I haven't blogged in weeks!!! So...I've decided to renew my commitment to my blog. Here's some random happenings around the Giles household lately:

Cara: she starts 4 year old preschool next week. Yep...4 years old! She had a birthday on August 19th! Can't believe my baby is growing up so quickly! We go to a "meet the teacher and your classmates" thing tomorrow and she's so excited! Same teacher as last year and the one Camryn had for 2 years before Cara...Mrs. Dance...we love her!!!

Camryn: They are building a new school in our neighborhood and it's not done. Ughh!!! The other kids in the district started a week ago. We're hoping that the new school is done by the proposed start date of next Tuesday. She'll be in 1st grade....all day long!!! I can't believe it!!! She's been testing my patience and although I'll miss her during the day....I have to admit that I can't wait for that first school bell to ring!!

Me: I've been working away lately. Haven't had much time to scrap....but as soon as school starts I'm hoping to get back into a good schedule!! I'm waiting on the KI Memories Album contest...supposedly they're making calls on Friday!!! I really want this one!! I wasn't sure I'd like the Color Theory line but can I tell you? I LOVE MY ALBUM!!!!! It's really freestylin' and fun!!! I'm also waiting on the Piggy Tales DT call!!! They are supposedly announcing by tomorrow! Haven't seen anyone "tooting" for this yet! I'm going to die waiting for the KI call!!!!

Steve: not much new with Steve!!! He is taking another college course that started last Wednesday. History of Western Civilization. Fun!!! Blech....so glad I'm done with school. He's also coaching grid kid football so he's gone most evenings until supper time. It's nice that he's got some "manly" stuff to do since we only have girls. His nephew is on the team and he is coaching with some people I work with. Should be fun to go to the games...we've watched for the past 2 years.

Well....that's about it for now. I'm hoping to re-dedicate myself to my blog and be more consistent posting!!! Thanks for reading!!

Sunday Blog Challenge for 7/16

1. Tell me why your blog is named what it is. Giles Girl Designs....my last name, I'm a girl and I'm showcasing my designs and work....pretty simple!!
2. Tell me one person you admire as a scrapper/artist and why. I really admire Elsie Flannigan because she does her own thing, doesn't follow the rules and isn't afraid to be unique, regardless of what people think of her!!
3. What is one thing that you've never tried on a layout or project that you'd really like to try? Well, I tried sewing with a machine once and it didn't turn out so great! I think I'd like to try the dry embossing...haven't done that yet. I've done the wet embossing and like it, but never the dry!
4. What is your favorite time of year to scrap and why? I like scrapping in the winter....there's nothing like being warm, having fun creating, being surrounded by all my favorite supplies and looking out the window to a beautiful snowy day.
5. List 2 other people's scrappy blogs that you enjoy reading and post a link to them.
I love reading Elsie's blog A Beautiful Mess
and Donna Downey's blog Simply Me
Donna is so funny and has some entertaining posts. Elsie is just full of life and creativity! She gives some good pointers and ideas, too!

New CMK DT Layouts!!

Just thought I'd post some fun layouts I've been working on for CMK!!! This month's product sponsor was Lil' Davis Designs!!! I wasn't sure I'd like their stuff, but WOW!!! I love it!!!

Junkitz Top 30 and July 4th Photos!!!

Hey! Just a quick update.... the Junkitz Designer Draft is officially closed and I'm very pleased to have made the Top 30. Of course, like any other scrapper, I would've liked to have been chosen....but I am absolutely thrilled to have been recognized with all the amazingly talented women who applied. I don't know how many entries there were but I'm excited to be on that list!!

Here are a couple pics from the 4th of July parade yesterday. We went with some friends....Cara very rarely smiles with her eyes open...she thinks it's funny when I get mad at her for it!! {great!!}

Design Team Projects for Scrapbook Memories!!

I had so much fun playing with the stuff I received for Scrapbook Memories this month!! Here's my projects!!

The Weekend Update

Camryn was in her first golf tournament last week and this is the first chance I've had to load these photos. She got 3rd place and was excited to receive a trophy! She couldn't believe that her dad has never received a trophy for golf and proudly displayed hers in her room immediately upon getting home! She was quite timid and didn't like people looking at her when she hit the ball. But overall...she did great and had a lot of fun!

News of Note: Create My Keepsake will soon be announcing 2 new design team members. What a tough decision that will be. Take a look at the entries here. Rebecca has such an amazing site and it is growing so quickly!!! If you haven't checked it out yet...you'd better get over there and see what you're missing. There are so many talented scrappers and artists there....not to mention some great people!!!! I am truly loving my DT work for them!!!

My Regular Life Stuff: I am swamped with work. I can't seem to focus enough to get things done. I sit down at the computer to work and get about an hour into it when I get this sudden urge to play online. Darn it!!! I need to get so much work done this weekend so I'll get a decent paycheck this week. Someone get me off line...quick!!!

Movie Review: I took the girls to see the new Disney/Pixar movie Cars tonight. It was super cute and the girls loved it. They absolutely loved Larry the Cable Guy as "Mater" and I have to admit that he was super funny!!! It was a great show and I think kids of all ages will like it. As in other recent Disney shows...there are always wise cracks that only adults get that make it interesting for us parents, too! Go see it....you'll love it!!

Well...that's it for now. I'm sure I'll find something else to blog about tomorrow! Have a great weekend everyone!!

Kenny Chesney Concert

We went to the Kenny Chesney concert down in Salt Lake last night. What an amazing show!!! We got stuck in traffic and completely missed Carrie Underwood...which I was totally bummed about. But we were there in time for Dierks Bentley and then, of course, Kenny!! Our seats weren't terrific...but they were free from a friend so I'm not complaining!! Kenny entered in the middle of the arena....17 seats from mine...but I wasn't in it! Ugh!!! So heartbreaking...I was trying to get back to my seat when he was coming on and they had everything blocked off so I couldn't get back there....shouldn't have left for a break in the first place I guess. So anyway...the silhouette type pictures are the ones I got while waiting to get back to my seat. Dierks was great...love his sexy voice. Kenny was great as usual...that man has so much energy!!! Uncle Kracker even showed up as a surprise!! We had a ton of fun!! Here's some pics.

Father's Day

It's almost Father's Day again. Steve won't tell me what the heck he wants and my dad's present is probably going to be late. So typical of me!! Steve is golfing in a 2 day tournament this weekend and says that's his present....that'll be real fun for the girls to buy, wrap and watch him open now won't it? Ugh!! Men are impossible. I got my dad's gift sent today. I made this clipboard and card and also sent a gift certificate! Hope he likes it!


Not much to blog about today. I got my Junkitz Designer Draft entry sent in last night and then my stupid Yahoo mail kicked it back...twice!! Now what??? Freaking out about that and hoping to try again later tonight. Here's some of the stuff I sent in. I was amazed at how easy these layouts came together for me...they were just plain fun!!

Another day....another pee'd bed.

Don't ya just get so tired of changing sheets? My 3.5 year old pee'd her bed again last night. Can I tell ya.....about to scream over the pee-ing thing. She refuses to go to the bathroom by herself and will literally pee her pants in the hall dancing around waiting for someone to go with her. Ugh!!!!!!! Getting really tired of it. She has pee-d her pants every day this week...sometimes more than once. Just had to vent about that!!

On a happier note...we planted a little garden Monday night. Here's some pics of the girls planting seeds and one of our fat dog Callie enjoying us being outside.

Create My Keepsake Design Team Work

This month's Design Team sponsor at Create My Keepsake is Imagination Project! Don't ya just love Gin-X, Chloe's Closet and Center City Designs? Not to mention Blue Cardigan designs. They have some really fun stuff! Here's some stuff I've done with the Center City Designs line that I was sent. You can also see it in our Imagination Project Gallery at Create My Keepsake.

The shadows are kind of bad since I took photos of the layouts early in the morning yesterday. It was sunny and beautiful...is today, too! I've got to get some work done today and then hoping to scrap more. Cara's having a meltdown this morning...she can't find her "kitty". You know...the beloved kitty in most of her photographs. I think she left it at daycare yesterday so Leslie {the daycare lady} is searching frantically this morning for us. That'd be just great if she couldn't be found....last month Camryn left Pooh Bear there, which she's had since I was pregnant with her, and he's never been found. That drama still exists and now Selina {the cat's name}!!! Wish us luck on finding the missing stuffed animals today!!

Holy Crap It's June!!!!

Can you believe it? I can't! It's already June and I haven't accomplished close to half of my scrapping goals for the year. I'd better get with it! I'm hoping that writing my scrapping goals down and seeing them daily will help me focus more on what I want to accomplish.
1. Complete my MMM entry.
2. Apply for the Junktiz DT.
3. Complete my KI Memories Contest Entry!
4. Submit at least 2 layouts per week for publication.
5. Blog more often to keep myself motivated!
6. Do some heritage layouts with my family photos...{see my previous entry about people and places.!}
7. Get with it on my circle journal...I've had one too long!
8. Contact some manufacturers about work.
9. Continue creating things I love!
10. Enjoy every minute of creating!!!!

So there...now hold me to it, will ya?

People & Places

I've been a slacker again...I've been posting challenges and haven't had time to get over here and do them. So here it goes:
Thursday's Challenge was to talk about someplace you've been but have never scrapped. For me...it's probably Yellowstone National Park. I remember as a child going on a family vacation for like a week in Yellowstone with my cousins. My mom put together activity books {which I recently found} and it was an amazing time....there were still bears around then! Then when I met my husband he began working in Yellowstone for the road construction company he works for. After we got married he was sent there....good thing it's only 1.5 hours away. He had to work all summer, 90 hours per week, often working at night. He lived in a little camp trailer and I went there to visit him on the weekends. It was such a stressful time for him and for us. However, I really enjoyed the beautiful scenery and our drives around the park exploring. Our oldest daughter was even conceived there. We rarely go back because Steve spent so much time there and got sick of it. I guess I should scrap about it, huh?

Friday's Challenge is to write about someone in your life that's gone that you've never scrapped about since it's Memorial Day Weekend. The easiest {or perhaps the hardest} thing for me to do would be to scrap about my mom...but I've done that already. So I started thinking about this and realized that I've never done a layout about my grandmother. My dad's mother was an amazing woman! She had the biggest heart and loved God so much! She had a hard life and went through far more than we ever knew until after her death. I have so much memorabilia from her early years....World War II stuff from the men she dated, pictures of her as a young child and pictures of my dad as an infant. I truly think my grandma was the person who inspired me to take pictures....that woman carried her camera everywhere she went and always had one of those little steno notepads, the tiny ones, in her glove compartment {and in her purse before she drove}...she'd actually write down every picture she took so she'd remember exactly where and when it was when her film was developed. I am so lucky to have many of those pictures and I really need to scrap some of them. I feel so blessed to have been left with so much memorabilia from my family....I guess I've put off working on it because I want to do just the right thing with it!

CKU Pictures!!

Well it's taken me a few days...but here are some pictures from CKU Provo last weekend!
1. Me & Heidi Swapp
2. Rhonna Farrer, Me & Elsie Flannigan
3. Natalie, Teresa Collins & Me
4. Me, Donna Downey & Natalie
5. Me & Nat having drinks at the only bar in Provo for her birthday!!
6. Me with Andrea Gibson of Reminisce.

Had a great time...will post a whole review tomorrow!!

Friday-Saturday Thoughts

I haven't posted since Wednesday and I'm feeling a little lost! Today was Camryn's field trip to Yellowstone Bear World....it's a great place where you drive through the park surrounded by grizzlies and black bears, wolves, bison, elk, deer and moose. Her entire kindergarten class, as well as the afternoon class all went. I, of course, was begged by Camryn to be a chaperone and was happy to oblige her! Boy....and I thought 1 kindergartener was a handful at times! It was a long day but all in all...it was a ton of fun! Camryn said she loved having a whole day with just me and I have to say that it was really fun to see her interact with her peers and still have me to turn to when she needed to. I'll post pictures tomorrow...I got some great ones!

It's officially getting close to summer!!! I'm heading out to garage sales early in the morning with a friend....can't wait to see what I find! I'm hoping to find some great things to alter and maybe even some storage ideas for my scrap room! I'll be sure to post some pics of my amazing finds when I get home!

Teacher Appreciation Week

This week is teacher apprectiation week and today was "Take you teacher a flower" day. Camryn has her main teacher, 2 teacher's assistants for special needs children in her class and a sign language interpreter for a deaf child in her classroom. I figured taking real flowers could be a disaster and besides...they die. So we took inspiration from Rebecca @ CMK and made some paper flowers!! Camryn was so excited to take them this morning but was worried about how she was going to get them on the bus, to school and off the bus into her classroom. {I have no idea where this child got her worrying gene from!!} We put them in a little shoebox and she looked so cute carrying them to the bus stop this morning. I, of course, had to snap a few pictures!

The whole teacher appreciation thing got me thinking....I have some teachers that I remember really made an impression on me throughout my school days. My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Lintula, was awesome! I still remember her and how she made each person feel so special. She made me feel so smart and I truly believe she is a big part of why I loved school so much. I had another teacher in 7th grade, Mrs. Kelsey. She was such a smart woman and inspired me to be different, set myself apart from the crowd and really encouraged her students to be everything that they dreamed of being. I still remember many of my teachers but these two in particular were huge influences on me.

Being taught that I could be anything and do anything while being loved and truly cared about really fostered my independence and my desire to create and be an original. I guess that has really carried into my adult life and my scrapping. I try to follow these same principles when I create! How about you? Have you thought about special teachers way back in your life? Or maybe special teachers in your children's lives who have really made a lasting impression? Do you think those impressions have changed the way you scrapbook? Think about it....pay tribute to them somehow...even if it's just blogging about them as I have today.

Have a wonderful day and don't forget to thank your children's teachers this week!!

My Favorite This and That...

Here's my challenge to the CMK girls for today and anyone else who'd like to try:

Post your favorite in each of these areas and explain how you'd incorporate it into your scrapping.

1. Kind of Music: Country {Tim McGraw preferably!}
2. Decorating Style: Very Eclectic...shabby meets country
3. Hair color: On me? the color of Camryn's hair which I had at her age, too.
4. Piece of Clothing: My Old Navy Pink Lounge Pants
5. Item to collect or hoard: Jackets....one can never have too many jackets
6. Favorite City to Visit: So far....Mazatlan, Mexico
7. Favorite Job I've Had: A Valet at the Greyhound Race Track {great tips!!}
8. Favorite Animal: My fat cat Charlie who passed away 2 years ago.
9. Favorite Food: Steak, Baked Potato and Salad
10. Favorite Room in my House: My kitchen...it's where we hang out together, eat, talk and even watch the tv in the family room!

Now...how could I incorporate these things into my scrapping???
1. Scrap the pictures from Tim concerts.
2. Scrap pictures of my house and my style.
3. Scrap a picture of me when I was younger with a picture of Camryn now.
4. Um....scrap in my favorite pants?
5. Take a picture of all my jackets...oh...good idea!
6. Scrap some pictures of our trip to Mazatlan when I was pregnant with Camryn
7. Do a page about all the jobs I've had
8. Ahhhhhh....do a page about my Charlie..I"ve been holding on to these pics.
9. I could SO do a page about this!!!
10. I don't think I've ever even journaled about my kitchen and all that we do in it...hmmm!


Hope this gives you some ideas...it certainly has for me.

Please Remember Me...

I love that song by Tim McGraw...but who doesn't love Tim? We lost a friend last night when he finally gave in to his fight with liver disease and other problems associated with drinking. So sad to see someone so young throw their life away. I've been thinking about him and his parents a lot lately and his death got me thinking even more about my own life.

I challenged the girls over at CMK to blog today about how they want to be remembered or what their scrapping would say about them when they are gone. So here's what I would hope people would see when they opened my albums and looked through my scrapping room....
1. I loved my family more than the world!!
2. I loved to preserve stories for my children to remember.
3. Losing my mother changed my life in so many ways, including encouraging me to preserve my memories and live life for all that it's worth.
4. I cared about my friends and loved to do things for them.
5. I was creative and found great solace in scrapping.

I was reading someone's blog today and they stated that making this list really made them think about how they scrap. It does me, too. When I sit down to create a layout or an altered item...am I doing it because I love to do it and I love being creative? Does it preserve a special or even an everyday memory I want my children to remember? Does it show my friends and family how much I love them? Does what I'm scrapping or working on represent my desire to live life to the fullest? I know it's not always easy to think of those things each time you scrap...but if I were gone tomorrow, heaven forbid, at least I would be at peace knowing my family and friends understood just who I am.
These are some layouts I did on National Scrapbook Day...

National Scrapbook Day Goals

Here are my own goals for National Scrapbook Day:

1. Complete @ least 2 DT projects.
2. Make altered item for nephew's room.
3. Alter a license plate!
4. Participate in all of CMK's classess/projects.
5. Hang out with Nat all day and scrap away...
6. Hopefully complete my last layout for a contest...
7.....and start my layouts for another contest!

I'll check them off as I go! Have a great night and I'll see ya'll online tomorrow for National Scrapbook Day!!

Pub Blogging Challenge

Sophia over at 2peas gave us a blogging challenge today. List 10 food/drink items that you crave and can't turn down!!!

1. Diet Coke. No if's, ands or buts about it. I MUST have my Diet Coke daily.
2. Pecan Pie tarts...you know, the Little Debbie's cheap ones??? Can't turn 'em down!
3. Dark Chocolate...anything dark chocolate.
4. Oatmeal cookies...no raisins, no nuts...just ooey, gooey warm oatmeal cookies!
5. Tortilla chips and warm refried beans. Yummy!!! They can be an entire meal for me!
6. Wedding Cake...the kind with the "real" buttercream frosting!!! Must be moist!!
7. My only 2 "milk" chocolate loves.....TWIX Peanut Butter Bars and Reese's Peanut Butter cups.
8. Cold Stone Creamery's Birthday Cake Remix ice cream!!
9. Red Vines.
10. and last, but certainly not least....McDonald's French Fries. There's nothin' like 'em!

A little known fact about me: I can't mix my foods on my plate....it disgusts me. I have to eat them one at a time and they can't touch!!!

That's it for today. Plain and simple! I have to work all day and have training all day tomorrow...yuck! Have a great day!!

Contest!!!!!!!!

I decided to have a little contest. I really want to alter something new...something alternative and that I've never done before. I have this SEI 11 x 8.5 album and paper set that I've had forever. It's way cute and I had full intentions on using it....Camryn has an album like this done with the Molly line. Cara was supposed to have an album done with this Kate line but I never got around to it!! So....leave me a comment on a new idea for altering something and I'll give the SEI stuff away to whatever item I choose to alter.

Give me some inspiration!!!