So the holidays have come and gone - I'm slowly putting my house back together, purging old stuff to make room for new. I'm happy to have some new holiday decorations to put away, thanks to some DT projects.

For Midnight Oil Scrapbook Designs:
The first is a Christmas Countdown calendar I made with their Easel Mini Album, some extra acrylic pages and my Bind It All:




The next is an acrylic banner that looked pretty with the snowy theme of my tree:



For Treasured Scrapbooking:

This wall hanging was a plain wooden plaque from the local dollar store. I used watercolor pencils to color the sweet birds on the Jenni Bowlin paper included in the December kit. The crackle paint layered over some gold acrylic added some vintage holiday feel:






And a "Let it Snow" holiday banner that I made using some wooden snowflakes from M's. The closeup shows the wonderful sparkly effect the Mica flakes add:






Sadly, the snowflake banner was trampled by Tommy and Harley, so I'm gonna have to redo one of the flakes or just pitch it all togerher.

Here's a couple of pictures of a mini album I made for the holiday Bazaar raffle at my kids' school, using gorgeous Paper Loft papers available at New England Scrapbook Co.:




Looks like I've been busy, huh?
Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

It's the Holiday Season...

And a whoop-di-do!
Sorry, for some reason that song is stuck in my brain today, LOL. I've been meaning to blog for the past couple of weeks, but kept putting it off. Not for lack of having something to blog about. I've got lots of news and projects to share. It's just that I was afraid it would turn into a monster post!

So let's see... my birthday came and went with the big ice storm on the 12th. We spent the day without power. Since our well and oil burner don't work without power, that meant we had no heat or running water. We spent most of the day bundled up in the living room around the fireplace. The kids had fun playing with legos and action figures. They were almost disappointed when the lights came back on. Ahh, to be young! For those of you that don't get to see ice storms, well they really can wreak destruction. Here's a young tree in my yard that was bent with the added weight:


But, the ice can make trees look like art too:



Let's see, I do have some scrappy stuff to share...
First, a toot! I was asked to join the Design Team at Scrap for a Cure. I've known for a while and have been patiently waitin to share! Diana and Patti put together an amazing mix of papers and embellies, always with beautiful trims and a fun vintage find. This month's kit is gorgeous - grab one to scrap all those holiday photos you'll be taking!


Here is my layout for the latest Dreamgirls challenge:





This challenge features a sketch by the talented Liz Qualman. The twists are to use a holidy song as your title and to add some glitter. I used Stickles on the holly berries and outlined my chipboard title with some Pink Paislee Pixie Sticks. Love how this turned out! Hope you'll get a moment to scrap a bit and play along with us.

Okay, so this post is getting a bit lengthy - still have tons to share, but tomorrow's another day, right? Until then...

Making a List

Tonight I spent the evening helping the kids make their lists for Santa. We've been talking about scaling back, and not just for the financial reasons. A few years ago I heard or read this somewhere: that since Jesus only received 3 gifts on his birthday from the 3 Wise Men, then maybe we should too. If the Son of God received only a few gifts, why should we have so many? This line of reasoning made sense to me, and helps to bring the focus back to what the holiday is really about. So the kids made their list and really, compared to other years, didn't ask for the sun, moon and stars. I hope that they will be happy with less.

Mike brought the tree up today and we'll decorate it over the next several days. I can't believe how fast time seems to be going! I have the Christmas Story on tonight and am enjoying it as always.

Here is my layout for the latest Dreamgirls challenge - to scrap something (not someone) that you can't live without. The twists are to use paint and chipboard on your layout. I used the November Treasured Scrapbooking kit for my page:



The mug in this layout was a gift from the kids a few Mother's Days ago. I love it. It holds just the right amount of coffee. I'll wash it out before pulling a different mug out of my closet. It makes me smile. It reminds me that I'm blessed when I'm feeling tired and sorry for myself. It's truly a "must have" for me.

Starting to get a bit sleepy here, with a busy day ahead of me tomorrow, so I'm signing off. Goodnight!

December 1st!

Can someone please tell me where November went? I'm still up to my eyeballs in fall photos and it's time to get out the holiday decorations already!

Anyway, I have lots to share today, starting with the reveal of the December kits over at Treasured Scrapbooking.

Here's the first page I made with the kit:



and here's another for my holiday music challenge:


Today was the start of the new DT term - you need to go check out the rest of the kit reveals - these girls are seriously talented!

Today we announced the new DT members at Dreamgirls. We were blown away with how many talented scrappers applied. We wish we could have chosen more! The new team will start with the December 15th challenge. So without further ado, here they are:

Elizabeth Carney

Sophia Soh

Chataqua M. Yardley

Susan Dupre

Erin Gudge

I'm really looking forward to working with these ladies. I hope you'll check us out!

Birthday Bonanza!

If you know my family, you know that fall is an extra busy time of year for us. We celebrate 3 of my kids' b-days in November, following Ryan in October and with Colin on deck for December.
Here are some pictures:








This weekend was spent in a domestic flurry, since we have a tradition in our family that the birthday celebrant chooses dinner on their special day, and of course the cake.
Brenna chose homemade chicken noodle soup. She and I spent a lovely afternoon together, cooking. She is learning to chop veggies and did a great job. She definitely inherited her dad's love of cooking! Desert was a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. YUMMO!

Saturday was Jimmy's birthday. He's had a lousy cold and spent a few days home from school with an ear infection. Well poor kid, this is just the type of thing that gets his asthma going. He spent the day miserable, needing a nebulizer treatment. He managed a smile before his cake and presents though. His cake was a Boston Cream Pie cake:

Both of these cakes are from this book - it makes box cake mixes into amazing deserts:


And since I never shared a pic of Tom Tom from his special day:


Lots more to share, but it's getting late here. Go check out Dreamgirls . We're fortunate to have Midnight Oil Scrapbook Designs sponsor us with TWO big prize packages! You won't want to miss this! While you're there, take a peek at our DT call - we're looking for a few new people to add to the team.

Talk to you all soon!

Rooty toot toot!

Happy Monday everyone! How was your weekend?
I spent mine working, so I'm a bit pooped. I'm working tonight too, so I'm heading off to nap in a bit. But I'm so excited, I had to blog to share some good news from Leslie at Treasured Scrapbooking:

The new Design Team is (in no particular order):

returning from the previous DT:
Lisa (justlisa)
Michelle L. (alysmom)
Julie (juliesaddiction)
Shirley (Shirley)
Tracey (TraceyT)

and our new DT members:
Laura (laurajean)
Abbie (AbbieT)
Debbie (debbiefitz)
Cherrie (floridagirl)
Cristal (pinky)

I'm just thrilled to be part of this talented group of scrappers and can't wait to get started! Leslie puts together some gorgeous kits and is one all around sweet lady. Thanks Leslie for this opportunity!


Next, I need to share a non scrapbook related toot, for my son, Colin. Here he is with his report card:




And here is a closeup - check out these grades!



We're so proud of him. THe whole report card is amazing, but math has always been a challenge for him - so getting an "A" is a huge accomplishment. He was actually skipping with glee as he left the school building. I was so happy for him, I got all misty!

Anyway, I think I hear my bed calling me, so have a great day, everyone!

Fall is Whizzing By...

Don'tcha think? The leaves have passed peak here, we've woken to frost several mornings, and the clock's been turned back.

My little Tom Tom celebrated his fourth birhday yesterday. He exclaimed, "Holy COW!" when he unwrapped his presents - a Shake and Go Batman plane and a Vtech Motion. I just wish I could pause time for a while so I could savor his little-ness a bit longer.

Halloween was low key and fun here. All of my kids changed their minds about what they wanted to dress up as.

Here is Colin, as a Demon Skateboarder, (note the matching Element hoodie - isn't that serendipitous?) with Ryan, as a skeleton:

Brenna switched from her planned Mummy costume to a hippy chick. Isn't she groovy?

Jimmy chose to be Black Spidey:

And Tommy, who swore he'd be Superman, changed his mind when he saw this alien costume. I'm glad he did, even if the mask only stayed on for pictures, hee-hee!

I had worked the night before and was absolutely exhausted. So putting on a bit of makeup seemed like a good idea. I added some past costume pieces and transformed myself into this:

Pretty scary, huh?

Dreamgirls challenge 15 is live. I used the song lyrics to the

song "B!tch" by Meredith Brooks as inspo for this page. The yellow and blue flower was made from glimmer misted cupcake wrappers:

You can hear the song on my playlist in the side bar. Come play along! Dolores put together an awesome prize package. Plus, a little bird told me there might be a DT Call coming soon, so you wouldn't want to miss it!

Still here!

Oh my, I can't believe it's been so long since I posted! Been busy with the kids. Ryan turned 8 on Oct 7th. Here he is looking at his musical bday card. When you open it, you are treated to dogs barking to the tune of Happy Birthday, LOL!

He has always loved dogs, so this card was perfect for him. He is getting so big, but still has the sweetest little boy giggle. I could listen to him laugh all day long.



He had his first sleepover party, complete with make your own sundaes, Goosebumps movies and staying up late. All the boys had a great time. I spent the next day recovering with a good long nap. Ryan did too.


One afternoon we took a family walk along a local river, which was the basis of this layout:




Those black swirls along the flower cluster are Whirly Gigs Stick Ons by MOSD. Love them!

I have lots more pictures and updates to talk about, but it's way late here, so I'll try to post more tomorrow.

Where'd you go, Deb?

Wow, it's just been crazy busy around our house the past couple of weeks. I've worked a bunch of nights, which is great for the paycheck, but not so much for creativity. Sleep just has to become the priority, along with making sure I give each of my kiddos some quality time.

The weather's getting crisp here in New England and the leaves are starting to change. I'm waiting a bit longer before I start snapping some foliage shots, though. The black bear in our neighborhood has been making a few more guest appearances in the woods near where I walk Harley. I have to confess I've been a bit spooked to walk the dog at night. Hope Mr. Bear hibernates soon.

The color yellow has been making me happy lately. I bought myself some new sneakers, and as soon as I saw these, I had to have them. I've decided to start walking when I can, and these make me feel more excited about it, LOL.




My Monday night CBS show have restarted. I was so excited that Horatio Kane was not killed off on Miami CSI. Even though he seriously overacts, I love David Caruso in this role. I just laugh at him sometimes. One of these days, I swear I am gonna count how many times he removes and reapplies his sunglasses in an episode. I bet the number will be over 20!

Tommy decided to boycott gymnastics classes last week. He flat out refused to go. I realized that he is probably to pooped to play on Thursday afternoons. He rides around the world all week while we drive the bigger kids to their activities. He goes to preschool 2 mornings a week. He generally does it all without a complaint. By the time Thursdays at 4pm roll around, he's had it. I figured I needed to give the little guy some downtime so we withdrew from the class. And I enjoyed taking a 2 hour nap with him on the couch. Message received, little man, loud and clear!

Speaking of Tommy... Here is a layout I made about him tonight. I did this for Challenge #3 in the Top Designer contest at Bad Girls:




I used their Sept kit for this page, which needed to have white space and demonstrate "less is more." Gasp! If you know me, you'll know that this was a HUGE challenge for me. But I'm so happy with how this turned out.

I really like the Glitz "table of elements" paper. I may need to get some more of it. Keeping fingers crossed that it will get me through to the next round.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

What's Up?

I've worked the past couple of nights. They were quiet shifts, which is always a pleasant change from the norm. I really enjoy the majority of the people I work with. We get giddy since we're all sleep deprived. When it's quiet, we all get laughing like crazy. One funny thing that happened last night...
One of my co-workers asked me to come in and help translate for a Spansh speaking patient she had. So the two of us are in the room with this woman, asking her about her baby, if she has any pain, is she using the breast pump, yadda yadda. That's when the patient passes gas. Loudly. Long winded. And she doesn't even blink . She doesn't look or act embarrassed. She just keeps talking like nothing happened. Yikes! I think my eyes popped out of my head as I stifled my giggle. Now I know, toots are a normal body function. But this one was loud and it had some hang time too it. Even if I'm a nurse, I can be a bit juvenille about these things. Needless to say, the girls and I laughed about this all night.

I scrapped tonight. Look for Challenge 12 to be up on Dreamgirls later today.
In the meantime, here is a layout I made for a contest over at Bad Girls. I was feeling down in the dumps when I scrapped it, so I don't think it's my best work ever. The assignment was to use layering on a page. I worked with bright colors to try and cheer myself up, and it did help. Not sure if it's good enough to move me on to the next level in the contest, but that's okay.







Okay, gotta run - it's late and I need to catch some ZZZZ's!

Sad tonight

I was flitting around on line tonight as I always do and discovered a post about Aleida Franklin.
I was on the DT at Scrapping the Music with her. Aleida was killed in a car accident on her way to work this morning. While I can't say I knew her well, I am able to say she was a warm and real person whose artwork truly inspired me. I am so sad for her family, and hope they will be comforted when they look back at her scrapbooks.

It blows my mind to think about this. She probably got up this morning and assumed today was like any other day. How could she know that today was to be her last morning on earth? This could be any of us on any given day. Give your family an extra hug and remember to not take any moment for granted.

Wow, has it really been 2 weeks?

I can't believe it's been 2 weeks since I've blogged. Guess I just got caught up in the whole back to school whirlwind. I actually now have two mornings a week where I am ALONE. Can you believe it? It's been 11 years in the making. I still just come home and savor the quiet.

Of course I squeezed some scrap time in since my last post.
Here is a mini I made for MOSD that captured the back to school excitement:








Speaking of Midnight Oil, here is a layout I made featuring Stick Ons. These are SO cool. They are a cross between rub on and stickers. They are vinyl, and add just a bit of dimension to your projects. This page is about Jimmy's preschool road race. The car, the exhaust, and the "o's" in the title are all Stick Ons. I love working with them. Check them out!





Have a great night!