Weekend is here!!!!

And not just any weekend either - Easter Weekend! What a special weekend for me. I am amazed daily that God sent His son to earth to die on a cross for ME, and for millions of others. I am so undeserving. To fathom this as a mother too makes the holiday even more emotional. Anyway - just felt moved to express my gratitude.

Some fun things this morning in the digital community. Shabby Miss Jenn has designed some amazing new goodies this week that you will not want to miss. There are two new free desktop LO's also!!! And did you know she has a new gallery that you can upload your shabby LO's using some of SMJD goodies? And a new forum too! Just a few places I hang out every once in a while! :) And Fri. is always the release day for new products at The-Lilypad. I did the new release blog entry over there today - check it out here!

Here are two LO's to share too!

Should be a fun and busy weekend ahead. Small group tonight. Some salon time tomorrow, egg hunt with neighborhood, some computer stuff with a friend, and probably dinner at home. Early bedtime I'm thinking on Sat. b/c I think we will do the 9:00 easter church service which is early for us, and then off to my aunts Bed and Breakfast for easter lunch. At night we go to Kyle's mom for supper! So a fun day!

Have a great weekend everyone!

10 Yrs. ago

I was tagged by my sister-in-law and it got me thinking. Here are my answers - hope you find them mildly interesting! :)

10 years ago...I was in my last semester, senior year of high school. I only was in school half day b/c I was in beauty school for half the day! I HATED beauty school. 35 girls in one classroom - 'nuff said. I was however glad to only have to be in school for a half day too - didn't really care for school either! :) 10 years ago I still did not know Kyle, but I knew I would not be marrying the person I was dating, for some reason though I couldn't let go then.

Things on To Do List Today:

~the day is half over, so not a ton on the list anymore. Dinner with friends tonight.

3 Bad Habits:

~complaining about finances.

~spending too much time on computer

~chewing on my inside cheek

If I suddenly became a Billionaire:

~I would first off tithe the 10% b/c suddenly becoming a billionaire would a miraculous act of God and after all - it is all His to begin with! After shaving off the first 10% I would take 50% and invest it. That way it just keeps earning and I could live off of just the earnings! I would use the other 40% to build a new house (which means I could sell this one at a steal of a deal), buy a new vehicle, have more kids, and send them all to our local private christian school. I might even splurge and get a whole new family wardrobe. Oh wait - and I'd get a house cleaner so I could spend more time with family and not cleaning! Am I getting greedy yet?! :)

Five Jobs I've Had:

~Roller rink (yeah - I can really skate - and well to!) Started there when I was 14 - always hitched a ride with my siblings that worked there!

~Electrician - my Dad's owns an electrical company and so for one summer I worked with him. Mind you, he does a lot of agricultural electrical and so I spent a couple weeks at a hog farm with hogs - YUCK!

~Body Perfections - hair salon - started as receptionist while in beauty school and worked there for 5 years. Went to work at the leasing company listed below and then back to salon (different location salon though)

~Leasing Company - i currently work at the leasing company that I worked at for 3 years - a couple years ago. They called me back for a position and I couldn't refuse - love it there.

Five things People Don't Know about me:

~I stress about finances too much (ok - maybe some of you know this about me - LOL)

~I don't read my Bible enough - especially since dropping out of BSF

~I secretly want to be more crafty than I am. Would love to do what some of the crafty girls can do and make cute things.

~I barely EVER wear lipstick - don't really like lipstick

~I am NOT good at decorating

So this was kind of hard - at least the 3 bad habits part and the 5 things people don't know part. I feel like I am kind of an open book, and as far as habits - I have a million and one bad habits - don't we all? It was fun to reminisce though isn't it.

I've been thinking a lot lately about doing a LO about how much things cost currently. Like in our year book we had a section that listed what common things cost that year, like movie theatre tickets, milk, gas, etc... What other things should I list on it? I just think someday my kids will look back at it and say - wow - gas was that cheap - LOL! I always did that when my grandma would say stuff like that - like we spent .05 for a haircut or something like that. So that is on my list of LO's to work on - I think it will be a fun one - but a tough one to do creatively b/c I will probably use stock photos and do mainly journaling. I struggle with those LO's. Another LO I am going to do is a family tree of sorts for my kiddos to have too. I got this great kit at Catscraps to make it easier!

Here is on LO that I finished while at my scrapping thing last Fri. It is of Gracyn's first haircut!

I created it using one of Janet's two page spread templates and Shabby Princess' newest freebie kit. I am shocked that this kit was a freebie - it is awesome! I took the template - which had 3 slightly smaller pictures on each side and then deleted one on each side and made the now 4 pictures down to two slightly bigger photos! I love taking a template and altering it just a bit - to what I need on that LO! I had a good time at the scrap night last week - a lot of chatting and what not, but also got this two pager LO done and one other LO I can't share quite yet.

And on a random note here are some things that have me bothered lately.

~The current influx of "leaders" who can't be monogamous. What is the deal lately. Makes me irate. Do they not think of consequences ever???

~California's ruling that Homeschooling your kids is illegal. Come on - what is the world coming too.

~The nations debt.

Does that give you an idea about who I am?! :) Anyway - I've babbled on long enough today, so Toodles!

I forgot one....and some enabling!

So I forgot one more program that I added to my computer that I LOVE - I mean - I have no clue how I forgot it. One of my main dislikes of Vista is their extraction of zip files is HORRIBLE. It takes forever. I have always just used the extraction that comes on my computer, until now! I swear by Extract Now. I just drag in all of my zipped files and then hit extract now, and whaaaalllllaaaa - it is done - all of them within a couple seconds! Anyway - just wanted to add that one in for those scrappers that are always extracting files!

And I told you I have some enabling! The-Lilypad has some great new stuff this week! A collabe by Amber Clegg and Jacque Larson - so fun and bright! Check out all the new stuff! Amy put up some new templates too last minute so I can't wait to scrap with those! Here are some of my recent LO's!

This last one was done with a template by Janet Phillips - I had fun with it - altered it a ton, but still left the main design - love doing that with templates!

The weather here is like spring today - it's so awesome! You will see Michigan people's moods change thru our blogs! :) Braelyn had school this morning and then we did lunch with my mom and sister and her little baby. We then had to get all the girls' ears checked at the Dr. just to make sure the ear infections and sickies are all out! The girls played outside for a bit when we got home since it was so nice! Tonight I am heading off to scrap and then just a bunch of odds and ends things to do tomorrow and a birthday party for my niece Kennedy at night! I'm off to enjoy some of the outdoors I think and clean out my car!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Computer Software

Since my brother NEVER posts on his blog anymore I figured that I would do a post in lieu of him! :)

So I bought my new computer and I refuse to pay any extra money for "stuff" to put on my computer like virus protection, third party email program (like Outlook), etc... So who do I go to? My brother - my personal geek squad! So he told me never to pay for those types of programs because there are other computer geeks out there that make programs that are as good or better than the ones you can buy and they offer them for free. So I just want to link anyone up that might want to know! I am no computer geek myself, but these are the programs that I have found work for me!

Mozilla - Thunderbird - third party inbox email software. This was super easy to download and start! My review - I love it more than Outlook Express or Outlook. One downside that my brother pointed out -

Comodo Firewall Protection & Comodo Anti-Virus Protection - only thing on this one is that my friend Beth told me the anti-virus doesn't work great with Vista. Good free programs though!

Neat Image - a plug-in for Photoshop to fix photos. Great to run on all photos, but I really use it mainly for my noisy ones! The free version was sufficient for me!

I think so far that is all I added to my computer. I hate to put junk on there, but these are great programs in my eye!

Couple more LO's I'm working on and tomorrow night I am going to a scrap night with Nina so I should get a ton done there too! Will have to show them off on the weekend!

A Day Off!!!

No school today for Braelyn which means a day off!!! Here I sit in my PJ's and just enjoying life! We have been doing a sticker chart with the girls since Sat. where they get stickers for different categories. Breakfast, lunch,dinner, attitude, cleaning, sleeping, etc... I added the sleeping one yesterday b/c they were up at 6:15am (which really - if time hadn't changed would have been 5:15am.) Not acceptable so I told them they needed to sleep longer or stay in bed quietly longer. Well today they both got stickers! Selah came in to my room about 7:30 and Braelyn slept until 7:45. I'll take that! I told them that when they sleep longer, than I get to sleep longer and I wake up happier. EVERYONE knows that a happy mom means a happy home!

Last night I did some cleaning while the kids were outside with Kyle - beautiful day yesterday. So I have a little more cleaning today, maybe some laundry, and another work out. Other than that I plan on scrapping during naps this afternoon and tonight we have our nieces and nephews over while their parents do their date night!

We decided to not do our big shopping trip this weekend. There were a bunch of things stacking up against it. I started to get the feeling we weren't meant to go. The hotels all around there were all booked up which means I am sure the big outlet mall was going to be PACKED. So we couldn't stay over night right there, we would have to miss my nieces 2nd birthday party - can't have that. Few more other things I can't think of too. So anyway - we are putting that off until the first week of April. And I booked the hotel room so that we for sure can stay overnight right there! This just gives us time to perfect our list. My list just entails a whole new wardrobe. I have clothes from highschool yet. Good thing is I guess that they still fit, bad thing is they are OLD and outdated!

Guess I am out of stuff to talk about. I feel like I never really have inspiring stuff to say - kind of getting sick of the blog. Guess that's why I have only been checking in every week or so. I occasionally start to think "now why would people care what we did this weekend", or "who really cares what my kiddos are up to". Do all you other bloggers go thru lows like this in your blogging life?

OK - have a great day - I know I will - might just stay in m jammies all day. Oh wait - have to work-out which means changing into workout clothes and then showering. Darn.

Toodles

Just busy

Just had a busy week - nothing real big happened, just normal weekly stuff. Yesterday Braelyn had a little girl from her class over after school. The little girls' mom had just had a baby, so we wanted to give her a quiet afternoon. I brought her home around 4:30 and dropped off dinner for them. Braelyn did not want the day to end! This morning I cleaned and did my workout, and then we all went out to Subway for lunch. I tried the new chicken spinach artichoke flatbread sandwich and LOVED it!

Have you seen SMJ's first ever collab kit??? She teamed up with Dani Mogstad and made the kit Vintage Garden fairies! Fabulous kit. Here is what I created with it...

And of course, since we just had the first Fri. of the month you can find the new Lilypad BYOC hitting the shelves! I will get lots of use out of all the goodies! Here is my first LO with it...

The girls are spending the night at my parents tonight since we are going out with another couple. I'm so thankful for our parents living so close and for their generosity!!! Next weekend Kyle and I are going for a much needed shopping spree overnighter. Now that I think about it, tonight is the first night I am leaving Gracyn overnight! Good thing she is a great night sleeper!!!

Have a good rest of your weekend folks!

Guess what I heard....

a bird....chirping!!! For some of you that might not be such a big thing, but for me - HUGE! I stopped and listened. It was marvelous! And guess what else? I went to church yesterday morning with no coat on. Again, for many of you that means nothing. But here in Michigan - we don't take these things for granted! Now don't get me wrong, I just heard that we are expected to get another 6 inches of snow possibly this week, but I heard what I heard and that means we are close!!!

How was everyone's weekend? Ours was good. Fri. night we went to dinner with our small group HERE. Good stuff, fun times. On the drive home we went about 15 miles an hour the whole way (about 40-50 miles) - that sucked. The roads were SHEAR ice. We made it safely to the house where we had dessert. Sat. morning we hit the morning cleaning. Like deep cleaning. We ended up touching up some paint, washing baseboards, etc... It was the type of cleaning though that you are done and say "now what did we just do" because you can't tell at all! it does not help that the girls are just making messes all around us. That seems real bad too lately. We can't seem to get thru to them that they need to clean up one thing before pulling out another. Ugh. Endless battle I guess. Anyway - Braelyn had a FUN birthday party with a friend on Sat. and they hit Libby Lu and came back all gussied up! So cute!!! We then headed to my mom's for a birthday party for my nephew Owen who turned 1!!! That was a fun party too! Sunday was church and lunch at mom's like usual! There's our weekend in a nutshell.

Just a normal week I think this week. Don't forget to grab Janet's March Grab Bag - it's super this month! And the Lilypad Blog challenge is good this week - white space!!! Here is my submission for the challenge!

Have a great week everyone!