CTMH package! Fun Stuff and Great Products!

Look what I got today! I wanted one almost from the moment I set eyes on the cute bag. I love the colors and how cute it is. It’s not overwhelming huge, but it’s also not a small bag. I could very easily carry my full size laptop on it, but its not bulky, so its easy to carry. I just love it.

I got a bunch of other fun goodies from the Spring 2010 Close to My Heart catalog too, new stamp sets and some new papers, and now I am feeling majorly creative and can’t wait to play.

Are you ordering anything from the new catalog? If so, what?

Reminiscing

Reminiscing is something I have found myself doing a lot lately. Mostly because we have been cleaning out storage and boxes from years ago. It wound up motivating me to get my extra hard drive cleaned up. So this morning I was milling through some videos I took of my kids.

This one:

And this one:

These songs tend to make me feel almost sad, since I realize how fast my kiddos are growing up. My daughter is the one in this video, and I know exactly where she is in both. She was in 2nd grade when she performed this concert, and she had a speaking roll which I did not upload. I just started thinking about how badly I not only want to preserve this concert for her, but how much I want her to know how excited I was for her back then (which I have done in journaling) and then I almost want her to know how it feels today (three years later) looking at that video and hearing those words. Guess I better get busy.

Oh, and for anyone who cannot understand the lyrics. The first song is called Possibilities and the second song is called Big Dreams. The lyrics are below.

Who’s Your Inspiration? Your Creative Muse?

I am continuously on the hunt for inspiration and ideas, but there is one blog I visit REGULARLY that there is absolutely no shortage of inspiration from. It’s the Wizard’s Hangout. Yes, Vicki Wizniuk is a fellow CTMH sisters, however what’s interesting is that I have been visiting her blog and viewing her artwork since BEFORE I became a CTMH consultant. Vicki is so incredibly talented.

Some of her more recent work is featured below, but if you want to really get to know her, please visit her blog: Wizard’s Hangout. You will NOT be sorry!

(Forgive me Vicki for “borrowing” a few of your pictures to get others to go check you out. You continue to inspire me, and help me find my creative muse. Much more so than just about any other location I look at. Keep creating, I’ll keep following

Christmas a Little Different

Our Christmas was absolutely wonderful this year, however it ended with a twist. (photos included) First of all, I only wanted two things other than that, I really needed/wanted nothing and would have just been happy with some scrapbooking stuff. I actually didn’t get any, but I got a check so I could order my own – that’s even better. The only two things I wanted, was a specific coffee maker, and a specific bread machine. I’m not too picky – really. LOL Both were WAY expensive and seriously not anything I intended to receive. In fact, I really didn’t think my mom could pull it off before Christmas, since I only told her about a week and a half before and they needed to be ordered. Well, I got both and I will share in another post about what and how they are. In the meantime, this was my Christmas Night:

The repercussions of a UTI gone bad. It was spreading to her Kidney’s and her fever was almost 105. It was nuts, but she is feeling SO much better, and we have a pediatricians appt. in the morning as a follow up and we are hoping to begin working towards figuring out why she gets them so often. It’s terrible for this kid.

She had what the nurse coined “sick eyes”. She said it made her sad to see kids with sick eyes, and boy did Brie ever have them. She looks like she has a black eye, but honestly she didn’t. They were just that pink around them. The right eye (your left) was WAY worse than the other.

Again, she is doing so much better – two antibiotics, a pain med and plenty of Tylenol for good measure. Oh, and way more water than she’d like to be drinking (I’m not complaining at all!)

Boys in Pink

I love my son, I really do. But there are just some days where I love the ability to humiliate him. If you knew him, you would love it too. He takes great pride in being as silly and goofy as he can be, even when it is not appropriate. In addition, he takes more pleasure than I’d like, in seeing other people humiliated. So, with that said, here is my son in my daughter’s pink jacket. Isn’t he cute?

I love you Rye, I really do!

Christmas Ornaments

I promised in this post that I would update with clear photographs of the ornaments my two youngest made at my mom’s house last month.

This one is Brielle’s (age 10) and for the most part she did do it all by herself. My mom taught her shading awhile ago, and showed her how to first draw it and then my mom helped her a bit with the eyes. My mother is an artist and has every brush imagineable so many of the features were done with certain brushes. I was really impressed. Who is the girl she painted? Nobody actually knows. Including her. LOL

This one is Jesse’s (age 9) and she did this side the red with green polka dots and the other side is green with red polka dots. It seems simple, but looks really cute on the three. She’s still learning art techniques, and hasn’t been working with my mom as long, but I the ornament completely reflects her and her personality.

So there’s our two ornaments that are new to our tree this year. The kids always get new ornaments on Christmas eve, so that night there will be five new ones.

She’s Riding Again

Brielle is finally riding again. We found her a great barn (quite by accident actually) run by this amazingly wonderful lady that I just adore, as does Brielle (which is the important part). So letting go of our old barn, was a blessing in disguise even though it felt like the end of the world to all of us (we miss the horses and many of the friends we made). After her former trainer left (much better job opportunity in the show circuit), we just couldn’t get into the new instructor. Riding wasn’t fun anymore.

Brie had her first lesson Wednesday night at the new barn and it was awesome. We are back to private lessons (they are FAR cheaper than the other location) and I am doing some marketing and web design work for her to get them even more discounted. Woohoo!

It was just really nice to see her on the horse again. I plan to keep updated on the pics and video as time goes on.

This is Sassy just before Brie got on her for the first time. She is a very smooth walk and trot, but Brie was a bit unsure about the whole bumpy canter thing. LOL We are so happy to be back in a barn again.

Hard Times Call for Frugal Measures

With the gas prices finally making a slow decline, it doesn’t feel quite as tight as it did, but we are still watching where every single penny goes and making sure we are living comfortably. I don’t think I ever knew I’d wind up as frugal as I am.

I don’t know what kinds of things your family does to be frugal, but we:

• cook nearly every single meal from scratch.
• keep the heat and/or air conditioner off and open the windows to get cool or layer our clothing to stay warm.
• have all unused appliances unplugged from the walls – do you know that even if something is turned off, it still draws energy? Yeah – unplug it.
• try to make only the necessary doctor and dentist visits and not go overboard or act a bit over protective (which I am know to be sometimes).
• spend loads of family time together rather than worrying about how much money we are spending on fun things, etc.
• purchasing items online we might not otherwise have purchased such as eyeglasses and other products.

The cool thing about ordering eyeglasses online is the quick and efficient way you can do it and they are so much cheaper than going and dropping $100-$200 at an optical shop. Face it, eyeglasses are expensive and if you shop online, you get a much better deal!

So what are you doing to be frugal in this money pinching economy?

Just a Little Wave

Brielle has been on me for the past couple of weeks about getting another perm (it’s been about 3 or 4 years). Her perfectly straight hair seems to bug the heck out of her. Even though we all love it, everyone always seems to want what they don’t have. For instance, I’d give anything for Brie’s hair.

Her hair was super long over the summer, so right before school we cut it (about 3″ off). (They started school the end of July.) And we’ve even trimmed it once since then. It has grown rapidly and once again she is left with quite a bit of length and I guess in her own mind, was ready for some change.

So, yesterday morning she left the house for school with her hair looking like this:

I picked her up early from school and took her to the salon to my hairdresser, and while we know her hair is super hard to perm, hard to work with and probably won’t last too long, she now looks like this:

It looked a lot better when she left for school this morning because we used some curl enhancer and gel and these pictures were taken with absolutely no product and completely air dried. I’m happy for her that she loves it so much and honestly, she pulls it off well. It makes her look older. (oh and she’s 10.5)

I cannot wait to scrapbook all the pictures I took at the salon yesterday. When we did this several years back we got some cute ones and she loves looking at those pages in the scrapbook!

Is It October Already?

What is the deal? How are we already ten months into the year? It seems so hard to believe that Halloween is already creeping up and that it is time to decide what costumes we want. I’m pretty much excited about the weather change as my favorite time of the year has always been Autumn. I love the cool crips days and the cold “firepit” weather at night. It just means the smell of pumpkin wafting out from my various candles and well…the oven since I have to cook as often as I can. Check out these recipes for Pumpkin Pancakes, Pumpkin Cupcakes and Pumpkin Custard. So delicious!!