Layout from Friday's crop

This is one layout that I had wanted to do for a while. I made the flowers a long time ago and put them together with the photo last year sometime. Amy gave me this floral peice of Bo Bunny patterned paper as part of a crop gift and it was exactly what I needed for this layout. Thanks Amy.

cardstock - DCWV
Patterned Paper - BoBunny
Trim - Doodlebug
chipboard letters - Chipchatter
die cut letters - sizzix
Flowers - by me

I'm not good at crops

I went to an all day crop at my friend Amy's house today. I had a lot of fun, but didn't get much done. I don't know why, but I never do. I don't bring enough stuff to finish any layout or card, but manage to bring tons of other stuff that I don't need at all. Meanwhile everyone else got at least 3 layouts done each. Emilie got there a while after me and whipped out 3 amazing layouts in no time. I left with 2 started layouts and 2 started cards. As soon as I unpacked I grabbed my supplies and finished one of my layouts in about 10 minutes, proving to me that I suck at crops. This fact won't keep me from going to them because I just love the social part of it.

7 days and counting

only 7 more days until our new Target opens...WOO HOO! not that it's been a problem going to the one 3 1/2 miles down the road. I have to admit that when I heard that another Target was going to be built so close to where I live I was not too happy about it, but as soon as the construction started and there was no turning back, I couldn't wait. This will make my life so much easier!

and yes, I know I have to fix my blog header!

My first album cover

This has to be the coolest blog tagging things going around. This is what you do:

You are making your first album.

Follow these instructions:

1 - BAND NAME Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random article”or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - ALBUM TITLE Go to "Random quotations"or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - COVER ART Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop or similar software to put it all together.

and...everyone who reads this is now TAGGED!

I've been baking again

It seems like Birthdays around here are BirthWEEKS. We end up celebrating all week. I guess when you have two people with birthdays 3 days apart it's bound to happen. Nicholas is the 3rd and John is the 6th. Here's the cake for Nicholas' Cars themed birthday party.

dinosaur cookie anyone?

One of my favorite things to do since I discovered Royal Icing years ago is deocorate cookies. So when Nicholas asked to bring in Dinosaur cookies to preschool for his upcoming birthday on Tuesday I was all over it!
I still can't believe my baby is going to be 5!

I've been tagged

This time I've been tagged by Kerri to go to where I keep my photos, pick the 6th folder pick the 6th picture, post on your blog and tell about it. I keep my photos on my external hard drive ever since my hard drive died a few months ago. My sixth folder is of my wedding day, 14 years ago. I've scanned in about half of what we have and hopefully one day I'll take the time to scan the rest. I remember telling the photographer ahead of time that we wanted all black and white candid shots and that was it, but my mom really wanted some posed photos in color. So you can see it's posed, but not in color. The photographer accidentally shot them in black and white.



So now it's my turn to tag 6 lucky people.
Amy Steinmetz
Sam Mansfield
Noel Culbertson
Kim Kesti
Chris Hertel
Joscie Cutchens


Remember the rules are 6th folder, 6th picture, post on your blog, and tag 6 more!!

Favicon

I just learned what a favicon is...a website icon (thanks Joscie rhymes with Bossy) They show up in the browser bar to the left of the website that you're on. So I picked my all time favorite cartoon character...

can you see him up there in the browser bar?

I know it's January 10th already and I didn't post any resolutions, but I have made some.
1. I want to learn how to use my Canon Rebel xti off of the automatic setting.
2. I want to actually submit some of my scrapbook layouts to magazines instead of just thinking about it. This means I'm going to have to keep up on the page calls.
3. I resolve to keep my purse/handbag organized.
4. I resolve to use the grocery recyling bags that I keep in my car. Everytime I go shopping I forget to bring them in with me. So far this year I remembered every time!
5. I want to be a better meal planner for the family. I'm sick of coming home from work, not knowing what to make and not having enough of any ingredients to make something interesting. So my goal would be to find a lot of easy, but good recipes that don't take too long and make sure I have the ingredients and plan out what days to have them.

So on the cooking thing...I've always been a gadget lover and have tons of cooking tools and gadgets. This love for tools and gadgets is probably what got me into Architecture. I loved all the drafting equipment, but then the computer came along for Architectural drawing and I switched to kitchen gadgets. This is what makes me a good scrapbooking candidate...I saw all the tools and equipment and got sucked right in. Somehow since the scrapbooking started, the cooking kind of slowed down. Anyway, I've been doing pretty well on resolution #4 so far. I made a meatloaf which turned out to not be so good. I like my family's recipe way better. I tried it because it was different and looked easy and I wanted a change, but I'm going back to the tried and true Mom's recipe. We also had the most delicious Southern Style Jalapeno ribs that my friend Amy gave me, a very easy, but good chicken pesto dish and today French Onion soup that John said "is better than what you would get in a restaurant".


Crispy Baked Pesto Chicken: I got this recipe from the kraft foods website. I used boneless chicken breast that are individually wrapped and frozen - easy to keep on hand. The only part of the recipe that I didn't like was the Shake-n-bake coating. I will substitute Italian style bread crumbs in the future. I made this with Green Beans and Tomatoes Italian also from the kraft site. This was really good. I used Good Seasons Italian instead of what the recipe called for. My time saving tip is that I used the frozen steam in a bag green beans, also easy to keep on hand.

Woo Hoo!

What a nice way to start off the New Year. I am one of the winners of a Hero Arts (my favorite stamp company) contest. You can see my cards here...

http://heroarts.com/blogs/club/2009/01/01/announcing-the-first-challenge-winners-of-2009/

Finding my roots...

So facebook is pretty cool. I've been able to connect with some old high school friends as well as my current friends. What I didn't realize was that I would find my roots. One day I typed in my fairly uncommon maiden name, Barecchia, wondering if I could find the other Barecchia family that my grandmother and father lost touch with here in America. What I found were relatives I didn't even know I had in Italy. We communicated back and forth trying to figure out if we were related at all. One day I received an email and it said "Do you know this man?" Attached was a photograph. When I opened it I almost fell off my chair. It was an old photo of my father from the 60's, before I was even born and it did not look like Italy at all (It's Washington state). How did they get that photo and did they even know who it was? Maybe I solved some mystery of who was in that photo? Anyway, after weeks of communicating that photo was evidence of our relation. There is so much of my family over there. I'm getting lots of photos of my cousins and the little town my family came from. I'm hoping to make a trip to San Marco Evangalista one day to meet my family and see where we came from. Thank you facebook!

Ah...my cards are finally finished (well, almost)

I started making these in November. The card opens up from the top and the white snow at the bottom is actually a pocket that holds photos of the kids inside. I got this idea from one of my favorite stampers, Jennifer McGuire.

Here's the card inside...