I Never Win Anything...

But this weekend received notice from two separate contests that I won! The first I found out about was from one of the hostesses of the BBTB (Bitten by the Bug) Blog Hop, Creative Candy... It's a Sweet Thing. How cool is that?!?!? The blog hop did a challenge where they all had to use the tag from Stretch Your Imagination cart and to use it in a Halloween themed idea. Because of this blog hop, I was introduced to a bunch of talented ladies all of whom I have become followers on their respective blogs. It is such a good way for me to learn how to think outside the box for scrappin'. What did I win? Creative Candy mentioned in her blog post that it would be cartoon dimensional stickers... very, very cool!

Tonight I was reading a new post for Bo Bunny blog. And reading it, once again, saw my name. Now Carrie isn't exactly a common name but it's not all that unusual either. So I went back to the comments on their post about "BOO"ing two people... one from Facebook and one who left a comment on the post commenting on their favorite Halloween memory/tradition and linked them to their blog. That was me... my favorite tradition... growing our own pumpkins and carving them Halloween week (but how sad is it that I don't even have pics posted yet). I wasn't sure how I was supposed to be contacted. Had to search my comments from the previous post and there it was.. on the one from August 3... again, very sad that it's been so long since I've blogged. As for the prize... some goodies from their Boo Crew Bo Bunny line... which is pretty dang awesome! Their paper is fantastic. Bo Bunny is a new product line for me but one that I will definitely be looking for.

So right now I am feeling like I should go buy a lottery ticket... aww, but what could be better than winning from 2 scrapbooking sites... guess I'll forget the lottery ticket, save my money and buy some scrapbook products instead... definitely a better investment!

Halloween 2009

Halloween is supposed to be less hectic as our kids get older, right? At least that's what I thought... but not so. This has been a crazy busy week. My kids are older so no costumes to prep... well, not really. They were all pretty much on their own for them... no one really needed mom's help. But Cheryl at work decided that we should put out Halloween treats for the other members of the office. It turned into quite the spread.





















She LOVES to bake and did quite a bit... including gross but yummy Witches Fingers (the cookies are hers, the witch is mine) and super delicious monster cookies (again, my monster contriubution). Both were made from Paper Doll Dress-Up.





Besides contributing sloppy joes and a pasta salad, I decided to decorate my treats this year. Through the cricut MB, I have discovered lots of creative ladies and one in particula, Kerry, amazed me with her work so I completely stole her ideas and made these... little bats on the kit kats... and spiders on the York pepermint patties. The bats were from Hello Kitty Greetings and the spider was from DoodleCharms.



I also copied her Pumpkin Poop... which I thought was so cute! Mr. Pumpkin was from Stretch Your Imagination.



But thankfully we don't get any trick or treaters at our house so I only had to make about 35 of each and not hundreds!


Halloween Day arrived and with it so did the flu... poor Kendra! Since Kevin had it 2 weeks ago, we've been waiting to see who would be next and very surprised that it took this long! But she had been showing subtle symptoms this week and unfortunately today it decided to rear it's ugly head. So no trick or treatin' for her... but I felt so bad that I went to Culver's and picked her up a double scoop Chocolate Oreo Volcano Explosion. Yummy!



Kaitlyn was invited to a friend's birthday party tonite started with t/t and then bonfire and cake. She threw her costume together very quickly... quite appropriate for her... The crazy cat lady.




Kevin who should really be too old to go trick or treatin' (are you ever too old?) decided to go out with his GF, Kelly. I didn't care as long as costumes were worn. He was a gangster and she was a flight attendant. They were frozen when they got back in... I think it was about 40 degrees while
they were out.
While all of this was going on... Jeff was busy carving our pumpkins as we didn't get to do them earlier this week. But it's late and I'm tired and going to bed.

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Aug 3 Challenge - Fun in the Sun

We had a great day yesterday helping Andrea and Jeremy prep for the babies arrival which is happening this Wednesday!! The nursery has been done but we helped get their bedroom moved upstairs, moved other furniture downstairs and did some general cleaning. We probably should've gone for the whole weekend and more would've gotten done. But I think most stuff is in place. This is so exciting but I am so glad it is not me... don't think I would've survived 3 babies at once. And I just have to add here that Andrea looks FANTASTIC! I don't think she put on any weight that wasn't baby related. Granted her tummy is very large (but let's see you carry 3 babies at one time) but the rest of her is her same old skinny self! Heck I don't think her ankles ever swelled up... she looks good. We made her post for pictures before we left (mean of us, I know, after she spent the day cleaning)... I plan on doing a layout of them so you will have to wait for the layout to see how good she looks.

Back to scrappin'... Today's challenge had to do with the book, Holes by Louis Sachar. I took this one very literally and challenged the ladies to use something to represent holes on their layout.. eyelets, brads, buttons, etc. My layout is the kids back in 2003 (Kevin looks so little compared to today!) playing at the lake by Grandma and Grandpa's house. "Fun in the Sun" is cut from Life's a Beach cartridge.

August 2 Challenge - Hiking

We are off to the in-laws in the morning so I am posting this now. Got another layout done for my Monthly Challenges at MSH. Today's book is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle. The quote I used from the book was this... "Love. That was what she had that IT did not have." Okay, if I am being honest, I have never read this book and I don't think my daughters have either. Is that a bad thing??

The challenge I issued to the ladies was to create a layout on something that we love... not necessarily someone (because honestly so much of our scrappin' already involves pictures of those we love). My layout reflects on the hiking we do as a family. My first few mother's days were spent hiking the Ice Age Trail in the lower Kettle Morraines. The picture is from our last hiking excursion at Governor Dodge State Park. The hiking boots were cut from my Camping Solutions cartridge.

Finally Scrappin' Again!

I can't believe it's been 6 weeks since I've last posted but so much has happened... good and bad. The good is that Kaitlyn and I went to Savannah for a week on a girl scout trip. I will try to post some pictures from that soon. And we went camping for the first time in 3 summers! Jeff and Kevin have been so busy the last couple of summers preparing for and going to Philmont. This was the first summer we were finally able to go as a family. We also had a wedding in the family. My aunt married her sweetie earlier this month and Jeff served as photographer for it. Now if only the photo lab we used would get their machine fixed so we could see how his pictures turned out. The bad I am not going into.

I've always said that scrapbooking is my "yoga" or "mental health therapy". And that is so true! When I scrap, everything else goes away...at least for a little while. So I guess it's a good thing I am serving as guest moderator over at MegaScrapHappy, an online Yahoo group I belong too. Everyday this month I have to post a challenge based on theme of my choosing... so I chose Children's Books. Everyday I will post the title and a quote from a well known children's book and issue a challenge to the group.

My first one for today was The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. My quote had to do with cleaning up the mess they had made so I issued a challenge for this first layout to keep it "clean and simple". Here is my layout for it...



This is the most recent picture of us taken at Lynn and Jeff's wedding. I can't believe how much time has passed... the kids are all getting so old. Which I guess means that I am really getting old. At least I don't have nearly as much gray hair as Jeff though. LOL!

Sweet Layout

Here's another layout I did based on a challenge from the If It's Groovy blog. I am really loving challenges like these. I have so many pictures, events and ideas I want to scrap that sometimes it's hard to settle down on one. Using a challenge, whether it be a sketch, a song or a theme, gives me a starting point. It's easier to search my stash of pictures and supplies and put them together. It also helps with scrappers block.

The June challenge at IIG is to do a "Candy" layout. I had some candy stickers on hand but no candy pictures simply because my darling children don't eat candy (Ha! Right! Then why did Kaitlyn only want the largest bag of dum dum suckers I could find for her birthday??) I decided to take this theme in a different direction. At work there are a few of us who share a love for trashy romance novels which we call brain candy. It was a simple matter of taking a couple pictures of some of my books and going from there. I should mention that I also used a sketch from the MSH sketch challenge(this one was based on # 20 from 52 Sketches... 52 Weeks).

Scrappin' Late into the Night...

Last night I went to my scrappin' table around 10. I had spent part of the day cleaning it off and it was calling to me. Marci, from the MSH group, had mentioned a Cyber Blog Hop Crop being sponsored by If It's Groovy . A group of bloggers were each posting separate challenges with an 80's theme. Marci's challenge at her blog, Marci's Scrapping Spot, was to use some suggested 80's movie titles. I thought I'd give it a try and used the Pretty in Pink (a movie that I have never actually seen - I must be the only one!). I grabbed some photos of Kendra at one, a sketch posted in the MSH sketch challenge and a stack of pink papers. The title was cut from the TearDrop cartridge. This was my result...



Since I had so much fun doing that one, I decided to do another one from the If It's Groovy Blog Hop Crop. This one was posted by Scrap Happy Mama and it was to do a layout featuring neon, another 80's staple. This one took me a little more time. I went thru a box of old photos til I found some that I could use neon (neon, really???) with. Then I came across some great pictures of Kaitlyn in 1999 at grandpa's Iowa farm. She was wearing a great neon green tank (hmmm... maybe neon didn't leave with the 80's) and some bright purple shorts. After finding the pictures, I went through more of the sketch layouts posted in the MSH challenges and found one that would work for my pictures (this one came from the ScrapRoomClub). After grabbing some paper, some flowers and my green stickles bottle, I was off. I cut "Summer" from Stretch Your Imagination and "FUN" from Lyrical Letters. And here it is...

I really like how these pages came out... maybe I should do more of my scrappin' late at night.

Edited to say... I messed up. "Pretty in Pink" was not one of the movie choices in the challenge. 16 Candles... Pretty in Pink... they both had Molly Ringwald... same diff, right? LOL! I still got a great layout out of it! :-D