Back to School

It's been awhile since I've posted! I always have good intentions of posting daily, but I always fall short! The girls are back in school and I'm back to having quiet days around the house to craft. I've been busy...I've gotten lots of projects done lately...I'll go ahead and say that I'll post them on my blog and then I probably won't...ha ha!! Trust me, time passes so quickly that when I go to the blog and see that the last time I posted was several MONTHS back, I just can't believe it!





Enough about my shortcomings. Let's talk about these awesome photos from my good friend Mary Morris. She came up with the chalkboard/speech bubble idea. I made them, and then she took the photos. I got the best end of that deal! And, she's the ONLY one who can make Ellen smile like that! LOVE these photos!!

45 Years Together continued

Here's the final gift all framed and ready to be given to my parents. (They loved it, by the way!) And here's a photo of Elizabeth...it was NOT her idea to hold the letter still and look at the camera. If you look very closely at her photo in the frame, you can see her dad's finger at the very bottom holding it straight and still. And, thank goodness for rapid burst photography...why didn't I have a camera that did that when my girls were little? Regardless of how she holds the "E" she is absolutely adorable!!

45 Years Together

My parents celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary in June. For a gift, I covered the letters that spell LOVE in Stampin' Up! bright designer series papers and took an individual photo of each of the kids. See the next post for the final gift (and why I had to take individual photos) ha ha!!

You Make Me Feel...

Here's a photo of my sister and me with our birthday cards (see previous post for details). I have countless funny stories about us, but this photo reminded me of one of my favorite memories. Please notice that Julie is quite a bit taller than I am...this is KEY to this story! One time, Julie came up and stood next to me and said, "You make me feel so tall." and I responded with "You make me feel so pretty!" I'm certain I understand now why she picked the card that she did.

I'm STILL here!

I can't believe that 6 months slipped by and I haven't posted a single thing! Believe me, I've been creating...probably even more than usual. The last posts show Christmas events...well, Christmas wore me out and then I took January off from "business stuff" to concentrate on Ellen's birthday and get ready to start new classes in the spring. Our spring turned out to have some unexpected happenings and things just didn't get back on track. All of a sudden I had all sorts of stamping obligations for school, church, personal friends, etc and classes took a backseat to life in general! Thankfully everything is better now and I have a few events planned for the summer. And, I promise I will have a full line up of fun classes in the fall. In the meantime, plan to come over and stamp this summer. And, I will be posting ideas and projects from the last 6 months over the next few weeks. :)

More Teacher Gifts--Wednesday

The girls had to draw a picture for the teachers for Wednesday's gifts. You wouldn't believe how many rough drafts it took to get these pictures done.

In another note, notice the girls' hair...ugh! NEVER, EVER go to Great Clips 15 minutes before closing on a Saturday evening. Laura's simply got whacked off about 2 inches shorter than we intended. Ellen's got cut completely lopsided...one side was a full inch and a half longer than the other. The back of Ellen's was supposedly "layered" but it looked more like it was weed-whacked. For the record, it wasn't my idea to get their hair cut at that time...I had said we'd wait until Monday, but they begged. :(

A New Craft for the Family?

So, this weekend Laura decided she wanted to learn to crochet. She was all excited and couldn't wait to get to the store to purchase the supplies. I agreed to buy yarn and a hook (needle, stick--honestly, I don't even know what you call the "tools"). I had told her I didn't know how to crochet nor did I want to learn a new craft. She promised that she knew everything there was to know...she had "googled" it. Well, it turns out crocheting was a little harder than it looked on the web. After a huge fit from Laura, Chris agreed to try...he's much better at looking at a diagram and following it than I am. Well, it turns out Chris is a mighty fine crochet-er. Yep, he's surrendered his man card and has crocheted until his hand hurts. Laura's still learning, and I'm still sticking only to stamping and paper crafts! You all know I have a REALLY awesome husband! :)

Bulletin Board!

Tonight was Open House at the girls' school. What fun! Last week Laura's teacher emailed me to ask if I could come help her put up a bulletin board. Well, this probably won't surprise you, but that used to be one of my VERY FAVORITE parts of teaching!! (I think that's why I like to scrapbook...it's just a smaller bulletin board!) Mrs. Rosales did all the layout and the hard work. I just put up the letters, leaves, vine, and borders. Most of this bulletin board isn't stamped, but of course, I had to work a few stamping elements into it. Check out that vine--it's Stampin' Up! packing material! I also stamped the stationery the kids wrote their summaries on. Laura was so proud that her summary made it on the Standards Based Board. Naturally, Chris and I were very proud of that too!

Amazing Amounts of Snow!

The girls had such a great time in the snow. This is definitely what memories are made of! Eventually I'll have scrapbook pages to share of these photos, but these were just too good not to share immediately! Our awesome next door neighbors are originally from Colorado, so they KNOW how to play in the snow! It was their idea for the giant snowman and then we went on to build the igloo and snow slide. Laura was a little apprehensive going down the slide, but she did it and loved it. Ellen (who is not afraid of anything--ever!) went down over and over and over! They tried to make me take a turn, but honestly, it looked a little scary to me too. I was happy to be taking photos. :)

Record Snowfall in North Texas!

So, Thursday, Feb. 11 North Texas got the most snowfall ever recorded in history! It was already snowing before school started...in fact, we had several inches early in the morning. It snowed fast and furiously ALL day long. We were baffled that school was still in session...they've certainly called off for lesser weather events! The girls did get home early that day and we built the Giant-Sized Texas Snowman with the neighbors. Our snowman was over 11 feet tall! The scarf (that looks more like a bandana) around its neck is one of my table cloths that I would normally use when the table is as big as it can get...this was one amazingly large snowman!!