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 !

Oat Delights (aka Bear plop cookies :)

Charlotte, this is for you! That's my sister for those of you who don't know. I thought it was time to share another favorite recipe of ours. My sister and I have made these together quite a few times and can't help but giggle when we put them on the pan as they always look like bear poop (hence the name) Anyways, I like making them for a few reasons, #1 They are easy, #2 You don't need eggs or flour, #3 You don't need the oven as they aren't baked #4 the kids like them! #5 They're so chocolatey! So without further ado, here's the recipe,

Oat Delights

2 cups sugar
6 tbsp cocoa
1/2 cup butter/margarine
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup shredded coconut
3 cups rolled oats

Combine sugar, cocoa, butter, and milk in saucepan, bring to a boil. Boil for about two minutes, stirring constantly. Add vanilla. Remove from heat and stir in coconut and oats. Drop by teaspoonfuls (or tablespoons like I usually do) onto wax paper lined cookie pan; chill. Makes about 4 1/2 dozen

Enjoy!
Can't believe it's already February, can you?

From Window Frame to Picture Frame

Today I'm going to share with you a project that I did with some of our family pictures.

I've had these old window frames sitting around here for about a year. I had spotted them at our local thrift/architectural salvage store and had big plans for them, but I needed the perfect pictures for them :) So when I saw the proofs from our family photo shoot I knew exactly where I wanted some of the pictures to go.

First step was to clean up these babies and seal them. I like the shabby chicness of the roughed up/peeling white paint and wanted to leave them that way. Also, I knew I wanted to use a bunch of colour in the matting so a white frame worked for me :)

Next I decided which pictures I wanted to use and had them printed out in 5"x7" size (the window openings are 9.5"x11.5") 

As you can see I chose 1/2 going vertical and 1/2 going horizontal. (sorry for the really orangey brown background, my desk is the same colour wood as our log walls)

Next, I went through my scrapbook paper stash and selected some papers to mat the photos on. I chose one solid colour (the blue that the picture is sitting on) and four different patterned papers to coordinate with the solid.

oops! I guess I only took a picture of two different types of pattern for this part, but you can see the other two patterns I chose, further down :) I just love that paper with the birds and have been wanting to use it for soooo long!

So, then I decided to round the corners of the solid colour paper with my corner rounder. Next, I centered the photos on the solid 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper and secured it with glue dots and centered both of those on the patterned paper and secured it as well.

Ah here's where you can see the other two papers :) I decided to jazz it up a little more and added some rub-on quotes, swirls, stars and words (whatever "spoke" to me :)

Next I had to secure everything to the window picture frame. I decided to use my trusty little glue gun for that part ( I was running out of glue dots!) So I decided where I wanted each picture to go and I carefully squeezed a little blob of glue on each corner of each paper.

And Voila!! Two nice big picture frames showing off 8 family pictures :)

As you can see, the vertical frame had a little handle in one corner so I decided to jazz it up with a little help from my ribbon stash. ( sorry the picture below is so blurry)

Overall I think to total cost of the project was about $15. The frames were 5 bucks each ( if I remember correctly) and the only other cost was enlarging and printing the photos as the rest of the stuff I had on hand. Not bad for two huge personalized frames that I absolutely love! The other bonus? Hubby and kids love them too!

I'm linking to:

i heart organizing- Trash to Treasure Link Party!

(click above or you can click on the button on my sidebar)

Our 2011/2012 Family Photo Shoot

I'm back!!! Did you miss me? Sorry for the three week hiatus. It was very impromptu but I think I was just burnt out (that three months of Sept to Dec are a killer).   I confess I've been a bit of a hermit for the last month or so (ok maybe a lot!) and now I am ready to rejoin the world :)

So, I figured what better way to rejoin the world than to share our family pictures we had taken in the fall! I hadn't wanted to share these till after Christmas cause some of the pics were part of our Christmas card. I will warn you, there are a lot of pictures so you might want to grab a coffee or tea and a snack :) So without further ado here we go...  

These first couple are some collages that our photographer Cindy did :)

 Such a beautiful fall day :)

I just love Cady's smile in the background.

Awww, we have so very few nice pictures of Pat and I that I was thrilled to see this one :)

The above two of the girls were taken near the beginning of the shoot so their smiles are looking a little nervous still :)

And Gabe was just being his normal goofball self :)

Some of you may recognize the picture above :) And those of you who were at a certain wedding here last summer might recognize a certain little cable ferry we were on in that picture :)

More bum shots! Love how Cindy just accented Nyla's bright boots :)

LOVE this picture of Gabe! My little boy is growing up so fast!

The whole famdamily, Stella included :) And I just have to say I LOVE LOVE LOVE the next few pics...

Just the girls :)

And just my handsome guys :)

Pat and Gabe's hands. I don't know why, but I always love pictures of hands, and feet too!( just kids feet though)

Love this one!

Absolutely adore this picture of Cady :)

Kisses!

and more kisses! *snicker* I laugh at this picture every time I see it (though I confess, not too thrilled with my expression) Cindy told us to kiss each other, but I guess we need a bit more direction *snicker snicker *

Love it! all our hands together :)

Daddy and the kids off to explore :)

Awww, I adore this picture of me and my boy

 And of course I love this one of Nyla

*adore*

my handsome man :)

I love pictures on train tracks and I was so happy we could get these with all the beautiful fall colours in the background.

show me some attitude!

*sigh* oh my boy what a goof!

That's all folks!

Our family is pretty casual and just a bit rustic ( we live in a log house people!) so I wanted to keep it real and natural with jeans and fall sweaters (Nyla's sweater was handmade from my grandma! she is so talented)

All in all we lucked out completely with the weather, the timing with all the fall colours, and with our wonderful photographer and friend Cindy ( if you live in the Kootenays of British Columbia, (that's in Canada in case you're wondering) and you are interested in having a photo shoot with Cindy, just email me and I'll get the details to you.

Thanks to all of you who stuck it out through all those pics, these weren't quite all of them, but I had a really hard time just picking out just a few that I loved. And thanks again to Cindy for doing such a wonderful job and for making it fun while we did it :)

P.S Come back next week and see a little home decor project I made with some of my most favorite pics from this shoot.