projects to share...

what would be a post with out some Scrapbook share? well thought I'd break it down today so as to not have a wayyy tooo long of a post.

Ok so here's a quick and easy way to dress up those Halloween treat bags you need to bring for your kid's class or for your Halloween party favors.


I made this for Maddie's preschool class. They had their Halloween party today and each parent had to bring something for each kid. Now you all know that right now I'm pressed with time so I made it a point that I wouldn't stress myself out too much with this and yet made sure that I presented my "crafty" side to all the moms. LOL.



All I did with these tags was designed it in MS word, grabbing a clip art and adding some text. Printed them off on white cardstock, cut them, punched a hole and used some of my inexpensive ribbons to tie them to my clear treat bags. I loved the clear ones cause kids can see what's in them and also that the bags didn't clash with my ribbon nor my tags.

And while catching up on my Heroes show last night, I covered my new journal. Journal writing is definitely something I've missed doing and have promised myself that despite my overly packed schedule that I will take time to write again. So to inspire me to do my goal, I prettied up a simple notebook.


I used a paper line complete with tags and stickers. Then rummaged my ribbon and flower stash to add the final touches. This is so simple to make and you can even make a big batch of this for some homemade Christmas gifts.






Speaking of Christmas projects, I've noticed that a lot of people have been making my altered post it notes lately. I'm so happy that people are being inspired by the projects I share here in my blog, with that being said, is there any projects that you've seen me share that you would like a play by play instructions on. I wanna be of service to you my dear blog readers. *wink* So just leave me a comment and I'll try to post as much as I can.

Oh and one last thing...I was reading my November Family Circle magazine and came across a neat article about gratitude. In the article are certain challenges that the author asks us to do to to help us (and our family) really understand the many things that we should be grateful for. So next week I'm hosting a week long "gratitude" challenge here in my blog. It would vary from things you write to things you need to do. So are you up for it? I wanted to do it myself cause I think it will be a great theme for a thanksgiving mini album. I will post the challenges everyday and have random raks to share as well. Hope you'll stay tune for that! It'll be fun.

So that's it.

Have a spooky day tomorrow. *wink*

Grace

What's brewing at home......

I think if you have little ones at home (or even when you don't) the big thing on your mind right now is Halloween.

So is the case in my family. All I hear Maddie or Marcus ask is "is it Halloween yet?" Sure it's annoying most of the time but it also helps me get in the mood.

One of the things we're doing to get ourselves in the Halloween spirit is to carve our pumpkins. We had to do it a little early (last night) cause I have to work tonight and tomorrow night. Here's some fun shots of our new tradition.

With this shot, I propped the camera on top of a tall glass for an instant tripod, set up the timer and made everyone smile.


With two kids always competing with each other, it's just natural to get two, although if it was me and with all the seeds and inside things I need to take out and clean, I would've been happy with just one *small* one.


Here's Maddie just before we started carving. She's drinking some metamuccil to help her with you know what!


Mitch practiced his jack-o-lantern faces on paper then had the kids pick which ones they wanted their pumpkins to look like. Marcus wanted a scary one and he picked this.


I also made some caramel apples. It's too bad that both Stater Brother grocery stores that are the closest to me didn't have the melting caramels so I had to resolve with this premelted ones that you just cover the apples with. It still tasted the same but I would've loved to have added some more fun toppings on my apple. Oh well!


Here's Maddie being the ham that she is...


Mitch was such at "artist" with the pumpkins. He did such a great job.


and the result was a very cool and somewhat scary Jack-o-lantern.


Have a great day everyone,
Grace

food + papercrafts = yummy inspirations

Check this new book out!!! Totally my type of inspiration. Now I'm not in this book (how I wish) but bec. they're from one of my fave magazines, I simply had to endorse it.


And bec. our dear editors from PaperCrafts magazine is so nice to my blog readers (all 20 of you, LOL just kidding) here's a delish recipe and a great project just for you brought to you by the very talented Alisa Bangerter.

Cheesy Garlic Drop Biscuits

This is a perfect recipe to pull out if you are short on time because there is no rolling or cutting. The cheese and garlic add extra kick to a plain biscuit, and kids love them. They are the perfect accompaniment to serve with soups or stews, and are great served with a salad.

INGREDIENTS

2 c. flour

2 tbsp. granulated sugar

4 tsp. baking powder

1 1/2 tsp. garlic powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2/3 c. butter or margarine

1 1/2 c. grated cheddar cheese

1 1/4 c. milk

Chives (optional)

DIRECTIONS

Mix together dry ingredients. Cut in butter with pastry cutter until mixture is fine. Add cheese and mix well. Add milk and stir until just moistened. Drop by spoonfuls onto greased baking sheet. Sprinkle top with chopped dried or fresh chives if desired. Bake at 400 degrees for approx. 15 minutes.

Enjoy Halloween Tag

Designer: Alisa Bangerter

SUPPLIES: Cardstock: (ivory) Dye ink: (Black) Stewart Superior Corp.; (Summer Sun) Stampin’ Up! Specialty ink: (Mango Lemonade color wash) Stewart Superior Corp. Color medium: (black chalk) Craf-T Products Accents: (black brads) Making Memories; (chipboard bat, moon) Melissa Frances Fibers: (black striped ribbon) Pebbles Inc. Font: (Black Family) www.dafont.com Adhesive: (foam tape) Finished size: 3" x 4 1/2"

1 Make tag from cardstock. 2 Crumple tag and smooth out. Spray edges with color wash; let dry. Apply chalk. 3 Ink chipboard moon; let dry. Chalk edges and adhere. 4 Ink chipboard bat; let dry. Adhere with foam tape. 5 Print sentiment on cardstock; trim and tear edges. Chalk edges and adhere with foam tape. Attach brads. Attach ribbon with brad.

So does this book not sound "yummy" or what?! To learn more about the book, check it out here.

Oh and I know I'd be trying out this recipe really soon. *wink*

Have a great day,
Grace

splish splash....

I was taking a bath, all alone on a Saturday night.......

yep that's song is still stuck in my head. I guess having to practice a dance with my Primary for over a month will do that to you. Our stake had a big 50th year anniversary celebration and they've asked the primary of each ward to perform a dance to the tune of a 50's song. Our ward picked "splish splash" and they performed it last night.

First off, HAY!!!..... that's my big sigh of relief that this thing is over. You just don't know the drama and stressed this has caused me. I'm sure that I'm not the only one that's feeling this too.

But at the end, it was all worth it. The best part for me was seeing my two kids be a part of the show. At first Marcus was very hesitant to participate. I didn't push the issue too much bec., well frankly I didn't want the headache, until finally his Dad got him to commit and I'm so thankfully Mitch go to him. At the end Marcus said he had a lot of fun and that he'll do it again. Woohoo and for a minute there I thought my kid won't follow in his Mama's footsteps in doing road shows during his youth.

I didn't have any problems convincing Maddie to dance. All I have to say was that she'll get to wear make up and she was right on board. Now the problem we had with her was her short attention span. On most parts of the dance she was oblivious to what was happening and by the time she gets the steps they've moved on to another routine. Funny kids.

Here they are before the show. I couldn't take a lot of photos of them cause they were not cooperating.



And here's some shots of them dancing. I made sure they were partners so that I can teach them that part of the dance at home and they'd know exactly what each other need to do on the stage.


So now that's over, I can now move on to worrying about this coming week's stuff like, Halloween. Boy, we never run out of things to take care of.

Despite all the hectic schedules and things to do I am very blessed this month. Not only did I get published 4 times this month but I just found a very exciting email from Creating Keepsakes. Wow!!!! Now if everything goes through like they should by mid next year, I would've been published in all of the major scrapbook magazines. How cool is that!!!

Oh and one final thing that's making me happy. I found a very cool and inexpensive gadget for my camera to use when I really need to use a flash. It's called a flash diffuser. Took a little field trip to Samy's camera over in Santa Ana on Friday and got me one.


So that's it for me right now. I need to focus on emailing people pictures of the dance. Somehow I got suckered in to being the "official" photographer of our dance that I need to send some people pictures and I still need to iron out details for my sharing time lesson on Sunday. Boy, the list goes on and on.

Have a great day,
Grace

a midweek post

Happy Wednesday everyone! How's your week shaping up so far?

For me it's all good. Of course I still want more time in the day but I'm slowly letting go of the need to have and do everything. I notice that as I let go of some self expectations and perfectionism that I'm a better person to live with! Ok so enough psycho babble and onto some picturse and layouts share....

The one thing that has been put in the back burner since I started working for Aeropostale was our Monday night family home evenings. It's been about a month now (very embarrassed about this!). So to make things right, we stayed home on Sunday evening (we usually spend this time at my parents house) and had our family night then. We went for a walk around our street and wrote letters to Amanda, who's finishing up basic training this week and will move on to more training soon.

Marcus enjoys his costume so much that he decided to walk around the street on it. Yeah people were looking at us and since I have my camera they're probably thinking we're a little too early for Halloween. I know some kids even had to think twice and asked their dad if it was Halloween that day. It was kinda funny.


There are tons of black and brown widow spiders in our area. Yuck! Mitch wanted me to take a picture of it. He even wanted me to get a real good close up. Of course this freaked me out so thank goodness for zoom lenses. (laugh)


Yesterday (Tuesday) our Preschool had a field trip at the Pumpkin Patch. We've done this before so I opted to do my own thing. I invited Maddie's friend Danica from church to have a play date at the house. Maddie had a blast and I was able to do a lot of scrapbook work as well. It's good that somebody else is entertaining my kid. (smile)


Here they are jumping on the trampoline WITH their princess dresses. These girls are a hoot. As you know I don't like to put other kids' pictures in the blog so here's one where Danica is not too focused. (note: not that I don't like to put pictures of them here but I just don't know how they would feel about that. )


And while they're playing, I was able to get these layouts finished....

4teen

Just going through some old pics of me. I made the big laced flower by sewing on the edge of it and pushing the thread through until it goes all the way around and create the circle. Added some more flowers from my scrap bin, a sticker and some rhinestones. This page is all about playing for me. Loved that I was able to rummage through my ever growing stash and got some cute treasures to add here. Do this once in a while and it brings your creativity in a different level. Seriously!


iknow

Another me page. Scrapbooked the things I learned while I was a bride, planning my own wedding all by myself. Not the easiest thing to do but I learned a lot of things during that time so I wanted to document that.

I even made my own little bride with the Maya road sheer woman image. Fun stuff!


And finally, I'm hosting a product challenge over at Coconut Scrapshop message board. Stop by and join in. The deadline for uploading is Oct 31st, so you still have time to play and you don't know you might win this....


So that's it. Hope you all are doing well and have a great day,
Grace

just a whole lot of something.....

don't really know how to title this post as it is part scrapbooking, part family share and just about anything I can think of to cram. So let's move on shall we.....

First off are some fun scrappy news to share, got some of my published work back and my projects/pages and name can be found inside these books/magazines which are out in newstands right now

BHG Scrapbooks Etc. Nov/Dec 08 (my page is on page 96)


and PaperCrafts Cards Creations Vol 6


here's my card, it's on page 10

Plus I got two digital pages picked up for publication. My first digital pages to get pubbed. Woohoo!

And then we have some early Halloween photos. A friend of ours hosted a Halloween party and here's the kids just before they left for the shindig. I wasn't able to go with them since I had to work but according to Marcus they had a lot of fun. Sounds like a great party to me :)
I'm so glad Marcus wanted to be a Ninja Turtle again this year. This meant we didn't have to buy a new costume. Woohoo, saved me a few bucks!

I'm also very happy that Maddie's birthday is in the beginning of October so we can have loving relatives buy her her cute costume. Thanks Lolo and Lola. :)

So what would be a cute photo shoot without these kinds of outtakes right?!


And finally some projects to share. This is courtesy of SoCalScrap.us. This month is my final month to be in their design team and I've been very lucky to have had this experience. Shopping their store was just a thrill for me and being able to host challenges was a blast. These pages/projects features this, this, this, and this.

Real thing

Journaling:

What’s a girl that dreams of a trip to Paris gonna do when she can’t make that dream happen? Simple, she goes to Las Vegas and takes pictures of the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe at the Paris Hotel. It’s probably the closest she’s ever going to get to the real deal. May 2008

Bellagio

I used the swirl template here. I made the swirls with white pen then added glitter glue on top of it to add dimension and some sparkles.

Journaling:

My favorite hotel by far to tour was the Bellagio. It was so glamorous with its exquisite artworks, fountains and glass ceiling. It even had a conservatory and botanical garden in the lobby that just made me ooohhh and ahhhh all over for. It was definitely full of inspiration that I’m definitely going to go back there again and not to mention they had the biggest chocolate fountain in the world! May 2008

Now and Then card

inside look


Mom paper purse

was just playing around with leftover papers and thought of making a little paper purse.

the side view


I'm planning on actually giving this out to my mom but since Mother's day is quite a ways away I'm going to leave the real hugs and kisses chocolate till then. So for now there will be scrap paper in there instead.


Happy Sunday

Grace

do we not live in AMERICA???

ok so I'm taking this time to vent out so please bear with me and just hear me out......
Last night I worked. Everything was fine. Was doing a little customer service, so I came up to this couple and asked them if they were finding everything ok. The guy looked at me and started speaking to me in Spanish. Seeing that I was totally clueless to what he was saying, he asked if I spoke spanish. In my dorkiest spanish I said "muy very pukito" (translation: very tiny/small) and then he said......" muy very bbbaaaadddd!"
I was floored. He was upset that I didn't know Spanish. I held my tongue and turned around to continue my folding. After a few minutes I saw them still looking like they needed some assistance so I came up to them again and asked if everything was ok then he goes...."no spanish!" and continues to shake his head.
At that time I made the choice to turn around and do a few breathing exercises and just scream in my head. Seriously I was soooo close to telling that guy off.
First of all, I DO NOT NEED TO LEARN SPANISH! I'm in AMERICA for crying out loud. This is not Mexico!!! Grrrrrr I'm just sooooo upset about this. I mean I'm an immigrant too but I know how to speak English and do not even dare think that everyone else IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA will try to learn Tagalog just so that I CAN LIVE IN THIS COUNTRY. Sooooo unfair!!!
and second..... I've encountered some people that does not know a lick of English that will try to point, sign and cooperate with you so that you can help them out, but clearly this guy was more concerned that an AMERICAN like me does not know Spanish for him to refuse my help. OOOOOhhhhhh I hope that guy won't come back anymore cause maybe next time I won't be NICE!!!

(breathing in and breathing out)

So there. Thank you for letting me vent out and promise, my next post will be on a brighter note.

Have a great Saturday,
Grace

monday share and date with hubby pictures

Hi all,
Finally getting the feel of autumn around here. We are breaking out our jackets and extra warm blankets and (sadly) the coughs and colds have arrived in our home too. I had to have Marcus miss school today cause he was coughing really bad yesterday. I'm sure people at church didn't appreciate me bringing my hacking boy, but oh well! He's getting better though. I'm praying with some rest, liquids and cough medicine he'll be ready to go back to school tomorrow.

Anyways, did you guys know that I can track my blog visitors. Yep, thank goodness to my stat counter. Well last Thursday I checked (just like I always do) and was shocked to find out that I had 200 something page loads! Wow where did that come from? I mean, I didn't even post anything new so why would there be so much visits? Well come to find out that somebody made these and kindly posted where she got the idea and that's how everyone came to my site. It's really cool to know that (a) people like my tutorials/project shares enough to try them for themselves and (b) that they don't forget to share the source. Made my day. :)

So moving on.... Friday night, Mitch and I went to the Newport Beach temple for a date. Yeah, were kinda dorky that way. Since Mitch was so busy making the canoes for their scout trip in July and I've been working nights and Saturdays, we never had the time to go to the temple. But thankfully we got some break. Funny thing is that, that day they actually called me and asked if I could come in. I nicely said no, I mean I have a date!

Anyways, my in laws were kind enough to watch the kids. Although Newport Beach is far from us, since we were dropping the kids off at my in laws house we figured we'd go to that direction instead. It was great. That was our first time doing an endowment session in a small temple. Every temple is different in it's own right but they all have that distinct quality you can only see and feel in a house of the Lord. We can't wait to go on our next date there.

I don't have any fancy contraption for my camera for night shots so here's my best shot of the temple.


After our session, Mitch was in the mood for some mexican food so with my trustee walking google (my brother Gary) we tracked down a Don Jose close to my in laws and ate there. Mitch got a plate of Chile Verde and I got Chile Relleno. Mmmm!


And finally some monday layouts to share...

His/Her

I made this page using the October Coconut Scrapshop kit. The journaling is Mitch's and I perspective on our Vegas trip in May. Still going through those pictures.

I used the acorn cookie cutter that came in the kit to make my leaves. I used them as a template. I also took apart this circle embellishment from Maya Road and used the two circles for the date on my page.


U&I

This page was made to journal the highs and lows of my relationship with my daughter. She's really cute and loving but sometimes can be really stubborn and "diva-ish" in character. I particularly chose these pictures so as to show that the good times outweigh the bad.

I did some paper pleating/folding then sewed two ribbons. You can't see it but the & sign has glitters on it.


So that's it, thank you for stopping by and have a great day,
Grace