march sketch challenge

Look at that... two posts in one day from me! Now if both of them had been scrapping stuff that would have been even more of a miracle. I spent the morning in the art room at the school. Actually I was in the hallways of the school hanging up some of the most beautiful artwork you could imagine for the school wide art show that goes on for the entire month of March. Those kids are truly talented.

Anywho... in the sketch challenge group I am in, this was the sketch for March. Pretty neat one. I do believe I shall use this again as it was pretty easy to do and I can see different ways to add pictures and such.

Here is my take on the sketch. I used my scoring board to make the flower medallions and used one of my EK Success border punches for the circle borders. I wish they would put the name of the punch on the punch. It would make it easier when trying to describe things. I guess I could have put it on when I bought it, but alas, I did not.

Alex got to paint an ornament while Kira was doing two projects for a Girl Scout badge. He took his time and was really careful about where he put the 'ornaments' on the tree. I did the trunk of the tree and filled in some of the paint on the sides that he missed but he did everything else. It came out so nice. He hung it on his Christmas tree and it will be a treasured ornament for years to come.

Thanks for stopping by to peek. I need to work on a card... hoping to get some inspiration. Wish me luck.

heritage festival weekend

It was that time of year again... Heritage Festival weekend in Newmarket. There are vendors and foods and demonstrations and freebies and lots of fun. Unfortunately, for the past two years it has rained and we didn't feel like dragging the kids through all this outdoor stuff in the rain. I know we are very silly parents. This year... no rain. Super humid but no rain.

Every year Kira has performed with the elementary school chorus. Last year and this year she has played her saxophone. Afterward we went looking for the fire truck that was supposed to be down by the waterfront. So after a bit of a walk, we made it and no fire truck. Talk about a bummed little guy! But we did happen upon an adorable llama who looks just like little llama from the Llama Llama books. Alex and I LOVE little llama. This picture is so adorable!! My little llama....

Before the concert, Alex and daddy went down to the Lamprey Health's Teddy Bear clinic where they were giving away Clifford and his pals that were donated by the local Kohl's. Alex was so excited to get Clifford. Kira had a bit of a meltdown when she thought they didn't have any more Cliffords. Amazing that at age 10 she still loves the big red guy.

Concert pictures!! There's my sweetie doing the motions for one of her songs. She loves songs that they can move around to. The lovely lady to her left is her BFF Michaela. Sweet girls.

Finally!! I was able to get pictures of Kira playing her sax during a concert!! So darn cool. Love the action.

About the fire truck... as we were heading back to pick up our magnets that the kids painted, there it was! At the end of the festival. Alex was so excited. Especially when the firemen asked if he wanted a hat and a tour of the truck! He was on cloud nine.


Kira got a feather in her hair... it's pink. Perfect for her. I need to snap a picture of it. Of course tomorrow is picture day so it will live on forever in her fifth grade picture. Great memory! I get to work at picture day too. Always a fun day to see all the kids dressed up... and some that are not.


Mom and dad are here for a couple days. They went to the Loudon NASCAR race on Sunday. Fun hanging out with them. I spent the day Sunday trying to find the house. Somehow tons of dirt and stuff has found its way into this place. I must have turned my back for a minute. I was sore that day, but the house is back together and in order. I'd like to say the same for the laundry. Seems to be taking forever to get through the zillion piles I have. Little at a time and it will be done... sorta.


Kira is the Student of the Week in her classroom this week. We found out on Friday and then promptly forgot. She reminded me as we were heading out to her Girl Scout series program meeting (at 6:30pm on Sunday) that we needed to print her pictures for her. oh yeah... knew I forgot something. I hadn't eaten all day since I was cleaning, so I made me something to eat and my parents came home. My dinner was at 9:30pm and then I started printing her pictures at around 10:15pm or so. Finally got eighteen lovely pictures of Kira, her family, interests and friends printed by 12:30am. I cheated on the last two and used two Disney pictures that were on my desk. shhhhh.... it's our secret.


I had the fun of volunteering in Alex's class today. I am loving having this standing volunteering going on. So wonderful to get into the classroom and help out and meet Alex's friends. Doesn't hurt that Alex simply LOVES his teacher. I'm pretty fond of her myself. He was telling everyone who would listen today that I was coming in. So sweet. I went out to the playground to meet up with his class and he saw me and came running. His one shoe did not though! He was almost to me when he realized his one shoe was missing. Adorable!!


Need to get back to scanning school work. Maybe tomorrow. Tonight this momma llama is taking it easy and heading to bed early. Me tired.

project life 2011- weeks 20-23

Trying not to make the blog posts super photo heavy so instead I'll post three posts today!! That should catch me up with things. LOL

Week 20- Alex is once again wearing mis matched socks on purpose!! So cute. Saturday was a day of shopping ALONE for me. Got through 3 stores without one single complaint!!

Week 21- So much to do and no time to do it!! We have bought our paint to do the garage and the house. Hope it's enough. And yes we know they sell the paint in the 15 gallon tubs but the Home Depot we went to, was out of the proper tint we needed so they sold us 15 gallon cans instead. Turns out it was much easier to use these than worry about lifting a 15 gallon tub up a ladder!!

Week 22- Working on the house time. Must be spring finally!!

Week 23- Kira's birthday this week. Daddy got a new car and Alex graduated from preschool. Good week for the Foltz Family!!

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!

last day of school and some gifts

Been slacking in posting some gifts I have made. Time to catch up... I made these two gift card holders for Kira's Girl Scout troop leaders. Love these ladies. And the papers and flowers were so wonderfully fun. I tried to use green since Kira is a Junior and wears a green vest. Had fun with these and they were appreciated.

This was a gift card holder for my Alien friend. If you look closely you can see one of her cousins right below the flower/ belt. Yummy greens on this one. Very happy with how this turned out.

Here is the card I sent to the above mentioned Alien. The paper is from the All About Boys DCWV stack. So perfect for all those extra terrestrials in our lives. Okay... I only have one, but she is pretty darn special. Love the purple and green on this. Used my Nesties for the pop dotted circle and the alien guy was just begging to be cut out of the paper to travel.

Yesterday was the last day of school for Kira! No more fourth grade for us... we are headed into 5th. Mr. Jones will be her teacher. I am very happy with this. And I think it will be great for her to have a male teacher before heading off to middle school.

Took the kids to McDonald's to celebrate the end of school. Plus it worked out since they have Pokemon toys and cards. We had a play date with Kira's friend Maggie which was great. They had a fun time since the rain came tumbling down shortly after we got home from lunch.

Here comes our summer. Hoping to be able to post some more creations shortly. Busy weekend coming up for us so if you don't hear from me... I'll be back soon!! Enjoy!

almost friday!

Here's a couple of pictures from last week. First one is of Kira from her Court of Awards ceremony for Girl Scouts. So cute. If she keeps growing at the rate she is... That vest will be tiny on her at the end of next year!

One night while I was reading to Alex, we heard some animal making very loud noises in the front yard. Almost sounded like a bird or a bat. Then there was two or three of these animals making noise. Lovely... what woodland critter is hanging in my front yard?

Come to find out it's this little lady and her babies. We're not sure if they fell out of the tree or fell off her back when she was bringing them up or down the tree, but they were lost and she was calling to them to get them back to her. VERY LOUD!! I never knew that raccoons made noise, much less the loud ones that this little family was making.

It took us a bit of time to find the source of the noise as the front tree area needs some major professional work (one of the trees broke during the wind storm in February 2010 and the parts that got cut off were left for us to dispose of by the power company) But we found her. Hubby continued to watch her while I got the kids to bed. Then he told me that one of the babies had gotten hit by a car on the road. Why the raccoon had to cross the road is beyond me, but she did. I felt horrible. He said that the hurt one kept walking up and down the road on the side calling to his mommy. Very sad.

The next day (and when hubby got this picture) we found the baby in the front yard very near the tree base. He didn't make it. The mommy kept coming down the tree and going over to it. Very very sad. Hubby got rid of it when he mowed the lawn. In the morning, we found another one in the road, very run over. I want to tell this mommy to keep her babies in the tree, they are not ready to cross the road. But nature knows what it is doing and it is not up to me to repopulate the raccoon population in Newmarket.

Isn't she cute?? And pretty big. I never knew that raccoons could climb trees or that they would nest in the tree. From the looks of things, we REALLY need to get that tree removed once she is gone. Looking a little dead to me.

Hubby was by the driveway when he took these pictures. Plus it was getting to be dusk so many of them did not come out great. This spot is WAAAAAYYY up high in the tree.

Looking forward to Friday and the weekend. Been a long one here and happy that the kids have been good and not too crabby.

Oh yeah... Kira had her well child check up yesterday. They say she is doing a great job taking care of herself. She grew 3.75 inches since January! I know I have her record from last year somewhere around here. I'll have to see how much she has grown since last June. It's got to be a lot. Her pants have shown me she has grown. That girl has got some legs on her!

And the best news... the title came for hubby's old car so we can sell it off and get it out of the driveway and onto it's new owner.

parade pictures

And because she asked so nicely.... here are the pictures from the town parade yesterday Alien!! Of course everyone else can look at them... but please wait for Alien to look first since she did ask for them. *giggle*

Here's my little guy before the parade. He was a posing fool while we waited. We were at the very end of the parade route. It ends at the cemetery across the street from our house. Works good for us!! So we had a bit of time to kill before anyone crossed our path. He loves doing these wacky poses for me when I have my camera.

This is Kira's troop. I would love to point her out to you... but she is not here. I was concerned that they had lost her during the parade. Seriously wondered where she was. The Brownie troop behind them is headed up by my friend Nicole.

Oh look.... there she is behind the Brownies. She was walking with her friend Maggie who is in another troop in the town. Should have known that is where she would be. Can't blame her. They did have a play date earlier in the day. Oh in case you are wondering... she is the one with the floral skirt on looking at the camera. LOL Her troop leaders are the two of the ladies behind her. The one with the sunglasses waving and the one in the black shirt. They are amazing. I am so happy they are still working with the girls. Love them!!

Here's her troop. At least some of them. Not everyone marched. Good group of girls.

Here's Kira with her friend Maggie. Had to get a shot of her patches on the back of her vest. Nana works hard to get them all on. Those ones are NOT iron on and mommy sewing... not a good thing. Much safer to let Nana handle that. I do know my limits and sewing patches is beyond me!

Today I did manage to get the front bed uncovered from the dead leaves and weeds. I am SORE! Need to pick up some mulch and maybe a couple plants to fill in the spaces of the ones that died over the winter. I'll write that on the shopping list for tomorrow when we hit Home Depot for two new doors. Nothing like stuffing the van full when the kids are at school. :)

memorial day

It was a hot one here today. I am so happy that they had the town parade at 6:30pm instead of at noon!! Don't think I would have enjoyed it as much. I'll post pictures tomorrow of my girl marching with her Girl Scout troop. I'm beat and need to hit the bed as the regular week will start again tomorrow.... is it June 22nd yet?? School will never be out! grrrrr

Anywho... lots to do this week. With hopefully lots of pictures to follow! Wish us luck on the possible painting of both the garage and the house. Along with replacing the falling off trim around the garage doors as well as replacing the side door on the garage and the side entrance door of our house. Looking forward to getting rid of the glass in the doors. AND getting dead bolts installed on both of them. Long week ahead of me.

On the sharing front... we did manage to get the deck furniture out of the garage yesterday before we all felt too sticky and gross from the wonderfully HOT weather. We also got the winter cover off of the sandbox. That was a bit interesting as there was a small family of mice living in the sandbox!! Seriously... who does that?? I screamed a bit as I was so not expecting anything living in there (maybe a spider or two) but mice. Nope. Didn't see that coming. Poor hubby was behind the extremely large winter sandbox cover and couldn't see why I was screaming, until he peeked around. The good news... they ran off the deck pretty quick (probably under the deck) and hubby cleaned the nest and rest of their belongings out of the sandbox. They have been evicted. I'm a bit scared to move the summer sandbox cover. I don't want to see them again. eeeek. I don't do wildlife well. The summer cover fits better than the winter but we'll see. I may have to hire the neighbors cat for some mousing duty.

Pictures tomorrow. Not of the mice... parade and whatever else strikes my fancy!!

the best girl scout cookie ever and a gift

Yesterday Kira and I helped out at her troop's cookie booth outside the local gas station. Thank goodness it was a pretty decent day with sun and a gentle wind. Haven't had too many of those around here, so it was nice. Kira got to dress up as a Thin Mint, her favorite cookie. We then went out to the grass patch by the road so she and another girl could wave at the cars. They had fun and we sold a ton of cookies!! She does make a pretty cute Thin Mint!!

This is the project I was working on a last week or so with the mod podge. Love the smell of mod podge. Anywho... a friend of mine was going to surprise her kids with a trip to Disney and I thought I could make her up a little vacation journal to record all the great memories they will be making. I mailed it to her with no time to spare! She left later that evening after receiving it! Talk about close. LOL

Anywho... here it is.... I think I got the journal at the dollar store or from ACMoore/ Joanns/ Michaels. I really can't remember just that I have had it for awhile! Added some Mickey/ Disney paper from my very large stash along with a ribbon. The Wishes do come true is a Jolee's set that was perfect for this project. On the final coat of mod podge, I added some very fine glitter. After it was dried, I ran my hand over it to get off any loose glitter. Worked pretty good. Pixie dust all set for the trip!

This is the inside cover (the back cover is the same) I mod podge'd all four covers to make sure it will withstand the travel and happy hands coming in contact with it. BTW... she loved it!! So happy.

me... I am happy that Turn Off TV week is behind me. Now to start working on the Book Fair. Guess I should get at it. Happy Sunday!