A day for scrapbooking

I made myself sit down and actually do a scrapbook page. Last weekend I joined my sisters Suzee, Margaret and Beverly, my niece Kacie and Bev's friend Terri for lunch at Claim Jumper. Our life long family friend Chris and his son joined us in time to buy us dessert. It was a lot of fun but unfortunately it didn't end so well because of a heated discussion about something from when my mom died. Anyway, here is the scrapbook page I did this afternoon....

Template by Yin, Artimia kit with additional items from Katie Pertiet

I are not smart

I must be truthful with you. I don't always do the smartest things. Let me give you an example of the most recent dumb thing I've done.....
This is a really dumb thing to do when you've just recently lost 20 lbs. Yeah, making Toffee Crack is something you only do if you want to gorge yourself on high sugar, high fat treats.
I even went the extra mile and added pecan pieces and some melted white chocolate bark to the top.
And since misery loves company I wanted to share these images with you and perhaps you will visit this website for the incredibly simple recipe for this highly addictive snack.

Recollections

I am one of 4. My dad, at times, affectionately called us Thing One, Thing Two, Thing Three and Thing Four (go read The Cat In The Hat) and I am Thing 4. It wasn't always easy being the baby of the family (although my sisters seem to think I was spoiled).

We were pretty poor when I was a kid. I remember we sometimes got hand-me-downs from a family with older girls. I was the smallest so I got the hand-me-downs that my sisters had grown out of. My mom was a great seamstress so quite often she made our clothes.

If you'd ever spent time at our house back in those days, this was a common site to see....

Holly, sitting at her sewing machine. And if you are curious about what she is working on, then the next photo is for you.
She made each of us a Holly Hobbie doll and our very own Holly Hobbie dress. As you can see, we were very happy.

I wasn't always happy to have sisters. We had our fair share of fights growing up. Of course if you were the one caught being mean, you had to say the family prayer that night. Have you ever tried to pray when you are being a meany? Not an easy thing to do.

Now that I'm a mom, I look back to the days of my youth and can't help but ask, How in the world did our parents not kill us? I have only 2 and there were days that I thought they might not make it to their teenage years. My mom and dad had 4 girls in 4 years.

I really love these sisters of mine and I treasure every memory of growing up in that crazy house. BTW, I think we are overdue for a get-together.

It's OK to scraplift!

I've been feeling kind of down for a few days so I thought maybe if I did some scrapping I'd take my mind off my troubles. Here are a couple of pages that I scraplifted* today.
My page of Jacob is scraplifted from this page.

My page of Jared is scraplifted from a layout I saved in my ideas folder, but I have no idea who did the original. It was a good way to pass the time.

*scraplift: the act of copying ideas and designs from another person’s scrapbook page to use in your own pages.

Yeah, something is wrong with me

Ever since I came across this website, I have been totally addicted. I spend way too much time drooling over the photos and having fantasies. You'd think that I would be smart and stay away since pretty much everything I see is forbidden to me. My family is shocked that I torture myself in this manner. Why? they ask me.... I tell them that soon, although not soon enough, I'll be fulfilling my fantasies. Ah, I am counting down the days.

You Might Enjoy This

I'm finding myself singing this song and it's making me hungry.

Sometimes I Wonder

On any given day, I have many questions that go through my head. Today I will share just a few with you....

If I am running the air conditioner at 78 degrees (with the thermostat upstairs), why is my loft 82 degrees?

Have you ever seen such a cute little USB memory stick? (compare it to the regular memory stick above it)

Why do I take so many pictures of my cat? Does he even care that nobody can resist his silkiness?

How can my child sleep with his bed like this?

How can my child sleep with his bed like this? Wait, I'm beginning to repeat myself.

Is ther an unwritten rule that says at least 85% of boxers manufactured should be plaid?

Why didn't we take the cute cake off the outside box it came in before we took pictures? Why did we leave it there for the whole party?

If anyone has some answers, I'd love to hear them.

Ingenious...Totally!

I was in a bit of a dilemma today. I've got this old pair of worn in Levis. They are at that stage where they are soft and the denim is thinning a bit. Well, they had a small rip in the seat that became larger from wearing them over my growing behind. Because I am cheap cost conscience, I decided to repair them instead of replacing them. So I got some cute flower iron-on patches to repair them with. Unfortunately the iron has been missing ever since we moved. I really wanted them fixed.

And then it came to me. We had another iron in the house. And I knew exactly where it was. Only this iron isn't usually used for anything remotely like this. It was my step-daughter's flat iron for her hair. I said to myself, "It gets hot...just like a clothes iron." And do you know what? It worked GREAT!
I just kept moving it and squeezing until each little petal was fused tight to the jeans. Ingenious! In fact, I think it worked even better than the times I've had to iron on patches for my kids clothes using a regular iron. I don't think I'll tell her that I found another use for her flat iron. We'll just keep this our little secret.

Science Fairs and Camping Out

Just last week my step-daughter Olivia participated in her school's Science Fair. Unfortunately we got some bad information about what time it was happening so we got there as it was ending. We went in anyway so we could check out her project.

Her daddy is checking out the eggs that she did her experiment with.

She had 4 eggs in different substances and recorded what each did to it's egg.

Olivia is showing us one that was unaffected. The most odd thing I see in this picture is the sweatshirt she is wearing. I'm telling you it was about 95 degrees outside this day.

Had to get a close-up of her eggs during the experiment. That egg in vinegar is pretty gross looking.

As that week came to a close, we were ready for our kid free time. Only those moms and dads who are on their second marriages would know what these are all about. (As much as we love our children, we still enjoy the time they spend at the other parental unit's home.) We decided to load up the truck on Saturday and head up to the cooler climate of Payson, AZ.
It takes us less than 2 hours to get there. We love to drive around....even when we have no place to go. It's a stress reliever for us and we always enjoy each other's company and conversation.

Saturday night we just sat around by our fire talking and playing Farkle. I thought it was chilly, but Jason thought it was great. I was feeling a little sorry for myself because I'm on a diet and wasn't able to eat the pizza he brought back to our camp site. Yeah, yeah, I know pizza is NOT a camp food, but we didn't plan in advance and the impromptu adventure is more important than what you eat.

In the morning, Jason lit our fire back up and we put our percolator on the hot coals. While waiting for it to get hot, I snapped a few pictures to show you why I really don't mind camping out.

Jason found this super duper cool truck tent at Cabela's. It sets up super fast and then we hook the opening around the end of the truck.

Standing inside the tent (and yes, it's tall enough to stand upright in) you can see our very cozy bed set up in the bed of the pickup. Jason bought an air mattress that fits the pickup bed and we throw a thick foam pad on top of that. Then I put some king size sheets on it with some blankets and VOILA! Comfort at it's finest.

I can't wait to go again while it's still cold enough to have a fire going. Too bad most of our kids don't enjoy camping.

Get Ready

Mother's Day is just around the corner...