So this weekend my BFF and I did some scrappin via satellite :)

We got talkin yesterday about scrapping and I had JUST received the rest of my photos from Flower Child's birth so I was feeling INSPIRED!

I was a little shocked at how few pictures I had though, so her birth/hospital photos only ended up being a 4 page spread. I just didn't take photos back then like I do now {thankfully sometimes}. But they came out pretty cute so I'm happy :)




On the final page here I left a BIG space to journal her birth story, and I still need to add a title but I'm waiting for my Lil Sis to come down with her Cricut this week :D

So my TO-DO's for this week are:

• Finish Flower Child's birth pages
• Do some more of my friend's pages
• Clean up the cave for my Lil Sis to see on Thursday!
• Think up some CUTE titles or anything else I might want to use the Cricut for ;-)

So that's it for me this week! For more scrappers check out Sunday Scrappin!

So I have been ESPECIALLY busy {scrappily speaking, of course} this week!

It all started with a little project I decided to work on last weekend :) You should check it out ... it's MARVELOUS :D

And basically it really got me excited and inspired to get scrappy with it this week!

My TA-DA's:

• NINE pages of my friend's stuff - which I would LOVE to share but can't :-/
• 2 pages of my OWN below ...
  

And these two pages will FINALLY finish the most spreads EVER for ONE 36 hour event our mini trip to Napa :) It was fun ... but I'm kinda glad it's over lol ... the scrapping, not the trip ;-)

As for my TO-DO's ... well I would just like to keep putting my scrap cave to good use! I got so much done this week, I would LOVE to continue the streak! I would REALLY love to get all of this girl's stuff done lol ... but THAT could take MONTHS, even at this pace ... SIGH.

Anywho ... for more chicks getting their scrap on, check out Sunday Scrappin!

What I learned this week is that persistence pays off my friends.

Well, one Thursday afternoon I was all hopped up on Hydroxycut restless and I happened upon this post and drooled all over my keyboard at her beautifully organized scrappy stuff and her SPACE.

It was the space that got to me. I loved that she just had a place of her OWN to go to when she felt the desire to scrap. It made me giddy at the thought of having something of my own, a place of my own.

Enter the hubs. I showed him the picture of awesomeness and he was like "Yeah ... we're not doing that in my office though." And the more I whined and cried tried to reason with him, the more he put his foot down. I guess having a bunch of pink stuff with ribbons and pretty doesn't GO with his construction office motif ... PSSSH

So being all hopped up on my legal crack being restless, I decided I WOULD have that scrappy space DANGIT! And I would have it NOW.


This ... was my downstairs closet shame.

It was full of goodwill stuff, scrap stuff, summer stuff, Christmas stuff ... basically ... a LOT of stuff.

It was then that I looked at that closet brimming with crap and decided it should be brimming with SCRAP!

With my BFF on the line, it only took us a few hours to get it all cleared out, purged, organized, reorganized, and everything other than scrappy stuff REMOVED and put somewhere else it belonged.

Then the hubs came home. He had no knowledge of all the mayhem cleaning that had ensued that day. SO when he left it looked like the above picture and when he came home ... it was EMPTY! He looked in and said "How did THAT happen?"

I took it as a compliment. And then I went on to beg for insist upon ask nicely for him to help me build my dream ... in scrap form.

He had to work the next day but ideas were swirling in my head so much I was dizzy! Soooo ... my partner in crime BFF talked me into using a piece of scrap wood in the garage to show her how far along I had come in my scrap oasis efforts...

Honestly, my DH is lucky he forbade me from using his power tools, because as persistent as she is - I might have tried it myself ... and then he could have come home to me with my head stapled to the carpet.

How's THAT for progress! I did all of that myself :) First I found and emptied 2 sets of white storage drawers. They were PERFECT for storage! I filled them up and moved on to the shelves on the right holding my scrappy stuff, organized and reorganized all of that stuff.

Then I went out to the garage and found a piece of wood, drug it into the house and laid it across the white shelves ... it was SO cute! It totally gave my DH the idea to not only make me a desk out of some wood he had in the garage ... but to make me an L SHAPED DESK!

And the next day my dreams were made real and my heart made whole ... well I was real real happy anyway I mean seriously ... if you go back and look at that first photo and then this one ... I mean WOW. And my Scrap Cave was born ...

The best part of this whole thing is that I didn't have to buy a THING for this whole space! I had 4 empty clear paint cans and decided that instead of sitting empty they could hold my ribbon! I had 5 little tins sitting around and now they hold buttons, paint, pens, chipboard & phrases! The flowers are displayed in 2 glass candle holders that I had nowhere to put! The chair was sitting upstairs in our bedroom at the desk he never uses so I didn't even have to buy that :)

So basically ... it was the BEST.DAY.EVER :)

For more people learning stuff and sharing it with you ... check out Musings of a Housewife :)

P.S. No inept women were harmed in the making of this scrap cave :)

Good Morning Sunday Scrappers!

Well today I'm sharing something I made a few weeks ago for a Christmas gift ... yeah ... again lol

This week I've been working on a top secret project scrappy related but it's not QUITE ready to share. Since there are power tools involved and the hubs has forbidden asked me nicely not to use them, I've been waiting for him to have a day off to finish it up for me.

TODAY IS THAT DAY MY FRIENDS! and I am 10 kinds of excited!

So until next week, I will share with you what I made for my dear dear friend Rachelle :)

When I start this project these bottle were nothing more than a Starbucks Vanilla Mocha 4 pack

What I did was:

• pick out some super cute papers
• cut one into a band for the bottles
• cut a solid color a little larger and inked it
• used THIS as a guide for the sizes to cut for the container - she explains it WAY better than me :)
• tore and inked the edges
• tied some ribbon around the neck of the bottles

Then I filled each of the bottles with something scrappy, I used ribbon, chipboard phrases, something I forget, and peppermints (cause she's preggy and having morning sickness ;-)

They came out DARN cute if I do say so myself :)

They only took a few hours to make (minus the drinking and cleaning of course ;-) but I totally think I will use this again in the future since it came out so nice :)

So if you're looking for inspiration! check out the other chicks at Sunday Scrappin!

So every Monday night around here we're like the Cleavers.

Except with more cursing.

Ok. Not really. On the Monday - Cleaver thing anyhow. But we're getting closer! We've been making some big changes around here. One of them is eating traditional healthy food and the newest one is to make our time together as a family more enjoyable.

We have an odd set of circumstances. With our blended family, we only have Monday nights where we're all together the 6 of us. On a normal Monday night the people living across the street from us know what we're having for dinner because we're constantly yelling for so&so to FINISH YOUR CHICKEN!

Basically, since it only happens once a week, it's utter chaos. It's hard to really have structure when your day to day living arrangements are different every day of the week. So it's a struggle for us not to completely lose it on Mondays. All of us. The kids act like lunatics. It's quite a sight.

So we've decided that maybe we should just embrace the chaos that is 'Monday Night'. My thinking is, maybe if we just give in to the madness and stop trying to fight it and act like it's a 'normal day' and stop expecting the kids to act like it's a normal day, then maybe it will help.

If we can't change the circumstances, then we can try to change our reaction to it.

SO. Family Game Night was born.

We decided to make home made pizza's for dinner and get the kids in on the action since they love to help in the kitchen. So after homework and chores they were put to work!

DH made the dough, the sauce, and got all the fixin's ready.

Then we set em up assembly line style and let them each decorate their own personal pizza.

Tween got all fancy and tried to write her initial in olives LOL

Earlier in the day I decided to make something special for dessert and saw an awesome recipe for angel food cake on Giada's Food Network site. I was a little nervous reading the reviews because SO MANY PEOPLE said it came out horrible! But I pressed on. It was pretty low in calories and seemed like a fun dessert so I gave it a shot.

It was AWESOME! It came out SO GOOD! I didn't love the yogurt honey lemon icing so much though. But the kids and the hubs thought it was perfect! It was so cool that *I* made it though :) And they just thought it was the BEST DAY EVER lol.

So after plates were cleared and jammies were on we got down to BUSINESS.

Flower Child and Lil Miss got into a rousing game of Candyland while us bigger folks broke out the Sorry game :) I am a Sorry MASTER ... and I brought the pain ya'll LOL

After like AN HOUR lol Man that game took FOREVER lol

I think the girls ended up playing 4 games of Candyland and then switched to Memory {only because I caught on to Flower Child and her card counting scheme when she won every match :-/ ... card shark}

So yeah, next week we'll be working on getting the dinner thing done a bit quicker. But they had SO MUCH FUN together so I guess that's all that really matters :)

We actually started doing fun Monday stuff last week. We had a gift cert to a local ice cream place and since Monday was our only opportunity to go together, we went.

At first I was a little worried that it would be too much or that I'd get stressed out taking them all there or I don't even know ... I was just stressed lol. Plus we didn't have anything alcoholic at home to take away the pain should things have gone awry LOL

But I was pleasantly surprised.

• The Boy got all his homework done on TIME {which has been a struggle for ALL of us}
• Everyone ate their dinner quickly {which can be a struggle when we're all together after a week and everyone has stories to tell}
• Everyone got ready to leave quickly {which can be a struggle with 4 kids. Period.}
• Everyone listened and followed the rules at the ice cream place {which can be a struggle when the ice cream place has "rules" to follow LOL}
• The older kids sat at the table next to us and were little angels! They didn't make a mess, they weren't loud or disrespectful
• No one threw a fit when it was time to leave!
• Everyone got ready for bed quickly and we didn't hear a peep out of them!

Afterward, the hubs and I sat and pondered what EXACTLY we had done right that day. And I think it was partly that we just stopped dreading the chaos that Mondays bring and started to plan for it.

We're going to try to enjoy the kids more. Which is not to say that we don't love and have fun with our kids, because we DO. But when the chaos is coming down upon your head like a building crumbling from above you ... it's hard to find the fun in it, ya know?

So since my angel food cake was soooo gooood last night but the sauce needed something, I looked up a lovely blueberry sauce recipe and OH MY ... it is greatness.

Just look at Lil Miss's face :)

So here's hoping we keep to our idea of Family Fun Night and the planets align and the birds sing and I don't go runnin for the liquor cabinet next week ;-)

Ok so this is a little misleading.

I didn't actually scrap THIS WEEK. But I DID scrap a BUNCH in December and didn't post it due to nosy gift receivers ;-)

Each year my best friend, her sister, & I all exchange gifts. We ended up getting into a groove of homemade gifts that I LOVE giving as much as I love GETTING! They usually end up being something skillfully altered or a scrapbook related something.

So this is what I made for my best friend :)

It's a mini 3 ring album for wedding photos :) Her wedding was so beautiful but she hasn't had a chance to scrap it yet so I thought I would give her something easy and fun to start off with :)

That way she'll have a cute little something full of beautiful photos that she can look at or show off ;-)







It came out SOOOOO nice! and I'm pretty sure she loved it too :D

This week my TO-DO is to finish matting my 4x6 photos so they will fit in the 5x7 & 8x10 frames LOL and to GET SOME PICS SCRAPPED!

Lofty goals, my friends. We'll see how well I do! For more craftsy awesomeness, check out Sunday Scrappin!