She watches too much info-mercials

Maddie made me crack up very early today because of the conversation I had this morning with her after waking her up....

Mom: Wake up Maddie. We're going to the park this morning for the Church's breakfast activity.
(Maddie gets up and starts walking out of her room to our room so she can change)
(She places her hands on her back)
Maddie: My back hurts!
Mom: Well maybe it's because of the way you slept.
Maddie: I NEED A SLEEP NUMBER BED!!!

Yes, I about fell down and cracked up. There's definitely way tooo much infomercials in the Qubo channel.

Till next time,
Grace

this weekend....

Yesterday (Saturday) I tried my hand on bread making again. This time I followed the recipe 0n the back of the wheat flour bag that I have.
I'm not sure if it's a total success granted it didn't rise as big as the ones I saw on the youtube videos that I've been watching but it did rise and as far as I'm concern, I can say I was able to make bread!!!
Here's a look at it, I decided to not make a loaf, because I wanted to divide the batter and make different types out of it.


I make a tiny loaf and some rolls with it. Next time, I'm going to try to make it more "aesthetically" pretty.

and then I also made this pizza with some of the dough


needless to say I was in my kitchen ALL day long yesterday.

I feel so tired today because I've stayed up late the past two nights watching these....

The Lovely Bones


review: I was scared with this movie. Yeah I know, it doesn't sound or look scary, but it did for me. I was at some point being like a little kid, covering my eyes with my hand during the "scary" scenes and telling Mitch to let me know when the scene ends.
I think the story is very interesting and it makes me wanna borrow the book that it was based on. But the only thing that I didn't get was the scenes from what is supposed to be the "in between" (between the earth and what I'm assuming as heaven) world where she was surrounded by some wonderful but weird landscapes. I felt it didn't fit with the rest of the movie.

and then last night this....
Invictus

review: This movie was good. Matt Damon deserved his nomination in this being that he had to have an accent and bulk up a lot for the rough role of a rugby player. I loved, loved, loved how Nelson Mandela was so inspiring. It seemed like every line Morgan Freeman had to deliver, spoken by Mandela inspired me!!! Love it a lot!
There were a couple of things that I thought was hard to get over with in this movie..... I do not have any clue what Rugby is and so to watch a movie with that sport as the main plot lost me in so many scenes and the various accents or attempt to have an accent was getting me confused. At the middle of the movie, I had to put on the subtitles because I can't hardly understand what they were saying.

And finally a photo of our newly painted front room...


As you can see it is still a work in progress but I'm so happy with the flowers on the wall all gone! You don't know how long I've been waiting for them to go away. *wink*

So that's it. Till next time,
Grace

Friday post

Where did this week go? Gosh sorry for the blog neglect. I've been very busy with home projects. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind painting but a whole week of non stop painting.... and it will just make you go a little nutso!

Anyways, here's a few things I wanted to share today....

Over at Crazy Daisy kit blog, they posted my May layouts PLUS a trio of mini cards I made with the kit.

Learn more about this and the kit over here.

Then at Clear Scraps blog, I got to post this card with a peak-a-boo opening.

Check the post here.

and finally here's my Get Sketchy card for this week. The design team members were asked to make a Father's day card and I made this....

Happy Father's Day

I made a guy shirt from pattern paper plus I added a handcut tie. :)


learn more about this week's sketch, challenge and prize by clicking over here.

So there you have it. Happy start of a long weekend.

Till next time,
Grace

5.5 hours

of my Sunday night was spent glued to the TV watching my favorite show "Lost" wrap up their amazing 6 season run.


And after all that, what do I think?

I'm still LOST!!!

Yes granted the ending was a "happy" ending, it still didn't provide enough closure for me. The creators of Lost had built up this big web of stories in the past 6 seasons that for them to say that those people in Oceanic flight 817 was dead from the very beginning and they went to a "pergotary" state which is the island and then now finally going to "heaven" is just not enough for me. I mean c'mon, if that's the case what was the purpose of the "dharma initiative", the "others", Jacob and the black smoke, etc., etc, etc???

And then I stayed up till 1am bec. Jimmy Kimmel's special show was going to show three alternate endings, only to find out that they were spoofs of the show. What a big waste of my sleeping time!!!

Ok I'm going to step off my soap box now. thanks for letting me let out a little steam here and now I'm off to sleep early and get back some of those "precious" hours I spent on "LOST" last night.

Till next time,
Grace

You are a great catch

Happy Friday.

I'm taking a little break from taking out wallpaper trims from my walls to post this. A girl gotta take a few breaks from the house projects right?! LOL

Anyways, the Get Sketchy sketch #39 and challenge is up today and here's what I made for it...

You are a great catch

The design team sponsor for this week is Robin's Nest. They have paper collections complete with stickers and rubons.


My kit had a fishing theme and since I don't have any idea on what card to make with that, I turned it around and made something of a "love" theme instead. I used the rubon "great catch" as my starting point and used letters stickers to complete the sentiment. I also added a fish rubon and die cut heart to emphasize the theme.

So there you have it. Join us in the challenge here. There's always some great prizes in store.

Have a great weekend.

till next time,
Grace

my new obsession

I got this book a while back at the library and was very impressed at the read.....


I was impressed at what the author can do/make for her family for just $5. I love that before she shared the recipes, she talked a little bit about how she saves so much. The one thing that struck with me was that....she decided to do this exercise/challenge because she felt that since her husband was the only one working and she got to stay home with her kids, that it's her "job" to make sure that she spends her husbands hard-earned money the best way she can. I kinda related to that and so I'm now making that a priority as well.

Anyways, I love that her recipes are nutritious, easy to make and for the ones we've tried so far, they're pretty good.

But one thing I've noticed with her recipes is that....for her to have saved, she made a lot of things from scratch. She used dried beans instead of can, made her own sauces AND made her own bread.


that's something that I tried for the first time this weekend and sadly I was not successful. Oh my family still ate it despite that my rolls didn't rise and it felt like a brick once it's in our stomachs. I love that Marcus can pretty much eat anything so long as he adds honey to it. :)

Anyways, I vowed to try my hand on bread making again and even went on Youtube last night (something I rarely do) to watch videos on how to make bread.

So if you're reading this and have some kind of wonderful tip/recipe/trick or any bit of wisdom that you can share with me as far as making homemade bread, please feel free to share. As this woman can make cute things with paper, organize her life, even dabble in photography but for the life of her CANNOT make bread!!!

Till next time,
Grace

Card time

The weather around here have been a little bit crazy lately. Last week we were clear and sunny then this week we started with some showers and "June gloom" type of skies. I don't know if I should start packing the sweaters or hold off on buying the kids flip flops.

Anyways, how about some three new cards that have the Spring feel to them....

Happy Spring

this card was based on the latest card sketch at Page maps. I love how sketches make creating so much easier and faster.

I kinda switched the placement of the element and card sentiment, and used the color blue as my visual triangle element.

Friend

A simple card that used scraps from the card on the top.



Precious baby

and a note card, again from the leftover of the first card. I can't get over the pinks.



thank you for looking.

Till next time,
Grace

Crazy Daisy May layouts *photo heavy*

What do you think of the colors purple, green, black, Grey and some deep blue?

I have to say that Crazy Daisy kits have some great color combos that I have not tried myself and every time I dive into the kits I get more inspired.

Here's what I made with the May main kit....

Breakfast fit for a queen

This page focused on one photo. A photo of my breakfast during Mother's day of last year.

I lined up pattern papers, border sticker and trim. I also added the rubon, flower and journaling block here.


Little miss Sunshine

This page was based on the sketch assigned to all the design team members.

I layered two papers here. Gotta love double sided papers, I used just one sheet here, representing both patterns in this page.

I added the lines of circles with punched pattern paper and buttons.

his hands

This is one of my fave pages right now. I love that I was able to finally document something that I love about my husband. We have this little routine to hold hands while driving. Of course he has one hand in the steering wheel and the other holding mine. I took that "physical" representation of love and journaled about the many ways his hands shows love for me and the kids.

I made sure the title stood out a little bit more against the background, so I painted over the paper and then adhered the letters.

To create the page, I layered pattern papers and embellishments. I love the fancy black trim and used that to lead the eye to the photo.

Anniversary date

This is my two page spread for this month. Although I usually use 12x12 size, I thought that the pictures will look better in a smaller scale.

I cut out the GCD paper to get the handcut flowers on this page. They served as my elements that created the visual triangle.

I used the back side of the My Mind's Eye papers with a Kraft color background.

A Mother's Bliss

Sometimes shaped pattern paper are good as a template to create shaped from another paper. Such was the case for the blue pattern paper which framed my white cardstock. I love the My Mind's Eye pattern paper in the kit but it didn't work with the rest of my design, so I used it as a template, tracing it behind the blue pattern and cutting out the design, giving me a unique frame.

I also repurposed "8" stickers for my 2 S's in the title.


and here's a peek at the mini that I made with the kit. YES, you can make 5 layouts PLUS a mini album with this wonderful package of a kit!!!

See more of book here.


and if that's not good enough, see what I how I re-purposed one of the product packaging from the kit here.

Till next time everyone,
Grace

in this monday...

so I'm sitting here in front of my computer wanting to blog about something, something other than craft projects but I feel stumped!
There are so many things going on in my life right now, some absolutely blog worthy, but.....either I don't really wanna talk about it........or just tired of thinking about it.......either way I've decided to keep the personal stuff off the blog for right now.
I figured that most of my blog readers don't really come visit for the personal stories so I'm going to step back on that. Nothing lost, right?!
And for my family, just give me a phone call and I'll fill you in on the details. *wink*

Don't worry though cause I'm still going to "try" to keep up with my monthly random 4. That'll probably be the only time I'll talk about the fam.

Anyways since this sounds like such a sad post, let me share a sweet surprise I received recently....


I got this copy in the mail about two weeks ago with this inside....


I love this layout! It was one of those pages that never reached the blog or gallery since it was picked up right away. But now I can share.


I challenged myself to make a page ONLY using papers. It was a challenge but thank goodness for tools, I was able to pull something off. See the button, that's paper too strengthened by some embossing, event the thread in between it is an itty bitty piece of scrap.

So there you have it. have a great start of your week.

Till next time,
Grace

Thank you card

Whew! finally the weekend in upon us. This week has been filled with events some good, some bad but as always all of them memorable. I will have to post a "personal" post in the next couple of days to explain more but for now let me share my card for this week's Get Sketchy challenge.

Thank You
PULLED OUT FOR PUBLICATION

this week's sketch was a simple one and yet gives you a great amount of inspiration to start your card off.

PULLED OUT FOR PUBLICATION

the sponsor for this month was Deco Bugs who makes these interesting chalkboard stickers. The black frame on this card is from that pack. I thought that chalkboard stickers were very unique. I gave it more emphasis by adding white pen stitching and layering lots of fun things over it. :)

Oh and if you're looking for more inspiration, hop on over the Clear Scraps blog where I posted a layout with some fun techniques. Here's a sneek peek of it.....


Hope you all have a great weekend.

Till next time,
Grace

Upsy Daisy share- May Edition

This month's share was based on the challenges that was given to all the DTs.

The first one was based on our talented DT member Kim's sketch. She gives us a sketch every month to be inspired with. If you want to play along, we have the sketch up on the UDD blog.

History in the making

I used the new Vogue line. I switched up the flower placement from the right to the left.


I made some paper flowers and placed metal UDD brads for the centers.


Since my page has an American theme, I picked white, blue and red as my main colors and the green as the secondary tone.

a Mother's gift

the next challenge for us was to mix up the collections with one of the new lines predominantly used in the layout. I used the Blossom line as the main collection and brought out the other collections by making butterflies out of them.


I used puffy paint to make the centers of the butterflies. This was a cheaper way than adding pearls or rhinestones on each one of them. I also adhered some of the butterflies with pop up dots to add more dimension.


I added a journaling block from the Blossom line and tucked it in behind my photo.

so that's it for now. Have a great rest of the week and make sure you check out the Upsy Daisy designs website for more inspirations.

Till next time,
Grace

how was your weekend?

hopefully it was good. To all my Mother blog friends out there, Belated Happy Mother's day.

Well for me it was an event packed weekend.

We started Saturday with a garage sale.

as most of you know we are in the middle of a transition. A move is in our future and to start that process, we had a garage sale. It was better than I've expected but without some funny and memorable stories here and there. There are definitely certain things to be learned about garage sales. Mine would be.....1. paying that $30 for an ad in Penny Saver might be steeped but it was worth it. We definitely got some traffic because of that. 2. Price to sell but don't let people haggle you down to nothing. Thank goodness for a husband that was tough, I am known to be a pushover and a people pleaser so if not for him, we would've given away half of the things we had for sale. and 3. you never know what will sell or not. I thought my baby toys/play pens and such will sell fast but none of them moved. Instead we sold a lot of baby clothes and tools.

and then that night we went and watched this....


We went out with my parents and brother Gary. My thoughts on the movie......go and watch it but I have to warn you that (in my opinion) the first one was better. There were scenes that they showed in the trailer that didn't even came up in the movie. Plus the ending was a bit of a disappointment. Oh and if you are thinking of watching it, make sure you stay till after the credits are done because there is an extra scene at the very end.

Then the following morning, Mother's day, I was served this beautiful and yummy breakfast....


and showered with all these things....

I told Mitch that I wanted chocolates since I know our church won't be handing chocolates to the Moms. That is still quite of a disappointment for me since they always give the Dads chocolates for Father's Day. Anyways, I got a ton of handmade cards from Marcus and Maddie. Oh and the Colbie Callat CD is a gift I bought myself. I just love her songs.

and this wonderful Mother's day weekend wouldn't be possible without these beautiful people...
Mitch


Marcus


and Maddie


They definitely make my role as a Mother all worth it.

Till next time,
Grace

P.S.
Thanks to all that joined Clear Scraps and me on a fun blog hop. Wasn't all the DT's projects fabulous? Anyways, we picked a winner for the blog hop but she didn't leave a trace for us to personally contact her. If you are Claire and your Clear Scraps message was....

I love the blog hop and all of the great ideas from you great team. It was so easy to comment on each of the blogs.... Thank you!

Posted by: Claire | May 08, 2010 at 11:34 AM

please contact Cathy at cathy@ClearScraps.com to claim you prize.