A favorite quote

" Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: It is the time for home."

~ Edith Sitwell, British poet



An Inside Day

Since today it was looking like this.....

outside, I decided to stay in and work on something I've been wanting to work on for awhile now. By the way, the picture above does not do justice to the sheer volume of snow coming down, it is almost a white out. We had hardly any snow left before this morning, I took this picture at around noon and now there is about six inches of new snow!

Anyways, awhile ago I mentioned I had a plan for the Big Envelopes I ordered with my project life stuff (you can check out that post here) well today I decided to work on my kids' "School of Life" albums (well mostly just Nyla's as Cady is only in grade 1 and Gabe isn't in school yet :)

I believe it was in spring 2010 when I took the Library of Memories online course with Stacy Julian (check out more about that here) among many of her many ideas was one that really resonated with me about organizing and keeping track of all things school related which she called School of Life. So since doing that course I have been pretty good at organizing the kids school stuff in a little file holder on my desk. Each child has a file for each grade (since my kids are young I just started with what I had which was this little cheapo file folder from Wallyworld, not pretty but it works)

This is my desk while I was hard at work. Notice I've got my important stuff always out, my school of life folder on the right (to easily drop school stuff right in) and my project life stuff in the middle :) Necessities people, necessities :)

Here is a picture of the title page of Nyla's book, I kinda scraplifted the idea from SJ :)

And here is one of the Big envelopes ( I bet you wondered when I was going to get to that) LOVE THEM! They have that great pocket on the front with a card to label and personalize, which I did with some stamps I had on hand and a little flower. Inside are things like report cards, special art projects, certificates from school and sports etc etc. Like I say love them. So nice to have it all organized and pretty and easy to access (now if only my basement was that easy to organise and make pretty, which is my next project)

What did I do with school pictures you ask? Well, you are just going to have to tune in next week and find out :)

Yesterday was my Cadence's 7th birthday. First of all I can't believe she is seven already! Seems like just yesterday she was this pudgy cheeked little baby...




Cady at about 4 months



I remember when I was pregnant with her that I was hoping and hoping for a little girl because I wanted Nyla to have a little sister that was close to her age (they're 2 1/2 yrs apart) and for both of them to have the closeness and friendship of sisterhood. Well I got my wish and Pat and I were both ecstatic when our little baby Cady arrived!




Cadence is such a bundle of energy always moving in some way or another, though when she does slow down, she enjoys doing puzzles as well as playing barbies, playmobil and littlest petshops.



Cadence has a great love of animals and creatures of all kinds especially chickens!

Cadence, you are such a sweet girly girl. You have a great love for your family and animals, and a never ending abundance of enthusiasm for trying and learning new things. You have an innate natural ability with sports and anything physical and a sweet cuddly side to those you truly care about.

I love you very much and look forward to watching you grow and learn and be you!


Hope you all have a great week!

P.S We would have been just as ecstatic to have a boy on that day 7 years ago, but we were doubly lucky to have one 2 1/2 years later when we had Gabe :)

A new venture

I just wanted to let you know that I am posting today on my new other blog "The Happy H Homestead".

You can check it out here if you want.

Have a great day and a great weekend!

It's here! It's here!

I am so excited! Can you tell? Why am I so excited you ask? Well, I'll tell you :) Remember when I wrote this post a few weeks ago when I was impatiently waiting a certain something? Well, it's here finally, my project life stuff has arrived!

I had ordered the cobalt core kit, then I changed my mind and decided I liked the Clementine version better. I also ordered a black signature binder,  a package of the big variety pack of photo pocket pages, and a pack of Big envelope pages. I was so excited I nearly ripped the box out of the purolator man's hands :)

I guess there had been a mix up with the company who distributes the Becky Higgins product in Canada and I was supposed to get my order around Christmas, but that didn't happen so I had emailed the company to see when my things were going to be shipped. The woman emailed me back right away and we got it sorted out and she felt so terrible about the mix up that she overnighted it straight away so I could get started :) Long story, sorry! 

My plan was to highlight a week per layout in 2012, so I had been taking pictures and making notes and had my idea for my title page all planned out. When I got everything out of the box, I got started right away! Here is my title page:

The core kit comes with everything you need for a title page and last page all planned out, but I knew I wanted to add pictures to the title page at least. I still want to add our last name and the year somewhere, but haven't decided where and how yet.

I also threw in all the pictures I wanted to use from the last 5 or so weeks, so I continued on with that. Now I just have to finish the journalling and add those card to the pages and I will be all caught up! Here's the first week of January:

 I'm hoping to get most of the journalling finished today. Oh and those big envelope pages I ordered? Those are going to be a part of some scrapbooks I'm planning to document the kids school years, an idea I got from Stacy Julian called "school of life".

In other news, our week has been kinda quiet around here, my mom watched the kids for us for a few hours the other night ( I had to work, Pat had a meeting, so nothing fun) and she and Gabe made this,

 Cady made the other tower :) Gabe played with it a ton yesterday while I did my thang (see up top :)

And poor Nyla has been sick with a sore throat so she's been watching a lot of Garfield (their latest favorite movie) and reading.

How is your week going? Any fun and exciting things arrive for you to play with? :)

P.S If any of the links for the project life stuff above don't work for you, you can check out Becky Higgins site HERE. Also, if you don't live in the United States and want to order stuff, there are links on her site for how to do that, they ship all around the world!

P.P.S. I am not affiliated with Becky Higgins at all so I don't get any perks or anything for sharing all this (I doubt she even knows I exist :), I just really like her stuff and her outlook on what scrapbooking is and the fact that she is a mom herself and understands all the challenges we all face :) Just so you know :)

My Man's Birthday

Well it was yesterday actually :) My hubby, Pat, turned 31 yesterday. We had a pretty quiet, normal,Thursday. Work, school, gymnastics, etc. the only difference was I took last night off work (I usually work Tuesday and Thursday nights) and made one of his favorite meals (tortellini with alfredo sauce and salad). Gabe and I made a cake yesterday, banana split cake with strawberry sauce and whipped cream. Yum!

And here's the birthday boy,

He is such a great dad :)

And a lovely husband :)

He is a great friend and loves to do so many different things.

He is wonderful with puzzles (both physical and mental) and he is a fountain of useless information (right Sherry?!) which makes him deadly in a game of Trivial Pursuit! He is goofy, friendly, funny, sincere, honest and the love of my life :)

Happy Birthday hon, and just remember....................... you are only half way to 62 !