A Busy Busy Week!

I have to warn you that this post has a LOT of pictures :) So maybe grab a cup of tea, or a snack and come along for the ride that was my week.

Starting out last Sunday (Father's Day) the kids and I made breakfast in bed for their daddy. Bacon, eggs, toast with peanut butter, orange slices and coffee, yum :)

I was amazed at the beautiful artwork the girls made at school for their daddy, Nyla's is the top one, it's a card for her dad and Cady's is the bottom one, she painted a picture for him (it is so cute, a daddy and kid dog with chicken pox :)

Below is a picture of the cute bird feeder Nyla made for her dad :)

   Tuesday, Nyla had her class field trip to a wonderful park in town and I got to go with them on the bus and Nyla asked me to sit with her :)

Her class got to spend some time at the beach as well as learned how to make pine needle baskets and play on the playground. We even got Dilly bars from Dairy Queen, yum!

Working together to make sand castles :)

Wednesday, the girls school had a day of fun for their principal who is leaving. The whole school did different stations of their principals favorite subjects and activities to do. Gabe had fun helping Nyla build with marshmallows and toothpicks :)

Cadence had fun with the building foams and squirting them down :)

And Gabe helped Nyla again:) Aren't they cute?

Today, Cadence worked on her monkey bar skills before soccer :)

Nyla's team kicked butt, winning 13-4! She improving so much this year and doing so well! (She's the one looking to the right )

And my silly Cadence who scored a goal today! Woohooo!

Between all that, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Cadence had her end of year gymnastics show (2 1/2hrs each night) I couldn't get any good pictures there because the building it is in has terrible lighting. Tuesday and Thursday night I worked as well as had my triathlon training. Thursday Nyla had soccer practice and Thursday and Friday, Nyla and Cady had their last swimming lessons. Then this morning the girls had their last soccer games for the summer. Whew! what a week, thankfully all the extra activities are finished and they only have 2 1/2 more days of school (they're done on Wednesday!??)

Updated Scraproom pictures

Last night I did my triathlon training course and Thursdays we do a run practice (Tuesdays we swim and Saturdays we bike) we did the whole running course which is 5 km and because I have such bad feet (bad pronation) I am always sore the next day. Well today I can barely walk so I figured I may as well sit and update my blog a little bit :) Thank goodness the run portion is the last thing we do during the tri :)

So, anyways I found my camera finally (it was squeezed in between the cushions on the couch ?? hmmm) and took some pics of my new scrapping area. It is in a small room in the basement where the playroom is as well so it's a bit squishy, but so far it works. My idea is that for the summer, we will do our outings in the mornings (beach, spray park, library, etc) and then during the heat of the day we can hide out in the nice cool basement and the kids can play/ do artwork and I can scrap. Yay! I've been reading

 and getting really inspired! I love books about decorating/organizing and scrapbooking so what could be better than all three together? So here it is, not completely organized and pretty yet, but hopefully you will enjoy.....

My stuff takes up one wall, and the kids get the rest of the room :)

I like to organize my supplies by colour so each square bin represents the colour of stuff within. Although I want to change this a bit for a few reasons 1) the store doesn't have all the colours I need like yellow, purple and black and white 2) it looks too mish mash and I'd like it to look all uniform. Oh what I wouldn't give for an Expedit!! The boxes on the shelf above? The colourful one and the black one are my category drawer and my cold storage. Yes I only have one category drawer, but it is almost full so almost time to shop for another :) and on the left you can see a few of my storage albums. ( all the terms; category drawers, cold storage and storage albums are from LOM or Photo Freedom)

View from the other side.

My desk aka where the magic happens :)

                                                     My two youngest playing in the playroom half (please don't mind the mess picture was taken on a real day :)

Playing playmobil, I love when my kids play playmobil (and Lego!)

Gabe on his last day of soccer this week

I love this boy :)

Go Canucks Go!!!!

We are watching the big game and cheering for our boys in blue! We are all Canucks fans, are you?

June Already?!!

I cannot believe how fast the month of may flew by!! Well actually I can sort of, we have been so busy with soccer, gymnastics, school, swimming, work, and I decided to join a beginners training for a triathlon in August! Oh my what have I done? Actually, so far I am really enjoying it and doing better than I expected I must say. You can check it out here.

Last weekend, er the last weekend in May, I was lucky enough to attend a scrapbooking retreat. It was so nice and relaxing and productive! I got nine pages done! And that was done even though I left for about six hours on the Saturday to help build a playground in our community. Such a great weekend. I wanted to take some pictures but I can't seem to find my camera so I found these pictures from the last time I went to this retreat two years ago (it doesn't look much different)

This is the view from the ferry ride on the way over. (yes folks, the longest free ferry ride in the world is out my backdoor!) Isn't it beautiful?!

This one above is from the beach below the lodge where we scrapped and stayed.

And this one is taken from the deck, looking the other direction from the picture up top. I am so lucky I know!

So hopefully I can find my camera for some pictures of my new scrap space I promised you and of our kitchen which is now done!

Operation DD scraproom edition

Well, I'm finally getting back to doing the operation DD! Last weekend I worked on my "scraproom". Our house is mostly open plan and this area is on the main floor, but while being nice and accessible, was always a mess of works in progress. Not very nice for doing showings for selling our house :)

That window faces our trampoline so it's nice to keep tabs on the kidlets while letting the creative juices flow:)

Also part of our library/den area,

And fairly organized, notice my labelled photo albums, also called storage albums in library of memories talk :) The bins on the left hold my embellishments organized by colour.

Have you been organizing lately? Tomorrow I'll show pictures of my "new" scraproom :)

Finding Photo Freedom

I am so excited for June 2nd! Why, You ask? Because that is the first day of the online class I just signed up for called Finding Photo Freedom. It was written and made by a woman named Stacy Julian and I just love her! I actually took her class last year when it was called Library of Memories and I was so happy I did because it totally changed the way I scrapbook and also how often. This past year I've done the most scrapbooking I've ever done and I credit it to taking Stacy's class. I love how organized my pictures have been since then and I can't wait to see how Stacy changed things up a bit for this years class. If you are curious about Stacy or her class, you can check her out by clicking on her blog link on the right under"My Blog List" or, for her class, click on the button on the right "Finding Photo Freedom".
Now I'm off to check out what I have to do for pre-class work, should be fun!
Sam

Fun at the Fair!

Spring just wouldn't be spring without the fair coming to town :) On Friday evening we all went with Grandpa and Grandma Bev to check it out and try out some of the rides. The kids, of course, had a blast and one of their favorite rides were these spinning berries;

The kids all decided to have their own car on the train (it wasn't very busy yet) and Grandpa's favorite was the bumper cars although we didn't get a picture of that. I might have screamed a little bit on a ride called the octopus, but just a little ;) (I tend to scream on almost all rides)

Gabe was so cute waving wildly to us every time he went around!

I can't believe how grown up our girls are getting, sigh.

We had nice weather all weekend (finally!) so on Saturday I kicked the kids outside and they played out there literally ALL DAY. It was wonderful! Sunday was really nice too and we spent the day tilling our garden (well Pat did, I picked out rocks,yippee!) and helping my mom build her deck and having a bonfire, which of course meant roasting weenies and marshmallows.

All in all it was an excellent weekend and I can't wait for summer and camping!

Sam

@#$%^$%&^ internet service!

Whew! Got that out of my system! I have to apologise for not writing on here for nearly a month. I cannot believe it has been that long already! We've been having problems again with our Internet and it has really affected the amount of blogging I've been wanting to do. That and this month seemed really fast and busy :)

To sum up our month, we had my dads birthday, my birthday (30th!! yikes), Easter and a memorial for my uncle who passed away in January on the same weekend, soccer started for Nyla, getting the garden ready, finishing our kitchen reno (which is taking way longer than I had hoped), and of course all the other day to day cycle of things.
Hopefully, hopefully we have this Internet thing figured out and I will be writing to you again shortly :)
Have a good weekend!
Sam
P.S Did you watch the royal nuptials this morning? I didn't but I've got it recorded :)   

Can you tell I have two older sisters?

Look at those pretty little fingers :) Poor Gabe, with two older sisters, he doesn't stand a chance! But, I guess I shouldn't say poor him because he loves having his nails painted, and if its pink, all the better! 

Lately his favorite things to do are, play with this tiny micro machine train set (it used to be my husbands when he was a kid) and play "I spy" with one or all of us. I asked him to smile for a picture and this is what I got :)

And then he asked me to take another one of his "beaver smile" So here it is...

Notice the big white teeth :)  Oh, and the cute pink toenails ( because your toes have to match your fingers doncha know?!)

Last night the girls had their end of term (for Nyla, end of season) gymnastics session in which parents and siblings can come onto the floor at the end and participate and watch up close. Then at the end they do a little presentation and receive a certificate. So here's my little gymnasts ( and Gabe too of course)

Nyla looks so serious and nervous...

                            And Cady, so proud...

They had to run and jump on the red mat onto this block that I think was taller than I am!

Cady has no fear of course. And then they decided to just hang around :)

Cady practiced her cartwheels on the tumble track (a long trampoline)

 which looked like so much fun that someone else had to get in on the action!

And of course what two do, the other has to as well...

All in all a good day :)

Before Pictures of our Kitchen

I mentioned a little while ago that we are do a mini kitchen reno, so I thought I would post the "before" pictures. We live in a log house built in the late 70's early 80's and I don't think anything has been updated since then. Our plan is to paint the walls (all the green in the pictures) and the cupboards, get new counter tops (the original is a really nasty white lino that is so stained and cracked and coming apart) and new hardware for the cupboards, all on a really limited budget.

This is also on my list for Operation DD as I'm cleaning and organizing as I go:)

So without further ado here is the old kitchen ( looking very messy and disorganized because that's the way "before" pictures are supposed to look right?)

I don't mind the colour green but this was just too "minty" for me and dark and gloomy as well.

Hmmm looks like we just finished breakfast :) See what I mean about dark and gloomy? And there is even a huge french door just to the right in the picture (not shown)! But alas, this room is in the northern corner so doesn't see much sunshine except for early in the morning in summer.

Sorry for the white glare out the windows, we still have quite a bit of snow :)

The ugly hardware everywhere. Yuck could we be more ugly 70's.

And the gross counter top. This edge always catches on sweaters and nice shirts, ruining them, so I have no problem saying buh-bye.

So how about you? Any mini renos this spring? Or are you sticking to a good old fashioned spring cleaning?

Have a good day!

Update: you can check out some "after" pictures  HERE.