? His awesome wife got it for him for Hanukkah ;-)
Not quite sure what to think when they sang Happy Birthday to her...
It was a wonderful day :-)

So, we are in the middle of a winter storm watch - we're supposed to get 12-24 inches, maybe even more (depending on which news report you listen to)! They're saying it may be in the Top 5 for biggest snowstorms in this area ever. I'm feeling very torn as this is the kind of thing I love! What could be more fun than getting snowed in with your loved ones and having countless opportunites to go sledding? The only think that could ruin the excitement for me is a birthday party that is likely going to get cancelled. :-( Yep, Chloe's party at her dance studio is on Sunday. Unless the weather people are way off base, it seems as though her party will not be happening, so we're trying to figure out what to do. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that she is still too young to really be dissappointed - wishful thinking?!?

Things have been so busy here lately that I haven't had as much scrapping time, but i'm hoping things will pick up again soon. I do have a new Fancy Pants layout i've completed, as well as one that i'm almost done with that i'm doing just for fun - I will be back very soon to share them. Happy weekend, everyone!

A road trip, a cookbook, and a really cool lady (AKA The Pioneer Woman)

So, I've mentioned on several occasions on my little blog here that i'm a big fan of The Pioneer Woman, who goes by Ree, but who revealed to us that her real name is actually Anne Marie. Not only has she helped me in the kitchen department (and everyone knows I need help there - no comments from Tony or Lisa please!!), but I absolutely love reading her blog, as she comes across as a very funny and very genuine person. Well, when next-door Lisa told me that Ree was doing a book tour for her new cookbook, I was super excited to find out if Ree's humor and genuine-ness (is that a word?) were for real.

Down-the-street Heather ended up having to cancel at the last minute, so Lisa and I packed into Tony's car (his is much bigger and more comfortable than mine ;-) and started the journey up to West Chester, PA. Due to the rain and the lovely detour/tour of Univ. of Deleware that my GPS decided to take us on, it took us almost 3 hours to get there. However, Ree wasn't due to appear until 2:30, and we still got there more than 2 hours ahead of time. We reserved our seats (in the 4th row, whoo!) and hit up the cafe for some yummy burgers. Here's Lisa humoring my attempt at pre-Ree photos:

Finally, 2:30 rolled around, and Ree walked in. Isn't she so pretty??
Ree had a Q&A answer session for about 30 minutes, at which time she discussed things such as how her family feels about her success (they're happy for her), how she can cook with so much butter and oil and still look as good as she does (she claims she put on weight while writing her cookbook, but I don't beleive it, lol), how long it takes her to do a blog entry (it can range from a 20 min. quickie "confession" to a 5-6 hour cooking post, complete with edited photos), how the home schooling thing is going (she made a very funny joke that i'll never be able to recreate, lol, about how the reality of people who homeschool is very different than her impressions before she became one of them), how she is able to "do it all" (this answer made me totally love her as she said she does not do it all and is not able to keep up with everything - that she throws clothes on her closet floor (yep, she's my soul sister, lol) and constantly has a huge pile of laundry), how she takes the photos of her cooking (she used to use a tripod but now has gotten really good at holding one arm out and shooting while using the other to cook) and when she is going to be on Oprah (she told us that the same question was asked when she was on the booktour and she gave a smart ass response saying "Who needs oprah? I'm more of a Bonnie Hunt fan myself!" totally forgetting that she was in Chicago, hehea!).

And then, at the very end of the Q&A session, (the very last question in fact), she was asked if she would do her Ethel Merman impression. And being the good sport that she is, she did.

I can not tell you enough how impressed I was with her. I think her story is so cool - she was just a "regular" person, doing her blogging thing, and now she has become very well known, put out a cookbook, and she toured around the country promoting it. I'm sure that's quite a life altering experience for anyone, getting used to sudden popularity and fame like that. She handles herself with such poise, though, and she's hysterical! She's not afraid to poke fun of herself, and she's incredibly modest. And genuine. And yep... totally real.

After the Q&A session, Ree started the book signing. They were calling people up by groups of 20, and Lisa and I were 83. So we waited. And waited. And waited some more. And in the meantime, we walked around, people watched (and concocted some great stories about the other people there), chatted and laughed a lot. Mostly while we were doing this:

Yes, if you ever have about 90 minutes to kill while waiting for someone to sign your book, I highly recommend reading through a 3D animal book for kids. Just don't look at the pages without the glasses - it'll mess with your head.

Finally, it was our turn. Ree graciously took photo after photo with all her fans, and we were no exception.

It was a great day - it's always fun to get in some quality girl time, and it was even better that Lisa and I got to do something totally out of the ordinary. It was really fun and exciting to meet Ree and to hear what she had to say. I wish her the best of luck, and I can't wait to try out even more of her recipes. Thanks for making our roadtrip so much fun, Ree!

Frosted

The new Frosted line by Fancy Pants was just perfect for scrapping my sledding photos from last year. How cute is that little snowman?? I just had to accessorize him by giving him that little scarf, lol. And a big thanks to my friend Heather who helped me word the title ;-)
So, i'm very excited because tomorrow I am going to meet her:
Yep, The Pioneer Woman is doing a book tour, and tomorrow she will be in PA, about 2 hours north from me. So me, next-door Lisa and down-the-street Heather are heading up to go meet her and get our cookbooks signed. Yep, we're totally geeky, and I can't wait! ;-)

AMM December kit reveal

Happy Thursday, everyone! I finished my projects with the beautiful Dec. kit from AMM - this kit is so pretty and elegant!
I stamped our wedding vows at the top, and the journaling on the tag reads: These rings are so much more than pretty diamonds to me. They are the promise of true love, the promise of family, the promise of dedication, the promise of hope, the promise of understanding... the promise of the future.



For this project, I altered the 7 Gypsies book cover that came with the kit and turned it into a little wall hanging of my family.
Before I go, I wanted to tell you about an awesome contest Michelle is having at AMM, and the prize is the complete Cosmo Cricket "Jolly by Golly" crafting kit! For a chance to win, you need to become a follower of the AMM blog and join the AMM facebook group. You can read the details here.

Have a great week, everyone!

Our first snow!

You've got to love the first snow of the winter. Well, except that it's not even winter yet ;-) I think we're going to be in for a crazy, snowy, cold winter once it actually gets here! We got several inches yesterday, so, of course, we just had to go out and play!






It was perfect packing-snow, too - it made great snowballs (that was Noah's favorite part, as you can see ;-)

How's the weather on your end?

I hope everyone had a great weekend! We had a busy one here - we went to a Brinner (breakfast for dinner) party at our neighbors' house last night, and we had a birthday party today. We'll all sleep well tonight!

I'll be back soon with my AMM December kit work :-)