... funny things are everywhere

life's little surprises

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Sometimes I am caught off-guard by little things in life. There are moments when I stop in my tracks and wonder, "How did that happen?" Or I'll ask myself, "Really?!" For example...

1. It turns out that I am a lot more organized and effective when I have a VERY full schedule. Instead of breaking down into a sobbing mess, I rise to the occasion and get the job done.
2. The boys surprised me this morning by getting up, fixing their own breakfast, getting dressed and brushing their teeth... all so they could get in one more game of Indiana Jones on the Wii before we take the game back this morning. 
3. After the hot spell we had in late June, the weather has turned for the worse. It feels nothing like summer... it's been cloudy, rainy and basically just sucky. On the upside, I don't have to slather the boys in sunscreen before taking them to day camp this morning. 
4. I was caught off guard by how much I enjoy running these days. I've been running a lot lately. Not long distances, but I've been running about four days a week, and I'm already looking at the fall race schedule, wondering which races have the best shirts. ;)  

Well, I'd best be going now. All this talk of being busy (see #1 above) is making me anxious. I have to do a quick search for a document online, and then I need to get dressed and get everyone out the door.

Happy Wednesday, everyone! 

birthday number nine

We celebrated with the Blais family on the weekend. So much to celebrate! The birth of baby Christopher (such a cutie!) and the 9th birthday of our eldest kids, Thomas and Madison.

** Warning: If you've known me for more than... ummmm... a year, you can skip the next few paragraphs because you've likely heard this story many times over.

Mike and I met Christine and Ian at prenatal class in the spring of 2000. They were the funnest couple in the class, and as it turned out, we had the same due date. Well, fast forward a couple of months, and who should we see as we were sitting in the waiting room at the hospital? It's Ian, taking a bit of break from the intensity of the labour and delivery experience. We said hi, wished one another luck, and that was that.

The next day, Ian, Chris and their new baby dropped by my room to say hello. We exchanged phone numbers, and they went home. Lucky ducks! I was stuck there for a bit... I was recovering from a planned section and Thomas, as it turned out, had a touch of jaundice going on.

Five weeks later, I looked at that slip of paper with Christine's phone number on it, and I told myself, "It's now or never." So I called... and they invited us over for dinner. And that was the beginning of one heck of a special friendship.

Thomas and Madi have shared a cake and candles every year since their first birthday. I shared some photos in last year's post, but I found a couple more from years gone by. Here are pictures from no. 2 and no. 7...

And now, pictures from our visit on Sunday...

 

Hard to believe we'll be into double digits next year... yikes! 

Hey, thanks for dropping by to visit... and a special thanks if you've managed to read to the very end of this rambling post! :)

another weekend bites the dust...

... and it was a glorious five-day weekend for me. Aaaaaah. It didn't matter that it rained for the first half of it. The sun came out on Saturday, and it warmed up by yesterday, and we got out to enjoy some summer fun at the water park. First time this season! 

Yesterday, we did birthday cake no. 9 for Madi and Thomas. Man, I canNOT get over how fast our kids are growing up... Madi's so tall and looks like a real young lady now. But she's still a little girl at heart, all excited about lots of kid stuff, so it's all good. She's an accomplished dancer now, and she's so helpful with her younger brothers. When we walked into the house, she was carrying Christopher, her new baby brother. He was so tiny and so sweet, and she was a total natural at it. I love that.

Yes, I have pictures of our visit, but they'll have to wait for another day. I might have time to put them on facebook tonight though... gotta spread that baby cuteness around the internet, right?

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this. It's a page I did in late May for a scraplift tag challenge. The results were just posted on the forums where I signed up for this, so now I can share my page.

Mine isn't too much like the inspiration piece, other than the photo and title placement. I find it hard to leave my style behind when I'm scraplifting, so I added the large mat to make it look more like "me."

Well, it's Monday morning, and I'm going to make a valiant attempt to get to work early, so I'd best be signing off here. Have a great week, y'all! :)

my desk is still clean...

... just in case you're wondering, Katie. I scrapped, and I put my leftover paper and scraps away. And believe me, there was a MESS when I was done. I built the LO below on a different background, cut it up, stuck it on something else, cut that off, stuck something else down... all before giving up and peeling the photos and paper strips off and sticking them on plain, smooth white cardstock and just going with that. *sigh*

(all Amercian Crafts, except for the photo corner punched with a Stampin' Up! punch from Bazzill cardstock)

We're having a super laid-back weekend here. Not very much in the way of plans... just playing it by ear for the most part. We are having family over for dinner tonight, and tomorrow we will go out to the west end to visit Thomas' birthday twin, and we'll get to meet her new baby brother. No. 4, in case you're counting. Wow, Chris is my hero. I can barely handle two kids... *sigh*

Okay, it's past 11:00 am, and I'm still in my jammies. I'd better get a move on. Happy 4th of July to all my American friends! Have a great weekend, everyone! :)

15 on Friday

Hey, it's Friday. YAY! How's your weekend shaping up? Lots of exciting things planned? I am happy to report that we have a pretty laid-back, slow-paced weekend here. Thank goodness... because I am tired. Still tired because I haven't managed to find the secret to staying asleep after the sun comes up in the morning. Maybe I need to try a sleep blind-fold thingy... hmmmmm...

Anyway, it's Friday, and it's been a long time since I've posted any random lists, so I thought I'd throw one in.

1. The first week of the boys' summer vacation is going well. They're enjoying day camp and getting LOTS of exercise, including a daily swimming lesson. I LOVE sports camp.
2. I went shopping this morning and found a purse and a pair of shoes on sale. Great deals, both of them! 
3. The weather's been a bit wet this week, but that hasn't stopped me from running. I ran on Monday and Tuesday at work... and I loved it, even though it rained the entire time I was out on Tuesday. 
4. You know you're addicted to running when you actually enjoy running in the rain... although I have to admit I did run extra fast on the way out, just in case it started to downpour while I was out.
5. I need a hair cut. It's not very long right now, but it's BIG, especially in the humidity. Think 80s BIG hair and you pretty well have it. 
6. Canada Day was a lot of fun. One of my favourite parts was walking hand-in-hand with my 7 year-old and having him sing "O Canada" to me en français. Super cute. (And for the record, I only know the middle part in French... I must really learn the rest so I can sing along next time.)
7. While I was at the mall this morning, I bought some new shorts for Thomas. One of the three pairs I picked up is lime green, just like the super-bright running shoes he chose last month. Yikes! 
8. I have two friends who just had babies... both of them were at 41+ weeks and getting impatient, but they had their babies in the past couple of days. Yay! I hope to meet one of these little guys this weekend. :) 
9. Blue sno cones make for the best photos! (Scroll down for pictures...) 
10. We are enjoying the Wii tremendously. 
11. A quote from Thomas' tennis coach... "Wii tennis has nothing to do with real tennis." I love it!  
12. Mike said that he needs to cut himself off from MarioKart racing at least an hour before getting behind the wheel of the car. Otherwise, there's a real urge to bump vehicles that are smaller than ours off the road. Yikes! 
13. I'm loving the Friday challenges posted on the American Crafts blog... won't you join in the fun with me?! Click here to play along this week. :) 
14. I dropped by The Scrapbox on my way home from teaching at lunch, and who should walk into the store but my dear friend, Rachel! Wow, it's been well over a year since we've seen one another, but now that she's *thisclose* to retiring from the military, we'll have lots of chances to see one another.   
15. It's pouring rain right now... I'm so glad we don't have soccer this week. *phew* 

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Pictures of my guys on Canada Day...

  

Have a great weekend, my friends! Environment Canada forecasters are predicting sun here. Yay!

scrap challenge grudge match...

Oh yeah! Nathalie and I are on a roll with our challenges. She finished the latest one in record time. It was based on a challenge that had been posted at the How Much Is Too Much? blog... we changed up the rules a bit to suit our needs.

The rules were as follows:

1. Use 15 different things from your stash, preferably things that have aged at least 12 months in storage.
2. Each piece of patterned paper or each type or colour of brad counts as one item.
3. One of the items has to be a clear/transparent embellishment, like the Heidi Swapp ghost shapes or letters.  
4. Tools, such as punches, stamps, inkpads and pens, do not count towards the final tally. 

And that was it. Nathalie finished hers in less than 24 hours, which made me want to weep. I HATE those stupid clear embellishments and have such a hard time using them... and how on earth was I supposed to cram 15 items onto a page? I usually have a hard time using more than 7 or 8 things on my pages.

Well, I chose the photo, notecard and patterned paper last night... and I tried painting the stupid clear letters, but I ended up washing the paint off them this morning. I hauled out my American Crafts Slick Writer and went to it... I had blackish letters to work with. Yay! I cut the blue floral paper... and then I added the dark brown mat to ground the notecard and give it more visual weight... added the crazy line of embellishments (Nath, you don't want me to name them all, do you?), stamped the lines for journalling and jotted down my story. Voila! All done!

Okay, okay... just for fun, here are the supplies:

Bazzill cardstock (1)

MME Wild Asparagus patterned papers (2)

American Traditions photo anchor (1)

Doodlebug Designs glitter, black... used to fill in the hole on the photo anchor (1)

MME "Rate the Day" notecard (1)

Fancy Pants See-Through letters (1)

Keiser rhinestones (1)

Making Memories brads, six colours/four kinds (6)

American Crafts brads, green/medium size (1)

Provocraft patterned paper - heart with paw print (1)

Doodlebug brads, three colours (3)

Robyn's Nest dew drops, two colours (2)

Making Memories gem sticker, purple (1)

Karen Foster brad (1)

Buttons, unknown source, three colours (3)

All My Memories brad (1)

Twill ribbon, unknown source (1)

Making Memories staple (1)

oops, I forgot one...

Queen & Co brad, green with white dots (1)

Grand total: 28 29 items

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Not bad, not bad... I'm pleased I got so many things onto the page without deviating too far from true love of clean and simple designs. :)

Now Nathalie, it's your turn to think up the next challenge. Take it easy on me, okay?! :P

** Edited to add: Here's the link to Nathalie's take on this challenge. Great job, girl!

repetition isn't so bad...

Okay, that scraplift challenge I posted yesterday wasn't so much of a challenge to me. Know why? Because I've used that same basic design many, many times before in my years of scrapbooking.

It all started with my love of all things by ChrisS, a friend I met at the now defunct LSS near the train station. She had a real knack for squeezing lots and lots of photos onto her pages, and she used photo strips like no one else. In fact, she still does.

So that design with one large photo with a row of smaller pictures... guess how many times I've used it since 2005? I didn't actually get an exact count, but I'm going to share these samples with you. These pages were created between 2005 and 2009:

Crazy, eh?! None of them look EXACTLY the same, but really, when you break it down to the general design, they are all variations on the same sketch. And these are just the ones where the small photos run across horizontally... I did a number of pages like this with a large photo and a vertical strip of smaller pictures as well. Not very original, right?! :P

On that note, I will sign off and wish all my Canadian friends a Happy Canada Day! I hope the rain holds off, wherever you're celebrating! :)

another scrappy challenge

I recently challenged Nathalie to scraplift this LO by the fabulous Nic Howard, originally created in 2007. It's a timeless beauty, for sure. 

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Nathalie completed her LO on the weekend and posted it on her blog right here, so the pressure was on for me to get it done already. I have to admit, I've been totally lacking creativity these days... I don't know if it's the busyness of life, the lack of sleep or just being out of practice, but I'm not loving anything I create these days. Oh well. Not every page has to be a masterpiece, right? lol

Here's my page, made with the Kraft Kuts line by Fancy Pants. I wasn't totally sure about it when I bought it last week, but I'm happy that I used it.

Hopefully my creative muse will come back very soon. I don't think I can handle too many more forced scrapping sessions. *sigh*

confessions of a scrap-shopaholic

Oh, I've been shopping at my LSS, The Scrapbox, many times this spring, and my supplies are starting to overflow their storage systems again. oops! And then on Saturday, I had to go to Multicrafts on an emergency craft supply run for Thomas' party, and oops, I loved browsing through the HUGE selection of scrap supplies from manufacturers I'd never seen before. Still, I was good... I didn't buy stuff just because I'd never seen it (only the Pink Paislee alpha stickers)... I stuck with stuff I knew I'd use (AC Thickers, three sheets of AC paper and some of my favourite Bazzill cardstock colours).

The good news is that my desk is cleaned off, so I can finally scrap again. Now that all the year-end madness is over and the kids are done school, I should actually have time! I'm looking forward to it... besides the LO a Day pages I made in May and a few cards, I've had a pretty dry spell in terms of creativity.

Here's the card I made for Thomas' birthday this year... the paper and alpha stickers are from KI memories, and the robot is a Basic Grey stamp. :)

Okay, I'm off to face the new work week. Have a good day, my friends!

MarioKart Wii, cake and ice cream

Thomas had a great party at home yesterday. The three kids he invited got along really well, and there were no melt-downs or arguments... just a couple of close calls with food-fight type behaviour, but the kids all respected my wish that icing-covered mini crackers and ice cream-coated gummy worms not take flight across the table onto someone else's dish.

Thanks to everyone who posted birthday wishes on facebook. :)