New layouts

It's been a long time since I've done any real scrapping. Last night I got a burst of boredom and decided it was time to start catching up!

kit by Imagine by Fran (my favorite designer)

kit by Audra's little scraps
Kit by Audra's little scraps
kit by me

kit by Audra's little scraps

Simplicity...

Celebratory images

kit by Shabby Princess

Independence Day....

The mother in law has been begging for awhile (well, since they've been in their new house) to take a family photo on the front porch. We took advantage of a visit from grandma and grandpa to do just that... though we obviously didn't prepare ourselves very well since we were all in our post dinner grubbies and messy hair. The four year old niece was not very cooperative, as she was convinced my camera on the tripod was a telescope and she wanted to see the moon... to heck with taking pictures!

No, we are not short people, my brother in law is just a giant, and of coarse, you can't have a family photo without the dog!

digi kit by me, word art by Bethany

We had a good day.... steak, dutch oven potatoes, corn on the cob, homeade icecream, and then beautiful fireworks in town. The only mishap was remembering the watermelon the husband stuck in the freezer the night before and forgot about. We let it thaw out for awhile then cut it open, ate a bit of it (not so good frozen), and left it sitting on the island while we went off to party. We came home from fireworks at 11:00 p.m. to watermelon juice all over the kitchen floor. Talk about a sticky mess! You know it's bad when I actually can't WAIT to mop the floor. Live and learn!

Tonight, we're doing our own fireworks show in the front yard. Hopefully we won't light anything on fire like the people through the mile (we've BTDT before with illegal fireworks ourselves). EEK!

5 silly blue eyed girls...

Yesterday, we had a visit from more of those superbly cute nieces of mine who currently reside in Missouri. It was a bit tricky at first as the five year old seemed to have NO desire to stay with me, despite having stayed here before. As she sat by the front door and cried, the boy went up to her and talked to her, told her that if she was going to cry, so was he. That helped a little. She eventually warmed up to us, though, and we all had a good time.

I had to giggle when the same five year old came up to me, wrapped her arms around me and whispered in my ear... "(the boy) sure is bigger than he was last summer!" Ha ha!


We had a fabulous time, they posed for some pictures for me, even (and totally gave me a photoshop challenge that was funner than heck as I transposed a head from another picture on to this one... LOL It's good to know when a certain three year old doesn't want to cooperate, you just edit her a little and it's all good!). We all miss them terribly when they aren't here and Ishee asks weekly when they are coming to visit again. Too bad I don't have some sort of control over where they live, eh? (Just for the record, their daddy just got home from his second tour in Iraq, so they go where they are told!).

What's black and white and red all over?

You know... all this time I've been learning digital scrapbooking techniques and I make a cute template and call it good... I never once thought until today that I should be making them into kits, just so I can use the papers again if I ever need to or whatever... I'm not a deep thinker, you know...

That and I have way too much time on my hands. You know, though, with the price of gas and everything else, I can't afford to do anything but stay home anyway. So, I digitally scrapbook... and break up fights...

And today, I used the layout I made above as a starting point, and made my first real kit...

What do you think? That chain link fence was a real bugger, too....

Happy, Happy Birthday Family dear...

Okay, so their birthday is not today, it's actually tomorrow, but I will be a bit incognito tomorrow, or at least away from the computer and blogger hasn't quite figured out how to post "post" posts. Follow that?

Either way... tomorrow is two of my favorite people's birthdays... my dad turns 81 and my super cute great niece Kenzie turns five. I'll be celebrating with my dad at my niece Amanda's wedding, which may or may not be an interesting event, who knows. You'll just have to wait and see what I have to say about that when I get home.

So Happy Birthday dad...
And Happy Birthday cute Kenzie...
I don't get to see cute Kenzie on her birthday since she lives in the midwest and I... don't, but cute Kenzie gets a very awesome belated birthday present, her daddy is coming home from Iraq (for the second time) in a few weeks! We're so happy they get to be a family again, it's been a long year for them.

Enjoy your weekend, all! I'm outta here!

Longing for summer...

Heck, I'll take spring, even...

After waking up to blizzard like conditions and spending the day nursing yet another winter cold or strep throat or whatever this crap is that has taken over my head, I've SO had it with winter! I'm craving a pool party... and this is the closest I can get for now. *sniff*

Isn't she cute? If you only knew how cold the water was that day... poor Kenzie was a popsicle! Oh wait... that's too much talk about cold, so scratch that last thought.

*WHINE*

Happy Easter

May you all have a very Happy Easter!

Some layouts...

My son was ordained to the office of a Teacher today, and if I had a camera, I'd photograph him on his special day, but since I don't, you'll have to just suffer through some digital layouts I've worked on over the past few days.

To find the beautiful word art that I've used... check out Bethany's talent at Elegant Word Art. She's very talented and has some great LDS sayings as well. I have figured out how to make the sayings, but alas, mine look very amateurish compared to hers!

Enjoy!

My middle child and my parents on her birthday...

My funny funny niece Rylee, who was fascinated with the leaky sprinkler head and would laugh and giggle as it squirted all over the front of her. That tongue of hers is always out, too...

Ishee playing dress up...

Word art Bethany custom created just for me!

Sweating after a game of football with dad...

Shortly before I cut all my hair off...

With my husbands grandparents on Thanksgiving last year. Grandma freaked out when I got out the camera... she didn't have her lipstick on!

A few days after getting my hair cut... our first family photo in many years!

Zoolander...

I've been messing with photoshop and learning all sorts of new things, thought I'd try doing some layouts while I was at it, something I definitely need more practice doing!
My photogenic subject gives me such fun stuff to work with, too. Now if I could just figure out a good place to have them printed! It might actually make it worth my time to do it more often!
What have you been doing lately?