Identity Crisis

I am having a Clark Kent/Super Man kind of day. Since I have become a mom, my identiy has been wrapped up in my kids. Every thing I do...every hour of the day...every day of the year has revolved around them. Alone time is precious and rare. I am a proud stay at home mom who rarely gets time away from my kids. I am okay with that. Until today.

Today was Isabel's first day of Kindergarten. Wow. I mean, just WOW! Can she really be this big? I have to admit, I wavered between tears and excitement when I left the school. I had to call my little sis and take a walk. LOL I have been waiting for this day. Both kids in school now. A few hours to myself. What a luxery! But all I felt was lonely. She is a fun little thing. She irritates me, argues with me, doesn't listen and is such a joy to be around. She makes life interesting. And I missed her. I'm sure I will get over that, though. It is only for 1/2 day. Hmmm...now I can't wait for full day! LOL
Now, I do not have preference over my kids. The reason Collin does not have any photos is because he was at the Children's Hospital in Indy with Daddy. He had an appointment for...you guessed it...the first day of school. What a bummer! Hopefully Dr. Susan will be able to figure out what is wrong. In the meantime, his first day is tomorrow and I will have some pictures then. Since I was missing my girl time...I took Isabel to Igloo for some frozen custard BEFORE lunch. You heard me. I'm a bad mommy. Bad to the bone. But fun! She was excited to do something special becuase...ahem...brother was going to the Children's Museum after his appointment. Without her. Mean Daddy. Mean brother. Yum...ice cream! She is easily distracted. LOL

The most exciting thing about today? Her first ever...very real...not given by mommy....homework. Yep. She was thrilled. She felt oh so important. She had a paper to fill out about herself so they can make a class book. Pretty big deal, huh?

So here she is. Not my baby any more. A "big girl" now. Am I ready for this?

Good enough is good enough...

Since it is SO hot outside (and my allergies are going crazy), I am having a creative day today. Well, it has been more like a creative five minutes here and a creative five minutes there, but it is working for me anyway. My brain has been stuck lately...too much to think about and too much going on, so it was nice to get a few things done.

I did one layout the last few days. It is only a one page layout, but it has been sitting on my desk taunting me. Telling me that it is not quite what I want it to be. Well, you know what, layout? I'm done with you. Good enough will have to be good enough this time. So there! LOL I love thise pictures of my girl and her first time doing a slip and slide. She was so excited. I forgot how much they can hurt, though.

I was feeling inspired to try and make my own patterened paper again. I haven't done that in YEARS ( I never like the way it comes out), but thought I would give it a go again. I stamped the background for this card and then distressed the paper with some Tim Holtz ink. Not too terrible.

I was excited today about 2 of my projects. Just felt inspired on these topics, I guess. First I made a birthday card for my little sister. She is turning 8 this week. :) I had loved (and missed) the Copic Challenge for making a bookmark, so I made her a card with a bookmark. (Sorry about the sideways pics; Blogger is acting up. However, if you hold your head JUUUUST so...you will not notice. LOL)

My (hopefully not) last project today was some notecards for the give bags I am making for the kids teachers. I found some for Collin's teacher, but they only had one pack, so I made some for Isabel's teacher. I like mine better. LOL

Later Gaters! I'm hoping to have a little more fun before I need to make dinner. Be on the look out for a challenge with a prize coming very soon. :)

An Ode to Jennifer....and a Copics Challenge

My friend Jen and I met in a very strange way...through a garage sale. LOL My DH went to her sale and brought me home one of her CTMH catalogs. The rest was history. We started at downline/upline and ended up great friends. I can always count on her to understand EXACTLY what I am talking about...and to be excited about the same silly things that get me happy. We don't live near each other any more and don't talk as much as we should/could/want to, but I don't think it matters how much time passes. We are friends no matter what.

We both would like to get back to scrapbooking more, so she challenged me to do a Copic Marker Challenge. The theme of the challenge is birds. Gee. It is not like I am obessed with Owls or anything. Picking WHICH stamp was the hardest part of this challenge.

I used one of my favorite color combos of Copics right now: B02, YG03 and E37 for the owls. Love them!

While I am sharing, I also just made this card the other day...inspired by Alice in Wonderland. Copics used for this one: YG03, B02, Y21, B24, E00, and RV11. Doesn't that Hero Arts set remind you of a modern Alice? So cute!

If you want to play along with the Copics Challenge (Yes, I mean YOU, Pam) then go here and see what you can make. http://copiccreations.wordpress.com/

Bugs in my brain

Do you know how distracting it can be to get things done if a fly is buzzing around you? It is probably one of the most distracting things in the world. Hard to think...hard to get anything finished. I guess the same could be said of mosquitos if you are camping and trying to sleep. Not the end of the world, but irritating nonetheless. Apparently, my kids are being bugs today. LOL They keep buzzing around me, interrupting what was supposed to be my mommy time. I will not give in, though. Usually a few times of interrupting my scrapping and I give up and put things away for another day. Today, however, I will prevail. I am taking care of business with the kiddos (no guilt here...I have been entertaining them non-stop for several weeks now) and getting my scrapping done, too. Slowly. Oh, so slowly. LOL

Here is the ONE thing I have managed to put together today. I have some pretty aweful (composition wise) pictures of Collin's first time roller skating (bad lighting and I did not have the camera...LOL). I found a sketch I liked in Creating Keepsakes May/June 2010 and built on that. It is clean, simple and I like it. Hopefully I can get some more done today to add to this post. :)

What can be better than pb and marshmellow sandwhiches?

There are just some foods that remind you of certain people. For example, when I think of my husband, I think, Mac and cheese. Orange Marmalade, homeade chip dip (miracle whip, mustard and ketchup) and bread and butter remind me of my grandma. Bacon (nice and crispy) reminds me of Sunday brunch with my grandpa. And peanut butter and marshmellow sandwhiches remind me of my dad. They are FAR from healthy the way he makes them (slathered in butter), so he would sneak them to us whenever my mom was out of the house and he needed to make lunch. We thought he was so cool. SO I have passed this onto my kiddos. We have them rarely and I don't use butter, but they think they are just as cool. :)I did 2 more cards yesterday and they were HARD! LOL I picked a challenge from this site: http://cas-tasticchallenges.blogspot.com/ and tried to make some cards that only had one layer. One layer? No patterned paper? Just stamps? Oh, boy! Let's see what you think.

Oh, I can't believe I never mentioned my darling daughter and her latest obsession: mustaches. Yep. You heard it right. She wants a mustache. Now, not a real one, but she did see some in a gumball machine and has begged and pleaded to have one, so...

We went out shopping and she wore it part of the morning. We got stopped a multitude of times with people wanting to tell her how cute she was. Wrong move, people. Baby girl got the idea in her head that people were making fun of her and she was done. Decided that having a mustache was a silly idea. I'm so glad I got some pictures first. :( I liked the mustache phase.

Give me back my Mojo, Pam!

I need ALOT of inspiration. I will admit it. It doesn't always come naturally. My excuse is that my brain is too full for new ideas sometimes. Really. I have a very full brain. LOL I recently found the answer to my full brain problems...a blog that lists daily challenges found on other blogs. How perfect is that? Now I can have inspiration at my fingertips any day of the week. Most of my scrappy friends live far away, so that is a great way for us to do some challenges together. :)

http://dailydare4u.blogspot.com/

I got my favorite scrappy friend, Pam on board to play with me. In fact, now that I think about it, I think I was much more inspired when Pam lived closer to me. Hmmmm...maybe she stole my Mojo. That has to be it. Anyway, the challenge link I chose for today is found at Sweet Sketch Wednesday. Here is the sketch for today:

Here is my interpretation of the sketch:

Not bad, not bad. I love the house part. I have been struggling lately with choosing papers. I don't know why. Maybe I need some new ones. ;) Here is another card and 2 layouts I have finished in the last week. I have chatted with Pam. Maybe some of my Mojo leaked back out over the phone. I hope she is taking good care of it.

Okay, now for the most exciting thing of all! Seriously, I haven't stopped smiling since I bought it. I am totally in love with it:

For those of you who think I have lost my mind along with my mojo (maybe Pam took that, too). Take a closer look at my "disposable" Starbucks cup. It is NOT disposable! It is a double insulated tumbler cup made to look like a Starbucks cup. How clever is that. It does a great job keeping my ice water icy and I think it is too cute. (Billy thinks it is retarded, but he didn't pay for it...LOL)

Off to finish up one of my favorite layouts that I have done in a long time. I hope to post it soon!

We are here! We are here! We are here! We are here!

Or at least, I am here. I just love Horton Hears a Who. First of all, who doesn't love an elephant who hears voices. And secondly, don't we all just want to be noticed? I look at my little wall of subscribers and feel loved. I'm sorry I have been neglecting you.

So today Isabel is not feeling well. I'm sorry she is sick, but oh, I have needed a "play day"! She is happily watching cartoons on the couch and I am sitting in my studio deciding whether to create something or organize. LOL Which do I like better? Anyway, I am keeping her in popsicles and happily watching Julie & Julia. What a lovely day!

I hope all of you had a wonderful Mother's Day. My kids are getting to the age where they like to participate in it more and are so excited to make me/buy me things. This year, Collin's teacher at school really outdid herself with having the kids make things for Mother's Day. On Friday, Collin happily ran out of school holding a plastic cup in which he planted some flowers that were beginning to sprout. He proudly thrust it at me shouting "Happy Valentines Day"! I love it! He was also thrilled to have some other surprises for me in his bookbag. He enjoyed playing a "can you guess what I made you...don't look in my bag" sort of game with me all that afternoon. The kids also picked me out some gifts (from Goodwill...we are not rich, you know...lol) that they were delighted with. Isabel got me the school house and Collin got me the tiger. I am a lucky mom.

Although my time to create has been sparse, I have made a few cards lately. Of course, I keep mailing them off without pictures. LOL However, I did try a new type of card called an easle card. You can find the directions for it here: http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/easelcard/

It was much easier than I thought and really a lovely card to decorate. You should give them a try.

Now that we have had a nice chat, I am going to get back to finishing up some layouts. How refreshing is that?