Feeling Lucky

Another Calendar topper
Template 6 from Amy Bleser's Just the Tops Calendar templates (SBB)
Ruffed Up Papers by Kaye Winiecki (Pickleberry Pop)
Irish Blessing paper by Kay Elfin from the St Patricks Day collect a kit (E-scape n Scrap)
Green Stained Wood Alpha by Misty Cato
Shamrock from Doris Castle's Bit o' Green (freebie)
Font-Monotype Corsiva

Autumn Harvest

Another Calendar topper
This is Aidan picking Apples this past October.

Template 9 from Amy Bleser's Just the Tops Calendar Templates available at Scrapbook Bytes
Autumn Bounty by Connie Prince available at K-Joi
Fonts- Monotype Corsiva and Selfish

New Header

I figured it was time to holiday up the old blog-a-roo. So I made a new header. I used Amy Bleser's BlogHeader Templates available at scrapbook bytes. I used LaWanna DesJardin's Merry Wishmas Kit. Font used is CK Holiday Spirit. The picture is of Aidan from christmas of 2005. I need to do a photo shoot soon for this year.

Thanksgiving Table setting

Here's the pictures promised a couple of days ago. one is of our place setting, complete with home made cloth napkins (I just loved the fabric) along with placecards and napkin rings made by Aidan, with only a little help from his Momma. There's a picture of my sewing the napkins (as you can see by my super red face and frizzy hair we were really working, lol) and one of Aidan coloring in the turkeys. I hope every one had an awesome thanksgiving.

New digi Layouts

"Is not a kiss the very autograph of love?" ~Henry Finck
Template by Jessica Gorny for HappyScrapz November template challenge
Fallen By Jessica Gorny (I flipped the Background around, and I recolored the stitches)

Dirty Tag ALpha By Jessica Gorny (from her Nov GrabBag at Oaks)
Fonts-Franciscan and CK Holiday Spirit

I'm working on chrsitmas gifts, going to try to get a least one calendar made. This will be for December.
Christmas Comes But Once A Year
Merry Wishmas by LaWanna DesJardin
Template 8 from Amy Bleser's Just the Tops Calendar Templates
Font- DSP Cybergram

Waiting for Santa
Lush Grids (Boyish) by Jessica Gorny
(The Great Frame) Wrap up By Jessica Gorny (from her Nov GrabBag at Oaks)
Dirty Tag ALpha By Jessica Gorny (from her Nov GrabBag at Oaks)
Santa Hat by Robyn Gough
Fonts- CK Holiday Spirit, CK Chunky Block

Ready to get your gobble on?

We're gearing up for turkey day here. As we all know, Aidan helped make placecards already, and yesterday I finished up sewing my cloth napkins, they're lovely if I do say so myself. And I do! :) quite proud of them, I am. What cloth napkins could be complete withough napkin rings, so last night Aidan helped make turkey napkin rings. They're pretty cute (pictures to come of the ringed napkins tomorrow, but for now I'll include on of me sewing the napkins) and the table will look fabu. Today we made 4 pies, 2 pumpkin (I love the smell of pumpkin pie baking in the oven, totally a comfort smell) and 2 oreo cream pies. The recipe for that is on this blog, go back in the archives to NOV '05. I had to make a change though, because we don't use cool whip anymore. We've cut out partially hydrogenated oils from out diet, and so that rules it out. I made whip cream myself instead. We're thrilled to be able to have these again, we haven't made them for over a year because the oreos had that kind of oil in it, but Oreo has seen the light and gotten rid of it, and we now can partake of the yummy oreo goodness again. On that same note, making the pumpkin pies took longer as well, for the same reason, every store bought crust I could find had it, so we made our own, that was interesting, lol. We'll see how they taste tomorrow.

This was just a quick update. Have a rocking turkey day everyone!

Aidan's Turkey Day Placecards

fun simple turkey day project with my little. I figured this way he'll feel involved with all th preparations. If I get my napkins made tomorrow, we'll make napkin rings.

the place cards were simple. scraps for the place cards (4x4 square folded in half) leaves with letters (punch), and the turkey is a stamp that I let Aidan color in, he was so proud of himself. then we stamped turkey tracks across each card.

Lil' Punkin

Aidan's little cousin Charlie, last Halloween.

Kit used is Autumn Bounty by Connie Prince from K-joi

Font DSP cybergram

Look Who's TWO

My son's younger cousin, turned 2 recently, I couldn't resist scrapping that sweet birthday girl smile!

Everything is from Fallen by Jessica Gorny

font is DSP Cybergram

Paper scrapped gift

I know it's hard to believe. I've had the stuff to make this since I came back from IN/KY back in August. The picture is my cousin Sandy and me standing in what is left of a carriage trail on what was once land owned by my 5x great grandfather (Sandy's 3x great grandfather).
This is a gift I'm going to send to my cousin Sandy.
The background paper is paper salon. the frame is K&Co. the round stamps are Sandylion clear stamps. the larger journaling block is by Stampabilities. I used brilliance Ink in Cosmic Copper. and I used a Marvy scalloped circle punch. on the two little leaves are the month and year the photo was taken.
Top circle has out names, middle circle says where we are, and the bottom one says, Cousins, Friends, Family Historians.
The quote on the journaling block says "to forget one's ancestors is to be a brooke with no source, a tree with no root. ~Chinese Proverb"
This is relevent for us because we are the ONLY ones in the family with an interest in researching our family tree. It was quite an experience to stand there in that carriage trail, to see what was left of the tracks worn by years of use, and to imagine what it must have been like to live the way they did, to have to travel miles in a wagon on such rough terrain, to be so far from town.

Farmer Aidan and his Girlfriends

Farmer Aidan

This is his "costume" for Halloween this year. We went from him wearing the same clothes, along with his toolbelt and hard hat (so he could be Bob the Builder) to being a farmer.

Credits
Autumn Mix by LaWanna DesJardinPainted Burlap-Alpha and Extras (red) by LaWanna DesJardinFont- DSP Cyber Gram

I got accepted to another CT

for Merkeley Designs., which can be found at Merkeley Designs and at Oscraps.



She's got some awesome stuff in her shops, I love her "A Big Alpha" which I used for the "1941" in the layout below.






The picture is my Great Grandfather. That's him behind the bar in his Saloon (one of many businesses that he had).


Credits





Blueberry Mountain (short stack) paper pack by Merkeley Designs
A Big Alpha by Merkeley Designs
Binder Clips Altered by Merkeley Designs
Purty Curls by Merkeley Designs
Sepia Stamps by Merkeley Designs
Spectrum Flowers by Merkeley Designs
Fonts MS Serif, Calligrapher, and Sylfaen


Credits
We only have a handful of pregnancy pictures, most were lost during my hard drive crash. This one is a scan of a really bad copy, but it's the only one from the end of the pregnancy, and a bad picture is better then no picture.
Blueberry Mountain (short stack) paper pack by Merkeley Designs
A Big Alpha by Merkeley Designs
Binder Clips Altered by Merkeley Designs
Purty Curls by Merkeley Designs
Sepia Stamps by Merkeley Designs
Spectrum Flowers by Merkeley Designs
Small Packages-Notepaper3 by ksharonk Designs
Font Arial

3.92

That's Ian's final GPA! It would have been even higher if we hadn't been without internet for a week during a 2 week long class. Ian you rock! I am so PROUD of you!!!

Ian "in the classroom"

Just another day in Paradise

Things are going ok here. I am, as per the usual, feeling overwhelmed about the things that need to get done, and trying to find balance between the things that NEED to get done and the things I WANT to get done. I was going to make baked ziti today, I had just finished boiling the noodles for it and was in the process of draining them when I spilled the darn things all over the sink! To my credit I didn't burst into tears, lol. I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. I cleaned that up and just boiled another kind of pasta with some broccoli, and some baked chicken. I was so annoyed with my self. Part of the reason for that is my poor little guy is sick again, just a cold but he's miserable, and didn't sleep well, and was up about 2 and half hours earlier then normal. I'm waiting for him to crash. It's probably going to happen soon, and I'm going to have to crash with him, because I just know he'll be waking up a bunch during the night. So anyway, I had to take a tired and listless little manto Sam's club and the grocery store with me. then I filled the truck up. came home and unloaded it all. didn't have much time to get dinner made before Ian had to get up for work and then I botched the first batch of noodles. so you can see my day's been a bit tiring. BUT. I'm home with my little man more, and that's a good thing. We're acclimating pretty well, we just need to get more a routine and we'll be moving right along.
So here's to many more days in paradise- maybe minus the flubbed noodles and the sniffles.

I've been double tagged

by Meghan and Lissa
Here's the deal:
7 Random Facts I must post.So read them, comment on them & then check to see if your name is in the 7 I tag. If it is, list 7 Random Facts about yourself & pass on the tag to 7 people.

1.I just ate pancakes and eggs for dinner (you asked for random, lol).
2.I love reading, I've got so many books I could use a couple more tall bookshelves. Ian is in the same boat. So is Aidan. We could so totally open the McBride private library, lol.
3.I've read all of my books, multiple times. And I usually finish a book the same day I start it.
4.I have the best in-laws in the world. I get along better with them then I do my own family. :)
5.My youngest brother in law turned 16 yesterday. he was 6 when I met him!!
6.My babay is going to be 5 in a couple of months..AHHH! where does the time go?
and last but not LEAST!
7. Ian just finished his last class TODAY!! As soon as the figure out the grades for that, I'll be the very PROUD wife of a college graduate! It's been a long 4 years. But I'm so proud of him, he's worked so hard.

now I'm supposed to tag 7 people, but I think most everyone I know has already been tagged, and I don't know 7 people to tag. But I'll tag the people I know anyway, and if they've been tagged more then once, as Lissa said, just considered yourself extra loved.

1.Abby
2.Tara
3.Laurie
4.Julie
5.Torreh
6.Jodi

Trick or Treat LO

I used a template by SStanton (there was no TOU, this was part of the file name) as a jumping off point.

Everything else is by LaWanna DesJardin.

Stitches- Bittersweet Autumn kit

Purple Glitz Alpha

Everything else is from her kit Moonlit Magic Fonts- Calligrapher and Arial

2 new digi layouts

Well, I was going to upload to new pages I did , but blogger won't let me! oy.
So here's what you can do if you want to see them, click on one of my gallery links, and you can see them there, one is called "Magical" and one is called "Autumn Romp". I'll try to upload them here again later.

ETA: Here are the LOs. Details below

Autumn Romp

Did this for the Hawt Mama Template challenge this week (10/19/07)

I used LaWanna DesJardin's kit Bittersweet Autumn. The r, m, and p are done with the socket font, and I covered them (masked?) with the burlap circle from the kit so they would match.

Fonts- Socket and Arial

Magical

Started out with KimB's Pretty Twisted Template.

I used LaWanna DesJardin's kit Moonlit Magic

Font - Arial

Blog Action Day

October 15th - Blog Action Day, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone's mind.
In its inaugural year, Blog Action Day will be co-ordinating bloggers to tackle the issue of the environment.

We all know we need to do what we can to help the environment right? I can't help but think that if we don't step up and try to undo some of the damage done that there won't be a healthy world for our children. What do you do to help the environment? Our neighborhood doesn't do recycling at the curbside, so that's not an option for us. But we do help out in other ways. We've switched to reusable bags for our groceries. They totally rock. I've got five "String Bags" from ResuableBags.com. We used to average 10 plastic bags or more a grocery shopping trip, and you several trips in and out of the house to unload the car. Now I use my 5 String bags (they can hold like 40 pounds a piece, which you know those plastic ones could never do) and I only make one trip into the house because they have these longer handles that I can swing over my shoulders. If I had tries to get in the house in one trip with the plastic ones my fingers would be numb and I'd need someone to open the door. So we save on plastic bags and a little on heating and cooling with the cut down on the numbers of times we have to open the door. We also cut back on the number of plastic bags and the amount of tin foil we use, but using Wrap-n-Mats for my hubby's lunches. We know it's not much, but it's something, right?

So tell, me what do you do?

Love her voice

LeAnn Rimes and Brian McFadden