Where have I been?

The answer to that is...

whew. It's kind of a loooong answer. :) Last time I posted I was telling the sad tale of a flooding at my house. Well, two weeks later I got in a car accident in my *new* car. The car had extensive damage (I was broadsided) and I was given a rental. It was all very very complicated by the fact that the guy who hit me avoided contact by the insurance companies for close to 3 weeks. When he finally gave his statement I was deemed "claimant" and they could begin the work on my car. That was in September and I still haven't gotten my car back.

We have been living at my parents house. They have been so generous to let us stay in their spare room and my brother's bedroom. My brother has been sleeping on the pull out couch this whole time. He is not so thrilled that we are still here. I can't blame him! My kids have been sick at least half of the time we've been here! The worst was on Friday. They both came down with flu-like symptoms which I discovered yesterday (in a visit to the Ped) are probably caused by their double ear infections and throat infections. Poor babies!!!

So, my life is turned upside down right now. You know, being away from home with sick kids and two insurance (home & car) situations. Our house is nearly ready for us to move back in. The kitchen is installed, the baseboards are in, and we removed the popcorn ceiling and painted. The carpeting was replaced with tile laid on the diagonal. It looks incredible! We're just waiting on our counter top installation so we can have a plumber come by and hook up the sink and dishwasher.

Here's a few pictures of our life these past few months:
Gracie loves the swings... especially when Ben is the one pushing her!

This is the newly painted & tiled livingroom looking into the dining area. The paint in the living room is Benjamin Moore Edgecomb Gray and the paint in the dining room is Benjamin Moore Silver Fox.

Dining Room/Kitchen. I am in love with the new cabinets!!! I wanted white cabinets at first and was a little nervous about the cognac cherry color, but I'm glad I listened to Aaron. They are so warm and beautiful.

Benjamin is really into basketball lately! I think we will enroll him in B-ball for ages 3 and up at the local YMCA.

Grace has grown soooo big. She crawls like crazy, eats finger foods, and even can say "duck".

At the pumpkin patch. Good thing we went and Ben got to dress up in his tiger costume because he was so sick on Halloween and didn't get to Trick or Treat.

He was the cutest tiger! He was in character the entire time the costume was on.

Here's Jack! Aaron and I designed a few options for his face on a sheet of paper and let Ben pick. He picked this face. It's the first time we carved a pumpkin with Ben... he hated the pumkin "guts" removal. LOL. I think it disturbed him! :)

In other news, I've still been scrapbooking for Mosh Posh. I am really loving the kits Kristen has been putting together the past few months! It's been tough to find the time, but it's always a great mental break to just sit in front of all the supplies and get crafty. It takes my mind off of all the stress going on in my life.

Here is the Mosh Posh November kit & add-on:



Oh man, this kit is delish! I love love love the colors. Those Cosmo Cricket papers are so fun and playful. I actually love the back side of them more than the patterned side, though. Each paper has a different faux wood grain in a different color. We posted our layouts to the gallery last night. Here's a link: Design Team Gallery, take a look. :) More stuff will be posted by Frances and Estee... and our Guest Designer Linda Albrecht. :)

Anyways, gotta feed the kids some lunch. I'll post some of my recent scrapbook pages in a day or two. :)

Duuuuude...

My house is flooded! Yes. It's true. :(

We stepped into a puddle when we arrived home from our one week vacation to a wonderful beach house. Our NEW hot water heater, which is located under our stairs inside the house, malfunctioned and started leaking... probably the moment we locked the door and left! The carpet in the living room was slick with bacteria, the house was as humid as a bog, and the tile was a giant puddle. To say the least, there was a lot of damage. We are living with my parents right now until the house is fixed... which (shhh, don't tell them) could be more than a month.

I am so out of whack right now it's not even funny. I was looking forward to getting home from vacation and falling into our old comfortable routine again. Getting the kids to sleep in their room (all thru the night) and snuggling into my very own bed again. I was planning on getting lots of work done with scrapbooking projects for my upcoming etsy store, and cleaning up the mess I left when we were desperately trying to pack for vacation. Well, none of that is happening.

My friend had something similar just happen to her and I love how she described it. She said she felt frozen. That's exactly how I feel! There's just SO much to be done that I don't even know where or how to start. I am still in shock that my whole house smells like a sewer and that we have to go through the process of hauling everything out, ripping everything up, and starting all over again. It's exhausting just thinking about it.

I am sooo thankful that I have my parents living 15 minutes from my house. The kids just love them, and mom is more than happy to help me with them so I can go get paint chips, search for tile, and schedule repairs. My brother is not so psyched that we've taken over his bedroom, though. And I get cranky at night when I can't just sit in a comfortable spot and watch what I want to on the TV.

I used to live here, this used to be my home. It's so crazy to me how it doesn't feel like home anymore. I really can't wait to have my home back. Hopefully it will all go smoothly and within budget!

Anyways, on a more exciting note (hey, that shouldn't be hard)... Mosh Posh just gave their website a brand new look and the September kit was just posted yesterday:

Nice, isn't it???? I am a huge fan of Sassafras Lass and it seems like Kristen is too because she keeps giving it to us! The Sweet Marmalade papers are so cheerful. Also some YUMMMY Lily Bee Designs paper & tulle flowers from the new Vintage Poppy collection. I'm super happy about the new Jenni Bowlin sticker alphas & borders, too. This kit is going to be a blast to play with. Maybe it will get me out of my funk?? I hope so!

So, stay tuned. I'll post some pics from the magical vacation... and the not-so-magical flooding. :) Later!

Change is good. So is chocolate...

A change is coming in our house. Something that I love (probably a little too much) is leaving. It's a good thing for many reasons. So, what am I losing? Cable TV. :( Bye-bye cable! Adios DVR! Good-bye. I will miss you. Kiss kiss.

Let me tell you, it IS a good thing. Don't cry for me. It's OK! We're going to be saving a good wad of cash. And I will finally have more free time to do other, better, things. Things like crafting, reading, scrapbooking, journaling, and... well, sleeping. My TV habits are certainly not the worst I've heard of. I don't watch hours and hours of it a day, but at night it is my go-to activity. I stay up too late watching Forensic Files. Haha. :) I DVR my favorite shows and sometimes I watch 2 hours at night after the kids are in bed. In the fall I watch a lot of TV, more than I'm proud to admit. I get sucked in to shows I would honestly NEVER miss if I didn't watch a single episode. So, it will be a healthy change to not have so much TV watching going on. Anything I absolutely MUST see (like LOST) can be seen online the day after it is shown on air. Or, I can always pick up live shows on the major networks with a fancy schmansy antennae.

I know, I know. A lot of babble about TV. But it is soooo connected to my creativity. You might be seeing changes around here after Sept. 1st. I could very possibly be bored out of my mind and driven to blog like a mad woman. Wouldn't that be nice?

I have been thinking about this blog. I want to make it even better... focus it into something I intended it to be. I want to share my creative endeavors, all of them, not just my scrapbooking stuff. Ben and I do fun crafts all the time that I would love to share with you! Also, I love to bake and cook. It's a huge creative outlet for me! And I like do a special creative project around the house here or there. That's part of who I am as an artist and I want this blog to represent that, too.

My former blogs have always been about my day-to-day life, and just talking about the everyday mundane stuff like a conversation with a friend. I've been slowly archiving those old blog posts into a new one (The Dilly Diaries: Revisited) because I realized that I didn't want to let it go. I stopped that blog right after my son was born in 2006. And now that he's 3 and my baby is 6 months I'm feeling the itch to start my personal blog again. Forget "revisited"! I think I will start up with it again. Especially in the light of my TV free life starting in September. :)

We are heading out for our very first official family vacation to the beach. I am sooo excited. I'm going to take gobs of pics and probably be so overwhelmed by them that I never scrap them (kind of like Christmas photos, they are the hardest to get scrapped). Anyways, I won't be around for a week or so... but you are used to me being sporadic. LOL. :) Until then!

Bathing Suit Shopping and other horrors...

Well, today is Tuesday and here I am sitting at the computer with my pathetic cup of coffee. I am drinking it without any enjoyment because we are completely out of cream or milk. I don't like black coffee. Gag. But I need the caffiene so I am sipping it anyways.

Also, today I am going bathing suit shopping. Gag. Thankfully, my mom is coming with me so I don't have to drag the kids into the fitting room 18 times. Gotta love mom! She's also GREAT at picking out clothes. I love having her opinion. It's just such a downer to shop for a bathing suit. I hate trying them on because it's so awkward to look at yourself in the mirror with the blaring lights, your underpants peeking out from the edges. LOL.

And is it just me or has the selection of decent bathing suits declined? Or is it just that I'm getting older and more modest?

Well, it's August! Can you believe it? I'd love to share my Mosh Posh scrapbook pages with you. I really really loved playing with these June Bug papers by Basic Grey. The colors are so saturated and they scream summer! It made me so happy to find photos that paired well with the colors because, to me, these papers even make my photos look more wonderful. In fact, I loved them so much that I hopped over to Two Peas In A Bucket and bought the whole June Bug collection. :)

So, here they are:


This one is about Grace at two months old. She was a difficult baby, but it was encouraging to see her personality and sweet smile. I Loved this patterned paper, but to make it shine even more I added stitching, Stickles glitter, and cut & folded it. Here's a close-up:

It was a little time-consuming, but well worth it. This page is even better in person. It sparkles just like my little Gracie.

It's too funny... when Ben was 18 months or so (I still have to look up the date of these photos) I taught him how to put his orange peels in his mouth and smile. From then on, everytime I gave the kid an orange he would do it and demand that his picture be taken. I have dozens of "orange smile" photos because they are soooo cute. I haven't scrapped it until now because I was looking for the right papers. Bright, cheery, with an orange to match. These were perfect. So were the ribbons I added from my own collection.

I'm not a card maker, but the August Inspiration Sketch by Jenny had a great scalloped rectangle with 6 squares in it and I immediately thought: card. What really makes this card work is the navy inking on the edges of the squares. I think it unifies them and gives it polish.

I love old photos! Especially when I can scan them and give them new life by correcting the damage and age. This photo is of my mom and her brother Eddie. They have the same birth date, so all of my moms old childhood photos of her birthday are always with Ed. I just LOVE it how my grandma made such frilly cakes and cupcakes. The colors in these photos are just yummy.

Ben loves his Comfortable Pants. He has 4 pairs of these plaid flannel pants, handed down from my Aunt and her 8 year old son Brandyn. Ben can't nap with out "comfortables" on. I thought it deserved a page of it's own! I will be sad when he grows out of them.

And lastly, this page about summer memories at my childhood home. The house number was 9871, so I used that as the title. The subtitle is smaller and up at the top, it says "summer memories". I am really into using BIG photos on my scrapbook pages lately. I printed this one out at 8x10 because there were so many details I wanted to see more clearly. When I scanned the original, I scanned it at 800 dpi so that I would be able to enlarge it without losing resolution. The result is a picture that brings me back to those times... my dad's Mazda GLC, the trees in my yard... that house is where I spent the majority of my childhood. Good times!

Anyways, I'd better get off the computer and get dressed! Wish me luck bathing suit shopping. I'm not having much luck with this black coffee, though, it's cold now. Better hit Starbucks!

Have a great Tuesday!

Every 3 hours...

Imagine... you're in your soft warm bed, enveloped between your 300 thread count sheets with your face in that "sweet spot" on your pillow. You are just drifting into dreamland, a droplet of drool happily forming at the corner of your fully relaxed mouth. The crickets are chirping. The moon is pregnantly hovering over the roof of your quiet home. All baby monitors are silent. And miracles of all miracles, your husband is actually NOT snoring. You fall asleep...

... and then the baby wakes up.

Repeat every 3 hours. Seriously. My daughter is 6 months old. She SHOULD be sleeping much longer stretches than that. But, without fail, the past week this has been my nightmare. 10 minutes after I crawl into bed she is waking up. Then she wakes up two more times before morning. I feel like I have a newborn again! And it's really doing damage to my days because I feel sleep deprived and lazy. I just want to sit on the couch like a vegetable.

She is cutting her first tooth. It's got the smallest layer of skin over it... as thin as rice paper. I know it will break through if not today than definitely tomorrow!

So! Scrapping has been good lately. My Aunt and Gramma came down for a visit and I was busy with my Mosh Posh layouts and lots of sewing. We were so crafty! We found the cutest doll patterns on Etsy by Bit Of Whimsy. I made a baby doll for Grace and for a friend as a gift. I'll have to post pics of them soon.

Here are my pages for the Mosh Posh Design Team this month:






I love October Afternoon! I really enjoyed these papers because they are double sided with a colorful pattern on one side and a black & white one on the other side. It was very versatile. I also had tons of fun playing with the Maya Road chipboard bird mini album (which I took apart to use the birds as embellishments). I'm making a decorative mobile from the rest of the birds. I can't wait to see how that turns out!!! ;)

Anyways, I better go. I have errands to run today. Once the baby wakes up from her nap (lucky her) We'll have to be ready to go. :)

Feeling kinda snazzy!

Tidy house. Clean sheets on my bed. Baby asleep in the swing. Toddler busy with Thomas the Train. Hot coffee beside me. New colorful clothes hanging in my closet. Visit planned with my friend this afternoon. Sun shining outside. Mosh Posh scrapbooking kit on my desk. Mmmm... it's a good day! What's making your day today? Anything to be thankful for? Some days I have to really dig to find that thing to be thankful for. Sometimes it's just that I brushed my teeth, for heaven's sake. Some days are like today. I'm in a positive mood and the birds are singing outside and I have rainbows shooting from my ears. Love that. Imagine my big smile:


So, today is another Mosh Posh blog party BLOG HOP! I had so many ideas, I tell you. So many rich plans which fell by the wayside when I got buried in a pile of laundry up to my ears last night. That kind of ruined my plans. This is what my face looked like last night as I was folding clothes:


I didn't do a stinking thing all weekend as far as chores are concerned. It was a holiday weekend! I was on strike! And yesterday I was paying for it with the numerous domestic tasks on my to-do list. So... I whipped something up for you. Something to make you feel like at least you got a nugget from my blog today.

I got the new June Mosh Posh kit yesterday. My trusty mail man came up to our gate in the drizzling rain. I saw his shoes under the fence before he even knocked! He's this happy old man with white hair and mustache. I call him my skinny Santa... although not to his face. But he gets a kick out of delivering my boxes to me because of my reaction. I can tell it makes him happy to be a mailman. I'm glad I can make him happy about that. He's probably wondering WHAT is in these boxes I get. Maybe someday I'll tell him. Although, that would probably ruin it for him. LOL!

So, I got my kit... and because I can't keep a secret, no way no how, I took some shots of it this morning to share with you. Please beware of electric shock as you drool onto your keyboard:


And because I like to give you something to make your visit worthwhile I leave you with this final facial expression.

What would you call this face? Snooty? Pompous? Spoiled? Gassy? Hmmm... I do love my QuickCam distortion photos. That's another thing I'm thankful for today! ;)

Man, do I love my kiddo...

My son Ben is weeks away from his third birthday and as that date fast approaches he becomes more and more precocious. The kid says the most hysterical things. He's even arguing with me at great length several times a day... about nothing at all. When I ask (or tell) him to do something he usually replies with a 5 paragraph long dissertation about this and that instead of just saying "yes, Mommy". I would prefer the "yes, Mommy" but I completely understand where he got this lengthiness from. It's 100% me. It's one of my most annoying, and endearing, personality traits. My whole family calls me the lawyer. I really should have pursued law instead of art. I thrive on healthy debate and heated arguments. And I LOVE being right! I am right. Always. ;)

Anyways, today we had yet another of these moments where my child when told what to do tried desperately to come up with an argument. And instead of letting it annoy me I ran to a sheet of scrap paper and wrote it down. It went like this:

Me: "Oh, look, Benjamin! Gracie is awake!"
Ben: "I need to get down and see her now."
Me: "Nope. You need to finish your lunch first."
Ben: "UGH. I'm just... too thirsty for this. I just... can't eat any garbage! Or apples! Or nothin'!!!"
Me: ...writing...
Ben: *sigh* "My teeth can't chew any more of this food. I just can't. I'm finished."
Me: ...writing...
Ben: "I'm tired about this lunch! Because... this is a bad noodle today!!!" *sigh*

The funniest things about this is that A: he was pausing to wait for me to respond... which I usually do. B: he was not even eating noodles for lunch C: he continued this silly talk for 3 more minutes before he finally finished his lunch.

Well, yesterday I promised a downloadable version of my paper-pieced Birdie Family Pattern. Thanks so much for all the compliments on it! I really would love to see your layouts if any of you use the pattern. About the pattern: the image of it in yesterday's post is not printable... it will be super blurry if you try. So please download this version if you want to print it. Click here to download the printable file.


Now, since I haven't updated my blog in ages and ages, I figured I'd post my May Mosh Posh layouts today. Better late than never, right? I loved loved loved this kit. I gobbled it up. I really love the new Lily Bee papers and the Sassafras Lass papers combined.

The kit didn't come with any flower add-ons and I wanted MORE (I'm very into flowers lately), so I hand-cut my own flowers from the papers in the kit. With just a little folding and creasing it's hard to tell which are handmade and which are purchased. This is a great tip if you ever need a flower but don't have any that match. Just grab another flower and trace around it on the paper... then cut it out. I like to fold each petal in half and then curl the petals back with my fingers. For an extra dimension I sometimes ink the edges with my cats eye chalk inks.






So, those are my layouts for the May kit! Oh, and some news... my hubby bought me a Cricut on ebay for mother's day. I plan on trying it out for the first time sometime this weekend. It needs new mats. I'm definitely excited about it but also apprehensive because I've never used a die-cutting machine before. I hope I like it!

:)