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.

Ok, Ok, I uploaded the pictures so here it is a picture H.E.A.V.Y. post!

I forgot to mention that I ran in a 5 mile race last weekend. The boys also did a kids 1K race. It was a lot of hard work, but I manged to finish in 55min 36sec. The boys had a blast doing their own race too, just like mom :) The day was pretty cold, took me awhile to warm up. I also learned that I cannot drink a cup of water while I'm running...I almost drowned twice, lol! Anyway, here are some pictures (I apologize, I look like a complete dork while running but I did it!).

Boys ready to run!

Kieran, a wee bit excited!

They had fun playing on the rocks waiting for the race to start. I'm just glad we didn't have to go get stitches! That may have put a damper on my run :)

Can you find them?

Heehee! He was pretty fast and was really tired :)

Kieran making his way to the finish.

Post race popsicles with their cute sister :) They were so excited to get medals but Riley actually gave his to a friend who didn't get one since they ran out! He was thanked with a big hug from her! So cute!

The running crew!

Woohoo!!! Almost done! Kieran actually started to run out into the road ahead of me. It was a good thing he got out of the way because I didn't have the energy to run around him!

So proud of us!

Shout out to my running girls! Don't they look amazing for just having run 8K?! We rock!

Ok, so here we go with first day of school take 2!

My cutie with his K'nex sword or blaster or whatever it was at the time :)

Two big boys!

All ready to go!

Got some cute pictures of Riley but he wasn't looking at the camera in any of them :)

Perfect pose!

So cute!!

Sneezin'!

Sneezes are funny!!!

Awww :)

And finally, the clipboards I altered for the preschool. I totally wanted to keep them ;) But was so happy to be asked to make them for note taking at the school! They'll be used to jot down quick stories about the kids during class. I thought the little boy and girl with the speech bubbles were just perfect!

Ok, now I'm really done :) My blizzard has been delivered by my oh-so-fabulous husband! It is much needed after my crazy day of knocking my daughter in the head with a car door, spilling coffee all over my car, almost being backed into by a truck (while walking to school) not to mention dealing with kids who cry, whine, throw rocks, hit each other and a pup who peed in my dining room. Sigh. Ice cream, here I come!

Stuck?! Sketches reveal and cute kid stories :)

You know what that means? Another Stuck?! Sketches reveal! I love looking at everyone's take on the sketch on reveal days. Lots of inspiration for sure! You can check it out here. This is the sketch we were working with:

And here is the layout I created with it. These pictures of Bridget crack me up :)

Kieran started preschool this week which made him a very happy boy and me a very happy mama to see him having so much fun and being down to 1 kid for a couple of hours. The first day was a hectic morning...we had to chase down Kevin's bus, take Riley to school, get groceries and then finally go to preschool. In all the chaos I forgot to take first day pictures!! Imagine, and a scrapbooker to boot! We recreated first day today and I also took some more pictures of Riley with his backpack this time and his new haircut (which he got gum in on the way home from the hairdressers I might add). I actually still have to put the pictures on my computer and I don't have my camera handy, but they are coming soon!

A couple of Riley stories :)

The other day I asked Riley if anyone had gotten in trouble in his class...if they had a time out or went to the principle's office. He said they don't have a bench to sit on this year, but they just have to sit at their desk if they aren't being quiet at circle time. I asked if anyone had to do that and if he did. He said that Noah did and he did. I asked if they were talking to each other. He said, " I was chatting more so I had to go sit at my desk first and then Noah did." I told him that in school he had to be good and follow the rules and not talk when the teacher was talking. He stops me and says, "It's in the past!" I said, "so..." He said, "So, we don't have to worry about it anymore, it's in the past!" Hmm...maybe he's seen that Lion King movie a few too many times :)

A couple of days ago he also declared that, "hummus is yummus!"

Yes, he makes me crazy sometimes, but ya gotta laugh at the kid! One more:

Kevin was feeding the kids breakfast this morning and told me that Kieran was saying that boys are tougher than girls. I think Kevin asked why he was saying it or something to that effect and Riley said that Sarah (his cousin) was tougher than him. Kevin said that someday he would probably be bigger than Sarah and would be tougher than her someday. Riley said, "yeah, when she's an old lady I'll be able to beat her down!" (Ok, I am literally laughing out loud while I type that!). He followed it up with, "but I wouldn't do that..."

I'll be back with pictures of my cuties, I promise. Funny how I think it's such a chore to upload them :) I also have pictures of some cool altered clipboards that I made for Kieran's preschool. I'm actually now in the process of making one for myself after having made 6 for other people. They are so fun to do!

Hope you all had a great Wednesday. Mine was not so great so I'm hoping for a better Thursday!! :)

Mish Mash Blog Post

I do a lot of blogging. I know you might not know it, doesn't seem like it here does it? But I do. In my head while going to get the kids, brushing my teeth, folding laundry. If only I could find away to plug my computer into my brain there would be a lot more blog posts here! Finding the time to sit down and do it is tough. Even as I type there are bathrooms to be cleaned, a playroom to be vacuumed and laundry to be folded. Sigh. But, the kids and pup are asleep so I decided to steal a few quick minutes to do this.

I realized I have yet to show you my projects that I did with the September Crop Addict kit! Yikes, I am so behind. This kit was so much fun to work with. It had a lot of the Bo Bunny Mama-razzi line in it, which is one I didn't buy any of. I just didn't think it was for me. Umm...guess I was wrong! It is perfect for getting some boy pages done which is good because they tend to get neglected! And I got a couple of birthday cards done which were needed for the month of August.

Fun stuff, eh? And I still have lots of this kit left over. You can do so many projects with it. You can get your very own kit here. All of the kits of filled with tons of goodies to work with every month. I'm sure I could easily do another 3 layouts with the stuff I have left and then of course some more cards with the scraps :)

During August I was also asked to guest design for Let's Capture Our Memories. Tanya asked different girls to design each month and kept it a secret until the reveal. What a great idea! It was fun to see who got picked each month. Here is what I created with her beautiful kit! Again, lots of this one left too and I hope to get some more done with it. Our life was just so hectic in August and I feel like things might just be starting to settle into a routine now. I also have some scrappy dates set up in the near future, yay!

Gorgeous girly papers! I was lucky to get a girly kit and and boyish kit in August!

Here's a layout that I LOVE that I did awhile back but don't think I ever posted. It's one of my faves!

Ok, on to my kids. I know you are all dying to hear about them :) Playing hide and seek with little kids is never boring! I love listening to Bridget now, it's just so cute. She was on the stairs counting the other day and I overhear, "1, you ready? 1, 2, 3, 4, 2. Here my not, here I come! Kieran, where are you? Are you under the bucket?" Which he was, of course, because they had been hiding under it all morning. He wouldn't think of hiding somewhere different, that would be crazy! :) Then he counted and she hid under the bucket. Ah, minutes of entertainment! Her counting is always different too (and she TOTALLY knows how to count up to about 13, but not when playing hide and seek, apparently). Once she counted, 1, 2, 3, 40, 9, 10 :)

Riley started school on Tuesday (that's his first day picture on my header). He has an awesome teacher and is loving every minute already. He even had homework the first day (those grade 1 teachers are slave drivers!). He has about 5-10 minutes of it Mon-Thur and then the weekends are free. It's good because in kindergarten he was always disappointed that he didn't have homework. I'll have to remind him of all of this in middle school!

Kieran is anxiously awaiting his first day of preschool which is Monday. I think it's hard for him to wait so long after Riley goes. He's been counting days until he is in the 'big 4' class :) I can't believe we'll be registering him for kindergarten next month! Wow!

Oz (ok, I guess he's my 4th kid) is doing well. Sleeping through the night now and pretty well trained. Well, as long as Kevin isn't home. I swear the only times that dog pees or poops on the floor is when he's with Kevin. Kevin claims he can look after 3 kids OR a dog, but not both :) He can sit on command but isn't a fan of walking on a leash yet. That's my next thing to conquer since we walk a lot to get Riley from school.

I have one more 'in my head' blog, but maybe I'll save it for a bit. Don't want to type so much that all my tens of readers bail on me :) Have a great Friday, everyone!!