Confessions Of A Scrapaholic

Home Sweet Home

It is soooooo good to be home.  I don't think we have ever been so happy.  As we pulled up to our garage Zoë practically yelled, "My home!  We are at my home!  Let's go play with the kitties!"  I couldn't get her out of the car fast enough.  Heck, I couldn't get out of the car fast enough.

I have been enjoying her so much today.  I missed my little monkey!  I know it sounds like a strange thing to say since we were together in Spokane, but it wasn't the same.  I couldn't focus on her with two other children to take care of.  I didn't get to spend time with just her.  I didn't like that at all. 

Zoë is my little buddy.  She's my little mini-me.  I love running errands with her and doing girly things with her.  I love that she sings Disney Princess songs all day long.  I love that she wakes up in the morning and crawls into bed with me and Kelly to watch cartoons.  I love that she is three and now so much more independent.

I am sooooo over babies.  Done with them.  Last week took care of my baby-fever like a bucket of ice water with a shot of penicillin thrown in for good measure.  Don't get me wrong, I love my nephews, but little boys are just plain gross.  Even if I was still on the fence about having another baby, the thought that I might have a boy pushes me right over to the NO side. 

I even told Kel that he could go and get the ol' snipperoo, with my blessing.  He gave me a look of utter shock and amazement and said, "Really?!" He has been wanting one ever since Zoë was about a month old. :)  I kept telling him no, I wanted another baby.  I have been hounding the poor man for about two years now.  It was the one thing we ever argued about.  But no more.  No thank you.  I am done with babies.  I am perfectly happy having one darling little girl that I can spoil as much as I want.

I feel like a weight has been lifted from me. For so long I have been fighting for another baby, and now... peace.  I am perfectly content and happy with our little family.  I am excited to clean out all of the baby stuff out of storage.  Excited that I never have to get up for middle of the night feedings again.  Excited that we no longer need three bedrooms, which means we can live in the city.  Happy with the thought that we can travel pretty much anywhere and not worry about it because Zoë is such a big girl now.

Life is good.  Our little family is good.  Just the three of us.

Adventures in Babysitting

Greetings from Spokane! I am a babysitting machine right now, which means no blog posts until we get back.  All my free time is being spent reading the new Harry Potter book. Yep, I am that much of a dork, but I am OK with that. :)  If you would like to see what I am up to this week, visit our family blog and check out my Adventures in Babysitting.  I'll leave you with this...  One of my new favorite pictures of Miss Zoë taken at Nick and Tera's wedding last Saturday.  She and I went to the salon and got "princess hair" done for the wedding. Little girls are awesome.

Dinosaurs Rule.

That's all there is to it.  Dinosaurs totally rule.  We got back from "Walking with Dinosaurs" a couple hours ago and it was AMAZING! Truly amazing.  There are no words to describe how cool it was. It doesn't get any better than life sized dinosaurs.  If you have kids and it comes to your town, GO!  I would share pictures but the lighting was bad and (of course) no flash photography or recordings were allowed.  I think Kelly and I may have been more excited than Zoë and she was pretty excited.  She has been saying "Go see dinosaurs with Brodie?" all week long. When the show started she immediately put her hands over her eyes and didn't budge.  She stayed that way for a good ten minutes before I put her on my lap. Then she kept her hands on her eyes but I could see her peeking through her fingers. By the end she said, "More dinosaurs, pwees?"  She simply could not be more darling.

Since I didn't get any good pictures at the show tonight, I scrapped the photos from our visit to see the T-Rex Named Sue.  I have had Kate's darling dinosaur doodles for a month in preparation for all my dinosaur pictures.  I just love them!  Actually, I love all of Kate's doodles.  Dang, I wish I could draw.

Credits and journaling can be seen HERE.

My Favorite Part of the Day

As a mother, I should probably say that my favorite part of the day is spent with my child.  I do love spending time with Zoë.  I adore the ground her little feet run on.  BUT...my favorite part of the day is right now.  Right now, Zoë has just gone down for her nap and I am drinking my Enviga and sitting at my laptop.  Now is me time.  I have two-ish hours to read blogs, scrap, leave praise.  Whatever I feel like doing.  Love it.

I mentioned Enviga above.  I have gotten myself good and addicted to the stuff over the last few weeks.  They say it is "calorie burning" but I don't pay much attention to that.  It's probably barely true anyway.  What I love is that it is not too sweet and has the same amount of caffeine as one cup of coffee.  Who wants to drink coffee when it is 90 degrees outside?  Not me.  My favorites are green tea and peach.  The berry is too sweet for my taste.  Let me tell you, these babies are like liquid gold.  They don't make me shaky or upset my stomach like energy drinks do and they are so refreshing! The one problem I have is that most stores are sold out of everything but berry (bleck).  So, when I see it I stock up.  I have been limiting myself to one a day because they are so scarce, but I think about them all day long.  It is a good thing I never did drugs. I would be in rehab for sure.  Today however, is a two-Enviga day (maybe three).  I have gotten quite a few items checked off of my to-do list, but I have quite a few left (in addition to the normal cleaning and packing).

So with that, I will be off.  I have to backup my laptop now and who knows how long that will take.  I am leaving for Spokane in the morning but I will try to post regularly while I am gone.  Did I mention that I am going to be in Spokane until August? Yep.  Kel and I are watching our two nephews while Nick & Tera go on their honeymoon. Soooo, send Enviga filled thoughts my way.  I am going to need it!

Whew! My Mojo has Returned

It was slow going for a while, but I am happy to report that my mojo is back. That is a relief.  Have you ever had your mojo completely leave the building?  Gone. Kaput. Poof. Done.

Yeah, that was me for about a month or so.  I get that way when I have too much on my plate.  In order to be creative, my house must be clean. I must be caught up on work, and Zoë needs to be sleeping.  Whenever I try to shirk my responsibilities and sneak off to scrap, I sit at my laptop and nothing happens.

As it turns out, being the featured scrapper at DST last week was just what I needed. They chose me. I must have some talent, right?  I guess so!  Since I was chosen, I felt it my duty to scrap, scrap, scrap!  That way, if anyone visited my gallery they would actually see some new layouts. (That would be nice).  Here's what I have been up to...

This is one of my new favorite layouts. I have had two versions of this sitting on my desktop for months.  Yesterday I trashed them both and started fresh.  I was inspired by the new Nerdy Girl Kit by Christy Lyle and Robin Carlton and just love how it turned out.

Credits and journaling can be seen HERE.

Next up, Adventures in Toddlerhood: Bath Time.  This too has been sitting on my desktop for months (another victim of the mojo-snatcher).  I just love these photos of Zoë.  She is such a funny little kid.

Credits and journaling can be seen HERE.

This is my desktop conversion layout. I thought I was quite clever with this one.  I turned Heather's March Decorative Desktop into a layout.  Easy peasy!  I love how this turned out.  I have plans to convert the other months. Hehehe.

Credits and journaling can be seen HERE.

Lastly, a quick page. This is the quick page included with the free Grateful Kit by Heather Ann.  The kit is free with a $5.00 purchase at Heather Ann Design (ends July 31st).  I was surprised by how much Zoë looks like Heather's son Jack in this photo!

That's all for now, and probably all the scrapping I will be doing for a while.  The next few days are going to be spent preparing for our two week trip to Spokane on Thursday. Yikes! That is a long time to be away from home...in Spokane.

Baby Charlee

Charlee has arrived!  Yay!  She made her way very quickly into the world on Thursday afternoon.  Ryan stopped by for lunch between deliveries and mentioned that Janice was having some contractions and that he shouldn't stay long.  Forty five or so minutes after he left he called back to say that Janice was at the hospital and definitely in labor.  Thankfully, he made it in time for the birth. Barely.

Zoë and I went up to Bellingham yesterday to meet my darling little niece, Charlee Ann.  She is so sweet and has such dark hair! It is actually really dark blond, not brown.  But you have to be pretty close to see that.  She is a very healthy baby (7lbs, 10oz. and 19.5" long), especially for being a couple weeks early.  I couldn't have asked for better timing.  I was convinced that Janice would have the baby as soon as we left for Spokane next week, but no! 

We will have to take another trip up there in a few weeks so that Zoë can meet her baby cousin.  The birthing center does not allow any children under twelve years old in, unless they are a sibling.  I understand the rule. Kids can be pretty germy, and you know how I feel about germs. ;)  So I left Zoë out in the waiting area while I visited. Kidding.  Ryan and Harry came out and they played together while I snuggled and photographed Charlee. Awwwww.

The Nerve!

Mmmph! (That would be me, pouting).

Let me tell you a story.  A story about a darling little housewife and her darling little daughter who were sweltering to death in their 86 degree home.  At noon.  With the A/C and fans going.

The darling little housewife (dare I say, angelic?) was trying to rescue her poor sweet child from the unbearable heat by booking a hotel room.  A hotel room with A/C.  And a pool.  And room service.

There was just one problem. Her dear husband was out of town on business and was unavailable for consultation.

Knowing that she should not interrupt him during his meetings, she decided to text message his cell phone and ask if she should abandon the sweltering heat and seek refuge in a hotel.  She reasoned that surely he would call her back during lunch time.  It really would be the only considerate thing to do.

Well, the darling house wife waiting patiently.  Hours went by and hotel rooms booked up.  They booked up so fast that all of the hotels nearby were sold out.  Hours went by and the husband never returned her text messages.  The nerve of him!

So she pondered.  Should she book a hotel room anyway?  Even though her currently not-so-dear husband would probably need to go home after his flight arrived this evening?

Why yes. I think so.

And so the darling and angelic housewife packed up her child and went to a hotel.

The End!

Toot! Toot! Toot!

Guess what?!?!  I am the Featured Scrapper this week at Digishop Talk!  I am so honored and excited.  I can hardly stand it.  And here I thought I had lost all my mojo.  Maybe this will get my creative juices flowing and I'll be able to finish up the ten or so "In Process" layouts sitting on my desktop.

I actually have finished up a couple layouts the last couple days. Wanna see?  First up, are the photos from Zoë's "bike ride."  I use the term loosely because she only stayed on her bike for about two minutes before abandoning her vehicle and fleeing on foot.

Credits can be seen HERE.

Next up, the Fourth of July.  You thought that I was just a big slacker when I didn't mention it on my blog, didn't you?  That is just because I wanted to finish up my layout first.  (You know how I feel about blog posts without pictures).

Credits can be seen HERE.

I do have one other TOOT! that I haven't mentioned.  I am getting published again.  Woo Hoo!  My "Power Outage" layout is going to be in the November/December issue of Simple Scrapbooks.  Of course, I am in my glasses with bad hair and in my jammies in the layout, but scrapbooking is all about telling our stories right?  Even the non-electrified bad hair ones. :)

Life is Good.

I love summer time.  There is no place on earth more beautiful than Seattle in the summer.  It's not too hot (normally) the skies are blue, there are tons of fun activities: swimming lessons, Kelsey Creek Farm, our swimming poodle, ear piercing, Zoë's birthday party, and the usual every day silliness.

I have gotten so much accomplished in the last couple days. On Friday, we had a sitter come and watch Zoë so that I could work in the office all day.  I had so much bookkeeping to catch up on, and nap times and evenings just weren't cutting it.  It is hard to be motivated to work on a project for an hour or two at a time when you know that you won't even make a dent.  You know what I mean?  So Zoë's favorite sitter "Grandma Cheryl" watched Zoë for us.  Actually, she took Zoê for the day.  They went to the zoo and the beach.  By the time Zoë got home at 6pm she could barely keep her little head up. :) 

While Zoê was gone I had a cleaning service come over and clean our townhouse from top to bottom.  *Sigh*  It was blissful.  When we lived in Spokane we had a fabulous housekeeper, Linda, who would come every other week and clean for us.  She even did laundry.  We cut that from the budget when we moved since those types of services are about three times more expensive over here.  I sure do miss Linda.  The couple that cleaned for us this time did an amazing job and are very reasonably priced, so I am going to talk to Kelly about having them come once a month. 

All in all, after eight hours of child free time, I got most of my book keeping done.  (I do the book work for four of our companies).  I was able to finish up after Zoë went to bed.  Woo Hoo!  Now, I just need to file everything.  Yay!  (I say that sarcastically).

Saturday was concert day.  I went to the Flip Flop Summer Tour with my good friend Tami.  Until that day I had no idea it was a concert tour.  I thought we were just going to Kenny Chesney.  Now before you start thinking that I may be a bit slow, I bought the ticket from my friend Carrie and I didn't get my ticket until just before the concert.  And what awesome tickets they were (or so I thought, read on). We were in the 21st row on the floor to watch: Pat Green (who we missed b/c we were stuck in traffic), Sara Evans, Sugarland, Brooks & Dunn and Kenny Chesney.  And guess what? This city girl bought a cowboy hat so that I would fit in at the concert. :)

Sooo, floor seats.  Not so cool.  Actually, I think they would have been really cool had we not been surrounded by drunken.... let's just stop there, shall we? 

Problem One: People standing on the plastic folding chairs and blocking our view of the stage. 

Problem Two: Beer being spilled on us.  Once I can get over.  Accidents happen.  But three times.  Really?

Problem Three: There was a group of people surrounding us. Two of them had seats in the row in front of us. Four of them had seats two rows back.  They all decided to cram into the row in front of us and proceeded to a) stand on the chairs, b) double fist the beers all night and c) generally squish everyone around them.

Moments after the security guards would ask them to sit down and go back to there seats, they would be right back at it.  In front of us.  Tami and I were so fed up with them by the time Kenny Chesney came on (at 9:15...we had been there since 4:30) that we left fifteen minutes into his set.  All in all, I had a good time.  More because of my company than the concert itself.  The performers were wonderful, but if I wanted to just listen to them I can do that on the radio.

To top the day off, while I was gone, Kelly and our friend Bob worked on installing micro-sprinklers on our front porch and balcony so that my plants won't die while we are in Spokane at the end of the month.  Geez, a babysitter, house cleaners, concert tickets and micro-sprinklers.  I have an awesome husband.

That's all for now!  Zoë's waking up from her nap so I've gotta run!  More errands to do.  Zoë loves running errands with me.

Blog Freebie!

I created a little something for my blog friends as a thank you, and to promote the new product line at Scrapaholics...Get Wired!  Each set includes wire threaded buttons, twisted stems, bows and more! The Patriotic Freebie can be downloaded HERE.  Have a wonderful night and a safe holiday!

Please leave a comment and let me know how you liked the freebie! :)