Yesterday...

the not-so-little-anymore guy turned six. He was a little excited about it:



It was a whirlwind day of cupcakes at school, swimming, cupcakes at home, and presents. Looks like my mom hit it out of the park with the Hogwarts Lego set.

At bedtime, however, Eli got a little teary-eyed and told me he didn't want to grow up; he said he wants to be my little boy forever. I told him that he will always be my little boy, no matter how old he is. That didn't alleviate his stress, but he did finally breathe a sigh of relief when I informed him that just because you're a grownup you don't have to stop playing with Legos. :)

What Time Is It?

Sadie yelled to me from the bathroom, "What time is it on my feet?" I went in and what was she doing? Standing on the digital-readout scale. :)

Love how that little brain processes info!

A Fun Little Video

Do you like Harry Potter? If so, watch this. Let me warn you, though, it will get stuck in your head! Proceed with caution...

Two New Favorite Fonts

Alamain and Dressy Dots. Add a photo and some stitching, and voila!


(Note to self: scrap more Eli photos soon!)

Apparently...

I came downstairs this morning and Sadie announced, "Apparently, Daddy says I can watch TV when I'm done with my breakfast." She proceeded to use "certainly" later in the day. Where these big words are coming from I don't know, but they sure are cute!

Today I conquered my desk with the help of Eli, who said he'd rather sort my paper than watch a movie. Um...who is this kid? He spent about half an hour making piles of paper by color. After he finished that and I finished cleaning my desk he helped me punch paper for a layout. I submitted the layout this afternoon and almost added him to the supply list as "Assistant Puncher," but then decided that perhaps the editor I was sending the page to might not share my sense of humor. :)

I will exit this not-so-exciting blog post by posting a layout I did a couple of days ago but haven't yet posted here (yes, I know "bubble" is missing a "b" but there's not enough room to squeeze another one in). I did this one with Collage Press paper. I think I've been hiding under a rock because I just found out about this company and it looks like they've been around for a bit. Their paper is gorgeous!

Looking For Something To Do Tomorrow?

If you're in the Denver area, you might want to check out the Valentine's Frenzy at Scrapbook Destination from 11 to 4 tomorrow (Saturday the 19th). I'll be there doing a make and take project featuring Urban Lily Secret Keeper Cards and the Scenic Route Loveland line.

I Was Right...Sigh...

Remember that "I Give Up!" post from the other day? Well, I was right....sigh...Seth and I had planned to take the day off today for a date day while the kids were in school. We were going to go to a movie and had planned to go shopping to buy Seth some much-needed new clothes. Instead, I am home with Eli, who is home sick from school, so Seth went to his office and is working today.

Eli, of course, is very happy about this situation, and said, "Hey! You and I can sort of have a date at home, Mommy!" Of course, he promptly went off to play by himself with his Legos. :) He did reappear and ask whether we could scrapbook together. He asked if I could help him with his page (which I did) and then he said he'd help me with mine. 3.2 minutes into mine he announced, "Mommy, this is sorta boring. Do you mind if I go?" I told him I didn't mind, so he's off playing with the Legos again. Wait! Now he's put on his art smock, his police helmet, and his astronaut backpack, and is holding the axe from his fireman costume. Um...space art fire police? Guess that could be a career of the future! Wait! He claims he's a "Space Police Axer In Charge!" According to Eli, "I fly in space, but not in a rocket because I have a booster backpack, and if there's anything that needs to be fixed up in space I use this axe to break it and I have this helmet to breathe and I'm in charge. And I'm in the circus." Hold on...I need a photo of this...okay, good, Eli humored me:



Here's Eli's layout. He wanted to use the same photos I used on a layout two weeks ago...and some of the same product:


In case you can't read the journaling it says, "Sadie is sile with papr" - or, translated, "Sadie is silly with paper." He was very impressed with the visual triangle he created with Sadie's sweater, the journaling note, and the title. Of course, there's nothing in the middle of this triangle, but at the very least he's absorbing some design principles! :)

Off to read some Harry Potter!

I Give Up!

Clearly, the universe is trying to tell me something. Every single time I've tried to accomplish something on a deadline this month an obstacle has been thrown in my way. Today my external hard drive threw a fit while I was trying to finish up some critical file transfers for work. My computer crashed, and it took me a couple of hours to sort things out. Turns out the computer works fine if the external hard drive is disconnected, which is good, but it also turns out that the external hard drive is kaput. All but the last batch of photos I loaded (which I will miss but didn't include anything "wow!") are backed up in two places (whew!) and Seth has all the music on both his laptops, so all is well.

This is a public service announcement. Back up your files. Now!

Note to self: Plan to accomplish nothing every day. That way there will be no stress or disappointment and you will be pleasantly surprised if you do get anything done! :P

Layout Catch-Up

The day before yesterday I posted a layout. Well, I did two others after that blog post that same night. I got so caught up in my crazy day yesterday that I forgot to post them here, so I'm doing that today. I think I was in an aqua mood!

Remember those Maya Road Office Sheers I mentioned last week? I finally used one!


While I'm sharing this "Lost" layout, I also want to share that I finally figured out where I can photograph layouts in my house (um...yeah...that took me way too many years!). The light that comes in through the back door is perfect mid-morning and I'd tried over and over again to photograph layouts lying on the floor there. Well, I had the spot and time of day right, but the key is apparently adhering the layout to the wall with masking tape. Who knew? I think I'm going to be doing a lot of layout photography over the next few days, especially those pesky 12 X 12 layouts and 2-pagers that need to be stitched if scanned. Then I can finally submit and/or post more of my layout backlog!

Funny, Not Funny, Funny

Funny
I ate breakfast with the kids this morning. All three of us were quietly chewing our cereal when all of a sudden Sadie became very animated. She perked up in her chair, looked at Eli, and said, "I'll do the moves, you do the farties, okay?!" Immediately she started doing some funky chair dancing moves, and, without missing a beat, Eli started in with fart noises to accompany her dancing. At that point I was still processing what Sadie had said, thinking to myself, "Did she say what I think she said?" A moment later it hit me and I lost it and started laughing hysterically. Once I'd composed myself (at which point they'd switched, with Eli doing the moves and Sadie doing the "farties") I asked them whether this is something they do regularly. Apparently so, but this was the first time in front of either me or Seth.

"The Moves"

"The Farties"

Not Funny
I got a call from Seth at 12:30 today. Sadie had tripped and fallen at school and Seth didn't have too many details save for the fact that they were concerned that one of her teeth was loose. He'd already made an appointment with the dentist before calling me, so he rushed off to pick her up from school and I dashed out to meet them at the dentist. Poor thing had a big swollen lip and a bloody nose and was very quiet and sad. The dentist says that in all likelihood the tooth root will firm back up (the alternative is that the root was too damaged and the tooth will begin to rot), so we're keeping our fingers crossed. After a sad hour or so Sadie perked back up, and by bedtime tonight all the swelling was down and she looked normal.

Funny
Sadie watched "Dragon Tales" this afternoon. As soon as it ended, she said, "Mommy, I want to go to Dragonland tomorrow day, okay?" "Okay," I said, "But how will we get there?" "Drive," she said, matter-of-factly.

Getting Out of a Rut

I've been in a rut the last few days and haven't been able to scrap. I was cleaning my scrap space earlier today and came across this series of five cards I made early last summer with patterned paper and embellishments added to cardstock I'd repeatedly stamped on:






I saw the cards sitting on my desk, waiting to be scanned, and, suddenly, I got an idea. I grabbed a piece of white cardstock, some red ink, and the same stamp (which is from KI Memories' Urban Geo set), and covered the whole piece of cardstock. Then I sorted through the pile of photos I'd been contemplating scrapping and chose one. The layout came together in under 30 minutes, including stamping time. And I think I'm back!


The best part of this whole process, though, occurred when Eli stopped by my desk just as I'd finished my stamping. "Wow, Mom!" he said, "That's so cool! It's kinda like you made your own scrapbook paper!" (Clearly a scrapper-in-training! :)) Then he grabbed it and when I said, "Hey! Put that down!" Eli said, "I'll be right back. It's just so cool I have to go show Daddy!" Seth says he came upstairs and asked, "Do you think Mommy bought this paper?" :)

Forgotten Layouts

I have vowed to weed through my "albums" (yes, in quotes, and that's because I use page protectors and 3-ring binders from Costco) and get older unposted layouts into my 2peas gallery. Some are layouts I simply forgot to post, others are ones I was holding out hope would get picked up (and I need to be better about realizing that after sending a layout to every magazine, and sometimes to the same magazine for two different calls, that it's just not going to happen even if I think the layout is the cat's meow), and others are ones that I never got around to scanning (oops!).

So...I just posted two to my gallery and I'll share them here as well. The first one I did for Scrapbook Destination and the second one was for the monthly Hall of Fame Product Challenge on the Creating Keepsakes Message Board - this one was from last spring and the manufacturer we showcased was American Crafts. Okay, so both layouts are American Crafts-only layouts. What can I say? It's an addiction! :)

Lost

The tooth fairy will be making an appearance at the Masket household tonight!

Sadie and Eli were extra sweet today. At dinnertime, Sadie told me, "You're my special friend," and, later, after I tucked him into bed, Eli said, "I love you twenty times more than you could imagine!" A good day! :)

Mug Shots

Take mug...


Add water. Microwave for two minutes:


Even if your politics are different, I hope you can agree that this is fun and clever product design.

On Trying Days...

It is helpful to have moments like these to hang onto:


Eli knew how tired Seth and I were so he offered to put Sadie to bed. He got her into her diaper and pajamas, brushed her teeth, read her this book, tucked her in, and lay down with her for a few minutes. Utter cuteness. Just what I needed.

Blog Utility

Voila! My first blog entry-turned-layout (see "Fruit or Vegetable?" from January 2nd):

The Birth of "Eastern Middle" and the Death of "Gridj Cheese"

A few days ago, Eli asked me for a grilled cheese sandwich. He's always pronounced it in this weird way and this time I thought to ask him, "How do you spell that?" His response? "G-R-I-D-J-C-H..." I cut him off at that point, grabbed a piece of paper, wrote "grilled" on it, and asked him to read it. He sounded it out perfectly and then the light bulb went off. "Oh! It's grilled cheese! Like on a grill! But Mommy, we don't make it on the grill!" After I went into an explanation of various cooking appliances and methods, he asked me, with perfect pronunciation, for a grilled cheese sandwich. And I was sad. One of his last baby-isms was gone, and I was to blame. What was I thinking?!

Fast forward to today, when I took Eli out on a lunch date to a Middle Eastern restaurant. Or, as he reported to his dad, "We had Eastern Middle food."

He's not a grownup yet... :)

A Resolution

I hate making resolutions, because I never keep them and then I get mad at myself. But this one is really important to me, so I'm making it publicly so that my readers (all five of you :)) can hold me accountable for keeping this one.

What I have always wanted to scrapbook are my beliefs. I know that most of the time when people hear "beliefs" they think of religion, and while religion is certainly part of that for me, I mean all of my beliefs. I want to record my beliefs about religion, social issues, political issues, economic issues, etc. I want to do this for me, so I can record all the thoughts - the decision and the indecision - knocking around in my brain, and I want to do this for my children, so they know what drives me and understand the reasoning behind it.

I have done exactly three layouts on this type of topic in my four years of scrapbooking. Yes, three. Two of them were in my Hall of Fame entry. One of them made it into the supplement that was packaged with the February 2008 issue of Creating Keepsakes, while the other one is still unseen. The third I posted a while back in my gallery at 2peas, and I'll share it again here. (Please note that I can't take credit for the "photos;" they are "Photo Real" stickers from MAMBI.)



Anyone want to join me in this journey?

Font Grumble

Why do some fonts not come with punctuation? I always type up my journaling in the standard Times New Roman, highlight it, and then switch to the font I want. It is beyond bothersome to find the perfect font, hit "enter," and then discover that my commas, periods, and apostrophes disappear. Are there really that many people out there who are anti-punctuation?

Party!

I design for my LSS ("local scrapbook store" for those of you who just read "LSS" and said, "Huh?"), Scrapbook Destination, and had a blast tonight attending the staff and design team party. I met some people I didn't know, reconnected with some I did, and laughed harder than I've laughed in a while. I picked up the Maya Road Office Sheers, which I've been coveting for a while. Hopefully I'll have time to play with those tomorrow. In the meantime, I'll share a project I did last week for the store using one of the Urban Lily Secret Keeper Cards:

Front of Card, Closed

Front of Card, Open

Back of Card, Closed

Back of Card, Open

Creativity Ebb and Flow

I had a very scrappy day today. First was an all-day playdate during which the moms scrapped and the kids played. I spent too much time gabbing about schools and furniture-buying and such and only got one layout done:


After the playdate I spent a few hours at home reading to Eli and getting things done around the house and then headed off to Archiver's to scrap with another group of friends. I was there for five hours and got not a single page done. The creativity just wasn't flowing no matter what I tried. It happens. I'll get over it. Hopefully inspiration will strike at some point tomorrow.

And...the big news is that Sadie is now officially potty-trained! Woo-hoo!

Upended

Ever have two days in a row when two majorly unpredictable things occurred, throwing both days off? That's where I'm at. Nothing on my to-do list is getting done. More tomorrow...that is if the trend doesn't continue.

Fruit or Vegetable?

At dinner tonight, Eli decided to quiz Sadie to see if she knew the difference between fruits and vegetables. The conversation went something like this:

Eli: Sadie, is lettuce a fruit or a vegetable?

Sadie: Um...vegetable.

Eli: Sadie, is a beet a fruit or a vegetable?

Sadie: A fruit!

Eli: Nope, a vegetable!

Seth: You know, there's an easy way to tell if it's a fruit or a vegetable. If it has seeds inside it it's a fruit, and if it doesn't, it's a vegetable. Sadie, what's a carrot?

Sadie: A vegetable!

Seth: Right! Now how about watermelon?

Sadie: Good idea!

Ah...there's nothing like the mind of a two-and-a-half year old.

Have to Start Somewhere...

I've decided that 2008 is going to be about "getting over it," that is, getting over the artificial barriers I am constantly setting up so that I can exist within my comfort zone. A few friends have been after me for a while to start a blog and I've had every excuse in the book: I'm too busy, I don't know how to make a banner, what would I call my blog, who would read this thing, etc., etc. So I'm "getting over it" and starting a blog. I might not have a banner up for a while, I might change this blog's title regularly, and I might never find a focus for what I write, but I'm going to start here, today, now.