May 17, 2016

Hey there. Not much going on around here. That's why I haven't posted. I have been trying to catch up on my Project Life album. I finished 2015 and got January 2016 done. Now I'm starting on February. I'm hoping to get caught up so I can just do it month to month like I planned :)  I'll see if I can get some photos sometime this week and post them.

I fell behind when Shane's dad (my father-in-law) passed away in July. It's not easy to scrap when your heart is broken. But we are getting through it now. Though I think Shane has some real bad days. I feel bad for him. I'm going to be a wreck when my dad passes away. Hopefully it won't happen for a LONG time. I just don't think we can do that again. It was one of the hardest things we've ever been through.

We both lost our mom's earlier in life. Shane was only 11. I was 19. And that was really hard. My mom was one of my best friends. And I knew she never judged me. But, I don't know, I think now that I'm older it just might be harder to lose a parent. I can't explain it. Maybe I was just young and I didn't realize what a hole it would leave in my life at the time. I do realize now. And I miss my mom every single day.

Anyhow, I didn't mean for that to be a bummer post. Didn't even really mean to talk about all that. But I guess it needed to come out. So there it is.

Guess I'll beat it now that I've bummed us all out lol. Bye!

Mother's Day Sunday

 

Happy Mother's Day y'all! I had a good day today. Shane and I got up around 7:30 or so and lounged around for a bit. Then Shane said he wanted to go get some flowers for his mom and go see her. I agreed, I haven't been to my mom's grave in a while either. So, we got dressed and went to buy some flowers. Then we got Garrett up and headed out.
Shane's mom is buried in the Provo City Cemetary. So we headed there first.The flowers we brought over on Valentine's Day (her birthday) were still there. I thought the cemetary would have cleaned them up by now? They were carnations as well. Her favorite flowers were carnations.

 

Then, we headed over to my mother's grave in Pleasant Grove. I feel bad. I haven't been here for a while. I know I visited sometime near Christmas. I can't remember if I came for her birthday in January or not? But we came over here for Valentine's Day too. 

I'm pretty sure my mom's favorite flowers were daisies. But, they didn't have any. And I know that she would have liked these pretty white roses. 

Shane's mom is buried close to her mother, so we took a carnation from her bouquet and put it on his grandmother's grave too. My niece, who was only 3 months old when she passed away is right near my mother as well. So we pulled a rose from mom's bouquet and laid in on Nicki's grave. We couldn't afford to buy flowers for all of them :(

When we got home, we pretty much just lazed the day away. Garrett vacuumed the living room for me. Shane had picked the house up and put a bunch of stuff away yesterday. Garrett did the dishes last night. So that was nice.
I finally got my craft room all clean again. Now I can mess it up. Ha ha.

It was a good day. Looking forward to more good days as summer comes!
Talk to ya later.
Shelly

Mother's Day Saturday

Today started off with breakfast at Golden Corral with Shane and Garrett. We like to do that sometimes. Mainly on payday weeks lol. It's a nice way to start a weekend.

Afterword, my sister, Kim, and I went to the Big Bodacious Boutique at the Fairgrounds in Spanish Fork. We had a lot of fun, saw some cool stuff and spent more money than we had planned on (isn't that how it usually goes?).

There were a lot of really fun booths, but the ones we gravitated to usually had hand-painted wood signs and decor or jewelry. Surprisingly, Kim got more jewelry than I did. I'm usually the jewelry hoe lol. But she and Jason have been doing a lot of sailing (they now have three sailboats I believe), and there were a lot of little anchor, compass, and captain's wheel charms and things. So she had fun with that.
I got some cute flower earrings and a suede bracelet.
Then, we happened on this Lilla Rose booth. OMG. Awesomeness. We both wear our hair up a lot, so this was pretty cool to us. It gives your ordinary twist up a little bit more of a put-together look.  I am kind of broke right now (:0), so Kim bought me one for Mother's Day. Isn't that sweet of her? I love it!

 Then, when I came home, Garrett and Shane were outside potting me some geraniums! Love them! And they aren't easy to kill ha ha. G mowed the lawn, and the yard just looked amazing.

Later on Shane made dinner. We had pork ribs from Fresh Market (they smoke them on major holidays and sell them), cheddar broccoli pasta, and grilled brussel sprouts. Yum! It was delicious.

Tomorrow, which is actually Mother's Day, they are going to clean the house for me and hang an awesome old window that I have been wanting to put up in my craft room. I have been spoiled. I'm so thankful that my boys love me!

Barbecue Season

The weather is getting warmer, and we are loving it! Time for some grilling!

We actually grill all year. Shane loves to grill and experiment with seasonings on different meats and stuff. But, it is definitely easier in spring and summer. I think we can all agree :)

Tonight I decided I wanted to try some chicken kabobs. My sister, Kim, brings them to family barbecues quite frequently. And they always look so yummy!

I have to say, these weren't as inexpensive as I had thought or hoped. However, I did buy way too much stuff lol. We each had a good amount for dinner, there was plenty left over for work lunches the next day, and Shane had some for a snack later.

Shane did an amazing job at keeping everything moist, and the seasoning was fabulous. We like our stuff spicy, so he used plenty of pepper. He got some on my pineapple by accident, but it was actually pretty good. Might do that on purpose next time!

I forgot to mention to that when I got home today, G surprised me with a flashlight. It has long range reach and a bunch of other bells and whistles lol. It is LED, you can strobe it or it has an SOS setting or just straight beam like a normal flashlight. You can also adjust the beam to concentrated or a  really large circle. He got some sort of deal on their website, so he bought two (one for his dad's birthday in April, and one for himself) and then got mine free. I guess it is a military grade survival-type flashlight. Pretty cool. He bought them back in April, but they were on backorder.

Welp, that'll do it for today. I'll be back when I have more interesting things to say. Ha ha!

Hello

Y'all--I live in Utah, we don't say y'all. But I do. I don't know why.

Anyway, I really am gonna try this blog thing again. I like it. I'm just not real good at it lol.

All I have to say today is that I spilled some Diet Coke on my USB drive (that has ALL of my pictures on it). Y'all, I about had a heart attack. I was wiping it, blowing on it, sucking on it, lol. Seriously. I was panicking. So I hurried and copied all of the photos over to my computer so I'd at least have a back up. AND NOW MY COMPUTER IS ACTING ALL FUNKY!! What the crap?

That is all.

Shelly

Pocket Card Swaps!

Well, I guess it has been a while lol. I totally fell off of the "30 Days of Thankful" wagon. But, I am still going to finish my thankful album. Maybe I'll do that this Thanksgiving ha ha. The holidays, and really the last 3 months of the year in general, are just so busy that I ran out of time. I should probably just do a page a week until I'm caught up I guess.
I'm gonna try this blogging thing again. I know I keep saying that, but I do so enjoy sharing my creative "stuff" with other creative people. So, here we go again.
I recently joined a pocket scrapbooking group on Facebook where we make our own pocket cards and exchange them (the group's name is Pocket Card Swaps if you're interested .). I'm having loads of fun and wanted to share some things I am making.
My first item is a twinchie. The theme this month is a color theme. This is the swatch we were given to work with:

 

And this is the twinchie that I made for that color scheme.

 By the way, a twinchie is just a 2" X 2" square card decorated to insert into pockets for Project Life or pocket page style scrapbooking, or for use on regular scrapbook pages as well. 

Another of the swaps I joined for the month of July was for cards following a certain color theme as well. For this swap, we could make either 3" X 4" or 4" X 6" cards (the most popular sizes for pocket  page style scrapbooking). This is the color swatch we were given:

 

And this is the 3" X 4" card that I made to swap out for this month:

I hope you enjoyed seeing my work today. I have a couple more swaps I am still working on. One of them is card candy in a free theme (Card candy are just little bits of handmade embellishments that you make to go on your cards or photos as decoration.). The other one is for a different group, and that was is also for card candy, but the theme is Christmas. I'm excited for that one!

I haven't started either of these themes, but I will be sharing what I do when I have them done. So, stay tuned!

Thanks for stopping by today! Leave me a comment if you like what you see or if you have questions. I'd love to answer any questions anyone has if I'm able. I sometimes don't know the brands of things I use because they've been in my stash forever. But I will do my best.

Day 8-- {Thirty Days of Thankful}

Today I am thankful for date nights with my hubby. We don't get them too often because we just can't really afford it, but he got his bonus from work yesterday. So, we splurged a bit.
We ran into my sister, Kim, and Jason at the restaurant tonight too. Which is a little funny because we have only been to The Pizza Factory twice in 12 years lol.
So, we all decided to share a table and do double date night instead!

 

Day 7-- {Thirty Days of Thankful}

Today I am thankful for the compassion of Shane's new Workman's Comp doctor, Kirk Leininger. His previous case doctor had a seriously bad bedside manner. He assumed everyone who was coming to him had a problem with pain medication use, and would not give him anything for pain at all. I know my husband. He does not abuse medication. He doesn't even take it before the "every 4 hours as needed" is up. Even if he is in pain and needs it. He isn't a drug addict. He has a serious back injury, and it hurts to watch him hurt. He doesn't ask for meds often. Only when he has to have his back injections, like today.
I get that some people do abuse prescription drugs and that doctors have to be careful about how and when it is prescribed. But this last doctor would never even listen to him when he said he was having pain. His solution was always to discuss surgery, which Shane is terrified of. He has a couple of friends that had the same surgery, and they were both worse off afterword. He'd rather deal with the pain than be disabled.
So, to have a doctor who listens to him and who talks to him and understands his needs is just really awesome. Doctor Leininger takes the time to explain things to us both and makes sure all of our questions are answered. I am so thankful that Shane was able to switch to him.

Thirty Days of Thankful Days 1-6

I am doing a Thirty Days of Thankful journal in an 8X8  Project Life pocket style album. I thought it would be nice to blog my thankfulness here for you all to share in.
Obviously, I am starting the blog entries late. But here are my first six things to be thankful for. I will share my photos of the pages as they are completed as well. I know you're technically supposed to work on those daily, but I don't really have time until the weekend.
So, here goes.

Nov 1--I was thankful for a handy hardworking hubby and son. We had an electrical issue that soon turned into a bunch of issues that they found while fixing the electrical. Plumbing problems mostly.
This could have easily cost us anywhere from $500-$1000 that we just don't have. But we have awesome friends that gave us supplies that they happened to have from previous jobs of their own. And my hubby is super smart and knows how to fix nearly anything. So it ended up costing us around $200 in supplies only. So happy they could do it. They weren't happy having to get under the house and deal with the yuck. But we're all glad that we didn't have to hire someone.

Nov 2--today I am thankful for hunting because it is one of the things that bring my son and hubby together. And because they do it outdoors, which can be a rare thing for all of us sometimes.
They don't always get along, but this is something they can bond over. And that makes me happy.

 

Nov 3--Today I am thankful for the beauty of the area that I live in. This photo is taken a little over an hour from our house. But we literally have many beautiful canyon drives similar to this within minutes of our home as well. I don't think I could ever leave this place. It is in my bones now.

Nov 4--I'm thankful for the little bit of snoozing our dog, Angel, and I do after Dad leaves for work each morning. Shane leaves about an hour and a half before I have to get up and get ready for work. So I cuddle with my doggie and snooze for a bit during that time.

She is getting older and starting to show it. She might not be around too much longer, so we will cherish our time with her while we have it.

Nov 5--I love family movie and pizza nights! Especially now that my son is nearly 18. He is my only child, and I have come to appreciate the times that we spend with him more than usual. I know that soon he will be gone. He will begin his own life, and before I know it, I will see him having his own family nights. I want to slow it down. Life goes by too fast. But for now, I have family movie nights.

Nov 6--Today I am thankful for E-Books. I don't think I have read an actual paper book in about a year now. Don't get me wrong....I love real paper books. I like the smell of the paper and the crack of the spine on a brand new book.

However, we have no space to store actual paper print books in our home. I have to check them out at the library and return them 2 weeks later. And, they are hard to carry around sometimes. Plus, an electronic book is easier to hold while reading in bed ;)
I love that I can read an e-book on my Nook tablet, or on my cell phone. Even for just a few minutes. Like when I'm waiting in the dentist's office. Or, when I'm on break at work.
I can bring a limitless supply of books to read while camping. It's a pretty amazing thing. If someone had told me this would be possible when I was in high school, I'd have thought they were dreaming.

Some Project Life Stuff to Share......

As I said in my post a few days ago, this pocket page scrapbooking is REALLY starting to grow on me. It gets pics in albums fast, and the every day stuff that may not ever get scrapped otherwise, gets into books too. I'm loving it.
I decided to do a pocket style album for this year and see how I like it. I am only doing it by month right now because, and if y'all know me you'll understand :), I can't really picture myself being able to keep up with weekly at this point. And daily is never going to happen :)
Anyway, I wanted to share some pages I have done recently. So here they are.

January 2014

 February 2014

 March 2014

 I also joined some Project Life groups on facebook to get some ideas and maybe even join some swaps or challenges.  I just joined my first challenge, which had a theme of "Summer is Here". The challenge part was that you could only use regular cardstock (no patterned paper), and you had to use at least one each of stickers, stamps, flowers and bling.
I didn't ask, so I hope it is ok, but I used ink as well. That may get me disqualified because she said to only use the things she put on the list. But, you have to use ink to stamp. So I was hoping I could scrape by on a technicality. I was having a really hard time coming up with some designs.
We were to do a 3X4 and a 4X6 card for this challenge. Here are my entries. Tell me watcha think?

3X4 Entry

 

4X6 Entry

 

That's all I've got to say today. Please leave me a comment if you've gotten this far :)

Make Your Own Washi Tape?! .........Yes Please!

Sorry I've been a bit absent. Busy last couple of weeks in my family.

Anway, I don't really have a lot of time to post today, but I wanted to share this fun little tutorial I found on YouTube and what I made with it. It was so easy!

I haven't really invested much in washi tape. Because I don't think I'll ever use a full roll of one design. I don't want all of my pages or projects to look the same. That's why I never buy paper stacks either. Too many of one pattern. Or, even worse, a bunch that I don't even like.

I digress.  I found this fun and really simple little video from Beckie Lehman on how to make your own washi tape yesterday and decided to give it a go.......Totally Worked!

 

Here is the fruits of my labor. Isn't that fun?! It probably requires a bit of advanced planning due to drying time. But I could totally wip up a bunch using all of my lovely scraps that I can't bare to throw away :(

 

Hope this post inspires you. If you got this far, please leave a comment!

 

Kinda Loving It.......

I have to say that I am really liking this Project Life style of scrapbooking. I got 7 pages done in about an hour on Saturday. This amount of pages would have taken me days in the past! Which is why I never get anything done. I don't have a lot of time these days to devote to scrapping.
I will still do some traditional pages for important and special events, or things that mean a lot to me. I'm not saying that family vacations don't mean a lot, they do, but we pretty much do the same stuff every year. And, I kinda like the focus on the photos aspect of this style of scrapping as well.
Anyway, I got all caught up on the 2012 hunting trip yesterday. Now I can try to get caught up on previous years. Maybe I can get my hunting book all caught up before we go again this year lol.

 

Most of what I used here is the  Echo Park collection called Photo Freedom Volume II. But some of it came from the 24/7 kit from Simple Stories. And a couple of random patterned papers from my stash that I really don't know where they came from