Happy weekend!  I am so excited to have a warm weekend!  Ok, maybe not warm but HOT!  On Sunday it was in the 50s, today it was almost 100 — wierd… 

Tomorrow Scott is doing a big bike tour.  Reach The Beach is a 110 mile bike ride from here to the coast.  Note, I am NOT joining him…   I get to hang with the kids.  I think we are going to go out to breakfast, hit the gym and go to the farmers’ market and then head over to this great fountain downtown so the kids can run through — they love it!  Then it’s home for hopefully some very long naps and some quiet work time for mommy!  Then it’s off to a t-ball in the evening.  And tomorrow night, a friend from Portland is coming down with her almost 4 year old twins.  The kids are so excited for a ‘lumber party and I’m looking forward to an evening out with a good friend.  I think it’s going to be a busy day….

And, here is a peek at next month’s kit, “Gazebo!”  Blue, yellow and white (with a touch of green and pink) is one of my favorite home interior color combination and I love the way it translated to scrapbooking.  I can’t wait to have a few free moments to play with this one (I don’t think that is going to be tomorrow!).

June Kit “Gazebo” Patterned Paper

7 Gypsies Nottinghill Westway

7 Gypsies Calais St Martin

7 Gypsies Calais Marquise

Pink Paislee Lunch Hour

Making Memories Garden party Scalloped Square

Making Memoreis Garden Party Scalloped Circle

Anna Griffin Blue & White Vine

Hambly Home Décor Overlay White

Glitz Sublime Vines

Narratives Flourish Sky

Sassafras Lass Pocket Full of Rosies – Secret Garden

October Afternoon Garden Chair

Webster’s Pages Feather Your Nest Morning Glory

7 Gypsies Journeys Reef Ocean

 Cardstock

Bazzill Parakeet

Bazzill Small Eyelet White 6×6

Bazzill Kevin

Bazzill Dark Butter

Embellishments

Amy Butler Belle Flocked Alpha

Prima The Goods – Clear Stamp “Corners”

7 Gypsies Rubbings – Self

Heidi Swapp Felt Butterflies Dark Pink

Heidi Swapp Felt Flowers Lemonade

Anna Griffin Blue & Yellow Card

Kaiser Pearls

3 Sheets Knock-Knock “Great Idea’

American Craft Indie McKeown Satin Picot – Green

Prima Blue Scalloped Floral Lace

The Narratives Flourish Sky is not shown in the photo

Nor is the October Afternoon Garden Chair

Share This

Today I decided that I give up.  No matter what I do, I simply am never going to be on time.  On a good day I may only be 5 minutes late but generally it’s going to be 10.

This morning Jack had a field trip at school so I wanted to be a good mom and actually have him at school right on time at 9am instead of the usual 9:10.  Scott left the house early and I never turn on my alarm clock because he always wakes me up so I woke up 30 minutes late.  I couldn’t go unshowered because I was suffering from the ultimate in bed head. 

Ok, I’d just skip breakfast.  The time was still slipping away. 

Ok, I wouldn’t make them lunch — one day of lunchables wouldn’t kill them.  We would just run quickly into the store on the way there. 

Ok, they didn’t need breakfast either — one day of Burger King fried French Toast sticks and Lunchables wouldn’t kill them. 

So, after scrambling like crazy, when we left the house we still had time to run through the drive-thru at Burger King and make it to school by 9 (at this point I was going to drop the lunchables off later).  

But…I wasn’t planning on waiting 7 minutes for them to cook the French Toast sticks.  We still could have been sort of on time. 

But…I wasn’t expecting to be stopped by a passing fire truck and…

I certainly wasn’t expecting to be stopped by a train for 5 minutes!

So…it’s official. 

I’m just going to accept that this who I am — someone who is cronically 10 minutes late.  Here’s to accepting our fobiles!

Share This

Happy Mother’s Day to everyone!  I hope you were able to do something special for yourself — scrapbooking, time off from the kitchen, brunch out or whatever floats your boat!  In my case that was cleaning out the toy room and organizing the hall closet.  Pathetic, I know.  BUT, I really hate it when the toys are disorganized.  It used to be that I couldn’t go to bed without picking up every single toy.  And not just picking up — every single toy, game etc had to be reassembled correctly and put in it’s proper spot (now if only I could instill that in my little darlings). Fortunately/Unfortunately, Cocoa Daisy has cured me of my somewhat overanal qualities — there’s only so much time in a day!  So, to be able to devote an entire morning to reorganizing, weeding out and reassemblying (much more tedious since Playmobile entered our lives!) was a luxury in my book.  And I did get to do it while sipping my yummy latte!  As far as the coat closet is concerned, I assembled some shelves for the floor and everything now looks so beautifully organized!  So much so that I’ve walked by twice and opened the door just to admire the organization!  A sickness (I know) that I rarely get to indulge anymore!

Speaking of toys, I just had a really remarkable experience.  A couple of weeks ago, Jack lost the “shooters” from his Ninja Turtle Action figure.  He was sobbing as if he just lost his dog (oh, except he didn’t even bat an eyelash when Hannah died, but losing a “shooter,” that’s a whole different story!).  To cheer him up I told him I would email the company and see if they would send new shooters.  I emailed Playmate Toys fully expecting never to hear back from them.  What a surprise when I got up in the morning and there was an email awaiting me.  She said she didn’t know if they had any missles (aka “shooters”) left for that particular toy but that if she couldn’t find them she would definitely send something else instead.  WOW!  That was amazing, but still, I wasn’t holding my breathe.  What do you know, this week there was a nice little package in the mailbox addressed to a certain Jack Canonico.  Inside was a brand new, fully equipped orange Ninja Turtle (the last one was blue) AND there was also a pack of 4 small Ninja Turtles as well!  To say the least, I was very impressed and will certainly go out of my way to purchase their products when we are in the market for a toy.

My inlaws who live in New Hampshire rented a time share right outside of Blaine, WA this past week.  It’s right along the Canadian border on the coast.  We drove up and met them there.  There was supposed to be just one nice day but the entire week proved to be gorgeous!  What a lucky break for that area this time of year! 

We went to Richmond, BC one day, did some picnics, some hikes, hung out in the pool, walked on the beach, went to Bellingham, and basically had a very nice visit.

Birch Bay at sunset…

This bald eagle just hung out at the top of this tree most of the week.  It was right beside the building we were staying in and from the rooftop you could get about 20 feet away from it.  And. it would just sit there.  Very cool.

Lots of hiking (or what can be considered a hike with a 3 & 5 year old).

Love the photos that show the sweeter side….

Alice with grandma and grandpa.

Flowers at one of the playgrounds we visited…

One of the beaches they hit was covered in these enormous purple starfishes!

 One of the highlights of the trip for me was having a bit of free time for scrapbooking!  I was on a roll this month with old photos of Scott’s grandparents.  I just wish I knew more about the photos…

I took the idea for the cutout of the cherry branch from Kim.  The brads, buttons, paper diecuts are all from the Cherry Blossom add-on.  The stamp is from the June Birdcage add-on and the journaling is from the Making Memories Spiral Journaling Notebook in the Teahouse add-on. 

And this is the other layout I did (remember — I’m in contention for the world’s slowest scrapbooker!)

I had so much fun doing this one!  The wings from the main kit I covered with Stickles (Lisa Pace’s favorite product!) and the Krylon silver leaf pen.  I then embroidered around the edge with silver embroidery thread.  The dot patterned around it made for a perfect template!  The flowers, buttons and “How Lovely” diecut are from the Cherry Blossom add-on again (it was definitely my favorite one), and the Fontwerks Blue Label stickers are from the Anna add-on.

 As all the kits had to go out this week, I took the train home on Thursday while Scott and the kids drove home yesterday.  I have to say that traveling by yourself is such a marvelous thing and I loved taking the train.  I splurged on First Class (ok, it was only $15 more) and it was really a great way to travel.  And, with gas prices these days, a very economical way to get about.  I got in Thursday night and packed kits.  Friday Kelcey and I spent the entire day and night packing kits and then yesterday Lisa, Pam and I finished them up.  WHEW!

On the train I was reading the lastest edition of Lucky, and saw these wide leg denim-ish linen pants that I needed.  Unlike 98% of the products in Lucky, they were actually affordable and I think they were even under $40.  I never heard of the company they were made by before, twelvebytwelve so I checked out their site in hopes of getting the pants.  No luck on the pants, but the site had some really fun stuff at some remarkably low prices.  It turns out to be a sister company to Forever21 and as I am nowhere near 21, it was nice to find this site with fresh, fun clothes that seem to be targeted to women who want to have fun, inexpensive clothes without looking like they are trying to look 21.

I love, love, loved this trenchcoat!  Now I just need to figure out how to justify one more coat….

Enjoy your special day!

Share This

Christine just told me that her Project of the Month is in the Top Ten over at Two Peas!  It is pretty darn cute!!!

And…

One of my customers, Krista, is moving to Corvallis from Massachusette and is getting a hard time from friends as to why in the world they would want to move here!  (We live about 100 feet from the Corvallis townline.)   To illustrate why she thinks Corvallis is a perfect place to live and I have to admit some of the bulletpoints I was not aware of.  I do have to say that I’m a bit biased about #5!

The Top 20 Reasons Why I Love Corvallis
(in no particular order)

1. The February 2004 issue of the Harvard Business Review ranks Corvallis as the 15th most creative city in the nation.*
2. In a 2007 report, Farmer’s Insurance Group ranked Corvallis as the “most secure” small city in America, based on (as reported by Insurance Journal magazine) crime statistics, extreme weather, risk of natural disasters, environmental hazards, terrorism threats, air quality, life expectancy and job loss numbers.*
3. The incredible park and recreation program, which includes soccer for 2 and 3 year olds.
4. A strong sense of community - everyone in Corvallis loves Corvallis. They support their schools, go to the OSU football games, and are proud of their town.
5. It’s the home of Cocoa Daisy - the best scrapbooking kit club around (ok, they are technically in Philomath, but close enough).
6. Nathan’s family and all our West Coast friends.
7. It was named “One of the 13 best towns to be a vegetarian.”*
8. The fact that one of Corvallis’ most notable people (per Wikipedia) is Brady Sahnow, founder of National Corn Dog Day.*
9. Corvallis School District was named one of the top public school systems in the country.*
10. Corvallis-Benton county library was named one of top ten libraries in the country.*
11. It’s the 9th most bicycle-friendly city in the nation.*
12. The Inkwell - a fabulous home furnishing store.
13. A survey by the National Science Foundation found Corvallis ranks second in the nation for the number of scientists as a percentage of total employment (12.7 percent) as of 2006.*
14. The climate is ideal for gardening and every yard has such beautiful flowers in the spring.
15. Corvallis was ranked the 20th safest city (of 344) in the 13th Annual America’s Safest (and Most Dangerous) Cities publication for metropolitan areas of its size.*
16. Francesco’s Gelato - they let you sample as many flavors as you want!
17. It’s close to both the ocean and gorgeous, green mountains.
18. It is much less crowded than the East Coast and really has such a relaxed vibe.
19. Corvallis was the first city on the West Coast and only the third city in the nation to receive the “Green Power Community” designation by the EPA.*
20. It has that small town feel with a thriving downtown full of one-of-a-kind shops. They are very conscious about urban growth and many “big box” stores have had a hard time stepping foot into Corvallis.

****But… she did miss that Corvallis was just ranked as the #1 green city in the country and a few other designations.  But shhhh don’t tell anyone how great it is here! 

Share This

Ummm… did I already mention that I HATE Vista? We were without internet for 2 days because a McAfee update screwed up all the settings on my computer as it’s not really compatable with Vista.  Of course this was only discovered after an hour an a half on the phone with Microsoft, an hour and a half on the phone with Comcast and 50 minutes on the phone with McAfee.  Happily though I am back online!

Over the past week I’ve actually found a few stolen moments here and there to scrapbook.  I am loving the May kit for heritage photos!  I think the muted colors work perfect with the sepia tones in older photos.  I’ve been using photos of Scott’s grandparents.  Now I need to track down some photos of my own grandparents!

Here’s one I created using the April kit:

I really loved working with this paper from the Geisha add-on (I just painted chipboard behind the flower pink) and the Crate Paper diecuts from the Cherry Blossom add-on are just amazing!

And then I did this one of Scott’s grandfather, his twin and older brother with the May kit as well.  All the little diecuts are from Making Memories and I believe those are in the Teahouse add-on.

Off to pick the kids up from school, and to hit the grocery store and maybe to get Jack signed up for kindergarten.

Oh, and this was interesting this morning — OPB, the NPR station in Portland, has a locally produced call-in show.  This morning’s show was devoted to our little town of Philomath!  There is a foundation in town that has been giving scholarships to all of the town’s high school graduates.  From what I understand (we’re not from Philomath and we did not purchase in town because of the scholoarship), the scholarship was orignally meant to send kids to Oregon State, about 10 minutes away.  Now, to get a scholarship, you can not go to Oregon State (the foundation had a falling out with the University), you have to be a second generation town resident and you have to attend a small number of schools hand picked by the foundation.  Of course, as a private foundation they have a right to do whatever they want.  However, in my humble opinion, I seems that the Clemens who started the foundation wanted to help the children of the town, not set a political agenda.  In the end, what they seem to have achieved is division and putting  kids who had rightly or wrongly counted on that money in hardship.  If you want to find out more about this controversy that received nationwide attention, there was a documentary called “Clear Cut” that was shown at the Sundance Film Festival.

Share This