We had our house painted all white a couple months ago...

There was a lot of overspray on the shrubs around the house

and so our  white azaleas had white leaves too.

A little Alice in Wonderland-ish.    

 We get lots of "opinions" from our family about our

choice of paint...isn't that what families are for?? :)

Shawn took some really cool Hipstamatic photos so I

did this page to show all our beautiful whites!

hope is a pond of love...

My daughter drew this for me the other day...I loved her title.

She was given a couple scrapbook kits for Christmas and birthday and has really started to get into it.  She has a natural gift for coosing a wonderful title or single word as the focus...something I sometimes
struggle with. 

Not picking the obvious and trying a little something unexpected.  Funny how much we can learn from little people with a fresh new perspective! 

in { a } constant state of motion

I did this page for the Elle's Studio challenge at Two Peas,
after coming across this series of photos of my son...

My daughter never really crawled...she "crawked" as we called it.
She half walked-half crawled until about 1 year and then she took
off walking...granted, falling a lot and bumping into things but she
gave it 100%! 

Our son, on the other hand, was a very late walker...16 months, and
I think he didn't really want to even try until he was sure of himself.
He didn't fall as much as she did...we thought it was laziness and being
a boy, well, I thought that...but I just think it was a sign of his future
personality...he may wait to do something but make less mistakes along
the way...whereas she jumps right into the fray, ready or not, and
sometimes learns the hard way.

It is so interesting looking back at little things like this that end up
shaping a little person's entire persona. 
Whew...that was deep! :)

8 years a g o...whaaaaaaa??

I have an 8 year old.

Daddy brought home flowers for the birthday
girl that nearly had us both in tears...sweet Daddy.

Seriously? How could that have happened?
It is hard to even believe that it has been,
uh...16 years since I graduated from college,
much less been married for nearly 11 and now
I have an 8 year old...

Never thought I would think about that Talking
Heads song in reference to my own life...?
Time to seems to be on a roller coaster that
is picking up speed...like a row of dominos,
can't be stopped, faster and faster and it
is hard to see, much less appreciate what
is happening while you go whirling past...

One of my most favorite things about scrapbooking,
is that it makes you slow down at least long enough
to look at that picture of your drooling
toddler and remember that it was really amazing.
Even thought you didn't appreciate nearly enough
those little moments that REALLY make up what is
important in this life.

unity stamp card challenge...

Here is my card for the Unity Stamp Card Challenge from February.

To use heart, but not in the traditional red or pink featuring a Unity stamp.

I also added my entry for the Dear Lizzy Neopolitan

Collection Challenge that Two Peas is having as well...

The colors of that collection are such nice subtle delicious

colors that I printed my photos in black & white so

they wouldn't compete with one another...and made the

jar of hearts look like it is being sprinkled out onto the page...

That was the idea anyway!  ;)

who knew???

Ok, so I know we are waaaaaayyy behind the times, but we just got an Xbox.
We have been holding out in the hopes of preventing another electronic
item that could add "screen time" to our children's day.

Our pediatrician always asks us if we are making sure that our children
only watch one hour of tv a day...or other "screen time". We say that
we try to. Honestly, some days the kids play outside all day or we have
some other crafty activity, and some days depending on weather or whatever
they watch a good 3 or 4 hours. We have a movie night every Friday night.
How can you not finish the movie to make sure that you only watch 1 hour??

At any rate, so now, we have an Xbox. It is so cool. We got the Kinect
thingie (that is how much I really know about it) and a couple of the
games that go with it. One of the Dance games is really cool. It has
some popular songs the kids like, but it also has some of our generation
songs like "Bust a Move"...so much fun. The kids love it but it would
be great to have an adult party and have some serious dance battles.

It also has this cool feature that you can enter your weight and track
calories burned based on your moves thru the Kinect. So I tried it on
a Lady Gaga song and it was pretty intense. At the end it told me that
I had burned a whopping TEN calories....woohoo! Seriously???
I am pretty sure I could burn 10 calories easier by chewing a piece of
celery or walking down the hall...

It was fun and exercise but I don't think I could hang with an entire
workout of Dance Central. I wouldn't be able to move the next day...at all.

daylight savings!

Even though I HATE the thought of losing an hour of
my time by setting the clocks forward, I am SO glad
it is finally here. I love it getting dark later.
The kids can stay outside longer which totally reminds
me of my childhood. We stayed outside until it was
almost completely dark...or dinner time.

I can totally understand how people have seasonal
depression...I feel more and more like that
every year. But finally, despite our mild winter,
the signs of Spring are here! I love seeing all the
new growth coming out of the ground. I love that
color of green, almost appearing false, and such a
pure fresh green, it makes me itching to be outside...

first blog post.ever.for me.on my own blog...

Ok, so here is my first post!  Yay! 

I kept wanting to wait until I had the Blog set up the way I want it before I posted anything...

I realized that could take forever.  I saw all these websites and even watched 1 video about

how to set up a blog in 4 minutes or under...well, yeah, I guess they did it in 4 minutes

but it was pretty sparse.

I am a visual, creative person...I need more to look at than a plain web page with some text...

unless I am using it as a sleeping aid.  Of course, this my first blog so, what do I know??

I know that I wanted to have my own blog as a sort of online portfolio/record of my

current creative outlets...whatever those might be.  You know how sometimes you get

dressed and think "I look pretty good" and then later see a photo of yourself and wonder

"what in the world was I thinking??"  I think some projects look good in real life and

lose a lot of umph in transition to photographs or even a different frame of mind. 

Sometimes I come back to a project and think that it looks better than I thought,

and then again, not so much.

A blog is the same to me.  Some things that look good get lost in translation to the

fabulous world of the Internet...

I don't think this will be any sort of super thought provoking springboard for in

depth blogs about politics or religion...The fact that my current vocabulary is

reverting back to deal with pre-schooler behavior is a good reason.  My personal

politics involve making sure WWIII doesn't start because my daughter got more

popcorn than my son...sad, but true.

All that being said, I decided my blog would basically be my mini version of Pinterest,

which is awesome by the way...I can blog about things I like and post some of my

own work as well!

I am going to keep tweeking with the template and uploading some projects and work shortly.

I think this is more than enough for now!