I need some help/advice

I'm wanting to do this project when i move. I'm doing it in both my kids' rooms. I've looked just about everywhere for cute fabrics, including Etsy (which i did find some i love)- but haven't found exactly what I want. totally cute right?

any of you have any recommendations of fabric places to look for awesome fabric? I'm not wanting to spend a lot either. Let me know if you know of anything k? Spanx!!! :)

I just had to.

yes. it's true. I just HAD to scrap today.

I totally hadn't planned on it. I cleaned the house this morning, got some paper work and such done, but for the most part, i wanted to sit and relax after this crazy weekend. I didn't want to scrap or do anything. (like making dinner) :)

but guess what? out of the blue.. i got this surge of energy (or whatever you wanna call it) and made this delicious dinner, a homemade fruit smoothy (YUM!), AND i scrapped a page.

oh yes... i'm pulling out the big guns now and I'm physically doing something. hahaha

SO- here's the page I did tonight. came together nicely yes? this is my funny son who was eating a snow ball as if he'd never seen one. lol

And- because i'm nice and had such an amazing dinner, i have to share the recipe. I totally made it up, which is even better! So no measurements.... just throw however much you want into it and it will turn out great!

Chicken breasts (or tenderloins)- i used 6 tenderloins and there was still plenty leftover.

parmesan cheese

saltine crackers

cornflakes

salt

pepper

paprika

basil

herb chicken seasoning

parsley

chopped onion

mix it all together in a ziplock bag and crush the crackers and cornflakes until fine.

beat one egg in a bowl.

Over Med. heat, melt about 2 tbsp butter and about 1 tbsp of oil.

cover chicken piece in egg mix and then coat in crumb mix. place in fryer and cook on each side about 3-5 minutes. ( i think mine took more like 8 per side , but i'm REALLY picky about no pink in the middle)

then voila! you're done! it's seriously SOOOO stinkin good! i made baked potatoes and broccoli with it and it was a GOOOOOOOD stinkin meal. i'm calling it Amber's Southern Fried Chicken. :)

then the master of all smoothies:

5 strawberries (cut up)

1 banana

handful raspberries

5 scoops vanilla ice cream

2 scoops peach sorbet

1 scoop strawberry sorbet

about 1/2- 3/4 cup orange juice

1 cup ice

blend it all together and enjoy the heaven it is meant to be! Seriously... it's so good- almost better than what you can buy at Jamba juice or any other smoothy place.

so there ya go- enjoy a nice meal, dessert, and inspiration on me! nighty night! :)-

Weekend Update and New kit!

Oh my word! This weekend has been a complete blast! A Scrapbook Boutique opened it's doors and boy did we have a great turn out for the opening weekend. It was especially fun for me to see all those ladies I hadn't seen in forever and to also meet new people. I really missed working and i'm just glad that i'm at a point right now that I can plug in a few hours a week.

If you haven't stopped by the new store yet, DO IT NOW! I'ts fabulous. Linda has done a fantastic job setting it all up and decorating it. it's just adorable. THere's lots of fabulous new product and some has already sold out- so be sure to get in before it all goes! We've changed the dates on our classes as well, so check out the site for the updated information. Also- we're having an awesome crop next weekend for National Scrapbook Day- chalked FULL of freebies! so call and sign up for that as well. Besides... my lovely face will be there, so why would you NOT want to come huh?! ;)-

So on to other things...... My Scrapbook Nook has their May kit up ready to order! This is a fabulous one as well and I'm very excited to play with it when it comes to my door. Be sure to order yours now because you'll be sad if you miss it. don't forget the add-ons too- cause those are just as fabulous!

Hope ya'll had a great weekend too!!

GRAND OPENING!!!!

Ok ladies- It's finally here! I know that all us Savannah area girls are anxious for the new scrap store to open since Jamie had to go and close hers down. (thanks a lot J ;)- )
But never fear..... only about 15 hours until we'll all have the supplies we need and the space to crop in that will fill our deepest needs and desires. hahahaha

Store opens tomorrow, but the official Grand Opening celebrations start up on Friday. Store opens at 10am and the first 5 customers will get something fabulous for free!!! (on Thursday)
We will be open until 6pm and open again on Friday at 10am.

Here is the official A Scrapbook Boutique website. It has all the information you need to find the place, the phone numbers, and most importantly.... all the fun stuff that's going on!

I will be planning on a few classes to hold this weekend and we're hoping that you'll want to join in the fun. Click on this link and you'll be able to see a description of the classes we'll hold and the make-n-takes that we'll be doing as well. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go sign up for these classes! I'll be making extra kits, and be offering the classes again if you can't make it, but they are seriously fabulous! All using BRAND SPANKIN NEW product!!! Seriously to die for! So call the store or email Linda to sign up. The actual projects for the classes will be put up for display at the store starting tomorrow for you to see them.

There's gonna be fun and food and fabulous give-aways.... so don't miss out on this weekend. It's gonna be a fun one! I'll be there all day, every day this weekend too- so pop in and say Hi to me (and to see this massive belly I've accumulated since seeing most of you last!).

Hope to see you at the fun festivities this weekend!!!

Piggy Tales Photo Contest

Check this info out. Looks like a lot of fun- plus... who wouldn't want free stuff huh?!


"To celebrate Earth Day, Piggy Tales is having their FIRST ever photo contest. Submit a photo (100MB or less) you have taken outdoors along with a short desription of the photo (50 words or less). 5 winners will be chosen and each will receive over $100 worth of Piggy Tales' newest products! Email entries to contact@piggytales.com All entries must be received by midnight PST, April 30th. Please title email "PT Photo Contest".

Check out Piggy Tales' blog to view some of my favorite outdoor photos.
http://www.piggytales.typepad.com

Happy Earth Day!
Debbie Juden
CEO/Chief Designer"


so there ya go... get on it and enter!! :) If you want to see their product- click on the link in my sidebar for Piggy Tales!

Mohawk Lake

We discovered this little lake about a block or so from our house and it's so nice! it's so quiet and peaceful. There's absolutely nothing there, no ducks, no walking trail, no park, nothing. but it's a very nice walk and there's ample amounts of fish, frogs, snakes, and flowers to keep us occupied!

Today was such a beautiful day out that we took a walk over there to just have fun and get out of the house. Here are a few pics to document it all. And they need narrating...... so here's your warning. hahaha

Pretty flowers and more pretty flowers and yet.... more pretty flowers! ;) (have i mentioned how wrong i think it is that it's THIS warm and THIS green already?)

Then we have the uncooperative, cute kids.

QUICK! I spy with my little eye..... 2 small frogs! looks like a big nasty dooky that they're sitting in, but it's not. rest assured that it's just a pile of moldy mud. hahahaha

Rick was so proud of himself. He caught this shot. he claimed to have seen a snake but no one else saw it. then i handed the camera over and walked off and look what happened! cool right?

And aside from the pasty white legs, can you honestly tell that i have a massive belly in front? that's what i thought...... ;)- gotta love me my girls though. they are just too cute!

very nice to get out, like i said. We did happen to have a mis-hap with Mia stepping into a pile of fire ants and geting bitten (poor thing) but luckily dad, the hero, came to the rescue and she walked off with only 3 bites. needless to say, she was traumatized and refused to walk on her own the rest of the time...except in this picture of course.

Hope you had a wonderful Sunday as well!

Pink Paislee in da house (again)

had a little time to throw this thing together today. must say that it didn't come together easily, but i love how it turned out. I'm truly in love with this new company..... you'll definitely be seeing me use their product A LOT! Check out their totally cool site- tons of inspiration there.

Maybe one of these days I'll post about my circus of a life that seems to be moving forward without me! um... maybe it's a good thing i'm staying busy so I don't give in to that circus?! ;)-

ANNOUNCEMENT:

A Scrapbook Boutique is opening it's doors this coming Thursday!!!! First day of open business is Thursday, April 24 from 10-6. However, if you want the good deals and the freebies, I'd wait until Friday-Sunday to come..... which will be the GRAND OPENING CELEBRATION! Linda Coleman (the owner) has some serious fun stuff planned and I must add how fabulous the store is looking! There will be classes, make-n-takes, freebies, crops, and FOOD the entire weekend! This will definitely be something you don't want to miss. I'll make another post about it next week to remind ya'll in the area. Classes will be posted in the next day or so, so be sure to spread the word about them as well. Check out the site to see all the information going on!

Piggy Tales Loving now!

Well.. double post for me today! aren't you lucky?!

Today i got my Piggy Tales assignment done. I totally didn't plan on having the whole thing done, but I lucked out and finished it! SOOOOO.... i'm totally scrapped out right now. I'll take a break tomorrow and then I'll get back to work on Friday. I don't think i've scrapped so much in a week in my life! But it's all good- look how many pages i have to show for it! :)

These projects are all using the new released Piggy Tales product. The cool thing is that they are all recycled papers and embellishments! cool huh? The first 2 are more "off the page" LO's and the 3rd one is a "card" i made using one of their sliders. The little "window" that has the trains on it, slides over to the opposite side to reveal writing underneath. They really are a cool product. So now that you see this delicious new stuff.. hop on over to their site and order some of it!!! Toodles for now... i'm off to get me a much deserved smoothy. ;)-

More Prima Loving!

Ok- so in my midst of projects on the list..... was this last line of Prima. I was able to get 2 LO's done from it. Now I admit... they aren't my fav- but they turned out ok.

Stay tuned for more... i have about 10 million more left to complete. ;)-

Fancy Pants Projects

Here are 3 more projects I've come up with in the past couple days. The first one is a littel Kaiser wood album. Really simple, but I love how it turned out. The second is my next attempt at "scrapping off the page". I'm totally loving it right now and i can see myself EASILY doing more of these. And because i'm so addicted- I've already put a class together to teach this month!!! lol the last one is just a plain LO- cute, and i'm in love with that clear robot! I'm trying my hardest to get these assignments done- i have to send these, the prima ones i showed earlier, AND about 2-3 more off tomorrow morning! I'll post more once i get them done. Then once those are completed.... onto other projects! Love all the scrapping i'm getting done though- feels good to get so many pictures "out of the way".

Too bad that the downside to this whole thing is that my house is being neglected. I totally should have taken a before and after pic of my bathroom today. I decided that I'd be more productive and scrub the sucker til it shined. Well... 3.5 hours later....... it's shining all right- but i darned near killed myself in the process! hahahaaha- Rick will be cleaning the bathrooms from now on. ;)-

Pregnancy Funny

When you get pregnant, you usually want to read up and sign up for just about everything regarding pregnancy and new baby. Of course... i'm one of them as well. I go online and search for the best sites and sign up for newsletters and want to find out every little bit of development that goes on at each point of the pregnancy.
I typically save the good sites and use them with each pregnancy. (because you know.. in my head, i KNOW i'm having more kids.... lol)

so.... when i found out I was prego with this kid, (back in November) I went on the search again and ended up finding a site I had previously signed up for in the past. You go in to enter in your information to find out the due date. Well... when i logged on, my "information" from my last pregnancy popped up, because I hadn't updated it since Mia. I ended up copying and pasting the information because it was so stinkin funny. So... here's the info that was given to me upon logging in the first time to this particular site:



Today is Monday November 12th 2007.
You conceived on Thursday April 28th 2005 and your due date is Thursday January 19th 2006.
928 days have passed since the conception,and you are 662 days past your due date.
You are 134 weeks into your pregnancy,and you are 94 weeks past your due date
You are in the 3rd trimester.
349% of your pregnancy has passed, there is -249% left to go.


How funny is this? Think I may be in trouble if this were acutally the case. And believe me... if this were all true, i would NEVER have kids ever again. :)

Prima Projects!!!

So Kim sent me home with the newest Prima product to make some displays for the Scrapbooks 'n Stickers store. Honestly... this line, i totally wouldn't have chosen myself to use at all. BUT, that's the glory of being on a design team. You're handed product, whether you like it or not, and forced to create with it. And through my years of experience, I've come to learn that even though you don't like it at first site, if you actually play with it, YOU"LL LOVE IT. So here are the 3 projects I came up with for this line. I used a smidgen of Fancy Pants product on them as well, but 99% is Prima. the Windblown LO is actually an "off the page" LO. first time i've ever done one and I absolutely LOVE how it turned out. It's on the top of my favs list right now!!!

The other hanging project is using the new wood product from Kaiser, teh Australian company. You can get all these products on Kim's store site- so check it out!

Holy Swampage Batman!!!!

So guess what?!?!?!?! Check this out!

Yah.... so count- that would be 3 AWESOME design teams for me! Being that 2 of the are manufacturers now.... I have massive amounts of cool product being sent my way! Am I going to be swamped with projects? probably. Is it going to be too completely cool? um... HELLOOOOO!!!! Check out their stinkin cool product- it's to die for!

very excited...... to say the least! ;)-

St. Louis and The Best Idea EVER!

Ok- so I was off again last weekend to CKC in St. Louis. Actually, it was in podunk Collinsville, Ill. , but no one knows where that is. It was seriously 1 street off the highway with some resteraunts, some hotels, and a convention center. that's it.

BUT.... aside from the size of the place, the convention center was so nice! Compared to our crap shoot of a place in CA just a few weeks ago.

CKC is seriously amazing. Setting up the booth and just the 2 days of constant sales and people was just too much fun. Not getting sick this go around was the best part. It makes such a difference when you're feeling well. (go figure)

So all in all, it was great. My classes went really well, and I'm proud to say that I had MORE than just 1 person too!!!! lol- Actually, my first class had 27 and my second class had 37! It was such a blast teaching to that many ladies.... i think i'm brave enough to want to see what teaching 50 would do to me! :)

But here's the picture i caught on my camera the very last night there. We had just gotten home from a later dinner at Applebee's (um.... SO eating there like once a week from now on!) and had just gotten out of the shower when i had this epiphany of a LO i could do (which will come very soon!). Let me just say, that after 3 days of working 15 hours straight, going back to the hotel and working another couple hours on projects, and only getting on average 3 hours of sleep a night, you're pretty dog tired by the time the last night hits. not that it's not worth it though- which is why i'm totally going to keep traveling with Kim. It's just too fun to NOT do! And BTW.... hop on over to Kim's site-- it's seriously one of the best. her kit club has just been re-done and you get enough supplies in there to make 3 double page LO's. It's totally cool.

Oh...... and this is a picture of our feet/legs. notice the red spots and the swollen hairy legs? yah- that would be the beating up we go through every show as well. hahahahahaha- i know we're so funny, we can't help it! ;)-

And one last note: supposedly people think i'm huge in this pregnancy. I lost count the first day of the show with how many people approached me and asked when i was due and when i told them, they would gasp and tell me that i looked like i was about ready to pop. Yah. um....... ok then! good thing i don't get offended at stuff like that. I know that I'm not "fat".... i'm actually losing weight in my body and getting a basketball of a belly. I'm telling you right here and now that this kid is going to be the biggest one out of all my kids though. Just a hunch, but for those of you who know me and have seen me lately, you'd probably agree. hahahahaha

Ok... so now i'm back and starting a new adventure. aka..... kids on spring break. yah.

After today, Rick and I had this idea of how to help us cope through these times of non-school. I had to share because I'm always up for advice and help with kids and issues facing parents. SOOOOO.... what I love about Hailey's school is that they "grade" the kids on behaviour as well as on school work. Every child in every grade is given a folder with a calendar for the month inside it. Each day, the kids are graded on how they behave in the classroom. There are 4 "levels". Top level is a blue star (the best behaviour), second level is a green smiley face (good behaviour), third level is a yellow straight mouthed face (behaviour needs improvement), and the last level is a red frowning face (not acceptable behaviour). It obviously works in the school here, so why not apply that to home? I'm proud to say that my daughter has only ever had 2 yellow faces and only a handful of green faces..... 97% of the time it's a blue star.( yup... proud mama :)

with that being said and explained, we kept wondering why the kids behave the way they do at home when their teachers say they are just fine and behave wonderfully at school. granted.. i'm sure almost every parents goes through this. So tonight for family night, we decided to do our own behaviour chart. Rick put together a chart and we all sat around and colored it. I then printed off a "calendar" for each child and hung it on the wall. They were each given a circle with their initial in it as well. During the day, rick and i will take that circle and move it up or down according to their behaviour at home. When the end of the day comes, whatever their circle is on, is the permanent "grade" for the day and that is marked on their personal calendar. At the end of every week, if they maintain blue stars and green faces, then they get a special treat. If they continue that good behaviour and get all green faces and blue stars the entire month, they get to go to the store and choose a new toy. if they get ANY yellow or red faces, it's over. They don't get rewarded at all.

I know that this will work with hailey. Kayleb.... i'm worried about still. He sees hailey getting praise for her blue star accomplishments every day and has become accustomed to telling me that he has also gotten a blue star at school every day too. hahahaha

But he's a boy and a monster and he's been copping a major attitude lately and i think this is the key i need to get that under control.

So there ya go- a picture and story for what may be the best idea ever for us! hope you can use it too!