Happy Halloween!

On Monday I drove over to my parents house to run some errands and also carve pumpkins. My parents keep my niece and nephew on Mondays and I thought it would be fun for the cousins to carve pumpkins together.

I wasn't sure what Peyton would do...he hasn't ever really enjoyed carving pumpkins....
Jazzy had never seen the inside of a pumpkin before. She thought it was quite interesting.
I was quite impressed with how well Jazzy cleaned out the inside of the pumpkin and she even did a great job of separating the guts from the seeds!
Peyton stuck his hand in once and took of to go play. lol...I knew he wouldn't want to clean it out. I'm bummed about the lighting for the pictures. But we had already started when I realized it and didn't want to move everything.I read on Melonie's blog how she had the kids draw the faces and she would cut them out. I thought that was a great idea. Peyton got a bit carried away with the permanent marker! haha!

So what were the littles doing while I helped the older ones carve pumpkins? Hanging out with Grandpa of course!

My poor nephew...what can I say...he's so stinkin' cute and I'

m sure he's going to hate me one day for this!
His clothes clashed with the pumpkin so we stripped him! :-0

I hope you all have a fantastic and safe Halloween!

Be Happy

Scrap It With A Song's song this week is 'My Guy'. I had some pictures of the kiddos playing and was looking for title inspiration for that layout. I read the line 'when it comes to bein' happy, we are' and knew 'be happy' would be a good title.

We had quite a few spurts of SUPER cold weather last year. This meant coming up with extra activities to keep the kids busy as walks and playing outside were out of the option. Peyton was pretty darn good about including and sharing with Maddy! We would pull out all the cars and accessories we had for them, we'd set up old formula cans to create carnival type games (knock the tower down and get the ball in the hole), we'd create forts and have tea parties and we'd go shopping for things we already had!

The papers and die cuts are from Fancy Pants. This is one of my favorite lines of theirs. Love the colors!

Thanks for stopping by!

Cosmo Cricket Garden Variety Projects

I came across a fantastic sketch by Deb Harter at Birds of a Feather. Here is what I came up with for the sketch:

Maddy would get so excited when I put her in her high chair as she knew food was on the way!

I did a little doodling for a little extra oomph and of course, inked almost everything! The papers, chipboard and journaling spot are from the Garden Variety line and the ribbons are from the Jacks World Line! I did a little stitch down the center of the green ribbon so I could give it the gathered puckered look!

I have really been enjoying making magnet boards for my Christmas Bazaar. The thing is, I can't find them anywhere locally. The craft store I found them at is 3 hours away and doesn't have an on-line store. I can't seem to find the metal sheets anywhere (even on-line). :-( I did however, find this metal sheet at dollar tree. It had a snowman painted on it and was thinner, but I thought I'd try it. Unfortunately it isn't thick enough to be a magnet board. So I guess this will be a piece of wall art. I'll probably add a photo to it.

The flowers were chipboard that I covered and inked.

This week was 'teddy bear' week at Peyton's preschool. Today he got to wear his pajamas and take a stuffed animal with him. He picked out his favorite pj's (these glow in the dark! and have a bigger dinosaur on the top). He requested that I get a photo of him and when I went to get the camera he put the straw hat on top of his knit one. He's such a goof!

I hope nobody turns me into child services for this one. I have a stripper on my hands. On TWO occasions now I have gone to get her from her crib in the morning and she is TOTALLY naked, no diaper or anything. :-( Well, the first one was at 3am in the morning and Chris dealt with it. I thought a fleece zip up sleeper would solve the problem....wrong!

This sure did though! haha! Yep, Chris has been gone for 6 nights now and I have been lucky to average getting maybe an hour and a half of sleep at a time throughout the night, I'm awake more than not. I DID NOT want to treck upstairs and deal with her 'stripping in the middle of the night! haha! And knowing my luck she'd do it in the middle of one of my sleep spurts. So I did a little preventative work. ;-)

Thanks for stopping by! I have another fun Cosmo Cricket layout that will be sure to give you a laugh! So check back soon!

Rub a dub dub

I have been trying to sort through photos and my pile of 'don't need to scrap' is growing bigger and bigger! I just can't keep up! Especially when working on a Christmas Bazaar.

Anyhow...this isn't the best picture of my kiddos in the bath, I have much cuter ones, but it documents their first bath together. This was a HUGE thing. lol....SSSOOO much easier than individual baths or what we did it for a short time. The baby bath in the big bath at the same time! :-0 Peyton was quite excited about it and Maddy wasn't real sure what was going on!

I pulled most of the papers (minus the base) from my stash (yeah for using my stash!).

I've had this jute, rope, twine, whatever you want to call it for a long time just begging to be used! I did a lot of hand stitching. That won't be happening again anytime soon! ;-)

I also had some thicker twine that I used. I punched a ton of circles and stars. Of course not having the right punches I altered the punched pieces to fit my needs! :-)

This has been happening a lot. It just warms my heart every time I see them do it. Its totally on their own, not forced. This was at OHSU as we were awaiting getting a few tests done for Maddy.
This is coming out of a store a while back. Chris did her hair that day! Pretty good huh?

Thanks for stopping by!

Art Freckles Blog Hop

Hello blog hoppers! If you came directly to my blog, you don't want to miss out on any fabulous inspiration, so head over to the Art Freckles blog where all the fun begins! This month Art Freckles is celebrating their 2nd Birthday with a Fall Blog Hop!

I love altering. I have two drawers full of empty food containers (this was a Gerber puff pinwheel container) and numerous other items that I thought 'why throw it away when I could alter it?'. I thought now would be the perfect time to put one to use!

I used the Cosmo Cricket Early Bird Crafting Kit and Cosmo Cricket Tiny Types.

I traced a pumpkin image I found online (sorry, can't remember where) and then embossed and sanded it. I thought the embossed and sanded lines went so well with the lines already on the paper giving it a fun texture and look! I also sanded the edges to the other parts of the pumpkin. I should have done the same to the tag, but didn't think of it til I already glued the paper down. ;-)

Now hope on over to Shannon's blog.

Make sure and check out Art Freckles friendly message board, inspiring gallery, great store and great blog.

In case you get lost along the way, here is a list of the participating blogs:

1. Art Freckles
2. Linda Gunther
3. Joanne Keminen
4. Jill Sarginson
5. Krystle Thomas
6. Jamie Harder
7. Kayla DuPont <-------YOU ARE HERE 8. Shannon Wyman <------------GO HERE

Oh, and in case you are curious about whats in the container, its called Sweet Toffee Chex Mix. My mom found the recipe and we've been completely hooked on it!

Here is the recipe:

1 cup butter

2 1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup corn syrup.

1 tsp vanilla

5 1/2 cup each Crispex and Rice Chex

7 cups Corn Chex

1 pound salted nuts

Boil first 4 ingredients 5 minutes. Mix dry ingredients. (I use a turkey roasting pan) Pour syrup over dry ingredients and stir well. Bake at 250 degrees for 1 hour. Spread on wax paper right away.

First Day of Pre-K layout

I was able to create a couple layouts for challenges at the two crops going on this weekend. This one was to use 5 patterned papers, 5 photos, 5 circles, 5 buttons and 5 brads! I used a sketch by Julie Bonner.

This was Peyton's first day of Pre-K (last year in March). After we moved, I started researching preschool to get him enrolled in. I found one and they even had room and were willing to take him the rest of last year! I was SSOOO excited about this and luckily so was Peyton! He has loved it since his first day!

Thanks for stopping by! I am participating in a blog hop on Tuesday, so make sure to stop back by for that!

Crops, crops and more crops!

I just wanted to let everyone know about two crops going on and a FUN new message board I found!

First off, check out Birds of a Feather Kit Co! The board just started up and are having a grand opening crop called The Great Migration (cute, huh?). So come join us! The challenges started Wednesday, but there is still plenty of time left to play! All the challenges are up waiting for you to start! Oh, and mention Kayla sent you! Make sure to check out her great store here too.

Next off is Citrus Tree Studio. They also have a crop going on this weekend. It starts Saturday morning and challenges are listed throughout the day!

Another Paper Variety Challenge

This week at The Paper Variety, they challenged us to create a project that incorporated candy or treats.

I altered the top of this little fish tackle box. I made one for Chris for Fathers Day and really liked it. I wanted to have a couple on hand as I think they would make great Christmas gifts or hostess gifts this holiday season.
I love this stack of My Minds Eye papers I picked up last year.

Thanks for stopping by!

Cosmo Cricket Wanted Altered Magnet Board

Here is another project I have made for the Christmas Bazaar I hope to participate in.

I used papers from Cosmo Crickets 6x6 Wanted Mini Deck.
I have seen zipper flowers on a ton of blogs. I found a bag at a garage sale for a quarter and decided why not try one out! Here is the result. The burlap material underneath I found at a little local store. I ran it through my Cuttlebug using a Nestabilities die. Unfortunately, it didn't cut all the way through so I had to do a bit of fussy cutting. Now looking at that picture I was debating adding something to the top of the flower and forgot! I put a magnet on the back in case someone didn't like the flower. It is easily removable!
Here are the magnets I made. I found these stones at the dollar tree. I don't like them as well as the ones I found at the craft store, but since I live in an itty bitty town, I really don't have much of a choice. :-/ Anyhow, I cut a little circle, glued a fussy cut flower to it and then covered it with liquid glass and stuck the rock on top. I spent a fare amount of time rubbing it and pushing out bubbles.

I set the bowl of popcorn on the end table and went to grab something else real quick and this is what I came back too:

Yep, Maddy in my rocker holding the whole bowl of popcorn! haha!

Our weekend at the Oregon Coast

We had a wonderful weekend at the Oregon Coast. We arrived mid afternoon on Friday. Peyton was itching to get down to the beach. Like usual, we left all beach toys at home as well as the kites. Seems like we forget them every time and our collection at home is growing. haha! So a quick stop to pick up yet more shovels and pails and we headed for the beach.

Here Peyton is running out onto the beach as fast as he could. He couldn't wait to start digging in the sand. It was really windy (you can see some sand blowing if you look close enough). Neither Maddy or I could take the cold and wind so we headed back to the car after only a few minutes on the beach. I of course, forgot my jacket, but better mine than the kids!

Check out this shovel! It cracks me up! Its HUGE! We got out on the beach early the next morning (thanks to Maddy waking us all up at 6am).
Maddy was so darn cute. Her little curls poking out underneath her cute hat my mom made and her hand-me-down jacket that is a bit to big for her!
Next on Peytons list was the Aquarium. He kept asking if we could go there yet. This isn't a typical aquarium. It was in a ship.
It was pretty small. Peyton was quite scared at first as it was pretty dark down there, but once other kids started coming in he thought it a lot more fun and didn't want to leave.
Peyton says the 'fish' were his favorite part of the trip.
We walked along the waterfront. On one of the piers, you could get a good view of the sea lions. They scared Maddy at first, but then the kids couldn't get enough of them.
Man were they LOUD but fun to watch! I was even quite entertained watching them. (below is the pier we were on and the sea lions below it).
I noticed this restaurant had a back deck we could eat on. The kids had a blast and Chris and I had a peaceful lunch! I'll definitely be going back to that restaurant.

Poor Maddy had all she could take. I can only think of a couple times she has fallen asleep like this.
Of course we had to play in the sand.
My parents happened to be at the beach also. My mom called us and asked us to come to the beach near her. It was really neat. Above my mom and Peyton are looking at an anemones.
We also saw and seals. Oh and a dead whale. It was mostly decomposed, but still very stinky and gross!
Peyton LOVED to show his findings to Maddy who would grab them, throw them and giggle!
Here are the two in the hotel room watching a morning cartoon while we pack to go!

Thanks for stopping by!

Wahoo, Clip and Update

How is that for a title? haha! First off, I was excited to visit the Paper Variety Blog this morning and find this:

I have been busy working on Christmas Bazaar projects. I found these really cute large (they stand about 6" tall) colored clear clothespins with magnets on the back. I used a fabulous Paper Poppy Kit on this one (the pins and alphas were mine though).

Thank you for all the well wishes. Our trip went pretty well. We found OHSU/Dorbecker fairly easy (I was worried about this as we aren't used to freeways and tons of one-way streets). We only got honked at once. Apparently the bus driver didn't like us being in his 'bus only' lane! lol...We really liked the doctor and Maddy seemed to like her too. We are still trying to figure out the root cause. But til then we have found out she has fissures. We have a game plan to get those taken care of (which I am NOT looking forward too). While there Maddy had some blood drawn and had to go through a sweat test. Poor girl was traumatized by the blood being drawn. We made the mistake of doing that first (we didn't realize what the sweat test endured). So when it came to the sweat test Maddy screamed with all her might through the majority of the hour long process. Poor Peyton just sat in the chair and plugged his ears the first 15 min. or so. Then asked if we could go wait in the car. :-( We are waiting to hear back on a few tests.

We headed to the Oregon Coast after the appointment Man, what a nice weekend we had. The weather was beautiful and we had lots of fun! I got lots of pictures to share! We learned on the way home, poor Miss Maddy got car sick. She threw up big time about an hour away from home. :-(

Thanks for stopping by! I hope to get more pictures of my projects to share with you soon!

Sketch Challenge

Melonie created a great sketch for October over at Citrus Tree Studio.

Here is my take on it:

And a close up:

Yeah, I'm a little behind on Maddy's baby album! ;-)

I saw an craft idea on-line and Peyton was itching to get crafty. We were trying to make sunflowers. This included three of Peytons favorite activities. Painting, cutting and gluing.

Of course, Maddy wanted to participate. Poor girl, I didn't trust her and took her shirt off. Her legs just crack me up in this photo!

Maddy was more interested in take the caps on and off than painting! haha!

Of course, I forgot to get a picture of the craft once it was done. Peyton wanted to give his sunflower to Grandpa and Grandma GG's!

Thanks for stopping by!