Happy Digital Scrapbook Day!

Did you know it was Digital Scrapbook Day? Well.... there is a lot going on out there on the net for everyone who enjoys the hobby of digi scrapping. I am having such a hard time narrowing down what I want to buy. There are some fantastic sales going on. Be sure to check out all the sales and activities going on at the Scrap Orchard, in Chrissy's Store at Elemental Scraps (spend $5 - save 30%, spend $10 - save 40%, spend $15 - save 50%!), & in Carina's Store at Two Peas. Hmmm I just took a looksie and as far as I can tell Carina doesn't have a sale for the DSD event. Still, as a memeber of her creative team I want to remind you to have a look at her store. I'll try to come back to update this post with some of the things that I just HAVE to buy this weekend - for now... I must browse some more sales. Hope you have a great day!

Stuff I Bought

These Drop Shadow Actions by Bec

I caved in and bought this darling alpha - Free Spirit.
I also picked up these paper borders. I already own her paper curls and tears and I love them!

A Layout to Share

Hope you all had a nice Halloween. I am now repenting for eating too much candy... but that is normal. We all had a good time and the dinner was a huge hit. I haven't had time to download my photos off my camera yet but hopefully will be back to blog them soon. Just wanted to share a cute page of my darling daughters that I scrapped this weekend. We took a bunch of fun fall photos just a few weeks ago. If you like the template I used you can pick it up for free in Chrissy's shop & be sure to check out the other products I used on my layout - many of them are on sale in her store today. You can click on my layout to go to get a full list of credits and you can click on the template image to go to Chrissy's shop. Oh and I just have to show off my desktop that uses the same photo plus others from that day. I just love it. You can pick up the desktop at Shabby Princess Blog for free and add your own pics and enjoy instant happiness too! Have a great Monday!

Another Blog Train

Just a quick post to let you know about a fun blog train that you may want to hop on! Click the image to go to the Orchard Blog where it all starts tonight at midnight.

Halloween Dinner Menu

Ok I have it narrowed down. The kids will get a menu with only the creative names listed in hopes that when they order it will be all out of order. They may get dessert first, they may get no utensils to eat with when they need them, etc. It just adds to the fun. All of the food items are showcased in my previous post unless otherwise noted. I have the items divided up in this post just so you get an idea of what is main course, appetizer, dessert, and so on. On the menu they will be all mixed up to throw the kids off in making their selections. I'm guessing we will be having our dinner at 4:30ish on Saturday but I need to be sure that it works for all my kids so that they can all enjoy the fun. I plan to take lots of pictures and hope to be able to show you how it all turned out. If you decide to host a dinner like this I'd love to hear your ideas too.

knife - spooky slasher
spoon - grave digger
fork - devil's staff
napkin - corpse bride's veil

mummy dogs - curse of the mummy
pizza mummies - entombed skull
chicken wings - bat wings (probably from the deli or in the freezer section)
ketchup - vampire kiss
drink - cauldron chiller (some kind of beverage - whatever I grab in the soda isle)

bread sticks & marinara sauce - blood & bones (see this item at Our Best Bites)
mini dill pickles - frankies fingers (frankenstein)
cheesy fingers - lost digits
apple slices - monster jaws
ghost crackers - haunted boo
carrot/olive appetizer - edible eyeballs
pretzel sticks - boogers on a stick (find this item at Halloween Is Here)

candy corn pudding - corny treat
spider cookies - spider's web

Halloween FUN!

I hardly know where to start with this Halloween themed post. Every year I like to have a special Halloween dinner for my kids. They always look forward to it & we have lots of fun with it. We serve 18 items in 3 courses and the kids write their 6 selections down for each course not having any idea what it is that they are ordering. Since we have now been doing it for several years, they have started to figure out what all the items are on the secret menu. So this year I went on a search on the internet for some new ideas & I must say I was not disappointed. I found more ideas than I will ever be able to use but I will share the ideas I am going to use and then some of the ideas that I found that were just too fun to not share. For starters, I needed some new theme music for our Halloween dinner and I was able to find a great free download of 31 tracks of creepy music at this site, Oddio Overplay.

I'm still narrowing down my 18 items for my Halloween Dinner Menu but will be back with another post when I have my decision made.


Candy Corn Pudding from Paper Jewels
Butterscotch on the bottom, vanilla (dyed with yellow food coloring) in the middle, whipped topping on top. (Make this kid friendly by using clear plastic tumblers.)
Scroll down on her blog to see the darling Ghost Grub she shared. CUTE!
Do you want more candy corn themed ideas? Skip To My Lou had some fun ones & if you are a scrapper/paper crafter - you are especially going to enjoy her ideas. I'm thinking it might be fun to dress up the beverages at our meal like this.

I only wish that there were a better balance of food ideas out there - there are way too many cute dessert ideas out there for me to reasonably serve. The kids will be getting plenty of sugar with their trick-or-treating so I can't give in to my temptation to serve too many of these cute goodies. These and other fun spider ideas can be found at Bakerella.


Although this is not something they would be eating... I do think my kids would get a huge kick out of these and I hope to find some time to make some this week with them and then we can use them as a centerpiece for our dinner. This idea can be found at Our Best Bites - I LOVE this site! Aren't these shrunken heads made from apples fun!

Here are some food ideas that I will be using on the menu from Our Best Bites. There are lots more fabulous ideas over there so be sure to check it out for yourself.

Mummy Dogs:

Monster Jaws:Cheesy Fingers:

Kraft Foods - I am going to use the ghost crackers
Family Fun had this cute idea of Mummy Pizzas as well as these edible eyes made of carrots & olives. They had lots more for you to look at too.
I thought these eyeball tacos on the Food Channel were just too fun and we may have to do them another year since I am going to go with the pizzas and hotdogs this year.

Are you in the mood for spaghetti? Here is a spooky one where the meatballs are made to look like eyeballs and a cute one.
From About.com
From Hostess with the Mostess In addition to this spaghetti be sure to visit this site for some more fantastic photos of ideas. I love the ribs, burgers, coffins... heck it was all very cute!

Some other sites that I found some fun ideas on were:
Epicurious - a cute mummy meatloaf
She Knows Parties - what an extensive list she has compiled for over 50 ideas for Halloween parties

It's a BLOG TRAIN!

Hi there and welcome to my stop on Scrap Orchard's Blog Train. To make my Brag Book Freebie I used the Mega kit Spooktacular, so if you like what you see, head over to the Scrap Orchard to buy it.
Be sure to scroll through this entire post because I have an additional freebie for you to pick up today. I have been doing the Project 365 this year and for my most recent two weeks of layouts I created a template to share. The kit I used with my template is the fabulous October Mega, Harvest Spice available at the Scrap Orchard.


And here are my two Project 365 layouts.

Now for what you came for - Click on the preview to download my brag book page.

The Orchard Girls will be having a blog train next weekend with free'bees' so be sure to watch for information this next week about that - it is sure to be a Halloween Treat!

And now you’re off to Erin’s blog! Have fun!

And here is the template I created to share for Project 365. Of course you could use it for any other themed page in your scrapbooking too. Click on the Preview below to download the template. Enjoy!

Clayne and I are on vacation

Clayne and I are spending a week here celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary. It has been fun so far. My sister Chelsea is staying with the kids while we are here. She is awesome! We have checked in daily and things seem to be going ok at home other than Carson running a fever and missing a little school. The school had a little trouble tracking down who could come get him and care for him and I am thankful for good neighbors who helped out since Chelsea was at work and we were hundreds of miles away. Well.... I am going to head out to this "big" town and have a walk-about. The heart of this town is about 4x6 blocks so it doesn't take long lol. We have already walked it several times - but it is fun anyway. I think we'll pick up a few souvineers for the kids today.

Getting into the swing of things

Now that school's been in session for a bit over a week, I am slowly feeling a little more on top of things and catching up on some of that stuff that I had been putting off until school started. This post is not going to contain even a fraction of all the stuff I would like it to - I am going to be a realist here lol. I did want to share the photo I took of the kids on their first day back to school. It is incredible to me when I compare it with the photo I took just last year... almost 365 days ago. What I especially want to know is how Cheyenne could turn from girl to young woman in just one year! Now if the maturity would just come as quickly lol. She has been told that she can get her drivers license just as soon as she demonstrates maturity - that should be pretty safe for putting it off for a while lol.

The back to school schedule is well underway with lots of stuff to keep us all busy. I am now the Wolf Den Mother in cub scouts and held my first den meeting yesterday. Of course my two boys have scout meetings to throw into the weekly schedule too. Cheyenne continues to take piano and this year we signed up Carson and Savannah as well. Cheyenne is also going to be taking a dance class. Savannah was disappointed that her TaVaci teacher wasn't holding classes this year but she is excited about learning piano. Carson still enjoys soccer and the practices and games keep the schedule full along with Morgan's football practices/games schedule. From the time they get out of school each day until we tuck them in bed we keep very busy! I have pictures to scrap for all of these busy events... and hope I just can get un-busy enough to do so.

Yesterday Clayne and I "celebrated" our 20th wedding anniversary. I say "celebrated" that way because of course we were too busy to even do anything for it lol. Clayne brought me home some beautiful roses and when we have time I have told him that we have a date to go pick out a new wedding band for him. His is more hexagon than round and not very comfortable. We bought what we could afford when we were starting out and as I recall it was about $30 lol. Now that we have made it 20 years, I guess it is pretty safe to invest in a new band. We will also be going on a week long vacation later this month to California - just the two of us. My sister Chelsea will be coming to stay with the kids for the week. See I had my motive for babysitting my niece Megan once a week this past year lol.

Well.... I think that is a pretty quick catch up post for now. I still want to share about our last vacation we took before school started but that will have to be another day. It is almost 3:00 and so I will be playing taxi soon. Hope all is well with everyone!

Credits: Scrap Orchard September Mega: Rule The School, Template Challenge FREEBIE #29
font- Adler

Credits: September Grab Bag by Jennifer Fox, You've Been Framed by Tracie Stroud, Doodled Paper Alpha by Tracie Stroud
Yes... the same kids just a year ago lol!

Back to School and Busy Bee

So school started today for my kids and soon they will be coming home and I can't believe how fast the day has gone! I wanted to do a cute post with their back to school pictures I snapped this morning but I haven't even found the time to do that yet. I have lots of plans for how I will be spending my days when they are at school and I just hope that even half of it can really happen lol. Poor Savannah had a fever of 103.3 yesterday and was even still warm this morning but insisted on spending her first day at school and not at home sick - so I gave her a dose of Tylenol and sent her on her way. All day I have waited for the school to call me and tell me to come get her. I just hope she had a good day despite not feeling 100%. I plan on making her take a little nap when she gets off the bus. Anyway.... just another quick post and a little announcement for anyone who is looking to join a forum for digital scrapbooking. Scrap Orchard is a wonderful place to hang out and they are going to have a fun contest starting tomorrow. Click the image to go to the forums.

A Few Great Scrapbook Sales

Ohhhh how I miss keeping up on my blog. I "think" I'll do much better with blogging when school starts up again. I find myself becoming giddy with the thought of school starting Monday and having some daily quiet time again. So... hopefully those who used to visit my blog will come back when I start posting more regularly. For now I wanted to inform you of a couple of great scrapbooking sales that will be going on at the Scrap Orchard. Click on either image to go to the Market and see all the beautiful products.

As I was saying in my post earlier today (yep I am making more than one post today LOL) I have been working on improving my photo editing skills. Below is a layout I made using some of Chrissy W's great new stuff go check it out in her store here. If it is of any interest to you... I use PSE6 and here are the steps I took to edit the photo below. I still have lots to learn but I am having fun.

The first thing I did was edit the eyes to sharpen and brighten them - select eyes with lasso & create new layer. Filter>Other>Highpass with a radius of 4 px. Change the blending mode to overlay Merge layers. Copy photo layer and then edit copy to black & white leaving the color photo under it in the layer pallet. Use soft brush eraser on the B&W layer to let eye color show through. Copy B&W photo layer and use a soft brush to paint some pink on the cheeks. Change this layer mode to soft light lower the opacity then merge the layers.

The eye brightening trick I learned at The Daily Digi and you can check out that tutorial in full Here.


I wanted to alert you on some fun times ahead at the Scrap Orchard. I have been asked to oversee the challenges at the Orchard and I look forward to participating in as many of the challenges as I can. Points can be earned for each challenge and you will then receive a coupon code for discount shopping at the Orchard store. I hope you will join us in the fun.
I had told those who attended the Craft Classes that Cheyenne and I put on earlier this month that I would share the link for the way fun colorburst cupcakes that we made on the first day of class. Now let me warn you.... this lady has many other fun and great ideas for food on her site so be prepared for some time lost as you surf around there LOL. My cupcakes weren't quite as picture perfect as this one but they were still lots of fun and YUMMO!
Also in our Craft Class we made a "Box of Fun" and I want to site my source of inspiration as The Daily Digi. Yes.... I love that site and get lots of inspiration there. The list of 100 things to do that we put into our box we made are at THIS LINK and you may find that some of the ideas would make great Activity Days for church callings or whatever. Enjoy!
How was that for a random post? Just had lots of tid-bits that I had saved up and decided to blog them all at one sitting. Have a great weekend.

A Little Photo Shoot

So I took about a half an hour out of my evening last night and took Savannah out on a mini shoot. I was really happy with some of the pictures I took and wanted to share. Isn't she cute? I didn't bother to comb or fix her hair or to change her outfit but just took her as is to capture her everyday look. Now I just need to take a little time and get the other 3 kids out for a little photo action. It has been a while since I went out with my Nikon to really try to get some good shots instead of just auto mode LOL. I almost forgot how fun it is. I have also been practicing my editing and trying to learn a few tricks.

Project 365 Week 28, 29 & 30

Another 3 weeks have flown by! I just can not believe how fast the summer has gone. I really did have grand visions about how the summer would be spent and we have only done a few of the things that I thought we would but hey... seems that is how every summer goes. I was reading an article in Woman's Day that asked if you are a Summer Mom or a Back to School Mom. It was really quite humorous. I guess mostly because I could so see myself in the article. If I get a chance I will post some of the article in a later post. So if you had to guess which one I am.... Which would it be?

Also I want to give a big shout out to all who supported Cheyenne's craft classes. They completely filled and we had a waiting list but no one on the waiting list got in because everyone showed up. She is looking forward to some back to school shopping with her earnings.

Jounaling reads: We attended the Pioneer Day Picnic on Thursday. On Friday Savannah came in dripping blood & said she cut herself on a balloon -now how do you do that? It was a latex glove that had been filled with water and then it popped when she was holding it and it snapped the skin off her inner forearm. We are now harvesting a bit from our garden and made yummy taco salads. Meg didn't play with her new ball as much as I thought she'd do. On Tuesday we went to the Chuckars game. On Wednesday I froze peas.
Credits for both week 30 & 29: Thank You For This Day by LCC by Amy Stoffel, template by Brooklyn Designs, Font - 39Smooth

Journaling reads: Yet another week has come & gone. Savannah swam at a neighbor's until her sunscreen was gone. We had our day of babysitting Meg like usual. I started taking the coupon subscription to the paper to get my deals & ice cream was my major deal this time. I got 36 pints for $4. I spent lots of time with Cheyenne preparing for and teaching some craft classes to get her some back to school shopping money. Clayne spent lots of time fixing the sprinkler system.

Journaling reads: 9 Thurs. Went to the library with Savannah. She is a good little reader this summer. 10 Fri. Went to the drive in movie with Savannah & Carson. Saw Ice Age three. 11 Sat. Clayne built me another food storage shelf & then arranged the food for me. 12 Sun. A weird weather pattern wind blew a big poplar tree down in our back yard and that night was a lightning storm. 13. Mon. A fun day with Meg. 14 Tues. A sprinkler head broke at 2 AM and flooded the boys bedroom. 15. Wed. Finding creative ways to use Cheerios that I bought a while back for next to nothing. Since the kids are too picky to just eat them for breakfast.
Credits: Scrap Orchard July Mystery Mega, Freebie 26 Template by Chrissy W., Font - Adler

Cheerio Treats:
Bring 1 C sugar & 1 C light corn syrup to a slow boil stirring frequently. Remove from heat and stir in 1 C peanut butter. Return to heat and boil 1 min stirring constantly. Remove from heat and pour over 6 C cheerios & stir well. Add 1 C mini marshmallows and stir in. Spread in a cake pan and pour 1 C chocolate chips over the top. If the chocolate chips don't melt well enough pop the pan into a preheated 350 degree oven for just a few minutes & then cool completely.

So This Wasn't Our Best Week

So early Tuesday morning (2 am) our sons came to our room to tell us that water was POURING into their bedroom downstairs. Turns out one or our sprinkler heads broke and flooded into the window well and they were right... it had leaked under the window and was flowing like a river in there.... ok maybe not a river but at least a stream. We quickly removed everything from the floors and threw the boys mattresses out in the living room downstairs so they could try to get more sleep while we moved out the rest of the furniture and cleaned up the room. BUMMER is that it was the last room in the basement that we finished... not even 2 years ago. The carpet is completely ruined as is the pad and we now have had the restoration crew here to cut the sheet rock under the window out so that the wet insulation could be removed and fans were placed in the room for 3 days to dry it out. Needless to say that the week has already been VERY long. We got the boys settled into the spare room (luckily we have one) and now we are waiting to get going on the repair work. This is SO not our best week!! Oh well... guess it could have been worse - it could have happened while we were on vacation last week and then it would have ruined more than one room. Thanks for listening... just had to vent a bit. I don't even want to think how much $$ this will be since the homeowners won't cover it since the water came from outside of the house.

Oh and remember that weird weather we had last weekend? The strong winds and lightening? Well the wind blew over one of our big poplar trees in our back yard. Again... trying to see the bright side - if it had waited to fall in a year or two it may have been big enough to hit the house but right now it wasn't quite that big - probably 5 feet short of it. This week is bound to be better!

Paper Craft Classes

So I told Cheyenne she would receive the same amount of money for her back to school clothes shopping as the boys get and she started to realize that her taste in clothing would exceed the budget I give her. She asked me to help her find a way to make some extra money. I designed craft projects for three classes and she will then be assembling the supplies and teaching the projects in some craft classes next week. The classes will be for girls ages 6 - 12 and will be held at our house (in the garage) on Tues. July 21, Wed. July 22, and Thurs. July 23 from 1:00 - 2:30. The cost is $5 each class or if you want to take all three the cost will be $12. There will be a limit of 10 students in each class so if you are interested call ASAP. If by chance you do not have our phone number leave me a comment here on the blog. I am posting the projects below so you can get a better idea of what we are offering. Excuse the poor photography... I have a million things to do today. Don't hesitate to call with questions either.
Tues. July 21 Box Of Fun This box will contain 100 slips of paper - each with a fun suggestion of an activity that your child & family can enjoy doing together. This will go a long way in helping when the kids say that familiar, "I'm bored."
Wed. July 22 About Me Book In our class we will complete 12 pages and place them in a cute binder as shown. There will be little areas for your child to fill in some text as well as to insert some photos (they will add text and photos at home). It would be fun to let your child use a digital camera to take their own photos to add to the pages when they get home. If you would rather, they could just draw pictures in the photo spaces. The binder does allow for up to 40 pages so there will be room to add more pages at a later date if you desire.
Thurs. July 23 Note Card Set In this class your child will make a set of 6 note cards as well as a decorative box to place them in. This card set can then be used by your child, or they could give it as a gift to a grandparent or teacher.

Oh You Poor Neglected Blog

I kept thinking I'd get a chance to blog but a whole month went by and I didn't find the time. Now I suppose I'll just bombard my blog with my 4 weeks of Project 365 layouts. We just returned home on Wednesday from a week at our Bodily Family Reunion in St. Anthony, Idaho. We had a great time with all the cousins. All but one of Clayne's sisters was able to make it. We hope that maybe next year we'll have 100% attendance. His sister Kami had a set of twins this past year and the travel would have been long and difficult. We attended the fireworks in Rexburg for Independence Day and I was greatly disappointed. Idaho Falls just has such a spectacular show that this one was not even close to being what I am used to. Oh well... next year. Now I am just trying to get things back in order after being gone so much. We had only been home for less than a week from our Utah trip - see below.

Credits for project 365 layout week 27: Scrap Orchard July Mystery Mega, A Photo A Day Templates Set 2 by Chrissy W., Fonts - Do I Like Stripes, Adler

The latter end of week 25 and beginning of week 26 were spent on a Utah trip. Clayne needed to work and so I loaded up the kids and took a trip down. I took them to our Condo up Ogden canyon and then from there we made two day trips on Tuesday and Wednesday to Lagoon. We took advantage of the bounce back deal they do to make it a little more economical and I used some coupons from Deseret Book for the first day. It still was pricey enough - I used to go to Lagoon as a girl when I was growing up in North Salt Lake and of course it was lots cheaper then lol. The kids had a great time and we only lost Carson once. I thought I did pretty good keeping track of 4 kids in an amusement park by myself. After we had our Lagoon days we traveled further south and went to Clayne's brother's house near Richfield where we dropped Cheyenne off for the week. They brought her back when they came up for the reunion. It was good for Cheyenne and I to have a break from each other. Since she became a teen - sometimes there is just too much estrogen in our house LOL.

If you like the templates I used on my layouts for the past 3 weeks you can pick them up on sale right now at Elemental Scraps where Chrissy is the Featured designer for the week and has a great sale going on. You will find a link in the credits.


Credits for project 365 layouts weeks 25 and 26: Lucky by Amanda Heimann Designs, A Photo A Day Templates Set 2 by Chrissy W., Fonts - Soopafresh, CookieNookie

For credits on my project 365 week 24 layout see previous post.