Sick Monday...

Yes, we've finally managed to catch something in our house too!  Stuff has really been going around and we did well until the end of this past week.  Nathan had 8 kids absent from his class on Friday!  Now not only have I been sick for days, but am now on antibiotics after going to the doctor this morning.  Nathan is home with me today too since he started getting sick yesterday.  The dr said if he's not better by Thurs, to bring him back!  I sure hope he's better by then!!! 

Kyle was mad because he still had to go to school this morning, but little does he know, that's probably a good thing!  He was at a Cubs event all day yesterday too, so he has been out of the house and that may be part of why he's still healthy at this point.  Kyle has a great time at his Cub Skills event though and was learning things like knot tying and how to light a fire.  Pretty cool!

Haven't been doing too much creatively lately though I did have fun with my classes on Saturday - especially the Exploding Box!  I did want to share a couple of cards done by my friend Alexis though!  The card above and below are just a couple of the hundreds she and her mum made to sell to raise money to help support a needy family over the holidays!  Amazing job Alexis and hope everything went really well yesterday!

Well, thinking that's it for today.  Going to go hunker down and relax.  Hoping the meds I'm taking don't upset my stomach too much which they're apparently prone to do.  One of those great things where they tell you the more you eat, the less likely your stomach will be upset, but if it's upset, you don't want to eat!  Such is life!  It's one of those days where you're thankful for the little things and I was reminded of that while in the doctor's office this morning.  Even though I'm not feeling good, it could be much worse. 

"Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it."
~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
Cheers,

Random Thursday!

OK, so I actually have 5 minutes (literally) to blog before I have to go get the kids, but it's been a great day!  Got the kids off to school, some work done and then went for a walk and even got something accomplished while doing that!

OK, so I was reading blogs for a few minutes and came across a post on Creative Organizing that really spoke to me.  It was a little project, but something doable and worth the time!  She talked about creating an area for all your Christmas card stuff so that it was together when you had time to get some sent.  I walked up to the dollar store and found a cheap box (*after looking at home and not finding one!) and then came home and organized!  It was great!  Got all my cards together and foing out I had more than I thought and then pulled my enveloped, addresses, labels, pens, stamps, etc all together so that if I only have a few minutes at a time, it'll still be easy to do!  Also finally set off the boys' school pics to get developed so they'll go in this box too to be sent to people in cards!  Awesome!

Another nagging thing on my list has been putting up more pictures.  I take all these great pics of the boys, but haven't been putting any up around the house.  We have a couple of picture walls and I finally for a picture from the first day of school blown up since I thought it was cute, but it's been sitting on the counter for ages.  Didn't have a frame and didn't want to spend a lot, so I decided to get a $2 frame at the dollar store when I was there and it's now up on the wall! 

Proud of myself for just getting it done!  One more thing to cross of my list and now I can actually enjoy the picture too!

Well, better go get the boys.  Weather has been quite cold and now it's raining.  Just hope it stays rain and nothing else.  Had our first taste of some sort of mixed stuff yesterday!  I'm teaching tonight, so I'm hoping the roads stay OK!

Have a great night everyone!
Cheers,

Something Creative again!

Wow!  Two posts in 2 days and something creative to boot!  I'm thinking I need to give credit to Shimelle and her challenges this weekend as well as starting to feel a little festive and thinking about the holidays (just a little!).

The challenge was to create a pocket page for your Journal Your Christmas album for the holidays.  I pulled out my stash and this is what I ended up with.  Quick and simple, but fun for sure and it's all stuff that was sitting around waiting to be used!  Bo Bunny striped paper and Bella Blvd houses paper and sticker along with a Jenni Bowlin journaling block and some cards from my Becky Higgins Project Life and there you have it!

Not sure what we're up to this afternoon, but enjoying not having to work today for sure and might even get into some more crafty stuff yet today!

Cheers,

Journal My Christmas 2011

OK, so Shimelle is doing her Journal Your Christmas class again this year and though I sort of pretended to do it last year, it didn't really happen.   I'm hoping to get a chance to spend a little more time on it this year and a little less on things I don't want to be doing.  Wanting to do some special things again with the boys and slow down a little...  best of intentions anyway!

She has a little challenge posted to start thinking about the album and some pages, so I pulled out my stuff.  I have an 8X8 album that came out a couple of years ago from Making Memories.  It has some predone pages in it and then I added some last year, but never used them.  Tried some pages like the ones Ali Edwards did last year with the spray adhesive on the lace papers and then putting them on the acrylic!  Fun!  Now I just need to actually use them!  I added a few other papers I liked as well as got some cardstock pages ready. 

I wasn't going to punch them for my book because I'm going to use a combination of pages in and out of page protectors.  What I realized is that if I punch them first, they're ready to be used like that and if I want them in a protector, I need to trim off the extra on the left side anyway!  Done!  There are a few patterned papers for pages as well, but I tend to do more cardstock bases.  There are some acrylic pages and things as well, so it'll have a combination of goodies in it for sure!  Can't wait.  I'll be playing with a combination of Shimelle's book and Ali Edwards' December Daily!  Should be fun!

Well, I know I need to update a whole lot of things, but I'm going to wrap it up here for now and try and get posting more often here again too!

Cheers,

Exploding Box!

OK, so we got the new Bazzill Christmas papers in at work they're so darn cute!  I had been thinking about doing an exploding box for a class in November and when I saw these, I knew they were perfect!  I was so excited I came home and started playing last night and finished it off this morning.  Here's more of a peek...

If you're local, keep an eye on the calendar mid-Octoberish for a date for this!

Cheers,

PS Things are generally good around here with both the boys in school now and I'll be posting an update very soon! 

Productive Day!

Love days when you feel like you get a lot accomplished!  Got inspired early and started cleaning...
- kitchen dishes and floor
- vacuumed living room, hallway and bedrooms
- did laundry
- made beds
- cleaned up my creative space!!!  A BIG challenge!

And as I was heading out to work, one of Kyle's friends arrived for our first sleep over!  George was all good with boys night and when I got home from work, Kyle and his friend were asleep in the living room and Nathan was awake!  George had to move him so the other boys could sleep!  Too funny!

Well, better be off to bed myself!
Cheers,

PS For LSNED, Today I learnt just how important a good night's sleep is to me!

Happy September!

also known as "what happened to the summer?"!!  OK, seriously, I don't know how it is that it's time for thinking about school again, but here we are.  And I haven't blogged all summer!

It's been a fun summer and one full of change and we're going to see more of that this month with Nathan starting Kindergarten and Kyle going into Grade 3!  Of course, I'm no longer looking after Matthew and Sophia (my niece and nephew) what with Sophia going to K as well at a school near their place.

Things that happened recently...
- Kyle had a wek of camp - sports and art
- trip to Oregon with 14 of us family (great time had by all!)
- had someone hit our truck and had it written off
- stopped watching Matthew and Sophia Aug 19th
- lots of visits with friends and trips to the park for the kids
- Kyle to the dentist and to ortho, but all's good thankfully for now anyway
- Nathan had an infection on his nose that didn't look great for a bit, but it's all gone
- a couple of birthday parties to go to as well as our annual family picnic
- we had all of George's family here for an end of summer bbq
- I went with friends to see another friend play (drums) at the Cobalt in Vancouver!
- the boys had a weekend sleepover at Nana and Grandpa's

And that was only this month!  So much fun and so many pictures!  Will try and post some soon along with some creative stuff as well!
Cheers,

PS I'm taking Shimelle's Learn Something New Every Day and I'm going to try blogging it too, so we'll see how that goes!

Counterfeit Kit!

OK, so there's a challenge blog called the Counterfeir Kit Challenge for creating your own scrapbooking kit using another as inspiration.  I've looked at this for ages and thought about trying it, but never had the time (or made the time!).  This morning I decided I wanted to play with my stuff, but was a little lacking in inspiration and thought this new challenge might just do the trick!

Here's my take on this and I got a little carried away and ended up with a BIG kit!  Fun!

Not the best picture for colours and to be able to see prints in detail really, but there are papers from a bunch of different companies and some specialty paper with die cut shapes, a transparency and lace cardstock too!

Got so carried away I needed another picture for the cardstock and add-ons stuff!  It was great to go through some of my stash and find things that would go together and I could really work on using!

You can see the Polka Dot Whimsy inspiration kit HERE!

OK, so now the goal is to actually get some things scrapped using this now that I have it together as well as some pictures developed!  Totally love this idea!

Cheers,

Date Day!

Yes, I had a date today - with Kyle!  It was really wonderful to be able to do something with just him today since it doesn't happen a lot.  I told him that I'd take him to a movie some time as partof his birthday present, so he picked Kung Fu Panda II!

OK, so it's not the best picture, but it's what I got using George's little camera inside the theatre!  You get the idea anyway and we had a great time!

Afterwards, we ran some errands:  stopped and got fruit and veggies at the "veggie store" and picked up pictures at the "picture store".  Love how these names the kids used to use when they were small have just stuck!  I had a bunch of pictures developed so that I can hopefully start some of my own scrapbooking again.

George also blew up the pool again so the kids could spend some time in there this week.  It's finally warmed up a bit, so they might really get the chance.  Nathan was in and out all day and went through 5 changes of clothes I think.  Kyle went in when we got back too and then went for a "bike ride" down the street.  Still trying to get him more confident and thinking we might have to get him into Pedalheads this summer since I've heard good things!

Going to be a quiet week here I think since Sophia and Matthew won't be here and we don't have a car for the week...  Putter around here and take it easy sounds good to me!

Cheers,

PS Anyone local and interested in a card class Wednesday night can check out my previous post!  Lots of extra goodies to take home too - in class or take out kit!

An Anniversary Card!

This was a card I actually made yesterday since we had a family celebration to go to.  George's family all got together for dinner last night at a restaurant in part to celebrate his parents 50th wedding anniversary!  Congratulations to them! 

Along with the anniversary, there were a bunch of family birthdays as well, so it was definitely great to see everyone!  We don't seem to manage it enough to be honest!  We had dinner and then went back to hi parents place to get a few things.  The kids all played for quite a while and the kids were totally done by the time we got home just before 9pm.

I completely enjoyed the first part of the day doing pretty much nothing!  Don't think I even got out of my jammies until about 2 in the afternoon and that's all good with me.  I puttered with the card and a few things around the house, but George took Kyle to karate and that was about the only other thing going on. 

Another great day to the start of the summer holidays...

Today was back to work for me for the first time in a week.  Don't remember the last time that happened as I'm always in Fridays if not for teaching during the week, but there was the holiday this week.  Was actually much busier than I expected on the long weekend and with the nice weather!  Made the day go quite quickly in fact.

George also has the day off tomorrow, so not sure we'll get up to too much, but it'll be nice having him home and spending the day with all my boys!

For anyone local, I'm teaching a card class this Wednesday with the fabulous Bo Bunny AdLib line of paper and you get a full sheet of the 12X12 stickers and a full pad of the 6X6 papers, so you have lots of leftovers!  You can come to class or order a take-out kit if the time doesn't work for you!

Ad Lib from Bo Bunny Card Class
AVAILABLE AS TAKE OUT
Class Fee: 15.00 Supply Fee: $8.00 *Extra Product
Who wouldn't love the fun, bright colours in these papers?! Not only will you take home your set of cards, but the rest of the 12X12 sticker sheet and your pad of the 6X6 paper as well! You'll be able to go home and make more! All Supplies Included.

Call the store at 604-530-2917 if you're interested!

Have a fabulous week everyone and Happy 4th to all my American friends!
Cheers,

June in Review!

Yes, I realize it's actually been 2 months since I've really been posting, but we'll start with June and see if  can get a May post done somewhere in there later this month too.  hard to believe the year is half gone!

Our Month in June
- our 9th anniversary was the first

- Kyle had grading for another belt (yellow with black stripe) on the 3rd
- a family day out at the movies (Rio) as a preschool fundraiser

- the Canucks had their amazing fun for the cup!
- Nathan's last class of preschool was on the 6th

- Preschool Graduation for Nathan on the 9th

- Kyle's sports day on the 10th
- Kyle had a birthday party to go to on the 12th (Sela's)

- there was a Kindergarten drop-in for Nathan on the 13th
- Parent Appreciation breakfast at Kyle's school on the 14th

- Nathan had his last preschool interview on the 15th and got his scrapbook!

- there was, of course, the horrible riot in Vancouver after the Canucks lost Game 7 of the cup final...
- I had a couple of extra kids here for childcare (friends) for 4 days this month

- Kyle's birthday party was here, at home, on the 18th with about 6 kids!  Fun camping theme and they "fished" and made S'mores!
- Father's Day was, of course, the 19th though I actually had to work!
- someone hit the truck that was parked on the street and within a week were down to a single vehicle family again since ICBC wrote it off!  :o(
- our last PAC get together was a dinner at Boston Pizza on the 21st

- Kyle was awarded his new belt

- we had a party for mum on the 25th for her 65th birthday!!!
- Kyle was in a local parade with a group of kids from karate
- Kyle had a picnic day on the 27th at school and took cupcakes for his birthday and one of his stuffies as well
- we had to turn the truck in to ICBC on the 27th...

- Kyle got a citizenship award at the assembly on the 28th

- the 29th is Kyle's birthday and was the last day of school too!  Only 90 minutes, so took the kids for ice cream in the afternoon for a treat.  Also went to Denny's for dinner at his request and got a karate themed cake!
- had dinner on the 30th with Maria before she left today to visit family in Sweden!

So, there was all that along with the regular stuff of having Sophia and Matthew, teaching and working at the store and just trying to keep up with things at home! 
It was a crazy month for sure, but one full of fun too looking back!

Here's to hoping for some lazy summer days...
Cheers,

Happy Canada Day 2011!

Wow how time flies!  The last couple of months have been a complete blur, but I think things have finally slowed down a little here and I'm hoping to get some more posting and personal creating done too.

We had a great Canada Day for sure!  Slept in a little and then puttered a bit after getting up.  Got ourselves ready and headed out for the annual celebrations around here before it got too busy!  There was all kinds of fun stuff: crafts, balloons, live music, food, tattoos, face painting, etc!  Spent a couple of hours there before heading back and grabbing some pizza on the way.

We came home and had a relaxing afternoon.  I spent some time ordering pictures online since I'm so far behind in both developing and any kind of scrapping lately it seems.  Have been doing stuff for work, but not personal stuff and I miss it.  I figure pictures are a good place to start.  The boys played video games - all of them!

We had a bbq for dinner and then headed out to the park.  Of course, there was a stop at Starbucks on the way so that the boys could get milk and we could grab a cup of coffee.  Spent a while at the park and manageg to get the boys out of there by telling them we'd come home and roast marshmallows!

George just picked this up after saving enough Save-On pointsto get this for the deck.  It was actually quite fun to sit out there tonight with the fire and roast marshmallows.  It's a self contained propane one and really does give off some heat.  I know where we'll be spending some more time this summer!

Well, better go think about getting some sleep.  Not too much planned for tomorrow really other than Kyle going to karate in the morning. 

Cheers,
Colleen

My Day in Photos

More Days Here!

http://www.shimelle.com/paper/1005/my-day-in-photos/

Cheers,