Happy Turkey Day!

Wishing all of my faithful blog readers a wonderful Thanksgiving. Hope you have lots of fun whatever you are doing today!

The other day Sadie was playing in the leave pile that Jake was raking, I tried to take some photos of her but my camera was not cooperating so this is the best one I got and of course her head is cut off! This would have been a great scrapping opportunity if my point and shoot hadn’t been a bugger! And of course now all the leaves are gone.

I also parked in the garage for the first time last night. No it’s not done but it was fun anyway! It’s getting there! Michael is working on the stairs that go into the house today.

Doors and windows are on the way as are the garage doors so in a few weeks there should be another new update!

Enjoy your day and don’t eat too much!

Holiday Meme with a twist

TodaysMama (link to: http://bit.ly/tmwishlist) and GameStop (link to:http://bit.ly/gamestop10) are giving away a sleighful of gifts this holiday season and to enter I’m sharing this meme with you.

1. What is your holiday wish for your family? Health, happiness and all they want under the tree!

2. What is your Christmas morning tradition? Cinnamon rolls, coffee, opening stockings first and then presents together, everyone does one around the room until they are all done, then relaxing a bit before showering and heading off to where we are spending the rest of the day.

3. If you could ask Santa for one, completely decadent wish for yourself, what would it be? An all inclusive family vacation in Mexico or a Canon 5D

4. How do you make the holidays special without spending any money? Spending time with family and friends I don’t get to see enough during the year

5. What games did you play with your family growing up? Sorry, Yahtzee, Parcheeze

6. What holiday tradition have you carried on from your own childhood? Opening one present on Christmas Eve.

7. Where would you go for a Christmas-away-from-home trip? Somewhere warm!

8. Check out GameStop (link to: http://bit.ly/gamestop10) and tell us, what are the three top items on your GameStop Wish List this year? Turtle Beach PS3 Headset, PS3 Rock Band Wireless Guitar, Rock Band for PS3

To enter, link to your Mama’s Holiday Wish List post using the Mister Linky box below.

Hope you play along for a chance to win!

10 on Tuesday

1) I’ve got a day off today because Josh is sick again for the third time in 2 weeks. We are headed to the doctor in 20 minutes.

2) Garage is coming along. I’ll take a photo later when it stops raining.

3) It’s raining. Ick. But it could be worse, since it’s November 16th, it could be snow so that’s something I’m thankful for today.

4) I lasted exactly 4 days posting Thankful for things on my Facebook page in November! Not a good thing!

5) Our neighbors got a trampoline, I am not happy about this.

6) I hate trampolines.

7) I need a new dress for the work Christmas party on Dec 11th or I need to lose several pounds before then. I’m thinking buying a dress will be much easier!

8) I bought my first Christmas presents yesterday, only got two, I’ve got a long way to go!

9) Christmas is exactly 39 days away!

10) I have parent teacher conferences on Friday with all Jake’s High School Teachers, he wants me to skip it, I wonder why?

I Scrapped!

Actual layouts not cards! For the first time in awhile! And I got 5 pages done. It felt good. I still have a pile of photos staring at me but was a pretty productive afternoon. Here’s my handiwork:

Jake’s School photo. I had the cute owl buttons made by Tessa Ann Designs (check out her Etsy shop she is awesome!) And the other buttons in the upper left hand corner were from http://evalicious.bigcartel.com/.

The boys birthdays:

 

And the first day of school photos:

and here is a little card I made for my cousin’s baby’s Christening:

And now I have to go back to reality tomorrow after enjoying 4 days off of work so I better get off here and get to my ironing! Thanks for looking! Have a great night!

Garage Updates and Carrie Underwood!

So not a lot of progress on the garage. Poor Michael is not having much time to work on it as his actual job is very busy and he’s had to work the last two Saturday’s. Add some nasty rainy weather to that and we aren’t getting too far! Here is the latest photo:

And I took my mom to see Carrie Underwood last night as an early birthday present. It was a total surprise for her because I didn’t tell her we were going until we got in the parking garage. Needless to say she was VERY excited. It was a fantastic show. If you are a fan, I highly recommend it as she’s definitely one of the best singers out there! Her voice is just as amazing in person as it is on the radio, even better, I’d say. I got a few shots with my point and shoot that was very low on batteries so no flash but since we were five rows from center stage they came out OK…

Sons of Silvia opened up, these boys were talented in the musical instrument department to say the least!

Billy Currington was next, he put on a fantastic show as well:

And then came Carrie:

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And now I’ve got to go get ready for a Christening for my cousin’s sweet little girl, then come home and write out 16 customs forms for the 16 boxes of Cards for Soldiers I’ll be sending out this week! It’s a short week at work for me as I have Thursday and Friday off and I can’t wait, I am hoping to get some real scrapping in as all I’ve been doing is making cards lately. I can’t wait to edit some of these concert photos and scrap them!

Have a great Sunday!

Updates

The garage is coming along! The foundation is dug and poured and it’s exciting to see some progress! Here is a photo of what it looked like when I got home from work the day it was poured…

Then it was time to backfill and compact, lots of fill brought in and then packing it down hard. And I thought we were waiting to have the floor poured but today I got home from baseball to see the first wall up. Talk about exciting! I wish I had been here to see the actual standing but we were all the way in Keene so I couldn’t just run home to see it…

On the way back from the baseball game I stopped to take some foliage photos. I was surprised that the colors weren’t better …

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I also went to an all day crop last Saturday. I made 40 Veteran’s Day cards for Soldiers and a 20 page 8x8 Baby album for a gift for a shower I had to go to on Sunday. It was a great charity crop and awesome to spend a day with friends scrapping. I’m looking forward to taking a Tim Holtz class with another friend at the end of this  month and I also plan on scrapping tomorrow and Monday since it’s a long weekend for me! Oh I forgot to share this page that I did a few weeks ago as well…

So that’s what has been going on with us.  I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Back to School, Another Anniversary, Building an Addition

So a lot has gone on in our house since my last update as you can see from my title! I guess I need to blog more often or I’m going to be writing books every time I update!

First off Michael and I celebrated 23 years of wedded bliss! Since we are doing the big addition project this year we kept it low key and spent the day on the boat with the boys and he brought me some roses. 

Secondly Jake and Josh went back to school, I am officially the mom of a kid in high school now! I wasn’t home for the big day since I leave at o’dark thirty (5am) but Jake was good enough to document the day for me with one photo of each of them. Not exactly what I had in mind but I’ll take it as it’s better than I would have got which is zip!

Here they are in all their happiness about going back to school…

School is in full swing, they are both doing well. Josh is playing soccer, doing karate and on the student council. Jake is playing baseball. So needless to say, I have no free time!

And last but not least, we have started the garage side of our addition. The foundation is in!

Hopefully the floor will be poured sometime this week and then the framing will begin. We hope to have it all done before the winter. Well I hope so I don’t have to clean snow off my car or trudge thru it ever again!

On the scrapping front, my friend Patty and I got together a few weeks ago to make Cards for Soldiers. We got about 50 done between the two of us on a Sunday afternoon. This past weekend I spent sorting all the cards I had received and packing them to ship them out, there were 2500! I have 8 boxes to go to the Post Office today! Pretty Awesome!  And I did a page last night for the first time in months! I honestly think the last time I actually made a page was back in May when I went away to a crop! It felt good! I didn’t finish until late so I haven’t scanned so I can’t share.

Oh and the last thing I wanted to share is a very talented blogging friend of mine Kimberly Geshwin is an awesome font maker and she is offering up a pretty cool deal. So if you have a fun and funky handwriting that you’d love to see made into a font, go and check this post out…http://gesweinfamily.com/?p=3259, it’s for a very good cause!

OK, that’s enough for now, I have to hop in the shower. Have a great week!

Long Time No Blog

It’s been awhile eh? I guess when you have like one reader (thanks Jodene) it’s not a huge deal anyway! Lots going on here! We have been in the midst of a construction project. Painters and construction. 4 years ago my fabulous husband decided to do hardwood floors in the house. Something I’d been asking him to do for years. Well this was a huge task because it involved tearing down some walls for the stairs and such. He eventually finished all the floors but never the stairs because we ran into some issues and we’ve been walking on plywood stairs ever since. Fast forward to this year, I decide I’ve had enough of looking at unfinished stairs and before we start more projects I’m hiring someone to finish the darn stairs, the trim all the way upstairs in the hall and into my bedroom and the windows! We had windows and siding put in and I decided that because the new windows are white and all of our trim in the house was stained that didn’t look right so btw, we need to hire painters because all the trim needs to be painted white now! So for the last week the house has been in quite an uproar to say the least! It’s starting to look great as the stairs are almost done and I can’t wait to see the finished product! It will be nice to have it all complete.

And then we will start all over again! We are adding on two additions! A two car garage with attic space above it on one side of the house and a big family room on the other side of the house. The garage will be first so that Michael will have somewhere to work on the other side. I hope this project doesn’t take another 4 years! Once it’s done I’m looking forward to doing some entertaining in my house because I’ll have a room big enough to do so!

In other news, we have been enjoying our boat. Last weekend Michael and I went out on it again while the boys were away for the week at my in-laws. We docked in Newburyport and walked around and did some shopping. Had lots of fun picking out some nautical decor for the downstairs bath. I decided since we are boat owners now I wanted a nautical themed room. We also found a yummy bakery where I got a gourmet cupcake, peanut butter flavored goodness! YUM! Michael snapped this photo of me enjoying it

Then he did some fishing and caught a few cod and this big cusk:

And we saw I pink boat which I loved so had to take a photo:

   And then we went out to the Isle of Shoals and saw the scenery there plus a bunch of harbor seals:

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It was a very nice day and I didn’t even get a little nauseous! We had a great dinner at a place called Michael’s Harborside before we headed home that night. I could definitely get used to that kind of life. Maybe in a 100 foot yacht! ;)

The boys and I also had our annual week at the beach with my mom in July! It was a fantastic week of perfect weather. We met my uncle and cousin for lunch one day, had pedicures with my mom’s friend and her daughter one day, the boys had a friend up for several days. Couldn’t have asked for a better week. Here are some highlights from that week as well:

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So if you’ve stuck with me this far you are a true friend! This was a long one! I’ll try not to be so scarce so I don’t talk so much next time!

I’m headed down to my scrap room so I can get out of the painters way! Happy Weekend all!

We got a Boat!

Well I should say we got a bigger boat, because we’ve had a little 18 footer for about 8 years now. I’ve hated that little boat since we got it because I always thought it was too small for the ocean and it made me nervous. It was fine for bringing up to the lake to take the boys tubing and such but out on the ocean I always felt like we were going to die!

Anyway fast forward to last month when Michael sends me this text pic that says I found my father’s day present…

One thing led to another and we bought it. It’s a 24’ Rampage and it’s much nicer than our old free 18’ boat. It’s got a cuddy cabin that sleeps 2 and a toilet! So Michael picked it up on Wednesday and we went out on it for our first time yesterday to see some whales and do a little fishing.

We headed out to a place called Jeffrey’s Ledge off of Newburyport, MA and before we got there we saw this:

Unfortunately it is the only photo I got because it was rough out there and every time we were able to spot one they were down so fast I couldn’t get the shot. We saw about 5-6 throughout the day and it was very exciting. The best was the tail shot that I missed and wished I could have got but maybe next time!

Then we set up for some fishing. This was Josh’s first time with a big deep sea rod so he needed a lesson from dad first:

 

He immediately hooked on to something and had to reel it in all the way from 150 feet of water…

And was very excited to catch his first shark!

No photo of Josh holding his catch because sharks are not welcome on the boat! They are a boatload of trouble (pun intended)! ;)

Then it was off to do some more fishing on mouth of the river hoping to catch some dinner. The only thing we caught was the tail of a whale watching boat that we followed out to another place called Stellwagen Bank. This is where it was a real rough ride but we got to see a bunch more whales so it was worth it sort of (I’ll leave the gory details out). Unfortunately because of the roughness no photos, I couldn’t even stand up, never mind hold my camera!

We headed back in before it got too late and the boys decided to stop to fish for a bit. This is where my stomach decided it did not have much more tolerance for the rough seas and had enough! I’ll just say this was my first and hopefully last experience with sea sickness! LOL!  They did catch two fish before I said we needed to get back to dry land.  I’ve been out on boats many times before and haven’t had this lovely experience so I hope it’s a one time thing or I won’t be enjoying the boat as much as the rest of the family I guess!

So there you have the tales of our first experience on our new boat!

Happy Memorial Day

Thank you to all of those that serve our beautiful country past and present…

Recent Scrappiness

These are some of the pages I did during my weekend crop. I finally got a new scanner for Mother’s Day! I still have one more that needs some journaling on it to scan. I am loving my new scanner it’s much faster than the old one!

The splashes were a total lift from my very talented friend Leslie Ashe. She just makes the most amazing pages and when I saw them on one of her pages I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the photos of Jake jumping off a bridge last summer! Thank you for the inspiration Leslie!

TFL! Hope you had a great weekend! We are off to a baseball game and I have to go get ready!