At the last minute...

I ended up getting Kenny Chesney tickets for last night's concert.  A gal that I work with had purchased tickets for a very reasonable price last weekend.  Then yesterday morning she won a contest on a local country radio station where she got two tickets and back stage passes to meet Uncle Cracker (she was bummed it wasn't Kenny himself, but still had fun meeting UC) so she had two extra tickets.  I ended up buying one and my friend Evon bought the other one.  We had a lot of fun.  Here are some close up pictures that I got off the radio station website and from some of Joe's co-workers.

A few people in the Hy-Vee suite ended up getting last minute back stage passes to meet Kenny himself and then got to go in the front pit area right in front of the stage.  I am so jealous, but glad that they shared the photos.  They are AWESOME!

If you like Kenny...ENJOY the view!  :)

Uncle Cracker was good and the second opening act was Billy Currington.  He looked pretty good in his jeans too!  :)

And there were a LOT of people there that were "pretty good at drinkin beer", which is one of his songs that he sang.  

We had a lot of fun.   Off to have more fun tonight!

Darla

Practical Jokes!

Ok, I am not very good at pulling off practical jokes, but I did manage to have a little fun last week at work.  I work for a small company and many of us have worked together off and on for many years and know each other pretty good.

Part  A:  Well, the cleaning lady thought she saw evidence of a mouse in our building, so the President put a few Decon mouse traps (the kind that they crawl into and then can't get back out).  Anyway, for several weeks we have seen no evidence of a mouse and I am pretty sure the original evidence was probably donut sprinkles or something like that and not really "evidence".

Part B:  The weekend that Joe and Hope went to visit Grandma Karen, Hope found the rubber mouse she got from Annie and Ally at Halloween.  So I asked if I could borrow it...

Here is where story A combines with story B...

So I take the mouse to work and just place it so it is by the mouse trap so when someone would sit down to use the toilet they would see it.  Let's just say, we had some good laughs and got several people throughout the day and some weren't phased by it at all.

After a few days, most people in the office knew about the mouse.  Our President's office is in the building next door, so I sent him an email and said he better come check the trap.  He emailed back all excited that he would be right over.  He walked in and kind of jumped and then started laughing.  Then he wanted to know if there was anyone in the office he could scare with it.  :)

Our next victim was one of the VP's, which is my manager.  I have known him for years.  Jeff was gone on Spring Break vacation, so we had the other VP unlock his desk drawer and we created a "nest" out of a kleenex and put the mouse in it so it would be the first thing he saw when he came back.

A few other co-workers put donut sprinkles on his desk to look like more "evidence".

A few days went by after he got back and he still hadn't said anything, so I asked if he had a mint.  When he opened the drawer there was the mouse sitting there and the nest was gone.  He had found it, but it didn't freak him out.  He was investigating.  :)  So I came clean and told him about all the fun we had with the fake mouse.  He thought it was pretty funny.  He still has it and I suspect it will show up in funny places every now and then.

Well, I am heading to the Kenny Chesney concert tonight.  Later!

Darla

American Girl Doll Store

We took a quick trip down to KC this weekend to visit my sister and her husband.  It was a lot of fun.  And of course I got to go shopping in The Scrappy Gourmet store!  I love just walking around all the stuff.

We had a few things we wanted to do while we were down there.  My husband works for Hy-Vee, and they had built a new store and he wanted to stop and see it.  It was VERY big!  We also took Hope down to the American Girl store.  It was a lot of fun.  She has been have a great few weeks, so I bought her a new doll.  Luckily, Dee hadn't gotten her anything for her birthday, so she bought her some things too.  And Grandma got caught up in all the fun too and picked her up an outfit for her doll (and got some ideas for some new outfits to make for the dolls).

Hope dressed her doll in the Snow White princess dresses that Grandma D made for her at Christmas.  Everyone there was asking where we got that dress for her doll.

As you can see, her doll's hair had seen better days, so we took her to the salon.  They brushed her hair and put braids in.  It was amazing how good she looked, and the magic solution is water and the wire brush made for doll hair.  WOW!

The store was a lot of fun just looking around at everything.  

Here is her new doll-Kanani.

Here is Kanani in her other outfit ready to show Snow White how to do the hula.

The night we arrived in KC, Hope wanted to get her cousin Lauren's American Girl dolls and accessories out to play with.  Lauren was even home visiting (and like all typical college kids, brought multiple bags of laundry), so Hope asked her to play dolls with her.  They had a tea party.

I brought home lots of great scrapbooking supplies, so I can't wait to start creating some projects with it.  FUN stuff!

Have a good night!

Darla

One more day...

Four years ago today we lost dad to lung cancer.  I always struggle during the week leading up to the 18th because I think of the things we were doing during that time.  I am so thankful that we had those last days all together in the hospital.

Anyway, I thought of another song that I want to do that is associated with a song.  It is a country song called "One More Day..."  I wish I would have created the layout in time to post today, but I didn't think of the song until I heard it the other day.

But I have been thinking about what I would do with one more day.   There are so many things I want to tell him.  Hope has grown so much and he would just crack up at some of the funny things that she does.  I would love to see them play together.  See dad on the floor and Hope on his back riding him like a pony.  Sleeping on his belly like all of us girls did during nap time (although Hope NEVER takes a nap).  And so many more things.  Hope doesn't really have any memories of dad, but I still talk about him to her and show her this picture whenever I can.

We took this picture on our trip to Alaska in 2006.  Best trip ever.

Dad, I think of you often and I know you are watching over all of us, and I know you are laughing at all the funny things Hope does from above.  :)

Cheers!

Darla

More summer fun...

The past few days have been just beautiful, so I am very hopeful that spring is HERE.  Hope and I checked out the flower gardens to see if any of the new bulbs were sprouting yet, and they ARE!!!  Yeah!  I can't wait to have some tulips this spring.

Joe and Hope made it back yesterday from their visit up to see Grandma Karen.  I am so glad they were able to make the trip because while they were there Great Grandma Weber ended up in the hospital.  She was doing ok for a while, but now her kidney's have shut down.  So time will tell.  We hope she is still able to get home for a while.  So keep her in your prayers.

Here is another layout I completed while Joe and Hope were on their little trip.

These were various summer trips to the pool and other fun adventures that didn't warrant their own separate layout.  Still fun memories.

To jazz up the border, I added bling to some of the flower centers.

And I added bling to the flip flops too.

Here is a close up of the flip flop border.  I cut them out of pattern paper and added flowers to some of them and just bling to others.

Well, that is all for today.

Darla

Dreaming of Summer...

The weather is getting nicer, and I love it!

I have been scrapbooking some layouts of pictures from last summer.  Here is one of them.

Here are some detail shots of the layout.

I didn't have a lot of journaling for this layout, so I tucked a very small tag behind one of the photos.  Here is what is says..."Hope fell asleep TWICE while floating on the lazy river."

Otherwise, I used letter stickers to describe the locations of the pictures.

Here's to summer.  I hope it arrives soon!

Darla

Childhood Memories...

Hope was listening to kid music on her i-touch and got this funny excited look on her face.  She yelled, this song reminds me of when I was a child!  I laughed and told her she was still a child, so she further explained that she meant back when she was three (she is now six).  :)  It was cute!

I haven't had much time to create lately, but I did manage to finish and photograph this layout this week.

This is a layout of her preschool picture in 2009, so she would have been four (you know back in her childhood).  :)

This is a close up of the upper edge.

Butterflies are not traditionally on a school picture layout, but I wanted to include them since she had them on her shirt in the photo.

Sorry for the harsh shadows, but that was the only time I had to take the photo.  Oh well.

That is all for tonight.  Hopefully I will get to feeling better (still fighting off my cold) and get my scrapbook mojo back!

Goodnight!

Darla

Sketch Inspiration!

The Scrappy Gourmet is this week's sponsor at sketch inspiration!  Go check it out here.

Here is the sketch  (#210) for this week.

Here is my layout based on the sketch above.

I wish I would have made the inner red circle slightly bigger so you could tell it was to be a target for the paintball, but I already had everything put down.  Oh well.  I was trying to make sure the area where the target transparencies was white.  Then at the last minute I decided to add the large splat under the title area, which covered up a lot of the inner target circle.

I gave the layout some dimension by not gluing down the fingers of each splat and bent the papers upward.

I hope this layout was inspiring.  Now go check out Sketch Inspiration's website and submit your own layout based on the sketch.

Til next time.

Darla

Bad Botox??????

No, just a bad case of chronic HIVES!  I woke up this morning with a weird looking eye and half a fat lower lip.  By midday my upper lip and eye looked better, but now the lower lip was blowing up like a balloon and now I had them all over my shoulders, arms and back of my legs.  ITCHY!!!!!!!

I got up at 2am to take an allergy pill, but it didn't seem to help much, so now I have also added Benedryl.  I hope it does the trick.  I have always dealt with chronic hives off and on for the past 25 years, so this isn't anything new to me.

And to top it off, I also have the cold/flu ick that Hope had this week.  I don't seem to have the fever though, which is good.

Well, I am going to chill out for a little bit before the drowsiness of the Benedryl kicks in.  Looks to be an interesting weekend around here.  Think non-itchy thoughts for me!

Darla

Sick Day & Project 12 (February sketch)!

Hope woke up with a fever this morning, so we are home for a sick day today.  We rested this morning and then Joe came home for a long lunch so I could go to PT for my shoulder.  The Ibuprofen kicked in and she felt good enough to  play a few computer games.  

Now she is all snuggled up watching a movie while I make this post and check out some blogs for inspiration.  She was less than thrilled to have her picture taken.  :)  I am just glad that the rosy cheeks have subsided for now.  Let's hope it was a quick virus and back to normal tomorrow.

So, I was checking out Scrapbooks and cards Today here:  http://www.scrapbookandcardstodaymag.typepad.com/

I wanted to see the new March sketch for Project 12, and saw that my layout for January was one of the featured layouts.  How cool!  Grandma Weber (the subject of the layout) will get a kick about being featured on a website.  :)  

And speaking of Project 12, I just finished my layout using the February sketch.

The pictures I used were more from Joe's family.  This past summer, Joe's sister got married and I used pictures from their wedding.  It was a nice small ceremony at their home.  I even made the cake, my first attempt at such.  It turned out ok, but I don't think I will make another effort any time soon.  :)  To make the event even more special, Joe, my husband performed the ceremony.  They were having troubles finding someone to come out and marry them, so he went online and got ordained.

So here is my Project 12 Layout using the February 2011 sketch.

Almost all the products were from Pink Paislee except the bling buttons from Bazzill and the vellum from Creative Memories.

I will close with a funny story.  Hope woke up at 2 am and crawled into bed with us.  She has a cold (on top of the fever) and was having troubles breathing, so I was having troubles getting back to sleep listening to her breathing.  Anyway, she had been asleep for a while and all of a sudden yelled out "Square!".  I wonder what she was dreaming about?  :)

That is all for today.  

Darla