Free Daily Downloads!

I have the privilege of hosting the free daily downloads at Scrap Outside the Box this week! I have had so much on my plate lately that I am in a designing slump, so it was great have this to motivate me to design. I plan to add to this and create a kit to sell really soon. But or right now you can go here each day this week and get a piece of this batch of goodies!

Toot!

I just got an e-mail telling me that *I* am being spotlighted on Disc Talk Radio. How cool is that?!? They are featuring my Doris Castle's Whispers Album and chose to highlight my Rachel Smiles page using it. Scroll down to see it; I just posted it here last week. According to the show, they fell in love with the Whispers Album because they saw it used on MY layout. How FUN! The show is free to listen to, but you do have to register at the site. Check it out!

Young Tomatoes

"My grandma used to plant tomato seedlings in tin cans from tomato sauce &
puree & crushed tomatoes she got from the Italian restaurant by her house,
but she always soaked the labels off first. I don't want them to be anxious
about the future, she said. It's not healthy."

Another StoryPeople story. (See post below)

Polar Fleece Body

"the problem with polar fleece is that it gets absorbed into your body after a
few months & even exercise won't get rid of it, she said, & there's
nothing more depressing than a polar fleece body"

I was going through e-mail and found this quote. It gave me a chuckle so I thought I would share it. This comes from the Story People which is a weird kinda quirky site full of these unusual "stories." You can sign up to get one daily by e-mail.

Her SMILE makes me SMILE

Maybe it is just me. I mean I AM her mom and that makes me biased, but I just can't look at that little smile without smiling myself. My little Rachel is getting such a personality. These are photos from when we were at the park a couple of weeks ago. Rachel was just hanging out in the stroller with us and I decided to catch a couple of photos of her. All I needed to do was talk to to her just a bit to get a grin. She is a ham at 6 months old!

It's another busy week. Too much to do in too little time - the story of my life! Of special note, Rachel is getting baptized this Sunday. It's her "official" introduction to God. But I know that they are already well aquainted - this is just a formality.

Credits for this layout can be found here.

I'm crazy!

I just started 2 new blogs this morning!

Really they are more for me than anyone else.
The first is called Scrappin' Sparks. It is a place to store any inspirational quotes and such that I like. Often I will be creating a scrapbook page and think, "I need a great quote for this." Now, instead of searching the web, I will have a little stash of favorite quotes on my own site. I thought perhaps someone else might enjoy it, too.

The next is called Page Patterns which is what I call my scrapbook sketches and templates. I thought it would be fun to periodically post some of these ideas and share them.

I will warn you. Both of these sites are about as generic as you can get. [boring blogger templates] But I hope that in time they will build up to be a cool resource.

Happy Belated Easter!

I guess it really doesn't matter that my Easter well-wishes are a day after Easter because really I think Easter should be celebrated EVERY day of the year. What Christ did on Easter has got to be the single most important thing that has happened in the history of mankind. He conquered death! By doing so we, too, get to cheat death. He took the punishment that was due to us for our wrongs upon Himself. It is an amazing thing to consider!

I hope you all had a wonderful time celebrating yesterday! We sure did although I went to bed saying to Barry that holidays can be just plain exhausting.

We were all up too late on Saturday night because we got a late start on dinner, egg coloring and baths. All of my children were still awake at nearly 11pm! Then we were all up at 7 am to get ready for church because I was performing in our church's Easter cantata bright and early at 1st service 9as well as 3rd service). There was no time for Easter baskets or hunting for eggs. We were at church the entire morning until 12:30.

Then we were off to my parents' house for a wonderful lunch. We did have some time to just relax and just visit there. Then we were off to Barry's parents' house to have dinner with them along with my brother-in-law's family. This, perhaps, would not be considered quite as relaxing. Imagine this situation, all of my 5 kids were shorted sleep the night before, had been on the go all day long, and had not had naps. I believe that my little ones having completely run out of their own steam, were at this point 100% fueled by the Easter sugar rush. Then imagine adding to the mix 3 more little boys (my nephews) AND rockets. Yes, you read that right. Rockets. Grandma and Grandpa got Patrick, Abi, and my 5 and 3 year old nephews these really cool rocket launchers for Easter gifts. To describe them they are plastic and fit on an air tube that will shoot them 35 feet according to the package. They were put to the test in Grandma and Grandpa's basement. I think they DO shoot that far! There were several near calamities and Uncle Mark nearly got his eye shot out before it was decided to put the rockets up.

When we finally got home, it was after 9pm. although it was past their bedtime, we let them check out their Easter baskets from us and check to see if the Easter Bunny had come to hide any eggs. We had a talk with the Bunny several years ago and told him not to hide the real eggs because we are usually gone all day on Easter and rotten eggs don't make for a fun egg hunt. Usually he hides plastic eggs filled with various candies, but this year he got clever and hid foil wrapped chocolate eggs. I believe that there were well over 100 for the kids to find. You should have seen them. Before I could even get into the house the kids were yelling, "There's tons of candy eggs and they're EVERYWHERE!" It was too cute!

Then it was off to bed for my little peeps. I have a feeling that they won't stir any too early this morning and that is just fine by me. I am hoping that they can catch back up a little on their sleep.

The scrapbook page here includes pictures from our church's annual Easter Fest that took place on Saturday which included crafts, stories and, of course, and egg hunt.
Journaling reads:
The day of our church’s annual EasterFest dawned COLD and SNOWY. I don’t think that it mattered a bit to you three. I took Anna, Patrick, & Abi to the event. First, you made crafts and ate cookies and jelly beans. Then some of the youth did a short presentation about the symbolism of the jelly bean colors. This was followed by the main event - the egg hunt! Due to the weather the eggs were hidden inside. Last was the favorite part when you got to empty out your eggs and discover all your loot!

This scrapbook page was created with Irene Brown's Pastel Pleasures kit from Scrap Outside the Box. I love the florals in this kit! The colors are great and I like how they are a bit shabby and distressed.

My morning

Even though this blog is titled, "Trish's Day" I probably don't post all that many little details of my days. I guess I figure it would just bore anyone else. But today, I just have to talk about my morning.

It started at 7:20am. I overslept [sigh]. I like to be up bright and early to have some time to myself while the house is still quiet. That means I should be up around 6:00, 6:30am at the latest. I was still sleeping at 7:20, but was aroused when I realized something was up. That something was a curly headed little girl who had her face 2" from mine. I greeted Abi with a smile and as she was making her way under my covers, my son, Patrick, crept into the bed, too. Because it is a physical impossibility for two small children in the same proximity to be quiet, it wasn't long before they had wakened Baby Rachel who had been asleep in the bassinet next to me. I brought her into the bed to feed her. The more the merrier, right? All of this was an effective alarm clock for my hubby and he got up giving us more room. This extra room was just an invitation for Patrick and Abi to decide to do a show for Rachel and I right there on the bed. There as singing and dancing and, of course, no way that I was getting Rachel back to sleep at this point.

I got up and took her into the bathroom with me. I keep a boppy pillow and a couple of toys in there for her. It used to be, that I would put her on her tummy on the pillow and she would play there contented for a good 10 minutes while I got ready. Today, I turned around and saw that she was no longer on the boppy, but was still on her tummy a full foot away and turned completely around. Ugh! MOBILITY! Gone are the days where I could sit her down somewhere and expect that she will stay there. Fast approaching are the days where a constant eye needs to be on her to protect her from whatever she may find to get into. I LOVE seeing her grow from a helpless little newborn. It is such a joy to see her cute little personality emerge. She responds when you talk to her and she plays. It is so cute! But if I am honest, I have to admit that I desire to hold her back. I was joking the other day about how maybe we shouldn't give her so much floor time. Perhaps if we kept her on our laps more or in the exersaucer we could delay the crawling and the inevitable MOBILITY.

While I was considering that future chaos, as if on cue, Abi came running through my bathroom wearing nothing but a pair of socks! She was followed by her brother who was at least wearing a pair of Bob the Builder undies with his socks. Rachel was thoroughly amused and I had to just stop and laugh! Chaos is just an unavoidable part of my life right now with 5 children under our roof. All that I can hope to do is try to reign it in and laugh.

So, my morning has not started off as I would ideally have it, but I have decided to find Joy in the chaos. May you find Joy in your chaos today, too!

Just one more page...

I should be SO relaxed [see post below]. I just had to sneak in one more page before I jump into my day full force. Luckily, this one went pretty quick for me. I have changed my method of organizing my photos and along wth that, I am getting into the habit of "tweaking" them in groups. This is because I have started shooting in RAW format and every photo I want to use has to be converted. The advantage to this is that when I am in the mood to scrap, I have a bunch of photos sorted into monthly folders that are completely ready to go. Before I would have to hunt a photo I wanted to use and do all of my photoshop tweaks before I could even start scrappin. This took much longer and I would often run out of time before the page was complete. I think I like this system much better and here is a page I got done fast to prove it. Credits for the layout can be found here.

Scrappin' as Stress Relief

I have decided that scrappin a quick layout is a great way to releive stress. I started this page last night as I was cooking dinner. I had stuff simmering and was waiting for my pasta to get done and I just decided to see if I could whip off a page. Well, I don't scrap as fast as I would like and I only got it started. I did a bit more to it last night before bed and finished it this morning.

I tend to crave scrapbooking when I am really too busy to be doing it. I think letting my creativity loose is good for reliving stress. It is also a form of procrastination [see previous post]. I just need to find the balance between stress relief and procrastination!

Credits for the page can be found here.

The Art of Procrastination

I think I have mastered it. Procrastination, that is.
[sigh]
I have SO much I really need to be doing right now and just can't for the life of me seem to will myself to do it.

So, while I avoid doing what I need to do, I thought I would quickly post this scrapbook page that I did a few weeks ago. I couldn't post it at that time because the kit wasn't officialy released yet. But I was lucky enough to get to play with it ahead of time. The kit is so pretty and just reeks of springtime! It is called Growth Spurts and was created by Doris Castle for Cottage Arts. I used this sweet photo of Rachel. She was laying on her tummy on my bed and the sunlight was catching her wild hair. She has these funny half curly wisps of long hair. I think the ones on the sides of her head are the longest.

Ok, I am off to work on my taxes. Yes, sad but true, it is already the 3rd of April and my taxes aren't yet done. As I said, I think I have mastered the art of procrastination!