Bits of Hope...

Last night while watching the American Idol finale...when Neil Diamond came out and started singing Hope said..."Wow, he's old!"  Joe and I cracked up and said we thought he looked pretty good for his age.  I guess the older you get the better everyone looks as they get older.  :)

We had a little neighborhood girl drama this afternoon, but hopefully they will all make up and play together this weekend.  I just seems to be when one girl comes into the mix her and Hope just seem to disagree.  I wish I could say it is like when Hope and her cousin Annie "fight" and then 10 minutes later act like nothing happened.  Oh well, they will all get through it, but could be a long summer since Hope will be in the school program and the rest of the girls are home playing together all summer.  So when she gets home they will probably have been playing together all day. Maybe one or two of them will want to do something different.  Keep your fingers crossed.  :)  Girl drama...so not ready for this!

Hope came home this week and wanted to buy some songs on iTunes.  After a few days she finally earned the songs...Firework by Katie Perry and Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO.  Cracked me up that these are her new favorite songs.  I guess we have moved on from YMCA.  :)

Hope's art area is ALWAYS messy (I think she gets that from me) so last night I bribed her...I told her I got the new purse die cut and if she would clean up her table she could use it to make some little purses for her friends.  Within 20 minutes the table was clean.  Now keep in mind, she probably has no idea where to find anything if she wanted to, but it is off the table.

So I showed her how to put the first one together and off she went.

Here are two of the purses she  put together and she was going to give one to each of the neighbor girls with some sweet treats in them.  I think she is going to make some for her teachers before school is out too.  She loves making crafts like this, so I knew this would be a fun project for her to make.

I don't know if you can read this or not, but this was on my local scrapbook store's blog.  I thought it was pretty funny and had to share.

And now some random shares...here are two more cards I made using the MME kraft 6x6 paper pad.

The first one is actually a birthday card, with the sentiment inside.

This one could be used for graduation, etc.

Well, that is it for tonight.  We have one more week of school and then I have a second grader!  Oh my!

Darla

Do wishes come true????

I had a very busy weekend.

I got to go to a scrapbooking retreat at my church on Friday and Saturday.  Then Hope stayed at my sister's overnight so Joe and I could go to a company retirement party.  We met them at church and Hope had a VERY important question...she wanted to know if we could go to the mall after church and buy these awesome shoes.  They were silver and sparkly with a bow and had heels!  I told her we would see, and she even offered to use her own money.

I had too many late nights in a row, so when we got home from church I skipped lunch and went straight to bed for a LONG nap.  Hope must have had a long afternoon and night with the twins because she even laid down for a nap too.  That NEVER happens unless she is sick or REALLY tired.

So after we both woke up, she started crying and it was because she didn't get to go buy the shoes and what if someone else got the shoes before she did....boo hoo hoo, sob sob sob!

I looked up the mall hours and looked up the shoes on-line to see what they looked like.  They were very cute and I had another item I needed to take back to the mall, so off we went.  We got the awesome shoes, a new bathing suit and cover up and on our way to the car we dropped a few coins into the wishing fountain.  On the way to the car I asked her if she made a good wish and she replied that she just asked for a wish not anything specific, but if she thought getting a unicorn would be a pretty good wish to have granted.  I just had to giggle.  I asked her where we would keep it and she said in the back yard, like that is where everyone would logically keep a unicorn.  :)

Next we headed to the grocery store.  Of course she had to wear the shoes right away.  :)

They are a bit big for her but she can grow into them and the strap helps them stay on for now until she does.  She is oh so "ooh-la-la".

She had to wear them to dance tonight too, since they happen to be the only shoes she could find to put on (except for the perfectly good pair that were sitting right next to them).  :)

This is her ballet costume for her recital coming up in a few weeks, and oh look, there are the shoes again!  I have a feeling we are going to see a lot of these shoes in the future.  :)

Hope lost another tooth (it had been almost the entire school year since she had lost a tooth) on Friday at school.  It happened in the morning and I was coming to the classroom for Spanish class observation time in the afternoon.  She was so excited for me to get there and show me her new smile.

About a week ago she came home and wanted to go get some clay at the craft store.  Well, we didn't have time to do that, so I encouraged her to get her play dough out and create something with it and it would dry up hard like clay.  So she went to work on some fairy furniture.  She created a bed with pillow (the white piece), lamp and chair for the tooth fairy to use when she visited us next.  The funny party about her losing a tooth that day is that i had no clue she even had a tooth loose enough to come out.  Once she gets it just a little wiggly she works it til she has it out.  Silly kid.  Anyway, so when I got home from scrapbooking late on Friday night, the tooth fairy had already been there.  And she must have really enjoyed her fairy furniture because she left fairy dust all over.  ;)

We found this in the back yard tonight after watering the flowers.  We think Joe created it.  :)

Well, if you stuck it out this long now I finally have the Mother's Day card I gave to my mom to share with you.  I finally got it to her this week.  Better late than never, right?

My mom likes to sew and quilt, so when I saw this pattern on the MME papers, I knew it was perfect to cut out and use a a card.  With just a quick sentiment stamped on the front, two pearls and tied a ribbon in a knot and added it a wooden spool button and it was done.  I think I also cut out a small banner and placed it over some text that didn't really go with Mother's Day.  It all blended quite nicely and no messy glitter because it was already on the paper.  Love that!

Well, I am off to finish up a few cards from the weekend.  I will share all of that in due time.  Later!

Darla

A tall tale...

Just before I was expecting Hope's bus to arrive I received a text from joe that he got a message the buses were running about 20 minutes late.  So a little while later hope jumped in the front door and started telling me a WHOPPER of a story...

The reason the buses were late was because just as school was to let out it was put on lockdown by the local police.  This part I know for a fact, but what follows is hope's version of the drama (in bits and pieces)...

mom, they locked the doors of our classroom and (her teacher) was locked out, but someone's mom let her back in...

(A boy) was in the bathroom and he saw the whole thing...the robber came down the hall and got to the middle of the school and that's when the cops came running in and caught him...(not true)

I saw the cops put the robber in the car...then later told me she was in the classroom and didn't see anything, but so and so saw it and said it was all true...(not true)

At one point in the story she mentioned that one of her friends was missing and she was worried she had been kidnapped because she wasn't on the bus home.  Then I mentioned that her mom went on the field trip today and she probably went home with her.  Her response "oh yeah".  Later I got a text from the mom and she said it was scary being in the school and she was pushed into Hope's classroom when the lockdown happened.  Hope's teacher started calling the other classrooms and found her daughter in her brother's classroom (she has started to go to the pick up lane).

The really weird thing is when I was in elementary school we took a field trip to living history farms (the same place she went today on her field trip).  On that trip we ended up being locked down in a picnic shelter because a motorcycle in a high speed chase had wrecked and the rider ran into the living history farms land area.  The other strange thing is that yesterday her school had a lock down drill, so I guess it was all fresh in their minds of what to do.  :). The mom I talked to said they handled everything perfectly during the emergency.  Good job teachers and school staff!    

Now for the rest of the story...

What actually happened is as the end of school was approaching the local police was responding to an altercation/stabbing in the neighborhood and as a precaution put the school on lock down so all the kids would be safe. I know it doesn't have the juicy drama of hope and her friends' version, but I prefer the minimal drama version and ending.  :)


Ok, speaking of school, here is a school layout of Hope's first day of school for first grade. I love the Little Yellow Bicycle paper line for this layout.  I wasn't sure at first since my daughter's outfit was pink, but it worked just fine.  Here is a full view of the layout...

The chipboard bus had a different number on it, so I sanded it off and used the glitter/transparent star with number stickers to add her actual bus number.

I love the banner title and the journal spot to add details of her class and year.

I love how I added the journaling for this page.  I worked on the spacing and kept printing it to make sure it fit before I used the actual paper.  The bottom of the page was a partial cut using a spellbinders die to only get one side of the die.  It turned out pretty cool.

Using the same paper line, this is a single page layout of Hope's last day of Kindergarten.  This was actually a make and take I made from CHA (last summer when this line came out) and I held on to it until I found the right pictures to use on it.

I added handwritten journaling on the ruler papers

...and used letter sticker for the title and the layout was finished.

Ok, well that is enough excitement for me for one day.  Have a good one!

Darla

 

You are cordially invited...

...to Hope's "kid" wedding on the last day of school.  Oh boy!  So it all begins...

Apparently her previous husband to be broke up with her, so now her boyfriend is Dillon.  She had told me a few days ago that Dillon was now in love with her.  And today she came home and announced her and her fiancé were going to get married.  Her exact words.  I didn't even know she knew what the word fiancé meant.  :)  She also said he would marry her no matter what!  And he got in trouble today for kissing her.  Yikes!

So she said they have it all planned out to get married on the playground on the last day of school.

I just had to laugh because it brought back a LOT of wedding memories of when I was a kid.  There was an old tree stump in the middle of the playground at school and it was kind of hollowed out and had a step on one side of it.  So it was perfect for someone to stand on/behind like a minister and conduct a wedding.  There were a lot of pretend weddings throughout my elementary years.  Such fun memories.  :)  I wish I had a picture of that old stump.

A picture of Hope will have to do...

After the discussion above, I decided now might be a good time to get out the flower girl dress I wore at my sister Debbie's wedding.  I was just going into Kindergarten when I wore it.  It was almost identical to my sisters wedding gown with a small train and everything.  I LOVED this dress.  So we snapped a few pictures of Hope in the backyard tonight.  The little bride to be (SOMEDAY) but not anytime too soon!  It is always fun to pretend.

Well, since my mom hasn't received her Mother's Day card, I will wait to share it here.  I will in a few days after I have the chance to give it to her.  I have a few other cards on their way in the mail too.  Sadly, I make lots of cards, but am not very good about getting them in the mail.  :)

So I will share a baby project with you that I gave to a friend just last week.  I bought a cute little dress that was inside the gift bag.  The large Melissa Francis silk flower on the bag is actually a hair clip.  I hot glued it to a hair clip and then clipped it to the bag as a decoration that could be removed and worn.  When the flower is removed I placed a button and ribbon underneath so the bag can be used again and not look like it is missing something.  :)

Here is the card I made that went with the gift.

I love the Papertrey Ink die I used to make this card.  So cute and they go together so quickly.

I also made a few other version of this same card...

Alright, that is it for tonight!

Going to the chapel and she's gonna get married!  In about 20 years (maybe)!  :)

Darla

Goin' Fishing

The cousins are here for a sleepover tonight, so Joe took them fishing.  On Ally's first cast she caught a HUGE fish.

Considering she was using one of the kiddie poles, it was almost half the size of the pole.  

Too bad she was the only one that had any luck tonight.

Another niece graduated from college today.  Congrats Lauren!  Your card will be on its way to you this week.  :)  Here is a sneak peek of it.

This was a SUPER easy card to make.  All of the elements on the card were part of the printed paper.  The only things I added was to stamp the sentiment and the two gems on each side of the sentiment.

I made another cards like this for Hope's birthmother, but made it a Mother's Day card for her.

I forgot to take a picture of the card my husband sent to his mom, but I will share the one I sent to my mom tomorrow (hopefully I find the time to make a post).  :)

Well, I am off to rest my back.  I think I pulled a muscle while cleaning the house today.  Yet another GREAT reason to not clean.  :)

Have a great Mother's Day!

Darla

Junk Day

Every spring our city does a junk day where you can put out pretty much anything and the garbage trucks come around and pick it up for free, which ALWAYS brings out lots of interesting "dumpster' divers driving around in trucks and sometimes hauling trailers too.  It is pretty amazing the kind of things they find.

Technically it isn't until tomorrow, but they have been driving around for days and they are really hitting the neighborhood tonight.  I keep hearing lots of trucks rumble on by.  I hope they find lots of good stuff.

Speaking of finding lots of good stuff, have you checked out The Scrappy Gourmet lately.  I have three new layout kits for sale.  You can find Cupcake boss here,

Make a Splash here...

and multi-layout kit (shown below) here!

Go get one, two or all three kits today before they are gone!

Let's see...what else has been going on around here.  I have been busy keeping up with Hope while Joe was out of town for two separate business trips.  We might get caught up on the house one of these days.

Hope informed me today that she has a new boyfriend.  His name is Dillon.  :)

Well, I better go rescue Reilly out of the blanket tent where Hope has him trapped.  Poor dog.  He is such a good sport.

Until next time...

Darla

I survived the Garage Sale!

I hardly ever hold garage sales, but this year during the neighborhood sales I decided to put some stuff together.  I wasn't sure how well I would do since I only opened up after I got home from work on Thursday and Friday and only in the morning today.  Well, I did way better than I expected so I am calling it a success.  :)

I sold a LOT of scrapbooking items.  A lot of "kits" with misc. products and papers that all go together in ziploc bags.  Pretty much four ladies bought everything in large lots.  They couldn't believe how cheap I was selling everything, but I had no clue if it would even sell.  I just told them I was glad it was all going to a good home and to someone that would use them and appreciate them.  I even had one lady give me her phone number so I could call her when I had more stuff to sell.  Alright!

Later this afternoon Hope wanted her hair put into braids.  It actually turned out pretty good considering it was me doing her hair!  :)  Then she wanted to put on a fun dress, so I talked her into taking some pictures.  I already have several paper lines I might use to scrapbook these photos.  Of course, I don't own any of them yet.

Then she talked us into going to El Rodeo.  It is one of her favorite restaurants because she loves the cheese dip.  YUM!

So when we got home she wanted to take more photos while blowing bubbles.  I got some great expressions and now I really can't wait to scrapbook these photos.

Today is my great-nephew's first birthday!  Happy Birthday Kenton (aka Pedro-since he was born on Cinco de Mayo).  :)

So in honor of his birthday, I will share a birthday card with you tonight!  The black plastic piece is something I saved from the packaging of a doll Hope received from at Christmas time.  I thought it looked interesting and I would find a cool use for it someday.  So I decided to thread ribbon through it and use it on a card.

Hope you had a great Cinco de Mayo and if you are reading this tonight, go check out the SUPER moon.  It is pretty bright out there.

Darla

Brrr!

Wow, what a difference a few days can make.  The weather temperature had been up and down a lot lately.  Today is a chilly rainy day.  We are home from church and just got comfy in my sweat pants and going to try and have a relaxing day the rest of the day.    I think I am going to read a book snuggled under a nice warm blanket.

Speaking of reading, Hope loves to read too, so I had to capture her love of reading in a layout.  I love how it turned out.  I need to add some handwritten details of her age, but didn't get that done before I photographed it.

Well, I am off to find a good book and snuggle up and get warm.  Have a great Sunday!

Darla

The Hunger Games

Well, I just finished the third book.  I think overall I liked the series.  The second book was my favorite for some reason.  And the ending was ok for me, in general how each character was left.  I know, not exactly a glowing review, but I can't give away too much without giving away how it all turned out.  Overall, it definitely had lots of "What?" moments as I read something and had to let it sink in of what I actually read.  At the end I even missed one of the names and got several pages into the chapter before I realized it was someone else they were talking about.  :)

Anyway, keeping it short and sweet.  Hope had school pictures taken a few days ago, so thought I would share a layout of her Fall school picture.  This was a VERY simple page layout using the Little Yellow Bicycle papers and a few other goodies.

This fall, Hope lost three of her front teeth just days before school started.  She was so cute with her toothless grin and I told her the morning of pictures that I wanted her to smile big so I could see her toothless grin in the pictures.  When she got home she told me they said to close her lips.  What?  Ok, this picture is still cute, but I REALLY wanted the toothless grin captured.  Oh well, we got several of them at home.

Well, that is it for tonight!  Have a good one!

Darla

A little bit of everything...

Conversations with Hope tonight covered a lot of topics that I can hardly even remember all of them.

She was telling me about the clouds and how they are all connected.  So I pointed out a cloud that was all by itself and she explained that they are all connected by invisible string.  :)  I asked her where she learned that information and she said I just learned it.  Me:  ok.

Then she started explaining that she actually learned it from a friend at school who learned it from another friend and so on and so on through about 10 different friends...

Then she started saying someone's great grandma wrote about it in a book and it was written in cursive, not jewish.  I giggled and asked what jewish handwriting looked like and she said you know jewish.  Ok.

Then we had a conversation about generations, like why some grandmas are grandmas and others are great grandmas, etc.  Not sure she got it, but she will eventually.  :)

She had a good day, so we went to Maggie Moos for ice cream after I picked her up from school.  She won a free scoop for getting a 100% on the spelling challenge.

Then home for supper and a quick play date with the neighborhood girls and off to bed.

Here is another share...since I mentioned ice cream here is a Sweet card.

The white starburst had glitter glue added for a bit of sparkle.

and this is the inside of the card.

Well, time for the bedtime routine!  Goodnight!

Darla

May the odds...

...forever be in your favor!

Yes, I have been reading the Hunger Games trilogy books.  I am about half way through the third book and am planning on making a dent in it tonight after the chickie goes to bed.

Speaking of odds...Hope came home today and started gibbering about winning a 3DS and I had no idea what she was talking about.  Apparently she won a prize during the all school assembly celebrating the spelling challenge they had last week.  "Mom!  They called my name!!! I won it"  She was pretty excited about it.

She also brought home some of her prized art pieces from school.  They are pretty cool, so now I need to get pictures of them so I can scrapbook them.  They are pretty cool looking.

I purged my scrapbooking area this past weekend.  Hope decided last week she wanted to sell some of her toys at a garage sale to earn more money to buy that American Girl doll bed, so we started cleaning out her toys and have a pretty good collection of things to sell that she has outgrown.  It is kind of sad to see her let go of some of these things, but I know they will find a good home with another little girl that will love to play with them.  So luckily in two weeks our neighborhood will have a HUGE garage sale and we hope to make some money to buy different toys.  :)  So I am also hoping to sell some scrapbooking items so I can also get different toys too.  :)  I am also purging the kitchen and other areas of the house too.

Well, I will end with another share...

This is a two page and single page layout kit now available at The Scrappy Gourmet!  You can get yours here!  The kit is only $10 for everything you need to make both of these layouts!  And they are very easy to put together.

I am off to do a little reading!  Have a great night!

Darla

So amazing!

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending a young women's conference.  I was invited by Hope's birth mom, Jessica.  She was going to be one of the guest speakers to talk about her open adoption experience.  Also on the panel of speakers was a young mother that chose to parent (at the age of 14) and an adoptive mother.  It was such an emotional moment listening to Jessica describe how she made the decision to make an adoption plan and how our open adoption experience has been a positive experience for her.  She had a great message to share and she is so amazing.  She had a picture of the three of us the day we met her for the first time.  We all looked SO young.  :)  As I sat there looking at that photo and as I drove around town to get to the college, I had all kinds of memory flashbacks.  The hospital where Hope was born, the hotel we stayed at the night we brought her home from the hospital, the flower shop we stopped at to take flowers to the hospital...so many things came to mind.  I am so glad I was able to make the trip down to listen to her speak.  I thank God everyday for bringing Jessica into our lives and for her for giving us the best gift we could ever receive...Hope.

Are they not the cutest?!!!!!


Got my first massage in almost a year...and it was AWESOME!  I am going to be sore, but she really got the knots out of my back.  Ahhhhhhh!  Thanks Cindy!


Ok, here is another layout I made last weekend.

I love this simple layout about Hope and two of her "Tried & True" friends, who conveniently live just across the street.  :)  I loved when the zipper ribbon came out and I finally found the perfect place to use it for the first time.  Now hopefully I won't be so afraid to use it in some of the other colors I have collected over the past year.  


Well, I am off to see who will be sent home on American Idol tonight.


Darla

Banner Weekend!

I am finally getting around to posting about my retreat weekend (from last weekend).  I had a GREAT time as usual.  They did give me a hard time about creating so many pages with banners on them, hence the title of the post.  Anyway, the beauty of  not scrapbooking chronologically is that my banner phase will be spread out over several years.  :)

As usually Tara made lots of great "healthy" food and the CHEESE was top notch!  :)

Here is a page I made from the weekend and I will share more soon.  It is one of my favorites using the new MME papers.

I took Hope to see the Easter Bunny this week.

Well, have to keep it short today, but Hope to be back soon!  Happy Easter to you all!

Darla