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!!!

1/2 Way Through the Week

Good Wednesday morning!! Woke up with a killer headache that I went to bed with last night. Darn! Getting Camryn off to the bus and Cara is home with me all day. I have got to get some work done....I have to go in to the office tomorrow and training all day on Friday. Yuck! So I'll get some typing done today and then hopefully scrap this afternoon and evening!!

I have been just sick the last few days about a friend of ours. He is 35 years old and only expected to live a week or so longer due to drinking himself to death. Can you imagine? 35 years old and your liver is shot....how much would one have to drink to kill a liver by 35? It's very sad. He has been an alcoholic for the past 5 year or more. Over the past 2 years the guy literally lived on vodka...hardly any food. The saddest part is that he lost his wife over it because she couldn't watch him kill himself. His parents didn't even know the extent of it until they found him unconcious a few months ago and his dad emptied over a dozen empty fifths out of his truck and found many more bottles in his room. He had gone to treatment and then started drinking again...which is when his wife couldnt' take it. They split up last year but she has been here for the past few weeks spending time with him. It's sad...they didn't split up because they stopped loving each other, it was because of his drinking. He is now in a hospital bed at his parent's home. I feel so bad for them, too. I can't imagine watching a child die because he couldn't put down a bottle. Steve went to see him several times yesterday and is having a really hard time with it. I just can't get it off my mind. Thanks for listening.

On a happier note...I challenged the girls over at Create My Keepsake to blog this morning.
5 Words to Describe Me

• Friendly
• Creative
• Outgoing
• Mother
• Wife

5 Words to Describe My Scrapping

• Fun
• Layered
• Photo-centered
• Heartfelt
• Creative

Have a wonderful day and "blog on"!!

Why I Scrapbook!!

I started a "blogging challenge" thread at Create My Keepsake. This will hopefully challenge me, personally, to blog more often. I'm going to try to make the challenges scrap related...but hey, my life isn't always about scrapping {GASP!!!} so there may be a few stray subjects here and there.


The question of the day is this: Why do I scrapbook?


There are so many reasons...let's see if I can list some here:

• I love looking back at my own photo albums with my mom's writing in them.
• I don't have the best memory anymore...it's a way to document things that I want to remember.
• My children, and husband, love them.
• I love to create!
• I feel so much pride knowing that I'm saving these moments for the future....for my family and generations to come.
• It gives me a year-round hobby!
• Scrapping is a social thing for me....gives me times with my best friend to hang out, chat and share ideas.
• Hopefully some day it will make me money!
• And last but not least.....I love it!!!

There are so many more reasons...but these are just a few. Here are some pics of the girls I took yesterday afternoon. It was sunny and fairly warm....but that darn Idaho wind wouldn't quit blowing!!!

Mail.......

It was a good mail day. Isn't it funny how we can have good and bad mail days? Well...today was a good one. I got a thank you card from the lovely Christine Traversa for a RAK I sent her...totally sweet and the card was adorable!! I got another thank you card from my husband's aunt for a birthday gift I sent her last month. And.......I got a package from CMK!!! It had my order of Urban Lily papers, which are BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!! I can't wait to play with them. The box also contained my DT stuff for the next 2 months.

Our May sponsor is Die Cuts With a View and I received some amazing paper and rub on stitches from them! Our June sponsor will be Imagination Project and I was given some fun Center City Designs papers and WAY CUTE Coaster letters and shapes!! I can't wait to start playing with it all!!

First, I really need to make a thank you card for Junkitz from our DT at CMK. Then I think I'll get working on some Urban Lilly stuff....not that I'm entering their contest or anything! I'll post when I get something done and plan to have a little contest here on Wednesday...stay tuned!!