Christmas Blog Decorations

I know, it isn't even Thanksgiving yet, but I had some time today so I wanted to update my blog to look a little more festive so I changed the layout and changed my playlist to Christmas tunes. Hope you have a great Thanksgiving holiday! Someday I'm going to learn how to do my own blog layouts.

Naughty or Nice

I had a friend send me this and it was kinda fun. You can do your own after you link to mine.
Travis
Tyrel
Trevin

Invitations

I had to share this cute invitation. We are having our YW Evening in Excellence in a week and a half and I was in charge of the invitations. We have two girls that are over all of the planning so they can count as one of their projects so they have picked the colors, food, helped with theme and decorating ideas, and asked the speakers and planned the musical number. Anyway, they picked light blue and light green and our theme is "Stand in Holy Places". Speakers are speaking on being worthy to hold a temple recommend and go to the temple. The young men are dressing up to serve dinner to the girls and their parents and I'm also in charge of taking pictures of the girls with their parents. It should be fun. Anyway, they both came over last night and we mass produced and whipped out 40 of these beauties in 2 1/2 hours. Glad that is done. Sorry the scan isn't so great but you get the idea.

The Race is On

I feel like I've been a little neglectful to this blog lately, but work has been busy, which is good since the company Sean was working with since IndyMac got taken over by the feds just downsized. He has a couple of things going, so hopefully we will have more money coming in soon. We are getting by though.

Trevin had his Pinewood Derby last week, so he and Sean were busy building the car. He took first place in his Bear den and 3rd overall. His car was very shiny black and I cut a Philadelphia Eagles logo out of sparkly silver to put on the front of his car. He loved it.

Since the track was already set up, for YM/YW activity, we got some extra cars and gave them 45 minutes to decorate their cars (we had 2 for each class for a total of 12 cars) and then they had a race also. It was a hoot. I'll have to post pictures from the cars they decorated when I get them scrapped. There were some funny ones.

Our YW Evening of Excellence is coming up the week after Thanksgiving and I'm in charge of the invitations which have to be done to pass out on Sunday, so that is on my agenda today since I finally got my Christmas project done last week.

I'm excited to spend Thanksgiving with my family this year. Sean, Travis and Tyrel went down a couple of weekends ago to help my parents with getting the dining room finished. Trevin got sick that day, so he and I stayed at home. My parents have their mission papers sent in and are just waiting for their call now. It is so exciting!

What year is it anyway????

I thought I was doing so good. I got my major Christmas project finally finished and sent off to be published and then I got this cute kit for one of the creative teams I am on for digital scrapping that I thought would make a way cute photo Christmas card, so I made it and sent it to WalMart to get printed. I picked them up yesterday and was ready to stuff them in envelopes when I noticed that I had put 2006 on them instead of 2008. What a dork.!? Luckily they were only 9 cents each (yes I'm a cheapo this year, that is what happens when your husband hasn't really had a job for the last few months and the mortgage industry that I process for is crappy right now). Anyway, I had to send them to get printed with the correct date again today.

Happy Birthday To YOU!

I had this ready and saved as a draft and totally forgot to post it. I have been really busy this week, not that that is a good excuse, but it is the one I have. So, sorry Mom! Hope you had a great birthday! We love you and are grateful for all that you do for us!

Tagged

I got tagged by my good friend Kara, so here goes......

Tagged Lucky 7's and Crazy 8's

7 Things I Can Do...

1-Scrapbook – I love it, paper or digital, it doesn’t matter to me.

2-Cook – my hubby and kids think I’m the greatest cook in the world and I love doing it, thanks mom for teaching me how.

3-Organize – most of the time I am fairly organized, I sometimes don’t deal well with spontaneity or last minute changes

4-Read – loved it in high school and college and then didn’t read for a while until I picked it up again with book club a few years ago

5- Blog

6- Balance a checkbook – I was amazed when I worked at the bank the number of people with no clue.

7- Take pretty good photos

7 Things I Cannot Do...

1- Play musical instruments or sing – I have no talent in this area even after years of choir, piano lessons and violin lessons. Luckily my boys take after their dad in his area and not me. But, I can play Guitar Hero on the medium level, does that count?

2- Cut my boys hair – but I am determined to learn how

3- Make that sound that photographers make with their tongue to get little kids to smile and laugh

4- Whistle

5- Make meringue that works like my grandma’s

6- Afford to fill my car with gas anymore

7- Wiggle my ears

7 Things That Attracted me to Sean (to those I'm tagging, change this to your spouse, boyfriend or what you look for in a guy)

1- That he could dance and that he likes to dance

2- Him playing the guitar and singing to me while I cooked him dinner

3- His cute dimples

4- The way he looked in Wranglers and a cowboy hat

5- That he has a testimony and honors his priesthood

6- That he wanted to take me to the temple

7- That he treats me well

7 Things I say Most Often...

1- “Be good, have fun, I love you.” As my kids are leaving to go somewhere.

2- “Did you brush your teeth?”

3- “Get your dirty clothes and hangers up here NOW!”

4- “Used to could” I guess I’m a Redneck

5- “Do you have any homework? And Did you turn it in?”

6- "How was your day?"

7 - "Did you comb your hair?"

7 Favorite Foods...

1- Mexican Food

2- Cheese

3- Homemade bread and rolls

4- Cheese (oh did I already say that?)

5- BBQ’d meat (chicken, steak, pork, etc.)

6- Popcorn (does that count as a food?)

7- Cheese (yes, I admit it, I am a cheesaholic)

CRAZY 8'S
8 TV Shows I Like To Watch...

1- The Amazing Race

2- Survivor

3- CSI (I don’t care which, Las Vegas, Miami, New York)

4– Eleventh Hour

5– BYU football

6– Steelers football

I think that is all that I really watch

8 Things That Happened Yesterday...

1-I got some of my Christmas projects done

2-I went walking in the freezing cold with my neighbor

3-I got our family pictures ready to get printed

4-I watched the Utah vs. TCU football game

5-I made deer steak for dinner.

6-I talked to almost all of my sisters in law on the phone

7- I processed some loans

8- I got to bed before 10:00

8 Favorite Places To Eat...

1-Mi Rancherito – or the sauce place as we call it

2-Bajio – I crave the Chicken Green Chile Salad sometimes

3-Ruby River- Sean and I love to go there for our birthdays and anniversary

4-My house

5-Tepanyaki’s – my kids always choose to go there for dinner if they all get straight A’s on their report cards

6-PF Changs

7-Macaroni Grill – Sean doesn’t really like Italian, but I get to go there every once in a while.

8- Arbys as long as it isn’t the one in Payson

8 Things I'm Looking Forward To...

1- teaching a digital scrapbooking class to friends and neighbors

2- getting my Christmas project finished

3- going to my parents house this weekend

4- Thanksgiving

5- Christmas

6- Going out to dinner with my husband tonight

7- The boys cooking their own dinner tonight

8- Finishing this post, it is taking me forever and I don’t have time for it today.

8 Things On My Wish List...

1- to get my house paid off

2- to get all of my boys on missions and married in the temple

3- to go on a mission when I’m old with Sean

4- to be able to travel more

5- that we will continue to be healthy
Stumped on this one too. I’ll have to post later.

8 People I Tag...

1-Heidi

2-Katie

3-Lisa

4-Haylee

5-Sharlynn

6-Kristi

7-Traci

Scrap, Scrap, Scrap

Hi all! I haven't scrapped my Halloween pictures yet, I'll try to get to them some time this week, but I have been scrapping a lot. Here are some of my layouts from this week in case you don't frequent my other blog. Some of these haven't been posted there yet, so Shhh, keep it a secret. I am on 3 different creative teams now for different digital designers which means they have a select group of people that do layouts with their kits to promote their sites and stores and help with advertising. It has been a lot of fun for me and forced me to get some of my older pictures scrapped as well as keep up on my current photos because I have to do at least 3 layouts per week.

This is from last year at Thanksgiving when I was in charge of pies, I made pumpkin and apple cream and then I had the boys each make a pie.

This one is from Christmas day sledding at the golf course last year on their new sleds.

This is a picture I took of cute little Whitney last Spring at Troy and Lisa's wedding reception.

This is a picture of Troy and Lisa from their wedding in April.

This is a picture Tyrel took of Sharlynn at Troy and Lisa's wedding reception.

This is a layout I did of Travis on the first day of school. I also did the same layout for Tyrel and Trevin, just had to change the one picture. That is one of the great things about digital. You don't have to do the same thing over and over again, just use the same layout, different picture.

This is a picture of Trevin and his friend Brady from 1st grade. Their teacher sent it to me a year or so later, so I had never printed it out to scrap, so I did it digitally when I happened upon the picture on my hard drive.

This one is from Mother's Day this last year. I always get a picture of me and the boys on Mother's Day and also take one of Sean and the boys on Father's Day.

This is from a Richardson Family Reunion a couple of years ago. The favorite activity of the boys is to build a fort every year. This is one of the better forts they have come up with. It had a door with hinges (yarn) and furniture (stumps) on the inside.

One of our friends got us free tickets to the Styx concert in Las Vegas a couple of years ago. This is the crappy picture I got of the band and a picture of Sean and I at the restaurant we ate at before the concert.

This is from one of Trevin's flag football games a couple of weeks ago.

This is Trevin with the gingerbread house he made and gave to his teacher. This is a family traditiion that my family did when we were younger and my kids have made gingerbread houses for all of their elementary school teachers every year.

Are you bored yet? This is the last one. This is of Travis and my parents a few years back when they took him on a trip to Colorado. This is a mine they visited. They take each of the grandchildren on a trip when they turn 12.

I'm going to be teaching a digital scrapbooking class in January and I emailed many of you who I have emails for, but if you are interested, let me know by sending me an email to lori@loaner.net and I will put you on my list. It doesn't matter where you live, because it will be an online class with a week to complete each assignment so you can work at your own pace. You will need internet access and you will also need Photoshop Elements 6 or above, or Photoshop 6 or above, or Photoshop CS2 or above. I don't think versions before that will support what we will be doing. It is free, so let me know this month if you are interested. It is really fun!