IT'S THE BIG 10 COUNTDOWN FOR SAM 10TH BDAY

Today is a special day in this house!! It's officially the countdown to Sam's 10th birthday!! DID YOU SEE THAT?? HE WILL BE 10.... DOUBLE DIGITS..... YOUNG BOY......ALMOST TEEN......MY LAST BABY......MY ONLY BOY......where did the time go, why did it have to go so fast and all these years are like a blur. So many fun times with this boy and I don't want to forget them and have them end yet either. I have wanted a boy forever since I grew up with girls and had 3 girls before this baby boy of mine came. If I knew for sure the next baby would be a boy I would have had another one gladly but after all these girls I wasn't taking the chance.
He is extra special and extra sweet because he's the youngest and only boy. I wake him every morning telling him how cute he is and how much I LOVE HIM!!!

So anyhow why is this birthday special.... well he will be 10 on the 10th this month. I'm sure that means something and probably even has a name...... for me the 10th bday rocks in our house. We always give them a friends bday at this age and this year we are doing a laser tag party with 10 boys at our local bowling alley. Sam is over the moon excited and can't wait till it's party time.

Untill then though his sisters and I have secretly planned a 10 days till your 10 countdown calender for him and I wrapped up 10 gifts which he will get to open one each day till he's 10. It all starts tomorrow when he gets up. This is top secret and he will be soooo excited to have these extra special things for him. So thru this week I will be sharing some photos of him and his birthday Q&A that I do on their bdays and next week he gets to take the pictures for the day and help me with Project Life.

I have some pictures below that are some of my favorite of him growing up and will do more later this week and/or on his actual birthday. Hope you enjoy them and see just how big he has gotten.

LOOK AT HIM AT JUST 5 YEARS AGO, HE'S SO TINY AND SWEET AND LOVED LOVED ME SO MUCH. WANTED TO BE WITH ME AND PLAY AND THOUGHT I WAS COOL. HE LOVED TO PLAY WITH CARS, READ BOOKS, PLAY BALL, DO PUZZLES FOR HOURS, CLEAN HOUSE, EAT EVERYTHING I GAVE HIM. OH DO I MISS THIS BOY AND HIS LITTLE FACE AND VOICE. HE IS GROWING UP SO FAST RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES. ABOUT THE CAKE YES IT'S PINK HE LIKED LIGHT COLORS AND THAT WAS PINK AND YES HE WAS VERY HAPPY WITH IT AND LOVED HELPING ME FROST IT. REMEMBER I'VE SAID BAKING IS NOT MY THING ESPECIALLY CAKES. SO IN FIVE MORE YEARS HE WILL BE 15 already he will be a young man with a deeper voice, taller then me, hopefully eat everything I feed him and hopefully will still think I'm COOL and hang out with me. I loved going back over these pictures and remembering all the good times he's had.
Here he is at 5 and at pre-k sitting with his first crush, Lily..... these two loved each other like crazy. they would blush just talking and playing together. She just moved this year so we don't see her anymore but he's had her in class every year since pre-k..... so adorable
oh how I love love this boy of mine, look at that face and those too short pants and cheesy smile. I want this little boy back.
He loves loves the snow and would live out there all day if I let him. Most of my favorite pictures of him are in the snow or at least outside enjoying nature.
he loved finding eggs in the house, just to practice and for pretend Easter. Look at his short hair and cute cheeks. Where does the time go???
look at that sweet face and little hands. he was always so sweet in the mornings. he would always let me get his picture and smile cute for me.
Here is our picture from tonight before trick/treating.... they look soooo dang cute and big. I'm so glad my sister got to come with us this year. Summer said she wanted to be in charge of all the kids and for me and my sister to walk way behind them. They all did good together and walked holding hands, so dang cute and so dang big (sniff, sniff) I will do a post on this later this week with more pictures but I had to at least show one photo tonight. Love you kids!!

30 DAYS OF GRATITUDE.... HOPE YOU WILL JOIN ME

Here is my little gratitude idea for our family. We have done this on/off for 5 years now and every year I love it more. Every day there is a little something to be thankful for and just for these 30 days we try to really focus on these. This is my favorite thing to do each year and you know by reading my blog that the little things are what's BIG and makes me HAPPY!! To be honest the kids aren't always thrilled about this and don't like cutting out all the leaves but I'm hoping by keeping this tradition they will appreciate it when they are older and can pass it to their kids.

The way we do this is by cutting out all these leaves that I drew with a stencil and putting them in a jar. Everyday at dinner we think about what we are thankful for and write it down and tape it to the door. If we have more then one we use more leaves then, this is always a good thing. So by the end of the month our door is filled with gratitude and love and special memories. What I will do at the end is put them all in an envelope and include it in my project life album.

For the month of November my photos for Project Life will be of what I'm thankful for that day. This is what I did last year and it was so heartwarming to do this and really made me slow down and look for these moments. Last year I posted pretty daily on these photos, this year I'm not sure yet. If they aren't up daily they will go up weekly.

I have one special friend who also does a 30 days of gratitude and will be jumping in with her to post about this every week. She is encouraging others to do this in any way they want. So many ideas are out there, a journal, photos, digital, turkey's, tree's, anything goes with this project. It will be so exciting to see everyone's ideas and what they find everyday to be thankful for. I have a link to her blog and this special project and will try to have it on the right side tonight or tomorrow. Her blog is inspiring and warm which always feels my heart with joy and a smile to my face.

I do plan on keeping my Project Life thankful photos different from my thankful leaves. I figure the photos are of things I see everyday and the leaves will be the things maybe I can't take pictures of or of things from my past or gestures from my kids or others. Even with all this my creative side is calling out to do a artsy journal too, not sure if I can handle all 3 of these but we will see.

SO HOW ABOUT IT, DO YOU WANT TO JOIN THE FUN??? DO YOU WANT TO SLOW DOWN YOUR DAYS AND LOOK FOR THINGS THAT FILL YOUR HEART WITH JOY AND NOTICE THE THINGS IN YOUR LIFE TO BE THANKFUL FOR AND TO HAVE GRATITUDE FOR ALL THAT WE TAKE FOR GRANTED. YOU CAN DO THIS ANY WAY YOU WANT, MAKE IT BIG OR SIMPLE. I HOPE YOU WILL WANT TO SHARE WITH US. LEAVE ME A COMMENT IF YOU ARE AND EVEN IF YOU AREN'T.

We will start on November 1st and go to the last day. The leaves on the door in my photo are just to give you an idea how it will look, the real ones will be on Tuesday. If you have already done these in the past or something like this please share those ideas too.

My biggest THANK YOU is to all of you for being a friend and even though we have never met you all touch a part of my life and have a part of my heart. All of you are so sweet, positive, supportive, inspiring, fun, sweet, generous AMAZING BLOG FRIENDS A GIRL COULD WISH FOR. So thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing so much of yourselves with me.

But until then HAVE A HAPPY, FUN, SPOOKY, SAFE HALLOWEEN!!

November Project and NEW ART!!

Here is my November project, will post more when it's done. Just wanted you to have a peek. HOPING YOU WILL JOIN ME IN THIS!! Below is some art I've done this week, had one really bad day this week. Nothing I was creating would work the way I wanted and I gave up and was moody all day. Thankfully a positive and understanding BONITA helped me out of this funk and the next day I whipped up a few projects that make me happy. I'm thankful for all the love and support you give me here ladies, it means the WORLD TO ME!! Happy Weekend!
I created this one last weekend. I thought of the word DISTANCE and wanting to remember that this is place is important to me and I need to make the time for it. NO MORE EXCUSES! JUST DO IT !! I do like the page but wish the little squares were bigger and the letters more WHITE!! I've accepted my handwriting, it's not the best but it tells the story.
sorry this one isn't straight. my dog kept sniffing the picture and I was hurrying. I really like how this one came about. These colors were on my mind today so I did the painting first, just played. Then while it was drying went and looked for a picture and this one looked great with the grass and her pink flip flops. The only trouble was the title, didn't have all the alphas I needed so I wrote in the last "L" and then added the little trims under the photo. So happy to be creating this day since the day before wasn't working for me.
I love this picture of Renee whose the oldest looking out at the kids, it was too cold for her to get in. For once my page isn't too beachy looking which makes me happy.

MY THANKSGIVING STORY.....

Hi everybody,

My computer won't let me upload my pictures for some reason, was going to post new art and my November thankful project. So instead I will share about my obsession with THANKSGIVING!! Some of you may have heard all this before but for the new readers I thought they'd like to hear. My husband and I love love this holiday, it's all about the food for us that day. We are still thankful for this day, don't get me wrong but we LOVE OUR TURKEY!! It started when we got married and has only gotten worse. This is my one holiday that I don't stress over.... no shopping at the mall, no wrapping, no surprises, no cake, no ANYTHING BUT TURKEY!! It's so bad that even for the week or two before this day I barely cook any meat or mashed potatoes or rolls, just so we can anticipate having them on this day. We only have TURKEY this one time a year, don't mess with this tradition... my husband tried this one year and failed miserably. The last couple days before Thanksgiving nothing tastes good to me, I eat little things thru the days but really I'm just waiting for this Turkey my husband is cooking for us. We use to be able to wait till 4/5 to eat well we are soooo sad that it's usually done by noon or one at the latest.
Ok I give you permission to laugh at us, call us crazy or anything else. I know we are over the top about this but it doesn't matter this is what we do. We don't mess with the recipes either, everything is the same, EVERY YEAR!! Don't mess with what works I always say... so we have turkey, stuffing, deiveled eggs, cranberry sauce out of a can, pork&beans, corn, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls&butter, pumpkin pie for dessert. This is what makes us happy!!
Now let's talk about those kids of ours, you know the ones we HAVE TO SHARE THIS FOOD WITH!!! HAHAHA just kidding, we gladly share and make way more then we can ever eat. All our girls love this holiday and love it more each year, they always love the parades and sitting and being lazy, watching movies, eating leftovers for the next 2 days. The love this day and will do this with their families I'm sure.
Now how about that SON OF MINE, you know it's now secret that I've wanted boys and especially love love that I have this one and only boy of mine. Oh what joy that he was due to be born this month of Thanksgiving, we were even more happy about that. This sweet little angel was born 2 weeks before the big day, just what I wanted so I could be home to enjoy this favorite day all of us together. Well that little baby slept most of the morning like an angel then when we sat down to eat, he cried and cried for hours. That whole day he was fussy and just not his usual self. Every year since then it's gotten worse, fast forward to know since this is getting way tooo long. He hates Thanksgiving not how it become but just what it involves. NO WAY WILL HE EAT ANY OF THIS YUMMY FOOD, NO WAY TO THE PARADES, NO WAY TO ANY OF THIS JOYOUS DAY, NOPE HE EATS A CORN DOG AND MUNCHES ON SNACKS AND THEN HAS PUMPKIN PIE WHEN WE DO. Last year he was a bear all day, I'm secretly thinking of sending him to a family member this year or ANYWHERE just not HERE!! Just kidding again, but seriously how did this happen to us???? How can he not like this day, really since he was a baby this has happened. I blame it on me for wanting this to be his special holiday with us, I jinxed it!!
So that's our story about THANKSGIVING!! The next best thing is the leftovers, we get up early the next day just to have a turkey sandwich for breakfast. Hope you enjoyed my story and will try to post my pictures again tomorrow. Thanks for reading all this if you did!!!

Some favorites from my December Daily 2010

I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite memories/pages from last years December Daily album. Everyday I keep reading it before going to bed and am loving it even more a year later. Doing another one this year seems like the right thing to do, the memories and special times all wrapped around this one little album. Going to try and make it much easier this time, with only one picture per day, please hold me accountable to this so I don't get CRAZY with picture overload. Hoping to have my plan to share with you soon. Going to be working on my Thanksgiving projects this week and hope to post them this weekend. So I hope you enjoy going back to last year December 2010 when I made my very first December Daily. Oh and yes it was hard to pick just some of my favorites but these should be enough for now.

I love that the first snow came on Dec. 1st last year, what perfect start to the album. The little journal cards were the advent cards for my kids. On the back was a hint of what activity we were going to do that day. We made homemade wreaths for their bedroom doors. Look at little Lucky, so cute and tiny and loved the snow!!

Project Life Oct. 9-15 and what's happening around our house

Thinking of adding in a page of Renee's thoughts on homecoming to this week too. Just realized that I'm not caught up, didn't do this past week's pictures. How the heck did that happen??? Possibly due to my cold and can't think straight and all the coughing I'm doing. Will post more project life this week when I get it ready.


It feels good to be caught up in my Project Life, missed a couple weeks here and there but it's all done now. Getting ideas on how to do next years, thinking of making 4x6 for the busy weeks instead of adding in the extra page protectors, also adding in more journaling about our weeks too not sure how to add it but will think of something. We all seem to be a little under the weather here major colds with sore throats and coughing. The weather was nice over the weekend after all that rain we had. It was soooo nice to be outside again. My daughter Renee just tried out for the winter play and got 4 parts in it!! Yippeee the play is 'A CHRISTMAS CAROL" she is excited. Sam's soccer is almost over, couple of make up games then the tournament weekend and then it's his 10th birthday!! So we are going to be buuuusssy for a few weeks. One more week till Halloween already too, making plans still for this night. My menu is going ok, couple of changes had to be made and I'm working on next months which is tricky with all the activities and THANKSGIVING!! I can't wait to have that turkey dinner. Will post the menu when it's finished. Will be posting some art and scrapbook pages this week too. Hope everyone enjoys their last week of October.

ONCE UPON A TIME..... PART 2 THE DANCE

AND THE STORY BEGINS WITH SOME OF HER GETTING HER MAKE UP ON. I forgot all day to take pictures till now, how the heck did that happen!! Note to self remember camera next year.



I love this one of her, probably my favorite of the whole night. The rest of the pictures below are blurry and kinda dark. Such a bummer about that, wanted the perfect photo but it was dark and stormy out and not good lighting in my living room. You can still see how pretty she looked though and very HAPPY. I love those braces and they go with all the bling she has on already. Look at those hoop clip on earrings, she was so excited to find them today. I also forgot the camera while she got her hair done and her nails by her sister. So mad at forgetting it. So here is the young lady playing Cinderella tonight....



SO EXCITED AND TICKLED PURPLE.... IT'S ALMOST TIME

the fake nails (check) the bracelet (check) the necklace ( check) ready to go ( check)
too blurry I know, but still pretty
I like that all her friends had different colors and styles of dresses, so pretty they all look. So off she went to Applebee's for dinner and then to the dance. At the dance they had a little photo booth like at the malls and she and 2 friends took some pictures in it, they came out cute!! She danced all night long in her bare feet, just like I use to do. Her curls were still bouncy all thru the weekend. She said the high school dances are way better the the middle school dances because everyone dances and not just stand around. Everyone liked her dress and loved her hair. She lost the hoop earrings while dancing, I figured they would and she lost 2 of her nails. The price we pay for beauty, right?!! I think the night was magical for us both and it's only the beginning, hoping the rest go this smoothly. Next year her sister will be in HS and it will be double the FUN... I hope so!! Thank you ladies for getting excited with us and enjoying this fairy tale.
THE END
P.S. the Cinderella slept till 11:30 the next day......

More art and a page about ME

I DID A PAGE WITH ME ON IT!!! Love love these colors and the page came out how I imagined it. This is crooked though I think and I have words on the bottom too. Didn't want to write on it in case I made a mistake so used word stickers to describe ME RIGHT NOW!! Might have to take another photo of this page??? I really really wanted to paint some white on here and orange splatters but left it clean and simple for now.
this is a favorite of mine now, kinda like that yellow one from yesterday. it just makes me happy. I tried new colors and the little flowers, do they need some outlining??? Let me know if they are too plain, I do like them but maybe outline would be nice too. No words to this one yet, just enjoying what I did. Totally playing and not thinking.
just a happy colorful page in my journal. planning on doing this kinda monthly. just picking a color then finding more of that color and put them all together.
the left side is my first attempt at panchanella and the right is my 4th I think. the first looks "wrong" but that's ok, I'm learning and still like it for that and will try to do something with it. The right side was much better and love these colors. These were both just about playing and not making anything yet. Same with the next one.
just some playing with the colors and circles, not sure what I will add to this yet.

Art pages and journals

I have been having fun again with my art pages using a new goodie from my dear friend Bonita. She sent me some panchella which is kinda like a stencil and so cool to use. I used it some of the pages from today and have more for tomorrow and even a scrap page about ME for tomorrow. Figure I should break all these up a little so it's not to overwhelming. For those who read my post about all the rain we had this weekend. Well mother nature came out shining and warm today for us. It was sooo nice to be out again and even the dog kept wanting to go out and run.
Enjoy my pages and have a good day.

New art/scrap pages and some art journal pages

I love making fall pages and adding this photo to it made it even more special. Thanks for the panchella Bonita, do you see it? LOVE LOVE THIS!! I kept adding more to this and had fun with all my favorite fall colors. Also made my first little tag, going to make more of these. I love the fall from that year, the kids had a ball decorating the front yard for fall.
So many good things about this page, the best is thanks to my friend Bonita who sent me some panchella which helped me make this page. I love the happy colors to this and that it turned out the exact way I pictured it. So even though there's no word/photos on it I'm loving it this way. Might add more stuff later but for now it's been sitting beside me making me happy. Thanks Bonita for this special gift. This was the second piece I made that night I got it.

this was about PP which I shy away from using but love so much. Once I made it smaller it was easier to play with and PLAY I DID!! Totally love the bright colors and that I can still have white showing since it's my COLOR.
had soooo much fun with this one. just wanted to keep adding more stuff to it and love the way it feels and looks like fall. all my favorites are here.

Rain rain go away weekend and updates

This weekend was a busy one and VERY RAINY RAINY ONE!! I'm sharing some pictures of all the rain just so you get an idea. It poured hard for 5/6 hours on Saturday and then just a regular light rain the rest of the day. High high winds all day that flickered our lights constantly, lucky the power never stayed off for longer then 5mts. but what a pain. There was also lightening and thundering all morning too. So we didn't do too much, stayed in and the girls and I watched FOOTLOOSE the original one and they kinda liked it. So much swearing and brief nudity that I'd forgotten about though. Have to watch out for those pg-13 movies. Sam watched some boy action movie from the library.

Renee's homecoming went AWESOME she says and had tons of fun. She looked beautiful and so grown up. Will be posting later about it because I have some photos from my cell phone that I'd like to include but not sure how to upload them, looking for my connector piece. Thank you for all your good wishes for her. I fell asleep at 10:30 on the chair waiting for her, pretty sad that I can't make it past 10 anymore.

I did have some fun in my art journal and scrapping/ art pages, since we had no good natural light all weekend I couldn't get picture. It rained all day yesterday too, the sun is already out today though so will take pictures and share them later too.

Remember in my last post about doing a December Daily album, well the idea comes from Ali Edwards who I loooove and think she's the best!! Well lucky for us she just started a little post or peek about her DD this year. It's very exciting news for those who wanted a kit and/or special album made just for this project. So go peek at her blog and she shares her links to the last few DD she's done which are always great to read and really help you. JUST CLICK ON HER NAME TO THE RIGHT OF MY BLOG TO TAKE YOU THERE. I just started pulling out my Christmas leftovers from last year's DD and thinking of how simple to make this years. Glad to see some of you wanting to join this year too.

Also working on a thankful family tree we do every year for November and will post pictures of that soon too. I just love this time of year, so many good things to look forward to and enjoy. I'm already drooling over Thanksgiving and can't wait to eat our big dinner we have.

Happy Monday everyone and thanks for coming by.

the backyard of the ditch, gets overfilled and spills into our yard. Makes a huge mess but so far has never came close enough to damage house. Thank goodness!!
our backyard has some puddles and the ground is soft and yucky all around. Can't walk Lucky during this so we take him for walks on the road instead.
This is the ditch outside our front window, see the neighbor across the street now look at the next picture and see how much more rain we got later
Our poor neighbor across the street gets it pretty bad. We hate it when this happens to them. Cars driving by actually slow down and some even take pictures. Hope this is the last bad rain of the year.