House Contest

My friend Stacey at All Moments Remembered has a friend that needs to sell her house in order for her family to be together once again. The housing market is not great where they are (Los Alamos) so they have decided to have a contest to win the house! All the details can be found here: http://winahome.blogspot.com/ including a description of the house and the contest rules.

Pictures

Took some pictures of Rhi in the sandbox yesterday. Some of them turned out really well... the first one is my favorite.. I love how she is peeking out from beneath her flyaway hair.

I also caught my son playing building castles with her. Ok, probably destroying the castles - they have a great time building things and then exploding them.

This is what happens when you ask them to get some mulch from the mulch pile. Silly children.

Easter

We decorated eggs yesterday, then the kids found baskets this morning. We had thought about having an Easter egg hunt, but it was so cold today (and the chickens tend to find any hidden eggs long before the kids do!)

Here are some pictures from yesterday (didn't manage to take any today!)

Flat{jewlz}

I joined up with a group of girls from AMR to do a Flat Scrapper swap. It works on the same basic premise as the Flat Stanley that we did in school - you make a flat friend (in this case, a flat version of ourselves!) and send it out to someone. They take the flat friend to places around their town, take pictures, and then send the flat friend on to someone else. 12 of us on the AMR board have decided to make Flat Scrappers and send them out!

Flat{jewlz} will be leaving tomorrow. She will be heading out to Richmond Virginia to visit with GayBow, then I'm not sure where she goes from there! It will be so interesting to see where she is going! She has her own blog, and it will be updated with pictures of her travels.

Birthday

Well the day turned out better than it started...

Came home after work to find not 1, not 2, but 3 scrappy packages waiting for me! AND a handmade card! The card and one of the packages came from my (not so) secret sister Jennelle from the Cricut board. Beautiful card (I will have to get a photo tomorrow and post it). The package contained the Tim Holtz distressing hammer, which I have been wanting to get! (and would have bought as soon as I saw it at the LSS except that Jennelle had already told me to expect it - but how GREAT that it came TODAY!)

The second box was from my Spring Swap sister, CarrieCameron (also from the Cricut board.) The swap consists of several challenges of things to make, including an altered item... omg, I cannot believe how much was in that package! An altered lunchbox tin, altered flower pot, a mini purple pail easter basket with a cut little bunny butt sticking out of it, note pads, gift bags, etc. Inside the tin was easter candy, cards, tags, a ton of diecuts, a cut fuzzy bunny pen, stamps, and a bunny sticky note pad. Will definately have to get some pictures of this to post tomorrow.

The last package contained 2 grab bags of unmounted rubber stamps from a company called Angi-B's (http://www.angi-b-co.com/index.htm), which is unfortunately going out of business. Each grab bag is 2 lbs. Before I ordered 2, I emailed her and asked if it would be worth it to do that, or if they would end up having pretty much the same thing. She said she thought she had enough, but there still might be some duplicates. Well, I'm pleased to say that out of 4+ lbs of rubber stamps... the only duplicates I have found (so far) are a set of 5 words, one bee and one angel. Not bad, not bad at all. Now I just need to get some more EZMount... LOL and more CD cases!

The best part though, of today, was coming in the door, and having my daughter run up to me and give me a big hug and say "You're here! Happy Birthday, Mommy!" and then "Can we make the frosting now?" LOL She blew up balloons all day to decorate the house. After dinner, she insisted on having the lights turned off, and my mom bringing in the cake so I can blow out the candles. "Ok, mom, now you have to make a wish!"

And special thanks to all the AMR girls... Stacey has dubbed me the AMR Acrylic Queen, and everyone send me happy birthday messages today. How cool is that?

Today is my birthday.

Whoopee.

All Moments Remembered

Last night I was the guest for an hour long chat held on a fairly new messageboard. What fun!!

All Moments Remembered is a lovely place - messageboard, gallery, store and more. Stacey runs the store from her home, and just recently quit her day job to devote all of her time to AMR. She is such a nice lady! She approached me shortly after I posted a link to AMR in my Clear Scraps links blog post. So, of course, I had to go and check out the board. And I love it there! Everyone has been so friendly, and welcomed me as soon as I started posting. I did not realize until a few days ago that the board has only been up for 11 weeks! There are already so many people there.

I had so much fun last night as they peppered me with questions about acrylic albums. (Which, as everyone probably knows by now, I love talking about!) Stacey carries several Clear Scraps albums in her store, so it was exciting to be able to teach the board members some of the tips and tricks I have learned while designing for Clear Scraps. Definitely a board I will be spending a lot of time at in the future!

Now if only I can get a monthly kit!

(Click the logo above to go to All Moments Remembered)

Layout

Here is a layout I just finished up... I took one of the pages from the arrow album and used it to make and interactive page.

Supplies used:

Clear Scraps arrow album

Basic Grey Sugared papers

Magic Mesh

Glitz Designs - bling arrow

Crop-a-Dile

Cardstock - DCWV

Ribbon - Offray

Bracket punch - Paper studio

Corner punch - EK Success

chipboard

Ink - Tim Holtz distressed inks (on paper) and StazOn (on acrylic)

rings

Have to say, these are some of my favorite photos of my daughter... she is such a model sometimes, and when she is "into" it, it can be a lot of fun. Here are some more pictures from the shoot...

I've been tagged!

Wow, my first tag... I was tagged by Cathy, on the Clear Scraps DT. http://cathysbloggin.blogspot.com/

The rules:

Link to your tagger and post these 3 rules on your blog.
* Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
* Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
* Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.


7 random things about me:

1. I raise Shetland Sheep. Fascinating creatures, with wonderful personalities, their wool comes in 11 different colors with 35 different markings. They are a fascinating genetic puzzle when it comes to color. They are my other obsession.

2. I was born in Honolulu Hawaii. I don't remember being there, as I was barely a year old when we left.

3. My favorite video game is Fate. My character's name is Tangaloor. I love this game because it reminds me of the good old days of playing Dungeons and Dragons with my brother and his friends. And it is a way for my son and I to bond.

4. I am terrified of flying. Was doing pretty well about fixing that problem until Sept. 11th (flew to England in '95 and to California in Aug '01.) Now I can't even think about getting back on a plane. (LOL Watching LOST probably doesn't help with that!) So much for my trip to Australia.

5. I love Jason Reeve's music. Jason is an (as yet) unsigned artist from Iowa City. He has worked with Colbie Callait. I found his music on MySpace.

6. I sent a pun to Piers Anthony, and it was published in one of his Xanth novels (Geis of the Gargoyle). He wrote me a very nice letter back, saying he wanted to because I had told him he didn't have to. The pun was a maze made of corn... or a MAIZE.

7. I still think about Heath Ledger every day.

I will tag:

1. Siobhan http://dreamofscrappin.blogspot.com/

2. MaryJean http://paperchalksandscissors.blogspot.com/

3. Nicole http://red1der1.blogspot.com/

4. Robin http://tqmnurse.blogspot.com/

5. Lorie http://www.bedifferentactnormal.blogspot.com/

6. Ali http://aliedwards.typepad.com/

7. T!m http://www.timholtz.typepad.com/

Saturday crop

So I went to a Crop for the Cure on Saturday.. that was cool - and a lot of fun. The Cure part was to make some money for vasculitis research. There were a lot of ladies at the crop, so hopefully they made quite a bit!

I finished a new album there.. a wedding album for a friend of mine.. it is done using the schoolhouse album. (Janet took pictures - as soon as she sends them to me, I will post them!)
It was a lot of fun to make.. now I just have to duplicate it so CS can have one too (yeah, I can just see me going to James... "Uh... can I have that album back for ______?") Had one of the other croppers ask me when I started the album... and look at me dumbfounded when I said "After I got here." Her response "You did that whole thing HERE?" hehe. This is the first album I have used the Zip Dry adhesive on... didn't like it at first, because it does have a strong odor, but you get used to it. And MAN that stuff STICKS. One of the pieces on the album is a large flat glass bead with a photo behind it - the bride had made them into magnets for the wedding reception. I pulled off the magnet and stuck one on the album (as the center of a flower). The Zip Dry has NO PROBLEM keeping it in place! And that thing is HEAVY.


They also had door prizes (I won a page kit) and a raffle... the grand prize was an awesome Stampin' Up basket... TONS of stuff in there! (naturally, I didn't win it!). But I DID win a printer! woohoo! It is a Lexmark that will print photos, scan things, copy things, etc. And it has slots for my camera cards! Cool, huh?

Picked up a cool new set of stamps from Inque boutique there too. They will be perfect for setting up holes to punch in spirals.. to use either with or without eyelets! So much potential for these!

Also got my hands on the new Crop-O-Dile, though I didn't buy one (YET). Will definitely have to get one of those!Made it very easy to put eyelets into the middle of the acrylic page!

Haven't been doing much otherwise lately. Been playing a game called FATE. If you haven't seen it, and you like D&D type games, you should check it out. (If you don't know what D&D means... LOL.. don't bother). Everyone in my family actually has their own player.. it is a lot of fun. And yes, rather addictive.

It was 70 degrees here today... it was SO nice outside! Now if only it would stay that way! It is supposed to be back in the 30's tomorrow. UGH.