Celebrating My Birthday & Happy Mother's Day!

My mom and stepdad returned from Florida about two weeks ago. They spend about half the year down there, leaving in October and coming back up here in late April/May. My birthday was this past week and my mom wanted to come down here to see me, but since my stepdad is having heart problems and his sister was still in the hospital after just having open heart surgery (two weeks ago this coming Tuesday), we felt it would be better to go up there to see them.

My stepdad's heart is only working at 20% capacity now, (it was at 40-50% a year ago), and the doctors say the main artery to his heart is the size of a thumb tack. He has calcium build-up like his sister. So it evidently runs in his family. He's 76 and his sister is 70. He's been having problems with breathing too. He just had a heart catheterization done on Friday (two days ago) and they are putting him on some new medicine that's supposed to hopefully help him. My understanding is they will see how he's doing in six months and if the medicine isn't helping, he'll need to have a valve replaced which will require a team of surgeons and finding a doctor who will do the surgery. The only area around here that has doctors who will do the surgery is either up in Cleveland or Pittsburgh. He doesn't want to go to either and would prefer to have it done down in Florida. So we are praying that the medicine works for him.

He had triple-bypass surgery 20 years ago and they say they usually only last about 10 years. You may remember me mentioning on here a couple of summers ago that he had started having problems and had to have a pace maker put in. I just hope and pray that this medicine works for him and that he won't have to have major heart surgery done.

We celebrated my 45th birthday up at my mom and stepdad's house last Sunday. My brother, Bruce's, birthday is the day before mine - he turned 33 and his wife, Kerri's birthday is a few days after mine and she also turned 33. So we celebrated all our birthdays together. Plus I gave my mom her Mother's Day gift early this year. My brother, Gary, and his wife, Julia, and the twins came up from Columbus which was really nice. It was the first time we had all gotten together since almost a year ago....

My husband had gotten me a birthday cake to take up and my mom had already gotten a cake with all three of our names on it. So we had lots of cake to celebrate with. lol! Plus my mom and me had decided beforehand that we would just get pizza and my husband and I paid for half of that. We got it from a place called Cocca's Pizza and it was really good. Pictured above are me, my brother, Bruce, our sister-in-law, Julia (my texting buddy - lol!), and Bruce's wife, Kerri.

My husband gave me some birthday money to spend and since it was still National Scrapbook Day weekend last week, I got a bunch of downloadable sketches from Scrapbook Generation on sale 20% off. It had been a really long time since I had gotten any downloads from them and so I had some catching up to do. lol! I got 22 downloads which was about 83 sketches worth. Then I had gotten a $5 loyalty coupon in my e-mail and was able to get the summer bundle for only $3!  I use their sketches a lot of the time and so I am a happy camper now. This is how I've basically been storing my SG sketches....

Although, since I got all those new sketches last week, I have since moved the ones with 1-6 pictures into their own binder since this big binder was getting full. But you get the idea.

I also got some new dies I've been wanting for like a year from Cheery Lynn Designs. I got the French Pastry doily die (which I absolutely love love love) and the adaptor plate for the Big Shot last week. They just arrived on Friday...

 And then I used the birthday money from my mother-in-law to get the English Tea Party Doily die and one of the flourishes dies this week. I'm so excited to finally have some doily dies to use in my papercrafting projects.

B. and I were busy most of the week preparing for cheerleading tryouts. The parents' meeting was Tuesday evening, and then Wednesday the girls learned sideline cheers for two hours that evening, Thursday they learned a dance routine (2 hours),  and Friday was tryouts (5-1/2 hours). B. practiced as much as she could which was hard because we didn't get home until almost 7:00 in the evening and of course she had school during the day. She was doing really good with the long cheer and we were told that would be the one she would have to do by herself. It turned out that it was the shorter cheer that they did by themselves, and the longer cheer and the dance routine was done with the other three girls she was trying out with (they went in groups of four). The dance routine was really hard and they only got to learn and practice that the night before tryouts.

I had gotten her the mandatory red shorts and plain white shirt that was required to try out with. She already had white sneakers from the beginning of the school year that she had hardly worn except for gym class mostly. I just had to clean them up and get new laces for them. I went online and learned how to make a cheerleading bow for her and went out and got all the stuff to make it with. It turned out pretty good, I think. I used 3" wide grosgrain ribbon cut 30" long for the main part of the bow and 5/8" wide ribbon for the center, a ziptie holds it together, and I made it so it would clip into her hair....

These bow pics were taken the day before tryouts. I had gotten B. out of school 1/2 hour early so she would have time to get a shower, eat, get her hair curled (by me) and get ready and practice a little bit beforehand, plus get her out to the tryouts. We did all that within about two hours. A lot of other girls got picked up early for the same reasons.

B. was all excited as were her friends. She had said earlier in the week that cheering is something she's been wanting to do since 4th grade. I dropped her off at the school building that was having the tryouts a little bit before 4:00 p.m. on Friday since they had to meet in the cafeteria first at that time. Tryouts started at 4:30 and so I came back around 6 p.m. and I saw B. through the cafeteria window. She said she hadn't gone up yet. It was almost 6:30 by this time. All the parents had to wait outside since no one was allowed in the building. The girls came outside after they were done trying out to wait for the results. Then we had to wait until ALL the girls tried out - even the ones for high school. Which made for a V-E-R-Y lonnngg evening, especially with no restrooms around. :-/

They didn't post the results for the junior high until after 9:30 p.m. and then they said the high school girls wouldn't know if they made it until an hour after that. :-o  B. was soooo upset when she finally found out she didn't make it. :( :(  This was the very first time she had ever tried out for cheering or for anything really, and I think she was especially upset because she was so patient during all those hours that we waited for the results. She was only trying out for the basketball cheering since we didn't want it to interfere with her being in band. But they only pick very few girls. As her mom, it was heartbreaking to see her so upset and disappointed because she tried so hard and was soooo excited and had had a lot of fun this week at the mini-cheerleading camp. I told her that I'm really so very proud of her for trying and that she needs to know that there are a lot of other girls who are also disappointed & upset because not everyone made it either. And that disappointment is a part of life, unfortunately. Sometimes things don't work out the way you want them to. :(

She got a lot of support from our family and from her friends who she texts with, so I think that helped her to feel better. My husband told her how he tried out for basketball and for some other things and never made it. So he just stuck with playing drums in the band. And how he was the only one in the neighborhood who didn't make it for basketball but how everyone always ended up practicing at his house. Go figure. 

Anyway... there's always next year if she decides to try again. Our niece has been a cheerleader for the past two years in junior high and she tried out for junior varsity for next year in high school (9th grade) and she didn't make it either. It was tough this year. They had to learn a lot in such a short time. But at least they got to have the experience, right?

The month of May means getting back out there in the yard, re-mulching the flower beds and planting flowers. Lowe's has an awesome sale on mulch going on right now during their "spring black friday sale" which ends today - $2 for a 2 cu. ft. bag. My husband took Monday off and we went out and got 35 bags of mulch which is equal to about 2-1/2 yards worth. It filled up the whole back of the truck. lol! Boy that was a lot of weight. But, thankfully, we don't live real far from there.

I went out Friday morning to pay off the mulch we had bought and ended up getting a bunch of flowers to plant as soon as the ground dries up enough. I think it's just as dangerous to send me into a garden center this time of year as it would be for me to go to a craft store or scrapbook store. lol! We have huge flowerbeds in the front of our house, plus we always have planters on the deck out back and the patio below. I had that whole cart pretty much filled up. Plus my sister-in-law, K. gave me some zinnias she got out in Amish country (Sugarcreek) last week with my mother-in-law for cheap. We didn't do much with our yard last year and I really missed it. So this year we are going to have a pretty yard again. I love playing in the dirt and watering the flowers every evening in the summer. I'm one of those people who actually enjoys doing yardwork. I love being outside when the weather is nice.

Last but not least, I leave you with my scrapbook layout from this past week:

I made the little circle flowers with punches. The papers are the Snapshot collection from Bella Blvd. And the flourishes were made with a QuicKutz die.

Well, that's all for now. I wish you all a Happy Mother's Day!  My brother-in-law made reservations for this afternoon at 2:30 out at a place called Mill Creek Inn. You have to make reservations because they can only seat so many people. My husband and I have never been there before, but we hear it's looks like a house. Maybe it is someone's house for all we know. lol!

I'm hoping the ground is dried up enough when we get back so I can start getting all those flowers planted out front later on today....

Til next time...

A Better Way to Store my Paper Scraps...

Today was the first day that it actually felt like spring for once this season. It was really windy out, but in the mid-60's and sunny. We had the windows open and it was really nice.

Sittin' here watching Rock of Ages with my husband. Tom Cruise and  Alec Baldwin are in it. It's such a corny movie, but yet we can't stop watching.... we can relate to everything in it because it takes place in the 80's. lol! To think that I used to dress like that back in high school... jean jacket with rolled up sleeves, Madonna bracelets, the make-up, the hair, the Aqua Net. Ahhh the memories. lol! I know the words to every. single. song. It's actually a pretty good movie, but, yeah, corny, yet cute & fun at the same time. lol!  If you grew up in the 80's, you have to watch Rock of Ages. It came out last year.

Anyhoo... this is just a quick post to show you how I'm storing my paper scraps now. I "thought" I had broken one of my Sterilite drawer units the other day when I was rearranging my scrapbooking room. I was almost on the verge of throwing it out, in fact. I'm almost certain that they've quit making these drawer units from Sterilite. I say that because someone in a YouTube video said they did and I can't find them around here anymore. Wal-Mart and JoAnn's both quit selling them, but I just so happened to find two of them at a different Wal-Mart 20 minutes away the other day. Turns out, the one that was almost thrown out was fixable, so now I have storage for my paper scraps which I had been storing in a 12x12 Cropper Hopper accordian envelope before......

The top drawer has red, then orange & yellow scraps are in the next one, then green & brown, blue & purple, black & pink, with the last drawer being white, off white, ivory and vellum scraps. I could actually use another drawer unit. But, like I said, I don't think I'm going to find anymore of these around here anytime soon.....

But, uh, maybe that's a good thing though. lol!

Scraproom Redo

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter this past weekend. B. and I did our annual tradition of coloring eggs the night before Easter and we spent a relaxing afternoon with family. It was cold and rainy out,  so the kids had to do their Easter egg hunt indoors at our sister & brother-in-law's house. My husband's sister hosted dinner this year and we all made something to go along with the dinner like we've always done for every get-together. I took my broccoli-rice casserole and low-fat brownies. We even managed to take some nice family pictures of everyone together which was actually my sister-in-law's idea. Glad she thought of it because these family gatherings have become more dear to  me as we have lost a few family members during the past year including two of my husband's aunts (one around Christmas - both of which are my father-in-law's sisters)....

Or maybe it's just my middle-agedom kicking in making me all sentimental. Anyway.....


I have been busy the past several days during this wintry spring, rearranging, cleaning, and reorganizing my scrapbooking room. My scrapbook table used to be up against the wall and so I decided the day before yesterday, that I'd like to move it so that I can take advantage of the light coming in from the window. I like this set-up a lot more than how it was before and now I've gained some space there on the end of the table for my sister-in-law to sit at when she comes over to scrapbook with me someday soon...

 I had had a navy and tan checked valance with red embroidered stars on this window for the past 8-1/2 years along with a roller blind that I had custom-ordered to size from Penney's. I wanted something that gave me more privacy but allowed lots of light to still come into the room when the blind is up. But I didn't want to spend a whole lot of money either. So I went on the search for some sheer curtains with hopefully a floral or lace pattern on them. I was also hoping to find something with an attached valance. I found exactly what I was looking for at Sears this afternoon - for cheap. These were only $10.98/panel with embroidered flowers and with an attached valance. They are very pretty and so I'm quite pleased with them. And they look pretty from the outside of the house too...

The night before last, I spent time redoing my Cricut cartridge shelves. I had my cartridges stored upright (like a row of books) before. But because I have so many cartridges, I had to store them two rows deep on the top two shelves making it impossible to see all of my cartridges at a glance. So I decided to store them like this, labeling the ends of the boxes with my handy-dandy Dymo label maker. I went through an entire roll of Dymo label tape and then some but it was totally worth it. Now I can see all of my cartridges at once plus I've gained a spot for my box of embossing folders and Cuttlebug dies....

The three boxes on top hold my everyday general EK Success slimline punches, acrylic paints, distress crackle paint, and ribbon. I organized my ribbon in that box before I started blogging, but basically I just have my ribbons sorted by color, wrapped around pieces of foam core board and held in place with little pins. There's quite a bit of ribbon in that box but I've also used a lot of it since I put it all in there.... these next two photos are from February 2010 when I first organized my ribbon this way...

The bottom shelf holds my little box of seasonal and Solutions cartridges that didn't come with a box of their own and my Jukebox. The two blue Iris cases hold my Martha Stewart snowflake and Christmas punches with my Artbin box of Spellbinders and other wafer-thin dies on top.

This is behind my table. I have my Sizzix dies, scrapbook idea books and Scrapbook Generation sketch books stored in that media tower. The basket on top holds all of my Glimmer Mist. The binders next to the media tower hold sketches that I've either downloaded from Scrapbook Generation, PageMaps or various other sources. My scraps are stored in that Cropper Hopper accordian envelope thing there on the floor. I will come up with a better storage system once I gain more room when the computer desk (not shown) gets torn down (someday soon I hope).

You can see B's craft table there when you first come into the room. Her lastest obsession has been making oven-bake clay creations. She's made some really cute things.  It can be a challenge trying to get her to keep her area neat and tidy at times. I tell B. that I will use her table for my sewing machine if she doesn't clean her area up.  lol! Of course, I want to keep encouraging her to do crafty, creative things with a special spot of her own, plus I like when she's in here crafting with me.

Getting back to my part of the room.... I'd like to come up with some type of nice table skirt to hide all the Artbin and Iris containers underneath my table. I saw a really nice one on Pinterest yesterday where they used a shower curtain with lots of ruffles. Not sure how they did it though. I'll think of something. Anyway.... the small bookcase in front of the window has three small milkcrates on top that hold my Ali Edwards and other phrase-type stamps, journaling stamps or most used stamps and my Thickers and other misc. alphabet stickers.

 The first shelf has all of my Craft Mates containers with small embellishments such as brads, eyelets, small bling, etc., my Tim Holtz box of embellishments, another big container of sorted bling that I bought in bulk a long time ago, and a shoebox-sized box of packaged bling and i-rock stuff. The bottom shelf has a few more books including both of the Tim Holtz Compendium of Curiosities, dictionary/thesaurus, and title idea book, Crop-A-Dile Big Bite,  my container of alphabet and number stamps, a small box of chipboard shapes and another container with organized doodads for making charms and stickpins....
 

I hope to convince my husband to get me an Expedit from Ikea when the computer desk gets taken down. I need a place to store my albums and the tons of pictures and photo boxes that I have no nice place for.

All of my seasonal stuff and certain other themey stuff like birthday and baby is still being stored in the closet in their own boxes. This system is working quite well for me and makes it so I don't have to search in several spots for something since it's altogether in one (or two or so) boxes of whatever subject it is I have in there. So far I have Sterilite boxes for Christmas, Halloween, birthday, baby, Valentines/love, spring/Easter, Girly, summer & vacation/road trips. I not only include embellishments in these boxes, but any dies, embossing folders or punches that I may have that go with that subject or holiday. This has freed up a ton of space on my scrapbooking storage shelves and in the drawers.

General everyday border punches are still being stored in an over-the-door shoe organizer on the outside of the closet door. And my shape punches are on the inside of the door (I showed this quite some time ago on here).

I hope you enjoyed my little tour of my redone scrapbook room.

'til next time....

My new iPad Mini, Die Storage, etc.

Happy Friday! :)

It's a gorgeous, sunny day out there today. When I picked B. up from school this afternoon, she was excited that the bags of canned and boxed goods that I brought in to her school this morning helped her class to win first place out of the entire school during their canned food drive. Apparently, when I cleaned my pantry out last year, her class got first place because of it (which meant an ice cream party for them). I had absolutely no idea at all because B. never told me until the other day when she came home saying that her class and teacher were asking her to please ask her mom (me) to bring canned goods in because I helped them to win last year. I'm like "really??" I know it sounds really strange considering there are over 30 kids in B.'s class. But for some reason, not many brought cans in this year like last year. But I kind of understand why. Apparently, B.'s teacher last year, Mrs. M.,  didn't let them have the party. Last year, the kids were supposed to have their ice cream party the Monday after winning first place in the canned foods drive. Mrs. M.,  kept telling the kids "no we don't have time" everytime one of them would ask when they could have their party. Then one day - four weeks later - one of the little girls in B.'s class asked the teacher if they could please have the party after recess when they would have time, and Mrs. M. told them "I threw the ice cream away because it was expired." Can you believe that?? The kids were soooo disappointed. :(   Needless to say, that teacher was not one of our favorites. To top things off, she's young with an attitude. I can't handle attitude. She's no longer an elementary school teacher because the district moved her to the high school meaning that, unfortunately, we will more than likely have to deal with her again in the future. Maybe she'll be better by then. We can only hope. Luckily, B. has a much nicer teacher this year - Mrs. B.

Not wanting to disappoint, I cleaned out my pantry cupboards last night. Which was long overdue anyway. Of course, I'm thinking more about the local food pantry that it was all going to and less about some ice cream party. A lot of people have lost jobs in our area and I want to help in whatever small way that I can. It doesn't look like that much canned and boxed goods is even gone from the cupboards because there's still plenty left in there. And I've got some space to put stuff which was much needed anyway. I'm more than happy to help. And happy that I made a whole classroom of kids happy too. When they announced on the loud speaker this afternoon at the end of the school day that Mrs. B.'s class won first place in the canned foods drive, the teacher gave B. a big hug and the whole class gave her a group hug. Now I can't help but think who I can make happy when I finally get to cleaning out my walk-in closet here soon. lol! It does feel good to give. Especially during this time of year.

Last night my husband came in from work and handed me a purple gift bag with pink tissue paper in it. He said it was my early anniversary gift and that I would understand why I was getting it early once I opened it. I was completely surprised because I certainly wasn't expecting anything. I was already looking forward to our upcoming (long overdue) date night for our anniversary and was more than happy about that. Inside the bag, was a very nice anniversary card (*sniff*). And further down in the bag, under all the tissue paper was a white box. I picked it up and couldn't believe what I was holding in my hands.... the new iPad mini. wow.

I don't keep up with all that techy stuff so I didn't even realize they had come out with a mini. I love the size of it and how it's better on my eyes than the iPod and iPhone (Although I love my iPod and iPhone). But this larger 7.9" screen is so much nicer...

B. will be getting my iPod because hers needs a new power button and battery. Someday, we may get it fixed, but she can have mine and it will save us the cost of getting hers fixed for now.

I've also come up with a fabulous new way to store my thin dies like Spellbinders, QuicKutz, LifeStyle Crafts etc....

I saw a video about these storage boxes and magnet sheets on YouTube. JoAnn's got them in, so I was happy to find them locally. I got the box and extra packages of magnet sheets 40% off earlier this week. I love this storage method and it will keep my dies from getting bent or lost while keeping them nicely organized. Although, I don't have many sets at this point...

The magnet sheets are magnetized only on the white side. The other side (black) is not. Which is fine with me because I think it's better that way....

Other than that, I have been on an OPI nail polish kick this past week, adding some new colors to my ever growing stash. My three favorite brands (so far) are OPI, Nicole by OPI, and Sally Hansen Salon Manicure. I tried out a different, non-conventional color today - teal. Not my usual color. But I really like this shade of teal. Not too light and perfect for fall and winter. I like the darker colors but only tend to wear them in the fall and winter months...

This is "Ski Teal We Drop" from their Swiss collection and I think it would look nice while wearing black or gray perhaps...

The more I look at it, the more it grows on me. I've also started wearing the Poshe top coat. I really like it so far and it doesn't have any of the harmful chemicals in it like another popular top coat, Seche Vite, does (toluene, formaldehyde, or DBP - which all cause either cancer or birth defects). Poshe comes in a package that looks like this...

At first,  I really wanted the Seche Vite because a lot of people rave about it - that is until I found out about the nasty chemicals in it. So I'm really glad I found the Poshe at CVS. I stopped in Sally's Beauty Supply for the first time ever the other day and saw they sell the Poshe cheaper than CVS does, but I already had my bottle of it from CVS. Oh well. Those are the only two places that sell it around here. And even the Seche Vite was hard to find - Sally's is the only place that sells it in this area.

While I was in Sally's, the woman working there was telling another lady and myself that we're supposed to be getting an IHOP and a Buffalo Wild Wings. Hopefully, the rumors are true since we need more restaurants in our area. They're already in the process of building a Lone Star Steakhouse and we're getting a T.J. Maxx (finally - yes!).


Well, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend ahead. The weather's supposed to be nice.

'til next time...