Lots of pics and links! Christmas excitement!

   We've had a great couple of weeks. Christmas is coming and we are excited!! We've decorated the tree, learned new songs, gotten some snow (though it was too cold and windy to go play in it), and had Christmas at the in-laws! Oh, and we've been reading "The Night Before Christmas" every night for about 2 weeks now. We are in the Christmas spirit! I can't wait until Christmas eve when we'll bake cookies and put the key on the door for Santa! Christmas here we come!

   Yep, we already had Christmas at my in-laws! Remember when I told you guys we had our pictures done for my mother-in-law? And she was going to love them and I was so excited to give them to her? Wel...she loved them! We all had so much fun watching her open them. We gave them to her before any of the kids opened their gifts so it was all about them at that moment. I thought it was really special! Here's my MIL receiving them:

   After that, the kids got to rip into their presents! Maylee couldn't believe all these presents were for her!

Here's a layout I did of Maylee opening her presents:

Credits:

Dreaming of Christmas by Irene Alexeeva

 One of her gifts was this little puppy that walks and you can play with it in the bath, so it has these little bath goggles. Maylee decided she needed the goggles more than the puppy did:

 

Can you tell they're a little too small? They're for a toy dog head, not your head, Maylee!

     I've kinda been on a scrapbooking streak as of late. I guess I have some creative juices running or something 'cause I'm cranking pages out left and right! And I'm glad! Sometimes I go for a couple days with no ideas and I hate that. Here's some pages I've done recently.

Credits:

Charlie by Digitreats

 Credits:

Shabby Christmas Blog hop by the Studio

Papers – Digilicious, Angel Hartline Designs, Deli Scraps by Min

Elements – Deli Scraps by Min, Designs by Darlene Houghin, Kimberkatt Scraps, Lightning Bug Creations, Digilicious, eqrAveziur Graphic & Design, Angel Hartline Designs, Piggy Scraps Designs

Credits:

Enchanted Neighborhood by Irene Alexeeva

   We're going to go see Santa Claus and one of his reindeer (a live reindeer!!) at the library tomorrow. We're excited! I hope Maylee sits on his lap with no problems...she was kinda leery of him last year, but in the end she sat on his lap without crying. Hopefully this year will be good as well.

Love to all!

New blog design - Chance to win

   I have a whole bunch of new scrap pages to share with you all, but I wanted to let you know about this contest that April Showers Blog Design is giving away. All you have to do is comment on this blog post and you could win a new blog design or a free workshop registration! How cool would it be to have a real professional design your blog? Too cool, I think! I wanna win!

Kids say the darndest things

  Man, kids are freakin' cute, aren't they? I know mine is, when she's not busy hiding crayons in her underwear. Yep, that's what I said. Maylee got into big trouble the other day for writing on the wall in her playroom. So when mom was taking away Maylee's crayons, she had to do a pat-down on her because the little turkey was hiding them in her underwear! Sneaky-sneak!

   Anyway, back to the cute thing. I had to share these videos with you, because I do happen to think my kid's kinda cute. Really cute.

   Maylee learned a new song! Santa Claus is Coming to Town. How 'bout I share a couple renditions with you?

and another:

  Now I know you may not be laughing as hard as I have been over this, but let me tell you, it's cute. And I couldn't get video of the last part of the song. Where it says "So be good for goodness' sakes," Maylee says, "So be good for good and snakes!" OMG!! Hahahaha!

Which is better? Part deux

 I redid another scrap page. I think this one's pretty obvious as to which is the older and which is the newer, but I'd love to hear which you like better, and maybe even why.

#1

#2

Credits:

Vintage Florals by Shabby Princess

  I think I tried a little too hard on this one and I don't really love either page. Which is a shame, because the photos are amazing. They are done by my photographer I have on retainer (LOL), Valerie, at the Sweet Life Images. These pictures seem like they were so long ago! Maylee looks so little...she's such a big girl now. Anyway, I'd love some feedback.

Why do you blog?

  So a friend of mine, Karine, asked on her blog, "Why do you blog?" This is a good question. To be honest, I wanted to blog because I was curious to see if anyone would be interested in what I'm talking about. Turns out, they're not. After 9 months of blogging, I have 13 followers. Two of them are the same person, two of them are digital scrapbook designers and I highly doubt they actually read what I'm writing. A couple of them are blog-hop followers, so they just followed me because I followed them, so they're not reading what I'm writing, either. Oh, and one of those followers in me, LOL! I have a core group of girls, one being my mother, who read what I'm blabbing on about over here. Makes me wonder if it's worth it. But then I remember after I started doing this, a friend pointed out to me how cool it was going to be for my daughter to see this blog one day. I hadn't really even thought of that...a blog for posterity's sake. That's fine with me. And you know what, I like to blog. The followers may come, but it's really just something for me to do and a way to share things I love and are important to me. I'm not sharing to many people, but I guess that's beside the point. Would I like more followers to kinda validation this whole blogging thing on my part, sure, but I'm not going to make it that important. I hope.

  Well, Christmas has come around here. Here's proof:

Credits:

Sugarplum Dreams by Shabby Princess

   Maylee had such a good time helping decorate the tree. Once it was up, she messed with it for about 3 or 4 days, then has pretty much left it alone since then. Thank goodness! And Christmas on my in-laws side was moved up from Christmas Eve to earlier for the first time in 15 years. My mother-in-law understands that now that her kids have little kids, we'd really appreciate being at home for Christmas. I'm really grateful, too. I didn't know how I was going to swing going to the in-laws and put out cookies and carrots for Santa and the gang. Maylee would have been dead asleep before we got home and I don't want her to miss out on those traditions. This will be the first year she may actually remember, though I doubt it.

    I did one more scrap page this past week, too. It turned out pretty cute.

Credits:

Mostly Promise by Shabby Princess

A little bit of Shabby Mommy by Shabby Princess

Victorian hearts by Bisontine Creations

Font: Pea Lovey Dovey

   She's just growing up way too fast. But she's not too old to do naughty things. My mom called me from work today to say that Maylee had colored all over her playroom wall. Mom put her in time out and took her crayons away, but had to give her a pat-down because she was hiding crayons in her underwear! That little turd!

  Well, I'm going to cook breakfast for dinner. Brandon's working a lot of overtime this week, because it's the last week he can get good $$ before he starts having days off for the holiday. So he's home late this week and that makes the evenings fly right by.

   Thanks to my few loyal readers! I really do appreciate you guys stopping by.

Playing catch up and 2011 Reading Challenges!

   Yo yo my peeps. Crazy week. Crazy people. I'm crazy.

   I could be finished there, but I guess I'll write some more.

    So you know the layout I showed you guys in this post? The one done by the designer Adeyeo that I absolutely fell in love with? She put me on her website!! How cool is that?! Check it out here. Yep, I'm famous. Maybe I'll get rich. Rich and famous. My life's ambition. Yeah, right!

   That's the most exciting thing to happen to me this week. I've had such a busy week and I haven't really gotten to get much done! You all know how Christmas gets so hectic? Well I'm there. I've been running here, and getting this, and going there. Phew! Christmas cards are just not going to happen this year, and I hate that because I've got a REALLY cute kid to show off, but oh well.
 Wait, I think I'll make a digital one up real quick and post it for you. Hold on.

Credits: Summer Driggs

   Whipped that puppy up in about 5 minutes. That's the most creative I've gotten all week...sigh, that's sad! I hope to do a new digiscrap page tonight. I've gotten so many freebies this week, though! Lots of blog trains and Christmas giveaways right now.

   So onto the reading challenges I'm going to take on for 2011. I've never joined an actual reading challenge, but I thought that now that I have this fancy new blog and a whole 13 followers, I have an avenue to really put some of these challenges out there. I'm going for it! So without further ado:

Pulitzer 1s Challenge

    This was a great challenge for me. I've been slowly trying to read all the fiction Pulitzer winners for the last 20 years, but it's been slow-going. I figure THIS I can do! This one is made especially easy because in 1941 & 1971, no prizes were given to fiction, and I've already read the 1961 winner, To Kill a Mockingbird, so I only have 8 books to read to finish this challenge!

Challenge rules: Super lenient! The challenge runs from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2011. Audiobooks, ebooks, and overlaps with other challenges are accepted. The goal is simply to have all the Pulitzer fiction winner for the years ending in 1 read by the end of the year. So if you've already read a couple of the books before the challenge begins, fret not: you don't have to re-read them (unless you want to, of course). Fiction not your thing? Feel free to read all the general nonfiction, history, or auto/biography winners for the years ending in 1.Wanna join with me? Head over and sign up!

And next:

350 Page Books Challenge

   I love a big fat book. I love YA (young adult) fiction. These are combined to make this awesome challenge!

The Guidelines:

·      *This challenge does not have to only include YA, but it should be predominantly YA that means at least 75% of the books you read should be young adult fiction.

·     * Each book MUST contain 350 pages or more.

·      *Only physical copies and e-books will count toward the challenge. (Sorry, but audio books don’t have pages!)
Y  YES, e-readers DO count! :) 

·       -You can add each book as you read them. You do NOT have to make a list.

 

 T      I'm really excited to be participating in these challenges! I may decide to join a few more, too. A lot of them kinda overlap so one book can count for more than one challenge. Multi-tasking! 

 

Thanks for stopping! I'll see ya'll next time, ya'hear?

P.S. I see those random T's up there and can't figure out how to get rid of them =( It has something to do with my copy/pasting the guidelines for the second Reading Challenge. Oh well.

T

Top 100 books

I have seen a lot of top 100 books lists. Most of these lists are comprised of books that are around 100 years old and are great literature. Like academic literature. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these kinds of books. I just haven't read that many of those. So I like this list that a friend sent me on Facebook. I really like it...I've read so many of these books! The titles that are in bold are titles I've read. The titles in italics are titles that I've started to read, or tried to read and just didn't finish. Thought I'd comment on some of them, since this is my blog and I can do whatever I want. I really hope you read through this. Books are so important to me and these are some of the greats. Maybe something I say will get you to read the book. Just maybe!



1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (I love Jane Austen. THIS book made me fall in love with Jane Austen. I've read everything she's written. I've read books based on her books. I've read books based on books based on books she's written. Oh, Elizabeth and Darcy. )
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (Really enjoyed these books. But I'm going to blaspheme. I like the movies better. **GASP** The books are written with from the characters' perspectives. And you follow one character's WHOLE story before you see what happens with another character. So you follow a character all the way to the end, then have to go back and find out what happened to another character at the same time. Just didn't really like that.)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (What a great story. What agony. What love. Sigh.)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (I'm a self-professed Potter-head. Love this series. No, I really LOVE this series.)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (One of the best books ever written. Period.)

6 The Bible (haven't read the whole thing. Haven't read most of it, actually. It's a really big book.)
 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (Another amazing story. This isn't a classic for nothing.)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell 
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (Great series. After I read the first one, I had to read the rest.)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (Read it. Follow Pip through his life. Just do it.)

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (One of the first books my mom ever read to me, and have re-read it many times myself. I always wanted to live back in their time.)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (A little spoiler. She gets executed in the end. Oopsie!)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (I read it. It was alright. This may be why I'm not a literary genius, because I don't necessarily think "classics" like this are amazing.)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Complete works? Wow, nope, sorry. Just Romeo & Juliet and Hamlet.)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (Great book. Got me interested in fantasy when I was younger)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (This is another one of those books that people think is great and I didn't really like. Meh.)
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (This was a little lovey-dovey for me...But a good read overall.)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (Tried. But failed. Maybe another time.)
 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (Now this is a story. Sweeping drama and all that.)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (Friends stabbing friends in the back. Love gone awry. Ah, just like high school!)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (I read it. I did it. This is the only book in my reading career that I ever had to drag my ass through and make myself finish. Don't even ask me what it's about. It's pretty self-explanatory.)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (Funny stuff. The whole series is great)

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (I tried. But it was going the way of War and Peace and I wasn't doing that to myself again.)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (I actually just read this in the past year. It had me balling my little eyes out in the end. Great.)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (Great classic. A little dark, actually)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (Great children's classic. Get the illustrated (but not abridged) version.)

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (I'm going to try this again, soon.)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (Follow David, or Trot through his life. Go'head.)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (Great series. Really makes kids think and get the feel for good vs. evil.)
34 Emma -Jane Austen (**Sigh** See #1)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (Again, see #1, though this is my least favorite Austen, it's still wonderful)

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis (My friend Val pointed out to me that this was already in the list at #33. Nevertheless, this is my favorite of the whole series.)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (Wonderful story. Expand you reading and read about other cultures.)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (s'okay. I'll allow you to just go watch the movie.)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (Amazing. Amaaazzzing. One of my top 10.)
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne (Aawww. It's Pooh bear.)

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (If you read this book, you'll never forget it. It will be seared into your mind for your whole life. Only people who've read the book will get that play on words. Don't you wish you were cool and knew?)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Great read. Fast read. Yes, it's written like a movie script. Yes, it was made into a movie. Book's better.
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (This one was a little slow for me, but worth the read.)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving (Great book One of the first novels I read that made me want to read every single thing by one author. He's an amazing, amazing author.
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (This book made me fall in love with reading. Seriously. I remember being amazed that reading words could be like...seeing into another world.)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (Post-apocalyptic story. Need I say more? Way cool.)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (I read this book a little too early in life. I think I was about 9. Scary dreams for quite a while!)

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (Sad story. **Sigh**)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (I didn't like this as much as other people did. I was an okay read.)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (I'm gonna have to read this.)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (My 2nd favorite after P & P. That damn Whillouby. And when Edward comes back? Tears. Streaming. Down. My. Face.)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon--
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens ("It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." That about sums it up.)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (I picked this up because I have a person with a disability in my family. I kept reading it because it was great and interesting.)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (What a lonely story. I find it awfully sad.)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt (Oooh, this is such a great novel! I'm not usually one to like mysteries, but when they're as well-written as this one, I'm all in. Very intriguing.)
 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (Told from the viewpoint of a raped and murdered little girl. It's as sad and heart-wrenching as it sounds. Very suspenseful, too. I haven't seen the movie...doubt I will.)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (Humongous book. Awesome book. I remember diving right into this book and really loving it. You have to really be able to follow along with that old-timey style of writing, though.)

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (Really funny book. But the second one wasn't. Bummer)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (He's on my to-read list)
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville ("Call me Ishmael." Another classic opening line.Ahh.)

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (Sucks to be poor)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (I loved this story when I was younger. Loved the movie, too.)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce 

76 The Inferno - Dante (Did you know that Hell is actually ice, not fire? Well, according to Dante, at least. Hmm. That's a thinker!)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (It's almost Christmas time. Read it!)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (Awesome book. What an amazing story.)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (Weeeiiiirrrdd. But good.)
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White (I wish I had a friend like Charlotte.)
 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (Tear-jerker. Not really my cup of tea, but okay)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Boy, that Holmes and Watson are quite a pair.)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (Aaaww, bunnies!)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (I always liked D'Artagnan)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare  One of the few Shakespeare I have read. Even though you may have to read a line about 20 times to figure out what he's saying, it's worth it.)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl  (Kinda creepy, to be honest.)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (One of my all-time favorites. What a love story.)


So that's that. Whew! Please read. A book. Any book. But not War and Peace. God it's so difficult to get through!



In-between Thanksgivings

   Hey everyone. Hope you had a wonderful Turkey Day. I called this post in-between Thanksgivings because we had Thanksgiving at my in-laws yesterday and tomorrow we'll be with my Grandma! More food and giving of the thankses.

    So another name for today is BLACK FRIDAY. I mentioned already how I wasn't getting up before the crack of dawn to go shopping. And I didn't. But I didn't say I wasn't going to go shopping at all. Sneaksy of me, eh? No, I just did a little online shopping. So many places had great sales and free shipping. I got myself a new computer chair since my fat ass is planted right here in front of the computer so often. I can't wait. And mostly I bought digital scrapbooking stuff. So many sales, so little time! No seriously, it takes some major time to buy these materials, because you have to download them and then organize them to your liking or how you have your system set up. I break mine down like so: Pictures>Scrapbooking>Designer>Kit. Since I'm really trying to get better at crediting my stuff now that I have it all over the internets, I sorted my stuff into designers so I know who's who and what's what.

I bought this kit:

Adeyeo Designs

 
the cutest kit EVER, that I've had my eye on for about 2 weeks now and I was so happy to finally have it that I instantly scrapped a page with it. And I loooove it!!

Credits:

Village by Adeyeo Designs

Cat from Happy Cat by Adeyeo

Fiddle from Lingering Joys from Sunflower Designs

   Hey Diddle Diddle was (is) the first nursery rhyme Maylee ever said. And man is it cute to hear her say it! So cute, in fact, that I just had her say it and recorded it! Sorry she doesn't have a shirt on, she had just gotten out of the bath. But, come on, is this not the cutest thing, EVER!?!?

   OK, I've watched this like 50 times. And I just took it 20 minutes ago. I gotta admit, my kid is cute!!

  Just real quick, I wanted to share what's going on with Thanksgiving on my side of the family. Notice above that I simply said we'd "be with my Grandma." Well, Grandma decided this year that she didn't want to cook. That's fine! Perfect, even. Let's have it at my house Grandma! No, she didn't want that, either. So instead of having a traditional Thanksgiving dinner together, we're all going out to a Chinese buffet together. I told her that was great. It doesn't matter what we eat, or even what day (she used to get really miffed that we didn't go to her house on Thanksgiving DAY, we always did the Saturday after), as long as we were together. I think this might just be a great Thanksgiving tradition. I'm all for it!

   Everyone enjoy the rest of your weekend! To me, it feels like it should be Sunday night, and it's only Friday night! That's awesome! I could stand a few more 4-day weekends in my year!

   Love to all,

Happy Thanksgiving

   Wanted to wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving. Though I'm not a very religious person, I do know how truly blessed I am and have so much to be thankful for. After all the food and festivities of Thanksgiving, we'll be putting up our Christmas tree! We usually do it on Thanksgiving evening, but that will all depend on Maylee this year. If she's not tired and cranky after a day of playing with her cousins, we'll put it up tonight. But if we have to wait until tomorrow, that's fine, too.

   Oh, and tomorrow? I'm not getting up at the butt crack of dawn and going shopping. I did that last year. And in the weeks that followed, I found the EXACT same sales that I got up and froze my tookus off for. So I'm not playing that game again. Though I am going to stop by K-Mart today (yes today, on Thanksgiving) because they have an 8GB Memory stick for my camera for $13. And they have a couple board games I wanted to get Maylee for $5. Man, bargains are so hard to pass up!

   In the mood for giving thanks, I made this page a few days ago. I just love the rich colors of this one.

Credits:

Wild Mountain Honey by Raspberry Road

  So be merry and thankful and have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I love EVERYONE!!!!

Ruminations

   Hey e'rybody. It's been almost a week...but I was sick! And Maylee was sick-ish, but thank God it never got really bad. And now the hubby's sick. And guess who's the worst??? Yep, the hubby. Why are men such babies when sick? He laid on the couch, then took a 3 hour (?!?!) nap, then laid on the couch some more. Wah! Oh, well, if I baby him I figure he gets "better" faster. And no, he's not nearly as sick as I was. So I'm done pouting about how no one took care of me when I was sick. Sniff.

   My mom was also sick this week. On Wednesday, she tells me this little story, which just thrilled me. Mom came over and wasn't feeling well; she mentioned that she had a sinus headache. This is what happened later that day: Mom falls asleep on the couch. Maylee finds the jar of peanut butter (which my mom has left on the counter, lid ajar. She has a problem with leaving the lids off of things). When Mom wakes up, she finds Maylee squirreled away under the kitchen table eating fistfuls of peanut butter. I told my mom that if she feels badly, it's not a big deal for me to take Maylee to the sitter's at the spur-of-the-moment. Needless to say, next day she went to the sitters. Oi vey. Oh, and she didn't poop for like 3 days. Just though you'd all like to know that little tidbit. Eating large quantities of peanut butter will apparently constipate you. Oh, and mom's feeling better.

   Later this morning I'm going to go see the new Harry Potter movie! I'm super excited. I'm going with a girlfriend and Maylee's staying with Brandon (he had planned to go with us, but he's sick now). I'm so glad they broke this one into two parts, but it's going to be so hard waiting until JULY to see the next one!

   I don't want to make this post really long, but I want to talk about books I've been reading, TV I've been watching, and of course my scrapbooking, so I'll just pick 2 of the three (cause you know I'm not leaving out my scrapping!). I'm kinda glad we're going into the holiday season, because that means primetime TV will go into rerun mode! And I need some time to catch up on stuff! I'm at least 3 episodes behind on both How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory. And worse of all, we're 7 (or 8?) episodes behind on House. We haven't watched one all season. We'll probably never get to them :( Oh well, there's plenty of other good shows we're watching. Here's the rundown of things we watch/record: Mondays: Chuck (love, love, love it!), House & How I Met Your Mother (already covered these), Mike & Molly (Brandon loves this show, which surprises me. We haven't watched a traditional sitcom in a while, and this one's pretty funny), and The Event (a good mystery). Tuesday: Glee (Love this!), Raising Hope (so funny!), Dirty Jobs (Brandon loves this, I don't usually watch it), and Parenthood (I really like this show). Wednesday: Better With You (we've kept watching this one, though it's not really that great. I guess if we keep watching it though, it's good enough to watch), Modern Family (the best 1/2 hour comedy I've watched in years, or maybe ever watched. I don't like calling it a sitcom, because it's so different from one.) Mythbusters (we've watched this for years and both find it funny and interesting), and Stormwatchers (Brandon likes this one, not to big on it). Thursday (oh boy): Big Band Theory (I like this one more than Brandon, which may explain why we're behind on it), Community (this one's funny, though the last couple of episodes have been kinda blah), Grey's Anatomy (my favorite drama), Fringe (love this show! So scary I can't watch it until usually mid-day on Saturday or Sunday), Nikita (this one's pretty good. I'm kinda surprised I like it, but it sucked me in. Of course Brandon likes it...a hot woman usually wearing black leather. Yep.), and Burn Notice (love this show!). Sunday: The Next Iron Chef America (this one's almost over, but I love this show). I feel like I'm missing a few shows, but oh well. And yes, this is a lot of TV, but this is how it works: we record everything, there's very few things we watch in "real time," so we don't waste time with commercials. A lot of this stuff Brandon watches and I "listen" to while I'm doing stuff on my computer. And it goes without saying that we watch this stuff when Maylee's gone to be or is napping on the weekends. We might watch something like Mythbusters or even Parenthood while Maylee's awake, but nothing that's too adult.

   Wow, that was a long, probably very boring paragraph. I should have put put a disclaimer at the beginning of it that you could feel free to just skim it if you want, but I didn't and now I'm too lazy to go back and do it. So if you actually read all that word-for-word, you are a good friend and maybe even my new best friend. This paragraph is shaping up to be a real stinker, too. I'll just move on.

   Whew, so anyway, I've spent a lot of time on my new favorite place, DigiShopTalk. Talking on the forums, posting my layouts, trying to win free stuff. It's great. I even joined the Gallery over at Shabby Princess. They have a lot less members, so I get a lot more comments and views of my stuff over there. But to post there, you have to have used 75% of Shabby Princess stuff, and of course not all of my pages are using their kits. But it's nice to have 2 places! Though I've started 3 pages this past week, I've only finished one. I used a Shabby Princess kit so I could post at both places:

Credits:

Happy Go Lucky by Shabby Princess
(I had to remove this from my blog for a couple of weeks because this LO is being featured in this online Scrapping Magazine. How cool is that? I'm super excited!)

Oh, we got our family pictures back from Target. I was really pleased with the pictures, especially for what we paid. Remember, we took these as a surprise Christmas present for my Mother-in-law, and she's going to be so excited and surprised. She loves pictures as much as I do, and that's sayin' somthing! So I'm going to post the totally illegal scans I took of them. Don't go sharing them anywhere, or I'll get sent to copyright jail.

While we were there, we got a couple shots of just our little family, too. 

The photographer told us to squish our faces together with Maylee's and she just put her hands around our faces like this. It was really cute!

So that's that. Until next time, adieu!

Shabby Princess Easy-as-pie template challenge

   This is the first digiscrap challenge I've ever entered in. I'm excited! The Shabby Princess' stuff was the very first scrap kits I ever downloaded and got me started in this awesome hobby, so I hold a dear place in my heart for their stuff. I think I've always felt intimidated to participate in contests and also, I know I don't have the time to devote to a lot of them either. So the challenge I've entered is the Easy-as-pie template challenge. I love templates and scrap almost exclusively with them, so this was a great challenge for me. Pretty much all I had to do was use the template they provided for everyone, use a Shabby Princess kit and post it in their gallery. I had to blog about it (which you are now reading) and put their blinkie up on my site (which I had already, anyway). That is 3 different entries. Posting in their gallery (1), blog (2) and blinkie (3). So this isn't a contest, really, they just randomly pick a winner from all the entries. A good first challenge for me since it's not really a competition!

Without further ado, here is my entry:

Credits:

Promise by Shabby Princess.

Before I had decided to go ahead and enter in this challenge, I had already used this template. But since I hadn't used a Shabby Princess kit, it didn't qualify, so I just did a new page. And I made sure to make it look different from the other page I did, for my own personal collection. I don't want a lot of pages using the same templates and looking alike. So can you tell these are from the same template? (For those not in-the-know, a template is just...map of where to put things. You can do with it what you want...move things, eliminate things, or use it just as is.)

Credits:

So Thankful (Digi Scrap Addicts November 2010 blog hop)

Papers – Victoria Feemster, Sir Scrapalot, Miss Tiina

Elements – Miss Tiina, Craft-tastophic, Penny Springmann, Geek Chic, Lillyscrap Designs

So even if nothing comes out of this "challenge," I enjoyed making these two scrap pages. I really like how they turned out!

Peace out, yo.

My sixteen-year-old self

  A blog that I follow, The Creative Junkie, posted about this a little while ago (in her usual hilarious manner), then another friend of mine, Shawntae, posted about it as well (on her Facebook, not her blog). It's apparently been trending on Twitter, and I thought I'd share mine. You're pretty much just supposed to tell things to your sixteen-year-old self. I thought this could be both pretty funny and maybe poignant. Probably not so much poignant for me, but for someone it may be.

This is me at 16. Good Lord!

Nice bangs.

Here goes:


Your mother is not that bad. Get over it.

Yes, you will get out of that little podunk town.

That guy that you're totally in love with? Yeah, stick with him. He's even greater in 15 years.

You are not fat. Now, in 15 years, it'll be another story.

Hypercolor shirts aren't cool. No they're not.

That Chumbawamba song will be in your head FOREVER. (I get knocked down, but I get up again SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP)

Some of those awesome friends you have right now just won't make the cut.

Get your bachelor's degree out of the way RIGHT after high school. If you don't you'll be in school for the next ten years finishing it. Then you'll go onto your Master's and that'll take years, too. Just do it. (I wish I had taken this advice!)

Those romance novels you insist on reading? Complete drivel. There are so many good books out there your should be spending your time reading!

You know that habit you have of burning something or almost burning down the house every time you cook? It will get better. Much better.

All those baby doll dresses you have? You'll never wear them again.

That Fresh Prince of Bel Aire show you like so much. That guy grows up to be DAMN FINE.

Your sisters aren't that bad. Get over it.

It all ends up pretty good.

Veteran's Day

  Those of you who know me well, know that I'm a flaming leftist liberal. Those of you that don't know me, I'm a flaming leftist liberal. Now we're all on the same page. Sometimes liberals are accused of being unpatriotic or not loving America or most absurdly, that we don't support the troops. For THIS flaming leftist liberal, none of those is true. I could not be more proud to be an American, nor could I be more thankful and full of awe for the men and women who serve our country (my eyes just welled up a little, ugh!). I do not take you for granted and I wish I could thank each and every one of you. Thank you seems like such a little phrase. But from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

This is a picture of my husband's Grandfather, Glennon Coleman. He was a good man and I had the honor of knowing him. These kinds of pictures amaze me. Love it.

Again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Tackle It Tuesday # something

   I'm trying to get back into the blogging. I figured doing my memes again might get me to update regularly. In looking back at my posts, the one that stands out to me is the post My Award-Winning blog. Not because I "won" an award, though that was fun, it's because the post was funny and interesting and was an easy read. It wasn't boring drivel about how I went to work and cooked dinner and played with my kid. If I find things to write about, or have questions to answer, I feel like I'm a little more interesting. I follow this blog, The Creative Junkie, and OMG, I'm not kidding you, this chick is hilarious! Her blog and her writing make my blog look like a gnat, but that's not really what I'm saying - I mean that her writing style and her humor is what brings people back.

   Anyway, onward...Tackle It Tuesday. Hmm. I've been trying to tackle so many things lately. I told you guys how I got the play room set up.
 Check.
   I got my own bedroom cleaned up (which is the only room in the house than I seem to be incapable of keeping clean).
Check.
   I mated the socks in the OhMyGodWhereDidAllTheseSocksComeFromAndWhereAreTheirFreakingMates basket.
Check.
   I've made a point of using $10 of a $10 purchase (or some such similar amount) coupons that stores are sending out like crazy now that it's the holiday season. Even if I'm just buying socks and underwear, I'm not wasting that $10! I'm determined! I mean, we've already determined that we need some freaking socks around here, as most socks don't have a mate. Stupid socks. (Oh, and just an aside for those of you thinking, "She 'tackled' shopping??" FYI, I HATE shopping. I hate it. Hate it. Hate. HATE.(An aside in the aside...I do like to Christmas shop. I like finding the right gift for the people I love!))
Check.
   I've found a digital scrapbook forum that I really like, DigiShopTalk, and I've become active in the forums and trying to post my layouts in the gallery (though I haven't been successful in that yet, and that's a whole 'nother story cause I'm starting to get pissed that I can't do it and no one's helping me!).
Check.
   I cleaned out the pictures on my harddrive. I deleted all pictures where it was just the back of someone's head or it was blurry. And that was no easy task. I ended up deleting over a thousand pictures (out of about 20,000).
Check.
   So I guess what I'm saying is, can't I get out of Tackle It Tuesday? I tackled a whole bunch of crap these past couple of days! This blog post was to tell you that for Tackle It Tuesday, I'm not going to tackle a damn thing cause I've been tackling like crazy!

   For those of you not "friends" with me on my Facebook (stop by and "friend" me!), who have already seen this picture, I'll leave you with a picture of me going to my cousin's wedding reception Friday night. We had fun!

Yep that's me. And my chins.

One more, because my kid is so dang cute and she danced the night away at said reception:

 

Boogie down, Maylee!

Love to all,

Goings on

  I think I have this preconception that every blog post has to have pictures attached. I guess they don't. I can just share with you guys my boring mundane life. I guess that's why I figure I need pictures, why else would you stop by and read this if it weren't for a little something special. I'll see what I can dig up. Anyway...

   For those of you not in-the-know, this weekend was iDSD, which is International Digital Scrapbook Day. The "day" was officially Saturday, but they sales and freebies went on from Friday to Monday. I've been raking in the goodies all weekend! It's been so awesome! I got so many full kits for free! Amazing! I tried to be really selective because everything was so cheap. But I knew if it didn't really wow me when I first saw it I shouldn't buy it, even if it was only 60 cents. Yes, there were kits for 60 cents! Crazy! But when it comes to templates, I can't say no. I grabbed up every template I could. Again, so many freebies! And in the digiscrapping world, there's this thing called RAK, which is a Random Act of Kindness. Designers just randomly pick people (in forums) to give stuff away free! I was RAKed once with a sweet template pack! It's been really awesome! And I found so many new designers and shops that I love! Here's the template pack I was RAKed from TinyToes at CatScrap:

Got this kit for free from a designer and shop that I've never been to, Thaty Borges at Digiscrappers Brasil:

I got this GORGEOUS kit for $1 at 7th Heaven. Brydka is one of my favorite designers!

This is a cutie kit from Vesi at Shabby Pickle. I've been to SP before, but Vesi's new to me. FREE!

      Anyway, them's some of my goodies I got. Can't wait to start SCRAPPING!!

We got family pictures taken today at Target Studios. I've never used them before. We did it with all of Brandon's siblings and their families. There were 11 of us total. I thought they turned out great and the kids (a 4 year old and two 2 year olds) did great. It went much better and smoother than I thought it was going to. We did this as a surprise for my mother-in-law. I'm so excited for her to get them at Christmas...she's going to be so surprised! She loves pictures as much as I do! And with coupons I got online, it was so cheap! Especially divided between 4 families. Even without dividing, it was a damn good deal! I've paid well over $200 for picture packages of just us, and this was under $50 (total!)

   With my Mom and brother moved out, we decided to make the spare room into Maylee's "toy room." I got it all set up yesterday, and when I was done, Maylee kinda stood back and said, "Look at this Mommy! Look at all my toys!" The only problem is that the play room is upstairs, and Maylee always wants someone to play with her. She's not very good at playing by herself. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I know when I have stuff I need to get done, it's a bad thing! Ugh!

  The mouth is still sore from the new filling. I have a very hard time getting over fillings and dental work in general. My mouth will be sore and throbbing for about 6 weeks and my filling very sensitive to hot and cold for about a year. That's just the way it goes for me and it SUCKS! But I'm glad I have all my teeth and generally have pretty good teeth and only have to go to the dentist for cleanings.

   I don't know why anyone reads this drivel I write. I'll shut up now. I'll leave you with the last scrap page I did. I haven't been scrapping much lately, just buying stuff to scrap with!

Credits:

Mel Hains - Chicolate

Love to all.