Ha ha ha ha ha

This is a great website.... I know if I dug deep I could find a few that would be deserving enough to go up there!

http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

Awwww...

Here is a page I created the other day... of Myka and Josh on Easter in 2004 - so he was 3. Wow how time flies. Myka got bubbles in his basket and Josh was showing him how to blow bubbles...

I love CVS

Did you know that with a little time, and some planning, you can get some great household neccessities at CVS for FREE or next to nothing?

It's true. Shocking, I know. Nothing these days is cheap.... but last summer I heard the buzz on "CVS-ing" where you match coupons with their specials that give ECB's (extra care bucks - money to spend at CVS later). I did this last summer and got tons of things like toothbrushes, toothpaste, bodywash, etc etc for mostly free or for pennies. Once school started, I just didn't have the time to keep up with it, though I wish I had.

So I started back up collecting the coupon inserts and this is what I just got at CVS:

2 tubes of Crest toothpaste for $1.16, and earned $4 in CVS extra care bucks to use next time.

Yay!

FREE at last!

Until August 20-something anyhow....

I officially finished my first year of Nursing school last week. And it took me a darn week to recoop, I tell ya. Finals wore me out,but thankfully they went very well, and I managed two A's and 1 B (in mental health... go figure - ha!). But in the stuff that KEEPS YOU ALIVE - I got A's - so I am hopin' that's a a good sign?

--> This time next year I will have graduated and I can't believe how fast it's going! YAY!

Anyhow, so now that the semester is over, I have the summer off and I have great aspirations for what I want to accomplish this summer. Here's a brief list:

1. Trip to Missouri end of June. Driving. Sanity stealer? Probably. But I'll recoop once I get to catch up with the fam there.
2. Buy a NCLEX-RN book and take practice questions daily (um...like 5 or 10 MOST!). This is the big test you have to take to get your license.
3. Get my 16 volunteer hours in that I have to have before graduation.
4. Go through the bazillion and one toys Myka has - and sell some, donate some.
5. Clear out clutter.... and I have lots.
6.Join the gym. Like I should have done that last week. But still plan to.
7. Read more good books. I am in a book reading frenzy.
8. Garage Sale. This helps with #4 and #5.
9. Get Organized. Ha.
10. Scrapbook more. Take some cool online classes and attempt digital photography in the *gasp* manual mode.
11. I have more, I just know it....

SO there's the plan.

The End.

PreK 2006-2007

Here are the pages to Myka's prek scrapbook. If you are a scrapbooker too, and want to know the products I used, click this link and it will take you to my DigiShopTalk gallery. It may take a few days for all these pictures to be in that gallery but I'll have all the layouts there with a list of the products I used if anyone is interested.

I am *hoping* that once I get several examples done, that I can start creating albums for other people. With these of Myka's, I am going to have them printed at a photo lab, and slip them into a traditional scrapbook. But you can also have them printed into board books, etc so I am really excited to get this going.

Thanks for looking :)

April Fools...

Ok. I make a promise to post on my blog at least once a day.

APRIL FOOLS!

Ha. Ok that was dumb but I always have good intentions to post regularly. There is so much cool stuff I have been doing but I havent been doing any blogging.... other than reading lots of other blogs.

Anyhow, a few things I wanted to mention, first today of course is April 1st - and April is Autism Awareness Month and tomorrow, April 2nd is World Autism Awareness Day This is a cause that is really important to me. While Myka has not been diagnosed with Autism he definitely has some special needs including his social skills, and learning how to deal with his anxiety or frusturation. Just knowing that your child may not fit into that perfectly square box that society has created for them - it is really frusturating. Autism is such a broad spectrum. More and more children are being diagnosed, and there needs to be more research, support, and progress towards helping the children of our future generations.

Now... onto what has kept me so busy the last week or so (besides school, a big GI test last week -scored 94% by the way, work, keeping up with Myka and his homework, etc) I have been working on "digital" scrapbooking. I finally finished Myka's preK album and will post it all here in the next day or so, and then tonight I worked on a layout for my super cool sister Caitlin. I am going to put together an album for her of pics of her and her super cool boyfriend, Thiago.

So.... here is what I did tonight, and I am super happy with myself and am LOVING this new way of scrapbooking!

Product used: Wishes & Dreams kit from Oscraps

Yay me! On top of finishing Myka's album and then doing this one, I actually feel a ...gasp...sense of ACCOMPLISHMENT! Instead of my usual feeling of never getting anything done...

So, there ya have it. And I'll add Mykas album pics up here soon!

I love Photoshop

So those of you know know me (that is, IF anyone even reads this darn thing besides me?)... you know I scrapbook. Well....back it up. I USED to scrapbook, years ago, I started right after Myka was born, loved it, then started an online business with it, and (thank God) the business took off like crazy - dang near overnight it seemed.

So I never seemed to have much time to actually scrapbook then, and that went on for a few years while I continued to hoard super cool supplies and papers and stickers and embellishments along the way. I knew one day I would get to scrapbook again.

Then in 2007 I sold the business, and thought "Yes! Finally, I will be able to scrapbook for myself again!".

And then one day in October of that year I got this wild, crazy, semi-mad idea that I wanted to go back and get my Nusing degree. I say go back, because I had originally started this process those early years after Myka was born, until the business took off and I had no time to go to school. So, in a brief moment of insanity, I registered again for school, and got into the program. So.... since then I havn't picked up one piece of scrapbook paper to do anything with.

Honestly, I haven't even printed pictures for the last few years (thanks to my Nikon D70 and a FreeAgent 750GB hard drive). But I have been secretly admiring the new world of scrapbooking - the digital version where you create your pages in a photo editing program (Photoshop CS2 for me) and then print them out and slip 'em into an album.

Well I FINALLY started this process awhile back and though it's been slow going, I have almost completed my first project: Myka's PreK album. WHOOO HOO!!! Pop the champagne!

So here is a page I did tonight, and I thought I'd make it my photo for the day - and then I'll post all of it when I am done, hopefully next week sometime. Or next year. Who knows.

3.19.09
Credits:
xOxO Kit from Oscraps
Template (I Love My CT3) by Darcy Baldwin from Sweet Shoppe Designs