Where does the time go?

I logged on today and decided I should update a little bit since it's been a while again. I should change the name of my blog to Week to week life of a stay at home mom, but oh well. With Easter and a stampin' class this week I haven't taken the time to sit down and blog.

Easter was a good one. Same annual easter egg hung the neighbors have. It is awesome. No pushing or shoving. No crying kids. And everyone leaves happy. It is a very good thing. I appreciate all the hard work they put into it every year.

The Easter Bunny was a bit delayed coming to our house this year as we have 9:00 church and I really wanted my girls to focus on the true meaning of Easter. I showed the kids a movie in Primary about the life of Christ and it is always surprising the things they come up with. One scene of the movie shows Christ walking on the water and I hear a little voice in the back say "He's walking on water that is really deep. He must be magic." If only they could truely appreciate the magic. Anyway, Easter Bunny came during church and the rest of the day was spent bordering on a sugar coma. Dang jelly beans anyway. Due to a case of procrastination, the girls did not get their Easter dresses on time and I will have to post that picture another day.

My stampin' class was a tag class and it turned out pretty good. Attendance is down, but I am very thankful for those who come and support me. I have one more class next week and am really looking forward to it. I always feel lucky when I get to spend time with my friends. Here is a picture of the tags. I had a really hard time figuring them out, but am pleased with how they turned out.



I am really glad that tomorrow is Friday. I am looking forward to sleeping in on Sat. I really thought I would outgrow the desire to sleep till noon,or at least nine or ten, but I guess I still have some growing up to do. Hopefully it will be a little bit warmer and we will get to enjoy some time outside. I just don't know how much more snow I can take.

April Card Swap

Well, it has happened once again. A fabulous night with my card swap group. I look forward to swap night every month. I feel a little spoiled to be able to spend some time with such a great group of women. This month's theme was You've been Cased. The challenge was to find a card we like and then make two changes to it to make it our own. I love the cards everyone did.



The tin in the picture is actually the project that I brought to make. It turned out pretty cute. I have to say I cased it off of splitcoaststampers. I had to change mine because I bought the wrong size tins...twice, so I just figured out how to make them work. The round card that my very talented sister-in-law did is a hinge card and it slides open when you pull on the ribbon. It is very cool. The green card has a beautiful glass embelishment on it that has a velcro closure attatched to it. The music card has actual music on it. How cool is that? And the card with the flowers on it has dimensionals under several of the flowers and the saying. These women are so talented. My card is the one with the big pink flower in the middle. I have wanted to try to make one and it was a lot of fun.

Here is a picture of the tin on the inside and my sister-in-law's card open so you can see how it works.




Next month we are doing a one sheet wonder template where you take one sheet of designer paper and cut it into 16 pieces to make 16 different cards. I tend to struggle with this challenge but I say bring it on. Gives me a chance to go play with my papercrafting toys and unwind.

Now I need to go cut tags for my tag class next week. Soon as I get them finalized and am happy with them I will post a picture. Hope you get a chance to do something you love to do today!

A Case of the Blah's

This is definately one of those days I would like to have crawled back in bed. Mostly because it is still cold and snowy outside. I am so ready to be warm. I tried to get hubby to take me away this week-end, I thought about begging. I just want to be warm and somewhere quiet. I could use a break. I am sure we all could. I am sitting here blogging, instead of figuring out what in the world we should have for dinner on this lovely Friday evening. Hubby is on his way home from a meeting and will be arriving in about an hour. I also have to figure out exactally where M&M has wandered off to and get her home without a major break-down.

There are a lot of underlying issues going on, none of which I care to blog about. I am thinking my hubby has some of the same issues as I can see how I feel reflected in how he acts. I'm pretty sure he could use a long vacation in a warm place too. All we need is the time, and the money.

For now I will just be thankfull for the things I have. A beautiful home full of healthy, headstrong children. An amazing husband who give us his all every day just to provide for our needs and as many wants as he possibly can. The knowledge that all of this is worth it in the end if we can just endure. I read a plaque in a flier the other day that said something like: Sometimes the Lord calms the storm around us, and sometimes he calms his children while the storm rages around them. I am hoping for the latter, because apparently it is going to keep on storming and I can use all the help and support I can get.

Now on to dinner.......

Spring Break?????

This week is our spring break. We were so excited to get things started. Oh the adventure that may lay ahead. Then things started going terribly wrong......first M&M came down with a fever of almost 105. Scary. Saturday night she started losing her lunch. Not good. She still isn't feeling better, but she doesn't have a scary fever anymore. I am hoping she is on the mend. I can hear her coughing upstairs right now. Poor kid.

Yesterday we woke up to Christmas. Two or three inches of snow on the ground, and a blizzard. Not what we had in mind. More snow today. Brrrr. I have been freezing since November. We almost hit 70 degrees last week and now snow again. We should expect this in our neck of the woods, and I am very thankful for the moisture that these spring storms bring, but I would prefer it in the form of rain, and warm. It is supposed to snow through tomorrow so I guess we will spend spring break hanging out in the house trying to keep warm.

We are hoping my hubby doesn't have to go in for Jury duty on Friday and maybe we can take a day trip somewhere. I know he is crossing his fingers and so am I.

Honda vs. Ferrari....

This week-end our family stopped for dinner on the way to a birthday part for my nephew. My hubby thinks it is funny that I just can't get what happened out of my head. It's not even that big of a deal, other than I now know that my sweet hubby is respectful and not a slimeball.

Let me explain. We got seated in one of those horse shoe shaped booths with the full circus going on. The baby popping in and out of the bottom of the table, swinging on the nearby rail, anything but sitting quietly. I am always a little nervous about her tripping the unsuspecting servers on thier way by. The other two do pretty good, but it's always and experience to go eat with the kids in tow. As we were sitting there, a very pretty girl, I would say in her early/mid 20's walked by. She even got my attention and knowing that, I checked to see if she had gotten hubby's attention. She had (he later rated her a 9 1/2....which is not something I have ever heard him do outloud before, but I would probably agree). I made it very clear that I understand him taking one good look, but any more drooling would not be accepted. Then we entertained ourselves as we watched the reactions to several men in the restaraunt. One even left the side of his wife, to sit by his friend and get a better look. This guy wasn't even "sneakin" a look, it was an all out stare. Creepy. The manager was over there quite a bit too. Hmmmm.
Then I got to thinking. Because we are a car family I told hubby my analogy. He came into the restaurant with a perfectly good Honda (that would be me). Nothing out of the ordinary, just a good reliable Honda. He appreciates his Honda, but when a newer model Ferrari walks by, of course he is going to look, even though he knows he still has his Honda. Sure the Honda would LOVE to be that Ferrari, but without the $50,000 or more it would take to overhaul the Honda, he will just have to be happy with what he has. I was however very glad to get back to the car and away from the Ferrari. The conversation going on at that table was less than kid friendly. The Ferrari's friends talk like they came out of the county dump if ya know what I mean. Like I said, I don't know why I have been thinking about that, but it really made me appreciate my hubby and the love and respect he shows me on a daily basis. I will keep trying to be a little more like the Ferrari, but I will always be the Honda, a good reliable wife who may need a little tuning up every once in a while, but will always be there when he needs me.

On a side note, anyone who wants to take advantage of sale-a-bration, time is running out. I got some new stuff today and hope to get time to stamp so I can post some new stuff soon.

Have a good one, and don't forget to appreciate the ones you love.

Card swap, sweet card swap

This has been a rough week at our house. I don't know why, just can't put my finger on it. I have been trying to get a minute to sit down and share my treasures I got at my monthly Paper Chain meeting (card swap). I look forward to this every month. I have even been known to dream about what I might create.....or recieve from our monthly swap. This month it was scheduled the same day as my older girls piano festival. I knew I would be late, but my dear sweet hubby saved the day and stayed in town to work so I would only be 15 minutes late instead of 35. The girls ARE more important than stamping even if at times they might feel otherwise. By the way, they both got superior's, earned the coveted "cup" and I am hoping we are done with festival. Now, back to paper chain,

The theme this month was "anything but a card". I decided to make a small scrapbook I saw Roxy make on splitcoaststampers. Although I have neve met Roxy, and probably never will due to the fact she lives in Canada, I think she is very talented. Here is what I came up with.
The top picture is picture of the book closed. The bottom picture is a poorly taken picture of half the inside open, and half closed. I just couldn't figure out how to make it look right.

Here are the pictures of what I got from the very talented group of women I swap with. I always feel like I hit the lottery.

One of the boxes is full of treats, the other has bath salts that have been colored with Stampin' Up! reinker's and scented with essential oils. The little white box has a beautifully embossed seashell scene on it and inside is a sand dollar and a poem about sand dollars that is amazing. I love the new way the notebook is covered. May have to be my new place to keep my scedule or something. The red square is actually a canvas that has been painted and then designer paper glued on top. They are meant to have a picture modge podged on top and used as a wall decoration. The project we made is the little book with all the ribbons. It is made from name badge holders and we decorated a front cover and back cover and the middle one's are meant for those store cards you can never find in your wallet but always need. I have to say the women out did themselves again and I have all my treasures still sitting on the table where I can enjoy them.

Now I need to start thinking on my next months project. Let the creativity begin :).

The new do's

Yesterday we went up north to see my sister and take the camcorder to Best Buy. I needed a haircut desperately and my sister is a saint and takes very good care of me and my family's hair care needs...thanks sis. B has been thinking about cutting her hair for quite some time. She has had really long hair for her whole life. She wanted to cut it for lock of love, which means so long to 10" of hair. She went back and forth all day. Yes, I am cutting it, well, I need to cut it, I don't want to cut it, I think I can cut it.....you get the idea. M&M has been wanting to chop hers again for a while. Silly girl. She loves her hair short. Daddy doesn't like short hair so much but was a really good sport yesterday. I told him it would grow fast if B didn't like it and by the time she starts jr. high in the fall, it will be pretty long again. So we took the plunge and chopped the main.....and she looks fabulous. I am hoping she will let me play with is a little bit today. We left it A line becaus it would have been really short in the front if we hadn't. Anyway, here are some pics of thier adventure,





I am hoping to get some better pics today or tomorrow, you know how freshly cut hair is less than cooperative, but I think they sure look cute. But then again, I am thier mom and I will always think that about my girlies!