Apr 19, 2009 | family |
I was doing so well, but if finally happened, and I knew it would, I just didn’t know when….but I didn’t post anything on Saturday. I was up early to take Ryan to a soccer game that was an hour drive away. Then he rode back home with a teammate and I drove on up to my parents house. I spent the rest of the weekend with them and came home this afternoon. My parents live in a sailing club on the lake and it was the 50th anniversary of the sailing club and there was big party Saturday night along with the Commisioning Ceremony. My brother is the new Commodore for the sailing club this year so it was an important day for my family. My dad was the Commodore several years ago and they are the first Father-Son to both hold that position for the sailing club. Everything was perfect – the weather, the ceremony, the dinner, the decorations….there were over 200 people there including one of the two founding members of the club. A very exciting time for everyone involved.
I got to visit with many people that I hadn’t seen in years – even some of the kids I used to babysit for – who are now grown, some with their own kids. I also got to spend time with my cousin, Ellen, who was visiting from Germany – the last time I saw her was about 3 years ago. Since I spent most of the weekend up there this is probably the most amount of time I have had with her in a very long time.
In the photo from left to right – my dad (Willi), me, my mom (Anita), my brother (Michael), his wife (Tammy), and my cousin (Ellen).
Check back in a few minutes for a stamping project.
Apr 13, 2009 | family |
This is me rambling today – you don’t have to read it – nothing really relevant here – I’m working on a stamping post now – check back in a few minutes.
I decided that I am tired and cranky and not very tolerant of problems today and I seem to be having alot. After being on Spring Break for a week and staying up late (but I didn’t last night) and sleeping in later than normal – this morning came early. But I did go to bed early – I was so tired after everyone left yesterday – I think I fell asleep every time I sat still for too long – so I had several cat naps in the evening. And my wonderful mother-in-law and her sister (Greg’s aunt) helped clean up all the dishes and food – I couldn’t stand any longer and had to sit. 37 people for Easter lunch (plus two extra dogs) and an Easter Egg hunt was a whole lot of fun but I am totally wiped out. I’ll try to get a few pictures up later this week – I had some stamping projects scattered around – the bunny baskets I posted the other day. Eggs and Chicks (from the Good Egg set) scattered around the tables. Labels for all my food items – made using the new scallop oval punch and wide oval punch and then the large oval punch – yes they do all layer together nicely. Everyone makes fun of my labels but there are several reasons that I have them – first of all I can plan where everything will go for serving the food, second I can see when everyone is here because all the spots will be filled (I have everyone bring something – I’m not doing all the cooking), third I save them for next year and already know what the menu will be!
So everyone got up – boys off to school and lots of rain and lots of wind! I needed gas so I stopped on the way back from school – I’m getting ready to start and all the power goes out – can’t get gas. So I drive to my jazzercise class across the street – no power over there either. We wait 20 minutes and then go home. Getting back into the neighborhood is like driving through an obstacle course – it is trash day so on the road the wind has blown over the trash cans, blown limbs off the trees, debris every where, trash everywhere it was just a mess. But luckily my power was on and I got back in the house. But since it did go out atleast for a minute at the house – the clocks are all flashing the computers have all shut down – so I had to reboot everything. Later my mom called and the winds came her way – they had lots of trees and power lines down where they were. But no damage to house/cars or their sail boat.
Then my computer monitor started acting up – blink on, blink off, blink on, blink off – I can’t get anything done after that – I was really cranky I could tell because I was ready to pick it up and throw it or kick it but that would not have made things better. Instead I decided to take a monitor from one of the other computers in the house – that would be Kyle. Now I can get something done again. Finally made it to the post office and the bank and back home – realized the tennis courts at the front of the nieghborhodd had alot of damage – one whole side of the courts had the fence collapse onto the court – I guess they won’t be able to use those for awhile. Now the sun is shining and I want to go get some stamping done. And I have to finish the ribbon share which I forgot about last week – hmm I wonder what else was on my mind…. I’m working on the class to go kit for April – I really haven’t forgotten about that either. I have work to do for Wow ScrapbookKits too. Where does the day go – it is almost 7:00 pm! Left overs for dinner for everyone – my fridge is stuffed with food – so no cooking needed.
I’m going to post this rambling of thoughts and then get a stamping project out real quick.
The sun is shining now and it is beautiful outside – so the day is looking better already….
Apr 1, 2009 | family, Wildlife |
My dogs, Aspen and Magnolia, do not like the rain. They do not like to be wet or cold. They are 
very spoiled. I even sometim
es carry them outside with an umbrella when it is raining since they won’t go out there otherwise. So today – is another rainy day and when there is rain, some where there is mud. You would think that my dogs would not enjoy the mud – but that is not the case – mud apparently is fun and not the same as being wet. I would beg to differ but then again I am not a dog. So after being outside (alone) for about 5 minutes Magnolia ran in the house looking like this. She looks like she wa
s rolling in the dirt and mud!
So I had to give her a bath which she really does not like.
Some how Aspen did not get muddy – so I don’t know where Magnolia was that he missed it.
She could not wait to get out of the tub. I dried her with a towel and then she runs full speed all over the house. They always do that after they get wet – they are little crazy dogs after they have gotten wet – do maybe it is good that they don’t enjoy going out in the rain.
And here she is all clean – 
Since I’m talking about family (yes the dogs are family) I may as well tell you that today is a big day – atleast I think it is – Kyle is registering for his college classes today when he gets home from school. He was accepted into the Joint Enrollment Program at Kennesaw State University so he will spend his senior year of high school in college. He choose to take a full schedule at Kennesaw and will not have any classes at the high school. He will earn both high school and college credit at the same time. The hope would be that once he enters college he will have completed most if not all of his freshman courses. I think this is very exciting for him – after today he will be officially registered and have a schedule for the fall semester. I can’t believe I’m old enough to have a college student!
And a brief update on the birds outside. I checked the bluebird house twice this morning at 8:0
0 am there was only 1 egg and later at around 11:00 am there were two! The bluebirds have been in and out of the box today. I was able to get a picture yesterday of the mama robin sitting on her nest – I tool this one from the window in Tyler’s room – it is above where the nest is located – she has been in and out of the nest today.
Here is a website with a live “Nestcam” of a bluebird house in Texas. They are a few days ahead of mine in the egg count – theirs had 5 yesterday. Click Here.
I’ll post more stamping stuff later today.
Mar 16, 2009 | family, Punch Art |
Hi Everyone!
Today wasn’t quite the day I was planning on. Kyle was sick this morning and didn’t go to school. I took him to the doctor and he has some viral infection that has given him all these painful sores in his mouth. And Greg ended up at home all day – not because he was sick but because he had to go in for a conversion at work last night and didn’t get home until 3 am. So he slept in and then worked from home. He also decided today was the day he would switch out my computer. So this afternoon and evening he has been trying to get it all set back up for me with all the software and my email and stuff. And I realized only a little while ago that I wasn’t getting all my Stampin’ Up! emails – so now I got that fixed and I think I’m all back up and running. So far this computer is faster that the old one. I did realize my photo catalog is missing so none of my pictures were in my photoshop organizer when I went to look for them tonight. I’ll have to fix that tomorrow. And I’ll work on more tomorrow to make sure I’m not missing anything else. Right now my old computer is still connected too; so if I need something from it I just switch my screen over to that one. It’s kind of wierd – two computers running on one monitor. Right now I have 2 keyboards and 2 mice on my desk so I can work with the one I need.
Anyhow the picture above is one that I took at the Stampin’ Up! Leadership conference. I thought this would be the perfect project to share with you today since tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day. I’m sorry that I don’t know who created him but she was at the Leadership conference in Orlando and was nice enough to let me get a quick picture. He is made out of punches – tag punch, word window, scallop circle, 1-3/8″ circle, looks like the 1/2″ and 1/4″ circle too. The belt is either the square punches or they might just be cut. There is a candy bar on the inside. A cute treat to share with your kids tomorrow if you have the time!
This reminds me of the year when Tyler was in 2nd grade and at school the sneaky leprechaun’s would come into the classrooms while the kids were out. This particular year I think happen to also be some other activity going on in the school so all of the kids desks were pushed together on one side of the room. While the kids were out of the room to lunch or somewhere I snuck in and moved all the desks so that I could stick a Leprechaun treat inside and then pushed them all back in place before the kids got back. Later in the day when they all moved their desks back to where they should be they were so surprised to find treats inside – they were convinced that little leprechauns snuck in and hid them because only someone small could have gotten to the desks since they were pushed together. They were so funny! Anyway – that is always what I think of on St. Patrick’s Day. Now Tyler is in 10th grade so that was quite some time ago.
I hope you have a great St. Patty’s Day – wear green and find some GOLD at the end of your rainbow!
Speaking of rainbows – here is a card from Leadership – this was one of the demonstrations from the Stam
pin’ Up! employees showing us new product from the catalog – this one uses the Sticky Cuts Sweet and the new fine glitter.
Have a Happy Day!
Monika
[email protected]
www.monika.stampinup.net
Mar 15, 2009 | family |
This post is just about Ryan’s creation – so if you only want to read about stamping stuff you can skip this one. It’s just my story and I can be long winded some times.
A few days ago I mentioned a creation that Ryan worked on late into the night and again early t
he next morning. I had to drive it to school and then he didn’t even get to present it that day. He did his presentation the next day and we’ll be bringing it back home on Monday. He doesn’t know what kind of grade he got and this wasn’t even the main part of the project. The main part was a report and this was his visual aid for the presentation of his report.
He wanted it to be life-size – so it’s about as tall as I am and just barely fit in the back of my car. I should have taken a picture of the back – I’ll have to do that later. He came home on Wed. and asked me for a 6 foot tall piece of cardboard – “I don’t have one” was my reply. “Let’s go to Walmart and buy one.” – he said. “Um, I don’t think they will have something that big. Can it be smaller?” And he said “No, it needs to be life-sized.” This was all without him really telling me what he wanted to make. Apparently I’m not good at deciphering where he was going with this – but Tyler came to the rescue – he said “Mom, let me tell you what he wants to do – he wants to make a card board man that will stand up.” Well, I’m still thinking we can’t buy cardboard that big. Ryan calls Greg on the phone and they discuss it. It turns out we have a large box in the attic from Greg’s TV.
So next Ryan wants to print this drawing life size so he can just trace it – printing a 6 foot tall man and 3 foot wide dog – after some calculations based on an 8-1/2″ x 11″ piece of paper – well that’s almost 50 pieces of paper – I’m thinking no. Ryan thinks otherwise and tries to print – luckily for whatever reason the printer would only print one sheet with some blue lines. So Ryan gave up on that idea. And instead printed it on one sheet of paper. So it looks like this: 
But he still wanted to cut th cardboard to life size. So this is what he did – he measured, calculated angles, and calculated each section to be life size. Drew it on the card board from his calculations and cut it out. Here is what one of the sections looked like once he measured and calculated it all: 
He spent hours doing this. And since it was cut from the TV box it was in several pieces – which he held together with paint sticks hot glued to the back. Then he wanted it all covered with white paper. “Mom, can I use some of your white card stock?” and my reply is “NO – use computer paper!”. Luckily I had some large sheets of white paper and the best thing – spray adhesive! It worked great – I sprayed that on and put the white paper on – smoothed it out and trimmed the paper. Then Ryan traced around with a blue marker – he also wanted to use my Stampin’ Up! Brilliant Blue marker for that – I said NO. Even though I had cleaned out most of our old art supplies and gave them away last month – I did keep a small box of markers – which did contain some blue ones which I think are now dry. So the next trick was glue the dog to the man and make the whole thing so it will stand by itself. I did this part of it since Ryan needed to go to school – actually I also spent the morning finishing the blue outline too. After a couple of tries I did get it to stand – it just leaned alot since the top was so heavy…
In case you can’t figure out what his report was about – it was on GUIDE DOGS. I guess now I should read his report – he didn’t share that with me.
I like it when they give a project their all – I just don’t like it when they do it at the last minute! I told him next time he needs to start a project like this earlier than the night before it is due – or scale it down to something he can do in the amount of time he has to do it. When will they ever listen?
Have a great day!
Monika
[email protected]
Mar 14, 2009 | Big Shot, family, Occasions Mini 2009, Petal Pizzaz, Stamps, SU Ribbon |
Hi everyone!
It is a rainy Saturday in Georgia. It seems we have had alot of rainy days but it is a really good thing because our lakes are so low from the lack of rain last year. My parents and my brother all live up on Lake Lanier and it still needs lots of water to get to normal water levels. So rain is good for the lakes, but bad for tennis matches and soccer games. Luckily Ryan played his tennis match early – yesterday afternoon – he lost 8 games to 1 against a boy that was 13 years old and 6 feet tall! Greg’s tennis was cancelled and Ryan’s soccer game is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.
I wanted to share this card with you. It was the last project that we made at the STARZ meeting last weekend. I really like this style of a card – especially to use it for invitations. It is like a pocket and you pull out the inside panel where you can have all of your information. This particular one is a thank you card. The colors used here are Certainly Celery, Pretty in Pink, So Saffron, and Almost Amethyst. The Designer Paper is called Tea Party. The stamped flower is from Petal Pizzazz – but we ran the white cardstock through the Big Shot with a Texture plate first and then stamped the flower – which gives it a totally different look. You may also notice a new accessory on there too. Coming April 1st the new Occasions Mini includes new Designer Hardware – the center of the flower is a Basic Jumbo Grommet. These will come in an assortment with Basic Black, Silver, Very Vanilla, and Whisper White. The ribbon is the new Whisper White Organza Ribbon in the main catalog.
Enjoy your weekend!
Monika
[email protected]
www.monika.stampinup.net
