Friday, March 30, 2007

Baseball kit available!

Baseball starts Monday!!! I'm so psyched! I've enjoyed a few spring training games, but I'm thrilled that the "real" games start next week. We're going to watch a game Wednesday afternoon (for my birthday...I'm accepting e-cards!!) at home, which will be fun.

So in honor of the season finally starting, I have made a kit of baseball quotes and a few little 'doodles' I made.
And I thought I'd add a little contest. If you leave a comment in my blog (with your email address!!) and tell me the name of a Yankee player, past or present...I'll draw one winner. You have until Monday morning, when I'll draw the winner. So post away (one entry per person, please!)
Oh right. and if you want to see it in my "store," you can do so here.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

The Zoo

We had a rough morning yesterday, for a variety of reasons. Josh and I were both discouraged about different things we were trying to figure out, and Jasmine was bored at home. So he came home at lunchtime, and I suggested that he take the afternoon off and take us to the zoo. The weather was ideal...the high was supposed to be 61, but it got up to 65! The sun came out...it was gorgeous! And our moods were lifted...we came home happy and relaxed.
But before I show you a layout, I have to tell you Jasmine's story.
When we were having a snack before bed, Jasmine was sitting in my lap, and Josh asked her if we had gone to the zoo. What followed was her first honest-to-goodness conversation.

Josh: Did we go to the zoo?
Jasmine: Zoo!
Josh: What did we see there?
Jasmine (quiet for a minute, then): zebra!
Josh: Yes! We saw a zebra! What else was there?
Jasmine: Ummm....Tent (elephant)
Josh: Yes! Elephant! What else?
Jasmine: Ummm...tigger!
Josh: Yes, we saw a tiger. what did the tiger say?
Jasmine: rawr
(he did roar, too)
Josh: Yeah! What else did we see today?
Jasmine: ummm...bears!

She then repeated zebra and elephant...forgot about the giraffe until I suggested it. Which is funny, since that's the first thing we saw!
Here are layouts I've done today:
You can see the credits here.

Credits here.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Kokomo

This past weekend was TDC's first birthday. We had a ton of challenges to participate in, and I made it a personal goal to see just how many I could get done. (this time I decided against trying for the posting challenge, which was a good choice, since I scrapped the entire weekend and the winner had over 700 posts in 48 hours!!!)
A few of the layouts I made had Tamra Burwick's new kit: "Kokomo." I really had fun with this kit and the 70s feel to the colors; I love when I'm stretched, using colors I don't normally gravitate to, especially when I really get into it. I ended up wanting to make a layout with a picture from the late 70s, so the oranges and browns were perfect!!


This layout was for a "once upon a time" challenge. I've wanted to do something with this picture of me for ages, but haven't had the right push to do it. I was 3 1/2 here, putting Lamby in my overalls so I could be pregnant like my mom! You can read the journaling here.
This is from a "time traveler" challenge; find a picture from a different decade and do a layout in the colors of that decade. This is mom holding me, summer of 1977 (dad scanned in this slide and gave me the file, calling it "Jan and baby" because he wasn't sure who it was, but I think the red hair on the baby is a dead giveaway :) (font: mojo std)

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Professor Jasmine

This morning Jasmine decided to teach Rebekah an important fact about life.
I found her phone yesterday (it's our old cell phone, which doesn't work anymore) She was so excited! Tried to talk to Anne (my mom) and Papa (my dad). It was adorable.
This morning, I put Rebekah on the floor to "play," and Jasmine sat right next to her, phone in hand. She showed Rebekah the phone, and said "phone. It's 'hello;'" and then she put the phone to Rebekah's ear. Rebekah didn't say hello like Jasmine had hoped, but she's patient and I'm sure she'll keep showing her how to use it.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Smiles

I should have written yesterday's post weeks ago...maybe I would have gotten awesome pictures a long time ago. It was almost like she was just waiting for that post.
Anyways, I got some fabulous shots this morning, and even scrapped them already! What a cutie!


You can see the credits here.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

A diffference in temperament

We've known that Rebekah was Josh's "mini-me" since day one. She's quiet, happy to just watch the world around her, not needing to be in the center of things. She smiles sweetly, but is usually happy to just sit and figure out all the things she sees.
Jasmine has always needed to be the center of things. the life of the party. She was born active, full of joy and life.
We got pictures of Jasmine smiling at 4 weeks. Big smiles, too. We haven't gotten any of Rebekah. Not that she doesn't smile, but they're not as frequent as her sister.
So in case you're wondering why I haven't shown any pictures of Rebekah smiling...now you know!

Monday, March 19, 2007

Guess what??

We stopped by our house on Saturday, on the way to Josh's parents' house. Jasmine fell asleep about 2 minutes before we got to the house (we were counting on the drive to get her nap in) and woke up when we stopped in front of the house, saying "house! house! Yay!!" She knew exactly where we were, which is funny since we pull up in front of our apartment and she asks, "where are we?"
This is what we saw when we got there:


It's ours!! We really are going to live there! Closing isn't for another month yet, but it's going to be our house. I'm so pleased! Unfortunately it makes me want to pack but I'm still trying to pace myself since I'm not completely "recovered" from giving birth. We have time, Josh keeps reminding me!
In other news, Rebekah is 6 weeks old today. Time flies when you're having fun!! :)

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Happy St Patty's Day!

I'm not Irish, in spite of my red hair. I do lousy accents, so you don't want to hear that.
But I thought it would be fun to point out that it was St. Patrick's Day, 21 years ago, that I started going to Paul Road School and met Sarah. I forgot to remind her last year, so I'll do it this year instead!! I can't believe it's been 21 years!! (now in all honesty, there's a chance we didn't actually start talking my first day, but she sat behind me early on in my time there.)
My first memory of her there: I remember seeing her with a little Bible, and asked her if she was a Christian. She said yes, that she was a Presbyterian, and then asked me the same question. Yes, I was a Christian, but I had no idea what "kind." Do you know how hard it is for kids attending non-denominational churches to get a handle on what "kind" of Christian they are???
I'm starting to think through where we want to put things in the new house. We still have a long month and a half before we move in; lots of time to plan :D
Here's a layout I did yesterday. Quite different from my normal style, but it was so much fun to do!

You can see the multitude of credits here. Isn't she adorable??
Have a fantastic weekend!

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Fun questions

I'm not in a very creative scrapping mood today, so I spent the girls' nap just reading forums for scrapping sites. I saw questions on one of the blogs that sounded like fun to answer...I'd love to see if you decide to answer them too :D

1. If you could witness one supernatural event–whether you believe in the supernatural or not–what would it be? Why? I would love to have seen what happened in the Upper Room described in Acts 2. To see tongues of fire come down on the 120 must have been exciting, scary and really, really cool :) And what must the people have thought to hear them speaking in tongues, something completely known to the entire human race??

2. What is your earliest memory? Why do you think you have remembered that particular event or thing? My earliest memory is from when I was about 2 1/2, I think (right, mom?) and they bought me a replacement Pooh Bear from Sears. I loved to pull the stuffing out of my animals (and soft dolls) so I think that's why I got a new one. I have no idea why I remember it, but I can still see how high the counter looked to me at that age, and having my parents hand it down to me was really exciting. I still have that Pooh :)

3. Pick a friend or acquaintance with whom you think you would like to start a new business venture. What business? Katie and I used to talk about setting up a used bookstore/coffee shop on the main floor of a Victorian house. Of course, that was before Josh and Tim (and Jasmine and Rebekah) entered the picture, but I still think we'd have fun.
Josh and I toyed around with the idea of an unusual restaurant, serving the dishes our families are best at (alfredo pizza, awesome reubens, lemon meringue pie, that kind of thing).

Re-posting the video

I posted a video a couple weeks ago, but just now realized you have to have a gmail account (I think anyways) in order to see it.

So here is one everyone should be able to see!

Monday, March 12, 2007

A Layout before it's on digichick, and a neat story

I made a layout and finished this afternoon, but I'm waiting until morning to post it (because layouts posted in the afternoon rarely get many comments. Yeah, I really do like to hear what people think :)

Ready for the credits?? ;) This is from an ad, not completely my own idea. But I've wanted to make a layout with all the pictures of Jasmine in her hats, so I thought this was the perfect opportunity. Anyways, here's where all the stuff came from (from top to bottom):
Tamra Burwick's precious and few
faithtrue's cool linen
kimberly geswein's baby mine
charlene virkler's 2006th noel
jan crowley's little black dress
amy knepper's darling dreamer
liddy's loft mega kit les vacances (also used for the background papers)
jan crowley's memoire07
holley vandenberg's jane
kryss bourque's shabby pumpkin (actually this is a liddy's loft mega kit, but she made this paper)
tamra burwick's grace like rain

alpha: Rachael Giallongo's Sack Lunch Alpha
font: MA Flirty


I know it's hard to see all the cute pictures, so here is that part, zoomed in (click to see it larger):



Time for my neat story. Ready?
Josh stopped by the listing agent's office today to get some paperwork, and found out a lot more about our house. We heard last week that it wasn't a flipped house, like we originally thought, but that someone had bought it and fixed it up for himself but was transferred out of state before he moved in. What happened was that he had bought it for his son and fixed it up, taking it from a horrid state to the beautiful house you see in the pictures. The only things left were to paint and put down carpet, but pretty much everything in the house had been newly done. Then his son got an amazing job offer out of state, and he couldn't live there!
It's been on the market almost 6 months. They've had a long list of people really want to buy it, but everyone's financing fell through.
I guess Someone was holding onto it until we were in a position to buy!
Closing date is April 20th. Our lease in our current apartment ends May 31st, so we'll have the month of May to move out and be able to do it gradually if we need to.
Isn't God good?? :)

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Layouts Galore

Jasmine sang "You Are My Sunshine" to Rebekah and I a couple days ago. Can I tell you how quickly I melted?? What a sweetie :)

I haven't gotten anything done around the house today, and I just looked down at the clock to see that I'd better have a "plan b" for dinner since the thing I intended to make wouldn't be done until almost 8 tonight! But I've had a great time scrapping, and the girls have been sweet and fun :)

This is a picture of Rebekah from a week ago, using Tamra Burwick's new "Hippy Hippy Shake" kit, available at TDC. The date stamp is by Jenn Star, and I "folded" the corner, but everything else is from her kit.








This is a series of pictures from about a week ago, when Jasmine decided that Rebekah's soft blanket would make a good hat. My favorite picture, the top left, is one I scrapped before, but there are other cute ones too. I figured out how to get sweet smiles from her: turn the camera window around so she can see herself in it :) Modeling practice already??
Everything is from Tamra's other new kit, "A Hard Day's Night" (great name, huh??). Font is KGD Curvy Script




This is for a challenge from Sweet Shoppe Designs ("what is your guilty pleasure?") Hmm. That one didn't take much thought! It's another layout that isn't my normal style, but was tons of fun to make. And I'm finally getting smart about layouts that use tons of elements from different places: make a list as I go! I can't imagine trying to remember what all I used, when the kit was done!
You can see the long list of credits here.

one more cute Jasmine story. Rebekah got a package from an online friend yesterday, and one of the things in it was a pair of slippers in a little plastic case with a handle. Jasmine thought they were the coolest, and loved the package it came in. I told her it was a present for Rebekah, but that she could hold it. She carried it around with her all night, telling me it was "present." I put the slippers on Rebekah this morning, which Jasmine liked, but later she decided they should go back in the case so she could hold onto them. :)

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Emailing

I would like to make a formal apology here.
I used to "clear out" my inbox daily. I emailed everyone who emailed me, the day I read it (which was pretty much daily). Pretty much until I got married.
It's gotten harder and harder to keep up with emails, and for the most part, I really don't even try anymore.

It's not that you're any less important. In fact, now that I spend my days with two under 2, your emails are my only source of adult companionship during the day. It's just hard to write when most of my computer time is while I'm nursing Rebekah.

So I would like to offer this blog as an email to everyone who reads it. I don't mean I'll start writing personals (you know; "Mom, thanks for telling me about ____. I love it" or "Bev, how are you feeling these days?") but I'm hoping that, if I keep up here with stories of the girls, pictures, and updates on life, that it will make up for how long it takes me to write back to people. Because right now, I feel a little guilty if I update this instead of writing personal emails to everyone. But this usually tells you pretty much everything I would have told you, and it isn't full of huge attachments when I post pictures!

If you think that works for you, and you haven't already, feel free to sign up for "feedblitz" (on the left side of this page) and have my posts sent straight to your inbox.

I'll leave you with a question: for those who come here regularly, do I do okay balancing family and scrapbooking, or should I work harder at getting more of one included? :)

Thanks!! And just since you've read the whole thing, here are two fun pictures of Jasmine:

Monday, March 05, 2007

Scrapping Question, a couple little things, and a BIG THING!

Little story first...

Jasmine likes to close the door, putting her on the other side from the rest of us. Then she calls out to whoever is on the other side to come "rescue" her, since she can't open turn the knob yet (praying it takes awhile for her to get that figured out). Saturday it was "Daddy!" and once "Grandpa!'
She did it again at lunch, and Josh wasn't right there to open it for her. So she tried to get someone else to come help: "Bekah! Baby!" For some reason, that didn't work either, but it was a great try.

And now for the question (and an explanation):
I'm working on something new and (I think) very cool scrapping-wise. I'm making a baseball kit to kick of the baseball season. It was going to be just word art, but then I kept thinking of other things to add, so it's far from just being word art anymore.
But now I'm starting to wonder if my idea is clever or just something people would think was weird. So I'm asking you for your input.
Baseball teams' colors are so varied, there is no way to come up with neutral enough papers that would work for anyone's teams. But I'm not going to make it so only Yankees fans could use it. As much as I love my team, that seems just slightly short-sighted.
So I'm in the process of creating "papers" that can be turned into whatever colors (at this point they'd be limited to two colors unless you played with it a lot more) you wanted.
Would this be something that is just too much of a pain for people to use, or is this a really cool idea that you'd love to try? Or somewhere in the middle?

I have one more scrap-related question for you. If you were looking for a CT, would you apply for one whose designer was designing but wasn't in an actual store? I'm not sure if this is a reasonable time to look for a CT, so that when I find a store (or get chosen for one) I have one established, or if I should just wait and get one after I have a place to sell (other than my lonely website).

Please give me your thoughts! I appreciate it muchly :)

And here's a layout I did a couple days ago for a "grunge" challenge (which was so much fun, but hard because I lean more towards the "clean" look):
You can read about it and see the credits here.

And our huge news: We're getting a house! We put in an offer, and after a couple counters, we have a deal! The closing date is April 20th, and then it's ours :) I'm so excited. We fell in love the first time we walked in, and when we saw it again on Saturday, we knew it really was as perfect as we imagined it to be.

There's a nice backyard for Jasmine to play in. There are no neighbors to worry about bothering (well, houses nearby, but no one living directly above us). No collecting quarters for laundry. No more cable included, but Josh and I are talking about getting mlb.com for the season, since that's all we watched on cable anyways.

I'm so happy!!!

Wanna see??






Friday, March 02, 2007

Layouts, a Jasmine story and memories

I wrote this all two days ago, but something happened and it didn't publish the way I'd hoped. So here we go again:

You can see all the words to this, as well as the credits, here.

I made this CD cover for a teaching CD put out by the ministry:

Everything is made by me or scanned in by Josh :) Fonts: Daniel; Americana



And a tidbit from Jasmine: She colored a picture this morning (actually, most of the time was spent munching on the crayons, but that's beside the point). It's two mice from Cinderella and two birds. She showed me the picture and said: "Mickeys! Two, three, four, six, birds, FOUR!" :) She can count from 2 to 9, skipping 5 for some reason, and yesterday she added 12 to the end. The amazing thing is that the numbers are in order (though she usually goes back to 4 for the grand total) :)

I was thinking more this morning about my memories from Turkey. I had hoped my monthly newsletters would be a good way to relive some of my time there, but they were much briefer and less in-depth than they could have been. It's been almost 6 years since I moved back to the states, so my memories are starting to blur, but hopefully I can put together enough pieces that I can tell some of my stories before I don't remember any specifics at all!


Okay. I lost the first post I wrote, when Jasmine started playing with the mouse as I was finishing. So I'll write something different, since I hate re-writing things.

Turkish Memoire Installment 1

Language was something that brought us much joy and frustration. Before I had learned any Turkish (other than “deprem” for earthquake, since the big earthquake in 1999 was 2 weeks after I moved there), my friend Amy and I saw something that said “cok satan.” We knew “cok” meant “very or a lot,” but didn’t know “satan,” so for awhile, anything we didn’t like was “cok satan” (very Satan)! Eventually we learned it meant that it was something that sold very well, but we liked our definition better.

The reason I decided it was important to learn to speak Turkish was that one day on my way home from school, a 3- or 4-year old girl came up to me and started talking a mile a minute. I couldn’t understand a single word! I knew right then, that if I was going to live there for 2 years, I was going to have to learn how to understand the people there!

I went to a church made up primarily of foreigners. Because most of us learned Turkish at least to some extent (some far more than others), we adopted some of their words into our speech and it got to the point that I forgot what words I had used before I got there. One such word: Cep. It literally means “pocket,” but the Turkish word for cell phone is ‘cep telefonu.’ We didn’t bother with the telefonu part, but just talked about “calling my cep.” I’m sure the Turks who heard us were amused (and maybe slightly confused).

Turkish has a bunch of words adopted from other languages, mostly of things that they were introduced to by foreigners, like ham (the only ham you could get there was made of beef and made to taste similar to ham) and french fries. So the word for ham is “jambon” (from the French), and french fries are “cips” (pronounced chips) from the British word for them. I had many students who were either British or had gone to the British International School before coming to our school, so they called them “chips” when they got there, so I started thinking of them as chips. One student, who was also a dear friend (she’s age-wise halfway between Amy and Vivian and was my next door neighbor, so I adopted her as my baby sister and went shopping with her and helped her when she took piano lessons), was an American, and she knew I was going to keep calling french fries “chips” when I went back to the states. So she took it upon herself to help me re-learn their proper name. (the funny thing: I don’t like french fries, or potato chips unless there’s dip around, so it really didn’t matter what I called them, because I likely wouldn’t eat them!) She would correct me and make me call them by their American name any time I said the wrong word! I appreciated it, though I’m sure the other kids thought it was funny.

Next installment: Taxi stories!

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Another layout

Not much else to say (I think I sad it all!!) but I wanted to post the layout I did while the girls were sleeping this afternoon.

Jasmine looked so beautiful this morning, putting Rebekah's blanket over her head. She asked me to take pictures (which still doesn't guarantee she'll stand still enough for me to get non-blurry pictures) but I've discovered something that works: turn the screen around so she can see herself as I take the picture. I got half a dozen pretty ones, but this was my favorite. Watch for another one using some of the other pictures, maybe tomorrow :)

Credits: butterflies by Marina Brendstrup, photo corners by Christine Haskell (both from a collab. kit for Liddy's Loft, so unfortunately no longer available.)
papers from Tamra Burwick's Grace Like Rain kit

Font: Dactylographe