Another warm one...

Well, it was another warm day here! Didn't have the most ambitious early morning, but I was definitely up in time for Sophia getting here. We had our breakfast and then got everyone ready and headed over to spend some time at Maria, Joseph and Sarah's place this morning! The kids had fun playing on the trampoline, the swing, the slide and just running around together. Maria kindly invited us to stay for lunch and then we headed back home for naptime.

I knew Nathan was tired, but was fighting it! I finally got him to lay down and he crashed! We had a big success this morning with the potty again though he surprised himself when he started going and stood up to watch, so you can imagine what happened! I was just happy he was willing to wear his underwear and had been trying all morning - never mind actually going too! Oh the things that you never imagined would be so important in your day!!

Kyle and Sophia spent some time in the new pool this afternoon as well. I can see that it's going to get more than it's fair share of use this summer if it's as dry and warm as they're predicting. Heard on the news last night that June was the warmest and driest since 1951!

I haven't been very good with posting scrappy stuff lately, so I'm going to post some stuff I've been working on. As you can see, this was done in May! It was also one of the Use It Challenges. The best part was that it has some scraps and some really old fibres on it as well! Gotta love scraps!

Well, think that's about it for now! I'm on a blogging roll here again now! lol Just watch me go!
Cheers,

Happy Canada Day!!

Hope everyone had a very Happy Canada Day!!

We didn't go to the Amphitheatre in Cloverdale like we usually do. To be honest, I think that was our plan this morning when we got up, but George told Nathan he needed to pee in the potty first and when that never happened, the park didn't either!

We're in a bit of a test of wills here now with Nathan and the potty you see. Still trying not to make it too big a deal, but we've moved on to underwear during the daytime and that means some accidents. The frustrating thing is that he'll be dry all night and then won't pee on the potty in the morning when we know he can!

Oh well, rather that going to the Canada Day thing today, we did mange to do a few other things. George needed to get some new work pants, so that got done. He'd also been looking for a pool or some kind for the kids in the warm weather and he picked one of those up today too! Then, this afternoon, Kyle and I got to go and do something fun...

We went and saw the movie "Up"! Kyle has only ever been to one movie in the theatre and that was when George took him to see Wall-E and it was a first for me with him. He still doesn't like some of the loud commercials and stuff and the beginning, but we both enjoyed the movie. I think some of the message was more directed at adults than kids, but he laughed a lot, so all was good!

We came home and had dinner and then the kids played in the new pool and that was about the extent of our day! Another one gone quickly! So weird that it's the middle of the week too! I'm going to be messed up for days!

Here's to a fabulous July for everyone!
Cheers,

Happy 6th Birthday Kyle!!

Wow! Once again it seems hard to believe we're celebrating Kyle's birthday, but here we are! We did most of the celebrating on Saturday actually when he had some friends over for a Star Wars Party and then we had George's parents and Tracy, Brian, Sophia and Matthew over for dinner as well. A couple of rounds of bbq and cake and we called it a full birthday day!

Since today is actually his birthday, we did something a little different and went up to the park/water park to play and have a picnic. We went with Maria, Joseph and Sarah as well as Tracy, Sophia and Matthew, so we had quite the gang. It was a beautiful day and a really fun time for everyone I think!

We're having Kyle's favourite for dinner at his request - tacos! Not sure if we'll go get a cupcake or something for him too or maybe go for ice cream!

Happy Birthday Kyle!!
Cheers,

Proud Mama!

Today, there was an assemble for the K-3 classes and they presented awards and recognized summer birthdays. I knew, but Kyle didn't that he was getting an award today, so here he is getting the award from the principal at the school and then with his teacher afterwards since I didn't get one of her handing him the award!

Kyle was one of 2 kids in his class to get a citizenship award.

He really loves his teacher and she'll be teaching Grade 1 next year, so I'd love it if he got her again, but who knows. We'll have to wait until September to see!

Very proud of him for doing so well this year and it's hard to believe that tomorrow is the last day of the year. The Kindergarten kids participate in the Grade 7 assembly tomorrow and sort of "escort" them out apparently. A short day with report cards and that's all that's between us and summer holiday! Amazing!

Cheers,

Scrapperie's Latest Kit

OK, I've been bad with my blogging and not posting scrappy stuff in the last while though I've been doing it, so here's the work I did with the June Scrapperie kit called Salon de The (sorry, don't know how to get the accent above the "e" for the French!).

This is a close-up so you can see that I added pearls and glitter to the centers of some of the flowers! One of those things that looks much better in person!

This is about our frustration in potty training Nathan as he's the most stubborn child you've ever met when it comes to this! I just keep telling myself that he has to get it someday!

I also did 2 cards with this kit and love how both of them came out!

Well, I have more with this kit too, but will post it another time! You can check out some of the amazing work that the other Tres Chic Girls did with this kit HERE!

You should check out the July kit - English Garden too!

Cheers,

I'm a Winner!

I checked my e-mail to find a little note from Lindsay at Pebbles Inc telling me I'd won one of their giveaways!! Wahoooo! Made my day! Can't wait to get that package!!

Cheers,

So much learning happening in our house...

This is what Kyle started the other day while Nathan was napping. I was shocked that he wanted to actually write a full sentence rather than a word, but he knew what he wanted to say. The most exciting part for me was when he got stuck and came and asked for help that he asked me for the phonetic sound rather that the spelling of the word.

After doing the printing, he had to draw a picture of course.
The funny thing is that after doing this at home, Kyle's teacher asked to talk to me after class yesterday and she wanted to show me the journal work he had done yesterday and it was something quite similar though on a different topic! Part of the reason she wanted to show me was that she thought it was so cute. He'd written "Thank you Ms. ___ for your help, but I'm going on vacation." and then he'd drawn a picture. So cute! And we're not quite going on vacation yet, but he's excited!!

He's also really improved his reading with the home reading books he's bringing home every day and I can see his reading confidence improving. He's much more willing to try and sound out words now and likes the challenge of words he doesn't know. It's so much fun for me to see him doing all these things! Think he'll be getting a couple of new books for his birthday!

His teacher also let me know that I might want to come to the awards ceremony towards the end of the month because Kyle will be getting a citizenship award! Cool! Can't wait to see what Grade 1 will bring!

Cheers,

Happy Anniversary George!

Yes, it's hard to believe another year has gone by and that we've been married for 7 years now! Happy Anniversary George and I'm looking forward to going out tonight! Thanks for taking the boys Trace...

This is the card I made for our anniversary! The heart has metallic paint on it and the big brad says "love". Gotta love it when you can use some stash to do things like this (the paper and heart)!

This is the little thing I did for George for our anniversary. We're going away in a couple of weeks, so we're not spending much on gifts right now, but he loves chocolate, so I got one chocolate bar for each year we've been married and cut the same number of flowers for a "bouquet". I used my MM Slice for all the flowers!

I guess that's about it for today really! Just trying to get some things done around here this morning after a busy weekend. Need to finish off a couple of things and get all my new class stuff submitted today for July classes as well.

Looks like it's going to be another warm one for sure and that the next few days will be the same. Kyle was extra happy to be going to school this morning because it was "messy day" where they get to play with paints, sidewalk chalk, a water table, etc outside for a while this morning. Good day for it anyway!

Well, going to try the daily blogging again this month though it didn't go so well last month! Here's to better timing this month!
Cheers,

New layout!

OK, so I have been a very bad blogger! Once I stopped the daily blogging, that was it and I haven't found a rhythm again as far as when to do it.

Anyway, enough of that and onto something new! I taught a class last night called From Sketch to Scrapped and we had a lot of fun! Ally Cope of So Sketchy was kind enough to give us the sketch and here it is along with my sample. This is one of my personal recent favs!



The idea of the class was that everyone brought pictures and I helped them pick paper and get their layout completed in class minus maybe the odd thing they wanted to add from their stash from home. The great thing about this class was that they brought pictures and we worked from the beginning of the layout! It was fun to see what everyone created and how they all turn out so differently even with the same starting point! Thanks ladies for coming!

Not too much else going on here really. I'm finally feeling much better and the sun being out makes things better too! I can't believe we've only got a few more weeks of Kyle being in Kindergarten and only about 2 weeks before we get a few days in Tofino! Yeah!

Well, better go throw together my casserole if we're going to have dinner anytime soon! Hope to be back in sooner that 2 weeks this time too!
Cheers,

Scrapperie's Spring Into Summer Crop

Come join us at Scrapperie this weekend as we celebrate with our Spring Into Summer Crop!

Starting at noon today (Thursday, May 14th), we'll have challenges, games and some other fun surprises to keep you scrapping all weekend long. The majority of the challenges will be listed Thursday and Friday, but all crop challenges won't be due until Monday night at midnight- so you'll have plenty of time to finish them.

The rest of the weekend will be filled with games, contests and other great activities that you won't want to miss out on! So, clean off your scrap table and invite your friends (because you just might win) and be here to celebrate as we Spring Into Summer!

Hope to see you there!
Cheers,

Teacher Appreciation Week Gift

With everything that's been going on with my health and the never-ending trips to the doctor, I barely got this finished off last week to give to Kyle's teacher this past Friday. I did this darling little boxed card set that a found a fabulous tutorial for on Dannie's blog. There's room for some standard invitation sized cards, some 3X3 cards and some gift tags. I did all of it with one sheet of patterned paper and 4 colours of cardstock.

It has a little spot for some 3X3 gift cards, but I couldn't find envelopes anywhere locally and didn't have time to order them. I thankfully found a great little blog that has a fabulous tutorial and you get 3 envelopes out of one 8.5 X 11 sheet of light cardstock - perfect!

The last thing I made was an actual card to go with this that I gave her with the present. I'm really happy with how this turned out and it was so much easier than I expected!

You'll be seeing more of this little project!
Cheers,

Happy Birthday to Me!!

Yes, well, it's here again - my birthday! Another year older though I certainly don't feel it! I'm thankful to be able to spend it with my boys and Sophia wished me many a Happy Birthday today too!

Pretty usual day around here though I admit to not doing much in the way of chores! I realized that George actually had left my birthday present out for me when I got home from dropping Kyle off from school and saw is under the kitchen island - a new coffee maker! Yeah! Got lots of wonderful well wishes from friends and family too. George brought home sushi for dinner and is busy making me a cake! Just hanging out and watching the hockey game for the evening... GO Canucks GO! The best thing for my birthday now would be a win for the Canucks!

I'll post some more pics later, but we're between periods here and I don't have a lot of time!
Cheers,

MM Slice - Optimizing Your Paper

OK, so I love my little Slice as many of you know, but I was a little frustrated with the amount of paper I seemed to be wasting. With the help of a little video on http://www.whyslice.com/ though, I've figured some of this out and am much happier! You can see the before and after in the picture above!

Check out this video!


I hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions you still have and I'll do my best to help you with what's been working for me...
Have a great Wednesday!
Cheers,

Use It! Challenge Card

OK, so I'm not doing so well on my daily blogging so far! I'm out of the habit and not in a rhythm yet! I did manage to whip up this card for my grandma for Mother's Day and decided to use the current Use It Challenge for this one. I put a couple of pictures inside and even managed to pop it in the mail today!

The flowers are in the patterned paper which it sounded like from the sample for this challenge was OK. I also used fibres on the bottom of the sentiment piece and the metal for this was the brads. I don't think you can tell, but the bird is all blinged out too because I used a glitter pen on it for a little pop.

We had a relaxing evening watching the fabulous Canucks win this evening and as we're sitting in the living room, Nathan says to me, "Take my picture". Yes, they're used to having a camera in their face all the time now! He wanted a picture with Rufus the dog and he was all smiles for it too as you can see!

Well, better go back it in here for another night since Sophia will be here in the morning and the boys will be up bright and early! I really, truly am a lucky woman to be living the life I have with the wonderful family and friends I have too...

Have a great Wednesday!
Cheers,

Go Canucks Go!

OK, so maybe it wasn't their best game, but don't go getting off the bandwagon just yet people! It's their first loss of the playoffs after all and one game does not make a series, so get those towels out and start cheering now for Tuesday!

As for as the rest of the day, I slept in a bit and then George went to work for a couple of hours while I hung out with the boys. We then all went to the bank to see about redoing our mortgage since the interest rate's fallen some since we did ours. We might, but we're holding off a little to see how things go. Stopped at Fujiya on the way home to pick up some stuff to make okonomiyaki though not for tonight. It's a Japanese dish I got addicted to while I was living in Osaka!

Grabbed pizza on the way home and then watched the game and worked on some scrapping related stuff. That's about it really! I did go out and get a coffee tonight at Starbucks since I needed more coffee beans for the morning too. Need to get my day started right after all! Work again tomorrow and then we're into another week already...

Have a great Sunday!
Cheers,

Wow! May Already!

OK, so not sure at all what happened to April, but I seem to say that at the beginning of every month lately. It was a busy one around here with

- lots of work (including our annual Scrapbook Spectacular)

- classes to teach

- Sophia's (my niece's) birthday

- a couple of Easter dinners

- our niece's, Brianna, first communion

- A field trip for Kyle

- George taking an exam for the International Arborist's Association (I think that's the right name!)

- Tracy's (my sister's) birthday

- my grandma's fall, broken hip and partial hip replacement which thankfully went well

- a visit for all of us to see my other grandma

- the sun finally decided it was time to show up again at the end of the month! Yeah!

I think that about sums things up rather quickly! I'm hoping to go back to my daily blogging as well since it seems to be all or nothing for me, so this will hopefully be the first of many this month!
Cheers,