enjoying summer

A quick recap on my life.

I taught seminary for my church this past year. That meant getting up at 5 every weekday morning and learning about the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the high school kids in my church. It was the best. It was hard, but like I saw on Pinterest, "If it's not challenging, it won't change you." So very true. We wrapped up a year of studying the Doctrine and Covenants, a book of scripture from the early years of our church. It's beautiful because it's the Lord speaking to His people. Encouraging them, teaching them, chastising them when needed, but most importantly, loving them. It was a good year. And now I'm having a hard time sleeping past 5. :) But I'll adjust.

Annie's doing great. She's still a missionary in Frankfurt. She's growing, learning, trusting, praying, and being formed into who the Lord needs her to be.

Ethan's doing great. He finished his Junior year in really fine style. He's really grown up this year, doing a lot of things without being asked. My favorite thing? He still tells me I'm the best mommy ever. I'm enjoying having him around. :)

Kelly is doing great too. He got released as Bishop of our congregation a week ago. He served for five years. It was a blessing for our family. He's enjoying not doing anything, but that will change very soon I'm sure. It's been nice to have him around more. We're doing a lot of yard work now.

Oh, and he's started eating spinach. He said he was wrong about it his whole life. He was thinking of Popeye version of spinach. I introduced him to fresh. Yah!

Here are my projects with the June Cocoa Daisy kit, Let's Go. I loved how varied this kit was, I have pink and turquoise and red and yellow. But somehow, it all works together so very nicely.

For my friend MK. Writing 50 things you love about someone is a good exercise, you should try it today.

Because reddish pink and charcoal grey go well together. Add some feathers, and life is good.

I think the triangle paper may be some of my most favorite ever. And this layout isn't about washing a car. :)

Here's the kit. It's a good one. All in all, it's just like life. It's good. :) I can't complain. Wouldn't want to anyway.

Thinking it's been a while. Understatement.

Let's see if I remember how to do this... Life sure has changed since my last blog post. Annie is now in Germany, she's been there since September. It's really cool to see her growing. It's also hard to not be able to just pick up the phone and call her. We get sad and droopy somedays missing her. But she's doing well. I update her blog fairly well, so if you'd like to follow her adventures, you can check it out: www.23epicthings.blogspot.com.  This is a layout I just made about her using the March 2015 Cocoa Daisy kit called Hello Again. She likes to take pictures of cute cars, the love of cute cars runs in our family. My mom loves them too. 

Ethan's now a junior in high school. He just planned out his senior year of classes. Holy cow. I know how this ends, it's not something I'm looking forward to. He's such a fun kid, I really enjoy our after school visiting sessions. He's got a great mind. I made this layout to let him know how much I enjoy picking him up from school every day. It's not cool for him, but he is almost always cheerful about the whole thing. I'll miss it. I erased the pencil on my journaling a little too soon, but it was all stitched down, so I just left it. Grrrrr. 

I have the best husband. This just happened last week. I was busy with my to-do list that was up to here. He gently reminded me that people are more important that papers and computers. I always tell the people I work with that very thing, but sometimes I forget to take my own advice. How blessed I am to have him to remind me. This layout was for the Bonjour add on. I loved that paper from Crate Paper. I just kept cutting it up. :)

And me? I'm loving teaching Seminary. It's been such an amazing opportunity, I am learning so much and feel very loved by my Heavenly Father and Savior. It takes a lot of my free time, I hope someday to figure out how to balance. :)

I did get a chance to get some decorating done for the main floor powder room (that sounds so fancy). I wanted to get it done for some wonderful guests who were coming to town, but didn't quite get it done, as usual... I will post a picture as soon as I have the last two elements: a plant stand and a garbage can. And I have to print off something for some frames.

I have

Nearly Perfect Is Now Minus One

So this weekend was a big one for our family.

My sweet Annie, our precious daughter and Ethan's treasured sister, graduated high school this past May. This means she is now a college student. Meaning for us, we had to drop her off, say goodbye, and drive away, with her seat in the car empty yesterday.

It's been pretty emotional.

We packed up the car and drove to Provo, it's closer than I thought when we go I70 :) 500 miles door to door :) We took her to The Creamery where she'll be buying most of her groceries and went through what to look for, aisle by aisle. We went and picked up her books from the bookstore, my how buying books has changed! We also went to a local grocery store that had more selection, just to give her an idea of what to do when she had access to a vehicle. We went to dinner at the Olive Garden where I started into labor with her almost 19 years ago. Then we checked her into her apartment and got her mostly moved in. We still had an hour drive to get to my parents house so we left her kitchen supplies for her to unpack and headed to Grandpa and Grandma's for the rest of the weekend.

It was a special time for our family. Full of good times and more than afew tears. We drove away Monday morning, leaving her with my parents, she wanted to spend a few days with them, and they'll drop her off for new student orientation. We had to get Ethan back to school... And now we are adjusting to missing her. What a huge hole such a little girl can leave. Thanksgiving can't come soon enough.

I'm so blessed to have been her momma for the 18+ years (yes, I know I'm still her momma, it's just a bit different without her here). It's been nearly perfect, we have a really good family life, something I was promised a long time ago. I was talking to Kelly about how we got married because we really liked each other, then we got two awesome kids as a bonus, and now Annie will be spreading her wings, closely followed by Ethan, which means it will be just Kelly and me again. It's a good thing we still really like each other. The thing I didn't realize when I became a mother was just how much of a bonus my kids would be for our family unit. Makes it hard when they start to leave, but how great it's been! 

So here we are, checking our phones for texts far too often than I care to admit. And enjoying every single minute of the next three years we have with Ethan. It goes way too fast.

She promised to send me pictures of her first day. 

I had to finish up my Cocoa Daisy work before we left, I was a little melancholy, so two of the three designs are based on Annie. They make me smile. I ended up really liking the kit, it was hard to get into, but once I got going it really worked well for me. :)

Reveal of 5th & Main is tomorrow at 9 EST. Christine has a special offer for her 3rd anniversary, it's really a good time to be at Cocoa Daisy. Join us!

12 years later

if you happened to miss it, last friday was a blog hop for write.click.scrapbook as well as the new gallery reveal for june. the theme for the month was team pairings, and i was lucky enough to get alexandra as my pairing. see friday's post for her inspiration piece, here's what i did with it: 

every year, on may 12th, i celebrate my life-iversary, i was diagnosed with heart failure 12 years ago and the prognosis wasn't too good. but so far, things have proved otherwise. the journaling on this is very heartfelt (that's so funny to say, you wouldn't believe how many terms we use on a regular basis reference the heart. having heart failure puts a whole new spin on saying things like bless your heart...), i still can't make it through reading it without crying. i really have been blessed these 12 years, but i'd really like to keep going a bit longer.

a little late because i am lazy

i bought a laptop in january so i'd have computer access at CHA. that laptop has changed my life. it's also made me a little bit lazy. all my photos are on the iMac upstairs (although that is currently downstairs, another story altogether) because that's hooked up to my non-wireless printer. so lately i've been doing all my computing (and all that blogging that i do) on the laptop because it's easy and i don't get nearly as tied to the computer for some reason, but that also means all my cocoa daisy projects for the march kit are on this computer, which is usually upstairs and takes forever to boot up (should get that looked into...).  this means i haven't posted pictures to my blog. but today, i change that. :)

we had international reveal yesterday at cocoa daisy, it's a new thing we started last month because nearly half the team is international and sometimes they don't get their kits until a day before reveal or even later. i don't know about you, but i do not work well under that sort of time pressure. so christine decided to do two reveals, one on the 28th for stateside DT work and another on the 14th for the international DT. it's been amazing to see what a little more time does! their work was awesome before this, but it's phenomenal now.

and i'm telling you this because? i don't remember. i started down a path and have plumb forgotten. just thought i'd let you know a little bit about cocoa daisy...

any way, here's my march gallery.

oh, i remember now!

 

i was telling you that because i really struggled with this month's kit. there were awesome things in it, lots and lots of embellishments, enough paper that i knew i could use easily, and the stamps were amazing! but the colors were softer and i struggle with pastels. always have. hopefully i won't always will. i have gotten over phobias in the past, i need to work on this one. the reason i was telling you about international reveal was i thought everyone did an amazing job with the kit and made it look easy. i am very happy with how my work turned out, i just had to push myself to get anything i liked. i suppose that happens on occasion.

again, here's my march gallery. i'll walk you through how i survived it:

the paper from crate saved me. who could not love happy flowers. and if you look back to this post, you might notice something. i totally scraplifted the card. turned it into a layout because i knew it worked the first time, it had to work again. so that's my valuable lesson numbers one and two for you today. use paper you love and scraplift. i also loved the may arts ribbon. you'll see that again. and again. this photo isn't one of my best, it was snapped before i knew a bit about lighting and such. but it was a proud moment and i decided it was time to scrap it. it really doesn't work with the paper, but valuable lesson number three? so what. things do not have to work perfectly together. and the title? there are only three people in the picture. so what possessed me to name it that? well it's the chant from thumb wars, of course: "1,2,3,4, i declare a thumb war!"

this paper from pink paislee, well i had originally put it aside, not me. i've never been scuba diving, have no pictures of fish, nothing that would be supported by paper with fish on it. i was cropping with my denver girls and we discussed the paper, when i remembered another card i'd done about birthday fishes. a clever play on words, yes? so this card came into being. valuable lesson number four: you don't have to use paper as it seems to be intended. think outside the box. putting a birthday hat on anything that shouldn't be wearing a birthday hat is rather rewarding. try it sometime. notice the canvas ribbon again?

this next card. yes it took me a long time. but i knew it would look awesome. thank you to christyn for the lovely background book paper. it's from sense and sensibility. and after i got over the horror of using such a lovely book for such purposes (christyn showed me the book came to her in pieces, unusable already, making me feel better. valuable lesson number 5: it's ok to repurpose something that may have ended up in the trash), i enjoyed painting and stamping over it. makes a nice background, don't you think?

took my favorite papers, stamped with the quatrefoil stamp, and began cutting. i was inspired by a gorgeous piece of art by jill ricci. (i want to be like jill when i grow up) check out her site, hello lovely! i think my card is lovely and i was lamenting to my denver girls that whoever got it would just throw it away, not knowing how much time and effort went into it. they assured me if they were the recipients, they would save it forever. valuable lesson number six: pick good friends.

and finally, this sweet little framed piece. it's a quote i found long ago. i am notoriously bad at remembering quotes and punch lines. i'm just not blessed with memory cells like that. i can remember many many things, some very valuable, some not so much. but i can't remember a quote this good to save my life. i was sharing the gist of this with my good friend heidi and she she loved it and wished she could remember it, saying how hard it was for her to remember good quotes. i had a lightbulb moment and this is the result. valuable lesson number seven: not everything you do as a scrapper has to be a layout. use your skills to bless and enrich the lives of others.

the quote is one i've shared on my blog before long long ago, i'm not going to go find it. it was before the days of pinterest, it was that long ago. the jar paper, another piece that i set aside because i just couldn't think of how to use it. but to hold a quote and some sweet little flowers? well of course i could use it. so i cut and glued and wrote and voila (i like that word), i had this. and it makes me very happy. and it made my friend heidi happy. and there's not much better in this world than being happy. note the canvas trim yet again?

i'm sure there are a few more very valuable lessons in this post, but i'm late for art day at ronda's, i haven't gotten dressed yet, i didn't exercise today (but i've been very good all week and have done the legs routine in this post every week, yesterday in fact, and it's getting easier, will discuss later...), and i have to end this, which means i can't think up any more very valuable lessons.

i will tell you i've got a quick picture tutorial for the above framed piece, but am saving that for another post, remember: smart blogging!

but i need to say one more thing. MY SISTER IS ENGAGED!!!!!! and i am so happy for her. she giggles now. she never used to giggle. more on that later too :)

have a great day!

getting married in the morning

ok, not me, but it's catchy so i used it.

this is where i was this past weekend. my little brother got married to his beautiful bride. makes me very happy. mr. and mrs. ready to face the world together. perfect for each other.they got married in the mount timpanogos temple in utah, isn't it a beautiful building. one of the perks of being LDS, you have a beautiful backdrop for all your wedding pictures. it was cold, windy, and snowing, but we managed to get some decent pictures. and at least it wasn't raining anymore!

enjoying baker's dozen from studio calico

i feel like i didn't get enough time to spend creating with this kit. too many other things to get done before i left for CHA. but i am incredibly happy with my layouts because of the moments that they documented. this one is my favorite, it's so very simple, and the picture is not great, but it is so us. we'd gone on a walk on MLK Jr. day and i happened to bring my camera. the afternoon shadows were lovely, we were walking side by side along the path, i made everyone stop so i could take a picture. it captures the feeling perfectly. love the stage our family is in right now. it's crazy busy, but very fulfilling. i used the AC slick writer to write on the crate stickers, very important when you have a shiny surface you need to write on.i painted, misted, and stitched on this one. it was so much fun to create this one, it just kind of fell into place. not counting paint drying time, it took about 30 minutes. i love that. the MM bling circle kept losing gems, so i started gluing them onto the layout :)

i was getting ready to leave for the week in CA and was already missing my family. putting this together probably didn't help my sense of homesickness, but i really liked how colorful it turned out. that journaling stamp is going to be a favorite of mine, i just have a feeling. i used this ink for the pink ampersand. that stamp was a free one if you bought an add on a few months ago.

all in all, i loved this kit and the add ons. and seeing that they sold out in no time at all, i'm betting it's going to be a favorite of a lot of other studio calico members. i am excited to see what everyone comes up with, there was so much to play with, it really lived up to its name of baker's dozen.

now i'm anxiously awaiting the march kit, it's such a happy kit and there's something i'm REALLY excited about playing with in it... but that's all i can say. :)

but until then, i'll upload some photos of the week in CA. so much fun!

quoting seinfeld

i have recently purchased a large format printer. i have yet to get it hooked up and operational. i bought it because it was really good deal. and because i wanted to paper scrap the following layout for the november write click scrapbook gallery on family stories. but since it has not yet happened, i designed it digitally, with hopes to make a paper version soon. the background is full of quotes from seinfeld, kelly and the kids have been watching only the appropriate episodes together for years. i had them gather and write down all the lines they could think of that they use on a regular basis. they are masterful when it comes to remembering lines and applying them to any situation. i am not. we'll be talking as a family, someone will say something then one of them will say something that to me is completely unrelated. the other two will take off, quoting entire scenes. we once started throwing out random words to see if there was a seinfeld line for everything. we didn't find too many things that couldn't be connected to a line. i wanted to record this relationship. i love how this turned out.


and i realized i'd forgotten to post the layout from the october gallery. the theme was eye on design and i went really minimalist, i wanted the apple ad feel. i like to go minimal for the WCS gallery i'm noticing.


and a heads up, in case you didn't know, i am hosting over there this week. :)

the mother of a 15 year old

today, my sweet baby annie turned 15. we called her sweet baby annie because when i was a computer tech, i was cleaning up the hard drive of an old computer in the humanities department and someone from many moons ago had a file that i happened to be deleting called "sweet baby nephi." i was expecting annie at the time and kelly and i thought it was so funny, it just stuck. the "sweet" was long and drawn out, "sweeeeeeeet baby annie." she definitely fits the nickname. it's been a wonderful 15 years, and i'm so blessed to have had the opportunity to be her mother. i'm not one to get overly sentimental, but i do want to thank my heavenly father for giving me this sweet girl to raise. it's been fun.

we've been getting up every school day at 4:45 so she can get ready for seminary. it's a church sponsered before school class that focuses on the scriptures. it starts when the kids start high school. if you live in utah, you don't have to go to early morning seminary, it's just a part of the school cirriculum because there are so many of the LDS faith there. however, in most of the rest of the world, kids are getting up that early and earlier (depending on how pretty you need to make yourself) and heading off to learn about our Savior. i did it when i was in high school and my mom made sure i was up, so i think it's only fair to help annie along as well. anyway, i make sure she's up and then i'll head back to bed for 40 minutes while she showers and pretties herself up. then at 5:25 i get up and make her a hot breakfast. coming from a mom who used to say, "there's cereal in the closet..." every day for the last 10 years, this is quite the sacrifice, but this year, i really felt like it was important to send her off every morning with something more substantial than cereal. she's gone for 9 and a half hours. i don't want her to starve. so anyway, after family prayer with a groggy brother and dad, we head downstairs for breakfast. it's been such a treat to visit with her during these morning sessions, i'm quite looking forward to the next 4 years of it. year 4 ethan will join us. after she eats breakfast, i take her over to the church building for the 6 a.m. class. then they head straight to school, so i don't see her unless i'm the parent driving, until 3:30. it's a long day.

anyway, huge detour there... this morning i asked her what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday. she usually asks for cheesecake, but this year she decided on chocolate. so after i dropped her off, i came home and made a chocolate cake, the one from the hershey's chocolate container. it's the best jerry, the best! i usually do my boxing after i drop her off, but i'm on hiatus until my shoulder stops hurting--painting the ceiling 3 different times in 3 days made it hurt. since i knew i'd have the time to do something, i made the cake and cleaned the kitchen. when annie got home today, i let her lick the beaters. it's her birthday after all.

i'm not a fancy cake maker, that's my sister's talent. when julia makes you a cake, it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. i can however make a very tasty cake. so here's her tasty chocolate cake.

and here's my last sneak for the october studio calico scrapbooking kit club. are you tempted? this is probably my favorite thing i made this month and i love all the things i made. i only wish i'd had more time.