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...

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

SUMMER if finally here...

Myka at his end of year pool party!

Ahh I love summer! And it is so darn nice to be able to sleep in a bit too!

Myka is officially a FIRST GRADER! Can you believe it??? Where has the time gone. His last day of school was Friday, and so we have really just been hangin' out since... I know it is SOOOOO important for him to continue reading every day so he doesn't regress. He is such a great reader, and I think if he keeps it up, he'll be headin' in to first grade with flying colors. So what I have done is set up a "Myka's Summer Reading List" and we write down the books that HE reads to ME. When he gets to 10, he earns something - a small treat, etc. We'll see at the end of summer how many he has read! Status now: 5 books read since school got out.

Now, I still read to him too, and we have so many books (gotta love Scholastic Book Clubs) but a new thing we are hooked on now is this series for young readers called "Magic Tree House" books. There are tons of them! They are chapter books, and definately not something Myka can read on his own yet, but he loves them! It's about a brother and sister who discovered a magic tree house filled with books. Each book in the tree house (and thus each book in the series) takes them back in time to the topic of the book. We read about 2 chapters a night, and get through a book usually in about a week. We started at number 1, and just finished number 2 in the series, so we are on to number 3 "Mummies in the Morning"

In addition to getting summer started, I have spent the last four days backing up ALL of our pictures on my new FreeAgent 500GB Hard Drive - got a great deal on it from Office Depot last week and I feel so much better! I was stressing over my pictures. I had tons on an old computer we don't use much, and 3 CF cards full of pics, and knew I couldn't store them on our computer BUT we don't have a CD/DVD burner on my old work computer I am using so that was not an option. My laptop is broke and probably not worth fixing, so I came up with this more affordable solution until we can get a new computer one day. However it will probably take half a lifetime to use up 500GB in just pictures.



I plan to start doing some digital scrapbooking on the computer because it is really bugging me that I haven't scrapbooked in ages. I have TONS of supplies, but for some things, like Mykas school photo books, I think I am going to do digitally on the computer.



So, hopefully now that summer is here, I reallyhope to get this blog going. Plus I am on a new journey to lower our expenses so I will keep you up to date on that too. I lowered our weekly grocery/household buget from $150 to $100, starting now, so we'll see how it goes. I know it sounds like a lot, and from the research I have been doing, lots of people with familes of 4 and even 6 have a budget less than that, so we should be able to do it. And then get it down less before long too. Time to make sure we know where every dollar is going, and save as much as we can. I have some great links to post for anyone else interested in cutting down their grocery bills! Maybe I'll post those soon...



Love to you all!