Paris was a BLAST!

So on Sunday we just hung out at home. I worked on the computer, which is in a room separate from LAD's train room (room near the garage that has had no designated purpose since we have lived here) where he was hanging out playing trains, taking all coats from coat rack and shoes from shoe basket, but hey, whatever, it's Sunday and we need to go thru them anyway. I could hear him chattering and he would travel back and forth from my room to his, or I would do some traveling of the same path. Late in the morning, I heard a deadly silence and decided I better go check on that...Here's what I found...



and he says to me "Look Momma, I'm driving my tractors thru the flour!" He was so proud and having SO MUCH FUN. I couldn't help but laugh, then groan, then Ah Crap! Now I have to get out the vacuum-Shit. I said "Ahhh, Honey, that's not flour" (but on the other hand what the hell is it!)...and here's what I found...



A partial container of, you guessed it, Plaster of Paris!!! I had recently cleared a space for him in this set of cabinets but he clearly finds the cabinets with my stuff still in them far more entertaining. I'm not sure how he got the lid off, but looking at the container again, it probably wasn't really hard, assuming it was on good to start with. Luckily it was not a humid day...



What really pissed him off was when I got out the vacuum and sucked all the "flour" out of the back of the truck. That sent him over the edge!



Although he was quite entertained when I used the vacuum on his pajamas!



And after looking at this photo again, guess I better either put a lock on this cabinet, or move the spray paint cans.......

Take Pictures TODAY!

Today is the 25th so get snapping!!!
See here for more details and inspiration.

Thanks Janet!

My friend Janet, of cats and cardstock, tagged me with this friendly blog award! I always enjoy Janet's scrapping inspiration, photos and on-going Lily and Tinsel escapades. I know Janet from our local scrapbook store and she teaches some great classes! Thanks Janet!
Now I'll pass this on to a few others:
Ma, who's taking blogging by the tail and posted almost daily since I twisted her arm.
Jan, who's just started because she like's Ma's blog so much!
And that's about it, b/c most of the other blogs I visit, I don't think they would appreciate me tagging them with this, besides all their links are to the right of here!!
:)

A Day Out With Thomas

Last Friday, LAD and his friend Evan, (from MI, they just happened to be visiting at the right time, so we got tickets for all of us-Susan and her ma Vicki) got to meet their great famous friend Thomas.

Visiting Iowa all the way from the Island of Sodor (should have known there's be a Wiki entry for this!!!), Thomas took us on a short 25 minute ride on the Boone & Scenic Valley Railroad. We had a very fun time and they had plenty of pre-train ride activities--coloring, watching battery operated trains, seeing Sir Topham Hat, bounce house and a very elaborate Gift Shop! (imagine that!) LAD came home with a Thomas hat, book (thinking Birthday/Christmas) and Thomas toothbrush (anything to make the chore easier!) I think they had every possible Thomas item known to child.

Here's Susan and Evan with his Jr. Engineer Certificate.

I cannot imagine how many batteries they went thru to keep these going all day.

This was the train car we rode in. I think LAD was about to give G'ma Vicki a heart attack each time he leaned out the window. Me too, but I sat on his feet (just kidding, sort of). Once we got moving he was much better at sitting, sort of!

And the obligatory photo in front of Thomas! The Thomas company was of course taking photos you could buy, but mine were just as good!

LAD and Evan with their fancy new hats on. They were very sweet and had a blast!

Then we got pizza and ate it in the back yard and the boys played on the new playground!!

And, most amazing of all, I already scrapped these photos! Inspired by Ali Edward's Weekend Creative, I created these. it was very easy and simple. Took most time to resize the photos. I need one of those giga 2 1/2 punches!!! Supplies: Random golden color cardstock, likely Bazzill, Thomas papers and chipboard by SandyLion, ephemera from the day, black pen.

It's kind of like buying a new car...

Jumped ship and landed in an Apple tree. Very nice. iMac. They have an economical option, the MacMini, but just didn't seem powerful enough for what I wanted it to do. My Dell has passed it's prime and I spend more time waiting on it to gulp, gulp, gulp...so LAD and I went shopping a couple weeks ago. I test drove a couple at the Apple store and decided, what the heck. He (thankfully) slept thru the WHOLE thing (it was after the Zoo trip) I would have liked one of their towers, but they start at, like, $2799 (I gulped)...thought I better choose a cheaper model, just in case I fall out of the Apple tree later...which I don't think will be happening anytime soon anyway.

As you can see, the monitor (which is actually the WHOLE computer) is quite large compared to my old 17 inch model. This one is 24, what the heck, only 300$ more from the 20 inch version. I was using 2 monitors on my Dell (2nd was flat panel CRT), so now I think I can get by with just one, but could add a second if I wanted to, the hardware is already in place. I lucked out and got in on the Back to School specials they had going on, a 100$ rebate on the price of the computer, a free printer (HP print/scan/copy), and a free iPod Touch.

iPod Touch...be still my heart, is the most amazing thing on earth. It's not something I would have just gone out and bought, but since they were just giving them away, what the heck! It does it all except make phone calls (they have a version of that, with AT&T, but not for me). I can sync my contacts/mail/calendar, load music, videos, podcasts, movies, AND it has wireless internet, so can browse the web, check email, etc, and a whole lot more. Plus you can download about a million applications and put on it. It's amazing what it can do, for such a tiny little thing.

One, Two and Oh No Three is almost here!!!

For Book Club at Memory Bound last month, these were the pages I made for class. The patterned paper was two sided (Scenic Route, maybe), so I actually ended up with two layouts that really don't look at all alike. These papers looked very festive and also had some candles on them. You can see 1 on the One page and 2 on the Two page! I hadn't scrapped any of LAD's birthday pictures, so thought they were worthy candidates. The words one and two were made from sticker letters that were sticky on both sides, then I attached micro beads, because I had them and the colors were right. Then i covered them with a dimensional glaze to make sure they stayed stuck. Dimensional glaze is a clear, thick, glue type stuff that dries clear and, well, dimensional!

The sketches I used were from the book we were using this session called Page Maps. It's been a great book and has "cards" that you can punch out from the back of the book and they contain all the sketches used. So when you have a pile of pics you want to scrap you can flip thru the cards and pick a sketch that works.

OMG, I can't believe LAD will be THREE in December. Where has the time
gone???

Here's a couple pictures from class. LAD has gone to book club several times with me. We always take the DVD player and he watches a movie and flirts with the girls. At some point in the evening we always have to visit the PAINT section. LAD loves all the colors!!!

Make It & Taste It

Whoo-Hooo! I am so excited! I am teaching 2 new classes at Memory Bound, our local scrapbook store in Ankeny. Dawn, one of the owners had a great idea for a class where everyone brings a recipe to share with the group, then also makes it to share with everyone. Then we have a mini crop and make pages to hold all the recipes to fit into the album. She mentioned it to me at one of our Design Team meets, and I loved the idea too so we decided to go for it for the fourth quarter! Below is the album (American Crafts, 8.5x11) I designed and the first divider page and a couple pages to hold the recipes. Our first class is in October, we are starting with Eggs and Breakfast. I'm so excited!!!

Isn't this floral BoBunny paper the prettiest stuff ever! I love the colors in it!

Photos are completely optional for the class. LAD loves to help me with cooking so I have some great shots of him. Plus he has this totally cool Chef's hat and Apron, thanks Aunt Suzie! This also showed an alternative way of having hidden photos or journaling and using a page protector, and then cutting the page protector to allow the viewer to see the hidden treasures!

These pages use the Flair paper. These recipe cards are as old as dirt. I think I picked them up at a bazzare or something many many moons ago and they work perfectly!

Patterned papers: Flair and BoBunny, Bazzill cardstock, ribbon, bakers twine, tab punch.

If you live in the area, come join us for some fabulous food and creativeness!!!

The other class I'm teaching is a Christmas Card class, in November. I'll post those samples soon.

Spiders and Butterflies!

We went out to the back yard Saturday evening and picked a few things out of the garden. We took a couple cukes over to Denny and Linda's back deck and I had walked back to our yard (to wash our last non- rotten pumpkin we picked) and LAD was investigating D & L's swing set,
then finally came running thru to our yard and when he did he scattered a huge batch of Monarch butterflies that were apparently trying to roost in the trees and his activity appeared to stir them up (or at least that's when I noticed them!) So we stood around and watched the sky swirling with "beautiful butterflies". LAD was very excited. I had to go inside for the BIG camera, the Canon point and shoot just wasn't cutting it! I got a few nice shots, considering I had my white balance on preset and didn't realize it until later. It actually really saturated the colors, so it turned out OK. I'd never seen so many flittering about, it was quite fascinating!

And luckily I spotted this big fat spider and her (his?) big fancy web _before_ I walked thru it! I pointed it out to LAD and he came up and looked at it, then backed off. He was worried I was going to touch it as I was getting pretty close to it to take the pictures. No worries, I'm not going to touch it. I'm sure it's quite harmless, but still, no. I think spiders are the one crawly type critter I like least. Not afraid to see them, etc, just eullllll (uninteligible sound that can't be spelled). I think it stems from living with brown recluse spiders while growing up. They get into places (clothes, sheets, coats) that you don't want them to get and eullllllll. Can you say shake, shake, shake everything. Eulllllll....

To the Zoo

This was last Saturday. It was a mild day with some overcast. Surprisingly, the animals were very active! I think LAD loved the fish tanks and the trains the best!!! He walked the entire way around but started dragging just past half way, after playing on the playground! But he did it and we saw it all (basically!). And the rocks were the best in the gift shop. And look at all those PINK ones!! You could buy a tiny little bag for $6.00, but we passed and just played with them!

Our Food

The garden is finally overflowing of tomatoes, the cherries and the big ones. The bell peppers have finally decided to make now. They are loaded. The jalapenos have gone gang busters all summer, like normal. I think they could grow in a total drought. There were 3 acorn squash that were close to ready, I thought I better get them picked, before the squash bugs eat them up. One was very tiny, no larger than a baseball, but it was dark green. It was so cute! I've never had one so small!!!
LAD was very helpful picking tomatoes, he loves to pick the cherry ones. Then he moved on to the jaleps.
And we had 3 new strawberries tonight. Two were a nice size, the third was a micro sized one, slightly larger than a good sized pea! But it was red and ripe and later when I put the three pitiful things on a plate after supper, LAD wanted to share, so I ate the micro one. It was actually very sweet (the boy and the berry). And he promptly gobbled the other two, apparently they were very good. He also licked the juice from the plate. Apparently not enough for him either!!!