Capture the Details

beating the heat

Woooo! It's been HOT! On Monday we got the slip and slide out for the kids (even my 6' tall kid).

(He's a little sore today. As he says - the mind is willing but the body is getting older!)

I posted some more pictures from yesterday. Ben loves the mud puddles that form more then the slip and slide itself. He was covered in mud from head to toe.

Today, Sarah had field day at school.

Here she is doing one of the activities:

Ben and I met Tante Kimmy there to watch for a short while.

"Can we go home? I'm hot." Ben must have said that half a dozen times.

Everyone looked wilted. The teachers were spraying the kids with spray bottles to try to keep them cool.

To stay cool, Ben and I came home and became 'cellar dwellers' for the afternoon. I set up the card table and laid out a bunch of blankets and the bean bag chairs so we could stay cool in the basement. He colored with crayons and we read about six books laying in our 'nest' made from the bean bag chairs. We ate lunch and supper down there, too. Thankfully, Todd and Tim put the AC in the windows tonight. MUCH better in here now. :-)

had a great fall

No - not as in Autumn. As in Humpty Dumpty. Here he is in all his oval glory...

He and all the kids did such a great job with their performances. After the program, each child got called to the front to receive their certificate and a goodie bag. Here's Ben with his teachers...

One down, pun intended, and one to go for Summer vacation to officially start. Sarah has four days this week, one of which is field day, and five half-days next week then she's done for the year as well. Man, that flew!

On to other things, like country entertainment. You know, when you're sitting at your kitchen table and eating supper and looking out the window into the back yard for your dining entertainment. Well, the other night I looked and then looked harder to see if my eyes were seeing what I thought I was seeing.

"Todd, what's in the tree there? Is that a bird?"

"No. That's a groundhog."    ( Let me zoom in a little closer for you...)

It's a bit blurry close up, but, yes indeedy, my eyes were right. Todd said he knew they went up trees but he'd never seen one up that high. So, that was our country entertainment as we ate supper. Watching the groundhog forage around up in the tree and waiting to see if he'd fall out of it. (He didn't. He made it back down in one piece, unlike Humpty Dumpty.) :-)

for the teachers

I picked up the corsages for Ben's teachers today. He gets promoted tonight into the four year old program for next year. The graduation theme is Nursery Rhymes, so the corsages are done in primary colors.

I scanned in a cover from the kid's nursery ryhme book that had an illustration of Mother Goose on it. I reduced the image down to one inch and printed it out on photo paper and mod podged it to a piece of chip board. Then, I cut out the shape. I punched a hole through the bottom and made a pick from wire and florist tape (see, I guess it's good to have all those supplies around - you never know when they'll come in handy!!!). I inserted the pick into the corsage for a finishing touch. :-)

the 60th bash

I posted some pictures from my mom's party. I think she enjoyed her evening. She loves to have her family around and watch the grandkids.

I'm so lucky to have her for my mom. She is a beautiful person with so much love to give. :-)

creating again

I'm in the groove. I came up with a little something for my cleaning helpers at Ben's school. My original plan was to use accordian photo holders made for a wallet to make a 'through the years' photo holder. But, when I went to Kmart to get them they didn't have the style I needed. So, I found these cute little polka dotted notebooks and pens that matched and even thank you notecards that had polka dots. It was meant to be together! I used my Making Memories simply fabulous font stamps to put the mom's initial on the front of each notebook. Done and handed out this morning.

I made my mom's birthday card this morning...

A few highlights from the card.... I added jewel brads from Making Memories to the metal letters and attached the letter to the front with pop dots:

I got these large silver leaf clips from Two Peas and folded them in half to add as an accent to the edge of the page. I added a jump ring to one and hung little word charms:

   

ahhhhhhhhhhhh. It feels good to have the creative mojo back. I have lots of ideas for projects swimming around in my head. I'll post what I can but some of the stuff is for my class at Valley Forge and I want to save that for down there. Once the class is over I'll share! Promise!! :-)

a willing participant

The kids have been playing very well together lately. Only an occasional squabble. On Sunday they had the Disney princess tent set up in the living room and Ben was the king and Sarah was the prince. I peeked in the hole in the top and they had it all set up in there with chairs and tables and decorations. Sarah was putting pretend makeup on her Barbie head.

I came back out a little later and noticed a smell in the living room that strongly resembled nail polish.

I peeked in the top again and saw this:

Yup. Nail polish. The result of this escapade? Look for yourself...

Those pretty piggies and fingers belong to my son. He thought it was neat. My husband, on the other hand... well... he kinda rolled his eyes.

It came off after supper with the equally neat nail polish remover (applied by me). :-)

Family Faces

My mom's 60th birthday is Tuesday, May 23rd. I put together an album for her called Family Faces. My inspiration came from Stacy, who just made this really cool album for her husband's birthday. Check it out here on Two Peas {and check out her other work as well, you'll be impressed :-)  }. I love how she divided her kid's faces in half to make a whole face on the one spread. That got me to thinking about putting my mom's album together doing the same thing.(Thanks for the inspiration, Stace! You're a creative genius, as always!!!)

So, I had 18 faces to put together, which works out well since it's an even number. Here's the front of the album...

And four of the nine spreads... My mom and stepdad:

me and Todd...

Sarah and my niece, Emily....

Ben and my nephew, Evan...

I converted all the photos to sepia and printed them out on 4 x 6 inch photo paper. I Mod Podged them to heavy paper. I've found when using Mod Podge on items that touch they can sometimes stick together, so I needed something for in between the pictures, but I wanted it to be see-through. The only thing I had on hand that fit the description was shrinky dink plastic sheets. I cut them to size and left little tabs sticking out. I added ribbon flower tabs as well. And I just got these cute rub-ons from Basic Grey and I added them to the shrinky dink divider pages. They are nature inspired, so they look good in reverse, too, when you flip the divider to see the other face.

It feels good to be 'creating' again. I think I'm emerging from my slump! :-)

creative slump

I've been in this funk lately. Just can't get the brain to come up with any ideas. I look through all my idea books and magazines and see all this neat, fun, creative stuff and I want to 'create' so badly, but when I sit down to get busy, nothing comes.

I thought I'd do something simple to see if I can get the creative mojo flowing. I keep a journal for each of the kids and I started a new one for Ben when he turned four in March, but I never did the cover. So, last night and today I played with some paper and supplies and mod podge and this is what I came up with....

So, tonight I'll play some more. Hopefully, I'll have some ideas sprout from my little ol' brain. :-)

Happy Mother's Day!

To all you mothers out there --- enjoy your day! :-)

***edited***Amy took this picture of Sarah and me tonight in Nana and Pappy's backyard. Love my girl! (Love my boy, too, but didn't get any pictures with him tonight. He was too busy!) :-)

a few things...

Well, as fate would have it, I caught the ol' stomach virus, too. I've been sick all week with it. Definitely not a 24 hour thing. I finally had to force myself to go to the grocery store while Ben is at school this morning.

I got the last sample done for my product showcase bulletin board. Here it is:

This is my cute little nephew, Elliott. He's so easy to photograph. I have tons of pictures of him.

Last night the kids were playing in the driveway while I sat in the Jimmy (weak as all get-out from this stupid virus) watching them. Ben loves the 'calepittars' {say it that way once and it gets stuck in your head that way} that are all over the place right now. He came up to me with three of them crawling up his arm. Being the die-hard scrapper that I am, I had to summon the strength to go in the house and get my camera. Got this shot:

I noticed that he kept taking them into the garage as he found them. I finally asked him what he was doing with them all.

"Putting them on the car."

I went into the garage and it was like a horror movie. There must have been about a dozen calepittars {see, told ya} crawling on the car and on the floor heading back out to the light. That's my boy. :-)