Happy Christmas....er, Halloween! and Stuck?! Sketches Reveal

So, I didn't really think I would wake up to a dusting of snow on Halloween, but that's what happened today. As if being awoken at 5:30 isn't bad enough! The kids were really excited and wanted to have snowball fights in the 1cm of snow :) Oz was confused and I'm still not sure he's a big fan. He doesn't seem to like rain or the cold, he's my kind of dog :)

Just quickly, I didn't post the pictures from Riley's birthday. He had a Halloween theme so I was busy making invitations and treat boxes and a spooky cake :) It was a lot of work, but he had fun. It was a crazy mad house with 14 6 year olds running around for 2 1/2 hours, but we survived! Barely...

My scary vampire!

Frankenstein treat box.

Jack-o-lantern treat box

Mummy treat box.

Many treat boxes and Riley's Halloween banner.

Banner up close.

Haunted cupcake house :)

The kids had such a blast trick-or-treating today. They visited Grammie and Grampie and as we were leaving with the loot Kieran said, "I love Happy Halloween!" :) They went out for treats with Daddy in the snow while I stayed here warm with Oz and handed out candy. It was cute when they got back and they gave candy to a few trick-or-treaters, Riley was all business giving out candy and saying, "Bye! Have a Happy Halloween!" It was just funny in the very business-like way he said it, lol!

My trick-or-treaters! Just realized Bridget doesn't have her unicorn head up..oops!

Watching for more trick-or-treaters :) And, yes, Oz always looks that pathetic, lol!

Yesterday, Kevin and I did the Creepy Crawl fun run in Saint John. It was hard going since I hadn't run in 2 weeks and I was coming off being sick. It was so, so cold out and my lungs weren't quite ready but I managed to finish. I did the 5K in 35 min and Kevin did it in 26. He did really well and had his best time yet. The kids also did a 1K run in their costumes. Adults were welcome to dress up too and most did. We didn't really have any costumes on short notice but next year we'll have to get some good ones :)

We also carved pumpkins yesterday afternoon with the cousins. Well, Riley and his oldest cousin were really the only ones interested and my sister-in-law and I did the others :) Kieran wanted a scary face to scare the deer away so they wouldn't eat them (which has happened to us several times in the past!). We actually played it even safer by not putting them out until this afternoon. So, all in all we had a pretty busy, but fun, weekend! Here are our pumpkins :)

On a scrapbooking note, the November 1st sketch is up over at Stuck?! Sketches. There are some amazing layouts up by the Creative Team! Be sure to get your entry in for a chance at an awesome prize! Here is my layout with a pretty old picture :) Trying to use up some of those pictures I have printed in stacks around here!

I should really blog more often so these don't end up being so long but we have been so crazy busy and fighting colds that it got put on the back burner. One more quick funny, this time a Kieran one :) We built a dump truck out of lego today and when we were done he said, "now I have to fill it with 'dump'!" LOL! They're too funny!

Thankful for...

siblings who love each other and get along...sometimes (ok, so maybe video games help....at least until someone gets eaten by a Yoshi then all bets are out the window...)

pathetic puppy dog faces (love those floppy ears!)

imagination and creativity

Laughter!

Little girls who still fall asleep in my arms (ok...in Daddy's arms, but I'm thankful she stayed asleep when I stole her away :) I would endure any discomfort just to get to hold a sleeping child!).

that I get to hang out with my best friend every day!

for fall...beautiful leaves to collect and dance in, cool, fresh air, long walks (and runs!), pumpkins to carve, apples to pick and apple trees to climb!

so many other things that I don't have pictures for....

grandparents who help us on a daily basis! we love you!!

friends and family who are always there for us

little things...

puddle jumping

pig tails

sticky, glue-y art fingers

morning snuggles

bedtime stories

little voices singing all day long

so thankful for my everyday, crazy life. Even when it feels like it's going to do me in, I still wouldn't have it any other way! Lovin' life here this Thanksgiving weekend...hope everyone else had a fabulous weekend too!

Tim Holtz!!!!

Ok, my non-scrappy readers, Tim Holtz is a BIG deal in the scrappy world. We were trying to come up with an equivalent. He's like the Brad Pitt of the scrapping world. Maybe even better than that. He has amazing products, is a fabulous scrapbooker (my fave is when he does his 12 days of tags at Christmas...the most amazing tags ever!!). Anyway, you get it, he's a big deal!

Well, my friends Amy and Emily and I got to meet him today!!!! He's doing classes on a cruise that is traveling New England and Eastern Canada. Through a very strange sequence of events, Amy and Tim got to emailing and he said that he would call her the day he was in Saint John. Jump to this morning and I get a phone call from Amy SCREAMING in my ear, lol. Said that Tim (notice how I call him Tim, like we're all cool and on a first name basis now :)) would meet us at Starbucks. Well, we got there good and early, chilled with a latte and tried to act all cool. Oh, I should add that Kevin actually worked from home just on the chance that I might get to meet Tim Holtz. What a good man! Yes, I felt somewhat like a dork, but that feeling is all gone now that I actually met him, lol. Should be interesting for Kevin to explain to his buddies at work tomorrow why he had to work from home. Non-scrapbookers don't really 'get' scrapbookers most of the time, haha.

When I saw Tim coming around the corner and pointed him out to Emily I thought she was going to break my arm, lol. We watched him get in line and then he looked over at us and saw his books waiting to be signed and all the cameras and kinda figured we were the girls he was gonna meet, lol! He was so kind and sweet. He chatted with us for a bit, signed our stuff and took pictures with each of us. It was even his suggestion to get a group shot...we didn't want to be too pushy :) Such a surreal day! Mario, Tim's business partner, was even taking pics with his iPhone and he put them up on Twitter! So cool! Check it out http://yfrog.com/jbrhosj

So, lattes (yummy!!), a pumpkin scone (a treat from my beautiful friend, Emily!) and TIM HOLTZ!! Well, there's just no way the rest of the week will live up to that :) Such a great day!

So cool! Emily has a ton more pictures...she's probably scrapping them as I type, lol! She was taking pictures of everything us, Starbucks, our lattes :) She wanted to document every second. She loves Tim and we always say she could be his girl counterpart because she does some beautiful work in his style! I'm sure there's a mini album about the day coming soon!

Hope you all had a great Monday too. I know, not as good as mine, suckers, but hope you had a decent day :)

Stuck?! Sketches October 1st reveal and cute kid stories (of course :))

Ack, I'm a few days late on this one! The weekend flew by...cropping, hanging with family, running. Anyway, Stuck?! Sketches had its reveal on Friday and the work is stunning! You can check it out here. Here is the sketch and my take on it:

I really like how this one turned out. There's a little, acrylic house stapled to it, under the heart, that's hard to see in the picture, unfortunately. But I love the colours of the paper and how the black just makes it all pop!

A couple of cute kid stories...what would a blog post be without them?

Yesterday morning I heard Kieran crying and Kevin was in talking with him and then called to me saying, "Amanda, I think you should hear this..." Well, Kieran was crying because he's the only one in our family with black skin! LOL! His skin tone is the darkest in our family, though he has aunts and cousins with darker complexions too. He was sad because he was the only one in our family that has 'dark' skin and one of his cousins that also does never wants to play with him. Honestly, I have NO idea where on earth he came up with it! I tried to convince him that lots of people try to get that colour skin, but I don't think he was buying it, lol! My poor, sad, interracial child :) I think he's over it now, but really, just shows you what lengths he'll go to to whine about something, anything.

Tonight at supper Riley just blurts out, "For the love of Pete, will you guys stop it." Nothing really was going on at the table so Kevin says, "What guys?" And Riley matter-of-factly says, "The guys in my head. You know, I can be in my imagination world in my head and this world at the same time. It's kinda cool. There's a war going on in my head and I'm the king and my guys won't listen and if they don't they are going to get fired...with real fire." Oh man, that kid cracks me up sometimes. At least we know he has a good imagination! He probably convinced Kieran he was adopted from another country or something, lol!

So, they sure keep us hopping! I also heard Bridget telling Kieran that she couldn't go upstairs and brush her teeth because, "my belly hurts so I can't brush my teeth." My kids think a belly ache will get them out of anything! She's lucky she's so darned cute because her red-headed stubbornness and temper is starting to show!

Well, that's all for tonight! I must get to bed...it's been a weekend of late nights and early mornings! Stay tuned for some work for the Crop Addict DT. I just got my kit today (living in the frozen north like I do, it sometimes takes longer for kits to get to me ;)) but you can check out the beautiful work from the other DT members in the gallery.