Wow! It's been a week since I've updated. I went scrapbooking last weekend with a couple of friends. We had such a nice time. I didn't get a lot done, but it was so nice to have a girls' day that it didn't matter how much I accomplished.

This week has been rather busy with just life. Tuesday Spencer had Jazz Band practise in Burlington and then I picked my brother Rick up and brought him home for the evening and night. He has Down's Syndrome and is pretty low functioning. It was so nice to have him home. We didn't do much except sit on the couch and cuddle (which is just what he likes to do!)

Matt started and finished his exams. He only had two to write this semester. He feels he aced both of them (which wouldn't surprise me.) Now he can relax over the next week before the next semester starts. ...then we have to do transitions all over again, new teachers, new peers, new classes. Not an easy thing for him to do. I need to set up a meeting with all his new teachers to help ease into the semester.

Yesterday we went to Home Depot to pick up paint for Spencer's room. His room is in desperate need of a make-over since he's 13 and still has space all over his walls. He decided that he wants a music theme (surprise, surprise) and wants silver walls. After looking all over, I found metallic paint at $54.00 a gallon! (Benjamin Moore wanted over $100 a gallon!) So, guess what my week ahead will be like??

I finally started my Book of Me! I've been wanting to start one for a couple of years now. I did a page on what makes me smile.

Bits and Pieces

I'm going Scrapbooking this weekend. A friend invited me to her house out in the Boonies (LOL) for the weekend. I can't go for the weekend, but I'm going to go for the day tomorrow. I can't wait.

I've got a lot I need to accomplish today to make my day tomorrow guilt free.
-clean the house (what a constant battle around here!!)
-pick up some dry cleaning
-grocery shop (before my boys fire me as their mother)
-preplan some layouts for tomorrow and pack my scrapping stuff
-go buy a new blow dryer (Cameron decided to blow dry the poor cat and burned it out on me ... I have no idea how he managed to do that, but I hope the cat didn't get burned in the process)
-take a film in to be developed
-Cameron has a hockey after school

OK, so I gotta get off this computer and get to work!

I saw a link to this article on Scrapping Buddies and thought I would share it here.

This is from a site called Organized Scrapbooks(www.organizedscrabooks.com) and it is a perfect motivator to use your stash. I'm in a Use Your Stash Challenge so I think I need to print this off and put it on my wall in my room.

"Did You Know? A Word About Stockpiling Scrapbooking Supplies (May, 2005) by Rockester, Scrapbook Organization Editor

Did you know that an inch of pattern paper is estimated to be 100 sheets or 75 finished pages?

Did you know that one inch of cardstock is roughly 50 pages finished? How many inches do YOU have? How many pages do you do a year?

Do you have over 12 inches (1 foot) of cardstock or printed paper? Do you realise that is enough paper for 1000 pages? Are you stockpiling for someday when you already own enough paper to do thousands of pages?

Did you know that one tin/set of 100 eyelets makes and average of 20 pages? (And how many sets of 100 do YOU own?)

Did you know that many paper packs and multi sheet slabs usually have 10-20% of their patterns that will not suit you within a pack? (one sheet in 5 may not be to your taste so don't keep it in the stash--share!)

Did you know that each sticker sheet you own will do aproximately a two page layout? If you have binder full of stickers it will equal about 300 pages to use them up?

Did you know that each yard of fiber you own will make 1-2 pages? If you own a skein of knitting yarn, they contain between 100-200 yards of fiber? At that rate it will take you 100-200 pages of JUST THAT SKEIN to use up that yarn ball on layout pages? (SHARE!!)

Did you know that the average gel and writer pen ink longevity INSIDE a pen is one year before it is generally dry or unusable? (Use them up before they DRY up!)

Did you know that playing music when you scrapbook helps your creativity and productivity?

Did you know that starting with a format saves you 20 minutes PER PAGE?

Did you know there are about 500 free sketches online? Watch our links for sites. If you can't find those free ones online to print and refer to, or need ideas for crop parties, get Becky Higgins Creative Sketches book and also her Creative Companion book. Sketches are simply awesome for versatile formats of layouts.

Did you know that shopping once a week at the scrapbook store costs most scrappers an average of $25.00 each trip? (And most of those have enough items at home already to make 1000's of pages.) $25.00 times 52 weeks a year means $ 1300 spent per year.

Did you know that sticker letters cost an average of $3-$5 dollars a sheet now? Buy black so that later you can mix and match later your partial sheets for 'mixed font' titles. It will save you at least a dollar a sheet to BUY BLACK! Why? Because you will eventually get more many titles per sheet that way!

Did you know that one ABC sticker sheet usually makes only two titles before is is 'cast off' by most scrapbookers? Over half the stickers are then wasting away in binders or storage and cloggin up precious storage space--never to be used again.

Did you know that people will pay $1 each for two punched flowers and a brad or pop dot? (Think Jolees, K and Co, and Paper Bliss) Do it yourself for a fraction of that. It takes only pennies to make a stacked flower from your scraps and chalk the outside petals..... I know you have scraps and brads, eyelets or pop dots! LOL Pay yourself about $20 to $40 an hour and make a few dozen sets instead of buying them.

Did you know that stamping your own twill ribbon with phrases saves you $2.00 a yard? How many premade ribbon yards do you have that you need to use up? Wording ribbon usually works out to 1 foot per page. If you have a stockpile of 20 yards of worded ribbons of all kinds, that means you better get cracking and make 60 pages before you buy more!!"

January is in full swing. I had great intentions of getting a lot done during these winter months but have yet to get started. We need to paint our intire main floor, as well as do some tiling in the kitchen. The problem is that I don't know what colours I want. Everytime I make a decision I change my mind!!!! (a woman's perogative I guess!)

I have been scrapping at home again, though. I joined a Use Your Stash Challenge again and set the goal at 50 layouts before making any more purchases. I'm almost half way through. Right now I've completed 24.

These three layouts are ones I completed recently. ...although the photos are from last summer (well, most of them.)

Happy Birthday Grampa

Yesterday we went up to Guelph to celebrate my Father-in-law's 80th birthday. 80 seems so old to me ... kinda like when I was a teenager and thought about 40 LOL! My father-in-law, however, doesn't seem "old." He's very healthy and active and young looking. He certainly doesn't look 80.

Four

I've stolen this idea from another Blog. It's actually a tag, but I'm doing it anyway.

Four jobs I’ve had:
Cafateria at KMart (many moons ago when I was 16!)
Cook at a summer camp (again, many moons ago)
Residential Counsellor with the Mentally Handicapped)
Stay at home mom - which means a bazzillion different jobs!

Four movies I’d watch over and over:
I'm really not much of a movie person.

Four places I’ve lived:
Brampton, Ontario
London, Ontario
Barbados
Oakville Ontario

Four TV shows I love to watch:
Everybody Loves Raymond
Any court show
Desparate Housewives
Grey’s Anatomy

Four websites I visit daily:
Cherished Scrapbooks
Scrapping Buddies
A Non verbal learning disorder web site
Two Peas online gallery

Four places I’ve been on vacation:
Whistler, BC
Sailing on a yacht in the Genadines
East Coast, Canada
Myrtle Beach

Four foods I love:
Chicken fajitas
MacDonald's french fries (can you call that food?)
anything chocolate
Lays BBQ Chips
(OK these aren't the healthiest of food, I know!)

Four places I’d rather be:
On a beach in Barbados
Scrapbooking with my friends
Quebec City
In Calgary visiting my family

Four Bloggers that I'm tagging
Robyn
Christyne
Kim
another Christine (who has just started a BLOG.)

Heather forwarded me some pictures of the Games night at Joanne's house on Friday.

This is me playing with one of Joanne's hampsters. I can't believe that I actually touched the thing, but she assured me that it wouldn't bite. It didn't!


I told Michele that I was going to put this one on my BLog. This is her kissing my butt because she told me to shut up!


Have you played Guesstures? It's so much fun. Heather was trying to get her team mates to say a word. I can't remember what that word was, but it looks like it was a squirrel or something.


What can I say? The losing team!

I did some scrapbooking yesterday. It feels great to be back into the swing of it, Now maybe I can actually put a dent in the ever growing pile of pictures sitting on my desk.

I scraplifted a layout done by a very talented scrapper named Nathalie. I did these two layouts of Spencer and Cameron and used up some some old scraps.



The first day back to school went well for all of us. Matt was in a good mood when he got home and said that everything was good. I'm glad! His exams start in a couple of weeks so we need to keep the anxiety at bay.

The boys are back to school. There weren't too many happy faces last night (except mine.) Matt was showing quite a bit of anxiety about going back so I hope today goes well for him. I told him just to take a class at a time. I've talked to the Principal and his History teacher and we are going to try to set up a meeting with all his new teachers (that he will have next semester - which starts in a few weeks) to see what we can do to help him out more.

Today I plan on scrapping and getting layouts ready to do for my play day tomorrow, and getting the house back in order. It's amazing how having three boys in the house for two weeks can turn everything upside down!

I picked up our Christmas pictures and photo CDs. I can't believe that I didn't take more pictures at Christmas. In fact, I didn't take any on Christmas Day. John had his digital out, but they never really turn out well.

These pictures were funny. My friend, Deb, and I were driving through a Tim's and four horses with people on them came by and asked if they could cut in line in front of us. I said yes, and grabbed my camera. Horses at the Drive-Thru!

Last night myself and a group of my scrapping buddies went to our friend, Joanne's house. She had a girls' night in with board games. We had such a blast. There were 13 of us playing Guesstures and Cranium. What a hoot! Thanks, Joanne, for the great time. I took some pictures but they are locked away on the film in my camera. At times like this I really wish that I was digital. I'm not quite ready to make that leap yet!

Today my goal was to get some of the decorations away and to do a little bit of scrapbooking. Mission accomplished! Everything is away with the exception of the trees. ...and I managed to get two layouts done so far. I did a layout that I was challenged to do by the ladies on Cherished Scrapbooks. I was to use Basic Grey (since I'm not a fan of it) and had to use Black Tie since it's retiring. This is what I came up with.


Don't the boys look thrilled to see the camera??

Year in Review

I completed a challenge for Cherished Scrapbooks. It was a year in review layout (well ... I actually killed two birds with one layout and did the BH sketch challenge as well.) The layout turned out so differently from my normal layouts so I'm not sure if I like it yet. Maybe it's that there's not blue in it LOL! I still need to add the numbers to correspond with the journaling, and two missing pictures (when I find them.)



Here's our year in review.
1. Hockey Tournament in Whitby, ON
2. March Break in Florida with my parents
3. Spencer played in the Halton Junior Jazz Band
4. Summer holidays in Myrtle Beach
5. Time spent at Tom and Doreen's cottage
6. Time at our trailer
7. Mom and Dad's 50th anniversary
8. Stephen and Joanne both move to Calgary
9. Junior Music Camp
10. Junior and Senior Soldier enrollment
11. CKU Stamford, CT with some of my scrapping buddies
12. Thanksgiving in Fairfax, VA with my brother David
13. Spencer got third place in Rotary Music Festival
14. Cameron got first place in Rotary Music Festival
15. Christmas with our family and friends.

It's been quite the ride this pat year!

So today I took my new years' film into Shopper's Drug Mart to get developed and get a photo CD. Here are some of my new years' pictures.


I guess Matthew and Spencer are too cool to smile for the camera (but not too cool to wear these hats! Gotcha, guys!)


Cameron and Uncle Don trying to concentrate on blowing up each other's ships ... and on New Years' Eve. Such gentlemen!


Happy New Year!


Just us girls, my sister Cathy, my friend Deb, and myself.


...and poor Oliver trying to hide from the horns and streamers under the Christmas tree.

Happy New Year Everyone!

I found this beautiful quote on Kim's Blog and thought it was perfect:

This is my wish for you:

comfort on difficult days,

smiles when sadness intrudes,

rainbows to follow the clouds,

laughter to kiss your lips,

sunsets to warm your heart,

hugs when spirits sag,

beauty for your eyes to see,

friendships to brighten your being,

faith so that you can believe,

confidence for when you are in doubt,

courage to know yourself,

patience to accept the truth,

love to complete your life.

-anonymous

I wish you all the best for this coming year.

We spent New Year's Eve at home. We had my friend, Deb, and my sister and brother-in-law over for a night of games and just hanging out. The boys were happy for the most part, but there were times when I wanted to send them to bed early. It was a nice quiet night, just the way I like it. We were so into playing Cranium that we almost missed bringing in the New Year. We managed to get everything ready in a couple of minutes and make it for the count down. The cameras were out. John took some on his digital camera, but the flash wasn't set so they didn't turn out. I still use film and so they are still tucked away inside the camera until processing time.