Pie for breakfast.....

No Excuses

This seems to be my most used phrase lately, "I apologize and I really have no excuses".  Since I had knee surgery, I am behind on everything.  I'm constantly apologizing for everything and saying that there is really no excuse for it.  I'm just not in the mood to whine and blame it on the meds, the therapy, the at-home exercises, the ice pack, etc.  It's just easier to say "no excuses".  The fact is that I'm just not Super Woman.  I had the surgery, the results were what they were, and I'm going to take the time to heal and get my knee working properly.  That's just how it is.  I'm sorry..........but I'm not going to make excuses.  Six  months from now, none of this will be important anyway.

Okay, enough of that.  Thought I'd share a layout that I did a few weeks ago.  So, the short version is that we had a robin build a nest on our front porch.  We had a perfect view from the window.  I couldn't wait to take photos of the little ones.  Both Mr. and Mrs. Robin were sitting on the eggs.  Went to bed, woke up the next day, only to find that an overnight storm had blown the nest and it landed on the ground.  All the eggs broke.  I cried.  How sad that mother robin must be.  Mark told me that birds don't have feelings.  That she doesn't mourn the loss of her eggs.  That she built the nest and nurtured those eggs purely out of instinct.  I don't know if that's true, or he just said it so I wouldn't be so sad.  But anyway, I guess we have to accept nature, but that doesn't mean I have to understand.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Eryn!  I hope all your dreams and wishes come true! (and I hope to see some cool videos in the future)

Sassy Scrappers

I recently found this website and want to share it with you Sassy Scrappers.  It's a group of really great women coming together to talk and inspire each other.  They have LOTS of challenges going on all the time.  Below is how they describe themselves. There's no kit, no store, and no drama, so you're free to talk about thing you want! Hope you'll stop by and check it out!

Tired of Message Board drama??

Then come and join us at Sassy Scrappers!! We are all about just having fun and scrapping with our sassy scrappin' sisters! No big rules, just plain old fun! Tell us about other places you love to hang out at! Got a company or business venture of your own, tell us about it! We want to get to know you, and give you a nice place to unwind at the end of the day! We've got tons of challenges going on every week, plus a few ongoing challenges.

Can you tell I'm ready for spring?

Here are a couple of layouts that I completed recently.  I just had to pull out some summer photos and scrap them!

I made this one for a challenge I posted at Sassy Scrappers - create a layout using 4 of my favorite things to use when scrapping - buttons, arrows, brackets, and bling. 

And this one that I created for a secret scraplift challenge at Sassy Scrappers.

ScrapMuse April Preview

Here it is..........the April kit, with papers from Daisy D's and American Crafts.  It's been so much fun to work with.  Wish I could share my layouts from this weekend, but not yet!

ScrapMuse All Day Crop - Saturday March 29th

We're having an Online Crop at ScrapMuse this weekend!  There will be challenges and games all day, as well as a tutorial, and a make-and-take.  And we'll be giving out points all day long!  We hope to see lots of our regular members there, and we'd love to meet some new scrappers, too!  If you've never been to ScrapMuse, we'd love to have you join our community of wonderful ladies.  Head on over and sign up so you'll have your account all set up for Saturday. 

"March Madness" Online Crop
Saturday March 29th

Camas, WA - 3/22/2008 -

Basketball season is in high gear and so are the folks at ScrapMuse.com!! Saturday March 29th, ScrapMuse is hosting an online crop to celebrate March Madness!

The crop will begin at 10AM EDT and carry on through 10PM EDT, Saturday March 29. Join us right here for a full day of scrapbooking challenges, chats, prizes and more! Win points for discounts in the ScrapMuse shop!

ScrapMuse March Madness Event Highlights:

"Warm Ups" - Get your creative side going with some "warm up" challenges, hosted by Gretchen Carmack.

"Jump Shots" - Nathalie Kalbach of Scrapbook-Trends.com, will be hosting a tutorial on techniques to create your very own backgrounds!

"Dream Team" - Amanda Hensley hosts a make N take using the Rusty Pickle Lucky collection.

"Sweet Sixteen" - Valerie Serfozo will be hosting a rousing game of BINGO!

"Slam Dunk" - Rebekah Robinson, hosts challenges geared to inspire your journaling.

"Final Four" - Donna Whalen ends the day with challenges to help you make the most of your scrapbooking time!

Details for challenges and games vary, so they will be communicated at the time of the challenge by each hostess. Points will be awarded throughout the day -  so come early or late, it doesn't matter!

Challenges, games and random conversations will earn you points to spend in the ScrapMuse shop. Also, the challenges will not be due on Saturday - so you'll have plenty of time to crop, chat, shop AND play games, too!

Stay tuned for supply lists, hints and more detailed information about the crop!

Heart of Romance - ScrapMuse March Kit

This month's kit from ScrapMuse is absolutely gorgous - black and white with highlights of red.  Here are my layouts this month:

This is my favorite layout this month - because we were able to choose one accent color other than red.  This is a photo of my nieces, Abby and Erika in New York City.  I chose lime for my accent color, drawing it from the "Wicked" sign in the background.

We also did a scraplift this month, and this is my version of Donna Whalen's layout Today I Am.  Donna is a wonderful designer and I was so excited to use her inspiration.  This is my niece Erika.

I'm so fortunate that my brother and sister-in-law share their beautiful photos of our nieces with us, and I love to scrap them.  This is Abby, and I love to see her having fun!

My granddaughter, Eryn.  Loved it that her top matches the pattern paper and I was real excited to see the Hambly in the kit!  I added a little journaling block from Fancy Pants.

We just celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary and this is the first photo I have ever scrapped (and I only did that because one of our assignments this month was to scrap a wedding photo).  Now I'm inspired to scan all of my originals and order prints so I can scrap more of this special occassion.

Some Easter Cheer

Our sweet granddaughter was here this morning and we colored Easter eggs, while making a video for YouTube. 

A Little Fancy Pants

Needed to post something fun today since we are floating here - way too much rain.  A layout of my precious niece using mostly Fancy Pants paper, felt, swirl.   Wishing you a sunny day!

Blizzard or not, things happen for a reason!

Last Friday my husband and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary.  Earlier in the year we discussed going out of town for the weekend.   There are several places we have always wanted to stay.  But we decided we wouldn't spend the money.  Instead we would stay home all weekend, and pretend we were in a B&B in the woods - no telephone, no chores, no computer, no grocery shopping, no laundry - you know what I mean.  Then we realized that we were scheduled to teach Sunday School the weekend of our anniversary.  And I have been helping with a crop at the church where I work, and it was scheduled for that weekend.  So we decided we would celebrate the next weekend and watch the Big 10 Tournament like we did last year when we went to San Antonio for our anniversary.  But we were invited to a graduation party on Saturday afternoon (congrats Nathan, who just graduated from OSU), so we gave up on having a weekend in our "B&B in the woods".

My darling husband came home from work Friday night with these 21 beauties - pink roses.  Oh my gosh, they smell so wonderful!

It was predicted that we would have heavy snow over the weekend (but those forecasts are never correct!).  It snowed all day Friday, but we went to dinner as planned at McCormick & Schmick.  Later in the day the Saturday crop was cancelled due to the anticipated snowfall.  I love to go to the crops, but wasn't too sad that I would be able to stay home Saturday.  And it was a beautiful day.  We sat inside all morning and watched the snow fall, and fall, and fall.  We had birds at all the feeders.  One brave squirrel came down from a tree and tried to clean up the scraps the birds leave, but quickly decided the snow was just too deep for his little legs, so back up the tree he went.  They measured 20 inches at the airport, and that's about what we had.  Here's a photo I took while standing in the garage.  Thankfully we have a snow blower, so Mark didn't have to shovel it.

And much to our surprise, church was cancelled on Sunday.  So we ended up having our wonderful weekend at home.  It was so nice.  We decided to watch movies all weekend, and quickly discovered that I'm not very good at it - I kept falling asleep.  I always wondered how people could fall asleep while sitting on the sofa, but now I know that it's actually very easy to do so.  I didn't see the end of one single movie!  I'm not really good at relaxing because I get sleepy, so I had to keep getting up to do something.  But it was a wonderful weekend.  They can't seem to decide if what we had can be classified as a blizzard, but it was a record snowfall, and I didn't mind it at all.

As it turned out, it was a good decision that we decided not to go away for the weekend.  We may have had a difficult time getting home Sunday.  And it was good that we didn't spend the money, because our dishwasher quit working.  So we took the money we would have spent on a nice weekend and bought a dishwasher.  Did you know that the stores do not stock things like that?  Well at least Sears and The Great Indoors don't.  We purchased one last week, and it's going to take 12 days to get here.   I hate spending money on things like that (rather have a weekend in the woods), but I've been complaining for a long time that the one we have is not very quiet.  It drives me crazy, so we focused on getting one that is supposed to be quiet (says Consumer Reports!).  But, washing and drying dishes really isn't that bad.  Mark washes and I dry (don't want my hands to dry out).  It gives us a chance each day to talk.  I've told him stories about how I had to wash dishes as a child, and how we took turns.  As I recall, we did it various ways -- rotated daily, rotated weekly, and I remember we once thought we'd rotate monthly because we could go a long time without having dishes duty.  Well that didn't last long because we all hated to do it for an entire month.  Anyway, hand-washing isn't such a bad thing after all.

ScrapMuse March Kit

This one is sure to be a hit - love black, white and red!

February ScrapMuse Layouts

Here are the layouts I created with the ScrapMuse February Kit (which is sold out!!).  I love green, so this was easy for me to use!

I have always loved this photo of the two of us.  We took this while camping one weekend.  We put the camera on a rock and set the timer.  I am very lucky to have such a wonderful husband!

I wanted to do a layout about our St. Patrick's Day traditions, but I didn't have any photos.  So I went on-line and got stock photos and used them on my layout.  I also added our recipe for Corned Beef with Cabbage & Potatoes.  We have this every year on St. Patrick's Day!  And I also cut out and added a felt shamrock.  Kind of looks like a pin cushion that I made in 4-H a long time ago!

Here's Ryan, Eryn, and their dog, Pepper.  I call this the "family portrait".  Pepper is a good dog, even though she drives them crazy sometimes!

And I call these the "Out Takes" from the family portraits.  I had a little trouble because they kept giggling.  Poor Pepper, she didn't care.  She was just happy to have the attention.

And last, but not least, I love this photo of my niece Lauren, and her precious son, Trevor.  I can't believe he is 4 already!  He is a very lucky little guy to have a mama who loves him so much!

Erika's Poster

It can't be.....our beautiful and talented niece Erika is a senior at the University of the Arts School of Dance.  Here's the cool poster for the Senior Show.  These are the choreographers (and Erika is second from the left).  Wish we could be there to see the performance!

The New Cover of Pet Fancy Magazine

This was fun.  You can create your own at MagMyPic.com

A Little Valentine

Created this sweet layout for Valentine's Day.  Hope yours was extra sweet!

February ScrapMuse Preview

Here it is - a peek at the ScrapMuse February kit.  Green is one of my favorite colors, and combined with brown and blue, this is really beautiful! 

Art Journal

I bought this wire-bound sketch book at Barnes and Noble to use as an Art Journal.  I had such fun playing with it today.  I began by painting it with copper paint, then I started layering.  In the end, I covered it all with mod podge and sprayed it with copper Glimmer Mist. 

The beautiful art is from a collage sheet I purchased from Teesha Moore.  She has some really cool stuff and even sent me some great stamps with my order!

January ScrapMuse Layouts

Flowers and butterflies are just what I needed to brighten up things in January.  This kit contains the entire K & Co. Wild Saffron line and it was so easy to work with -  along with a chipboard alphabet, butterflies, rub-ons and some really cool brads.  Here are my layouts using the kit:

Notice Something New?

Here's Eryn sporting her new pink and green braces.  I told her she looks like a watermelon!  She's on her way to having straight teeth and she is happy about that!  She was was in pain for the first few days, but they don't hurt too much now.   

An Art Journal Video Tutorial

How cool is this?  A tutorial from the talented Lana, who is a fellow ScrapMuse design team member.  I have always loved her work!   

I have fallen in love with the sweet, soft, voice of Rosie Thomas.  This clip of Izzie and Denny from one of the best story lines in Grey's Anatomy, is perfect with Rosie's song, Farewell.  Oh when you see the elevator and Izzie in that beautiful gown......... you know what's coming.  Get out the tissues! (keep reminding myself it is just a television show - it's not REAL!)

The January Muse

Here's a peek at the January ScrapMuse kit.  I have completed my layouts and can't wait to share them with you.  Butterflies and flowers are just perfect for this dreary time of the year.

My goal is...........

to become better at keeping my blog up to date.  I am busy working on my layouts for the January Scrapmuse kit, and I realized that I failed to upload the layouts I created in December.  So without further delay............here's the Zoo

I love this photo of Brent and Eryn taken at her last horse show.

Eryn's 3rd grade classroom.  I sure wish I had photos of my elementary classrooms.

This kit was great for these Halloween photos of silly Eryn.

Mark took these sweet photos of Joe and Alyssa on Thanksgiving.

We were challenged to use an item from each of the 12 ScrapMuse kits from 2007. 

I have used this photo before, but it's one of my very favorites - Sidney, Eryn, Alyssa and Abby. 

NEWS RELEASE

December 14, 2007

For More Information, Contact: Amanda Hensley, Amanda@scrapmuse.com

SCRAPMUSE ANNOUNCES NEW WEB SITE AND GIVEAWAYS

ScrapMuse, the online scrapbooking shop and mid-month kit club that provides “inspiration when you need it,” is pleased to announce its new Web site at www.scrapmuse.com The new site provides fresh graphics and easy access to the online store, kit club, gallery, forum and blog. A monthly, free newsletter is filled with scrapbooking designs, tips and articles from the ScrapMuse design team. A new For Boys Only section will offer scrapbooking supplies suitable for pages about boys and men.

“I am really excited about the new Web site,” says Amanda Hensley, who just celebrated her first anniversary as owner of ScrapMuse. “The feedback from scrapbookers has been tremendous.” To commemorate the new Web site, she is offering a weekly giveaway of products:

Dec 11-18 – August 2007 Mega Muse kit (worth $32) Congratulations Teresa!

Dec 18-25 –March 2007 Mega Muse kit (perfect for boys!) (worth $32)

Dec 25-Jan 1 –Tinkering Ink Complete Collection (worth $30)

Jan 1-8 – Three kits from 2005 (worth $30)

Jan 8-15 – The January 2008 Mega Muse kit (worth $32)

To be eligible for the giveaway, visit www.scrapmuse.com/blog and leave a comment in the thread under that week’s giveaway. To receive the ScrapMuse monthly newsletter, sign up at www.scrapmuse.com  

A snowy day..........

What am I doing today?  Well, I still have some vacation days that I need to use before the end of the year.  So, I decided to take one today so I could watch it snow (our first snowfall of the season), get caught up on things, and best of all, work with the December Scrap Muse  kit.  I'm going to love working with this one!  And, I'm very proud to now be a member of the very talented Scrap Muse design team.  What an awesome group of women!

Here's a peek at the December Muse.  I'll share my layouts later.