Stop the Press!

Stop the Presses! 

I made it to TWO events at Lexi's school in ONE day!

As a working mom, I NEVER get to go to anything at my children's school.  Sad really given that I'm a teacher, but I'm one of those parents that the teacher never sees.  My girls are so good about it, but they do notice that I'm not there.  Lexi goes through spurts of asking me to come for lunch or to pick her up, but most of the time I think we are all just pretty resigned to the fact that while I get holidays off to spend with my kids, I won't ever get to see them in things at school.  Well, I guess until they get to high school and are at my school.  And then they will be too old for class Christmas parties!

Okay, enough of the whine and back to the fun.

Today Lexi had a T.O.T.S. performance in gym class. I can't remember what it stands for.  Basically, it's ball handling skills.  She did great.  After the performance, they had parents come out and the kids taught the parents. Good for Doug!! I was happy to be the photographer :)

Then came the class Christmas party! I must say, I so enjoy a well organized classroom and party!  The kids rotated from the letter to Santa station, to the gingerbread house station, to the ornament station, to the snack station and finally to the Christmas tree decorating station.  I know that some classrooms function in chaos, but I just love organized teachers!! Yay Mrs. Priddy!!



A little wire, some beads and wah lah... Friend Gifts!

It wasn't that long ago that when Maddie, aged 11 asked to make gifts for her friends for Christmas that I cringed and said "Sure" in that sing-song voice that says "I may be saying yes now, but we are going to chat about that later and come up with a different plan..."

However, it is with great pride, that I can say that Maddie is now not only an official crafter, but she is getting good at it too!!  Last year she made baked goods that were delicious for friend and teacher gifts.  This year, she decided to make necklaces.

Below are a couple of her creations!

And here is a close up.  Can you see that one string is gold and one is silver? 

It looks really good in person!

Now granted, I would have never chosen the color scheme, but the necklaces aren't for me.

I think her friends are going to be super excited!

A Happy Heart for Thanksgiving 2011

Happy Thanksgiving from the McLemore's

and the Maxwell's

and the Greene's.....

I love getting together with my family.  This isn't all of us, but we had a great time. The weather was beautiful, the food bountiful and laughter plenty.

Maybe this year means more as my grandparents (in the middle, Grandad in the grey suit and Grandmother in the white shirt with the cane) are in their upper 90's. Just last week Grandad was in the hospital.  I know that these special moments are fleeting.

My dad's dad, my Papa, died 23 years ago on Thanksgiving day.  I remember the day with such clarity you would think it was just last year.  Maybe that's why Thanksgiving is such an important day to me. 

I hope you had the opportunity to be with those you love on this special day of the year.

You Can Never Go Home Again... Or Can You?

 We bought a house and we are moving!!

Well, we bought the house about six years ago or so, but yes, we are moving back to our old house.

It's interesting how life works. 

We thought the house had sold, we moved out the first week of June and the buyer moved in and was to rent our house from us until his house sold.

Well, with the market and all that... his house didn't sell.  So out he goes and we go back.

It could have been a disappointment.  But it's not.

We found that we love our house.  We missed our house.  The girls asked every day to go home.

So now we are going home. 

But I painted a number of rooms and we got new carpet, so it feels like a new house.

Yeah for us. 

No buyers remorse for us :)

Scrapbooking Made Easy, it's all in the Method!

As you all know by now, I'm a busy woman.

So I have had to figure out how to streamline some things along the way.

One of those is basic scrapbook pages.

By streamlining the method of creation, I have more time for my favorite part...

EMBELLISHMENTS!

So while you may be tired of my preaching easy scrapbook pages, I just can't stop myself :)

To start, choose 10 patterns and 12 pieces of cardstock that go together. 

Plus you will need base pages of white or cream depending on your color scheme.

 Here are my chosen pages.
Notice that my pieces of cardstock are really papers with a dominant color and a small pattern!!

The next step is to choose a set of page layouts that you like.  

Most of mine templates are taken from Close To My Heart's template books.

In fact, all of the layouts for this set come from Imagine.

To be honest, one of my very strange quirks is that I LOVE to take the layouts and place them on paper
and see how many layouts I can make with a little paper as possible. 

So while some of you might groan, I live for graphing paper!!

Once I have my cutting guides ready, I cut the paper.  The biggest part of the learning curve is to

 NOT STRESS over which page is which!

It's all part of the game.

As you cut your paper, label each piece in pencil and then when finished sort into piles.

Below you can see my pieces sorted with white between each grouping.

The first time you do this, it will take some work. 

You won't like some of the pages. 

In the midst of trying to figure out what to do you, you will be taking my name in vain!

But when you figure it out, well...

Then it is FUN!!

All of the above layouts were pieced and placed in the span of about three hours.

That's 18 12x12 pages.

That's enough to fill a gift book.

Plus, I had a good bit of scrap paper to use for journal blocks, embellishments and so forth.

So, if you haven't tried this type of scrapbooking, try it!

In fact, I'll teach you how.

Stay tuned for more details....