I have been a busy little bee... scrapping like crazy whenever I can find a spare second! Hannah is keeping me CRAZY busy all the time, along with getting things organized for Baby 2! The ideas are just flowing, though and I am LOVING it!
I am going to post several layouts I have done in no particular order... probably order of photo date since that is how I organize them. Hope you like seeing all these photos! I may have posted a couple of these before... i can't remember!
thomas & i back when we were skinny and young and beautiful! :)
Amanda Rockwell's Back in Black 2 Collection: FlavorFull Kit at The Sweet Shoppe
Maria LaFrance's New Beginnings Kit at Digital Freebies and DigiScrapDivas
cardboard: Linda Gil Billdal's Cardboard Edge Overlays at ScrapArtist
textured background: Christina Renee's Urban Love Kit from her blog
One of the designers that I "work" for made a beautiful baby kit at my request. So, I made several birth announcement templates and Maria LaFrance is selling them in her stores at DigiScrapDivas and Digital Freebies! Check them out! My work is being SOLD!!! yea! Now hopefully someone will buy them so Maria can make some money for all her hard work designing the kit!
My big plans for the weekend (or what's left of it) include scrapping and trying not to freeze to death! Here in Florida, we aren't used to being cold! Our blood doesn't know how to handle it! Our heat went out on Friday night. I called our property management office on Saturday morning and they finally found a company that works on gas heaters (no one uses natural gas here). The repair guy finally got to our house at 8:30pm... we waited around until 9:45 for the property maintenance guy to get here and open the hot water heater closet. Apparently we don't have a traditional gas heater. Which is good since the repairman didn't actually know how to fix gas heaters anyway. They went in the hot water heater closet for about 10 minutes and came back in and told us that we should have heat in about 2 hours. So.... at midnight, it was still cold. We bundled Hannah in her warmest fleece jammies and put her in bed with us. It was 29 degrees Saturday night. We called the property management group again after church on Sunday. They sent us out to get space heaters. So, we cranked those up last night. It was so COLD last night, even with the space heaters. It was 30 degrees again last night. My family laughs at us because they are in Chicago and Utah now and it is so much colder there. But apartments here aren't designed for cold weather. We have single paned glass windows (big ones) and terrible heaters (when they work). Our apartment also gets no natural light during the day, so it never gets warm in here just from the sun. The insulation in this place stinks, too! You can literally feel the cold air blowing in through the walls. Of course that might be because our walls are nothing but rotten wood... this whole place is going to fall down around us one day. And we live in a pretty nice condo complex. anyway... the soonest the apartment maintenance guy will even call the hot water heater contractors in tomorrow. Tonight is supposed to be the coldest night yet. It looks like Hannah is going to be sleeping with us for a few more nights. I don't sleep well when she is in bed with us. She kicks my blankets off and I have to sleep on my right side the entire night, because I am afraid she'll kick my belly if I sleep on my left side. Can't have her kicking my big old pregnant belly. I don't know what could possibly be wrong with our heater. It worked fine 2 weeks ago. I am going to be MAD if there is nothing wrong with the hot water heater and the problem is just a crappy furnace. Especially since the repairman said the furnace is OLD and it would take weeks to get parts for it. I am OVER this place... I'm not renewing my lease for next year. What a pain!
Hannah and I went to JoAnn Fabrics today. Flannel is on sale today and I got some adorable flannel prints for a couple of baby blankets. I got some new yarn, too. SO CUTE! I have an afghan to finish for Amber's baby. I am on the last row. I have the yarn for Ashley's baby blanket and for Chrissy's baby blanket and for Angie's baby blanket. Each afghan only takes me about a week to get done if I concentrate and just do it instead of playing on my computer at night. I have yarn to do about three more for my baby, too. I better get busy.
holy cow!!!!!! i can't believe that episode! she has to wake up next episode. although, my theory is that they were trying to find a way to end the show... this should do it! but she has to wake up!
and who dies on desperate housewives??? sweeps time kills me...
I haven't blogged or scrapbooked in about a WEEK! I am having serious withdrawals! BUT with good reason... last week we got our tax return back and went out and bought a new laptop. YEA! Or so I thought... In my mind, I opened the box and plugged it in and started playing! WRONG! I spent all day trying to get the wireless router set up... then Thomas spent another 2 or so hours on the phone with his brother, Super Greg, trying to get the new laptop and the old PC to talk to each other so that we could transfer my files to the laptop. Then I had to install all the software on the new laptop. I am just finishing that step up. Part of the big problem here is that the new laptop uses Windows Vista and it just doesn't work like XP. So, not only are we trying to learn an entire new way of using Windows, but some of the programs just don't work well in Vista. We can't get PS7 to install on the laptop, so I downloaded the free trial of CS2 and now I LOVE it and don't want to go back to PS7. So, I am probably going to have to buy CS2. YIKES! Not cheap at all! And it takes FOREVER to unzip files and you can only do one at a time. If there is a way to do it with more than one file at a time, I haven't figured it out yet. I am not a Vista fan yet... but I wasn't a huge fan of Windows 3.1 when it came out either, so I am sure that I will come around eventually. And my screen is NOT properly calibrated, so what I am seeing on my scrapbook pages on the laptop is NOT what they will look like when printed... that's not good! I was working with a kit yesterday that I thought was peach, then I tipped the screen a little farther back and realized that the kit was actually yellow! Oops! I am just going to have to do my color corrections on the desktop or plug the laptop into the monitor occasionally.
I am getting ready to start a couple of large scrapbooking projects. I need to get a LOT of pages done in the next 2 weeks so that I can get them printed for 50% off at MyPublisher.
That's about it for now. Hannah is throwing a tantrum and I think dinner may be burning... I'll update again soon!
Today has actually been a pretty good day! And I owe it to SuperNanny. I used to make fun of parents who were on that show. And last night I was flipping channels and that is all that I could find to watch. The parents drove me nuts (as I predicted they would), but I started to see some startling similarities in Hannah's behavior and those horrible children. Granted, Hannah is only TWO, but if I don't do something about her terrible behavior now then she will turn into one of those children. And I will be the pathetically stressed-out mom on SuperNanny... you know, the one who majored in Marriage, Family & Human Development and can't control her children. I decided this morning that I was going to set limits with Hannah and not let her treat me badly. I will NOT allow my two year old to hurt me or to run my life. So, when I was ready to leave the house today, we did a count-down to leave time. It really helped. Instead of telling Hannah to get ready to go, I gave her more manageable, specific tasks to accomplish. When we got to the mall, instead of giving her the option of walking, I just pulled her out of her carseat and plunked her little behind in the stroller. I sound like crazy strict mom, I know, but I tried to make everything fun and more like a game. I gave her specific things to remember like that we needed to get batteries at WalMart. And we needed to find teriyaki sauce... wanna hear something funny? ask a 2 year old to say teriyaki sauce! :) I got a great laugh at that one. Hannah did really well for about 2 hours and then she started getting cranky. I made the mistake a Ross of not getting a cart and she started running wild, so that was my fault, not hers. And Hannah is a shoe-fanatic! She LOVES to try on shoes. I found her a really cute pair of brown leather OshKosh sandals for $10 at Ross. She wanted to put them on and wear them out of the store. But I hadn't paid for them yet and they are still a tad too big so I wouldn't let her wear them and she threw a tantrum, but considering how long we had been out and what time of day it was, she did remarkably well. We were using a chore chart for a few weeks and it really helped, but then I got lazy. So, I need to make a new chore chart and really stick with it. Hannah doesn't really have "chores" but she has to help Mommy make Hannah's bed (she hands me the pillow and the sham and then puts on her stuffed animals), help Mommy put away the dishes (the silverware, minus the knives, and her plastic plates and the tupperware), be cooperative in the bathtub, read scriptures/say family prayers at night & behave while we are doing it, etc... She gets a smiley-face for every job that she does willingly and a sad face for jobs that don't get done because she doesn't cooperate. It was great, but I think she is bored with it already. So I am going to get a treasure chest that I fill with little toys and candy and after she gets a certain number of smiley faces she can pick something out of the treasure chest. Anyway... hopefully things will keep getting better as she gets a little older. She is so funny and so smart. I love that little munchkin!
Wow!!!! What a beautiful kit collection! I am in love with this kit!
this is hannah and her aunt shelby (my little sis) in december 2005.this is one of my favorite layouts of my granny, just a few weeks before she passed away. tomorrow (wednesday) would have been her birthday. i miss her so much! i am going to try to get several more pages done about her hospice stay. hopefully hannah will cooperate! and those are scans of her crochet hook, the one I use when I am making special afghans for the babies in our family, the afghans that Granny would have made for them. 
layout credits: Laura Burger's Single-Dipped Knitted Flower
green paisley paper (recolored): Autumn Kit at by Am at AmsDigiScraps
safety pin & barcode: Traci Reed's Punk Love Kit at ACOT, barcode altered
notebook paper: Amanda Rockwell's Back in Black Collection: Bright Kit at The Sweet Shoppe
red paper: Veronica Peralta from RAKScraps 2006 December Mega Kit
off-white paper: Audra Little from RAKScraps 2006 December Mega Kit
tan stitching: Robin Cabana from RAKScraps 2006 December Mega Kit
heart tag: Meredith Cardall's January 2006 Ad Challenge Prize
strung alpha & fibers (recolored): Sandra Boddington's Birthday Kit at The Sweet Shoppe
special thanks to atomic cupcake for her inked edges action
crochet hook: scan of my Granny's actual hook
Photoshop 7
Fonts: susie's hand, Times New Roman
Things have been really hectic around here the last few days. I have been extra-tired for some reason and have had horrible sinus headaches. And of course, Hannah has been a real gem! She has been so funny and so entertaining, but so needy and so clingy and so cranky!
Have you ever had one of those days when you just don't think you can make it through one more day of poopy diapers or microwave one more chicken nugget? I've had a full week of those days! I was reading a post by a friend of mine, Gina, and she included a link to post that I think all mothers and mothers-to-be should read.
http://rocksinmydryer.typepad.com/shannon/2007/01/to_the_young_mo.html
When Hannah was a baby, I was tired all the time, but I never had days like these. I was so grateful to be a mother and to finally have a baby to hold in my arms. If the house didn't get clean, it was okay, I'd get to it the next day or when Hannah was sleeping. And I thought Hannah didn't sleep much back then... she sleeps less now! I am so exhausted all the time now. I am always sick. Hannah always needs Mommy. I can't even go to the grocery store without feeling like I am going to have a mental breakdown just trying to keep track of my child. She is at the point where she can climb out of the cart and if I try to just hold her hand, she runs away. Needless to say, we don't leave the house much anymore. How am I ever going to keep track of Hannah and take care of a little baby at the same time? On much less sleep than I am already getting? With a husband who is home even less because he is going to be starting school again? With a daughter who repeatedly tells me that she doesn't want a baby coming to live at her house? One minute at a time, and when one more minute seems like it is too long, one second at a time. Through a lot of prayer and deep-breathing and a LOT of phone calls to my mom and sisters! Thank goodness for unlimited long distance!
I hope I didn't scare anyone away from having kids or having a second child. I just wish that I had known I would have days like this and that some days I would spend as much time crying as my toddler! Consider yourselves all warned by me! :)
