Another day in Paradise

   Another day in Paradise? Yeah, if paradise is 100+ degree temperatures, enough humidity to make your ears sweat and not a beach in sight. Doesn't sound like much of a paradise to me. I feel so sorry for my husband on hot days like these. He works in a factory that doesn't have air conditioning. Doesn't seem legal! Last week when it got so hot he said 6 people passed out from the heat, and 2 of them were supervisors! He says the heat doesn't really bother him any more after almost 11 years of working there, but I don't see how it couldn't. Sounds absolutely, positively miserable to me.

   Speaking of Brandon, he had quite a bad day yesterday. Without going into specifics, he got into an accident at work and now has a different job (within the same company). He's only had this particular job at work for about 6 months, but he says he's okay with it, as long as everybody involved (including him) is okay and he still has his job. It was scary to see him so upset and rattled over what happened. I'm just glad it turned out alright.

   I haven't done much scrapping the last couple of days. I'm still trying to get all my scrapbooking kits filed the way I want and organized so I can get what I need without too much hassle. It's harder than one would think! I'm also going to subscribe to an online backup, because the thought of losing all my pictures and scrapbook stuff makes me sick. Even though I have a new computer, @&%^ happens. If I got a virus or something and lost all my stuff, I would be inconsolable. I'm going with Backblaze, which is $5 a month or $50 if you buy a whole year. Seems like nothing for the peace-of-mind it will give me.

   Well, big news around our house is that Maylee is going potty in her potty chair!! She's been doing it pretty consistently for about 2 days now, and a couple of days before that were pretty good as well. She hasn't worn a diaper except for nap and night-night time for two days! I am ecstatic! I'm ready to be diaper-free and Maylee's ready to be a big girl, so all involved are HAPPY! Here's a picture of her getting her treat (M&Ms) after going potty.

I can't wait to scrapbook this picture! I tried to take this picture about 10 times, and finally got the shot I wanted. Too funny & cute! I'll spare you the pictures of the actual pee in the potty. Yes, I took a picture of the pee. I'm a proud Mommy! Can you blame me? And check out that curl! Her hair is so curly. I wonder if it'll stay that way? She's still got her fine baby-like hair, so I tend to think she won't have curly hair, but Brandon thinks it'll stay curly. I kinda hope she does.

  Just one more quick thing...I got one more follower on my blog. And it's not just any follower, it's a scrapbook designer!! I know my blog's way boring for someone like her, but it's nice that she followed me! And I have another person who commented that they read my blog, but I didn't recognize the commenter's name so I have a little mystery on my hands. I probably know them, but...So if you're that person, give me a shout-out so I know who you are!  And if you're new, welcome!!! I love making new friends!

Sizzling summer

   Hey everyone. Hope you're enjoying this wonderful Saturday. It's days like these that make me miss living in the country. I miss being able to just walk out the door and be in wide-open spaces and enjoy the summer breeze, but usually I'm very satisfied living near civilization! I come from a town where it took 30 minutes to get anywhere, so I find it nice to be able to run and get a gallon of milk just 2 miles away!

   I got to drop Maylee off at her Grandma and Grandpa's house this morning and have a little me time! It was really nice. I also got some birthday money from my in-laws, so I stopped at Cato on the way home and got myself a new outfit off the clearance rack! It's really pretty, and I very rarely get myself new clothes, so I'm excited!

   Speaking of my in-laws, their house is like a huge playgound/game room for Maylee. My mom-in-law has been collecting toys for her grandkids since before she had any! Not only does she have a toy room where she has huge collections of toys (all very organized), but she has a whole detached garage that is nothing but a huge play area. She also has a fenced-in yard with all kinds of swings and climbing/jungle gyms. It's a kids dream to go there! I'm so glad I have such a great mother-in-law and Maylee has such great grandparents! And I don't have to worry about anything, because she keeps everything so clean and she keeps an eye on her so well, mainly because she's right there playing with her!

   I was looking through old videos today and trying to organize some stuff on my PC today and came across the funniest video that I hadn't paid too much attention to the first time I saw it apparently. To set it up a little, Maylee (well, all of us really) just love The Laurie Berkner Band and we have all her music. She's a children's music artist. Most times, when we're singing together, Maylee really gets into it and dances and does all these different moves and stuff. But, of course, when I turn on the camera, she stops doing all of it. So in this video, we're in the car, and I'm prompting her to lick on her imaginary ice cream cone while we sing the song Ice Cream Cone. I'm driving, so I just kind of sat the camera on my shoulder and hoped for the best, so that's why the video kinda sucks, but check out what happens at about the :21 mark:

 

  SHE ROLLED HER EYES AT ME!!! I swear, the first time I noticed it, I just about peed my pants laughing! That is sooooo funny! She was one month away from her 2nd birthday in this video, so she's already rolling her eyes at me before she even turns two!! I've watched this about 20 times today and laugh out loud every time!! (Oh, and P.S., this is the first time I've ever loaded a video in Blogger. After previewing it, I'm gonna have to find another way to do it, like upload it to YouTube and embed it or something. I don't like how small the player is. Now back to regular programming....)
 
   So I was a little productive today with my alone time. I scrapped two pages. I think I'm gonna search for some kind of speed scrap or scrap competition tonight (if I don't end up going to be early...I'm really tired for some reason! I guess NOT having my kid all day wore me out?). But these are the two pages I did:

  I used a combination of Delicious Scraps Cherries on Ice kit and Scrap Orchard's designer Julie Bullock's Birthday Girl kit. Oh, and the "P" in princess is Alpha from the Scrapping Sisters' Chic kit.

  Next page I did was from a collab kit from Digi Scrapbook Mania called One Fine Day. One of the designers on that kit was one of my faves, Modern June. The Alpha is from Julie Bullock's Trixie kit.

 I just LOVE scrapping pictures of my little girl. I'm going to have to do some of me and Brandon soon, though.

   Hope you guys have a great rest of the weekend. The heats coming back full force in the next couple of days. They said the high on Tuesday is 101, and that's not with the humidity factored in (heat index). Yuck, yuck, YUCK! I don't like the heat! Now if I had a pool, that might be a different story...

Normal day

   Hi everyone. Just got home from work and thought I'd put a quick post up. I always love coming home, for obvious reasons, of course, but also, when I walk through the door, Maylee runs up to me and says, "Mommy!! I missed you!!" I just love that. My Mommy heart melts. She does so many things that make my heart melt, I'm sure all you parents can relate. A new thing she does is put her ear on my chest and say "Mommy, I hear your heart!" She's just amazed. And I am too, because SHE amazes ME.

Here's my July page of all she's done this past month. We had a full month with my sister and her kids coming down from Washington state to visit us.

 
   So the local news today was a horrible, horrible accident on Hwy. 44. Two buses, a semi-truck and an SUV had a pileup and the driver of the SUV and one child from one of the buses was killed. The local news played it over and over and showed things on the news that I don't think they should've. The picture they showed online to go with the headline made my physically ill. To be a loved one of someone in that accident and then see those pictures would be horrifying. I just think the news goes too far too often just to get a story or to be "the first" with the breaking news. Have a little tact, people!

   On a much lighter note, I've realized I like summer for the simple reason of there's a lot less TV that I watch. Now, two of my favorite shows are on in the summer, The Closer and Burn Notice. I also love Royal Pains and So You Think You Can Dance. But I watch way less TV in the summer and have more time to do things I love, like scrap and read. But this time of year also means I have to decide what new TV shows I'm going to watch for the upcoming season. I try not to pick up on too many new shows, but I don't want to miss anything great, either. That's why I LOOOOVE DVR! So convenient. I can record whatever I want and watch it whenever. Anyway, I haven't decided what I'm going to watch, but I usually go along with whatever Michael Ausiello suggests. He's a TV reporter that used to be with TV Guide and now he's with Entertainment Weekly. I've been following him for years. He's got great taste and he's funny!

  I've been toying with the idea of entering some scrap challenges. There are so many to choose from in the scrap community. There are speed challenges, where you have a certain amount of time to come up with a layout. Then there are kit challenges where everyone has to use the same kit and make a layout. Some sites even have prizes like iPads and iPods! I'd like to get in on that action! But time is always the biggest factor me. Boy, a kid really takes up a lot of time ☺!

Hope everyone has a great day!

New blog design

   What do you guys think of my new blog design? I whipped it up real quick, but think I'll do a little more editing and try to get that white background to be something a little more exciting.
   I came home from work a little early today. My mom needed to go somewhere, and plus I had some phone calls I needed to make anyway, so I came home! I got my stuff done, so I sat down to do a little scrapping and decided to re-do my blog header. It was fun. I hear Maylee waking up from her nap...she's only been asleep for about an hour. I guess I better get used to her taking shorter and shorter naps. I got a lot done in an hour! Anyway, let me know what you think!! I'll leave you with a kiss from my rotten angel:

EDIT: I've been trying to do some stuff to the blog, and now I can't get my header centered!! It's really annoying me...Just FYI.

EDIT2: I figured it out! A little Google search of the HTML coding, and I figured it out...

One new follower!

   Since my pathetic plea on Facebook yesterday, I've gotten one new follower. Thanks Jen!
   Yesterday was my birthday, and I had a great day. Once again I'm so thankful for Facebook...it makes staying in touch with friends so easy! You get to be a part of their lives in such an easy way, and it makes planning things a breeze, too! Anyway, I got like 75 "Happy Birthdays" in Facebook yesterday and that makes me smile!! I even got a kidney stone named after me by one of my friends in honor of him passing it on my birthday. How...nice. And then he posted a picture of said kidney stone. Yuck!
   Anyway, Brandon barbequed and we had a nice relaxing day. He took Maylee to the park for a while in the morning and I got to do a little catch-up on computer stuff, since Maylee will NOT let me be on the computer while she's up and about. She says, "No Mommy, come play" and it makes me feel so guilty! Of course I should be playing with my daughter and not messing on the computer! After Maylee went to sleep, I watched one of my obsessions, Next Food Network Star. I could not BELIEVE Brad got kicked off! Well, we were down to the last 5 and whoever got kicked off would have been a shock to me. It's so brutal!!
   I also scrapped a page real quick after Maylee went to bed last night. I've had this idea for a while now, to scrap pictures I've taken on the same day for all the years Maylee's been alive. In case you don't know, there is rarely a day I don't take a picture of my kid. She's almost 2 1/2 years old and I have over 10,000 pictures of her. Yep, you read that right! So here's the page I did with Mel Hains Oh Happy Day kit. Cute!

Have a great day, everybody!

Lamest of the lame bloggers

   Okay, so the last blog I posted I said how lame I was for not blogging for so long...and that was over a month ago. So this time I'm really, really lame and horrible and stupid and all that stuff. I think, in my mind, I need more followers to make this even worth it, so this may be my last-ditch effort at blogging. I really like sharing my stuff, but if no one is interested (and I totally get that no one is, why would they be, I'm just a normal person who does normal, boring stuff. It's not like I'm a circus performer or anything!), then why even bother? When I was blogging regularly, it was nice to have a kind of release for crap going through my mind. So, anyway, here goes the regular blog stuff.
   I mentioned in my last post (a month and a half ago, I know) about Google Reader. I'm probably really late in the game with this one, but I really love how it can organize all the blogs I follow in one easy place. I was bookmarking all these sites and checking them everyday to see if they had new posts or not. STUPID!! Now I just subscribe or follow the blog and they all show up nice and neat in my Reader! How so very convenient! So if you read my blog, get a Google Reader account and you can be a happy blog reader like I am! Too bad I don't have paid advertisers on this site...I just did a wonderful commercial for Google, huh?
    A lot has happened since my last post. My sister, brother-in-law and nieces came to visit for a week or so. They live in Washington state (about as far away from me as they can possibly get...maybe I should wonder about that?), and I only get to see them once or twice a year. It was awesome to see them and it was the first time that Maylee was actually old enough to enjoy the visit. She had a great time with her cousins. They got along like sisters, annoying and loving each other! Of course, my mom loved that they were here. She misses her other two granddaughters like crazy. I guess it was pretty nice to see her daughter, too, but she lives with her favorite one, now doesn't she (ha!)? The house was a complete disaster for a whole week, but what can you do with 3 girls under the age of 7?

The only picture I got of all three of them was in the tub, so I had to do a little cropping to make it internet-safe. Maylee's having more fun that it looks like...
    It has been crazy, miserable hot here. I really don't enjoy summer, but Maylee could care less how hot it is outside, so I try to let her see the sun every once in a while. Speaking of Maylee, it is just amazing to me how much she has learned. She can pretty much say everything now and communicate anything she needs to. She has even picked up the art of talking back to her parents. Fun. We're trying to nip it in the bud, because I'm not good at dealing with it, so I want her to get over this phase! She's generally a pretty good girl, but she likes to say "No, Mommy, I will not!" Then she usually comes over and says "I'm sorry, Mommy." She knows it's not "nice" to talk that way, but she can't seem to help herself, so she says it and then apologizes. AAhhh! I'm really trying to be patient.
    Let's see...in the past month I've read, of course, and I even went to the movies. I saw Eclipse with a girlfriend. Yes, I've jumped on the Twilight movie train. The books were okay, I read them way before they hit such popularity, but these movies....you have to admit, ladies, they have some VERY pretty boys in them. I mean, like, humina, humina!! As far as reading, I read the greatest book. It was called The Passage by Justin Cronin. It was a post-apocalyptic novel and it was HUGE and a great read. The apocalypse was brought on by vampires (or virals, as they're called in the book), but is far from your typical vampire novel. It was a great read. I highly recommend it! I also read the latest Janet Evanovich book, Sizzling Sixteen. It was hilarious, as usual for Evanovich. She's really the only bestselling author I read and she is so funny!
  Okay, on to scrapping. I haven't done a lot of scrapping, but I've been working really hard on organizing my kits and such. I know I've mentioned how bad I am about crediting scrap kits I've used and I've been working hard to remedy that and make it easier for myself when done with a page. So here are my recent pages, with credits!

This is a first for me because I learned how to blend a picture into the background! I took a tutorial from Misty Cato and she provided the clipping mask and the background paper in the tutorial! How awesome is that?! The elements are from Delicious Scraps Into Spring kit.

 These were Maylee's first pig tails. I know, I can't believe I waited until she was 2 years old, because they're heart-breakingly cute! She's just now letting me do her hair without too much fuss. This was done with the Stuff to Scrap April blog train, Simple pleasures. Blog trains are awesome. At the CT (creative team) members of a store get together and make one huge scrap kit. With everyone contributing a little, a huge kit can be made. It's great for us freebie-hunters!

This was done with Modern June's Cool Pool party kit. She has great freebies and great sales on her kits pretty often.

I used Raspberry Road's Fruit Salad kit for this page. I really like their elements. They have a real graphic feel that I like.

Next I made my usual monthly page. These are done with Cuddle Beez month pages. Unfortunately, Brenda is taking some time off, so we won't get freebies from her for a while.

This next one I whipped up really quick and was so pleased with how it turned out. I taught myself how to change the color of elements in Photoshop, and I've been playing with that. I made everything blue to go along with her beautiful eyes. This is the only page I won't be able to credit because I got all these elements here and there. Sorry!

The next page is probably my favorite page I've ever made. A lot of scrapper do this style of scrapping. I call it "reality scrapping." They use actual graphics instead of scrapbook elements to make pages. They've always intrigued me, but I feel like I'm not creative enough to do them. I've been practicing my extractions in PS (that's cutting out something from a picture), and I thought it would make a great reality scrap page. I used Raspberry Road's Nature retreat to do this page.

So that's all I've got! If I keep up on this blog thing, my posts won't be so long! I'll try for that next time.

Lame blogger

Okay, I haven't posted in almost a month. Lame, lame, lamety, lame. And I can't blame it all on "life getting in the way." Oh, I've had plenty of life the last month, it feels like it's been crazy, but I've had plenty of time to sit down for 15 minutes and post a blog. Laziness is a real downfall to my personality and I suppose my reality. After we get Maylee down to sleep, I just feel like totally vegging out on the couch and catching up on some TV on my DVR. So, sorry to the 4 people who read my blog. BTW, if you don't use Google Reader to read the blogs you subscribe to, I highly recommend it. I used to just keep up with the blogs using the Google dashboard that I have since I have a blog, but the Reader is so much better. You see the whole post and it's easy to visit the actual blog if you wanna leave a comment and such. Just a little suggestion.
So let's see. What's been happening? Hot weather. So we got Maylee's little inflatable pool out. The water was really cold, but Brandon and I put our feet in and enjoyed the sun on our faces and our feet in a nice cool kiddie pool. Maylee like splashing in it, but wasn't really interested in actually getting in. She put her feet in with us though:

Maylee is talking up a storm now and pretty much can communicate anything she wants with us. There are a few times during the day that I just don't know what she's saying and she'll get really mad and I'll feel really badly, but all in all she's doing so great. She's in that "terrible twos" stage, but I'd say she's a good girl 92% of the time. She doesn't always wake up in a great mood, but she usually breaks out of that funk pretty quickly. She watches entirely too much TV, but I do have to say that the TV's on, but she's playing with her toys or we're playing together and she doesn't always just sit on her tooshie watching TV. But if Yo-Gabba-Gabba comes on, her but is planted and she's enthralled. Of course when they get up to dance or something she's right there with them!
I mentioned before about catching up on TV on my DVR after Maylee goes to sleep. We actually still have some season finales we haven't watched yet. We haven't gotten to House or Chuck yet, but I hope to soon. My mom has been on us to watch the House finale, cause it's apparently really good. We LOVED the season finale of Grey's Anatomy, well as much as you can love a shooter coming in and trying to kill everyone, but the drama of it had us so anxious and sweaty. It was a couple of hours of really intense TV. One of our favorite TV shows, Burn Notice, has started for the summer. We love that show, great story lines and character, and it doesn't hurt that the main character, Michael Weston, is SO HOT. Wowza, he's a good-looking man!
My mom picked up a book at the library bookstore the other day, and I knew it would be a quick fun read, so I read it. It was the first Charlie Bone book, Midnight for Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo. Well, it's the first in a series of 8 books (so far) and I've read the first 6 of them in one week. They're such easy fun reads, and pretty good stories. They're obviously for 10+ ages, but I'm not a book snob. I can read books for younger readers; I quite often do actually. Anyway, they're pretty good books and I've enjoyed reading them. At work, I'm listening to Blue Heaven by C.J. Box. This is not my usual kind of reading. First and foremost, it's a mystery. I don't read many mysteries at all. Not my thing really. But I read some really good reviews on this book, so I decided to give it a try. It's his first stand-alone book, all his others are in a series featuring a character. It's definitely keeping me engaged and I look forward to going to work to finish it. When I really get into listening to a book at work, I have to stop myself from checking out the book and just finishing it when I get home, but I try not to, because listening to a book at work makes the day go so much quicker!
Now onto scrapping. I'll just post a few thing I've done and be done with the huge post. That's what happens when you only post once a month! Sorry!

I'm so bad about not posting the kits I used for these pages. I've actually got to go to work now, so I'll try to edit this post later with the kits I used. If anyone needs to know right now, just e-mail me and I'll be glad to share.