Welcome Friends!
Hi, I'm Nicole. I'm glad you stopped by.
Quick run down about who I am...
I am a Mom. Step-Mom. Wife to my best friend. Christian. Blended Family. 36. SAHM. WAHM. Writer. Scrapbooker. Close to My Heart Consultant. Creative. Bookworm. Playful at heart. Midwest girl.
Loves scrapbooking, cooking & baking, photography, horseback riding, words, living frugal, animals, sushi, chocolate, coffee and walks in nature.
Strongly dislikes spiders, Brussels sprouts, cleaning and messes. Ironic eh?
If you need to contact me for any reason, please email me at nicole (at) nicolehumphrey (dot) net.




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By Nicole Humphrey Cook
Just to have a little fun this morning…..

Sweet Lily – 5 days old

Little Rose – 5 Days Old

Bruiser – 5 Days Old

Sweet, Sweet Spot – 5 Days Old

This was supposed to be a picture of BELLA – but apparently we messed up and it’s a picture of Lily again. LOL – 5 Days Old

Sweet little Emma – 5 Days old
By Nicole Humphrey Cook
This is what the whelping/bed looks like now.

By Nicole Humphrey Cook
This has got to be one of my very favorite paper packs that we carry. Mainly due to the awesomeness of the color combination (blush, Chocolate, Lilac Mist and Sweet Leaf), total visual appeal for me.
Whenever I finally get the chance to do the paint in my scrap room, I’m tossing up the idea of using Life Delights or Let’s Get Together. Yummy palettes. Not sure which one I’ll choose because I truly love them both the best.
Anyway, this is my latest little cutie of a card – a flap card. I made a bunch of them but this was my favorite. I made them today for kicks, because well – I was bored and its Saturday and well, I like having cards on hand. So what do you think? Does it need anything else?
By Nicole Humphrey Cook
Two days of snow days for the kids and no work for me, because it takes everything I have to concentrate. I’ll be up late again tonight trying to stay afloat. I love snow, but I hate bad weather and I’m starting to not love snow days as much. Actually I was super happy about yesterday, today not so much. LOL We did have a great time, we made seasoned popcorn on the stove, cookies and other snacks. Today we are going to do cookie layer brownies. So yummy. (you’ll be able to see them here once they are done.)
Here’s my world today:


Okay, and I’m a weirdo. I take this same shot every year of my neighbors shed. I just like how it looks. I know I’m weird.

I need to go outside and get a shot – this was through my back window, so it doesn’t look as good as it usually does. I’ll get out there later. It’s just too freakin’ cold. LOL
By Nicole Humphrey Cook
Have you ever wondered about a situation that occured in your life, but as you piece together information, there are still pieces missing? Have you ever gotten those pieces? I have been wondering about something for EIGHT years. Something that has to do with a friend who is no longer a friend. I have my whole puzzle and a variety of people with matching stories, which tells me that I do have the complete puzzle.
So – when you get your confirmation – what do you do with it? It has made me angry, resentful and hurt over the whole thing as I continued to be friends with her for seven years afterward. It just kills me to finally have the pieces and to now be angry all over again. I haven’t spoken to her in close to about a year and a half now – and I was truly at peace. So now why, am I angry when I get the confirmation on what I already knew all along?
Ugh! Sometimes I think “friends” are more hassle than they are worth. My advice? Select your friends VERY carefully and don’t allow anyone toxic into your life.
By Nicole Humphrey Cook
I probably shouldn’t have used the word crap in my blog title, especially since for the most part this is a pretty PG-13 blog, and I can only imagine what in the world, kind of keyword searches will bring weirdo’s here. LOL
A few things:
Update on Brie: We have heard absolutely nothing and I am a bit perturbed – I put a call in middle of last week and have not gotten a call back. Guess what’s on the top of my TO DO list tomorrow morning. Yeah. Anyway, she is feeling great, you’d hardly know we went through any of that two weeks ago. Unfortunately, I am still a bit jumpy so any change in her coloring, her eyes, etc. and I get all panicked. LOL Honestly, she is doing great – thank you so much for all your prayers and thoughts and well wishes!
Update on this site: I was scanning back a couple of weeks and realized it had been a VERY long time since I have shared ANY of my layouts, cards and other stuff on here. That is what this blog was designed for, but I know I use it mostly as a personal writing outlet. I’ll get back there really soon, as I have set my scrap area back up and am almost done getting organized.
Update on the Wii: I seriously had no idea how much fun that system would be. I am such an addict, as are my kids. If you don’t have Outdoor Challenge, I strongly recommend you get it. It’s a full body, outdoorsy game with tubing, kayaking, trampoline jumping, jump roping, running, hurdling, boarding and so much more. It is probably our favorite game. I’m still a Wii Sports addict, but now that we have Outdoor Challenge, it honestly sits collecting dust. LOL I also really like Mario Party 8 which I had no clue I’d like. LOL Weird, I know. I’m excited because I finally got the Wii to connect to the Internet after giving up early on when we got it. So now we can d/l the games that are there. And if you don’t have the free Check Mii Out downloaded – you really should get it. It kept my kids entertained for over and hour while they went through and checked all the different Mii’s out and then guessed who they were. It was hilarious – and to whoever made the few Mii’s we picked to download – you guys rock – they were so good!
So, I think that’s about it. I’ve got some scrappin’ to do and really want to post some stuff on here showing off what I’ve been up to so I need to get back to layouts.
~Hugs and Stuff~
By Nicole Humphrey Cook
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!)
By Nicole Humphrey Cook
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!
By Nicole Humphrey Cook
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.
By Nicole Humphrey Cook
Trying to get Christmas shopping done, I had gone into my Pay Pal account to see how much I had to work with. I was a bit surprised and kinda freaked out to find quite a bit more money in there than I had originally thought. I was confused as to which one of my clients might have sent me extra $$, etc. So I went on a search.
I was pretty excited when after about ten minutes, I realized that The Daily Dish had been chosen as the Editor’s Choice at today (dot) com. (Quick update: I no longer blog for them because they are bad news – so the link now takes you to my OWN recipe site, and I removed the link to the today website. I didn’t want to remove the post.)
There are so many reasons why I was surprised, but the major reason is because while I get paid to blog for today.com, it isn’t an income I necessarily rely on. It’s kind of like my “extra cash” and some months there is plenty of it, and some there is not. I control that, but it has just never been a prime focus. About two months ago, I started spending more time over there, trying to get the blog name out, and for the past three months I have consistently been on the Hot List. This is a list where the blogs are ranked in order from how popular they are. To even make it in the top ten list is a huge feat in and of itself (there are thousands of blogs), but I was often floating between slot 3 and slot 6. Currently I am in slot 10 and this is because of the holiday rush and madness that always seems to consume me with my other clients. I was focused elsewhere for the past couple of weeks.
Winning an extra $250 just before Christmas, was honestly the boost I needed to appreciate my blog over there. A few days ago, I did a 12 hour of posting thing (it ended a bit earlier than I had anticipated due to unforeseen circumstances at home) and the past couple of days I have made it a priority to post a couple of times a day. (we only get paid for one post a day). I hope you will come visit me over there, leave a comment and say hi, find a great recipe to try and request a recipe you might be trying to find.
Here is a screen capture of the announcement.


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