our apartment is starting to feel like home! I just hung curtains in the family room/office area. I tried to use the holes that were already in the wall, but they weren't the right size. I think the morons who fixed this place up before we moved in used caulking instead of spackling to fill the h0les in the walls. Then they didn't sand or paint them. But the curtains are blocking too much of the natural light we get so I am going to have to move the curtains over another 6 inches on each side. I hope the curtain rod is long enough! Then I am going to have to re-do my photo arrangements. We only have one window in the living area (family room, office, dining room, kitchen) so we need all the natural light we can get. I feel like I am in a dungeon. They are bright yellow curtains so they shouldn't block too much, but I just feel claustrophobic. i need to take a bunch more stuff down to the garage like pictures we aren't using, extension cords, extra curtains, flower arrangements, etc... I need to clean the house one day and then take photos. Maybe I will do that on Wednesday. A couple of guys from church are coming over Wednesday night and the last thing I need is for them to go home and tell their wives how messy my house is! I better start cleaning now!
Monday, August 28, 2006
Sunday, August 27, 2006
I just don't know what to do with myself!
Hannah & Thomas are both napping! I just caught up on a few blogs and posted a few layouts and ate a piece of cake. I don't know what to do now! :) Maybe I'll have another piece of cake! :)
Chrissy, do you have pictures of the cabin? I asked your dad for some old photos of the cabin or any photos of the cabin, but I haven't heard back from him yet. I want to make a scrapbook about the cabin and have it printed and bound and kept up there. I just don't have any photos.... I have the kit, but not the photos... I think I have some old photos from the first time I went up there but I have to go to my mom's house and scan them and they really aren't that great.
Okay, I am off to scrap now... Hope everyone has a good rest of the weekend!
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Busy Little Bee!
I just posted 30 new layouts that I have done since the last time I posted. Most of them are pretty simple layouts. I am really trying to get caught up with my scrapbooking. Hannah is 2 years old now and I still haven't finished scrapping her first birthday! I take way too many pictures! Thank goodness for digital cameras! I wouldn't be able to afford to scrapbook if I had to develop my photos, too! :)
We are doing pretty well these days. I haven't been feeling all that well. I have horrendous heartburn. I think I am going to request some Nexium the next time I talk to the doctor. Hannah has been really snuggly the last few days. I think she can sense that I am not feeling well and that I need her to behave and give me lots of hugs! What a sweet little girl! She still has her temper tantrum moments, but she has gotten much better over the last week (knock on wood!). I think she is getting ready to go through another growth spurt. She is sleeping a lot and eating CONSTANTLY! She is already in 3T & 4T dresses. I could not believe it! On her birthday, I put a Gap 4T dress on her and it fit! They tend to run small, but still!
Hannah had a good birthday! I made her a cake again this year. I don't know why every year I think I have suddenly developed cake decorating skills! This year was a Cinderella cake. I used a Funfetti cake mix, so when I tipped it out of the pan, there weren't a lot of details, so I had to wing it! Let's just say that she didn't have a noticeable nose, her eyes were too far apart and her lips were ENORMOUS! I made 10 different colors of frosting for this cake! Next year we are going for something simple like a ladybug or a butterfly. Why couldn't we have done Blues Clues? You can't mess up a blue dog! My goal is to get at least some of her birthday photos scrapped this coming week. I hate scrapping birthday parties!
Well, my friends, life certainly is interesting and just when you think you have things figured out, you get thrown a curveball. There have been a lot of crazy things happening in our family lately. I guess our job is just to have the faith that what is happening is part of God's plan for us. It is hard to remember...
I discovered a new digital designer today! Her name is Tiffany Brady and she is from Utah. I saw an ad for her Creative Team, but I saw it too late! She had already filled all her spots. :::sigh::: She did send me a coupon, though, and I went and got some really cute stuff at her store at Plain Digital Wrapper. I love that site!
Well, Hannah is crying for a different Dora. She has had the squirties all day today. I think she had too many olives yesterday. Yuck! I am going to go cuddle with my baby. Have a great rest of your weekend!
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
it's working!
Do you like my new dress??? Okay, not the dress I'm wearing, but my blog's dress. It has a little bit different feel. I need a visual change every now and then. not that i ever really look at my own blog, but you know what I mean! :) hope everyone is having a good day!
changes
i don't deal well with change! and there are just too many changes going on. people are getting pregnant, people are having babies, people are moving, people are redecorating houses. all good things, just something to get used to. and i have something of my own to announce! changes will be coming to meredith's blog soon! i know you are all so excited to see what happens here! i am redecorating my blog! i have been working on it for a few days and I am having some issues with it, but I'll try to get it up in the next few days. other than that, i have a chat at noon today and allergy shots after that. doesn't that sound like fun?! lol oh well! have a great day!
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
good morning
hannah fell asleep at 8:30 last night. imagine my surprise that when i woke up to potty at 7:30 this morning, she was still sleeping. i figured she would wake up any minute, so i grabbed a book and read. at 9:00 she finally woke up! little stinker! i should have gone back to sleep. she is in a good mood today, so that's something new! we have had a really good morning so far. when hannah got up she wanted to come sit in mommy's bed. thomas didn't have to work until late, so we just hung out in our room for 15 minutes or so. sadly, that is more time together than we usually have. but i enjoyed every minute of it!
thanks for the birthday wishes yesterday! I am another year older. I always expect to somehow feel different after a birthday, but I never do. It's kind of disappointing, but it is also quite a relief as I get older! :) i had a good day, uneventful as usual. no complaints here! i'll take uneventful day anytime. i got some scrapbooking done and had a "tea" party with hannah. then we vacuumed the house together! little munchkin cracks me up! she pushes her little corn popper around and pretends to vacuum. My mom is trying to find a little vacuum for her for her birthday. Ruthie said that Dirt Devil makes a small vacuum that runs on battery power and it really works. I'm all for that! Hannah will vacuum the house twice a day at least! sounds good to me!
Monday, August 14, 2006
It's my party!
Okay, so it really isn't so much a party as it is just another day... but it is MY DAY!
So, what am I going to do today? Well, Hannah woke me up at 7 this morning. I couldn't sleep last night. There was a documentary on Sept 11 on the History Channel that Thomas had on. I couldn't take my eyes off it. Still, almost 5 years later, the images still have such a powerful effect on me. Everyone is talking about these movies that are coming out and I just don't think I am ready to watch a movie about such a horrible life-altering day and call it entertainment. When we finally turned it off at 2am, I couldn't sleep. So, needless to say, I am exhausted again. I have already cleaned the bathrooms and done dishes. I still need to dust, vacuum & mop. Thomas is working until 9 tonight. And I have about 4 loads of laundry to keep me company. My sister, Ashley, and my sister-in-law, Amber, may come over and watch my new DVD that I got for my birthday. Thanks Amber!!! :) I have to go buy a carbon monoxide detector because we don't have one and don't want to die. The water heater closet in the main hallway of the building always smells like gas. That's never good. We may make a trip to Wal-Mart and to the dumpster to take out the garbage... Sounds like a great start to my 28th year! toilets, trash, potty-training, laundry, cooking, dusting, mopping, vacuuming, the good stuff in life! :)
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Exhausted!
I just posted a link to some layouts I have thrown together over the last week. I have been so busy that I have just done them as I can and I think they turned out pretty well for the most part. I am determined to use every kit I have at least once, so I have been going back through all my old kits and trying to find things to use. I have found some beautiful stuff that I completely forgot I had. I hadn't ever used my Dana Zarling kit before Friday. How could I have forgotten about that??? And Amanda Rockwell's Watermelon Patch kit... what was I thinking??? I did get some cute new kits this week. There is an AMAZING sale at SweetShoppeDesigns until tomorrow. I love it when they retire kits because you can get them dirtcheap. And on my scrapbooking budget that is WONDERFUL! And I also went to PlainDigitalWrapper's blog and found some coupon codes to use in their store. I got a Holly McCaig kit for $3!!! Oh! And I got Fee Jardine's Wild Animals stamps & brushes set for 40% off from the DST newsletter. I spent less than $25 and got 15+ products. Pretty good if you ask me. Now I can't shop again until Christmas. I have new kits coming out of my ears right now! Tracy Blankenship, Sue Bond & Doris Castle are all sponsors for RAKScraps in September! They gave us AMAZING kits to work with! I got the new Laura Burger kit, Too Hot, to work with as well. I am so excited for that one! The colors are so bright! I also have a Melissa Goerke kit and a Rachel Dickson kit, too! AND I am a Guest CT for an amazing designer in the month of September, but I can't announce that until after she does. So, that's a surprise for now!
and on top of all the scrapbook news, I am turning TWENTY-SEVEN tomorrow. I deserve a break just for making it this far in life! lol I am soooo tired! That is really pathetic isn't it?! :) We had a carnival at church yesterday. I got to the church at 7am and didn't leave until after 2pm. It was HOT! I was dripping with sweat before 8am. Gross! I don't like to sweat. We had a good time. We were planning for 300 people, but hoping for about 150. We probably had 100-125. We were so busy we didn't have time to count. We ordered 50 pizzas from Dominos and also had hotdogs. We were giving away pizzas & hotdogs yesterday to anyone who would take them. After church today we were still trying to get rid of those dang hotdogs. At least they were BallPark all beef hotdogs. I wanted to use Nathan's, but they were too expensive at Costco & BJs & Sams, so we went with BallPark. Then, after I bought all the hotdogs, I ran to the grocery store and they had Nathan's on sale for the same price as BallPark. So we made nasty hotdogs for no reason. But they got eaten. We had a lot of support from the parents of the kids who came, but there wasn't much support outside of that. Most of our teachers didn't show up. Three of our little nursery teachers came and three of our other teachers came. In all fairness, 3 of our teachers were out of town, one had to work, and one was sick. It turned out rather well and everyone had a good time. Next time I think we will do more of the big activities like the dunk tank & moon bounce and less of the little booths. The younger kids really liked the little games, so maybe we would just do fewer of them. The cotton candy machine was a bust. It was way too humid here to make cotton candy. We are getting popcorn next time. We are also going to try to get a giant slide or a climbing wall or something. We'll have more than 2 weeks notice for that hopefully! There was a 70% chance of severe thunderstorms all day yesterday. Literally, as I was putting the helium tank in my car to return to the party store, it started raining and storming like crazy. It was like God waited until I put the last thing in my trunk and then just let it come down. I was so thankful that it waited to rain. And by the way, helium tanks are very very VERY heavy. After the carnival I was exhausted, but I decided to put the helium tank in my trunk by myself. I almost died trying to lift that thing. I thought my insides were going to come out. I feel better today, just tired. So, Hannah is finally napping, I'm going to go, too! later...
Amanda Rockwell's Watermelon Patch Kit
Priscilla Halliday's Big Flower Layered Template on her Priscilla's Thoughts Blog*
Atomic Cupcake's Pristine Chipboard Action
Photoshop 7.0
Fonts: Pharmacy; CK Handprint
*I altered the template to fit an 11x8.5 layout and then I added additional photos to the template.
Image Copyrighted by Meredith Cardall, 2006
Monday, August 07, 2006
photos from last summer... Scrapartist's Splash Kit
Floral Bkgrd by Sarah Batdorf
Photo corner by Jomi
staple by donna doherty
stitching by donna doherty
stamped alpha by donna doherty
Inked Edges Action by Atomic Cupcake
Virtual Photographer: Reminiscing
Photoshop 7.0
Fonts: A&S Black Swan
Image Copyrighted by Meredith Cardall, 2006
