March Swap Group - St. Patrick's Day

This month, Angie was in charge of Swap Group. She thought it would fun for everyone to make a St. Patrick's Day door hanging and then bring it for show and tell.

I was such a slacker. For all of February, I kept thinking, "I have until the 16th." I don't know why the 16th, but that is what I kept thinking. Then last Friday night, I realized our group always meets the first Tuesday of the month and that was only 4 days away! Since I was going to the city on Saturday, I got on Pinterest and started looking for ideas, knowing that I would only have Sunday to get it made.

I'm not really into door hangings, but I still wanted to make something. I found these cute lepercon hats and decided to make one for everyone. They are just those some glad containers you find in the paper towel section of the grocery store. I painted them green, but it took like 5 layers of paint to coat them well. I pretty much hated them by the 4th coat. I also didn't buy enough paint, but luckily I had some in a slightly different color, so I used it too. I wanted something quick and easy for the hat band. I thought maybe some black tape; I found a sheet of black duct tape and it was perfect. I cut it into half in strips and wrapped it around the hat. Then I cut out some yellow buckles and some clovers I found online. I was going to fill them with chocolate coins, but the store was sold out. So I did Rolo's instead.

In the end, they did turn out pretty cute and everyone seemed to love them. 

Valex's 1st movie - The Lorax

I remember watching "The Lorax" and "The Sneetches" all the time as a kid. I think my mom had recorded it on TV for us to watch over and over. Which we did, all the time. We loved those movies. So when I saw "The Lorax" was coming to the theaters, I decided, since it was a movie I know Vanessa and I both enjoyed as kids, it was a movie we needed to enjoy together now. Then I thought it might be a fun movie for Valex. I know Vanessa belongs to a book group and each month she gets a new Dr. Seuss book and he really enjoys those. I really wanted to take Valex, but he's not even 2 years old yet, so I wasn't sure how he would do. So I asked Vanessa what she thought. She thought he would do fine so we decided to try it.

Last night, I got to Vanessa's and Valex was all ready to go bye-bye. We decided to hang around the house for a few more minutes and get to the theater a few minutes before the show started so he'd have that much less time to get bored. Once we got there and found some seats, I went out and bought us all treats. That little boy loves popcorn! He looked like such a big boy eating it out of the bag.

I took a picture of him and his mom just before the movie started. He was only watching the previews, but he seemed pretty fascinated with the large screen.

I was still a little worried about how well he would do, but he was such a good boy through the entire thing. It is a kids movie so of course I heard lots of kids crying and fussing, but never once was it Valex. Vanessa thinks he slept for about 20 minutes, but each time I looked at him he was awake. He did loose his binks towards the end, but that didn't phase him. I heard Vanessa tell him it was gone and he believed her and went right on watching the movie.

The movie was great. It was so much fun to be there with my sister and for Valex's first movie. On the way home, I decided that when the movie comes out on DVD, I'm going to have to buy it for myself and for Valex.

Boondocks

Last week, Jessica's family had a party at Boondocks, in Layton, to celebrate Jade's 6th birthday. Jade is one of Jessica's cute nieces. Andrew had to work, so Jessica asked if I wanted to go with her.

We both bought the 2 event card. It let us do two of the things and then it also came with a $5 card to use in the arcade.

Jessica and I decided to play a game of bowling. She totally kicked my butt, but it was still fun. So much fun, that we decided we'll have to go bowling with the boys sometime soon.

After bowling, we watched Jade open presents. She got some fun things! Then we went outside with a few if Jessica's family members and played mini golf. I'm not very good at that either, but it was still fun. Jessica was a sweet aunt and let her nephew take turns with her. 

We both used the $5 to play skee ball. I won enough tickets to buy 3 airheads and a fun size starburst. We bought matching bowling pin cups, but couldn't get them in our picture since I was also the photographer. (We didn't think to get a picture with them until after her family left.)

I had so much fun and am so glad to have such a wonderful friend.

Close to My Heart Scrapbook Retreat

Several months ago, Janel announced she was going to host a scrapbook retreat at Hidden Springs in February.  I was the first name on the list. I figured Josh would be home, but by that point I might be tired of him being underfoot all the time, so I would feel fine to leave him on his own for a weekend while I went and scrapbooked for a weekend. Plus, in January he went to Ohio for two weeks to hunt. (If he'll ever bring his camera home from work, I'll blog about that.)

Then the wedding stuff hit. About 3 weeks before the wedding, we were in bed almost asleep when I realized that I couldn't remember the exact date of the retreat, but with the wedding stuff taking three weeks, I would most likely have to miss it. I was heartbroken. I got out of bed and fired up the laptop. I couldn't find an email about the retreat so I emailed Janel to find out for sure when it was, but I was sure that I would have to miss it. So the next morning when I got her email saying it was the last weekend of February I was relieved that I wouldn't miss it after all.

The Hidden Springs Lodge was booked Friday through Sunday with a late check out at 2 PM. It was only about 12 minutes from home, so I could've gone home at night to sleep. But because I was one of the first to sign up, I was allowed to choose one of the bigger bathrooms. And I knew I would stay up late, so I might as well just sleep there too.

I got there Friday morning about 10 and didn't leave until Sunday afternoon around 1:30. Scrapbooking is like the one thing my best friends don't do, so I was worried I might be lonely. Luckily for me, in the end, one of my friends from work came with me. I was so glad she did. I knew a few people there, but not well enough to have been comfortable. I told Karen that if she hadn't of come, I might have just set all my stuff up in my room and stayed there the entire time, except to eat. We had a blast and I'm glad she could go.

When I got there, there were several tables set up already, but since I had brought so much stuff, I also brought my own table. I found a corner where I could have plenty of room, but still be a part of everything. It ended up working perfectly because I could also use the space under the staircase. Each time I went under there to get something, it felt like my own den.

Here is what the area looked like when I got there.

After that, it was always a mess, but I took a picture at what I thought was the messiest moment. Once it got dark, the lighting wasn't very good, so we borrowed the lamp from our room. Then on Saturday my feet were killing me from the hard floor. So on Saturday we also borrowed a rug from the hall in front of our room.

Getting packed up and ready to head home. It doesn't look like a lot, but that is 12 trips to the car (including the food that was in the fridge). I think I took over half of my craft room. Just about the only thing I didn't take was about half of my paper packs and my ribbons. I was worried I would take too much, but in the end I did end up using everything. Well, kind of. I didn't use all of my stamps, but when I used a few, I was glad I had them there.

 I don't know how many people stayed the night and how many went home. I think the the busiest time was Saturday afternoon, there was probably around 35 people there.

My area is on the left of this picture.

Janel provided all of the meals for us. I'm a picky eater, so I was a little nervous. But everything was DELISH! I seriously wanted seconds after each and every meal. But I didn't want to look like a pig or take someone else's food before they could eat. And I was always anxious to get back to my scrapbooking.

Friday night, Karen and I stayed up until about 2 AM Saturday morning. When we went to bed, we set the alarm for 8 AM so we wouldn't miss breakfast. At about 7:30 we woke up because the sun was shining right in our eyes. We tried to fight it for a minute, but then admitted defeat and went down stairs. Saturday night, I went to bed around 3:00 AM and Karen was about 30 minutes behind me. At 7:00 AM we were woken up by someone playing the piano. I sure wished they would have waited a few hours for everyone to wake up. I know some people didn't go to bed until 5 AM, so for those poor people, they had only been asleep for 2 hours. But since the sun was about to peek through our window, we decided to get up. By this point, I had had about 6-7 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours. I ended up only doing a few pages Sunday morning, but I was so drained. I finally cleaned everything up and then went and soaked in the hot tub outside for a few hours before heading home.

I wasn't planning on buying many kits (but I still did in the end), so I brought everything I would need to create on my own. I also brought all of the blank pages I have made over the years as part of the monthly group.

Each time I started a new page, I would first take my pictures and go through my premade pages. I have like 50 and in the end I was pleased to use a few of them.  If I couldn't find a premade page, then I took my pictures over to Janel's precut kits. If I could find one that worked, I added it to my ever growing list of stuff I was purchasing. Even after that, I still ended up making a few pages from scratch. You can spot them easily, they are the plainest ones. I plan to add embellishments later when my craft room is all put back together.

I ended up making like 25 pages. I was only going to post a few pics of my favorite ones. But they all ended up being my favorite ones. I had thought about working on pages for Christmas presents, but instead decided to make the weekend all about catching up on my stuff.

Case in point, the below pictures are from like 3 years ago! I had scrapbooked them for Melanie and Barb, but didn't do one for myself. I promised myself I would do them later. I really never meant to wait SOOO long.  

This page was made from one of Janel's kits she had for sale.

This page was made from one of Janel's kits she had for sale.

This page was something I made when I still went to Andrea's group a few years ago.

It worked perfectly for some of my favorite fishing pictures from 3 years ago.

This was a page I made from scratch.

On Friday, Janel did a session where we made three Christmas pages, including an interactive one with flip flaps.

The Christmas tree is 6 flip flaps. It was a bit of work, but it turned out so cute! I don't have very many pictures from last Christmas. But I plan to take lots of pictures next year so I can use these fun pages. The above picture shows just the tree. The below picture, I flipped the first two flaps so you can see where the pictures will go.

This page was one of the monthly pages I've made in Janel's group.

This page was made from one of Janel's kits she had for sale. It also had the words "American Boy" cut out, but I just wanted to use to use it for our horse riding pics from this summer. Janel also had a girl version of this page, which I bought, even though I currently have no pictures to go on it. I also bought 2 other kits that I thought were super cute and will find a place to use them. With one kit, I bought 3 so I can use it for family.

This page was from a previous retreat Janel did.

This page was made from one of Janel's kits she had for sale. I didn't have any pictures for it, but since its made from my favorite past paper packet, I HAD to have it. I'll find some great pictures for it someday.

The first 25 people to sign up got a bonus kits. Janel had "FAMILY" stamped on hers, but I decided to leave my blank until I'm ready to use it.

On Saturday, Janel did another workshop. This time she showed us how to make 6 pages from one paper pack, with a few extra pieces of card stock. She had let us know before hand what we would need to buy so we could follow along. The paper pack she used wasn't one of my favorites, so I decided to use different paper. First, is a picture of what hers looked like, then below it is what mine looked like. While I was working on mine, I had a few people tell me how beautiful they were. That made my day. One lady wanted to take pictures, but I wanted to finish them with embellishments first. By the time I was done, she had left for the weekend. But she made sure to tell Janel to get pictures for her. When Janel saw them, she showed them to everyone so they could see how different mine turned out.

Janel's version.

My version, including a few more spots for extra pictures.

Janel's version.

My version.

Janel's version.

My version. My half circle says "Wild Wild West" with buttons between the words.

Janel's version.

My version. Its pure coincidence that my version is on blue paper too.

Janel's version.

My version. On the right page, the bottom left corner was a "oops". So I had to stamp another image, cut it out and then glue it over the first one so it looked like it belonged from the start.

Janel's version.

My version.

This was a page I made from scratch.

This page was made from one of Janel's kits she had for sale.

This page was made from one of Janel's kits she had for sale. The white boxes could also be pictures, but since I didn't have any more pictures from cake class, I decided to put the embellishments there instead of where they were in the sample kit.

This one, I had a premade one that would work, but the colors were all off for what I had in mind. So I copies it but, with these colors. I'm glad I did, it looked so much better then if I had just gone with the original page I had.

This was a page I made in one of Janel's past monthly groups. That day she had cutouts for friends, family, and I think sisters. So glad I went with friends, it made it perfect for the cooking classes I took with Jessica last fall.

This page was made from one of Janel's kits she had for sale.

Like I said above, I was only going to post my favorite pages, but they all ended up being my favorite. I think its because I like how each page turned out. But also, because when I look at each page I remember all the happy memories and that makes it my favorite too.

I think Janel plans to do something like this again next year. I can't wait!

Janel's Blog

Janel's CTMH website

Valex's Wagon

I was at my sister's visiting the other night when my dad stopped by with a present for Valex. My dad had found these cute little red wagons and got one for his grandsons. Valex loved it. We showed him how he could pull his stuffed tiger around in it. We showed him how he could put his balls in it and then dump them out. Then he showed us how he could ride in it. 

Throughout the visit, he keep panting at us like a dog so I had to get a picture. 

40 Bags

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to dejunk my house. I briefly mentioned hearing about a 40 bags in 40 days project, but decided to give myself a full year instead of 40 days. Turns out this 40 days project takes place in the spring. Some of my swap group buddies decided to do the challenge and invited me to join them. They've got about a 2 week head start on me, but I'm finally starting. I thought I'd keep a list so I could keep track.

1. Bassinet

Ok, so it wasn't in a bag, but its big enough that I'm counting it as one. Also, its been gone for a week now, so now I can not feel like such a slacker. I gave it to a girl I used to babysit. Its so hard to believe she's now old enough to have kids of her own. I've now gotten rid of all the big baby stuff we had. I have some cute blanket sets I need to try and sell and then get rid of some adoption stuff. I'll have to include that as part of this 40 bags project.

2. Bathroom junk
3. Bathroom junk
4. Bathroom junk
5. Bathroom junk (This is when I started to feel like a hoarder.)

Bathroom junk has included lots of shampoo bottles from hotels, half used hair sprays, expired prescriptions, etc. I have a DI bag going, it has 2 hats and a cute bag in it so far. I also have another pile for Heather that included cute hair stuff for her growing family. Everything else has gone in the garbage! Both bathrooms cupboards are about half as full as they used to be, maybe even less then that.

At this point, I had to remind myself a few things. 1) If I haven't used it in a year, its time to get rid of it. This has worked pretty good. I did keep one items, its a gift from a friend and even though I have not used it in the last 5+ years, I just can't make myself get rid of it. 2) I'm grateful for some of the deep cleaning I did last fall, I think it will make this easier. As I've lost weight, I have given away all of my old clothes. Also, when I got all my Pampered Chef stuff, I cleaned out my cupboards and got rid of a lot of old stuff there. I'm not trying to count this stuff in my 40 bags, I'm just glad its that much less stuff to deal with. 3) I need to stay more organized. I spent all morning upset because I couldn't find a paint brush I KNEW I had. I finally used a different one and it worked fine, but while cleaning the bathrooms, I found that same brush I KNEW I had.

6. Several wicker baskets and puzzles that have never been opened.

I threw away the worst ones that were pretty beat. I was picky and kept only my favorites. Now that challenge will be not buying new ones at the DI. When I threw those away, I thought of something else I wanted to throw away, but couldn't find it. Yay for me, I think I threw it out a while ago, after holding on to it for several years. The puzzles, yes, they were in good shape. But 2 of them were white elephant gifts we got at Christmas last year that were clearly from the DI. I figured they already had a chance at the DI. If the previous owner didn't use them and I didn't then its time to just get them out of the junk cycle and save someone else the trouble.

At this point, my garbage can is full and the truck doesn't come until Friday. So I kept my momentum going and scrubbed my bathrooms real good. My housework gets pretty neglected during the winter while we work 5 days a week instead of working four-tens and having Friday's off. But next week we go back to our summer schedule and I have Friday's off again. I'm going to try to hit it hard for the next few Friday's and get rid of my 40 bags.

Next week, I hope to tackle my craft room. Its in the WORST shape it has even been. There isn't even a path anymore. I did tear it up to take half my stuff to the retreat last weekend so that is part of the problem. But the bassinet I got rid of, it wasn't completely useless. I was using it to store crochet thread and other things. Now those things have no where to be stored, at least not neatly. I think I'll try to find a nice shelf or something this week I know I will get rid of a lot of stuff in the craft room. I actually want to go grab a few things I know are in the closet, but like I said, there isn't even a pathway in there, so I guess it will have to wait for next week.

Now when I go to swap group on Tuesday, I can honestly tell them I've started on my 40 bags.