document life now

Happy Mother's Day to me

Yeah, I'm just now getting these photos off my camera. Combine going to the lake for the day with back to back zoo field trips and I didn't actually get any energy until this Sunday. 

My girls did a great job of making me cards for the day. From Mykiah...

and the inside...

on the top, she wrote all the things she would buy me if she had money. The girls knows me.

And from Chesney:

My favorite line was "everytime you bring me to a place you don't want to go, I'm grateful." I asked what she was saying. The zoo. The kids know I rather dislike the zoo, so she was thanking me for taking her even though I don't like it.

And that evening, when we were all in our pjs and ready for bed, I got a very authentic photo of me and my kiddos...

overwhelmed

Last weekend, after a day of baby snuggling, and a day at the lake, I sat in my usual spot in our living room.

My legs were aching. My kitchen smelled of self-cleaning oven. My family watched The Green Hornet. My belly was full of pizza. My dog slept by my side.

I went to Pinterest, of which I am not a member, and typed in "overwhelmed." 

I am a bit at the moment. On Sunday, I was gearing up for two full days of field trips. Knowing what I needed to accomplish at work in two weeks. Knowing that I would get it done, but that I would stress until it was done.

Knowing that my own children only have a few days of school left. Then it will be summer, and I am not prepared for that.

So I looked at what images came up for overwhelmed, and thought I should share a few...

There was overwhelming overwhelmingness:

Overwhelming cuteness:

Overwhelming colorful:

Overwhelming nostalgia:

and overwhelming beauty:

Got me through the week. And now it's all better because...

year of weekends

Back in November, I won a contest on Becky Higgins' blog. One of my prizes was a 2010 Project Life kit.

I got the box, and set it aside. I'd attempted Project Life, or a photo each day for a year, twice in the past. And failed. Miserably.

Then I read Peppermint Granberg's blog about her Year of Weekends project. I decided that maybe I could do a Year of Weekends project.

And maybe I could take the Project Life kit and adapt it to fit my purposes.

This is my opening page. I didn't put photos in it yet. I may at the end of the year. The nice thing about Project Life is that all those little cards just slip in and out of the page protectors. It's very changeable. I've done it.

I started out the year doing one page for each weekend.

Left page is my first page. I completed my journaling this page and selected photos after we went up to visit baby Ryder in the hospital. I had no idea that within a few hours, I'd be back up at the hospital. It's the beauty of this project. I captured our life in that minute. Then on the right, I have a lot of journaling about how I started the weekend at the hospital, caring for Ryder's twin brother. My heart still clenches a bit when I look at these opening pages. That's OK. That was our life for that first week of January. 

The first weekends of the year were dark and dreary. There wasn't much happening, simply because the weather was awful and no one wanted to do anything. I did manage to capture a birthday here.

The page on the right... that's the weekend I almost quit. We did nothing. It was Super Bowl weekend and even the photo of the guys laying around watching the game... no inspiration there. However, I pushed on.

I should note here that I'm letting the kids help with the journaling. I will usually plan out what photos I want to use on a Sunday night, then hand the kids the journaling cards I need completed. If they whine, I do it. Sometimes they're anxious to do it. Sometimes not. It's important to me that this album not be completely from my point of view. I want it to be something with group participation. 

 

Spring came and I got all crazy and gave myself permission to do double page spreads. The first was the weekend we went to the zoo. I got some great animal action shots, and I wanted to include them. I also took some fun photos of my kids and wanted them included. So I did both. One of my favorite memories.

This was Mykiah's birthday weekend. Another two pager. Lots of memories made.

Then came my favorite weekend...

Spring Break! I was faithful to the Year of Weekends concept and only used photos taken Friday through Sunday. Luckily, the best parts of the trip happened on those days. 

So there's my Year of Weekends/Project Life hybrid for this year. I'm loving it and my family loves to walk by and pick up the album and look back. In fact, the kids are fairly good about saying, "You don't have many photos of me in the album. Can you take one?" It's awesome. I'm good about taking photos, narrowing them down and writing the journaling each week. Not so good about sending the photos to be printed. I do that about once every six weeks. Still... they're on my hard drive. The hard work is done. 

How can you take the photo a day project and make it fit your style -- lifestyle and scrapping style? 

something I love

One of my favorite foods is pizza. 

I grew up eating Pizza Hut. It's easy to do when for a large portion of your childhood, the only decent places to eat were Dairy Queen and Pizza Hut. Or a 45 minute drive.

Even though my own family lives near a metropolitan area, we still only have Pizza Hut as a choice for hot pizza. After 40 years, I have to say that I'm getting a little tired of it.

I mean -- taco pizza is still the bomb -- but Pizza Hut is just not doing it for me.

There's always Luigi's or Pizza by the Chef in Branson and Branson West, but a five hour drive for pizza is just not feasible.

My solution?

Papa Murphy's Take and Bake pizza.

It's very flavorful. You can build your own pizza. And have I mentioned the flavor?

I love getting it and bringing it home and having it for whenever we get hungry.

The best part? There's one on the drive home from the lake. I have a feeling this will become tradition. Day at the lake, stop and get pizza on the way home, pull it out of the oven as the last person gets out of the shower.

Personally, I like a pizza with everything on it, but Dan throws a small tantrum whenever I try to order it. This week it was pepperoni and ground beef on the entire pizza. Green peppers and onions on half.

What's your favorite pizza toppings? And don't say pineapple... yuck. Just yuck.

iphone dump: mother's day

Sunday morning was scheduled to be our lake day. As I've mentioned, I have an absolute need to be outside this spring. Preferably near water. 

We decided to try a different lake this time. We went there last year, but we didn't like it much. It is, however, a lot closer to our home and Dan the driver decided to give it another chance.

While we were driving, I used my iPhone to find another beach. We loved this one. Found our spot.

We bought a pass to all the lakes in our state for 2011. Expect to see many more lake pictures. I may even bring my real camera. These are all camera phone pictures. I just didn't feel like dragging the big one along. I wanted to relax and read and enjoy.

The kids wore swimsuits. Whoops. Actually Dan, Kiah and Ches wore swimsuits. Brady didn't think he needed one. He realized he was wrong about the time he was up to his waist in water. It wasn't the shorts, he said, but the underwear. 

It was about 85 that day, and windy. The water couldn't have been warm, but it was hot enough that it sounded tempting. I resisted.

It's ironic that I want to be outside so much because I actually avoid the sun as much as possible. I was in the sun for maybe 2 hours before I pulled my chair into the shade of our picnic shelter. I tan easy and rarely burn, I just prefer to stay out of the sun at my age. 

My children have no such concerns.

In addition to swimming, there was massive sand pyramid/grand canyon building. And a hike to the point...

iphone dump: the baby version

Saturday afternoon, we went to see Dan's brother. You see, I had a list of things I wanted for Mother's Day. I knew I was going to get a lot of my list. But I still had a big hole on my Saturday afternoon with nothing to do.

I could have stayed home and scrapbooked. It was National Scrapbook Day. 

I could have stayed home and napped. Or read. Or did the laundry or anything of a hundred other things.

But what I thought was, "We should go spend some time with the twins." I thought I'd offer to spend some time there, so that a mom and dad could get some things done.

Didn't quite work out that way, but I still got a ton of baby time. It filled my cup. 

Kiah and I had fun trying to use my iphone camera to take photos. Chesney played with big sister. We ate brats and laughed at babies. Cup=full.

Kiah started out tentative, but by the end of the afternoon, she was a confident baby wrangler. Of course, she always had the one who didn't need fed or changed.

Self-portrait. See that squishy baby goodness?

Oh my gosh. This guy was a smiley, happy little dude. I tried to get a smile. This was as close as I could do.

This is big sister. She's a little blurry, but she sort of doesn't like to stand still either. Totally a daddy's girl, but she was loving Ches.

Ack! The grain. However, love that smile on my girl's face and the fact that the little guy was all sacked out on her chest. 

This one amuses Kiah. I swear he didn't cry long. I had a bottle, and a clean diaper and a pacifier. Then he changed into smiley baby and made me all gooey.

More grain, but even upset, he's cute. 

Seriously happy to be an Auntie Kim again.

new kit: Quest For Fun

 Have you checked out Big Picture Classes? They have a little free self-paced class there that I'm teaching. It's called Come Away With Me, and it's awesome.

So awesome that I made a journal for this year's trip (which occurs in about six weeks... not that I'm counting). You can see last year's journal pages by enrolling in my *free* class, and here's a sample of this year's pages...

It's a gorgeous journal (purchased here) and my pages match it perfectly. The finished project is going to be such a keepsake for my family.

In fact, I loved the colors so much and I loved creating the backgrounds so much that I decided to turn it into a kit. It's got a bit of vacation in it, and it's got a bit of fun. Totally me. 

P.S. Family photos not included. Used for previews only. You can borrow them, though. Especially when they're driving me crazy.

Quest for Fun can be purchased here.

Here are some fun layouts from my girlies:

 

by Sharon

by Lynett

Don't forget that purchasing Quest For Fun means you'll get My Style Favorites templates for free. Add both to your cart and the templates will be free! While you're shopping, check out the rest of my store... on sale for 30% off for the next week!

new kit: Rockaway Beach

One of my favorite places in the world is Branson, Missouri. 

There's a litte town not far from Branson named Rockaway Beach. It's not a particularly pretty town (sorry!) but it is near a lake... or wide river. It's also where some of my favorite people live.

I wanted to do a beach-themed kit and I was pondering what to name it. 

Then I knew.

Rockaway Beach is available here.

Here are some fun layouts from my team:

by Christie

by Lynett

And don't forget... buy Rockaway Beach and get My Style Favorites templates for free! Just add both products to your cart and you'll get the templates for free. And Rockaway Beach is on sale for this weekend!

Happy National Scrapbook Weekend!

NSD is one of my favorite days of the year! New products, sales... what's not to love?!?

I've got three new products for you, and over the next 24 hours, I'll introduce them each to you individually. I love them so, and want them to have their time to shine.

When I was thinking what products I wanted to offer for NSD, I realized I wanted to share some of my favorite templates with you.

Templates are available here.

Here are the layouts that inspired these templates (and some of these go wayyyyyyy back).

For this weekend only, you can get this template set free by purchasing either of my new kits "Rockaway Beach" or "Quest for Fun." Simply log in, add one of those kits to your cart plus the templates, and the templates should show as free (barring any glitches I made entering the special offer... please let me know if you have any problems!)

This sale will be good for May 5-8. 

In addition, Two Little Pixels will be running a sale for the next week -- 30% off on all my other products. Check it out!

 Because I seriously love my blog readers so very much, I have a special code just for you, as well. 

happynsd

Make sure you're logged in, and type the code in the coupon box. It's good through the end of the month to the first 100 users. I'll post here once they're all gone.

Happy Mother's Day!

It's a few days early, but consider this your reminder.

And if *I'm* your mother... I'd like a trip to Branson to see my friends and the Haygoods for Mother's Day. Hey, you can pull it off. Talk to Dad, make a one night reservation at the LQ, and we're there.

Or, you know, chocolate cake, the lake, and some Mexican food would be adequate. Not stellar, but adequate. You can bring a bucket and beat on it. It'll be just like we're in Branson. Ish.

My mother-in-law is getting flowers. I do flowers for in-laws pretty well. Thank you ProFlowers and Kidd Kraddick.

My mom asked for something specific for the first time this year. I couldn't overlook that, so Dan and I stopped and picked it up for her.

Well, Dan picked it up. It was really heavy. And how was I supposed to know that my mom wanted it in the front yard and not in the back? It's not like he didn't need the workout.

It's pretty cool because it's got a little solar cell on top and it lights up after dark. Just in case you're a ship going down a street in the middle of Kansas trying to find my mom's house.

My mom loves her flowers and has been busy planting the last few weekends. I did not inherit my mother's passion for things that grow. I like to look at them, but would not know the first thing about keeping them alive.

They are gorgeous though...