I Created This...

 

We're coming off of another fun week of camp over here. This time it was a fabulous art camp that Robby attended with one of his bestest friends from school.

 

Oh yes, that is a two-tooth-missing-smile. Four days after he lost that first tooth, the one next to it decided to leave in a warm slice of pizza. Lucky daddy was nearby to rescue it.

But back to art camp...

They did a huge variety of projects during the week: sculpting from foam, sculpting in clay, tin poking, water-painting, paper-mache, book making, etc. He brought home a lot of projects yesterday and it was great to see how creative he was all week.

You know that made me happy!

 

He even made some new friends...

 

;)

On my creative side...the Piggy Tales Academy Kit is up for July which I had a lot of fun creating for. If you order the kit, you get a TON of papers and stuff from the new Yankee Doodle Dandy line and instructions to make all the layouts, cards and projects I created with it. Just in time for the upcoming 4th of July holiday!

Also, I received the image of the Summer issue of Scrapbook and Cards Today which will be available this Thursday June 25th!! Anyone look familiar?

 

:)

(photo by me...layout by Kim Hughes. awesome!)

 

 

 

It was a good week.

Robby LOVED his tennis camp.

 

  

 

I plugged along getting things cleaned and in order around the house.
Rob had a looooong week of work but made it through just the same.

...and we ended it all with a nice friday evening at the beach.

Ahhhhh.

 

Yesterday after tennis camp, Robby sat down to have a snack of strawberries, apple slices and grapes. What started as a snack enjoyed with a full set of baby teeth, ended with one less tooth than it began...thanks to one delicious strawberry.

 

Being the first lost tooth from our only child, we were a little unprepared to host the tooth fairy last night. No special box, no tooth-shaped pillow, no fairy dust handy.

So we winged it.

First Robby wrote the tooth fairy a note. Then he proceded to draw a smiley face and place the tooth on top...precisely where the tooth came from in his own mouth. This made me giggle but made perfect sense for the tooth fairy to find it, right? ;)

Soon after he went to bed and awoke to find this.

 

Something that the not-so-prepared 'tooth fairy' stayed up last night creating.

Something that was made MUCH easier thanks to the A-DOR-A-BLE digital elements in the Grinalicious Digital Kit.

And a very special $2 bill, which may just have been one of the very same $2 bills that I received from my Grandpa in a card for my birthday when I was a kid.

Funny how the tooth fairy finds these things! :)

 

Robby woke up this morning with visions of tennis courts in his head and instead looked out into the backyard and saw this...

  

...raindrops falling fast and steadily for hours. :(

I called the tennis club and sure enough it was cancelled for the day. So they are doing to run the camp Tues-Fri this week instead of the Mon-Thurs that was orginally scheduled. When I signed him up I was wondering why there wasn't any camp on Fridays. Now I guess we figured out why they do it that way.

This little guy hopes that this is the only day that he wakes up to all the wet though.

So instead of tennis and swimming with friends, Robby settled for a mean game of Battleship with his mama.

 

My dad got this game for Robby's birthday back in March. I knew it would be one he would really enjoy and he just loves it. However, it sure did take me awhile to get used to the 21st century version. I think the last time I had played Battleship, Pac-Man was the most current video game, so needless to say, the look of the game has changed a wee bit. ;)

By the end of today the rain had cleared and the sun showed itself for the final hours of the day. While I had dinner on the grill, the boys got the weekend yard clippings ready for tomorrows pick up. Obviously, Rob did some tree trimming this past weekend.

 

Here's to waking up to sunshine...

 

Yesterday, as much of our family that is in town, got together to celebrate my oldest brother's birthday. It was a gloomy day outside, but inside was a different story. Everyone spent a few fun hours celebrating, playing, catching up and eating. We had to celebrate quite a few days early since my brother will be in Las Vegas for his actual birthday. Pretty nice birthday present, huh?

 

That shirt my brother has on was part of our birthday present to him. He plays a lot of tennis and golf, so some new tennis digs were in order. I'm thinking he liked them since he promptly tried them on and stayed in the outfit for part of the evening.

There's another guy in our family who will be wearing some tennis gear today. Robby starts a four-day tennis and swim camp today with one of his friends. He's pretty excited about it, even if he claims he doesn't remember a thing from the four months of tennis lessons he took last summer. I'm thinking some of the things he already learned will come back again once he is out on the court. Either way, I'm sure he'll have a great time and I can't wait to hear about his first day.

On a quick scrappy note, Piggy Tales recently released two new lines, Yankee Doodle Dandy and Row, Row, Row Your Boat. They are both such fun and festive lines, especially for scrapping all the upcoming summer photos. I recently created a bunch of layouts and projects using the Yankee Doodle Dandy line for their upcoming Piggy Tales Academy Kit Club. Here is a peek at one of the projects.

  

 

I have to come clean. 

I have been cheating on my blog.

Yes, it's true. I have been spending my computer time elsewhere. Email, Facebook, Message Boards and even doing my share of blogging at other blogs. And every time I finish making the rounds elsewhere, I just don't put in the time I should to keep up my end of the relationship with Mr. blog. I even almost considered breaking it off.

Until yesterday.

I was sitting in my car waiting for the rain to let up so that Robby and I could make a run for it into the grocery store. I decided to check my email from my phone to pass the time. I see a new email from my dad with only an image attached. I open it to find this...

 

And I smiled.

And I sighed.

And I realized that I really do need to be better about blogging.

If not for me...if not for my scrap friends...if not for my life friends...if not for strangers who stop in to see what I'm creating...if not for the rest of my family...then definitely for my dad.

And so I will blog.

And I will never doubt that there is a good enough reason to blog again.

Because he is worth it.

 

This past week marked the first full week of summer vacation for Robby. One week before school ended, the Kindergarten had their graduation.

 

We couldn't be any prouder of the effort that Robby has made this past year. He was in the 'advanced' Kindergarten class in his school and just flourished within it. He earned the school award for having the most Reading Counts points out of all the seven Kindergarten classes in the school. He made fabulous new friends. He learned more about math and dictation and grammar and spelling and the environment and art and computers than I could have ever imagined possible in Kindergarten. When I was in Kindergarten, we took naps and the highlight of the weekwas who got to nap with the blowup character letter-of-the-week. I don't recall what letter I ended up getting but I know it wasn't in the first half of the alphabet because I remember spending most of the year just waiting for it to be my week to be able to nap with the letter. That was all I remember from Kindergarten. Well that and getting my hair pulled on the playground. But other than that. So it blows my mind the things that these little minds are capable of today. Amazing. 

Fast-forward two weeks to this weekend. This past first week of summer vacation was spent decompressing...or as Robby and I like to say...chillin'. We did some fun stuff, some have-to stuff, but mostly we did whatever-we-want-to stuff. It was a nice transition from school to summer.

As nice as the week was, by Friday I was ready for some 'Honey and Me' time. I had seen previews for The Hangover and thought it would be the perfect end of the week entertainment.

And it was.

Ahhh...a week complete.

Today was spent doing lots of things around (both inside and out) the house. However, the highlight was seeing my nephew play basketball and win in the finals in his team's division. Go Adam! Rob and Robby had been to see him play before, but this was my first time. So of course the camera came with.

 

 

And while her brother was busy tearing up the court, my niece watched from a seat high above.

 

We'll see these two again tomorrow at my oldest brother's early birthday party. Fun!

 

  

 

Seriously? Two weeks until summer vacation?

Seriously?

Wasn't it just spring break?

Oh man. I won't even begin to try and recap the gazillion days since my last post on the life front. Instead, I'll just ease back in to this by posting what I have been up to scrapwise. We'll start fresh with the life stuff next post. :)

I haven't been completely blog-absent. From this blog, yes. But I've been busy creating a bit for some others. Here's a little of what's been posted elsewhere.

First, for Scrapbook and Cards Today, I was created for the Monday and Wednesday blog posts for this week. You can check them out more about them here, but here are the two cards I created for the blog.

 

At Jillibean Soup, you have to check out the daily inspiration that is posted over there. That blog moves! (I think I need some pointers). Here's a few of the projects I have been creating for them over the past month that you can also check out on their blog.

 

  

 

 

 

 

I have one layout to share that was posted on the Dream Street blog this past week. It was inpired by one of Becky Fleck's great sketches and uses Amy Teet's Fresh line.

 

And last, but not least, I can't share most of what I have been doing for Piggy Tales because it is for their kits and such, but I can share a card I created recently which I made as a 'sidekick' to a layout I created for them a month or so ago.

  

 

 

 

Spring break is here and we, okay I, have high hopes for the coming week. I hope to be able to fit three things into each day this week, along with all the regular stuff that the days brings. For each day, (1) I hope to do something super fun for Robby, (2) get a large cleaning project done (i.e. spring clean), and (3) do something creative.

High hopes, I know. But I think we can do it. We already have each day planned for something fun for Robby to enjoy while he is out of school...I already have enough deadlines looming to fill in the creative stuff that needs to be done all week...and I already have my sights on some areas of the house that need my attention before they get out of control. Okay, too late there...but they WILL get my attention this week.

So yesterday we eased into the week by enjoying a leisurely Sunday around the house. Well, Robby and I were around the house and Rob was getting a few things done. We decided to heat the pool for spring break and Robby has been loving being able to jump in and out whenever the mood hits. Yesterday he and I enjoyed some Grilled Vegetable French Bread Pizza by the pool for lunch. And somebody decided when I got up to get the camera, that he was going to eat ALL of the pizza.

Stinker.

Luckily I know how to steal-back. ;)

Well we're off to start our productive and fun spring break week. I'm going to try and blog each night to report as to how well we did with our...okay my...high expectations for the days. Wish me luck!

 

Dads

Today my dad came over for a nice lunch together. With my dad living so close, this is something we definitely don't do often enough. My fault totally for letting life get so busy sometimes. But I am grateful for nice afternoons like this one when we get to sit for a little while and catch up. Awesome!

So I made us some sandwiches and dad brought the dessert. Oh yes, that's right. Lunch is not complete without...

 

Dessert

And as delicious as these look ... and as thoughtful as it was that he brought thes ... can you believe we didn't eat one!! Gasp!! No...we weren't being good. We were just too busy eating some chocolate-covered icing-topped brownies that I had picked up early this morning. Um...yeah. We were definitely covered in the dessert department today and it was lovely! :)

 

Determination

I thought I would share a layout I created recently with the Billy Goats Gruff collection from Piggy Tales. LOVE this line for my endless collection of boy photos. Especially love the bicycle theme used in this collection and thought it was perfect to finally scrap this photo of Robby from last year when he was riding his bike. It's been awhile since I created a layout with hidden journaling but thought this one really called for it...design-wise.

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

There have been a lot of reasons to celebrate around here lately. Mainly six reasons with our little guy turning six last week. He definitely celebrated to the max and enjoyed a birthday that lasted well into the weekend. I'll have to post a birthday summary this week, but before I do...I want to celebrate scrappy-style!

Scrapbook and Cards Today released their Spring 2009 issue and with it is celebrating their third anniversary!! HAPPY ANNIVERSARY SCT!! And I get to celebrate even that much more because I get to be a part of this fabulous publication! I couldn't be any more excited to be able to create for Catherine and Kerry and thank them endless for the opportunity to do so. It's already been a GREAT experience and I look forward to many issues to come!

I wanted to thank those who took the time to send me nice comments about my work in the issue. I appreciate it so, so much! I've received a few comments about the cover option I created. Thank you!! Last night, a great friend of mine was talking about it and wanted to see more of the detail. I showed her already, but thought I would post some more shots of the layout. The main shot here is a little blurry but you can see a better full shot of it in the magazine anyway. :)

 

 

 

It was so much fun...and SO easy...scrapping Greta Hammond's cute Ashlyn!! I don't think she could be any easier to scrap...SO CUTE!!!

I've been scrapping A LOT lately which has felt great!! Meanwhile, these guys have been busy practicing lots of baseball...that is, when there isn't team practice or an actual game. Yep, 'tis the season and we are baseball deep into it. It's so much fun...for all of us...so it's a great time of year if you ask me!

 

Silly boys. :)