ended the year scrapping!

I got a few minutes during the busy holiday time to sit at my scrap table and work on some fun pictures of Alex's birthdays. He ended up celebrating a total of four times the fact he was turning five. Not too shabby. Needless to say I had a boatload of fun pictures of my very photogenic little man. I decided to make some collages out of them to save time and frustration on my part. I could have all the great pictures I wanted AND not have to trim and cut and such. Easy scrapping here.

This is from his Chuck E Cheese party. This ticket blaster is the whole reason he wanted his party there. He got to do it twice since the first time his goggles fell off and he couldn't grab at anything. Lucky kid.

This is his party at my parents house. Love his reactions to his gifts.

Cake time at Nana and Papa's house. Wegmans didn't have a Sonic the Hedgehog cake (his choice of theme) so we got him a little Sonic figure to put on his cake. He liked it so all was good.

His crown at Chuck E Cheese. There were eight tokens around the outside of the crown, they didn't live there long!!

Here he is playing a bunch of games before the pizza came out. He LOVED the dancing game. And he was pretty good at it!!

Time to hang with the big mouse himself! Alex totally loved dancing with Chuck E.

Cake time at Chuck E Cheese. Yummy Hershey's chocolate cake. I made a couple of the medallion flowers to put on this page. I love how they came out with the papers I used. Old stuff from my stash. I stamped the 5's and the 'Your special day' on cardstock.

These were all done in 2011. It just took me some time to get them posted. yup... slacking again. I'll have to get my total pages scrapped up to date. I know I didn't do my 'goal' of 100 but I do know I made a ton of gifts and cards so I am happy.

project life 2011- weeks 24, 27, 29 and 30

This is the post that is messed up a bit with the missing pictures on three weeks. Soon as those pictures get printed, I'll be good to go on posting them. The journaling blocks are done, waiting on pictures.

Week 24- Kira's friends party at Chuck E Cheese, silly kids, Alex's car seat that he got sick all over, DADDY HOME!! and a haircut for my little man.

Week 27- My Maine lilies from my twin Tania. New ceiling fan since our other one fried (lucky there wasn't a fire) My new bread machine as I over-used our old one. Grandma Clark's desk in Kira's clean room and new ice cream bowls for the kids. Can't go wrong with M&M bowls for a buck (or maybe it was $2) at Walmart. They are so cute!!

Week 29- Me visiting my twin Tania. Had the best time EVER!! Hanging out with the kids at Nana and Papa's. Visiting my forever bestie and her girls.

Week 30- Seeing the Pooh movie, photo shoot with the kiddos, my rose of sharon in the back yard. Needs a trim this year. Price of gas for me with my Stop and Shop gas rewards savings!! So happy!! Truck from my twin's neck of the woods and the farm stand where we get our corn.

So happy I am doing this project as I love looking back at all the silly pictures and how this year is going. Glad the family goes along with all the pictures I need to take to keep this current.

project life 2011- weeks 7-10

Four more weeks coming your way!

Week 7-

Week 8-

Week 9-

Week 10-

Didn't do much yesterday. The day got away from me. Hoping to make today a better one. Would love to get Kira's room done. It's that never ending project that won't go away but needs to be done. The hard part is really done. We did get the trash out, 7 bags of stuffed animals are in hibernation and heading to the garage loft and the desk is stained and in the house. Need to rearrange the room and get things placed where they need to go.

oh yeah... and tackle the closet. That's very scary and I am not looking forward to that. Me scared.

Have a super one!

happy birthday to my munchkin

The weekend went by so fast! We spent most of Saturday cleaning the house and getting things picked up. The kids tried to stay out of our way and not make a mess behind us.

Sunday we had Kira's friends party at Chuck E Cheese. We offered to take any kids with us so the parents wouldn't have to drive too far for a drop off and pick up party. I ended up with five girls in the back of my van for the ride out and four girls and one boy on the way home. Can I tell you how LOUD fourth grade girls are?? Holey smokes batman! I turned the captains seats around in the van (Chrysler Town and Country) so they could all see and face each other. Worked well as all I had to do was concentrate on driving. Hubby drove his car there with Alex. They had a nice quiet ride both ways!!

The party was wonderful. The only problem I have with the parties is that they do not give nearly enough tokens to the kids to play for 50 minutes!! They get 20 and are expected to keep entertained until the food is ready. Not happening! I purchased a few more tokens and handed them out through out the day to keep them playing games and having fun. At one point, one of the guests said I was a cool mom since I kept handing out tokens. Neato!

Kira is totally into Pokemon and the trading cards. And her friends know this! She now has quite the collection of cards to play with. I am very proud to say that she did give quite a few duplicates to her brother. Very sweet of her.

Here's my girl with her friends at the party. My Alex and my friends two boys didn't get in the picture. They were busy with the games. It was quite a challenge keeping up with everyone. I didn't play a single game but had a great time.

I was sooo tired that night. I fell asleep holding Alex in his chair at bedtime. Hubby had to come in and wake me up before I started snoring too loudly and woke Alex up.

Yesterday poor Alex got sick in the car on the way home from picking up Kira. It was EVERYWHERE!! He did good and didn't freak out, Kira... totally freaking out. That's my girl. He's gently trying out some dry Cheerios and ginger ale this morning. (no not mixed together) He got sick once more when we got home but has been good since then. He even managed to eat a bowl of cheerios (dry) last night.

Off to work on some Thank You cards for a friend of mine. I have 15 made and have a few more pieces of paper I pulled to use so we'll see how many I end up with. Have a great one!

pagemap layout for contest

Greetings!

Every once in awhile I get the urge to enter one of the contests that are offered on the PageMaps blog. Yup, you guessed it, the urge hit me this weekend. It's taken me since Thursday to work on this page. I had a ton of ideas for it and kept changing my mind and getting new ideas in the process. It was easier to walk away than get overwhelmed.

But I finished it!!

When I went to print the pictures, I knew I didn't want four 4X6's on the layout. So I printed them all out on a 5X7. I wasn't planning on cutting them apart, but it worked out perfect for this contest and sketch! These were all the great pictures my kids did for me on our visit during Turn Off TV Week at school. (mentioned in this blog post) I scanned them and edited to size.

I went digging through my stash to find the pattern papers and managed to come up with four coordinating sheets. Two of them were from the same manufacturer. The other two just happened to work! Love that.

I used an EK Success border punch (swiss cheese) on this layout for the white block on the left hand side and on the layouts edges. I used another EK Success border punch for the bit under the title (parisian edger). I backed the edges with white cardstock. Added some extra large brads that have been kicking around for awhile backed by cardstock circles.

Also got into my Labels Fourteen Nesties where the date is stamped under Alex's picture and for the title space. Also used my petite scallop circles LG Nesties on the pattern paper on the white space in the left side. The journaling is located behind the page in a pocket... pull up on the pink tab at the top of the page. The title letters are Heidi Swapp chipboard letters (center of attention in white)

There you have it. I totally enjoyed doing this page. Fun to do something totally different every once in awhile. And if you are interested in joining me for this contest... here's all the information that you need to know.

chuck e cheese birthday party (photo heavy)

Happy Birthday (again) to Alex!! This should be the last party he has to celebrate him turning 5. Lucky kid has had one family/ friend party in Syracuse, one family party at home, one class party and now one friend party at Chuck E Cheese!! I am partied out.

He had a great time today. He was wonderful with his friends and played a ton of games. This one is one of his favorites. He has to get up on the game to be able to move the bone up and down, but he does fairly well with it.

Look at that concentration on this game!! This one you have to time the releasing of the six balls to get them to land in the correct spot.

Here he is after he did it and won the bonus!! (thanks to my amazing hubby who captured these shots for me)

Now time to boogie! He does really well at this game. He gets jumping around and hitting the spots and has a fun time.

Time to be silly with our birthday crown!! Of course he discovered the 8 tokens that were tucked into the pockets!! He had to go back out and play!!

Here's his total ticket count for the day! The red tickets are from his time in the Ticket Blaster. Pictures of that fun below!!

The gang!! Behind Alex left to right... Ethan, Emily, Kira, Papa and Nana. In front of Alex left to right... Brian, Justin and Nicole. Watching the show and waiting for our food!

Cake time!! Hershey's chocolate cake. YUMMY!! Good job getting those candles blown out!

Time to dance with Chuck E. I love the look on his face! I think he was watching the disco lights overhead. So cute!!

His time to shine with Chuck E! What a great day we had!

Ticket Blaster time. Alex has been wanting to do this since he saw it on a commercial. He informed me once he saw it that he was going to do it at his birthday party. hmmm... didn't realize we were having a friend party. But we did!! LOL

This is his serious ready to grab those tickets face!

He actually got to do it twice since the goggles fell off his face once the air started. So he was ready the second time! Look at that smile!! I do believe that was the highlight of his day.

Thanks to Ethan and his mom Kathy for such a great gift!! Kathy made the dog house and food dish for Alex's stuffed puppies. How cute is that?? He brings them into school to play with and talk about them. Now they have a cute house to play in! Adorable!!

I think that is the end of his 5th birthday. whew... Hope we don't have to top it next year. I don't think my hips can take much more cake. LOL

Happy Sunday evening everyone!!

today rocked!

Kira did not have school as the teachers had a workshop however, Alex did have school. We dropped him off and picked up some donuts and hot chocolate and came home. I had to be on a conference call/ webinar for a bit so she played nicely and enjoyed her fun breakfast. No guilt as she wasn't headed to school!!

After my call, we headed out to pick up Alex and have some fun at the Open Gym at the Rec Center. There were a ton of kids (all the older kids who are usually in school) there so it was loud but fun. Not much drama and no injuries!! All in all, a great time. I snapped this picture of my kiddos. Simply adorable!!

After the Open Gym, my friend Nicole and her three kids, came over to play. It worked out good as we needed to give her youngest his birthday presents. Love when a plan works!! Again, lots of fun, not much drama.

We headed out around 4pm on a surprise for the kids. I had told Alex and he did very well not letting Kira in on the secret. He's so good!! We ended up at Chuck E Cheese!! We had a boatload of tokens and tickets from previous visits to use and turn in. Of course we had to eat and get more tokens... of course. ;)

The kids had a blast! Seriously a blast. They barely sat still long enough to eat their dinner they were so excited to get winning tickets. Not that we needed many more. We had a gallon storage bag full. Yes GALLON sized bag. Somehow we managed to slip more in and use all the tokens we had... whew!!

Then it was the fun of having the ticket chomper count them all. Here's a picture of our bag of tickets. For your information... this is what 3191 tickets looks like!! Yup, we had a few!

The kids ended up with a stuffed dog for Alex and a baseball hat for Kira. A giant outdoor ball for both of them. Then a bunch of small toys to use up the rest of the tickets. They were quite happy to have won all those tickets and gotten some good prizes. We have left a few times with the cheap toys that break on the car ride home. Nice to get some better things.

counting down till Friday

It has been a crazy busy week. I love when PTA events coincide with hubby leaving town... NOT! And it wasn't like he was gone for a day... no he has been gone since Sunday! I have had to drag my poor kids with me to every Turn Off TV event this week. Monday we had a picnic dinner at the school so they wouldn't starve! They have been such troopers and for the most part well behaved. Hard being in one spot for so long.

Anywho... last night was Chuck E Cheese fun time. I sat towards the doors to catch people coming in with my raffle tickets for sale and they ran around playing all the games and hanging with their friends. I kept dishing out the tokens at a small amount so they would have to check in with me and I would know they were still in the building! For the most part, they knew where the other one was the whole time.

I had the pleasure of holding all the tickets they were winning. Kira declared that the new Operation game was 'sick' (oh I am not going to enjoy having a pre-teen in the house) and she did win a boatload of tickets from it. Alex came up to me with a picture he had done which I thought was the sweetest thing ever. Then Kira came up with her picture... okay now we are tied for sweetest thing!! Then be still my beating heart... both of my children whom I wanted to hang on the walls with duct tape Tuesday evening, came to me and handed me this...

It is the best gift ever!! I didn't even ask for them to do it yet they did it cuz they know I like getting these during our visits. Makes a mommy happy. I do believe I shall make it through this week after all. Doesn't hurt that daddy will be home soon!! ;)

chuck e cheese visit

We took the kids on Friday since they did relatively well getting their flu shots the night before. Let me tell you, once one kid starts freaking out... the other soon follows. Yikes. Good thing we had a fantabulous nurse who was quick like a bunny and very friendly.

Sharing a few pictures we had taken while hanging with the grey mouse in his house of fun.

We had a pretty good time. Kira played air hockey with a young man named Zac who is in 6th grade. Hubby noticed him 'following' Kira around the place. He was nice enough and maintained the proper boundaries.

Then we were off to BJ's for the fun of bulk shopping. My only problem with buying in bulk is finding homes for all the deals we get once we are home! I worked it all out and we are set with some stuff until the next run. It helped having the kids already on the worn out side while we were there. Less fights and tantrums. whew...

We got the deck cleared off for the winter and the cover over the sandbox. Productive weekend for us. But I think I need this week to rest so I can recover. Not that that's gonna happen. Lots to do with the PTA meeting, an oil change, spaghetti dinner at the school, teacher luncheon and a holiday thrown in for good measure. Is it Christmas break yet???