the little things

the cat

This is the kind of cat you get when it is raised by a toddler.  We got Molly for Laine when Laine was 3 (I think she was 3 anyway!) ...Laine plays with Molly all the time.  She goes in the doll stroller and gets pushed around the house.  She gets tucked in with blankies.  She gets cuddles.  She gets dressed up... 

And, she gets tackled by baby.

This was yesterday morning.  He does this to her at least twice a day.  And she does nothing.  Just lays there, purring.  Yep, she puts up with pretty much anything. 

What I love the most though, is he already loves her too. 

Look at his grin.  :-)

I am crazy.

um, wow.

I may have lost my mind.  Actually, I think I lost my mind somewhere back in 2004 when I started scrapbooking more and stopped putting my pages into albums.  Back when I stopped scrapbooking with the 'get it done' attitude and more of the 'creative outlet' type attitude.

Seriously.

Today, I thought would be a great day to get organized.  I have been collecting some American Crafts albums... which I am now realizing I am no where near close to having enough! lol  I am going to do my albums ala Lisa McGarvey (who was inspired by Tara and Em) style...  Such a cool look, I love the idea of including enlarged non-scrapped photos and artwork.  I am on a mission.  I don't know how long it will take, but I am going to do it.  One album at a time.  Break it down.  Otherwise, I will totally stress myself out and loose my mind even more!  HA!

My desk today...

See the pink album?  It has actual pages in it!  lol  I started with 2006, right in the middle.  I have no idea why.  Maybe because it was the smallest pile?  It has been a fun morning of figuring out the years.  I do not scrap in order at all.  lol  It is almost a blessing that Laine chopped her hair off in 2006... gives a good before/after type method of organizing! he heeeee 

I am realizing that pages with things sticking off the sides are becoming a problem.  Which sucks, because I love that look so much!  I am thinking for the extreme pages... maybe I will mount those to the outside of the page protectors?  I have no clue.

Just thought I would share a bit of my day. :-)

I will keep you posted.  3 day weekend here for us (school/teacher thing), and I think I am taking on a few too many projects. ;-) 

I also plan on painting Laine's old bookshelf to put in Harley's room.  I have been looking for a table to put his lamp on, but I don't want to commit to anything until we buy his actual bedroom furniture... then I remembered the bookshelf sitting here doing nothing!  Perfect!  SO hopefully, I can get to that.  Then we can also hang his pictures and get everything else set up in there... you know, now that he is almost 10 months old! lol

Hoping I have a productive weekend!  ...and cooperative children! lol 

It has been a busy busy week...

Although, I am not too sure why.  I hate it when a week goes by and it seems like I had no time to do stuff, but in reality I got nothing done.  Well, not nothing... but not much either! ;-)

I did organize the junk drawer yesterday ...and the mail basket.  I am proud of myself for that one! lol

I would love to get in the habit of doing something in the house like that every day.  Something that is more than the everyday cleaning.  Clean out a drawer, cabinet, hang a picture, move things around... get creative.  I love doing it, and I want to find the time to do it more.  Well, I love the creative parts more than the actual cleaning part! ha ha  OK, maybe everyday is a stretch... I am just gonna do it more.  Period.

Another habit I want to get into, taking pictures every day.  I also want to do something scrapbook-ish every day.  Man oh man, I need a better routine!

Speaking of new pictures.  I don't have any. HA!  So, here are some more pink room ones! lol

These are funny.  Well, funny to me anyway! lol  A lot of stuff this girl does makes me laugh!  ...balances out the times she frustrates me! ;-)

I don't even know how she ended up sitting on there! 

Funny faces are always funny. :-)

I love her little toes peeking out in that last one.

Guess what I get to do this afternoon?  Go to the rink.  Again.  At least it is Friday... and I am doing nothing this weekend.  I am not going anywhere.  I am not getting in my truck unless I absolutely have to.  I might even stay in my jammies all day long... ok, I know I am gonna stay in my jammies all day long!

Oh yes, I am looking forward to that.

Hopefully my kids will figure out how to sleep in.  Nope... that won't happen.  But at least I don't have to go anywhere!

Happy Birthday!

Today is James' Birthday.  He is my bestest friend in the whole wide world. 

Happy Birthday Babe!  I love you!

I tried to find a picture of him... like of his actual face.  I have some, but I think this may be one of my favourite pictures of him.  There is just something about this picture.  Nothing quite like the man you love taking care of his babies.

Yeah, I like this picture.  A lot.  It is framed in our bedroom, but I think I need to make it bigger and put it in our living room.

Yep.

Laine let me take pictures of her the other day.  Rare thing.  Usually I get the goofy faces.  We had a mommy/daughter date in her pink room.  She already had the skirt on, and it was perfect!  PERFECT!  My mommy made that skirt too. :-)

Here are some of my favourites.  Out of like 300 (crazy!), so expect to see a few over the next few days! he heeeee

This one is Flickr inspired.  I have many many like this saved in my favourites.  Like I said, the skirt was perfect. 

Here she is, sooooooo focused on reading.  She loves loves loves to read!  Check out her toes! :-)

oh wait, Molly had to sneak in for a photo too.  Totally 100% Laine's cat.  They are best buds...

This might be my favourite shot of the day.  Totally natural.  We were chit chattin' ...goofing around.  Then she paused, and I got this...

Yep, love that one.

Another pause.  She is not this calm of a child, trust me...

See, told you so...

...more to come later! :-)

the high chair

Is finally here.

We waited until Christmas to get this for him.  Easier to justify the price that way. ;-)  Until now, we used the bumbo... which was not working very well at all anymore.  He really needed his big boy chair.  So a few weeks before Christmas, I ordered it.

We wanted 'Walnut' with the 'Tales' cushions... and we also needed the baby rail (which is darn near impossible to find up here!) ...I tracked one down over the phone in Edmonton.  She was awesome and was willing to ship it on the bus that same day.  AWESOME!  So we thought.  A 4 hour drive.  A quick trip for the bus.  Nope.  At the very latest, we expected 2 days.  2 weeks ... yes two WEEKS later, it got here.  Of course it was now after Christmas and we were not getting home until New Year's Eve.  We finally got in to pick it up on the 2nd. 

Worth every frustrating minute of trying to track it down though!  It is so good.  So so good.

I love it.  It is perfect.  I wanted something with a modern feel.  I kinda wanted to stray from the more traditional seats... I was really drawn to this one since it allowed him to actually sit at the table with us.  There is no tray.  There is a harness and a rail for safety, but other than that... he uses the table.

AND it is fully adjustable.  Kids even adults can use this!  It allows kids to always be at the right level for eating.  No need for a booster.  It is also adjustable from front to back.  So right now, his short little legs bend at the right spot.  A lot of times, their legs never really even stick out of the chair until they are toddler sized.

Did I mention I love it? he heeee

I did think it would be a much darker brown though.  Part of me even wishes I went a little crazy and got it in lime green.  Oh yes... there is a whole rainbow of colours.  I like this one though.  Versatile no matter what colours we do our decor in.

He loves it too.  He loves this trick... yank the table runner before mommy can move it!

yeah, I think it is going to be an awesome fit for us.

He totally gets in to dinner time.  Watches everything we do!

I am doing some scrapping this afternoon.  You should see my room... it is a disaster and I haven't even really started!  Yikes!  I just printed 40 pictures and my goal is to get them all in an album by the end of the day.  Well, that was my goal this morning, but I know now that it is sooooooo not gonna happen!

Gonna get to my inbox soon too.  I have some from over a month ago that I need/want to reply to still.  Dang, I hate this awful email routine I am in.  MUST work on that!

Later!

Ice and Snow

This morning we woke up to fog and frost.  Beautiful.  I love love love it when the trees are covered in frost.  I wanted to take pictures... I have been waiting for a frosty morning.  But Harley wouldn't have his nap, and I couldn't get any good ones from the house.  The sky was blah and they were just blah. 

Then later on, I was down stairs in my office and I saw sunshine and blue sky out the window.  I grabbed my camera and ran upstairs... took this from my bedroom window.  The sun hadn't yet come over the trees, so it was dark along the bottom of the trees... branches are covered in frost and the sun was blazing! 

I LOVE living in the country!  I am itchin' to go out and explore!  Taking pictures through the bedroom window is alright, but man oh man does it limit you! lol

Some more icy pictures for ya!  Little miss Laine passed into Junior Starskate on Monday.  How crazy is that!?  She was the youngest one out on the ice by at least 2 years if not 3!  She is most definitely a natural!

Lucky me had my camera there the other night too.  My mom had made Laine 2 awesome skating dresses and gave them to her for Christmas along with matching sweaters and gloves.  She looked so teeny and so cute out there in her dress! 

Here she is patiently waiting to go on...

Please excuse the horribly grainy photos.  I had Harley on my knee and I couldn't get my flash out... so I had to crank the ISO all the way to 1250.  Which made for some very noticable grain!  Oh well... better than nothing right?  So this picture was taken pre passing, so she was waiting to go out for Canskate.  Helmets are mandatory... which is fantastic!  The next one is taken after she got put in Junior Starskate ...helmets are not mandatory.   This makes me nervous.  BUT her coach and I talked and she thinks she is fine without.  So, Laine understands that for now, she can go without... but if we decide that we would rather she wear it, she knows she has to. 

I did my best to salvage that picture and give it a cool 'feel' ...cause taking pictures through smudged hockey glass AND from the opposite end of the rink just does not work.  No matter how hard you try.   Some cool vintagy type texture might be cool on that, I have my eye on a set of texture actions but I am going to have to wait... officially added to my 'oh that would be cool' list though! lol

Super proud of my munchkin.  She has the option to go 3 nights a week now.  Her skate time changes for Monday, we go Wednesday instead of Thursday, and she can do private lessons on Friday if we choose to.  Talk about changing schedule!  Oh, and still Hip Hop on Thursday, which is done through the skating club... so there is a possibility of being at that rink 4 nights a week!  Imagine when Harley is going too!!  I will be living there! 

I think she felt pretty cool being out on the ice in her dress with all the big girls!

Harley is finally napping, so I better go get some stuff done or I will regret it later!   

Welcome Back Routine!

Yes, I admit... I need a little routine in my life to allow me to function. lol  As much I enjoyed not having ANY routine over the holidays, today I welcome it back with open arms!  Laine is back in school this morning... with a rough start to the day (bad bad bad mommy), who can sleep through a half hour of alarm clock anyway?!  How is that possible?  I have no freaking idea, but this morning I managed to do it.  ugh.  Poor girl.  Nothing worse then only having 15 minutes to get up, eat, brush teeth, get dressed, do hair, bundle up in snowsuit, and get out the door to make it down to the bus!  Bad bad BAD mommy!  Thank goodness I had her backpack ready to go last night... or it would have been a disaster. 

Sleeping in comes easy when the little man is still awake at 2 am.  Or was it 2:30?  I don't remember.  Teething maybe?  I hope so.   Well, I don't... but I hope that explains it all.  He is 9 months and still does not have a single tooth.  No sign of a tooth.  But he chews on everything in sight, drools, has rosy cheeks, snotty nose and is pooping too many times in one day for any human to be able to handle... and last night he added not sleeping to that list.  He did not want his suckie, no bottle, cuddles worked for a bit... but then that made him mad.  He did not want to be in his crib, barely wanted to be in bed with us.  Finally, I turned the TV on with the volume down... the lights of the TV in the dark room were enough (thank goodness) to distract him into not screaming anymore.  After about 15-20 minutes of that I put him back in his bed.  Where he slept until 7:30 this morning... cause if the alarm clock woke anybody in the house up, it was him.  He was already talking away as I slowly came to in the bedroom.  So far today, he has been much better... fingers are crossed that we do not have a repeat tonight!

Maybe James and I should NOT play Guitar Hero until midnight hey? he heeeee

Yesterday I bundled the munchkins up and took them outside for a play in the snow...

Newt (the dog) was so not impressed with the snow.  He is a big 'ol baby.  He put up with us for a little while though, leaping through the snow... but I think he was very happy when we decided to go inside! lol

Some layout shares!  Marcy Penner asked me if I would be interested in doing a guest spot for her fabulous kits!  I was thrilled!  I had so much fun, Marcy is so sweet and she puts together one kick butt kit!  Here are the layouts I did for her...

Thanks again Marcy! 

It feels so good to already have this many holiday pictures scrapped!  It felt good to scrap period!  Part of the routine I am welcoming! lol

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year.  Ican't believe how long it has been since I posted last!  It is crazy how the holidays make everything so hectic... starting like 3 weeks before, everything turns into a frenzy!  It is so draining! 

As promised (like a month late)...

I soooooo do not know the best way to get light pictures.  I imagine a tripod would have been good (he heee, but I got lazy)... so there is a little blur happening! lol  Oh well, at least I got it before we retire them for the season... yes, I just took this last night!  Who takes a picture of there Christmas lights on January 6th?  A little backwards no?

I have been having fun playing with this.  James got it for me for Christmas... it is awesome!  I love it!  I normally don't use a flash all that much.  Most times I prefer blur rather than shadow lines with the on camera flash... this is a whole new ball game for me!  I can bounce it off walls, the ceiling etc.  Crazy amounts of practice and learning ahead... but I am in love already!  So excited to play!

Darn, I have so much more to post... ramblings mostly, but I gotta run.  Early out and skating day today, and I need to go to town first... I discovered this morning that we are lacking in the lunch food department! 

Back to real life for me.   :-)