Party!

Here is Sadie at her party yesterday, and yes, this look didn't leave her face all day long! :)


The weather cooperated, so we were able to just let the kids play in the yard for most of the party. Love easy entertainment! We did play a game of pin the Tinkerbell on the castle, which Sadie's big brother lovingly made for her. He drew the background scene on a big piece of poster paper:


and then made a couple of different Tinkerbells that I scanned so that I could make one copy for each child (note the attention to...ahem...detail in the second one - when I saw it I laughed, which made Eli very upset :)):





Of course, no birthday recap from our family would be complete without a photo of Seth's cake work:


We mixed princesses, fairies, and mermaids for this party, because, well, when you're three, that's what's important! :)

Yay! I'm Back!

To 8.5" X 11", that is! After nearly three years of working almost exclusively in the smaller page size I simply ceased to be able to do anything other than 12" X 12" pages this month. I was starting to worry about myself! :) Here's another view of that crocus I posted about the other day:

See? Spring!

Over 70 degrees and sunny today, and a spring layout to go with today's weather:


The background here is my new favorite piece of patterned paper. It's the "B" side of Scenic Route's Providence Scrap Strip paper. I bought two pieces so I could use one for the "A" side and one for the "B" side and I've already used both for the "B" side (okay, there are some scraps left, but still!). Um....I think I need more!

And...here's our first crocus of the year, which bloomed around the time the snow melted yesterday afternoon:


See? Spring! :)

Could It Be?

Is it really spring? Can I say that without jinxing it? Besides the tulips and daffodils and hyacinths and crocuses popping through the earth, I've got two pieces of proof: 1) it was 73 degrees today - or at least that's what my car thermometer said, and 2) yesterday I went to get the mail and there was a ladybug crawling on my front door. Sadie let the ladybug crawl all over her and loved it (look in her hand):

One Year Ago Today...

Lisa Bearnson called me to tell me I had won a spot in Creating Keepsakes' 2007 Hall of Fame (also known as "HOF"). I was stunned. Truly. I had had exactly six scrapbook layouts picked up for publication at that point (and had had zero layouts picked up by Creating Keepsakes, although certainly not for lack of trying!) and had entered the HOF contest more to hang out with friends who were also entering than to win. I almost gave up entering with one layout to go (I was trying to fit entering in around a major work deadline), but Emily, Heather, and Mary Kay all threatened me within an inch of my life and were instrumental in giving me the final push I needed to finish my entry. When I mailed my entry off I honestly thought I had the teeniest tiniest chance of winning an honorable mention and never for a moment thought I'd win one of the top spots. In fact, I still can't believe it, even with multiple copies of the The Scrapbook Hall of Fame, Volume 9 lying around my house!

So...to everyone who says it won't happen to them, or that they don't have the "right" equipment to achieve success in the world of scrapbooking, don't give up hope! I put together a HOF entry with photos taken on a five-year-old Nikon point-and-shoot digital camera, used Microsoft Office Picture Manager for photo editing, and printed all of my photos at home. I didn't - and still don't - own any version of Photoshop.

Here are photos of one of my entry pages (all four layouts pictured were published - three in the Hall of Fame book and one online), front and back:


This has really been an amazing year in so many ways. I have had the privilege of getting to know the other Hall of Famers online and have had the opportunity to meet many of them in person, as well as most of the Creating Keepsakes editors, at the summer and winter CHA trade shows.

I know the announcement of the 2008 Hall of Fame winners is still a couple of weeks away, so I want to wish all who entered (and are reading this) the best of luck!

I Have Homework

This evening, Eli asked me to play school with him. He wanted to be the teacher and asked me to be the student. He disappeared and returned about five minutes later with this assignment for me to complete:


Clearly, his vocabulary is far beyond his spelling - love the "intrnl bode prts" bit. His kindergarten class is in the midst of a science unit on the body and Eli is loving it.

The Birthday Review

I have a long history of being sick on my birthday, and today was no exception. While I'm past the flu bit, I've got lingering pinkeye. Ugh. I'm also hugely sleep deprived because both of my kids have been sick off and on for the last three weeks; I can probably count the number of uninterrupted nights of sleep I've gotten in that time frame on half of one hand. However, today could have been worse, like my birthday two years ago...that year I got a stomach virus exactly two hours before my birthday dinner; I distinctly remember sitting on the bathroom floor, trying not to vomit (unsuccessfully), with four-year-old Eli standing over me asking, "Mommy? When are you going to come downstairs and eat your cake?" Fun times.

There were lots of good things today, though, even though I wasn't feeling 100%. There were birthday calls and emails and message board well-wishes, hand-drawn cards from the kids, and a dinner of matzo ball soup followed by homemade cake and ice cream. (An aside... since a sleep-deprived Seth forgot to chill the bowls for the ice cream maker ahead of time, my birthday continues tomorrow with the intended-for-today homemade ice cream. In less than twenty-four hours I will be eating Seth's famous hazelnut coffee toffee crunch ice cream. Mmmmm.....)

The best birthday present of all, however, came at the kids' bedtime, when Sadie came in to hug Eli goodnight while I was reading to him. She climbed up into his bed and, while they were hugging each other very tightly, Eli said to her, "I'm so lucky that you're my sister." Sadie replied, "You're the best brother in the whole wide world." At that point I dissolved into a puddle of tears, because I'm the world's biggest sap.

And that, folks, reminds me of a layout I created a few months ago that I've never posted anywhere because I was hoping it would get picked up. In a way I'm glad it didn't, since that means I can share it here: