Feeling Nostalgic...

No surprise there :)

Now that my twins are "big boys" now, I was looking through their scrapbooks and found some of my favorite layouts I made of them :) I don't often share my personal layouts, so I feel a little shy...

Classes and Barbecues and Babies No More...

First of all, who decided that summer was going to be played on fast forward? Seriously - it is going by way too fast! I feel like I have 12 pots on the stove, they are all boiling over, and 357 guests are about to arrive... and by the time I have everything ready, it is time to clean up after the party.

Speaking of parties, my two little babies turned THREE yesterday. THREE. Does that mean they are officially not "babies" anymore? I guess that the toddler title was actually official at age two, but somehow having my twins turn THREE makes them seem like they are little boys, not babies anymore at all, whose next step is kindergarten, then a driver's license, then college, then marriage...

Not fair. Stay little, darn it!

They will start preschool in the fall, and I too have been contemplating going back to school. As the teacher. In my "past life" I was a high school English teacher for over seven years. Then I had the munchkins, and was lucky to be able to stay home for a few years. Now that the boys are bigger (sniff sniff) I have dusted off my resume and had a few interviews. I have also been taking classes to finish my Master's Degree - just a few more left!

Of course, my favorite class will be the one I am teaching at my local scrapbook store! Mid-July I am going to teach fellow scrappers how to add stitching to their pages. So if you are in Michigan in mid-July, head to Capture-A-Memory and we can scrap and chat! :) I will post a link to the store where I will be teaching.

The boys are still sleeping (all the fun yesterday and they are wiped out) so I need to get scrapping! My design group, BTDL, has a BBQ challenge for July, so if you are an eBayer, look for BTDL in a search to find all our pretties! I am finishing up a layout with the cutest little cow....

Enjoy the holiday weekend, and if someone finds that remote control - would you please hit "pause"? I need to catch my breath :)

So, if I had another 4 hours in the day...

I wish I had more time. Is it just me, or just this time of year, that everything feels so rushed? My one little boy had his last day of "school" today, and I wanted to make his teachers some pretties :) Of course, I waited until the last minute. This morning. I was going to do it last week, and then I promised myself I would do it last night... and then woke up in a panic this morning...

Anyway, here is one of them:


It is a little 5x7 piecing that is in a magnetic clear frame. His teachers loved them! I was pretty happy how they turned out too :) The bears are my new design, and I think my favorite part is the little book he is holding! I just finished a layout with this style of bear, and listed it on Ebay tonight. Of course, no pictures, because after we got home from school, we played in the baby pool, then the boys took naps, I cleaned the house (I should have scrapped), then it was time for Speech Therapy, then home again to make dinner, then a spontaneous trip to the park...

Did I say four hours? Can I change that to 12? :)

Paper Doll

I love the look of paper dolls, and my latest layout reminds me of the dolls I played with as a child. My favorite part? All the little buttons on her sweater! I also like how her little wagon turned out :) I decided to go with blues and greens rather than the traditional "pink" of girliness... Of course, this little doll was so fun to make, I just may have to do a similar one with pinks!

Oh, boy!

Well, it seems like the last few weeks I couldn't create anything without pink and ribobn. Now, I am gravitating towards "boy" colors :) I just finished a layout with dinosaurs, and I have to say - one of my favorites! I have paper set aside to make another one for me, as I have about 395792 pictures of my cuties in their dinosaur pajamas, and this layout would be perfect.



Yes, I have my boy-mojo back! Next up...
Puppies!

Princesses and fairies and dolls, oh my!

Being a mama to two lovely boys, I don't get to scrapbook many pink and girly layouts :) Designing with BTDL (Better Than Doing Laundry) and selling my work on EBay and BTDLDesigns has become my outlet for all things pink and pretty! And a nice venue for using all my lace and pretty trims....

Lately I can't seem to make a boyish layout! I have been dreaming in pink and eyelet lace, tiaras and tutus... I don't think I would even know what to do with a piece of blue paper right now.

Perhaps it is the Spring weather Mother Nature has been teasing us with. The grass is greening, the dogwood tree just started to bloom, and my magnolia tree is full of waxy pink petals. Soon my backyard retreat will smell like heaven with lilac and Korean Spice competing with each other, vying for loveliest scented plant.

It is this environment of sweetly scented air and lush green plants that makes me believe a fairy or two could be hiding in the hydrangeas, or playing hide and seek in the roses. After a long winter of frosty windowpanes and austere landscapes of snow and ice, even a weed or two are welcome...

What's in a name?

Who would have thought that choosing names was so difficult? From baby names to business names, there are so many choices and combinations, there is no limit to the number of appellations one can create.

When I found out I was having twins, for some insane reason I thought that would make the naming process easier. I thought, "Perfect! I don't have to narrow it down to only one name - I get to have two!" Learning that I was going to have boys would make it even easier, I thought. I only had to look in half of the "1000001 best baby names" book now. Of course, that meant Charlotte and Isabel were no longer options....

You want to make sure your child's name is a name that fits an infant as well as a toddler. And a teenager. And a young man. And a wrinkly old man. So you start thinking. And rhyming. You suddlenly realize that half the names you like ryhme with either a body part or a bodily function, and you just know some linguistically precocious playmate will realize this in preschool, and before you know it, your little darling enters kindergarten known as "Pooper Cooper" or "Marty Farty".

And the spelling of the name. Luckily, it seems that boy names have, for the most part, escaped the grasp of "creative spelling." Bill is Bill. I know, I know.... there is Bryan or Brian, John or Jon, Zack or Zach, Steven or Stephen. The list goes on. But at least there is usually only one variation. Perhaps I am sensitive to this because I taught in a high school for almost a decade. I could have five girls named Lindsay in class, and they all had a different spelling of their names. Lindsy, Lyndse, Lindsey, Lynnse... LinZ?

I would love more time in the day. Actually, I would love more time in the night... when the kiddos are sleeping.

I get my best scrapping done between 1 and 4 am, I think. Of course, there are the nights where I wake up, think about scrapping, and decide I am just too sleepy. But then - I'll remember those new charms I just bought, or that pack of Basic Grey paper that is just sitting there, waiting for me. I'm like a kid on Christmas Eve - I can't sleep knowing there are new pretties under my tree... I mean, on my scraptable :)

While it can be bad for my checking account, shopping, or retail therapy, is one sure way to kick start my mojo. It also motivates me to clean and organize my scraproom. I can't put pretty new paper in a messy area. Plus, it gives me an excuse to sort through all my pretties. Again. As I find manythings I forgot I had, it is kind of like shopping...

Midnight Musings...

Well, technically 2:30am musings, but somewhere out there it is around midnight...


I was sewing on some photo mats, and I was thinking about Reality Television. (No, there is no connection, I was just wandering in my thoughts - it is very late (or very early...) after all) and how I will often scoff at these "reality" shows. However, why is it when I see a few minutes of one, I find myself watching the rest of the episode?


I was recently in Chicago, my twin boys were napping (bless their toddler hearts) and my husband and I were relaxing in our hotel room, ready to tackle another museum when the kiddos woke up. I stumbled on "America's Next Top Model" and for some reason, I couldn't not watch. Was it the challenges? The feedback Tyra gave to each one? The drama of who was going to leave? Maybe I imagined if I had to be in a photo shoot with an elephant, how would I pose? Luckily for me, the program was part of a "Marathon" so I watched several episodes in a row. However, the boys woke up when there were only three girls left, and I am left to wonder - who won?


So back to sewing my photomats....


I was thinking of my ideal reality show: "America's Next Top Scrapper."

How fun would that be? Challenges, scrapping under pressure, and creating the perfect pages to be judged each episode. Who would the judges be? What kind of cool locations would the scrappers have to scrap in? Maybe I need to write the DIY Network and pitch my idea...

The Sisterhood of Scrapbooking...

Deliberating on what my very first ever blog entry should be, I was overwhelmed with what to write. Should I describe my obsession with all things scrappy? My latest purchase of Halloween paper? Perhaps I should contemplate the pros and cons of computer journaling versus handwriting? Or maybe I should delve into the curious world of acidity and lignen levels of archival materials (do twigs from trees have acid or lignens? I need to know before I make more broom embellishments for Halloween...) And then it hit me, as I realized it is now almost 1:30 am and I am still awake. I owed this second wind of creativity to the very venti Carmel Mocha I had this evening at the bookstore. And the nice gal who created this caffeine concoction? None other than a sister scrapper!

In addition to my coffee drink, I was also purchasing a scrapbook magazine (and several children's books for my twin toddlers who were dragging my husband around the cafe, yelling "Moon! Moon!" I still don't know why they were fixated on "moon"...) and the cafe worker got a shy smile, and asked me, "Do you scrapbook?"

"Yes!" I replied, "I love scrapbooking! I am infatuated with scrapbooking! It is kind of an obsession, actually," I finished, hoping she didn't change her mind about giving me my caffeine loaded beverage.

"Me, too!" she laughed, and while she steamed milk and whipped cream, we talked papers, crops, best place to get adhesive, and what kind of "transportation" used to carry all our goods around. Within minutes, I made a new scrapping friend who I hoped I would see at the next local crop.

Scrapbookers are some of the nicest people I have met. When I have gone to crops, perfect strangers offer me glue, look in their stash of supplies for paper that might coordinate with my photomats, admire my handiwork, and before I know it, we are flipping through each other's albums, oohing and ahhing at pictures of people we have never met, and maybe never will. Such is the bond of scrapbookers...