finding time

i just finished a whirlwind of scrapbooking!

i barely finished teaching my last class (delayed) of a layout, then on to preparing kits for the next class. every single photo required a unique mat. what was i thinking? the largest one required 2 different edge punches. one of the 4x6 required me to measure carefully and do a 'punch around the page' edge punch. i have a love-hate relationship with that kind! love the look---hate the work. but i keep using it. what does that tell you? after i finished that massive amount of work, i put together the next classes. it was one time in my life that i wished i was a faster scrapbooker!


here is one class:




and now since i can breathe a bit on the paper creative side...it is time to get dirty and work on our backyard.

i can't wait to share photos.

but i must wait until i am dirt-free.

with love

note to self:
must take photos of my ever-growing and never stopping kids! yikes!

we've been driving from place to place, appointment to appointment, etc. after 2 weeks of this kind of routine, we are tired of it. although i am thankful that not one of the places was to visit the pediatrician or doctor. we are surrounded by colds, flus and virus'. last year we caught every bug going around and then some. we are more than thankful for the break from illness this winter.

i thought i'd share one of my highlights of the month:



i taught a layout class at a local scrapbook store in January. it sold out in a few weeks and was still being requested up until the day of the class. the class for February has been expanded to two classes. not sure where we are at for enrollment, but it was nearly full last i checked. the first of the two classes is this Saturday morning. it is a bit of a fussy layout, but the part for making roses is actually relaxing. once the first one is made! fortunately the students will need to make a minimum of 6, so they should be experienced by the time they are done. i thought i'd share a photo of them here. i also love the strip of negative ribbon. is that not the coolest treat?!






i don't have any other "heart" photos for Valentines day, so i figured this would do.

somewhere a lover of printed music is probably cringing in pain...the flowers were made from old music books. i made sure the lovers of dictionaries are also writhing in pain too. cut and glued those pages up too! just to annoy a third group, i also grunged up a photo. yes, i crinkled the one edge on purpose. hard to see in the photo, but it is there. all in the name of art. somewhere i am sure i hear a young child cheering.

i hope you enjoyed your day of valentines. my family showed their love to me by letting me scrapbook to my little hearts' content today. love that crew! tomorrow we hope to have lots of fun together....so hopefully no one will mind when the camera tags along too.

just one of those things

soooo....i am terribly bad!
Kristian just shakes his head at me.

yesterday i signed up for a scrapbook class at Urban. it was amazing!! anyways...my story. i decided that it was also a great opportunity for me to take some new photos of the kids. i made sure they had clean clothes....brushed hair...clean faces...i even got a sheet and prepared a backdrop. yes! i was very proud of myself.

and as they say...pride goeth before the fall. {sooo glad we don't speak like that anymore!}

the kids were awesome. cooperative. smiley. funny. cute. i knew i got some great pics. at least i hoped!

i patted my back and began the download. at 95% complete my computer shut down the operation. due to...not enough disk space.

no surprise that i am in need of a decent storage system and back up. but today?!

not only did i not get to use the new and latest photos for the project. but i had to wait to see how the photos turned out! have i ever mentioned that i have a patience problem?!

i was able to make some room....and downloaded them successfully today. wahoo!!

and this is one of many great shots of these two. yay for us!!


as a reward for great posing i took them to Galaxyland. and it was a great time for all of us. i managed to make it home in time to shower, pack up my bag of tools, choose two photos that i had on hand, and get to the class on time.

another busy day

the "boys" worked another Saturday on the garage building.

here is a point of frustration of dear hubby....

we discussed long and hard about what side of the lot to build the garage. finally decided that the spot where the "old" garage stood was probably best. the original lot had a HUGE driveway. longer than what we needed. the minimum length required in our neighborhood is 4 feet, too short for our liking. and here is where my grievance begins....

WHY is this measurement in feet in the first place? all of the drawings are in metric. could we pick a system?!

WHY do they issue their permits based on the distance from your house, when there is a minimum distance from the back of the property? and how difficult can it be to figure out? i recall doing similar measuring problems in elementary math classes!!

WE are totally confused now. Kris is much more difficult to confuse than i am...and it messed him up! so either the permit system is totally weird...or we have lost all sense. (well....after dealing with the permit office...both of those statements could be true!)

so after the initial permit...we looked at the numbers and think....hmmm....that is shorter of a driveway than what we were thinking. so we made a call. of course nothing permanent like this can be handled via the phone! so he went back to the city and tried to get the numbers to jive. we thought he had been successful then they measured everything out this morning....instead of making the driveway a foot shorter, the permit office person made it a foot longer! (or something sort of like that! when the boys talk numbers....all i heard was "longer driveway than we had ever discussed".)

thankfully these boys are smart and know what they are doing! they leveled out the area for the garage and measured out everything the way they wanted....so i'll drag all the kids i can find and head to city hall Monday morning to get it straighted out. surely Kris -my super smart man - will get metric measurements from the back of the property and from the house. surely this problem has a simple solution. these measurements must be so exact. there is very little room for error...when it comes to inspection. drawing another permit is the last cost we want to add. all because of insane measurement descriptions! {insert scream}

i heard once that it is really rare to get building permits in Greece. i don't know if everyone is at the beach instead of working.... it is common to see just the ground floor of a home that has been sitting vacant and unfinished for years. i guess some people get impatient (imagine that!) and start to build before the permit gets issued...when they have been waiting for YEARS since the application. i gues it is the "better to ask forgiveness than permission" policy! then when the city officials finally get around to approving the permit...they see that the building has already begun to be built....they fine the person and not allow any new permits to be refiled. of course i'm basing all of this on the fact that the person who told me knew what they were talking about.....


yesterday i took the kids to the dollar store. we hadn't been for many months! they sell the cutest work gloves for kids. you can see them right behind Aidan (in the photo below). i found some gardening gloves too. and some golf clubs. and a badminton set. i figured this stuff would be good enough for the kids to enjoy at this age. they also had alphabet and number strips. i once spent at least $15 on some similar strips back when i was teaching grade four. the number strips go to 100. i can already see the potential....crafts, learning....

with determination. a pair of his scissors. he set to work removing ALL of the packaging. no he was not asked. no he has never done this before.

in this photo he is gathering up all of the garbage. and again...no he was not asked to do this either.

he has been wanting to go to the "robot carwash". can you figure out what that means? for the last month he has been earning quarters towards taking the x-trail through the automatic carwash. unbelievably this was not one of those chores that earned him money. but he is still working at adding money.

speaking of robots. he has decided that he wants a robot themed birthday party this year. and he made this decision two months ago. he has not forgotten.

watching "Bob the Builder" is no longer a show he looks forward to. he still likes "Max and Ruby" and "Toopy and Binoo". he now also likes "Word World" and "Word Girl" and other more educational shows. i can see that he is memorizing word patterns. he isn't always paying attention to the sounds the letters make, he is more interested in the shape and what words have that letter. so while other kids can tell you what sound an "A" makes...Aidan wants to know what words have an "A". i think he has something against "sounds"! way back when he was a year old it was the same problem with animals....it seemed like ALL the other one year olds knew their animals and the sounds they made. except for Aidan. i wasn't sure if he didn't know them or just didn't care. i'm not worried about this stage of his development...i just think it's funny! the fact that a three year old even cares about letters is good enough for me. beyond my expectations anyway.


so while the boys slaved away at the gravel encrusted backyard....i got to teach at Urban today! yes my first class went very well. i was more nervous about presenting the project and scheduling a date than i was about teaching. then Kris pointed out that i am a teacher...so i should be happy that i wasn't nervous about that part! good point. the only time i was nervous was the 20 minutes before the class...worrying if i remembered everything i needed. and once the class got rolling, about 30 minutes later i was fine. phew! and i cannot wait to do it again. i'm so pleased that the entire process was so positive and enjoyable.


and tomorrow is Father's Day.

Happy Father's Day Dad!

Happy Father's Day Kristian!

i guess i better get to sleep....i'll be the one making the coffee in the morning....

welcome to my rollercoaster

happy days. sad days. sick days. healthy days.


yikes!


could we have some stability here?



i'm hoping to not have to take Kiara to the pediatrician tomorrow. she is still finishing her medicine....and it is obvious she is more than ready to be done with it if i believe the drama she shows when it is "medicine time". thank goodness some smart pharmacist thought to make the medicine spoons look like crocodiles! but she had a fever again tonight. and she started a weird cough last night. by bedtime - and now - she seems well. do i dare hope that it will stay that way?



don't know if you read my "scrapbooking" blog....maybe you didn't know i had one. sometimes i put scrapbook stuff here too. i decided to keep crafts and family sort of separate. i go into details on the scrapbooking blog that not everyone is interested in. (either they don't care or i would bore those that taught me and now i make them read it again!) at the time it made perfect sense....LOL! there's some trivia you maybe didn't need to know today.


anyways yesterday and today i shared happy stories about me and my scrapbooking.

today i posted info and details about the class i'm going to teach at Urban in a few days. (so excited about that...can hardly contain myself!)

yesterday i had a happy posting at SIStv. very cool for me. and shocked me!



i like happy stuff. keep it coming!!




oh and i think i have a prize decided. it will be made by me. and it will be awesome. (of course that is my opinion!) i'll share more about that this week. maybe even photos?!

new

baby!


my sister Sarah went into labour on her own on Friday. and by the end of the afternoon baby Violet Renelle was born. yay!! nine pounds five ounces and twenty inches long. 6 days overdue. and i may be in big trouble if i report my sisters' size.....



and an update for us. Aidan woke up with a fever yesterday morning. he's had sniffles and coughs for a few days already. fortunately we were able to catch an appointment with our pediatrician. so now both of the kids and myself are on medicine. Kristian has managed to stay healthy despite all the germs being passed around. Aidan had his first throat swab - in case of strep...and he handled it very well. (and it did too...thanks for asking!) of course we have to be so sick during the few months that we are without our health benefits.


and a fun update for me. my class at Urban is now scheduled for June 14 at 2pm. you can go here to see my class listed and a couple of others that are going on too. i am very excited about this!!


and did you check out "webisode" #70 at ScrapInStyletv? i asked - ummm, i mean, forced - Kristian to watch it.


i got this one on facebook this week.

it's all about

recycling....


we were lucky to have been given a tricycle and a little "bug" for the kids to ride on when Aidan just learned to walk. and i have spent last summer and this spring trying to track down a used bike for Aidan now that he's growing. i was quite surprised what people have been asking for rusted chains and worn back tires.....that will need to be replaced....and bring it up to the same cost as buying a brand new bike. too crazy.

we were double lucky that i came across this add when i did.....brand-new bike, never used.....

which i prepared myself could mean all sorts of things. the worst being that the bike was difficult to ride and thus was never ridden. and that would mean time out of my day i'd never get back.....yes i think about this a lot! not to mention telling my little guy that we'd have to keep looking for "the one". that would be the hardest.

as you can see the kids love biking. definitely lots of their daddy....

Aidan was totally prepared. as you can see.

how thrilled i was when this bike was in the shape they told me it was in. and that it was obviously a good beginner bike.

and the happiest.....

a great day for Kiara to have a long nap.....

he rode up and down the sidewalk......for nearly two hours....

what a happy boy!

phew!!!!

and a happy momma that didn't have to replace any parts.

yesterday he (and his classmates) went searching for treasure in the class sandbox. this was his first find. i'm sure he is thinking he's on a roll with his luck!

i've noticed a great theme in scrapbooking lately.

recycling.

check out these ideas on "one little word".

and check out this contest at Prima. check out some of the ideas.

not to mention lots of the pages out there that use vintage items.

i think that "scrap" is coming back to scrapbooking.

it will be interesting to see where this will lead.

check out this winning project.

what better excuse does a person need to start scrapbooking.....



and i'm trying to think of something cool to do now that i've had 1000 views on my blog. i'm thinking of some kind of give-away. thinking about recycling....good recycling....not doing any purging at this stage of my scrapbooking....maybe a project that involves recycling....i'll decide by the end of the weekend.


in the meantime....so excited to be signed up for the "Siblings" class at Urban Scrapbook! if i can just find my supply list.....i know i got one....sigh.....it is time to "adjust the paper piles" again....already.... cool new technique....can't wait to try it out...