Brier Rose Scrappin' Set

New page kits! These are available this week at www.scrapoutsidethebox.com

This is a scrappin' set with shades of blue and red and just a touch of pink flowers. Some of the backgrounds are scruffy and some are soft florals. The set is composed of 10 backgrounds, 4 matching ribbons, 4 various frames, and floral elements including an antique label. Along with this is a scruffy white overlay that can be used with any solid color or print background to create your own to coordinate. There are also two pieces of word art overlays: "The earth laughs in flowers" and the scripture, "Attention, all! See the marvels of GOD! He plants flowers and trees all over the earth! Psalm 46:8"

The quickpage gives you an easy way to create a matching layout with space for two photos or one plus some journaling.

Click on the images for more info.

My adorable nephew

I absolutely love the expression my sister-in-law captured here on my nephew's face. Perhaps it is because there are days that *I* feel just like this, but because I am the mommy I can't fold my arms and make this face. Ü

When I saw this, I knew it would be just perfect for Katie Mann's Serenity scrapbook kit (www.scrapoutsidethebox.com). It shows that the kit can be used for not so "serene" moments, too! Katie is this week's Designer Out of the Box and she has some great deals on her stuff.

But we still LOVE her....

Do any of you have one of these? My beautiful 12 year old daughter WILL NOT tolerate having her picture taken anymore. Future generations are going to be looking through our scrapbooks and think we either disowned her or she became disfigured and we stopped photographing her!

Journaling reads:
It may be hard to believe, but my little budding photographer has become extremely camera shy. I blame it on the self-consciousness of puberty, but that pitiful picture on the left is what the majority of our current pictures of Elizabeth look like. They are usually blurry because I have to move fast to avoid her instinctive action to block her face with her hand. Only rarely does she consent to sit still for a photo and that is usually after making some sort of threat. So if you notice a lack of photos of Elizabeth during this season of our scrapbooks, you will know that she didn’t suddenly fall out of our good graces, but instead was hiding behind her hand every time the camera wasn’t in it.

I did this using one of Doris Castle's Beach quickpages which really goes to show that they are pretty versatile since there is really nothing "beachy" about this LO. "Camera" was done with her soft blue alpha and "shy" was done with her Original Divas' alpha.

It's official! I have my first scrappin' set up for sale at Scrap Outside the Box. How fun!

Cool, huh?
Just keepin' it real. Actually, with the nausea and exhaustion, it feels pretty real to me. It probably doesn't help that I have a sinus infection on top of the pregnancy. Right now, I feel like I need about 3 times my normal amount of sleep. Perhaps, once my head has cleared up, I will only need about TWICE my normal rest!

Thankfully, I was awake early this morning. So, I heard the loud thud followed by crying when my 4 year old son, Patrick fell out of bed. (No, not his bunk bed. He had opted to sleep in the extra bed in the girls' room last night.) I went to console him and as my hand brushed the back of his head, I felt this giant goose egg. Well, giant may be an exaggerationn, but is was bigger than a quarter around and had to stick out at least 1/4". I couldn't believe how immediate that was! We got some ice for it and cuddled for quite a bit.
That was at about 6am. I will go check on him again very soon. I looked up head injuries at webMD and he didn't have any of the scary symptoms they listed, but I am going to watch him pretty close today. I just pray that God takes care of my little boys head!

Home Addition

I know that we just moved into our lovely new home a few months ago, but have now realized that we should add on. Crazy as it sounds, we decided that the house would be just perfect with the addition of 2 feet. Now, we aren't sure yet where those two feet should go. They will either be added to my son's room or the girls' room. We plan to make this addition sometime in September, and we will know then.

By the way, this is my secret. A secret my hubby and I have kept to ourselves for over three weeks. I thought I might bust! Ü

In case you are really thinking that I am crazy, look closely at the image and don't think in terms of linear feet, but instead...BABY feet. Yes, we are expecting!!! The family is excited and my girls are already thinking about baby names. As for me, I am thrilled but tired which is typical for me. Although during pregnancy, I deal with a fair amount of nausea, fortunately, I am usually spared excessive morning sickness, BUT I barely have the energy to get through the day. That is a trade off that I am more than willing to take!

Just to clarify, though, our actual house size is perfect! We will just get to take advantage of it better!

I have a secret...

Shhhh......I'm on my way out the door so I'll have to reveal it later

My Sweet Nephew

My little nephew was baptized yesterday. His baptism was somewhat unique in the fact that my mother-in-law had just returned from a trip to the holy land and brought back a bottle of water collected from the Jordan River. Little Henry got baptized with this water. Really cool!

Then, of course, there was a party and we wore him out. :-)

I created this picture as a gift for Henry. I found this poem and woodburned it on a plaque when his oldest brother was baptized and just love what it says. I created a something similar to this when his other older brother got baptized, as well, so I thought I should keep with tradition and make this for Henry.

Been a Busy Bunny...

I lost my entire day yesterday cleaning and preparing an apartment for rental. What is frustrating about this is that I had already hired someone to do this for me. Obviously her concept of clean and mine are QUITE different. Needless to say, I won't be using her again. This was a rush job we were doing as a favor for a current tenant. Thankfully my FIL came to help me with some of the electrical work that is a bit over my head (because hubby couldn't get off work until 5pm). He ended up helping me immensely with the cleaning as well, and I am so grateful. The stove alone took him hours.
I ended up tackling and learning a new skill. Someone previously had been caulk happy in that bathroom and it was on every edge in HUGE wide streaks. Over time it had deteriorated and yellowed and even had mold under it in places. Ick! I spent hours scraping it all off with a razor blade and re-caulking. I also figured out how to repair tile grout, too. Hubby joined us after work and we all ended up finishing around 8pm (We had started at 11am). And it looked good!

Anyway, enough about that. Tomorrow my sweet little nephew Henry is getting baptized and Barry and I are going to stand up as his godparents. Henry is going to have the special distinction of being baptized with water from the Jordan River. My MIL just returned from a trip to the Holy Land and brought back a bottle of it. I think that's cool!

There's much to do today, but I thought I should check in and say hey!

Celebrating Love

I was reading this article at www.crosswalk.com this morning discussing ways to "Model Christ's Love with Your Family this Valentine's Day." I think we may try one of them which is to make a certificate listing the attributes of love as found in 1 Corinthians 13. But instead of writing "love" [is patient] leave a blank. Then everyone is to be on the lookout to see these love qualities in others. When they spot someone demonstrating them, they put that person's name in the blank. When it is finished, it should read something like, "Hannah is patient. Matthew is kind. Dad does not envy..." Cool, huh?

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Love...
is patient,
is kind.
does not envy,
does not boast,
is not proud.
is not rude,
is not self-seeking,
is not easily angered,
keeps no record of wrongs.
does not delight in evil,
but rejoices with the truth.
always protects,
always trusts,
always hopes,
always perseveres.

Have you seen this? The promos were hilarious - a totally new perspective on scrappin'!

I can't believe it! My layout I posted yesterday is the Digi Pick of the Day! Go figure that it would be one of my quickest layouts and one that my daughter was not very happy about me posting. She DOES think its cool that it was picked though! But I have to share what she said when I originally showed her the scrapbook page. She looked at me and said in a threatening voice, "There shall be whoopie cushions in your bed!!!" Tee hee! She just keeps giving me more and more to work with!

Cool!

I just noticed that my "Mercy" image set is this week's Planet Pack at A Visual Planet. I'm so excited!

Prayer

"We put everything into our prayers. What we think about Jesus. What's happening
in the world around us. What our dreams are about how life should be. Our sense
of hope. Prayer is the ultimate struggle. It can be exquisite joy, and it can
also be painful tears."

-Dee Henderson (from "The Guardian")

Life and such

I have just spent the last 20 minutes amusing myself with the kids and the cat playing with this marble run thing we have. It is wood toy that has a series of sloped channels that the marbles travel down. I don't know how such a simple thing can be SO amusing. For me it is watching the kitten. You would swear those marbles were made out of catnip - he gets himself into such a frenzy trying to catch those silly marbles. I have been so far unable to capture a good picture of his crazy antics. We have put the toy away and he is still so wound up that he is now laying on top of the turtle's tank stalking the water currents through the glass. At least Wonder Turtle is finding him amusing. (For his sake there is a sturdy top on the tank!)

That was a good diversion. I have so many things to do today that I don't know where to start. I just keep plugging away at little projects and hopefully, by the end of the day, I will feel like I have accomplished something. For now, I am taking a short break before jumping into the next tasks.

On a lighter note, I need to document some funny kid quotes. Today I have to give full credit to Anna. As I am typing this, Anna is reading aloud to me. She got stuck on a word and I looked over to discover it was "chocolate." If you know Anna, she IS her mother's daughter and feels that chocolate should be one of the major food groups. I harrassed her a little about not knowing it and her reply was, "I EAT it; I don't READ it!"

That reminded me of her funny last night. She was sitting on the back edge of the bathtub wearing her PJs and dangling her feet in while her little brother finished his bath. Yes, with our big new bath tub, bathtime has become a family affair. Her big sister (who was also in the room) teased her that she could see her underwear the way she was sitting. To which Anna replied, "SO! They're fresh!" While I am thankful that she was "fresh," I do wonder if should worry about her concept of modesty. So, it's ok to flash others as long as you are clean?

Acceptance

Just finished the images for worship for tomorrow and thought I would share.

There's actually a whole group of images that coordinate with this one. I call the set Hands United.

A Really Grape Scrapbook Page...

My kids usually provide a good laugh for me every day. On this particular occasion, my youngest was sitting at the counter eating grapes that I had in a plastic storage container while I was preparing dinner. I turned around to look at her and THIS is what I saw. (See photo) She was proudly wearing the container on her head and waving the now empty grape stem around.

When I was looking again at this photo, I decided that she looked like some sort of "grape princess" and created this layout. I actually struggled with creative block on this for quite a while, but then I remembered a page I saw on the digital scraplift blog and decided to scraplift it. The inspiration page was a scraplift as well, so this is a scraplift of a scraplift!

I created the purple background for this and used Mo Jackson's frame and old paper from her Primitive Scrapbooking set. The bow is from a kit I had by Debbie Pearson and the painted edge overlay was created by Doris Castle. The grapes are from a ding font called Counterscraps.

If you interested, journaling reads:
With a grape stem as your scepter and a plastic storage container for a crown, Abi you are the cutest little princess around!