It's finally happening!!!

Ok, I was hoping this day would come.  Hope is actually tired when she got home from school today.  She is usually like the Energizer Bunny, but she fell asleep on the bus ride home.  YES!  And now after her bath tonight, she already asked if we could go to bed (at 6:45pm).  I couldn't believe it.  I know how she works, so I am trying to keep her up just a little bit longer, so she is spending some time with daddy while I post on my blog.

Next week she goes all day to Kindergarten, and I hope that she starts to sleep through the entire night.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Anyway, not much else going on here.  I am enjoying being home early everyday to see her get off the bus.  We usually have a quick snack and then some play time with the neighbor girls.  They have a lot of fun together.

I am going to start designing a Christmas mini-album with some awesome papers from MME.  Once I have some pages done, I might post a sneak peek.  So keep checking back.

I also was visiting some blogs and saw a call for some cards, so I started pulling out some papers to make some cards and projects.  Maybe I will give it a go and send in some work.  I have always wanted to get published, but in order for that to happen I need to send in my work.  I have only tried a few times.  I am going to try and make more of an effort in the next few months to send in my work, even if I don't get published.

Well, speaking of cards, here is one more card to share with you.

This is the second to the last card I made from my Pink Paislee scraps (although I found some more papers in my stash the other day).

I hope you have a good evening and day tomorrow!

Darla

Thanks a bunch card

Ok, not much scrapbooking going on in my neck of the woods.  Oh well.  Had a busy day with Hope.  We cleaned and then did some shopping.  Then she played solo for a while tonight and then the two neighbor girls came over to play.  They demolished the toy room.  :)  Luckily, we got it cleaned up again and ready to go the next time they come to play.

Well, I am tired tonight, so just have enough energy to share a quick card I made a while back.

This has some pink paisley, maya road, and a little bit of this & that.

I hope you are enjoying your weekend.

Darla

Riding the bus...

She got to ride the bus today.  She was pretty excited.  She sat in the very front with the neighbor girl.  They were both very excited when the bus came around the corner.  I hope it continues to be a fun experience.

We got our first call from her teacher today, BUT it was only to tell us that the bus was running behind so we wouldn't worry about her.  How nice!

Anyway, here she is getting onto the bus this morning.  She looks so little!  :)

Then last night, she wanted to use my Big Shot die cut machine.  She likes to cut shapes out to use for her art master pieces.  When I go to Archivers she likes to buy the glitter sticker paper so she can use it in the Big Shot.  It makes pretty cool stickers. 

Finally, I will leave you with another card.  I hope your Rockstar student is enjoying school as much as mine is.

Good night!

Darla

First Day of Kindergarten!

Wow, Hope started Kindergarten today.  I think she had a good day, but she didn't really talk about it much.  We had to keep asking her questions on what all they did.  She does have a little friend, Cali, that she has met a few times before school started and they are in the same class.  They will also go to the after school program together on some nights, so I think they will have a lot of fun together.

I am so proud of Hope.  She walked into her room, put her backpack in her locker and found her desk.  She is at a table with 3 other kids.  They had a lot going on this morning, with getting to know each other, 2 recesses, reading time and lunch too.

I didn't even cry this morning, but I was very nervous dropping her off hoping she would have a good day.  Joe and I both went to pick her up and she was busy playing with legos.  That is always a good sign when she doesn't want to leave to go home because she is having fun.  :)

Tomorrow she will get to ride the bus, so she is excited for that.

Well, time to go get her to bed.  Goodnight!

Darla

The night before Kindergarten...

Well, Hope is all excited about starting Kindergarten in the morning.  We didn't get her signed up early enough to ride the bus in the morning, so we will be taking her to the school.  Hopefully they will get her bus pass set up so she can ride on Thursday morning and get our normal routine started.

I have no clue if I am going to cry tomorrow.  Probably, but not until after we leave her in the room with her teacher.  It really isn't any different than when we would drop her off at preschool/daycare.  I have noticed how grown up she has seemed in just the past week or so.  She will see a lot of changes in the next year and learn so much.  She can't wait to read, so I know she is eager to learn.  That is so fun to see her excited about school and I hope she always has that spark to learn and read.

Anyway, I do have a few more cards to share with you.  The first one I didn't put a sentiment on it because it could really be used for anything, so I will personalize it when I am ready to give it to someone.  :)

The next card is a birthday card.  I wanted to try something different, so i added the "Happy Birthday" rubon to the flower.  Well, I must not have had the "B" on the flower very well because it flaked off.  I didn't notice it until after I took the picture, so I just used a black pen and filled in the "B" again so you can tell what it says.  Any "issue" can be corrected somehow when it comes to scrapbooking.

Well, Joe is putting Hope to bed so I am off to relax for the night!  

I will report back in the next day or two on how Kindergarten is going.

Darla

Meet the Teacher night

Tonight we got to meet Hope's Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Nelson and check things out around the room.  We also took in all her school supplies and looked around her classroom.  She was a little shy at first, but started to warm up as we walked around the school.

Our neighbor is in a different class, but another little girl we know is in her class.  She had swimming lessons with her this summer, and Joe used to work with her mom at Hy-Vee.

This is Hope and her teacher, Mrs. Nelson.  They were standing in front of the locker she chose.

This is Hope's classroom.  The entire school was remodeled last year, so everything looks new and has bright colors all throughout the school.  She has 25 students in her class, so Mrs. Nelson is going to be busy this year.  I think she has an associate to help out in her class.

Hope will be a Crestview Tiger (which is the same mascot as the HS she will eventually attend).  School colors Orange and Black.

Well, that is all for tonight!  Everyone have a good night!

Darla

It's Done!

We got the entire room done, with some time to spare before Hope gets home this afternoon.  She is going to freak out when she sees it.  She knew we were going to paint, but didn't know she was going to get new furniture too.  It turned out pretty awesome!

Here it is...

Hope actually had requested a rainbow on the wall.  Well, I didn't really want to do that, so I opted to buy a canvas at Michaels and paint a rainbow on that.  It isn't quite done yet, because I want to add gems  to each of the rainbow stripes.  I am still sorting through the bags of gems I bought for each color.  I did add some sparkly flakes to the cloud.  I might even add a butterfly too for some dimension.  I will post when I have it completely done.  

Well, I am going to go rest before she gets home.  We are going to make her cover her eyes like the tv shows do when they bring the family home (she likes to watch Extreme Home Makeover).

Darla

Bright cheery cards...

on a cloudy rainy day.  I just dropped off Hope at the neighbor's house for a play date, Joe is off to buy paint (for Hope's room) so I thought I would take the time to make a post.

We have new neighbors and I love that they have a daughter who will be going into Kindergarten too, so they will get to ride the bus together to school.  It is a lot of fun to watch them play together and I enjoy the quiet time I get when she goes to their house to play.  So much fun!

Anyway, here is a few bright cheery cards to brighten your day.

Both cards bases are made from clear acryllic paper.  It is really fun stuff and I got it quite a while ago at Archivers.  The papers I used were double sided, so it shows through to the inside of the card.  For the inside of the card, I just glued a strip of white paper across (you can kind of see it off to the left side of the card).  This is where I will add my greeting to whoever receives this card.

On the second card, the ribbon down the center of the card was actually left over from a Victoria Secret gift wrap set.  I had bought a gift card there, and they gave me a small box with the pink ribbon to tie around it.  Well, I ended up mailing the gift card so I didn't need the box.  So I put the ribbon in my stash and figured I would use it someday.

As I mentioned earlier, we are going to be painting Hope's room this weekend.  Grandma D is taking the twins and Hope down to her farm for the weekend, so we decided this would be a great time to get that done.  We are painting it her favorite colors, pink and purple.  She wants it to be a rainbow room, and actually wants a rainbow on the wall.  Well, I think I am just going to buy a canvas from Michaels and paint that.  Then I am going to get a big bucket of gems/bling and glue those to the rainbow.  I hope it turns out how I have it pictured in my head.  You know how those things go!  :)

We are also shopping for furniture for her room too. 

Off to go shopping!

Darla 

Let's Fly a Kite layout

Well, here is another layout I created last week.  This was from a visit to mom's farm last spring.  We got the kites out and had a lot of fun.

Sorry for the not so great pictures.  The lighting must not have been so great outside that day.  I also made the kite and tied string around it like a real kite.

This is a close up of the title.  I let it flow along the tail of the kite.  The clouds were made by gluing tissue paper to chipboard and then cutting out cloud shapes with a REALLY old template I found in my stash.  

This was the close up of the journaling.

It makes me wish we were just entering spring time instead of the end of Summer getting ready for school to start.

Good night!

Darla

wire bicycle-cool!

This layout has a really cool embellishment I made myself.  It was inspired by another blog (I have no clue who or where I saw it, but thank you to you if you are reading this).

This layout is about Hope's first bike ride, which of course ended in tears because she went over a small bank and ran into a fence.  Luckily, I was able to make it all better after a few tears.  It scared her more than anything, and luckily she wasn't hurt.  It was almost a year before she got back on that bike again.  Next step will be without the training wheels.

Here is a close up of the journaling and the wire bike.  I think it turned out pretty good.  I hope this inspires you to make your own wire bicycle or maybe something else.

Hope and I went to the Iowa State Fair with my sister Dawn, the twins and our mom.  We had all kinds of fun (& blew through a LOT of money).  It is always fun to go, but it can be really expensive to all the things we like to do & EAT!  We had our usually cuisine:  corndog, mini donuts, cotton candy (for Hope), strawberry smoothie, fresh lemonade and a pork chop on a stick.  YUM!  I wish I could say I started my diet, but we celebrated birthdays at work today with some yummy ice cream cupcakes from Maggie Moos.  They were awesome!  

Well, I got a new magazine today in the mail, so I am off to relax a bit and get some inspiration.

Goodnight!

Darla

Another layout

I have been finding a little bit of time to get some scrapbook layouts completed for Hope's album for 2009.

Hope was four years old before she got her first haircut.  She really didn't have much hair at all until she was about 2 and then it started growing like crazy.

I made an appointment for a salon that has special chairs/animals to sit on for kids.  My mom actually used to bring me here when I was younger too.  The salon is called The Lollipop, so I made my own lollipops to use on the page.  I cut chipboard circles and covered them with paper.  Then I created swirls to look like a lollipop.

Also, in the lower left corner is a small shadow box ornament.  I bought this years ago, with this page in mind.  I didn't even have a kid yet, but I knew what I was going to use it for (someday).  Funny how we scrapbookers do that.

Well, that is all for tonight!  Have a great weekend!

Darla

Iowa State Fair time!!!

Well, this year may be interesting for the Iowa State Fair.  There is a lot of major flooding going on in Central Iowa this past week (with more rain on the way later this week), and one of the main roads leading to the fair was closed today due to flooding.

In honor of the State Fair starting tomorrow, I just got around to making a layout from last year's fair adventure.

Ok, my favorite part of this layout is definitely how real the cotton candy looks.  :)  I used 3 cotton balls and just kept stretching them out and used liquid glue to put them on a chipboard piece I roughly cut into the shape of cotton candy.  I colored the chipboard piece with pink marker before glueing down the cotton in case you could see through.  Then I used bubblegum glimmer mist on the cotton.  It took several coats with blotting with paper towels in between to get the color just right.  Then while it was still wet, I sprinkled on some pink glitter.  It just stuck right into the cotton balls.

For the title, I used letter masks for the large letters and rub-ons for the smaller letters.  My "a" didn't stick down very good, so the paint went over the lines.  After I took these pictures, I actually used a black marker to color in where the pink paint wasn't supposed to be.

I also hand wrote my journaling again.  I have almost been doing that exclusively lately.  I guess it is a new trend for me.  I don't mind hand writing my journaling when I only have a few small details to note. If I have a long story, then I like to type it out.

I wish I would have had this layout done in time to enter it into the fair competition.  I have entered in the past, but haven't the past few years.  Well, there is always next year.

The fair lasts for 10 days, and it will probably be closer to the end of the fair before we get there.  Until then, I will have to think about all the awesome fair food I only get once a year.  I almost always end up getting the same things:  mini-donuts, corn dog, and a hand shaken lemonade.  There are usually other things too, but those are my favorites!  YUM!

Well, it was a long night of storms last night, so I am heading to bed early for once!  Goodnight!

Darla

Boyfriends...

Well, here was the conversation Hope and I had last night as I was putting her to bed.

Hope:  Mom, I really Hope no more boys are nice to me anymore.  Because I can't have any more boyfriends.

Me:  I kind of giggled and then asked, "Well how many boyfriends do you have?"

Hope:  I have 4!  Dillon, Sam, Noah and Owen.

Me:  Again, I try not to giggle, and said "Wow, 4 boyfriends!  That is a lot of boyfriends."

Hope:  Yeah, that is why I can't have anymore.  Then she jabbered a little longer before she finally fell asleep.

I could hardly contain myself.  I just thought it was so cute.  In a few years it won't be so cute though.  Yikes!

Anyway, here are some more cards to share with you.

I originally made this card to give to a friend of mine.  I attended an engagement party for her tonight.  She looked so good.  Of course, I forgot to take the card with me, so I will have to mail it to her.  So typical me!  :)  I always have good intentions!

Darla

More Pink Paislee cards

Ok, I found time to make a few more cards using the Amber Road Pink Paislee scraps.

Here are a few more cards.  Enjoy!

The first 2 cards used two of the journal/title cards as the main focus of the cards.  I just added ribbon, brads, etc to jazz them up.

The last card was from a portion of the die cut paper.

Well, I am hoping to do a little creating tonight before I head to bed.  Goodnight!

Darla

Misc. inspiration from CHA

Ok, here are some misc. layouts, projects, etc. I found at CHA.  Some of them I have found some items to create some of my own.  I can't wait.

I love this idea to create your own guest book for a wedding or any other formal event.

Here I am with Greta Hammond in the Pink Paislee booth.  She also designs for The Scrappy Gourmet.  She was so nice!

I can't to find the new Tim Holz Sizzix crown die.  

Oh yeah, I also met Tim himself and got a free distressed embossing folder.

I love the idea to make Christmas ornaments out of the two different die cuts.  Fun!

I love how the film ribbon was used, and I can't wait to create a page using this same concept.

This was a cute Making Memories cupcake made from the new rosette ribbons and the new papers.  Cute!

This is a card made from the new clear journal cards from Pink Paislee.  I can't wait to  play with some of those.

Ok, I love these bottles from the Prima booth.  I have already started searching for jeweled items to add to the top of some glass bottles.  I have had some good luck so far.  Once I have some completed, I will share them with you here.

This was a layout from the Prima booth.  I though the ribbon flower swag was an awesome idea.  I hope to put my own spin on it for a layout.

The other cute idea from the Prima booth were these dresses made from the new paper lines.  What a cute idea!

Ok, I just really like this quote, and I am sure there are a few people who think this every day I get up.  :)

Finally, these were some tags in the  Sizzix booth created with the new Tim Holtz Sizzix dies.  Very nice!

Ok, it is time to get my little one out of her princess dress and into her pajamas and into bed.  Wish me luck!

Goodnight!

Darla