bring back my babies!!!

*sigh* time goes too fast...

Dianne's new stuff prompted me to search out some baby pictures. Pre- Joey, all my baby photos are in print, and I currently don't have a scanner or access to one. Actually, I didn't own a digital camera until Joey was about 2 months old (it was an anniversary present from my husband and the photo used in the layout below is the, or one of the, very first digital pics I ever made), but prior to that I would occasionally order the discs that CVS used to offer with their film processing. Speaking of film, I would like to get my hands on a film SLR camera, just to play around. Until I was going through my old photos on CD, I'd forgotten how much difference there is in film and digital. I've come a long way in my photography skills since I last had a film camera so I'd just like to experiment a bit with film. Anyway. I digress...

Dianne Rigdon's Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep kit at TwoPeas prompted me to create these two layouts. I miss these fellas being so little... not to mention seeing the love! *sniff*



And here is another one, in the photo used below Joey was just a few minutes old. And now the baby fever has struck again. I can feel it in my gut.

And I am tickled that Francine from the CraftGossip Blog picked up the above layout to use for her Inspiration du Jour feature. Thanks, Francine!

the pumpkin patch

I have been so very busy the past few weeks, so I am relieved that Halloween is over and done with. Costumes were made (more on that later) and trick-or-treating has been done. Now I really don't have too much to stress out about, other than the general day to day stuff, until it's time to think about Christmas gifts. And since we only have one more weekend of Fall Ball, I'm looking forward to sleeping in on Saturdays again. Now to enjoy the remainder of fall with no more stress... I hope!

Sadly, we only made one trip to the pumpkin patch this year. It is one of my favorite fall activities and at least two trips are usually necessary for me to feel content. For this trip, originally I was just going to take the boys by myself and had been trying to talk my oldest into going along, as well, without much luck. But the day got away from us so I ended up calling Jason/Daddy to see if he wanted to go along, too. Fortunately, he was up for it and was planning on closing up the shop an hour early. We still had to wait a while for him to get home, showered, and dressed so by the time we got to the pumpkin patch, the sun was starting to set and my photo op options were few. It doesn't help that my boys don't have a lot of patience for my picture taking like they used to, so calling them back to pose by a scarecrow or a pile of pumpkins just doesn't work like it did several years ago. It really makes me sad that they're growing up so fast. Time to have another baby I guess! (hahaha....NOT!)

Here they are looking ever so excited in front of a field of cotton. This was taken as they were running to climb aboard the hay ride that was about to take off. I literally had to yell "STOP!!!" to get their attention and take a picture. 

 

Joey has his wallet. I just noticed that. If I had to guess, I'd say that he wanted to purchase a pumpkin as soon as we walked through the gate. He's been intent on spending his birthday money and is always offering to give it to me or Jason/Daddy or to buy one of us something or to give it to us for groceries or gas (LOL), but we refuse. Despite trying to rid himself of the huge responsibility of saving money he has been very responsible. He's kept up with his $55 for over a month now.

By the time the hay ride was over the sun had set and my photo op's were just about nil - sometimes I forget that my camera even has a flash, I use it so rarely... but even then, in low light, the camera (maybe it's a lens issues) has a hard time focusing - so even with the flash up, I hardly captured any usable shots. I can't believe I was ever worried that the younger two boys would be scared to be at the pumpkin patch at night. They had so much fun climbing up the tower of tractor tires, as well as sliding down the huge slide on potato sacks. The photo used in the layout below was the best shot I could get of them all after dark.  

 
Everything used is by Dianne Rigdon at TwoPeas. Click the layout for full credits.

That's all for now. After three days without a drop of coffee - the first two days I was too busy to notice, but today I found myself stranded at home with a sick kiddo (yes...again with the germs!) and then almost passed out when I went to make myself a pot and realized I'd never replenished my supply - needless to say, I am in somewhat of a forced caffeine-withdrawal-mode with the aches and pounding headache, so putting together anymore coherent thoughts in one day may cause my head to explode.  

I will be back soon with another post-Halloween blog post.

love, love, and more love

I'm totally slacking in pretty much everything at the moment. Boys have been back in school this week, thank goodness! Although Jace was out Wednesday and Josh is home today. Totally unrelated illnesses and symptoms, too. It's always fun wondering how many more of us will get sick. Even though I've had a few days to catch my breath after being full time mom for two weeks, I am still behind on housework, laundry, creative team responsibilities, email, projects for my husband's business. Seems to be... the story of my life. How many times have I said that? Ha! How many times have I complained about not being able to balance everything? LOL Geez, it's embarrassing to think about. So enough of that. Moving on to the good stuff.

First, tooting my own horn. How many of you have seen the Fall 2010 Edition of the Altered Hearts Zine?

 

Two of my recent layouts (love them & life with 4 boys) were picked up for this edition, and I have to say I'm honored to have my work appear alongside the other talent featured in this zine. Wow. If you happen to acquire a copy for yourself, look for me! Also, SherrieJD, who is the editor (?) of the zine and a fabulously quirky designer is having a newsletter drive. Once she has 1000 subscribers, everyone gets a $5 coupon! So hurry to her blog (find the newsletter link in the header) and sign up!

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I'm happy that after the recent closing of ScrapArtist, Dianne Rigdon has now opened shop at Two Peas in a Bucket! Congratulations and good luck with your new store, Dianne! 

Here's my layout using Dianne's latest release, Journalique. The photos used were just sort of random ones that we took last Friday, and even though they're just candids I really love them.... (click layout to see it in my DST gallery) 

  
Last Friday was a really wonderful day, not to mention my husband Jason's birthday. Sweet to have a way to remember it, even though he's not in the pictures (he was at work)... we were leaving the house to go get a few of the ingredients I needed to make this carrot cake and this icing for him. The cream cheese icing was the best I have ever made myself, and possibly ever eaten! The cake itself ended up being slightly over cooked, in my opinion (I reduced the oil and added applesauce as one of the comments suggested - that may have been the problem?). Still edible, and quite tasty, just a little dry. What I was most proud of though was the fact that Jason ate at least five pieces of this cake over the course of a few days. LOL He is not a big sweets eater, so the fact that he liked my cake and ate a lot of it made me happy and proud. I wish I'd taken a picture of it, as well as a picture of him blowing out his candles. Ugh. If you have a microscope and can read my journaling above, you know I am already aware of my laziness in taking photos. Sometimes it's due to laziness, but other times I just want to be in the moment (and then later regret not pulling my camera out). Rambling on...

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Here's another of my recent layouts using some of PixelWorks latest releases at The Lily Pad (click layout to see it in my DST gallery)

 
It was just a phone picture of the two of us taken at a wedding of one of his friends, but we have so few of us together... this one means a lot. We're one month away from our 15th wedding anniversary. Sometimes I'm just blown away by that thought.

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We have a very busy weekend planned, won't be much time for cleaning, but it some of it needs to be done before everyone is home again. So I am off to get busy. Thanks for reading, and hope you all have a wonderful weekend, too.