Today is Election Day

Today is such an important day.  I have always loved Election Day, even before I was able to vote. And I have to admit, I like voting on Election Day, not before.  I think early voting takes all the fun out of it and makes it less special.  But that's just my opinion.  :)   Anyway, I feel that today's election is one of the most important in our lifetime, for the future of my children, future grandchildren, and the future of America as we know it.  I know I'll be up late tonight watching all the results and coverage, I am such a political junkie.  Hopefully I won't be crying like I was four years ago.

Here is the link to a blog by a young patriot I found last week.  He is absolutely wonderful and says things so much better than I ever could.  Go visit his site, you will definitely be inspired. FYI--it is not a scrappy website, you have been warned!

My Political Rants

Scrap Our Stash has their October Challenge going on right now!  The theme is Hot Chocolate, so use that as your inspiration.  Check out their blog for more information and to see what the DT has come up with.  Here's my layout using Hot Chocolate as my inspiration:

Got Sketch has their class Got Sketch Express 4 going on right now.  I always have so much fun taking their classes, Valerie does a great job with the sketches and their DT always does such a great job with them!  Here are a couple of the pages I've done so far:

One day I'm going to take a photography class so I take better pictures!  But now I'm off to finish my youngest daughters Halloween twirly skirt--each year I make her a new one.  She is really excited to wear her new one to school tomorrow.  Have a great day! 

A New Life

We are finally in Kansas and life seems to settling down somewhat.  The kids are in school and love it (thank goodness) and I am finding my way around.  We sold our NC house in record time (1 1/2 days) and bought one here pretty quickly as well.  Our new house is huge compared to our old one, and I love having a finished basement (where I will be putting up my scrap space, yay!)  I haven't had a lot of time to scrap lately since I've been unpacking and getting everything ready for school, but I am hoping this weekend to sit down and finally break out the craft supplies.  In the meantime, since it's been a long while since I've last posted, here are a couple of pics from our final days in Raleigh.  This is Catherine on her last day of preschool.

And here's the big kids on their last day of school at St. Raphael.

Bittersweet moments for sure, they loved their old school, but I am so happy they love their new one just as much!

Hope to see you soon!! 

Selling a house is not fun!

I apologize for not posting in what seems like forever! The past couple of weeks have been just crazy busy, and a little stressful at that. We've had a couple of realtors come over to let us know what we need to do to get our house ready to sell(too much), painters to give estimates, and flooring guys to measure. Everything seems to be going at warp speed so we can have this house on the market by the end of the month. The house looks fantastic on the outside, after the power washing and painting that was done today. The inside, well that's another story, lots of painting and decluttering to be done. We're having a POD delivered on Monday so we can move out some of the furniture, off-season clothes, and about half the toy inventory we own so we can stage, and painters will be here on Thursday to paint the inside. After that it'll be flooring then a maid--yep, told the hubby I needed someone to come in and clean this place while it's on the market! The worst part of getting the house ready to sell? It's going to look so nice--for the next owners!

Since this week my kids were on Easter break I did take them down to the beach for a couple of days, told the hubs I needed a break. Here they are on the pier at Oceanic, my favorite restaurant on Wrightsville Beach.




And here's the girls ready to get out on the beach:
I am really going to miss being able to go to the beach on a whim once we move. Guess I'll have to see what Lake of the Ozarks has to offer!

Off to get some scrapping done tonight before I have to pack a lot of my scrap goodies next week, wah! Hopefully I'll have something to post in the next couple of days that's scrap related. Have a great night!

It's St. Patty's Day...

and the kids were going crazy the minute they woke up looking for something green to wear so they wouldn't get pinched. They've also built leprechaun traps to catch the little dude when he tries to steal their money! I myself am just looking for some green beer!

It has been way too long since my last post. Shortly after I last posted the hubs told me he got a new job (yay) and that we have to relocate to Kansas City by September 1 (what???) I was so bummed at first because I felt all kinds of guilt having to move the kids--I moved a lot when I was younger and it's so hard. We waited a month to tell the kids and finally I couldn't stand it anymore. When we told them and they were beside themselves excited! I think it helps out because their cousins live up there. That was a couple of weeks ago, and they are still excited, but I think now that it's starting to sink in they are getting a little sad about moving away from their friends. I told them we'll be back for visits though, after all Mommy has friends here too!

I haven't done a lot of scrapping lately (I've been trying to get rid of junk, I mean old toys that have collected up) but here are a few LO's. I'm a sketch junkie and these are from sketches from a great sketch site called Sketch Inspiration. It's run by Trisha who comes up with great sketches, they come out every Saturday and there's even a prize. So check them out!

This is Catherine on her first day of preschool from last year, I can't believe how young she is! Anyway, used some great MME papers that had colors that matched her bright colored shirt.

These are pictures of the girls from the beach last year--I'm so ready to go to the beach right now! I used some yummy Fancy Pants papers in this simple layout.

This last one also using a Sketch Inspiration sketch was for last month's "Leap" challenge over at Scrap Our Stash blog. The pics are of Catherine playing Leap Frog in the kitchen, in this one I used some Echo Park papers.

Now I'm off to head out to some furniture stores, I told the hubs that since he's moving me halfway across the country, everyone is getting new bedroom furniture--it's all for staging when we put the house on the market, right? Have a fun and safe St. Patrick's day!

More LOAD layouts

Been a few weeks since I posted but I swear, it has been one illness after another around here, kind of frustrating but I guess it is cold and flu season. It has been a good time to get some scrapping done around here though. = )

My niece sent a flat version of herself to Raleigh, NC for a visit. Flat Maggie is based on the children's series of Flat Stanley books. Anyway, we had to send Flat Maggie back home last week but not before making a scrapbook documenting her visit. I pulled the pages out of the scrapbook because the page protectors were causing a glare. So here are 20 pages for the Let's Scrap LOAD challenge.


We loved having Flat Maggie here and sure do miss her, and now my daughter has decided she wants to make a Flat version of herself!

Now I'm off to watch the 49ers-Giants game. I'm really hoping that the 49ers win because the Giants beat my son's favorite team last weekend, the Packers. Hopefully next year my Panthers will be in the playoffs!

LOAD Challenge

While I'm debating whether to go see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo tonight, I figured I should go ahead and post my LOAD Challenge layouts from yesterday and today, yay! This first one I did yesterday, it's a couple of pictures of Catherine I took last summer when we were visiting family in Kansas City. She decided she would get Grandma Pam's strainer and play with it, then she said "Look Grandma, I can make mountains." It was just the cutest thing to say I had to scrapbook it.

(Products used: Patterned Paper--Bo Bunny; Chipboard and cardstock stickers--Fancy Pants; Letters--American Crafts and October Afternoon; sketch from Allison Davis)

This second layout I threw together today when my sweet husband took the kids to the park so I could have a couple of hours to myself. I can't even begin to tell you how much that helped my sanity, lol! Anyway, these pictures are of Matthew and my hubby enjoying the 1 1/2 inches of snow we got over Thanksgiving in 2009 when we were visiting family in St. Louis. Unfortunately you can't see my journaling because all of my white pens have dried up (oops!) Hmmm, that means I may just have to make a visit to Archivers tomorrow for a little shopping. I apologize for that darn flash!

(Products used: Patterned Paper and Cardstock stickers--Bo Bunny; Snowman rubon--Moxxie; Journaling circle--Cloud 9 Design; misc. snowflakes and gemstones)

Well now it's time to get the kiddos in bed. They are (finally) going back to school tomorrow after 2+ weeks of Christmas break. I have a feeling there's going to be some slow moving peeps in this household tomorrow--me included! Hey, I may just make my movie this evening!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! I am not usually one who makes resolutions, but I have made a couple this year that I hope to keep. My biggest one is to try to get better at blogging. And to help me with that I'm participating in the LOAD (Layout a Day) Challenge at Let's Scrap. I'm going to post my layouts here so that should help me to actually blog (I know my family would like me to so they can see pics of the kids!) I've already finished a layout but will wait until tomorrow to post it because it's pretty late here so there's no natural light. So wish me luck, and don't forget to check out Let's Scrap . It's a great source of inspiration!