a boyish layout.

Typical week here...glad it's not as cold as it normally is around this time of year here. And with our new house it is alot warmer in general. The living room gets TONS of sunlight is really toasty in the afternoons :) Since my biggest complaint about our old house was how cold it was, I'm a happy girl *smile*

I'm pretty sure I haven't shared this layout yet. I used Basic Grey's Urban Prairie line on this, and I decided it is probably my all time favorite line of theirs. LOVE these colors!!

I liked how these papers worked for this layout even though I kind of thought of them as a little more "girl-y". I rolled out the Quickutz heart 4 times (I think) and glued it together. I love how you can make your own chipboard shapes this way!  This is the kind of thing I wouldn't really scrapbook before when I just kind of did events etc. But I'm so glad I do now because I really want to remember all these sweet silly things about my kids that unfortunately I'm sure I won't... but at least now I won't have to *grin*

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you're having a good week! We got some oats at Costco over the weekend, so we're supposed to make "creature cookies" aka preacher cookies, aka no bake chocolate oatmeal cookies this week. One batch usually lasts about a day here :)

supplies: cardstock: american crafts, pattern paper:basic grey, die cuts shapes, letters-quickutz, buttons and brads:basic grey

what do you do...

...with cards you don't love? I can take forever to make just one card, and I want be really happy with it when I'm done. But I'm not always. Often I make cards that I'm not very happy with. What do you do with those cards? Usually, I will wait a little bit and see if it grows on me. Sometimes it will, but usually it doesn't. In  that case, I see if I can just add something--like a gem or button to help. If that doesn't work, then I will take it apart and make another card, using at least some of the pieces from the original. I thought I would show you one of the cards I made that I didn't like and show you what it ended up looking like :)

This is what I made at first. And I just never liked it. (yes, it's ok to agree with me.) For the life of me I could not get the cherry image to look good to me, so I added it to my scraps drawer. And I made this card instead:

The only thing I used from the first card is the base, but I saved all the other parts for another card. The white label on this card was actually rejected from a card I made before. I like this one SO much better. I didn't stamp a "focal image" for this one. But did stamp both the backgrounds and the sentiment. The butterfly punch is from Ek Success. ( Everytime I see the Martha Stewarts' butterfly punch, I want to get it. But I haven't been able to justify it since I have this one...sigh...you can't have too many butterflies can you?!)

So, what do you do with your unloved cards? Do you just move on? Do you fiddle and redo like me?

Thanks for stopping by! Leave a comment and let me know which version you like better :)

supplies: cardstock-papertrey ink; stamps-papertrey ink and cornish heritage farms; ribbon-papertrey ink; punch-ek succes; other-gems.

You had a bad day....

Did you ever have a bad day and manage to turn it around? I'll be honest. I'm a stay at home homeschooling mom of 4....we have our days. It's not always just roses and butterflies (in case you thought it was :)). Anyway, today was one of those days. For some reason nothing seemed to be going well. But after a morning of feeling frustrated about it, I decided to try to do something to change it. I started by cleaning the kitchen really well. And that made me feel like I COULD do something (remember, cleaning is not my strong suit *heehee*). Then I cut Rhys' hair, which is another thing that I have struggled with being able to do well. But I got it done, it looks nice and there was only minimal crying from Miss Emma too. Then after I vacuumed upstairs, I made apple butter and cinnamon rolls. And I put all 4 kids in the bath and we all enjoyed some quite delicious cinnamon rolls together. By the end of the day I felt much better. By trying to do things that normally can be hard for me, I managed to turn my day around. Nothing really changed, but I felt much better which actually DOES make the kids all happier too.

So I don't have a card to share today, but I do have some cute pictures of Miss Emma I took at the park the other day:

Thanks for stopping by!! I hope you are having a great day *grin*!

Have you ever assumed your kids know certain everyday things only to find out they didn't? Living in Japan ny kids don't experience all the same things kids their ages would in the US, and I realize that. But I was totally surprised when Nana said they were having lasagne for dinner and my kids had no idea what it was!!! I know, I was just as shocked lol. What kind of a mother am I not to give my kids lasagne in the first place?I mean, they eat squid, octopus and seaweed, but don't know what lasgane is.... I spent close to 5 minutes describing it to them. I think Leah, who loves everything was sure she would like it, while Rhys was not so quick to be sure he would like something new. ( I mean, there might be veggies chopped up and hiding somewhere in it.)So now lasagne is on my list of things to make in the next couple of weeks :) So has that ever happened to you?! Or is my family just weird...

 Here is another card I made that came together really quickly(yay!):

I absolutely LOVE this color combo. This pale lavender is SO gorgeous in person. I would love to decorate my bedroom with these colors(and maybe some celery green too...*heehee*) I wanted to be sure to use some of my older stamps too, so I got out this cute bee image from Papertrey. The sentiment is from the same set. Isn't the font cute?

Thanks for stopping by! Can you believe the week is half over already?

supplies: cardstock: white, lavender, kraft-pti, brown-bazzill; stamps-bee, sentiment-pti, background-cornish heritage farms; ribbon-pti; inks-tsukineko; scallop punch-ek success

just a quick post....

Things didn't go too badly, considering it was Tuesday. There was a large amout of chocolate consumed today though *grin*. (Don't knock it, it really does help!!) I'm still working on trying to get Miss Emma to go for longer without me so I can get some things done. Some days she's fine, others not so much. (And when I say "without me", I mean with me not holding her...)

I DO have a card to share though! Yay. Using, surprise, surprise--my new polka dot background. Hope you're not sick of it, 'cause I'm afraid you're going to see alot more of it *smile*. I love the colors on this card. LOVE. This card came out pretty much like I had pictured in my head, which actually almost never happens for me. The damasks are so pretty I wanted them to be the main focus. Also, I've been trying to get my bows to turn out better too, and I like this one :)

Thanks for stopping by! I'm SO hoping to get some stamping done today. But I some snuggly time with Tomio would be nice too hee hee :) He's had to bring home work for the pas few days, so I'm hoping today he won't have to :)

supplies: cardstock-papertrey ink, stamps- polka dots-cornish heritage farms, damask, sentiment-papertrey ink, ink-tsukineko, ribbon-papertrey ink, button, twine-papertrey ink, scallop punch-ek success

goals

It's the beginning of a new week, and Mondays are usually good for me. I know I mentioned a little before about my 2010 (which is it btw, "twenty-ten" or "two-thousand-ten"?) new goals. For me most of them might not really be "new", but continuations of things I kind of started at the end of last year. One of the main ones has to do with cleaning :) I'm the youngest in my family( the ever-so-slightly-spoiled-baby)and organization and such does not come naturally...and well, Tomio is VERY neat :) SO, I have been working at keeping things neat and tidy all the time...you know, so you don't have to feel like you have to throw your whole room into a closet when the doorbell rings :) I've been trying to raise my standards so to speak. Now I've been doing it more in steps than all at once so I won't get overwhelmed or burned out. And I can honestly say I can tell a difference. My bathroom closet is SO neat now, I actually like opening it and seeing how nice it looks lol.(yes, I am weird.) Oh, and my scrapbooking space is SO tidy too. I realized how much I enjoy working in a tidier place heehee. And I can honestly say that there are no toys or dust bunnies under my sofa, and if you crawled under my bed you would not get covered in dust :)These may not seem like huge things, but to me they are a big deal.I'm proud of myself and inspired to do more.  And that's a good thing.

Anyway, here is one more Christmas layout I did. ( I can't promise this is the last one, but I THINK for now it is. I've been working on some birthday layouts instead lately)

I always do a layout of Christmas Eve too. We have a fun family celebration at home on Christmas Eve, so I always like to document that. The kids love it--well, actually I do too :)

If you look at the bottom and side you can see I am still really into paper piercing lol. It just seems to add the right touch--subtle, but still noticeable.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope your week is starting out well too! Do you have any goals that are going well? Although Mondays are usually good for me, Tuesdays sometimes aren't, so I'm hoping to continue with my positive outlook tomorrow. We finally got all the toyboxes and furniture for the boys' room and I am hoping to finish arranging everything tomorrow.

supplies: cardstock: bazzill, pattern paper: fancy pants, diecut letters:Quickutz, diecute snowflakes: cuttlebug, ricrac:basic grey, brads: we r memory keepers, oval tag: Quikutz

now we have some mojo...

So it took a little longer than I thought, but here is my Mojo Monday card. And yes I do realize that it is Friday...in Japan it's actually already Saturday :) But here t is anyway:

I had hoped by posting this later I would have a chance to take the photo during the day, but no such luck lol. I used 2 of my new ABSOLUTE favorites right now. One is the polka-dot background from Cornish Heritage Farms. So perfect for just about everything! My other fave is Papertrey's Everyday Button Bits. So fun and adorable!! Even the images that I wasn't too sure about (the bicycle and hot air balloons, for example...) are SO cute! I can't wait to use them all heehee:)

Anyway, thanks for stoppinbg by! Just a quick Mojo post :) Hope your weekend is starting out great :)

Oh, but since Miss Emma just turned 8 months, I have to share some pictures of her :)

Isn't she too cute?! lol

supplies: cardstock: kraft-paper reflections, white and yellow-papertrey ink, brown-bazzill stamps-papertreyink, ink-tsukineko, buttons-papertreyink, basic grey, ribbon-papertrey ink