New Layout

I thought I would post a new layout really quick before I ran out the door to go to work. I had a lot of fun playing with KI's lace cardstock and my brain was working overtime just thinking of all the possibilities with that stuff!

I hope everyone has a wonderful New Year!

Is your husband, boyfriend or significant other lacking in the gift giving department? Have I got a tip for you! A couple of months ago I had a page published in Creating Keepsakes about Mike's lack of gift giving skills. (It really was a nice layout, I didn't harp too much on the "bad" gift giving and mostly talked about all the nice little things he does for me.) Anyway, every since that page was put out there for public viewing he has stepped up his gifting game. This year for Christmas he did so good. Better than I could even imagine! He, by far, gave me the best gift of the year! A new lens for my camera. I was so shocked!

My second favorite gift was an iPod. I love it! I'm in major downloading songs mode right now. If you've got any must have songs tell me please!


The picture is one of my favorite things to remember this year. Everyone was gathered in the living room to open presents when Drew ran in and yelled "Merry Christmas everyone!" When he got a loud reply of "Merry Christmas!" from everyone else he then said, "okay, lets open presents!"


He was very eager to open the first one but after that he was only interested in playing with the new toy instead of opening the rest of his gifts. He did this every time we opened gifts so it would take forever to open all of them. We even ended up taking some home from Mom's unopened.


This present turned out to be the hit of the year. He has been playing with this train track constantly since he opened it on Christmas. He loves it! We love because it keeps him occupied and he doesn't notice all the extra candy laying around the house. The only downfall is bedtime. He doesn't want to stop playing with it!

So after this Christmas we have decided it's time for a new house. We loved our house when we bought it but with a baby on the way and the already massive amount of toys we have accumulated with Drew it's time to find something a little bigger! We have been wanting to buy a new house anyway so now we are on a mission!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas! We've still got one more this coming weekend and I've got about a million and one things to do before then so I probably won't be blogging till next week. Have a great weekend!

10 Second Santa Visit

Our Santa visit didn't really go as planned. Drew was so excited to go that morning and even knew what he was going to say to Santa. We got to the mall, waited in line forever and ended up with this hilarious picture. Santa was awesome (the poor guy!) and tried so hard to help but nothing worked. Mom thinks I'm getting what I deserve since pretty much every Easter Bunny picture of me resembles this one. Like mother, like son I guess. Afterwards when I asked Drew what he thought of Santa he said, "Santa's stupid!" Uh oh. It's a good thing Santa didn't hear that one. I'm sure that one would put you on the fast track to the "bad" list!

I'm a little late to getting around to it but I've been tagged by a few people. You know me, I always love a little tagging! I figured since I've done the random facts about myself several times that this time I would go with a theme.

1. My craving with this pregnancy is Caesar salads. I can't get enough of them! Breakfast, lunch, dinner...I don't care. Mike got a good laugh out the fact the I was excited to go eat at Red Lobster the other night because they have great Caesar salads. Forget all the great seafood, I just wanted a salad!

2. I really don't like the stage I'm at with weight gain. I'm afraid I look more like a girl who is wearing clothes a few sizes too small instead of a girl who is pregnant.

3. I hate peeing in a cup on a regular basis.

4. We just had an appointment this morning and found out that all is normal and in perfect shape. (Insert huge sigh of relief here.) With Drew it seemed that every appointment was bad news. This was a very nice change!

5. My due date is May 22.

6. I'm making it a goal of mine that this baby will have just as many scrapbook pages as Drew does. I myself suffer from a mild case of second child syndrome.

7. Guess what else we found out today? You won't see any pink scrapbook pages from me! It's a boy!

Another Sketch

Here's another sketch for you to enjoy. Like I said before, I've got books upon books of these things! I should go through and count them all just to see how many I have. I know that I've got four normal sized sketch books and then a few smaller ones that fit in my purse to carry around with me. Most of the books are full, with the exception of a few pages with Drew scribbles. When Mom sketches, he wants to sketch too!

I finally decided I had better get to work on Christmas cards for this year. We have always gone to a professional photographer for Christmas pictures but between last year's disappointment in the result and me getting a new camera I thought I could do them myself. I don't consider myself a pro at the whole picture thing at all. I would say that photography is one of my biggest weaknesses in scrapbooking. Forget trying to figure out how to use Photoshop!

(I don't want to post the pictures that I ended up using for the cards since a lot of the people getting them read this. I'll post the card after everyone gets their's in the mail.)

Drew was, much to my surprise, very cooperative with posing. I think he actually enjoyed it. The fact that he had a candy cane to eat in the process helped a lot! I also think having a digital camera has helped a lot with getting him to let me take pictures. He loves being able to see the picture afterwards. I'm also digging the new camera as well. It was so nice to be able to see what kind of result I was getting and knowing exactly when I got the perfect shot. I can't believe I waited this long to jump on the digital bandwagon.

The funniest part of the whole process was Drew couldn't quite grasp the concept of "hold up the candy cane". He didn't understand that I meant just hold it up close to your face or mouth so I can get it included in the shot.



He thought I meant hold it up in the air. Then he started saying, "Look Mama, up (reaching as high as he could) and down (reaching as low as he could)". He thought it was hilarious. I couldn't help but to giggle and get a picture of it!

Another HOF entry layout. This was the last page I made for my entry. I had very little time left to make the deadline and this may be the fastest layout I've ever done. I like it but it's not one of my favorites. The picture is what I love most. I was taking random pictures of Drew one day and when I had my film developed I stood in shock at this picture. It was the first time I thought he looked more like a little boy than a baby.

I also thought it would be a good dose of laughter to post one of my first scrapbook pages. Don't laugh! I had no idea what my style was other than sticking anything in any empty space that I could find.


I've got one page about Drew's first New Years Eve that makes me giggle because it's got so many brads on it! It took about 30 minutes to get it into a album because the page protector kept getting hung up on the brads. I really have to keep myself from going back and redoing some of my first pages. I will admit it's kind of fun to go back and see how I started to develop my own style. It was a bumpy road at the beginning but I feel that I've definitely found my style. Okay, you can stop laughing at that page now!

Finally, a layout to post. This is actually a page from my Hall of Fame entry. It was for the crafty combo assignment and my combo was hand stitching and beading. I remember working on this page at a crop and the women around me thought I was nuts! I got the page together fairly quick but those snowflakes really slowed me down.
I think I may have only gotten one snowflake completed before the crop was over! I had to sketch out the snowflakes first and then for the stitching part I would use two beads on each stitch. So, it was stitch, bead-bead, stitch, bead-bead... it was a long process! I really didn't mind it taking so long because, I thought, the outcome was worth it.

Journaling: It took twenty-four hours of continuous snowfall to end up with around eleven inches. About twenty minutes to bundle him up. Fifteen shouts of "o-side". And thirty seconds to decide this was sNOw fun.

The pictures on this layout cracked me up. We just knew that Drew would love the snow and he was all game until he fell in it. After that he was done! The only pictures I could get were of him crying or screaming! Hopefully, if we get some snow this year he will enjoy it!

Still no charger! Ugh! The place I ordered from called and told me the one that I ordered was on national backorder and I wouldn't get it until after Christmas. I told them to cancel my order and I would see if I could find it somewhere else. He then told me that I was basically an idiot for ordering the one I did because it had gotten horrible reviews. First of all, I've had this charger and had no problems with it. Second of all, if it's so horrible then why is it on national backorder? He then tried to sell me one that cost $70.00!!! I laughed and politely said "no, thank you." He then tried to give me all kinds of "deals", like $10 off or some store credit. Again, I said "no, thank you." To make a long story short I ended up getting the "better" charger for the same price as the so-called "horrible" charger. Funny thing is that I wasn't trying to get a great deal, I just wanted to get off the phone with a salesmen!

I have finally gotten the first Dr. appointment under my belt. I was so nervous since I hate the blood work part but the nurse was awesome. Got it on the first try. I think I love her. The next appointment is right around the corner on December. 4th. I had asked when I set up the first appointment if they could possibly go ahead and schedule my second one sometime soon since I had waited so long to set up the first one. It was a good thing I asked since I ended up getting the last available appointment during the month of December! I'm kind of excited about this appointment. I found out they will be doing an ultrasound since they can't figure out the due date. (All I got for a due date was "sometime in May") So, what I'm hoping is that we might find out what we are having! I'm far enough along that it's possible. Even if we don't find out at this appointment we'll probably find out in a month or so.

I hope everyone had a great weekend! We did! Lots of family time. This evening we all got comfy on some big pillows on the floor and watched Christmas cartoons with Drew. He can't get enough of Frosty so we ended up watching it twice. I'm starting to really get excited about shopping for Drew this year. I'm trying to not go overboard but I've learned that I just want to get him everything! It's a good thing Mike is a little more levelheaded about that stuff! Every year we try to get him one big item. This year the big item is a tent for his bedroom. Almost everyday it's "Build a tent, mama! Wanna build a tent? Let's build a tent!" Don't get me wrong the building part is fun and I've come up with some pretty good tents out of blankets, chairs, and pillows BUT it will also be nice to not have to clean the tent remains everyday!