Fall is BACK!

Second day of FALL, Y'ALL!  Only...

Yeah.  Insert frowny face here.  The high for today is supposed to be 102.  How lame is that?  Still, I can pretend!  Let me share my favorite things right now with you, in no particular order.

This child's bed head.  Her hair is super curly and super fine, and she is a crazy flip-flopper in her sleep.  It makes for some pretty epic bed head.  Thankfully I've figured out how to tame it!

This boy. Total mom brag moment here - He started Kindergarten this year and not only is he the only kid in his class who can read, he's reading at a second grade level.

Also, I want to add my haircut.  I finally feel like I found a good haircut and style for me.  Now let's see if I can properly maintain it.

My sorority.  Yup, eleven years after the fact I've decided to get back into it.  After all, it isn't supposed to be for just four years, it's supposed to be for a lifetime, right?  I need to get out of the house more and be more involved with other adults.  I was thinking to myself, sure, I can go out and look for something, but I already have this thing with people I already know built into my life.  Why not get back into that?  I've attended two alumni events in the last month and we're going to start planning for our grand convention next month.  I've paid my alumni dues, busted out my lavaliere and badge, and even bought a cute violet pin to wear for more casual events.

I may or may not have also started to teach the baby recruitment spirit songs. It's super cute!

Speaking of getting her ready for college, I'm also getting a huge kick out of teaching her slightly inappropriate things such as how to play flippy cup.  I'm easily amused.

Making The Team.  Dang I love me some Kitty Carter, but I wouldn't want to have her judging me.  The woman is awesome yet scary as hell.

Fall scents!!!  I so look forward to this time of year because it has the best scented candles of all!  I waited until Bath and Body Works put these on sale 2 for $22 and then printed off a $10 off $30 coupon to make these a great deal. Also, that lotion?  I wish I had gotten a bigger bottle.  YUM.

My pretty new fall wreath.  I saw one just like this on Pinterest years ago and finally decided to bite the bullet and make myself one.  The last one I made before Bubba was born, if I recall correctly, so it was time.

Glow in the dark nail polish.  It's so flipping cool!!! I found this at Target in the Hallowe'en section. This is my favorite brand of polish anyway (yes, even over OPI and Essie) and the fact that it's only two bucks a bottle doesn't hurt either.  I polished my nails and Kelly's nails with this and then when I went to bed I couldn't stop admiring my glowy nails under the blankets.  Again, I'm easily amused!

Card making.  Finding out that one of my neighbors is into stamping and paper crafting too has really gotten me back into this hobby.  We split orders to save on shipping, text each other pictures of completed projects, squeal over YouTube videos from our favorite stampers, and sigh over cool new product because we want to buy it all and know we shouldn't.  We've reorganized our stamps and dies and borrow items back and forth.  In fact, those are her stamps in this photo because she had a baby on Monday so I knew she wasn't going to be making anything any time soon!

So I guess I should add my stamp buddy (my husband calls her my pusher, haha) to this list!

Pumpkin spice chai lattes.  I can't drink coffee.  It's too harsh on my stomach and when I do manage to drink it the taste is usually too bitter because I'm not used to it.  The closest I get is the occasional Frappucino.  Chai lattes, however, are a different story entirely.  Add the pumpkin spice flavoring to it and it just tastes like Fall.

And yeah, I totally was watching Scooby Doo. Alone at night, without my kids.  Don't judge.

Hallowe'en decorations!!!  I look forward to Hallowe'en every year, not only because it's seriously fun, but also because it usually marks the end of the hot weather here in the Phoenix area.  That's right folks - summer here lasts until almost November.  How bad does that suck?

Until that cooler weather comes, I can distract myself with glorious Hallowe'en. I love going out shopping to look for new decorations to add to my collection. I love to look at pictures of how others have decorated online.  I love planning costumes for my kids. Honestly, Hallowe'en is second only to Christmas on my list of favorite holidays.

The blow mold ghost is a new acquisition this year.  I didn't even know they still made blow molds! I will admit that I would love to have a bunch of vintage ones in my collection, but they don't really show up in the thrifts or antique stores around here very often.  It's too bad, because I just love the retro look of them.

The spider is new too.  That big metal circle thing has to be about four - four and a half feet across, to give you some idea of how huge the spider is.  I debated between getting the one big spider or covering it with a bunch of smaller ones, but I'm glad I went in this direction.  It's really freaking creepy!

This guy.

And his weird little bendy self.

I love having him in our family since Leila passed this summer.  He's the perfect cat for our family, even though I could probably do without him getting on the fridge or the tops of the cabinets. He snuggles with me in bed, plays tag with the kids, tolerates them when he's not playing, and in general is just a good cat.  Let's not forget to mention that he's an absolutely gorgeous flame-point Siamese! A lot of these cats have really badly crossed eyes, or strange dark spots on their noses, but he has neither.  He's just handsome.

This isn't to say that I don't miss having a dog.  I think about getting a dog every day.  I miss having a dog, but I know that now isn't the right time for our family.  That doesn't make the void any less noticeable for me though. I love the cat but I know I really need a dog.

That's a little peek into where I am now.

Project Life 2013 - Week 35

This week I continued with my alternating of digital and traditional pages.  Since the last week I did was all done in Photoshop (praise the LORD for Photoshop!  I need to go add that to my Gratitude Tree!) I did this week all traditionally.  Therefore, no card close ups.

To make the title card, I took one of the first printables that I made and cut it down a bit.  I used a 1/8 inch hole punch to punch along the edge in a straight line, then stuck a metal dry embossing tool in the hole and pulled outward to replicate the look of torn notebook paper.

I found the quote on Pinterest, and the weather card is an iPhone app called Swackett.

I had a lot of photos this week, so I actually had to do a mini insert!  I used a Martha Stewart/Avery mini sheet protector for these. It was a little tricky because the dimensions are different than the 3" x 4" cards I'm used to making.  As a result, I had to go back and re-trim some of them after I was done making them so they would fit!  Duh.

I discovered after the fact that the quote I printed to use on this side of the insert had already been used earlier this year.  WHOOPS!  Luckily I had this one already printed and in my little basket of cards.

This is the right side of the week. I used a circle punch to cut out the logo of the Chinese restaurant from their business card.  The quote card was cut from a piece of card stock that was in a bag of assorted scraps and stickers that I bought at my local scrapbook store's "yard sale."

I accidentally made the yellow Costco card too wide for the space.  I guess I was having measurement issues this week!  Luckily because I don't use pockets I didn't have to go back and redo the whole thing.  I just adjusted the size of the card next to it.  It's just a cut down photo, so it was pretty easy.  So, there's another advantage to doing Project Life the way I do it!

Another week down... I will get caught up!

The Gratitude Tree

This year, since Bubba's a little older now, I decided to do a "gratitude tree" in our living room for Thanksgiving.

At the beginning of the month, I took some five sheets of construction paper and made a bare tree on the short wall under the bar/counter that separates our living room from the kitchen.  I just stapled it to the wall, because the holes are tiny and that wall needs to be painted anyway.  It's about three and a half feet tall.

I added a teeny bunting made from twine and washi tape.  I spelled out "We are Thankful" in round letter stickers that I found in the dollar spot at Target.

Man, I love Target.  I need to go see if I put that on the tree.

I cut up some more construction paper into squares and sat Bubba down with the Sizzix.  You know, there have been times that I've considered getting rid of this thing because I have the Epic now, but I have to admit it's pretty handy.  It's easy enough to use that I can leave the boy unattended with it.  He thought it was great fun and cut out many leaves.  I would have found it tedious, so win-win!

Here's what our tree looks like now, in the middle of the month:

Now that Bubba's learning to read and write, it's fun to see what he adds to the tree and try to figure out what his leaves say. I'm trying to get my husband to add stuff to it, so that we can all be adding things to it, but you know how husband's are with crafty stuff.  ;)  Either way, I'm really liking this and I might just leave it up longer than this month, because hey - we should be thankful ALL YEAR LONG, right?

Project Life 2013 - Week 34

I'm plugging away over here!  Two more weeks in the album!  Here are my week 34 pages:

The end of my mother in law's visit fell on this week.  I took a new profile picture for my Facebook page, my husband started to do his Fantasy Football research, I took Pocket Tupac to Applebees and celebrated an obscure holiday.  Hey - any excuse for a Chick Fil A lemonade!

This was a pretty boring week, but there were still some fun things to record.  I polished the baby's toenails for the first time.  Oh my goodness!  I was not prepared for how hard that would be!  I have not done it since!

Here are close-ups of my individual cards.  Everything was done in Photoshop this week.  Click on any photo to see it enlarged.

Project Life 2013 - Week 33

This week was done on paper.  I realized that I have amassed quite a few 6" x 6" pads of patterned paper (thank you TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and Tuesday Morning!) and I'm not using them!  Terrible.  So, I'm alternating.  One week digital and one week traditional.

Here are this week's pages:

That's right - I had a birthday... way back in August!  HA!  My mother in law came to visit that weekend and treated us out a few times.  We had creepy crawly issues before her visit (times it's awesome to be a renter - when something goes WRONG that is gonna cost money!) but thankfully it was resolved before her arrival.

Since these were scrapped on paper, not a lot of detail shots to share.  I did do a few quote cards.

I did the one on the left based on one I found on Pinterest that read "make the most of twenty-thirteen."  The other card was also found on Pinterest as a free printable and resized for Project Life.

I did type one journaling card on the computer because I knew that it was going to have a lot of text and no photo so it had to look nice.  The quote is, once again, a printable from Pinterest that I resized to fit in Project Life.

That's another week in the book! Click on any image to see it full-sized.

Ooh, and for funsies:  It's surprise freebie time!

The rules are simple - I make these cards for my own personal use.  However, since I've put so much time into them, I figure other people may as well enjoy them too, right?  If you are a fan of my Facebook page (found here) you can scoop these up for yourself.  All I ask is that you keep them for your own personal use only.  No reselling or refashioning into something else to sell. Also, if you want to Pin them to Pinterest (which I would LOVE and I think would make you AWESOME) please pin them from this page, and not directly from the hosting site.  Since they are a thank you for your traffic, it's pretty crappy to give access to them to people who don't stop by.

That's it!  Download them, print as many as you like (I printed mine on matte photo paper and they came out BEAUTIFULLY) and leave me a link if you post what you've made online somewhere.  I love seeing what people do with my cards.  :)

Project Life 2013 - Week 32

I'm so woefully behind on Project Life - AGAIN!!!  UGH!  I'm plugging along though when I get the chance to work on it.  I've got two more weeks in the book that need sharing.  I need to try to get as caught up as possible this month because I've decided that the December Daily is happening this year.

Oh yeah, baby.

Here are the layouts:

Not the most exciting week, but thankfully I can make quote cards to use as filler and add patterned paper to further round things out.  Totally feeling orange, aqua, and green this week.

I loved this quote so much for this week, but couldn't find a printable that I liked so I made my own.  I need to do that more often, but I'm lazy, and why reinvent the wheel?

Click on any photo to enlarge.