Drum Roll Please...

Adrian's first little tooth has busted out! It was like pulling teeth (pun intended) to get a peek, but there it was... his bottom left tooth! I felt it after he grabbed my finger and bit down. We are doin' the tooth dance! In other news... Rhiannon comes home today after an eight day stay at her dad's house in Maryland. She is pretty excited to see what the Easter Bunny brought her.

We had a pretty calm weekend here. Saturday was our third wedding anniversary. We went out to dinner with Vickie and Russ. It was a good time but unfortunately my taste buds were on the fritz because of my head cold. Bummer. After dinner we went to Babies R Us to get Tewk (as Corey has been calling him since he was born.... Corey has a nickname for everybody he knows..) some new Jammies. He is seven months old wearing 12 month clothing. We also got him a Bumbo seat, a new Baby Einstein DVD, and another Fisher Price crib aquarium thingy since the one I had stopped moving. All in all it was a good outting!

Here are some layouts that I did over the weekend. They were for a challenge at StoneAccentsStudios.com, but unfortunately I have been experiencing some technical difficulty uploading them to their site so I will have to show them off here. The first one was for their Sas-Y Self challenge. You had to scrap a photo of yourself as a teenager. Please don't laugh at our huge hair... we were very chic for the time. lol. This is one of my favorite pictures of my mom and me. It was taken, in our front yard, six months before we fond out she had cancer. I was a junior in high school.


Designer credits: Those Irish Eyes by BooLand Designs

My next layout is my first two pager. There is nothing more amazing than watching your children grow. Too bad it happens so fast!

Designer credits: Cheeky Charlie Monkey (Animals of the Zoo Collection) by Scrappin' Happens Digital Designs... Journaling tag from Sweet Honey by Verena Karolyi and Doreen Stoltz

Teething

Well it has finally arrived. Adrian's pearly whites are trying to force their way out, and the poor little guy can't get any sleep. That of course means that mommy and daddy can't sleep either. A couple days ago I pulled a box of Rhiannon's baby stuff out of storage. I found the Fisher Price aquarium that attaches to the crib. I tell you what.... here's to you Mr. Fisher Price aquarium thingy inventor... your contraption, with it's wiggly fishys and lifelike (smirk) wave sounds, has made my baby forget his pain... even if momentarily. We salute you!

Our Easter was so uneventful it was wonderful. The most exciting thing we did all day was rent Superbad from Pay-Per-View. I laughed the whole time! Truly not a movie to watch if you don't have a sense of humor. You know who those people are too. They're the ones that after you have asked them... "hey did you see insert funny movie of your choice here?"... they purse their lips and retort back with something about how stupid that movie was. Well no shit. It was intended to be stupid and slap stick. They weren't looking to win an oscar or be known as intellectually stimulating. Give me a break. Life is too short not to have a sense of humor. Add that to my pet peeve list: people with no sense of humor! I am fortunate to have some great friends with great senses of humor. Love you guys!!

Here are a couple of layouts I did. The first one is to commemorate Rhiannon's first lost tooth! My friend and digital scrapbook mentor if you will, Rachel, created this coordinated kit just for me to use with these photos. I absolutely love it. The link to download this kit is on her blog at http://www.simplyracheluncensored.blogspot.com/. There are plenty of other elements so it can be used to scrap photos that are non tooth related. The next layout is another years' past layout. Rhiannon was 3 years old and sitting amongst the fallen leaves, in our front yard, picking dandelions. I shot so many photos that day and I had a tough time choosing my favorites for the layout. I just might have to make this one a two pager. I love how children see beauty in the simplest of things. When we see our lawn full of dandelions my husband runs to get the lawn mower to get rid of the nasty things... you know before the neighbors start to think we don't "maintain our lawn". Rhiannon on the other hand sees a yard full of pretty little yellow wild flowers. The world would be a better place if we all thought like children once in a while. I did create an Easter layout, but I'm not happy with it. I spent all morning downloading a huge Easter kit, just to find that I don't like it at all. See... size doesn't always matter. ha ha. I will find a better kit and rescrap those photos.


Designer credits: Under My Pillow by Steel City Scraps

Designer credits: Autumn Splendor by Christy Lyle

Rhiannon's Easter Masterpiece...

Just wanted to share a few things real quick while the baby's taking a siesta. Rhiannon just left for a week long stay at her dad's house in Maryland. She drew him this picture, which I just thought was too cute:

Yesterday my friend Vickie stopped by and brought us this awesome Easter Bunny cake. All that's left are his ears and half his bow tie!! If only he wasn't so yummy! Thanks Vick!


This morning we had a visit from some really nice folks that have a female bullmastiff. They want to breed their Vegas with our Torino. They are going to be some gorgeous pups. I just hope my hubby and I can keep our willpower up and take the money instead of a pup! If not I'll have to come up with a cute destination name somewhere midway between Torino, Italy and Las Vegas, Nevada. Our pug's name is Sicily and I often wonder how many people "get" the names.........

Scrapbook Page

Completed another scrapbook page from years' past. This is Rhiannon opening her presents from my dad and step-mom in Las Vegas. It is a package she looks forward to every year. I take a bunch of photos to send them since they can't be here in person to watch her open them. This was Christmas 2003, and she was 2 and a half years old.



Designer Credits: background paper from Sweet Honey by Verena Karolyi and Doreen Stoltz and elements from Sleigh Bells Ring GDS collab. kit

What to do....

I rent space at The Craft & Antique Co-Op in Painesville Township. I have two 100 square foot spaces. I pay just about $200 per month, 20% of my sales, and have to volunteer to work three days per month. My dilemma is.... what to do with my children. The Co-Op is open Thursday thru Sunday from 10:00-5:00. My husband's mom was laid off from work and she had been watching the babe for me, on Fridays, so that I could put in my time. Rhiannon gets on the bus at 8:20 am and off at 4:00 so I would work at the wop (as my husband and I call it) until 3:30. Well... they called her back to work yesterday and to top things off, Rhiannon doesn't have school. Situations like this are just a huge reminder of my lack of family. I'll fgure it out, I've asked my friend Vickie if she'll watch them. She's one of the few people I trust with my babe. Here's the link to the Co-Op... it's a pretty neat place. http://www.craftandantique.com/. Alas I just might have to pack it in here soon. It's not making me money, since the baby came along, because I just don't have the time to devote to it. It's too bad though because I have so many things that I need to get rid of!!

A Quick Post

Just a quick post with my latest creation. Hopefully I will have time for more later!

Designer credits: Cool Boy kit by Designs by Coralie

Adrian's First Auto-Rama

I know it is Tuesday already, but I am still feeling relief that this past weekend is over!! Two childrens' birthday parties, a trip to the West side of Cleveland for the Auto-Rama, dinner at Red Robin, and a mini shopping spree at Lowe's... I am pooped! The Auto-Rama was fun, but it is always a challenge to get a good look at things when you have two children in tote. The WCW wrestler, Scott Steiner, was in the lobby of the IX Center when we arrived, and was nice enough to pose for a photo with the family. Rhiannon was happy as a peach that she got her first autograph..... even if it was just from a gal with legs up to her neck in black hot pants. So now she has a car poster signed by the girl posing with the car. Wonder where we'll hang that. All in all it was a fun time.

I joined a forum at Makeitscrappy.com, and decided to partake in their template challenge. Here is my first submission:

Designer Credits: Template by Rose McDigital Designs - Kit: Pocketful of Posies by Leslie Emery

My Jasmine Scented Kitchen

Add homemade soap making to my extensive list of hobbies. Or at least the list of things that I get myself involved with thinking I will have enough time to make it a hobby *snort*. Well I got frisky yesterday and I recruited Rhiannon to help me make some soap. It's been awhile and my husband keeps reminding me that my soap making paraphernalia takes up an entire cabinet in our kitchen. I simply retort back with something about his basket full of Hot Rod magazines dating back to the late '90s. He shuts up. So anyway... we finished our first batch of soap and, in my infinite clumsiness, I dumped the entire container of Jasmine scented oil on the kitchen floor. Scrub as I may I cannot get the smell out of the air. I'm sure it was absorbed into the grout. Today the smell has wafted down (down two steps that is) into my office. Completely fine for the first half of the day, but now I think I may vomit. This has probably ruined the smell of Jasmine for me.... kinda like the shea butter scented Huggie's wipes... they're fine for a tinkle diaper, but... well.. you get the idea. Now that is two ingredients I will no longer be putting in my soaps.

I never should have dabbled with templates. I made another page from Anastasia's wedding. I can bang out a page in 15 minutes using a template. About an hour when I don't. Talk about feeling like you've accomplished something. I told Rachel that I feel like I am cheating my creativity, so I will try not to get addicted to these template thingys. Suppose I should scrap a page or two from my own wedding. I was heartbroken to find that the second disk of my wedding photos is empty. Where the hell did they go? How could they have disappeared? Luckily I have a physical album with all of the photos. I guess I will have to scan them in my free time.... all 2 seconds of it.

Template by Andrea Gold, papers from The Promise Collection by shabbyprincess and Be Mine by Retrodiva Designs, element from Elevation by A. Teets.

Anastasia

Did a quick page tonight using a template. I see them on the freebie sites all of the time and needed to know what they were. It never occured to me to use shadows... now I know. This is one of my dearest friends, Anastasia, on her wedding day. She and her hubby, Carlos, got married in Maui, and we were fortunate enough to attend. Lots more pics to scrap!!

Template by Amy W. Designs, and papers and elements from The Promise Collection by shabbyprincessdesigns.

Michele....

Allright. I'm finally ready to put it all out there... or begin to anyway. For some reason I have been hearing about a lot of people finding out that they, or a loved one, have cancer lately. I am no stranger to cancer. My mother, Michele... or Miki as her friends called her, passed away from cancer in 1993. She was only 42, and I was only 18. My grandmother passed away from ovarian cancer 3 years later, but she deserves her own thunder in a later blog.

Before I begin the story of her journey down cancer's wicked path, I want to tell you a little bit about my mom. She was truly a wonderful person. I don't just say that in the way that everyone who dies young is a "wonderful" person.... I watch the news... I notice that whenever someone dies, they were just the best person around. (Don't assholes ever die?) Don't get me started on that topic... maybe another time. She would give you anything she had if you needed it. I am sitting here trying to come up with the best adjectives to describe her, I think some of them would be beautiful, charismatic, loving, caring, respectful, intelligent, talented, artisitc, fun loving, outgoing, classy, sexy, funny, magnetic, it goes on and on. I realize I can't paint the picture of who she truly was unless you were one of the people to have been blessed by knowing her. You will just have to take me for my word. My grandmother told me once that she would always set an extra place or two at the holiday dinner table because my mom was sure to bring someone, less fortunate, home for a holiday meal. That was her.

I am an only child and my mom divorced my father when I was only 2. She worked two jobs to support us for a few years. We lived right next door to my grandparents in Thompson, Ohio until 1985 when we moved a whopping 6 miles away. They had a big hand in raising me. In about 1980 she met my stepfather; Paul. She was the love of his life and everything was good until she got really sick and eventually passed away. He was a very good father to me.... considering I didn't see my real one from the time I was 4 until I was 26. Oh so many stories to tell. Anyway I will blog about him someday too, but I can only bare one heartbreak at a time.

Well I guess I will start with the "story". I might not finish it all in this one sitting, but I will finish it. It was November of 1992. I was a senior at Geneva High School and was very involved with my high school sweetheart; Billy. My mom was the administrative assistant to the vice president in charge of quality assurance at Allen Bradley (which is now Rockwell Corporation). She had a very heavy workload and a stressful job. She was also in the midst of rehearsals for Steel Magnolias at Lakeland Community College. One of her passions was acting and she was very involved with local and community theaters. She started having severe headaches and went to see our family doctor.... who also knew her personally. He attributed the headaches to stress and sent her home with some pain medication. About a week later they were still very bad so she scheduled another appointment. Dr. Soandso was out of town so she ended up seeing a different one. He took one look in her eyes with the light thingy....you know what I mean, and ordered an MRI. The MRI found a brain tumor. I remember that evening well. I came home from being somewhere with Billy and she asked me to sit down in the living room. I remember the numbness that washed over me when she told me the news. She reassured me that it was going to be allright. They were going to remove the tumor, get her going on radiation therapy, and it was all going to be allright. Numbness... nothing but numbness.

I can't go on anymore with this right now. I need a break. This is my favorite picture of her. It was taken about a year or two before she was diagnosed with cancer. Below her is a picture of one of her paintings. Did I mention she was an artist. She studied at the Dayton Art Institute after high school. Yes... I am extremely proud of her.

Thought I would share a little of our winter wonderland. These were taken today!

I know he's thinking that he can't move his limbs or get his fingers in his mouth.

March is truly in like a lion for those of us in Northeast Ohio! On Wednesday we had a severe ice storm, and beginning Friday we had nearly a foot and a half of snow dumped on us. I wonder why I don't move sometimes! I finally hooked up the old pc and transfered my older photos that were stored there. My goal is to create a scrapbook for every year since the kids were born. Here is a page I created with a photo from Rhiannon's 1st trick-or-treat in 2003. She was 2 years old.


This was created using Harvest Spice paper from Shabbyprincess, and elements from Trick-or-Treat by Andrea Gold.