I Am A Lousy Blogger!!!!!

I can't stand, that I want to "blog" so bad, but I always let my blog fall by the wayside!!

It's been what, 4 months since I posted last??

So what have I been up to in that time, you ask? A whole lot. Summer for starters! Because of summer, I have fallen behind on the blog, the Etsy shop, the Project Life, the house work, just about everything!!

I did get a custom order on my Etsy shop, for 12 post-it note holders. So here are some pictures of that project...

The work "in progress". I had soooo much fun making these!

And a pile of finished product!

A close-up of the finished orange ones.

And a close-up of the finished yellow ones. I really like how the yellow ones turned out!

Oh well, having this custom order has got me back into the creative mood, so maybe I'll be posting some new products soon. Or 4 months from now!

2011 Vacation Scrapbook Update

Just to be funny, I'm posting today, that the 2011 Vacation Scrapbook that I posted about in April, has not changed one bit since that day. We still have not started creating this book!!

Project Life - Locks of Love

During Week 16 of the year (I know that because it's in week 16 of my Project Life book!), Madison and Morgan got their hair cut and donated it to Locks of Love. They've been wanting to do it for such a long time and we just decided to finally get it done. Because there were so many pics, I made an whole layout in Project Life, dedicated to this one event.


Project Life : Week 16 : Supplimental
Haircuts and Locks of Love!! Madison's page shows a before and after of her hair and a picture of her ponytail.

Morgan's before picture was taken in the chair, with the cape already around her neck!

Both girls look gorgeous with their new haircuts and I am super proud of them for donating to Locks of Love!

For more information on donating your hair, visit Locks of Love.

Project Life Week 15 - 16

My Project Life is coming along great. I've got everything caught up for now and continue to pass along some pics of how it's going.


Project Life : Week 15
This week brings us Easter! The kids love hunting for eggs of course!


We took a new family picture of ourselves.


And we got a new dining room table. It's big, but soooo beautiful!


Project Life : Week 16
This week Morgan and Connor helped me make a desert for Grandma Ginny and Madison and Ryan received Angel Awards at school.


Ryan participated in the Young Author's Conference at Northrup High School, and met author April Pulley Sayre. Pretty cool!

Project Life Week 13 - 14

Project Life : Week 13
Items of interest this week...Zach sat in a "big boy" carseat for the first time (oops, just realized I didn't get that picture in the shot!) and Connor got a new chore, unloading the silverware (which he does very well!).



Madison and Ryan had Western Day at school. Fun!




Project Life : Week 14
This week...
Zach turned 10 months old and Ryan lost a tooth.


We colored Easter eggs

Zachary's First Birthday!!

As promised, here are the pics of Zachary's first birthday. As with all birthdays in our house, we have pizza with grandma and grandpa, and then cake and icecream. For 1st birthdays, the birthday baby always gets a Smash Cake!


Having a snack before dinner...cuz he was just too hungry to wait!

The excitement is killing me!

Mommy keeps telling everyone that this is my Smash Cake...I wonder what that means??

Oh look at the pretty light...and everyone's singing!!

Umm, YUMMY!!

Oh I think I understand Smash Cake now!!

Oh I am sooooo bloated!!

Happy Birthday my sweet baby Zach!!!

Look Who's One!! Banner

So Zachary, my baby, turned 1 on June 2nd (I'll post pics of that later!), and I made a homemade banner for him, because that's what I do!! So here are some pics of the process for that!


Checking things out...


Making sure all colors look good where they are.


Just about ready to punch holes and string it together.


Punching and stringing is finished, now I just need to add some decorative ribbon and it will be done!


And the finished product! I love it!!

Project Life Week 11-12

Project Life : Week 11
This week includes St. Patrick's day! The kids dress in green every year for this occasion, because Grandma Wrethia buys them a new green shirt every year!! No pinches in our house!

We are still experiencing unseasonably warm temperatures. The kids played outside in shorts all week, that NEVER happens in March around these parts!!

Project Life : Week 12

Madison had art on display at the Fame Festival

Because of the warm temps, the kids climbed the trees, even without leaves on them!! And the Easter bunny sent a representative to check up on the kids!

Project Life Week 9 - 10

This week in my Project Life has more than just the 2 pages so I've devoted an entire blog entry to just the one week.

Project Life : Week 9
This week we had 70 degree temps (on the 29th of February!!). Just an idea how this winter went.

This side is all about the Fort Wayne Mad Ants game that we went to. The kids all got discounted tickets from some players that came to visit their school. Lots of the Queen of Angels students were at the game and they got to go down on the court and "high five" the players as they came back on the court after half-time. Fun.

Something new that I purchased just this week, the cardstock paper that matches my Project Life collection. I used it on this week to do an additional page, for our visit to the Indianapolis Children's Museum. On this side it's a green pattern, which really matches the museum's logo!

The other side of the additional page is pink, which really matched the goofy picture of me in my Barbie glasses! I really love this cardstock and can't wait to use some more throughout the book!







Unfortunately, Project Life : Week 10, is a week that was lost when my computer crashed :( So there are no pictures from that week (March 4-10th). I don't think anything really exciting that week anyway!

Project Life Week 7 - 8

Well, here it is people. I'm finally getting back to posting my Project Life pages. And just so you know, I am currently 100% caught up on my book. I spent about 3 hours, ok maybe 5 or 6 hours, really working on it and getting it up to date. I must say, I'm very pleased.

So, here we go...

Project Life : Week 7

In this week we see lots of Zach again. It seems like most of my pictures are of him. In my own defense, he is the baby of the family and he is under a year old!!

Something new that I just recently purchased are these great page dividers. I'm using them to mark the months of the year, but there are also some sticker that I can use for the kids, for the grade that they're in etc. So someday when I decide to go back and scrap my kids' lives, I'll be able to use those too! I also saw a really cool blog article where the woman had added pictures to her dividers. As soon as I get a better adhesive, I will be doing that!

Project Life : Week 8

More Zach! At least he'll never be able to say that "Mom has soooo many pictures of the older kids and none of me!" I guess Connor is on this page too, but you can't see his face because of the nature of the picture! Oh well.

So busy!!

Well, I can see that I've been neglecting the blog again! I've been busy! But not creating, need to get creating! I've completely caught up on my Project Life! Yay!! I'll be posting pics of that soon. Maybe after Mother's Day!

Chicago

This weekend the husband and I are in Chicago with his company. We will drive to Dune Park and get on the train into the city. We'll meet with his co-workers for cocktails and pool etc. and then out for a bit. Saturday we have a luncheon with is Fort Wayne co-workers and then out for an afternoon in the city. Dinner and "playing" at Dave and Busters later in the evening. So, no posting for the weekend, I may have pics on Monday.

Our Vacation Scrapbook (2011!!)

Never let it be said that I don't know that I'm a procrastinator. I know it, admit it and embrace it. I try not to be, but to no avail. So, having said that, here is a picture of our vacation scrapbook from July 2011 (bear with me, this is a rather long post!).

At first glance you may think this looks incomplete, and you would be right. However, it is organized...a little bit...in my head! I mean there is a beginning and an end. Dive in with me, I'll show you!

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Here we have the beginning. The blank composition notebook, the foundation of the scrapbook!

Next we have the pictures. To me, the pictures are the core of the scrapbook. They are the one item that sparks the memory and helps us to visualize the events!

If you've been reading this blog at all, you will know that we had a computer crash in March and when it crashed, we lost all of our pictures from 2011 and the beginning of 2012 (we had moved all of our pictures from 2003-2010 to an offline storage location so we still have those!). Thankfully, I actually did NOT procrastinate on getting the pictures together for our book. I printed the pics the week that we got home, because that's when we were going to work on the book! So, I've got plenty of pics for this book, and these are the only copies we have!

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This vacation was the first trip that we've taken in about 5 years, and we had all 5 kids with us to that was interesting to say the least. We started by going up to Wisconsin Dells and then over to Cleveland OH to visit Aunt Bev and Uncle Ben, via Chicago. We were only gone from Tuesday to Sunday, but we did ALOT of traveling with the kids. I will say, they loved it and have been asking when we're going back! Not this year kiddos, we're going camping in a cabin at Jellystone park this year and we need to get last year's scrapbook finished before that!!
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So, moving on...we have a large collection of brochures from the attractions we went to while we were gone...

One of the attractions we went to was Chula Vista Resort which is an indoor/outdoor waterpark. It was too cold and rainy to go outside, but inside was awesome and every single one of the kids (including mom and dad!) loved it.

We have a collection of postcards we bought along the way...

And brochures and menus from some of the restuarants where we ate...

With all of this paraphernalia we should have no problem remembering everything that we did on vacation (almost a year ago!) right? Right, but who wants to risk it...not us, we kept a diary of sorts. That would be me, just keeping track of everything in my notebook!

I see in my diary notes a reminder that we were counting silos. On the way from Fort Wayne to Wisconsin Dells, in order to keep the kids entertained a bit, we counted any water towers that we saw. While driving from Wisconsin Dells to Chicago, we tried counting silos but I think we all lost track (or interest) around silo number 75 or 80!
We also kept a list of the license plates that we saw along the way...

And a map of our route...

We have an armband and discharge instruction sheet from our little side trip to the ER in Ashtabula, OH while visiting Aunt Bev and Uncle Ben!! Zachary was 6 weeks old and got a fever of 104+ that wouldn't break. They tested him for all kinds of things including menegitis, which all came back negative. We never did find out what was wrong with him. Poor little thing!!

And finally, the things that will make the pages pretty! Embellishments!!

There ya have it, I told you it was all clear in my head! Now I just need to get it all put together. I will be in Chicago this weekend, so I won't be working on it until after that, but I will get started on Monday. I promise! Stay tuned to this blog to see my progress! Thanks for stopping by!