Creative Bliss

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Second Hand Skates~Digi Layout

Hi again! This is my second post today, so feel free to check out both. *Ü*

I was able to complete the other layout I had in mind. Yay!

Jessica has been talking about wanting to take ice-skating lessons since her swim class buddy, Annabelle, started taking them. Steve thought it'd be smarter to take the girls on the weekend and let them try it out for a while before making any lesson decisions. So, he took them yesterday morning and apparently they had a blast. So much so that Steve started checking out used ice skates on Craig's List. Well, he found a pair that would fit Amy, but the seller was way out in the boonies and I wasn't willing to drive that far for a pair of skates. So, I piped up that I could check the thrift stores. Amy asked me to check after dinner last night. I knew Arc was having their 50% off Saturday, so I agreed to check it out. Talk about lucky! They had a pair for each of them! So, for about $11, the girls have skates to use on their ice-rink adventures. They were so excited they begged to go to the rink today so they could try them out. Steve willingly took them. (I personally am not a big fan of ice-skating...it hurts my ankles too much, so I was content to let them have Daddy-Daughter fun).

Anyway, I took a picture of the skates and wanted to make a layout about them.

What do you think?
The journaling reads: Jessica has been talking about wanting to learn how to ice-skate since her friend, Annabelle, has been taking lessons. Steve took the girls to the ice rink to see if they would like ice-skating, and they sure did. Rather than take lessons right now, he’ll take them on the weekend. Their enthusiasm prompted a trip to the thrift store to find skates and we got lucky. Amy was thrilled at her “Olympic Style Skates.” She and Jessica have been walking around on them in the big room. The skates may be second hand, but the fun they are having is first rate!

Credits:
Template: Kay Miller Designs, Collection 23
Page Kit: Arctic Antics (Kay Miller Designs)
Fonts: CK Ali's Writing and Century Gothic
Stitching: Jen Wilson Designs (feather stitch)

I think that's it from me today. My mental muscles are tired now. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope you have a great start to your week.

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Pantry Clean Out~Digi Layout

Hello there!

Yesterday was Digital Scrapbook Day! I took advantage of a sale at Sweet Shoppe Designs and picked up a few kits. Then I tried to download the kits at the same time as everyone else. Not the smartest move I've ever made. It took forever because the server was overloaded. But did I wait? Nope, I kept trying and it took all afternoon. There were a few files that I couldn't get to download, so I finally gave up and finished downloading this morning. I didn't want to wait because I had a layout I wanted to create using the kits I bought, of course! But, I had to wait anyway, because I needed one of the files to get this layout made.
Credits:
Template: Yin Template #145 (part of Daily Digi File #8) modified-I moved some pictures around to fit better
Page Kit: All in a Day's Work Collab kit by Heather Roselli and Libby Weifenbach
Font: Pea Missy

The kit is called All in a Day's Work and I thought it would be perfect to use with my pantry clean out photos. I liked all the little appliances and tools for cleaning that were included.

Remember when I said I had finished organizing all my digi supplies? Well, I was trying to pull up my templates for layouts using 10 or more photos and my attempts were pulling up bizarre selections. So, I ended up having to re-organize that part of my supplies before I started on the layout. But now all my new supplies are tagged and my templates are organized better AND I completed this layout!

So much for just relaxing after my busy day on Friday, huh? LOL Well, it may not have been physically taxing to do the organizing, but mentally? That's another story. (hee, hee)

I have another layout in mind to work on. We'll see if I get 'r done today...

Thanks for stopping by. Hope you are having a super day!
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Friday, November 6, 2009

I Can't Believe This Took ALL Day!

Hi there! Happy Friday to you!

I decided to tackle my "pantry" today. I thought for sure it would be relatively quick and easy given its small size. Um....nope. I decided to get brave and show you what it looked like before and after. Hopefully you won't think less of me after you see the before shots. LOL

This space is in our big room (the converted two car garage portion of our house). The previous owners created this little space, probably for storage. It's kind of an L shape and it also houses the water heater. The door goes out to our back yard, but we never use it. After we moved in, we added the wire shelving. Oh and Steve added texture to the walls and ceiling. What a joy that was to try to clean (not).

So here's what it looked like as you look into the space.
Turning to your left is more shelving with who knows what stashed here and there. Oh there's Steve's jimson weed plant. He brought it inside, I think to try to preserve the seeds in case it doesn't grow next year. The silver vent tube is Steve's jerry-rigged "pipe" to get the heat to go into the big room and not just warm up the pantry.
Oh my gosh...what all is up there?!!!
And what is down here??
Brace yourself. Here's what what actually IN that space!
Can you believe it? I think I said holy cr*p, I can't believe that all came out of that little space!

At 9:05am this morning I had everything pulled out of the space and the cleaning began. First, I vacuumed off the spider webs. Then I started washing down the walls. That door took some effort. Then I started washing the baseboards and the floor. E-gads, THAT took forever! I think I finally got done about 1:00 and I took a break to eat lunch and take a shower. I started putting the shelves back into place. And adjusting them because I forgot where they originally were. LOL I had to fight some of the braces to get them in place. By then it was time to head out to get the girls from school. And I STILL had to go through all the items before I could put them back. Sigh...

I started that about 3:00. And at 5:00 I had finished vacuuming the big room and took the last garbage bag out to the trash. At 5:05 or so, Steve walked up the driveway from work. I had a bag for Goodwill and oh about 3 large bags full of expired food. Ugh. I definitely won't let THAT happen again.

Here's what it looks like now...


Look, there's open space!! I plan on cleaning out cupboards in the kitchen and putting things I don't use very often up there.


I discovered that the mice we had earlier found the Top Ramen soup packages and ate into a couple of them....ewwwww. But I'm pretty confident that they are all gone now because I didn't see any "evidence" of them yesterday when I was moving couches to finish up the cleaning of the big room. (whew)
I have to say I'm absolutely pooped right now. My whole body is sore, actually. But I'm SO glad to have this done!

Thanks for visiting and hope you enjoyed this little "tour" of my pantry. Just a couple more rooms to go and I'll be done with this major part of my deep clean. Then I'll move on to the stuff behind closed doors (oh my).
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Thursday, November 5, 2009

Thanks to Barb for This *Ü*

My sweet friend, Barb, awarded me this last week and I really appreciate her thinking of me.
The Rules are:
1. You can only use ONE word!!!
2. Pass this along to 5 of your favorite bloggers!
3. Alert them that you have given them this award!
4. HAVE FUN!!!
***************
Just ONE word, huh? That may prove to be difficult! We'll see...

1. Where is your cell phone?purse
2. Your hair? short
3. Your mother? remembered with love
4. Your father? generous
5. Your fave food? popcorn
6. Your dream last night? dunno
7. Your fave drink? diet coke
8. Your dream/goal? happy
9. What room are you in? living room
10. Your hobby? handwork
11. Your fear? earthquake
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? here
13. Where you were last night? home
14. Something that you aren't? thin
15. Muffins? maybe
16. Wish List Item? laptop
17. Where did you grow up? California
18. Last thing you did? crochet
19. What are you wearing? clothes?
20. Your TV? on
21. Your Pets? one
22. Friends? special
23. Your Life? happy
24. Your Mood? good
25. Missing Someone? yes
26. Vehicle? van
27. Something your not wearing? make-up
28. Your fave store? Archiver's
29. Your fave color? green
30. Last time you laughed? today
31. Last time you cried? Sept 21
32. Your best friend? special
33. One place that I go to over and over? kitchen
34. One person who emails regularly? Dad
35. Fave place to eat? Chili's
36. Facebook? sometimes

I'm supposed to give this to five bloggers. However, I've seen it around quite a bit (my choices would be repeats) so I will leave it open to any of you who visit and would like to participate.

Thanks again, Barb! This was fun.

I got the rest of the big room (converted two car sized garage) done today (vacuumed the ceiling since it's a popcorn ceiling). After the leaf job the other day and holding up the mini vac today...I can safely say my arms are tired. But it's a satisfying tired.

Hope you have a great Friday!

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Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Too Cute To Spook!

This layout has nothing to do with the class I signed up for. It's just one I've been working on for the past few days. The previous layout I tried wasn't doing it for me, so I scratched it and started over. Then PSE locked up before I could save so I had to start all over again. But it's done now and I'm pretty happy with it, so thought I'd share (and get it off my brain).

Template is by Kay Miller (Collection 12) and the page kit is called Can I Be Frank? by Nitwitcollections. The word art is also a Nitwit product, only it's the Little Bits add-on.
Font is Pea Missy

Thanks so much for stopping by!

(in case you didn't notice, the little ghost has been transformed to look more ghostly by changing the opacity of that element. I thought it looked neat)


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Blogging for Scrapbookers

Hi there!

Happy Wednesday to you. I hope it's a good one. *Ü*

As I was reading blogs yesterday morning, I came across one from my friend April (Capture the Memories), a gal I've "known" from my CTMH days. She's also taken Library of Memories and other projects. She hasn't posted all that much lately, but she's been busy, like all of us. Plus, I think she moved too! Anyway, she posted about a new class she signed up for called Blogging for Scrapbookers. I was instantly intrigued.

After all, I've pretty much completed the tagging of my digital scrapbook supplies and I've pretty much finished getting my photos all centrally located (by month and year) on my computer. I'm itching to scrapbook and you all know how I love my bloggin'. *Ü* The class is $15, which is affordable. But I'm also trying to be frugal. What to do? What to do?

I did some leaf clean up outside and thought about it some more. I found I couldn't stop thinking about the class and how intriguing it sounded. It took about 2-3 hours (including breaks) to get the whole leaf situation taken care of and I felt like I sort of "earned" the perk (or reward if you will) of taking this class.

And so, early this morning, I signed up! For the next three weeks, I'll be involved in this class and because of that you might see more blog posts from me.
I thought this photo would be a cute one to share with you
about what I'm going to be working on. Wish me luck.

And if you happen to have found my blog because of my posting the address in the class forum, welcome and thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll visit often!

I even played hooky from housework today so I could get myself familiar with the class information....shhhhhhhh.....LOL

See you soon, I hope!
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Sunday, November 1, 2009

A Happy Halloween Was Had...

Happy Day After Halloween!

Hope you had a fun holiday and are well rested now that you've had an extra hour of sleep.

I might have enjoyed an extra hour, only I was kept awake last night by the neighbors behind us who had a party. The party wasn't too loud, but the fireworks they lit off between 2 - 3 am sure were! So any extra sleep was discounted by the time I was awake for that. It all evens out, I guess. LOL I did get my grocery shopping done an hour earlier than normal, which was nice.

The girls had a great day. Amy finally got to carve her pumpkin. We had to wait until the last minute to carve as the altitude seems to make carved pumpkins dry out and start looking like shrunken jack-o-lanterns rather quickly.

Look how proud she is!

She did ALL the work herself, with the exception of cutting the top off.

To think she grew this one herself from a seed made for a very happy camper. (and the pumpkin had a satisfying number of seeds to roast, too, which was great)

The girls had a Halloween party to go through that was organized by a troop in the unit. The girls had fun doing some crafts, checking out creepy containers and playing some games. There was also a gal there doing face painting and Jessica wanted to have it done.

It is fairly simple. She originally wanted a butterfly face (be still my heart), but didn't want the gal to have to paint onto her bandage, so she decided on this design. Still very cute, no? And did you notice on her ears?? Yep, I quick made up her pair of earrings and she's been wearing them pretty much ever since.
Here they are, ready to head out trick or treating. Never mind that I had thought Jess would wear pink under her dress and Amy a white shirt and jeans. They dress themselves and we have no arguments about it, which is nice.

Aside from needing a face wash, they are the cutest spooks around in my book. LOL

Hope you have a great Sunday. Thanks for visiting and your wonderful comments on the gingerbread house I made. They sure put a big grin on my face. You all are the best.

Big hugs to you!

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