Garage Sales

Josh and I started going to garage sales our first summer together, furnishing most of our apartment with dirt-cheap furniture. In the past 6 years we've been gradually replacing things, but there are still signs that we like to go garage saleing on the weekends as you look around our house!

We thought it would be fun to start to record some of the best and worst things we've ever come across in our wanderings.

To date, we have a two-way tie for worst-ever find.

• A board book that had been chewed by a very large dog (or malnurished child) so that about 1/3 of the book was gone
• an unopened bar of soap that had apparently sat in a very damp room for a number of years.The wrapper was completely attached to the soap

the best? That would be much harder to say. Our bed's headboard and footboard are pretty high up there (cherry four-poster bed; I don't remember how much it was. $40? maybe?)

Maybe at some point I'll go dig out the files we had on our website and post our "helpful hints" on the blog for anyone interested in reading it. (is there any interest?)

The Kiddos

Hudson's face reflects mine :)


And in case this one looks slightly familiar to Josh's family, here's why:
(and for everyone else: that's Charity and Josh)

kiddos and photo editing

I'm so excited. My friend Stacey told me about a photo editing course taught by Jessica Sprague, a name scrapbookers have likely heard. I decided it would be worth the money to take it, but I had NO idea just how much.
I told Josh last night, it's like I've just increased the value of my camera and Photoshop purchases. I'm now going to be able to make pictures shine like never before. If you have any interest at all in this, it's DEFINITELY worth the cost. I've taken 3 of the 5 sessions now, and can't believe what I've learned! It's so much fun!!
I got these pictures of the three kids on Sunday, and just learned how to turn them sepia after improving the exposure and brightness (by hand, instead of just doing what other people create).

First, the brightened version of my picture of Jasmine:

And then the Sepia pictures of all three...I finally know how to turn pictures sepia and to get bright black-and-white pictures!




And if you'd like to see a side-by-side before and after picture:



So my next step will be to take a real photography classes so I can get better shots to begin with. I've learned a lot by trial-and-error and reading various photography books and websites, but I know I could do even more with a little instruction.

a bit later: I made a layout!

Layout Time

I went a little nuts this week making new layouts. The designers at The Digichick were creating such awesome kits, I wanted to try them all (so I did!)

I'll link the layouts up to their place in my gallery there, in case you're a digiscrapper and want to check out the credits :D

A rare picture of Hudson and I:

I used an awesome tutorial at Creating Keepsakes to make this one :)

This is the first layout I've ever made that makes me cry. Phillip took the picture (I think; unless Vivian had the camera at that point!) and it's so sweet and so sad. Buffy likely doesn't have more than a year or two left to live because of a bad heart murmur, so we're treating him a little bit more like the royalty he thinks he is.

This one isn't with TDC stuff, but was for a challenge I did :)

Tidbits from our house

Right now, the girls are sharing grape tomatoes and a cucumber. I wish I could say that was normal, but it's not particularly...but that's my fault, not theirs. I really need to make sure we keep fresh produce in the house and then prepare it for them! They love it, which is fantastic!

Josh and Bekah were having a conversation at breakfast a few days ago. He asked her what the cow was doing in the picture on the milk carton:
Her answer: playing baseball! (obviously the farmer is throwing underhand) :)

The girls are still completely in love with their brother. They both think he's absolutely adorable, and really don't seem to mind the fact that it slows me down from doing their bidding. Bekah wanted to make him happy:

Okay, time to try to mediate. Bekah's trying to take a new piece of cuke before she finishes the one in her hand, so Jasmine's telling her "one at a time." Bekah's nap was too short, so she's crying like the world is coming to an end, and Jasmine's gently telling her "Jesus loves you!" Somehow it's not doing the trick, though...

Jasmine's Birthday

It's been strange for me to realize that my Princess is four...probably because I have so many memories of being four. She's really growing up!

So, in honor of her birthday, I thought it only fitting to write out some of the things she's said today, because they are well worth recording.

"There was a lot of rain yesterday. It was freaking me out."
(and she's right. She was crying hysterically)

Josh: What do you want for your birthday dinner:
Jasmine: (thinking for a minute) A sandwich.
Josh: Um, okay....what do you want on your sandwich?
Jasmine: Peanut butter and .... Jelly.
later she changed her mind and decided on a sub with "no salad" on it.

To Josh's dad: "Um, sir? Want to see my new shirt? It's from the blutterfy consertory."

"There's the bear! Now you can get me some more water!" as the grizzly bear bursts into the teepee (Josh had told her he'd fulfill her request for water after the tense grizzly bear scene in the movie Across the Great Divide...I guess you had to be there)

When I loaded the pictures from today (which are pretty minimal, because the battery died...my camera has an amazing battery life and I think this is the first time it's been charged since Disney World!) she chose two that she wants me to make into a scrapbook page. So I thought I'd share them here too:

Playing her new "flute":
And the only butterfly picture I got at the "blutterfy consertory" today (good choice, since it is pink; her favorite color!)


happy 4th birthday Jasmine!

Sharing my Passions (all Jasmine, all the time)

One of the inevitabilities of having two little girls with me 24/7 is that they pick up my idiosyncrasies. But it's kinda fun, too, since they take it their own direction.

I love baby toes. I love to kiss Hudson's feet. They're so soft and adorable. Apparently, I've said so often enough that Jasmine now comes and talks about his "tiny toes." She looks at the toes on her baby dolls to see if they have cute, tiny toes, too. Hey, there are worse addictions out there!
She likes to smell his head, too. I told her before Hudson was born that babies have sweet heads that are fun to smell. So she smells his head every chance she gets.

Non-baby related...if she sees a picture she likes, either one I took or one she took on her camera, she says "we should make a layout about that!" She wants to know every time I start scrapping if I'm going to put it in a book, or make a box out of it. She prefers when i do hybrid projects, because she can actually hold them, instead of having to come to the computer to see the finished page.

...Tomorrow Jasmine turns four. It's hard to believe I was in labor 4 years ago, getting ready to meet my first child. She's very excited about the day.
I love birthdays. I've always loved having a day set aside as "my" day. I didn't care if people did tons for me, but it was always nice having people remember/notice it. So I'm trying to do that for her. She keeps talking about being three, and I tell her that she's almost four. She likes that.
A funny side-note to the side-note: when I was three, we moved to our "house in the city," as I call it. I have a memory of jumping/running down the hallway upstairs, saying "I'm three!" Growing up, I figured I'd just dreamed it...after all, who says how old they are so excitedly?
I'll tell you who. Three-year olds. Half of Jasmine's sentences end in "because I'm three." Three is a serious age when you're suddenly aware of the fact that everyone has an age (and a weight, which is figured out by using a tape measure, usually of your thigh).
I can't wait to see what she's like as a four-year old! She's mellowed a lot over the past few months, though she's also gotten a bit bossier (what is it about oldest daughters and being bossy??) I can't wait to open the world to her as she starts to read (we've started doing lessons as she requests them). She's learning her sign language letters, too, so she loves to ask us "what's this letter" as she concocts bizarre shapes out of her hands.

Happy Birthday, Jasmine Claire!

New Pictures and Pages

But first a Bekah story.
The girls like to go outside and play in the (fenced in) backyard. I'll sit in the kitchen with Hudson and watch them, and they have a wonderful time playing together.
Bekah likes the dandelions in the yard. She's decided it's fun to bring me some, so here's something that happens over and over:
Bekah: Mommy, do you want a flower?
Me: Sure, Bekah!
B: How you ask?
C: Please!
B: How you ask?
C: Please!
B: How you ask?
C: Please!
B: How you ask?
C: Please!
B: Otay!
(trots off; comes back a few minutes later with flower in hand)
B: How you ask?
C: Please!
B: Here!
C: Thanks!
B: Yo' weltome! Do you want anudder one?

(repeat)

and then I end up with a pile like this:
Here are a couple nice pictures from yesterday. Saturday we found a beautiful (Gap!) white eyelet dress at a garage sale for Bekah, so Sunday when we were at Target, I found a pretty one for Jasmine. Then I remembered I had one too, so I'm hoping to get family pictures with the girls in our white eyelet dresses and the boys in light colors :) But for now:


(Oh! Before I forget again, if you read my blog on Feedblitz or in some other feed, you should come check it out, because I redid the look of the blog! Thanks to TDC for the awesome, beautiful Blogwear! It was a freebie for National Scrapbooking Day this past weekend, and will be available in the store on Thursday.)

Here are a couple pages I've just recently done:

Biking

My brother Daniel is riding for the Tour de Cure to raise money to find a cure for Diabetes. Since my sister Amy has Type I Diabetes, it's near and dear to our hearts!

I told him I'd give him a plug if he sent me pictures riding, since I had this awesome kit to work with for Fee (one of the Creative Teams I'm on).

So here's my end of the bargain, since he held up his half:

Old Friends

I've been on Facebook for awhile now, and I think one of my favorite aspects of it is the ability to get reacquainted with people I've lost touch with. I've found a couple people (or they found me; I don't remember now) and have discovered that we have a TON in common!
One of those people is Carole, a girl I grew up with but lost touch with for a long time. Our moms went to the same Bible Study when we were pre-school-aged. Now I find out we both have similar interests in parenting, "crunchiness" (meaning we try to use natural, organic products and very hands-on parenting styles), politics, and relationship to the Lord.
Of course, the down side of this re-discovery is the realization that just because "it's a small world after all," it isn't necessarily easy to meet up with people we connect with. She lives a couple hours from us...not completely unreasonable to hope to get together at some point, but not exactly an easy get-together!
So for now I'll do as I've been doing; enjoy my online friendships and pray that someday I do have a friend with similar interests (and maybe kids near the same ages?) that I can spend time with face-to-face.

In unrelated news, I finished a layout yesterday using pictures Bekah let me take yesterday morning. She was so completely adorable in her dress and with her hair up, and then when she started being a ballerina (or, as she says, "badewina") I wanted to gobble her up!
Have a wonderful weekend! I'm hoping we can hit some garage sales tomorrow. It's fun to get out as a family, and we do "need" some things for Hudson that I'd rather not pay full price for (an exersaucer, for one...we had two but got rid of them when Bekah outgrew them!) So a great excuse to enjoy the sunshine and spring weather!