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.