Marni Designs has a new collaboration kit with Anja J Designs coming out. It's called Color Me Happy. It will be available at Brownie Scraps starting tomorrow!

We went to the Blue and Gold banquet for scouts tonight. Owen got his wolf patch and some things for his belt. I guess he will be moving on to become a bear in the fall! At that time, Declan will be eligible to sign up as a Tiger Cub, which I think he wants to do. Then I will probably have to get more involved since Scot will be continuing to work with Owen. I see a busier schedule in our future, but I won't worry about it just yet! I was looking at the Scout came down near Colorado Springs. They have dates open all summer for 3 day/2 nights, so I am thinking of trying it out. All kids 6 and up can participate in the activities, so Declan would be able to do everything, also. They have lots of stuff to do, meals are provided, and there are real bathrooms with hot showers. You don't even have to bring a tent. It is either Thurs-Sat or Sun-Tues, so I would probably take the kids on my own since Scot hardly gets any days off and I would rather he save them for a fun vacation, either the two of us or another family one.

I am really liking the two new kits I bought yesterday by LDrag Designs, and I am getting some of my photos scrapped from our trip to Humboldt last August. The circle layout was for a template challenge and if my layout is picked, I will win some free templates, which I always love! The other one was done for a speed scrap at MLAS tonight. I try to do them every Friday night if I am home.

I have to share a poem Owen brought home today. He said he copied from his poem book at school because it was about Shadow.

black fur, foster dog
swinging and fuzzy tail,
sometimes startled by Declan,
why are you not eating?
you made us happy and joyful.
startled
startled
startled

I guess it was a certain style of poem that had to have 3 repeating words from the poem at the end. Anyway, I thought it was sweet and funny.

I made this page as a template challenge at Scrappity. It gave me a chance to use a kit I had gotten as a RAK but hadn't used yet by Julie It Is.

Shadow is going for her last car ride in the morning. I will take her to the shelter vet for her final farewell. She won't even eat ground beef anymore, which used to be something she would always eat, so I think it's time. She seems comfortable, at least, but not really too alert.

I was done with the Valentine theme background, so I switched again.

I had my recorder meeting today, which was fun. It was snowing off and on, but nothing was really sticking to the roads. We are supposed to get a few more inches by the end of tomorrow.

I moved all my digital scrapping files to my external hard drive to free up some space on my laptop. I can only hope it doesn't suddenly fail, as I've heard they sometimes do, but I have the zip files for all the kits still on the laptop and backed up online, so I can get them back that way.

Speed Scrap

I participated in a speed scrap tonight and this is the page I did. I used Finish Line by Pixiemama Designs and IBD Designs.

I usually do a Friday night speed scrap, but we were at the school dance. It was a lot of fun and even Scot was getting down with his bad self. It was a disco theme, but they played a variety of music. The kids both had some friends from their grade to run around with and we all danced.

Today I took Shadow to the shelter clinic since she's had a bad week. She is very weak and not eating well. When she does manage to eat, she throws up. We found her downstairs stuck by the washer the other morning, and I'm afraid she might have fallen down the stairs since she never comes down here on her own. She has been wandering and getting stuck a lot. She is probably in complete kidney failure so she is spending the weekend with an IV at the clinic. If she is still in discomfort, they will put her to sleep on Tuesday. I am kind of hoping for that outcome because she seems so miserable and can barely get around. I don't see the point in making her suffer when she has a terminal disease as it is. Luckily the vet agrees that even though they are a no-kill shelter, they will euthanize in cases like this. She is pretty out of it, so I think it's for the best.

As promised, these are my layouts using Peaceful by Marni Designs.

Those are my layouts using Little Man by Geek Chic Scraps. It is available now from Polka Dot Plum and GingerScraps.

Dawn showed me some pages she had gotten printed today. It reminded me that I should probably be doing some printing soon. I have a ton of layouts on my computer but I have only printed the first two I ever made. I need to decide what size to print them. I think I will definitely do 8 X 8 for the cruise pages, but I haven't decided about the others.

Marni Designs has a new kit coming out on Friday called Peaceful. This is a sneak peek of what it will look like. I will post my layouts then!

I always find the cool sidebar things from Melyssa's blog. I put up a Shelfari widget that shows what I am currently reading. I have actually finished a few books lately, which is a good thing. Sometimes Owen will sit and read with me, and I don't think he realizes how happy it makes me. I was worried that with boys they wouldn't be into reading, but luckily it's not the case so far. Declan is reading the Bob Books level C with not much problem. Too bad he still gets all squirmy and weird when he reads. Owen just kind of took off after the first set of Bob books, but Declan is much more reluctant, although I think he can read quite a bit. Sometimes he lets things slip out, but for some reason he doesn't want me to think he can read much of anything.

Geek Chic has a new kit coming out tomorrow. I have done a couple layouts with this one since it is great for boys! She will also be giving away a coordinating freebie on her blog tomorrow, so check it out!

The kids are off from school tomorrow, so we are decorating their new notebooks. I covered them with plain cardstock and then realized they would probably like to decorate it themselves instead of me picking out stuff. They are at the age where they are particular. I told them they could pick out some things from the Cricut and I would cut them. Then we can modge podge the covers. I found notebooks that had lines for writing on the bottom and space for pictures on the top 1/2 of the page, so they really liked that. Owen is really into the Diary of a Wimpy kid series, so he likes the idea of a diary. I will take pictures when we are done with that little project.

I ended up seeing "An Education" today, since it moved to the $5 movie club category. I dragged Dawn along with me even though she had no idea what the movie was, but we both liked it. I wanted to see it since the actress is nominated for an Oscar. I can't remember if the movie is nominated, or just her. Scot took the kids ice skating. We had take out mediterranean for dinner. Yummy!

I participated in a speed scrap tonight, and was able to use this new kit that I won for correctly guessing the name of it. It is perfect for boy layouts! It is called Rough and Tumble by Jennifer Fox Designs. I also played BINGO at another forum, and ended up winning a free kit for getting the first bingo.

Owen had his playdate today and it went well. They jumped a lot on the trampoline, even though it was kind of cold and windy today. They played some games, got to watch t.v. while eating lunch, and then I cute out a heart box for them to decorate using the Cricut. While I was in there, I took the oppportunity to clean up the craft room and little and finally move the bedding back to storage that had been sitting in there since Christmas! I am thinking of making some journals for the kids for Valentine's Day, just cutting out something to decorate the cover. The Paper Doll Dress Up cartridge has some cute characters.

Guess Pixiemama's New Store Contest!

Go to Pixiemama's Blog to guess and see how you can win $5 coupon to her new store.

Hurry and get your guesses in! Remember, you have until Sunday at midnight EST to post a comment with your guess, and please remember a valid e-mail address so she can e-mail your prize if you win!

I can post this layout since the kit was released today! I used Forest of Love by Geek Chic Scraps.

I am going back to the eye doctor tomorrow, but not feeling too optimistic. It seems like I have had problems with this one eye for months now with no relief in sight. I can't wear my contacts anymore, so that is making me sad, especially when I have to exercise with my glasses flapping and slipping around! I am seeing my regular eye doctor, at least, so maybe the guy I saw last time just didn't know what he was doing. I can always hope!

I just have to say again that I am so happy we started this whole chore thing with the kids. Tonight they both chose to vacuum their rooms for their chore. The house seems to stay neater, and it's nice to have them take more reponsibility without complaining about it!

Owen is having his friend Abbie come over on Friday since there is no school and I'm not on-call for work. He is excited about it, and hopefully the weather will be o.k. since she wants to try out the trampoline.

I had to get my CPR re-certification this weekend. A lot of it you can do online, and then my boss taught the hands-on part of the class with the dummies. We woke up to snow this morning, so it was not the best day to have to drive all the way to Highlands Ranch. Luckily I was able to catch a ride with another co-worker and my boss since she lives nearby, and she even took us out to lunch afterwards.

Scot and I went downtown Saturday night to watch a recorder group. They play jazz music and also use a sackbut (like a trombone), percussion, and have a singer. It was fun, although it's not my favorite type of music. I always like to go downtown every once and awhile to see how the "hip" half lives.

These are two pages I made with the new Marni Designs kit called Be Mine, which was released today. My challenge was to use it for something other than Valetine's Day, since I don't have a lot of those photos to scrap. Luckily it works for many occasions!

I was excited to finally hook up my new external hard drive, which connects simply with a USB port. What could go wrong? Well, Scot and I had to come to the conclusion that it was defective, because we tried it on 4 different computers, all with different operating systems, and it wouldn't show up on any of them. I will have to take it back and try to exchange it, but I'm wondering if I should get a different brand, since it doesn't exactly inspire confidence to get a defective one right off the bat! Scot had a different brand of EHD that I plugged into my laptop and it showed up right away with no problems, so I don't think my computer is the issue. So irritating!

This a sneak peek for a new kit coming out tomorrow by Marni Designs. It's called Be Mine.

The Store at Polka Dot Plum

It seems that Scrapable is back up with new and better owners. However, since none of my CT designers are in the store there anymore, I will probably be an infrequent visitor. It was the first forum I became active in, but after they started to have issues, I found some other cool forums to get involved in. One of them was BrownieScraps, where I was recently lucky enough to be accepted on a CT for one of my favorite designers there, Marni Designs! I can't wait to get started with her new kits, and I have already used one of her older ones on a few layouts when I first got it a couple months ago.

Next week is a busy one at school for the kids. They have the 100th Day party and then the Valentine party the next day, and lastly the Friday and Monday off from school. I am trying to see if Owen's piano teacher has an opening on a different day because Owen wants to take another after-school drama class, which is on the same day as his piano lesson. Hopefully it will work out, or he'll have to make a choice about which one he wants to do. Soccer will be starting after spring break, so I am already dreading those weeks!