The Y's Owls

Today we celebrated the Y's Owls preschool graduation.  It's hard to believe that they are all going to Kindergarten. 

CKC - Valley Forge

I had a great time at CKC this weekend. I volunteered again to be a Teaching Assistant. I was assigned to Quick Quotes for several classes. The teacher, Joy (who has a very fitting name, by the way) is actually the one who designs the paper for the company. How cool would it be to design scrapbook paper! Speaking of paper designers, I also met the paper designer for Marks Paper Co., Stacy Marks. Marks Paper Co. is beautiful and they have both real paper and digital...I love that!
I was really hoping to find the new Quickutz Letterpress, but unfortunately it's not out yet so I have to wait. If anyone knows where to find that baby let me know!

It's called a "Crop"!

John cracks me up when he thinks he's using scrapbooking lingo correctly.  I got home from my all day "crop" last night and he asks  "How was your scrap?".  Well...he tried.

As usual I didn't get that much done and was in awe of everyone else and how much they all accomplished.   Just getting out and hanging out with a bunch of women (and one little chicken) who share my same passion for paper and glue is enough to make me happy.

yes, we  needed ALL that stuff...even the rolling pin.

 here's little chicken...(or is it ralphie?)

 amy

em-i-lie

kristin

              nathan, one of the silly goose monkeys, smiled like this all day!

 friends...thanks for a fantastic day!

LEED® AP's

I'm very proud of my coworkers. 82% of us who took the LEED exam passed while the average for this test is only 30%. Woo Hoo Arcus Design Group...We rocked this exam!

{front: Brian M, Paul, Cassie, Suzanne.   back: Carl, Chris, Brian F, Patrick, Jeff}

GCD Studios

My project is up online on the GCD Studios blog Come check it out!
{They also just introduced some fabulous new collections last week}

This is a also great week for my favorite stamp company, Hero Arts, where they are having a week long celebration for their new website.

Sneak Peak

Remember this post? Well this week my project for GCD Studios will be online over on the GCD Studios blog. What a fun line of paper to work with. Here's a sneak peak...

Notecards

I really love making sets of notecards for gifts.  These are the ones I made yesterday morning for Sophie to give her teacher today for her last day of school.   One thing to make these fairly quick and easy is to figure out all the dimensions ahead of time.   Then all I had to do was cut out the pieces emboss the solids and assemble.  The scalloped circles were made on my Cricut and the butterflies are from one of my favorite Hero Arts stamp sets called Patterned Butterflies.The gift card was also made with my Cricut and I used the Bird Greetings set

Whew!

I took the LEED exam this afternoon. I don't think I've ever studied more for any other test in my life. I was suprisingly calm going in to it especially since I was in a total panic last week. I have to say that the questions were far from what I studied and from all the practice exams that I took. I thought for sure that I was bombing it. Then my time ran out when I was going through the questions I tagged to review again so I never got a second look at a bunch of them. I was so sure that I did not do well on the exam that I took the optional survey about the test center to delay the result. Then I had to click to get my score and at first I saw a 170 and I couldn't believe it....I got a 195 (out of 200) ! I said outloud..."What?! I'm still in shock.

c'mon...get happy!

Sophie wanted a Happy Face themed party this year. I love this because it's so retro. She picked out some retro fonts for the invitations we made and I just finished the cake some pretzel sticks today.

Don't Blink!

I can't believe how fast the past nine years have passed. Sophia turned 9 today. I remember so clearly the day she was born and it doesn't feel like that happened nine years ago....3 or 4 maybe, but 9? no way!

I remember this day when we had a photographer come to the house for her first photo shoot. Sophia was so interested in the camera, so serious, just starting at all the equipment. She was about 2 months old and this was actually on my birthday, August 17th 2000.



and here she is when she was two. Look at the innocent face!


four...closing her eyes because she was sick of me taking pictures. Liitle did she know how many I would be taking once I started scrapbooking in a year or so!


five...


six...


monday...so grown up


Happy Birthday my sweet girl!

I've been MIA around here

I've had so much going on lately that I haven't had much time to blog.  Right now I'm studying to take the LEED exam.  LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) created LEED as a rating system for green building.  So if, I mean when, I pass I will be a LEED AP (Accredited Professional).   This is what I've been doing mostly.  

Today I took Sophia to get her ears pierced for her birthday which is coming up on Thursday.  Could you believe that I actually forgot to bring my camera?  I'm trying to get the few photos I took off my cell phone, but not having much luck. Here's one that finally showed up in my email. I'm sure the girl piercing her ear wouldn't be happy if she knew I got a shot of her armpit!  She's was so excited.  She picked out cute little rhinestone flower earrings.
 

I was still able to squeeze in making a card because with all that studying I needed a little scrap therapy.

Stamps: Hero Arts
Ribbon: American Crafts (stamped with white embossing powder)

Flowers:  Prima and Making Memories

Ink:  Tsukineko

Uncle Billy

This is  a friend of mine's son, Billy.  He was tragically killed in a car accident in November of 2006.  Next month his sister is due with her first son.  The family baby shower was today and I was asked to help all the guests create pages of their part of the family so the baby would have a family scrapbook.  I was also asked to make a page about the baby's Uncle Billy.  There's a pull tab on the side so that they can add some journaling about the baby's uncle.