She's HERE!!

Proud Grandpa!

Can you believe I am a Grandma?

Whitney's mom...a very proud Grandma

Our little Angelina was delivered yesterday at 5:51 pm after a 13 hour labor of love! I am now a proud Grandma of a 7lb. 10oz, 21 inch long baby girl! Mom and baby are doing great! Thanks for peekin' in! Hope you have a great day!

The Driving Range

Here are a few pictures of my girls at the driving range on Saturday afternoon. Both of them have played Jr. Golf every summer for the last 5 years at Rolling Hills. This year they are both in 9 holes! I am so proud of them! They really seem to enjoy the game and sometimes they even go out and golf with Mike in the evenings! Unfortunately I am not a real "sporty" person so they have to tell me what everything means. They come home from playing a round and they said I did this or I did that and I have to ask "Is that good?" They laugh and say yes mom...it means...LOL!

We have been very busy working in our yard this year and for some reason we have had a real issue with algae in our pool. Mike just loves the pool and has been working on this "GREEN BEAST" for several weeks. It doesn't help that we have had so much rain the past few weeks either! The pool store where we buy our chemicals told us that we needed to suck the old sand out of the filer and put new sand in. Doesn't sound too tricky huh? WRONG! There is 300 pounds of wet sand in the filter that we sucked out until midnight last night. Good times. By the end we were both so tired and it seemed a bit strange that we spent so much time sucking the sand out just to put new sand back in. In case you are wondering the sand acts as a filter and filters out all the junk. This sand was yucky and smelly so that made the job even more fun. However I did get a lot of satisfaction out of the fact that we did it together in the heat and didn't get mad or short with each other once. Hopefully in a few days we will be back to having some clear water! But all these little outdoor projects have kept me very busy so I haven't been posting very many crafty projects lately. I am working on a layout so maybe this week yet we will have some good crafty stuff to look at!

I took my oldest for an Orthodontics consultation today. Can I just tell you that after we left there I was sick to my stomach about how expensive braces are! Holy COW! We have school enrollments coming up very soon and Haley's is going to be very expensive...first year of High School! I am not sure how I am going to swing braces but I am thinking that we will push the appointment back to October to get them put on.

GRANDBABY UPDATE: Well we are now having contractions as of today. The actual due date is tomorrow. The contractions are very sporadic so we are probably in the beginning stages. I will keep you posted! I am very excited to take pictures. When my kids were born I wasn't a scrapbooker yet so I have all these creative photo ideas now!

Thanks for listening to my ramblings! Hope you stay cool in this warm summer weather!

More Monograms!

Hi friends! How are you doing this week? This week seems like it is crawling by! And I even took a vacation day on Monday! Maybe it is just that there are so many things that I want to do at home that I don't want to be at work and that is why it drags...what do you think? I should just be thankful that I am employed!

Any who...remember a few posts back when I showed you the monogrammed cards that I made for the teachers? Well when I took them to work to show them off one of my co-workers thought that was such a good idea that she ordered 3 sets for her daughters teachers. She told me what sorts of colors would complement each teacher and this is what I came up with. My co-worker loved them. She said that they fit each gal perfectly! Don't you just love it when you do something and the person likes it?

GRANDBABY UPDATE: Well we are getting down to the wire now. She is due on 6/24 and hasn't really done anything yet. She just went to the doctor on Wednesday and she hasn't dropped and she is not dilated yet. We know that our little bundle of joy is a girl and she will be named Angelina. I will keep you posted.

Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday! Thanks for peekin' in! Hope you have a great weekend!

9 Months

Hi friends! Hope your week is going well...all I can say is thank goodness tomorrow is Friday! I am so very ready for the weekend! Haley took her placement test today at Bishop Carroll and she did very well. Then we went to a meeting for enrollment this afternoon. I can't believe my little girl is going to high school this fall! Seems like just yesterday I walked her to the Kindergarten door! Man where does the time go? Speaking of time...my stepdaughter is very preggers now and due in about 3 weeks. Her shower is this weekend and I thought I would make her a fun little memory of her pregnancy. I got this idea from a special issue of the Papercrafts magazine. This one was called 225 Cards & Gifts and it was in the June/July issue. I pretty much lifted the whole layout from the article but switched it up to be for pregnancy trimesters. Whitney came by for her "photo op" every 3 months. I cracked up laughing after the 2nd trimester photo because I noticed that she was wearing the same T-Shirt both times...totally unplanned! I told her no matter how small it is we have to get you in the same shirt in the last photo! She was a pretty good sport about it.

Here is the skinny on what I used to put this book together: Maya Road Scallop Accordion Book (this come with the rings attached), Maya Road Number Chipboards Philadelphia, Maya Road Fresh Chipboard Noah Alphabet, Heidi Swapp XL Ghost Shapes Butterflies, Clear Gemstones by Paper Studios, the stamp was from an SU set called Priceless and I stamped it in basic black. Now, you see the little journaling? Those are definitions that I typed up on vellum paper and ran through the Xyron to adhere to the book. Fun huh? All of the ingredients for this book was purchased online at Frantic Stamper with the exception of the Gemstones and Stamp. They have a wonderful website with TONS of fun new items all the time. They are very friendly and their service is quick. I was impressed with the personal touch. They called me to confirm the order and were wonderful to work with. When you have some time check them out here!

Thanks for peekin' in on me. I haven't been on the computer as much lately, my hubby and I have been doing projects outdoors and have been soakin' in some of this beautiful weather...but keep checkin' in on me I will post some new stuff this weekend! Hope you have a great weekend!

Love Him

On the last day of school last week I went with the 8th grade class to the lake. I got there a little bit early and thought I would kill some time and walk around the school and church grounds. Behind the church is a beautiful cemetery. When you walk in the cemetery if you look straight down the path you will see this beautiful crucifix all the way at the end. It was such a gorgeous day and I thought I would walk around and take a few pictures. I just love this photo! I did play around with it a little bit in Picasa but I just love the way that it turned out! I wanted to focus on Him so saturated the photo in color then made the background black and white and blurred the edges a bit. I just can't believe what a statement this makes. Can you?

Thanks for peekin' in...hope you have a great weekend!

Teachers Gifts

Things have been busy here at our house this week! Today was the kids last day of school AND Haley had 8th Grade promotion last night! How exciting is that? I can't believe that she is finished with grade school! Time flies so quickly! I will make another post with photos from graduation soon. I took a vacation day today to go to the lake with the 8th grade students and a few other parents. It is a tradition that Fr. Eck takes the 8th grade students out to the lake for water skiing after their promotion. How cool is that? Fr. Eck is in his 80's! I was so happy to be a part of the day...we had a blast! I will make another post with photos from today in a few days!

But hey...let's chat about the teacher's gifts! I wanted to do something special for her teachers because they really are a great pair of gals and can you imagine 17 7th and 8th graders 8 hrs a day? I know teaching is rewarding but I also know as the mother of a teenager that sometimes it can be a challenge and these gals are simply wonderful! I made them personalized cards and tried to fit their personalities with the colors.




Last year I purchased the Justright stamp sets, which allow you to make really neat monogrammed cards. I also purchased a little alphabet set so that I could make the border that says "From the desk of" and personalize it with their names at the bottom. Here is a close up of the tag. To make the perfect little circles and scalloped circles I used Spellbinders dies. I put the white cardstock through my cuttlebug with the smooth circle, then proceeded to cut the scalloped circles and layer them together. To break up the white cardstock a little bit I chose a lighter color of ink that would match the card and stamped a floral design over the initials in the middle of the card.

Here is a look at the alphabet set. It comes with these cute little tweezers...and believe me they come in handy!

Here is what the Justright kit looks like. There are several sets to choose from and recently they have started to branch out and make some really cute sets. They carry them at All That Scraps online store, which if you haven't checked them out you should. They have some great products over there and their shipping is very reasonable!

Well thanks for checkin' in on me! Hope your having a great week...can't wait for the weekend...it's my birthday on Monday and a holiday weekend...BONUS!!

U did it!

Happy Friday to you! We have had some interesting weather here this evening....thunderstorms and a few tornadoes! Hopefully that is all past us now through. The kids were supposed to have a dinner/program out at the school this evening but with everything developing so quickly out by the school I opted to stay home instead. They were okay with it...I think they had a long day today and were glad to be home anyway.

Like my cards? This is one of my newest Bella stamps. I got her to make these cute little cards for some friends of mine at work. I have had my eye on her for over a year now and finally decided that I really wanted to add her to my collection! Both of my friends graduated from WSU either this weekend or last so I made the cards using the WSU colors. On the card below I used my new Martha Stewart border punch. Like it? I picked it up at Walmart for $13!



Now on this card...I used the Cuddlebug and the swirly embossing folder to make that pretty design to the right of Bella. I put the card together and decided that it needed a bit more definition so I used charcoal chalk ink and inked up the embossed swirls. The gingham ribbon on both cards is from SU. The yellow used on the Bella stamps (as well as the colored spots they are standing on) are done with Prisma markers and the gowns are colored using a black colored pencil and blender pen.



Thanks for peekin' in! Hope you guys have a great weekend! We are gearing up for a busy week here. My oldest is graduating from 8th grade on Tuesday evening! I can't believe my baby is so grown up!