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!!

Playing dress-up

Anyone who knows my son knows he loooooves to play dress-up. It doesn't matter if he's pretending to be batman, spiderman, darth vader, or his made up red-caped "Super Nova" character, Noah just loves to turn into someone else for periods of time. He's been known to go on walks/bike rides through the neighborhood with his cape flying behind him, and to go on park playdates with his cape, too. I love that he is so imaginative, and I hope he never loses this side of himself.

Journaling: Its not just for little girls. Not a day goes by that you aren't wearing some kind of costume. It is so cool to watch your imagination run wild!

PP is Little yellow bicycle, cosmo cricket; wings are tim holtz; chip letters are heidi swapp and small letters are MM.

Speaking of my little man, this is a very eventful week. He turns four on thursday. Two more days! Sniff, sniff. We are having a birthday party for him on Sunday at My Gym. He's very excited, and i'm excited for him. I'm sure i'll update later in the week with a photo of my FOUR year old!

Scrap Pink Crop Weekend!

Whoo! We are well into day 1 of the Scrap Pink Crop weekend at Create My Keepsake! If you're looking for some fun challenges and some AWESOME prizes, please come join us here, if you haven't already. I just posted my layout challenge. The challenge was to create a layout about a skill, hobby or talent you have that not many people know about. I was inspired to do this layout after having a conversation with a newer friend who had no idea that I play(ed) guitar. It was such a big part of my life back in college, but since I don't really play now, my newer friends don't know this about me. So, I decided I needed to document this piece of me.

Journaling reads (yikes, it's long!): Anyone who knew me back in college knew how attached I was to my guitar. That thing meant the world to me. I got my guitar as a birthday present from my parents for my 20th birthday. I learned how to play from friends, teaching myself, and from taking a college guitar class. I even lugged my guitar with me halfway around the world when I studied in Australia because I didn’t want to be without it for so many months. If I close my eyes, I can clearly remember what it felt like to play back then. It was an indescribable feeling of truly getting lost in the moment. Nothing feels better then to lose yourself within music that is created by your own two hands. Fast forward a decade, and my poor guitar is locked up in its case, gathering dust. People who have more recently entered my life have no idea that I know how to play. My children have never heard me play, and my husband hasn’t heard me play in many many years. I miss it. Yet, something keeps me from picking it up, and I’m not quite sure what is stopping me. I think it’s time that I stop questioning it and just do it. I’m ready to reconnect with my beautiful long lost friend. Photos from Spring 1996, layout September 2008.

My Guitar Girl layout also happens to be one of my Luxe layouts this month using the new Sprinkles line, which is so bright and fun!

I got to scrap last night, too. I made a layout about Chloe enjoying her first snow... she looks so little here!

Lastly, do you notice that cute little "followers" widget over there <------------? You can sign up to be a reader of my blog. According to blogger, with the Blogger Reading List, you can read all of the latest posts from your favorite blogs right on your Blogger Dashboard! Your Blogger Reading List, conveniently located under your list of blogs on your dashboard, enables you to subscribe to any blog with a feed. It will update instantly each time a new post is published on any blog in your Reading List. You can add blogs not only from Blogger, but also from Typepad, Wordpress, etc. (Thanks Jen for the info about it!). If you're interested, just hit the "follow me" button, and then you can have your pretty little face on my blog, too (or you can follow it "quietly" without your photo showing up). :-)

Hope you all are having a great weekend so far!!

Disclaimer ahead....

So, my disclaimer is that I suck at making cards. There, we got that out of the way :-) Of course, I don't normally make cards, so I guess i'm not helping my card making ability any because of that (since we all know the lovely 'practice makes perfect' adage), but I just don't have the same passion for them that I do layouts. I love looking at them, though. And I greatly admire those who are talented card makers (and many of my friends fall in that category and constantly blow me away with their abilities!!), but I guess i'm just a layout kind of girl.

Anyway, why am I rambling on about cards? Because I made one the other day. One of my Luxe requirements this month was to make a card, so I embraced it. Anyway, all this talk is basically to convince you not to hold my card making skills (or lack thereof) against me, lol.

I hope i'm not boring you to death with all my photos lately, but boy, I think this month is the least i've scrapped in a long time (and I just have to share something on here to keep you all interested, right?! ;-))! I do have a layout to share on Saturday for CMK's awesome Scrap Pink crop, and I did work on a layout tonight that I should be able to finish tomorrow. And, I just can't resist sharing these photos. My family is addicted to the Noggin show "Yo Gabba Gabba" (I'm not sure who likes it more - Tony or the kids!), and last night we had a major rockin' out jam fest while watching the musical performances on the show. The kids picked up our Playstation Rock Band instruments and just went to town. It was the cutest thing EVER. Anyway, I'm outta here as it's after 1am, and I need to get to bed! Happy Fall everyone!