what ever happened to accountability?

what ever happened to you made your bed, now lie in it? What ever happened to, you are an adult with all the privledges and responsibilities that come with it and when you take advantage of the privledge of being able to make your own decisions, you necessarily take on the responsibility of dealing with the consequences of those actions.

Here's an idea

Make your own low fat kettle corn.

Ok, so you might not know that I am on a diet. I joined weight wathcers yesterday. So, I am starving, and someone on the weight watchers board suggested that I eat a bag of 94% fat free kettle corn for a nice filling low point snack. Well I have buttery kettle corn in my desk - NOT 94% fat free, but I do have some 100 calorie packs that are fat free. but darn it, I want kettle corn. So I popped one of the bags (that is worth ZERO points mind you! ) and I sprinkled the popped corn with salt and splenda. YUM! it was so good that I was sitting here sucking on the unpopped kernels. I am seriously considering having another bag, but I probably shouldnt. it IS zero points, but I should save one for tomorrow, and maybe have an apple instead.

Anyway, so yeah, I joined weight watchers. wish me luck.

now onto books. So I read the Twilight series and loved it, (not so much the movie), and I love TrueBlood, and I have loved vampire romance in the past so I looked up some new books. Read the first two books of the Nora Roberts circle trilogy (seth just got the third on cd from the library for me - yay seth - you rock!) and I got Zen and the ARt of Vampires at the airport and LOVED it. unfortunatly the sequel doesnt come out until May, but there are other vampire books by the same author - Katie McAllister, so I have one on order from the library. now I guess I just have to figure out how - now that the holiday break and vacation are over - how I am going to actually find time to READ. I mean, I did just commit to workout too! hmmm, any ideas from the peanut gallery?

No, I didnt drop off the face of the earth

I am in fact still alive and kicking and planning to continue blogging and scrapping and all that fun stuff. So, you might wonder, what important things have kept me from blogging and otherwise sharing my scrapping? Well, of course there is the holidays. But mostly I think I was just in a funk. It happens to me on a rather frequent basis - a couple times a year anyway - where I just dont feel like talking to people or otherwise being social. Now, you might be thinking - well what does that have to do with blogging, blogging is really the LEAST social way to be social right? and in fact a lot of people blame online communications with the degradation of 'normal' social interaction. But to me its all the same. When I write, I sort of imagine that I am talking to you all, so if I am feeling down and just in general like not talking, then I dont really get the desire to write.

Ok, with that disclaimer out of the way, what have I been up to? well there is the trip to key west. We went for 4 days and had a blast! Ellie just wanted to swim in the pool and play in the sand. But we made her go to the aquarium and the butterfly conservatory, both of which she enjoyed. We also went to dinner a bunch of times and had some really great food. Then we flew home on Christmas eve and went to my parents house where we did the traditional gift of pjs, leave out cookies for santa, then go to bed. In the morning we opened presents, then had breakfast - pancakes and bacon - then opened more presents and played with them. We played a lot of Wii because my parents got some fun new games. Then Lins came over with her kids and we opened more presents, made cookies, played more games, made gingerbread houses, and I drank a whole lot.

Friday we went home and relaxed for a little while before going over to Sherry and Bob's for a Hannukkah celebration. Latkes, candles, and MORE PRESENTS. Sat we had breakfast with Seth's grandfather, before going to my grandparent's house for MORE PRESENTS.This time we got one - a grill! Sunday we tried to recooperate and clean and organize a little before going over to Seth's parents for the last night of Hanukkah and even MORE PRESENTS!!

Oh and lest you think that it is over because Hannukkah is over - think again! Next week we will have another hanukkah celebration with the whole family since some of them were traveling. Yep, my kid is spoiled just a little bit.

So, on my recooperating day, what did I do? I cleaned and scrapped! I put away all my new scrap stuff in my new scrap organizer and scrapped a few layouts.

I had a tough time getting the mojo flowing since it had been a while, but it did and here are a couple.

Sorry for the slightly blurry pictures. These are for my Scrapbook Dreamer Dec reveal. The first is using the Fancy pants stuff and the second is 3 bugs in a rug.

Miri's wedding

Ellie has been talking about it for ages. And it was finally here last night. She was such a good girl and the wedding was beautiful, everyone looked fabulous and we all had a great time.

Here are the photos. Totally unedited, hence the red eye:

Me



Ellie - how cute is she?!





Ellie dancing with Miri

Some new things

Here are some things that I made for the December Design Team reveal at Scrapbook Dreamer.

This page was so easy and simple, but I just love it! why is it that the ones I love the most are often the simple ones?

What a weekend

Do I say that all the time or what?

So this weekend I had my first LSS Dt meeting. It was fun and I got to choose my own stuff for the next month's challenge and I might teach a class!

I also cleaned the house, did 10 loads of laundry, made cut out cookies, fudge, rice pudding, hershey's kiss cookies, 3 mini albums, 3 scrapbook pages, an altered item and a card.

now today I am miserable. I dont really know why, just in a funk and I can't get out of it - hence the short hand blog post. not my usual long-winded self.

anyway here you go - a page that I worked on for my scrapbook dreamer dec dt reveal. Using fancy pants papers, ek success punch (love that thing), puffy paint, dew drop things, a ymbd label and foam tape and ink.

What else is new

well I had a run-in with a crazy driver yesterday and a lot of traffic today, seems like traffic things are the order of the day so far. What else? it is 7:30 and I am still at work. how much does that stink. Ok onto more fun stuff. Have you seen these pages of mine?

This one was for a challenge. I think it might have been Scrapjacked blog. Either way, I think it turned out really cute. I love this photo of Ellie totally wiped out after her trip to see the horses and with blue cotton candy residue on her face.
Most of this is Sass Lass.. the letters are American Crafts, the bling is glitz and the paper background is MM




And this one was from my YMBD DT reveal for December. The stars, snowflakes, labels and stickers are all YMBD. The paper is love elsie, the ribbon is stolen from the trash of a bridal shower - it was on a williams-sonoma gift. And that is my favorite photo of ellie from last christmas, just total awe that santa had come.



ok back to your regularly scheduled programming, and back to yahtzee party for me

please help!

Cosmo Cricket has started out December with a BANG. They want to donate a 1.00 for every person who posts a comment...just a Merry Christmas will do.

Go to their blog http://cosmocricket.blogspot.com/ and leave them a comment. Lets help them make this a good charitable donation!

December Already?!

Wow, can you believe that it is December already? I really dont know where the time went. The last thing I knew, it was September and fall was just beginning. Ellie and Seth were starting school. And now - wow - Christmas is coming! This past week I have been very busy with Christmas preparations because I know it will be here before we know it. I need to be ready even before most of you because I have a wedding (and several parties) that are occupying the weekend of the 13th. And the next weekend we will be going away to Key West, to return in the evening on Christmas eve! So, this past week I wrapped all my presents and delivered them to my parents house (because that is where we spend Christmas Eve and day). Then I made gift tags which I will have to add on Christmas Eve. (My gifts are labeled now with sharpie marker on the backs) I also got my Christmas tree up and filled out all my christmas cards. (I still have to make one or two and a couple Hanukkah cards) So, yes I think I am under control.

Here is a little tutorial on making gift tags. Maybe I am the only one who didnt find this intuitive, but it works SO much better to make them all on one sheet and THEN cut them apart!

To make these tags, I started by choosing a stamp. I like this Christmas tree one and it sort of matches my wrapping paper, but you could use any stamp. I measured the stamp and decided that 3x3 inch tags would work perfectly. so I marked the grey cardstock with pencil lines at 3in intervals. Then I stamped a tree with staz on ink (just because it seems to be the darkest black - you could use any ink really) into each square. Next I embellished the trees with stickles. I chose raspberry for the ornaments on the trees and silver for the stars on top because the colors match my wrapping paper. After that was dry, I used a martha stewart glue pen to put little dots for more shine, and then sprinkled green martha stewart glitter on top. (I did one row of trees at a time and then after the glitter was on, I did the next row before shaking the glitter down the paper onto the next row - so I didnt have to keep shaking out more glitter)


Here is an up close view of one. I was working very quickly so I missed a line here. But I figure, once it is on the present, no one will notice.

Next I cut them apart and inked the edges with a coordinating ink color. I couldnt decide which I liked better so I did some green and some raspberry.

and ta-da! filled out with coordinating marker!


there are a lot of steps and the drying time made it take a while, but really, I made two sheets of 16 tags each and it seemed like it took no time at all! They dont have to be perfect because no one is going to examine the gift tags. But I really like the extra touch that the glitter gives.

and I will leave you with a pic of ellie on santa's lap - she sure looks happy doesnt she?!

She would not smile for anything. And we didnt really plan the visit to santa, he just happened to be there and she was interested. So that is why she isnt dressed up. Oh well, you take what you can get right?! If she was interested then I was going to go for it dressed up or not!