MiniBullyMom's Musings

A blogger I know who is also a Hockey Mom posted a link on her blog recently that I just can't resist passing on! Girls, if you didn't like hockey before you might now and if you liked it before you'll love the hockey eye candy!!! Pssst....there is a link to more below the photo.

For the past two years digital scrapbooking designers from all around the world team up and offer freebies. The designer that normally organizes the Christmas Around The World (CATW) Blog Train  is not organizing it this year. Instead there is a master blogpage (which can be found by clicking on the link HERE) that has been set up and bloggers are welcome to submit links to their freebies there. I figured I'd create a quickpage to give away from elements that were part of last years CATW kit. I could not find a background paper that I liked so I ended up creating one in order to complete the page.

Check back often during the month of December as I'm planning on having several other free quickpages available for downloading.

When I was in Hawaii I received my new Canon Rebel Xsi camera and couldn't wait for hockey season to start so I could get some great shots of the kids. I haven't sat and read the manual so I really haven't been able to get any good shots from the kids first five games. On Sunday I got lucky up at the Kingsgate Arena where we were playing Sno-King Green. The lighting was awesome and I managed to snag a spot between the red and blue lines where the glass didn't have too many scuffs or scratches.  I posted a bunch on my Facebook page but decided to share a couple of the good ones I took of Christina and Alex. I'm hoping to have a chance over the holiday weekend to read up on the settings so that the photos will continue to improve.

My niece is growing up so fast. Last year was her first formal dance. My sister went all out making sure it was a night to remember. She had her hair and makeup done professionally.

The minute I saw Scrappin Mommy's Autumn Splendor kit I knew it would be the perfect for showcasing this photo. You can pick it up at Divine Digital for only $2.50 right now. Angela did a great job creating this kit, it was her first time participating in Divine Digital's "PROject COLOUR". There is a unique flexibility with the kit which can appeal to those who prefer a bit of elegance yet those who enjoy a country feel to their layouts would find this a great addition to their digital stash.

I downloaded Cindi Ritter's "Spirit of Joy" kit over at Divine Digital. At first I thought this was just another religious themed kit but upon a closer look I realized that it wasn't. It contains a striking combination of flowers, butterflies and flourishes coupled with ten beautiful papers. There are two paper clip/ribbon combinations and a binder clip cluster along with a purple rose, tag and word art cluster. Other than what inspired the designer to create the kit there is nothing remotely religious about it. She has even designed a FREEBIE add-on  and the link can be found below!

Well....I'm not a "Twilight Zone" (the show/movie) fan but I am a fan of the "Twilight" series of books and the "Twilight Zone" kit designed by Christine Mortimer of DIGI_licious Designs. She also designed the wonderful little "button/typewriter key" looking alpha to coordinate with it.


Christine took inspiration from the colors used on the book covers. She gave it a soft, grungy feel with delicate elements that lend a vintage feel to the kit. I enjoyed playing with the papers and came up with the following layout without much thinking. It's not "DONE" quite yet, there is something it needs but I'm not quite sure what it is. Sometimes I sit on a layout and it' hits me later as to what needs changed. Once I figure it out I'll post the revised version here too.


What grabbed my attention to the kit first was the colors...although I will have to admit being partial to black, red and white anyways.

She did create the most awesome halloween quickpage from her "Bewitched & Spellbound" Kit that she is giving away as a freebie!
CLICK HERE for the BLOG LINK to her FREEBIE

Life has been real crazy at our house this past weekend for me. I worked out at the Washingtonian's for Wildlife Conservation booth at the Fair on Thursday night, Friday the dogs went to the vet for some long overdue checkups. Hemi has been limping due to a strained muscle and Tina apparently has an ear infection and a urinary tract one. So $150 in prescriptions later they are both on the mend. Although I have discovered that pet medications are definintely cheaper online!!! If I had purchased them online they would have only cost me about $50. But I did save over $600 on their checkups by joining Banfield Animal Hospital's Wellness Plan. We signed up for the Basic plus for Tina since it includes a yearly teeth cleaning. We signed Hemi up for the Basic this year and will swap it over to the Basic Plus next year. Kiwi isn't signed up yet but we will probably sign her up next year. They all needed shots and boosters this year and Kiwi will be due for boosters next year. We had plans to go watch Daniel's (Christina's best friend) football game but we got out of the vet to late. I spent Saturday doing stuff around the house, grocery shopping, relaxing and reading and promptly fell asleep around 11pm.
This morning I decided that some of the yardwork on the street side of the house needed to get done. It has beauty bark and as such every few years we need to replace all of it. About two years ago the waterline broke and they had to tear out part of the retaining wall and a 3 foot trench across the sideyard to the house. We should have redid the beauty bark after that but didn't. Then this summer I decided that we either needed to redo the bark this fall or rip up all the overgrown weeds and plant grass. I figured either way we needed to rip out the weeds so I got started on it. five hours later I had it about a third of the way done with the hardest part of it being knocked out. While doing all of it I decided that we would plant grass instead of beauty bark. This is the best time of the year to plant it because the root system has until next summer to develop. I also realized that if we do beauty bark I'd probably be weeding and that grass was just easier to mow. 
Now every night this week (rain or shine) I'm going to have to be out there finishing up the project and getting the grass seed planted before it gets much cooler during the daytime.

Well Mike and I are celebrating our 19th anniversary today! We took off camping for the weekend, some people think that's weird but then we went camping on our honeymoon. This is the first year we have actually went away the weekend of our anniversary. In previous years our anniversary either fell on a weekday or we had hockey commitments and for many years we just "went to the fair" together. After going online to make the reservations last weekend we realized all of our favorite places were booked solid and that we could either go to one of the Tacoma Power Parks on Alder Lake or try some place new. We opted for someplace new and made a reservation at Tacoma Power's Taidnapam Park. When we first arrived we weren't quite sure about the site we had but by Saturday morning we fell in love with the park. We were in the "older" loop of the two camping loops. Our site was in total shade all weekend which was nice considering the temps were in the mid 80's all weekend. Technically our site backed up to the lake but there was a trail between our site and the lake. The trail was far enough away and on the other side of a dense stand of shrubs/trees which meant that people on the trail couldn't see into our site or inadvertently wander into it. We walked down to the boat launch in the park yesterday and played alongside it with the dogs. They have already closed this launch for the season because they have already started dropping the resevoir levels.


Since Mike works graveyard and I work days our schedules are pretty much completely opposite. When we go camping he tries to compensate by going to bed around 3am and getting up by noon and I stay up later than normal. No matter how much I try to sleep late in the morning by 8:30am I'm wide awake and the dogs are getting restless. So I take them for long morning walks and spend time digiscrapping until Mike wakes up. I was able to get three pages completed yesterday morning and even turned one of them into a quickpage.

 

Decided to start scrapping some of my photos from my "work retreat" in Waikiki this past week. We sat and watched the sunset on the beach right outside our hotel twice and played in the surf afterwards. The first evening down there a young student approached us with leis that they were taking donations for to help offset volleyball tournament costs. We were suckers and forked over $10 each even though we could have walked down the beach to Dukes and bought them for $5 each. But it was for a "good cause" we figured even if it was just spending money for the students.

For a couple of years now Mike has admired the "Charlie Sheen look" on Two and a Half Men. When I went to Palm Springs last year for a work meeting he asked me to find him one of those bowling shirts. Well I about croaked when I found one he liked and it was $180 (Nat Nast) and he immediately informed me that I was not to buy it. So I've went online a couple of times and bid on a couple of nice silk bowling shirts for him but refused to pay more than $30 for one sight unseen. So when the boss took us to Hawaii for a staff retreat (instead of Arizona in October) I decided that I was going to really look for one of those shirts again. I found several at Moonbow Tropics (store in the hotel lobby) but they were all Nat Nast's and started at $145. I really didn't find any that he would like at the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet on Saturday morning. Then I hit paydirt at Macy's at the Pearl Ridge Shopping Center on Saturday afternoon. I was able to get him a 100% Vintage Silk Bowling Shirt in their "Island Style" section for only $30 on sale and after my Macy's Card Discount. I had four different ones in my hand but knew that this was "the one" that he would love the best. Then on Tuesday we decided to take a trip around the island and stopped at the Premium Outlet Mall in Waikele. At the Tommy Bahama Store I scored a pair of $100 Tommy Bahama's casual leather sneaker/loafers from their "Relax" line for 75% off. He came out looking pretty sharp. Although he still thinks he needs to wear socks like Charlie does in the show.

Well Kim has designed another wonderful kit and as a result I couldn't resist creating another quickpage for her. I'm going to use the quickpage for a heritage layout. There are a couple ideas for another quickpage I'm mentally tossing around out of this kit. To top it all off the kit is currently ON SALE at DigiTop3 for only $2.99!!! Here is the LINK to the full kit.

...but the Punkin Patch Quickpage is still available below. I was excited to find out this morning that Digital Freebies has posted a link to my quickpage. I've been in Hawaii the past week and been decompressing royally. Since I got here last week I have only checked email three times which is totally abnormal for me I generally check it three times in one day. I knew that there was a reason to quickly check my email this morning. Today we head home and my plan is to create a couple of more quickpages on my 6 hour flight home with a kit called Suddenly Sunset that Kim has designed. Thanks for visiting and come back soon I'll have more quickpages to offer.

We have done some crazy things while camping but this one probably is up there with some of the craziest things we've done when bored. Christina obviously has immense trust in her boyfriend.

Alpha, Background Paper and Elements designed by Royanna Fritschmann

Saturday evening proved to be rather interesting as you can see from the photo. Miss Camryn has no fear and thinks that anything her brothers can do she can do. The difference is that they are about 5 and 6 years older than she is. Well somehow she fell off the skateboard tabletop and landed right on her chin. Thank goodness for bike helmets or she probably would have landed right on her nose or forehead.
I decided that because Camryn is such a tomboy that I would use papers/elements that one would normally use for a boy's layout. But since I could not find one kit that had everything in it I ended up using about four different kits that were all designed by Royanna Fritschmann. The border cluster I picked up a couple years ago from a Designer Challenge and I have been unable to find it again.


I was poking around Hummiesworld earlier this evening and noticed that Binty had posted a free template. So I went and checked it out and was totally amazed at it's versatility and the fact that she does it in three different sizes - The 5x7 size is perfect for brag books and you can get the template HERE!!!

I decided that the "stock" Blogger template was boring earlier today. But I knew that I wasn't tech saavy enough to customize it myself. So I got to poking around the internet and found out that I could change it using a template not supplied by Blogger. I did a Google search and found Amanda, a blogger who designs templates and provides instructions on how to install, use and customize them further. So I downloaded her "Gourmet Menu" from the "Blogger Buster". She has links to great templates and provides simple instructions which make it easy to upgrade and customize your blogs! Now I think I'm going to go see if I can find one for the Smith Family Blog I'm considering starting.

...are in full swing everywhere else but here. Every year I tell myself that life will slow down when hockey season winds down but it never seems to do that. I think it's because we put off doing a bunch of stuff until the "off-season". Toss in a family reunion, garage roofing, upgrading some wiring, reseed or rebark half the lawn on top of all the normal stuff we do during the summertime. It just gets overwhelming and then we do a bit of this and a bit of that. The scary part is that none of it gets totally done. But I can say that about 10 other "little projects" that aren't part of the big projects do end up getting done.
One of the major "little projects" I recently completed was unzipping, organizing 7 gigs of digital scrapbooking stuff. I still have 3 gigs left, although I did clean out over 15 gigs of freebies that I never bothered to unzip/use in anyway. I've about decided that I'm only going to download what I'll use and that I can't download something else until I use what I downloaded last. Not sure how long I'll last with that mindset but I fully admit that digiscrapping is an addiction. I knew that I was taking a chance five years ago when I started paper scrapping and now I'm three years into digiscrapping. But I have well over 200 pages completed (although I've only printed about 50) and have started a Family Scrapbook for one branch of my family.
Now hockey season is starting up and I've decided that the constant "scheduling" we do during those 8 months help me stay on task and as a result I get more done. Go figure I guess I need the structure not free time.
Although I do admit that I get more scrapping done when we go camping during the wintertime. I think it's because generally it's just my husband and I camping without anyone else and we just relax and don't have the internet to distract us.
Now about those big projects....I think I need to make sure we complete at least one of them before the end of the year. I need to make a New Years Resolution in the middle of August to complete the garage roof this year - since we've talked about getting it done for the past two years - and now that I've made a resolution I need to get to work on it.....well after I finish organizing/tagging two more digital kits and worked on the mental planning on the next layout I'm going to complete using some photos we took at the Corn Maze about 5 years ago.

Well....I have been busy for the past two weeks getting ready for the family reunion in Lodi, CA which was held this past weekend. It was a blast and I was able to scan well over 200 photos plus items of my Great, Great Grandparents which were in a scrapbook brought by one of my cousins. I was able to complete 11 of 75 pages of the scrapbook I've been working on digitally. Now that everyone has seen what the pages will actually look like they are all excited about it. I went ahead and had it placed in the family reuion auction with the promise that the finished pages would be mailed to the buyer to be inserted into the book. My cousin Clara placed the winning bid which was $300!! I about fell over when it was announced.

Well we have done a ton of work in the backyard this summer. We decided to hold Christina's graduation party at home. The first photo is of the garage where a huge Pampass Grass plant used to be. Mike hated it from about the second year we had it. I loved it but realized after 10 years that it had performed it's original function and was tired of it's leaves getting mowed over. So we decided to rip it out. That turned out to be a major project in itself. It took a chain saw, electric hedger, axe, pick axe and shovel to get it out of there. The plant reached all the way over to the tiki torch on the right and about a foot past the tiki torch on the left. You can actually see a patch of dirt between the torches where the plant actually covered/laid over the lawn. We ended up planting four short pyramidalis trees along the old fence to hide the neighbor's garage. I finally gathered together my three beach logs and tied them into a piling (this was a project I wanted to get done last year) and hung the buoys we found at the beach also to create my beach scene. I have glass floats resting on a "stump" of wood we found another time in the flower bed that is the just out of the photo on the right hand side.

The toilet "arrangement" is the newest thing I did to drive my hubby crazy. We ripped it out of the bathroom this past winter because it was leaking. You just can't toss them in the garbage here but they will take them at the dump. Well it was the original toilet to the house and the only reason we took it out was because we couldn't retrofit the "guts" of it inside the tank. So I decided to plant it. I placed it in a hidden corner of the yard and filled it with "Impatients" of all things. Every guy who sees it just shakes their head but the women think it was a neat idea. One of my friends even fessed up that she was thinking about doing the same thing with one they had. Two weeks later we went to her house and lo and behold she had done it. Our husbands think we are both weird.


This is the last section of the backyard that we need to finish up. We have been storing campfire wood under the tarp and after we finish reroofing/painting the garage Mike will probably build a covered storage bin for it. We have debated making an arbor or gazebo to cover this deck but resisted so far since we have a covered patio attached to the little garage closer to the house -yes we have two garages in our backyard. I'm leaning towards an arbor of some sort because that would allow sun through but I'm just not quite convinced I really want to do that. We need to pressure wash, stain and fix the lattice work that runs along the sidewalk. The only reason we really don't sit out on that patio is that everyone across the street can see that deck because they are on a hill and it faces their front yards. The other patio provides lots of shade and has electrical outlets. I'm actually sitting at the bar on the covered patio as I blog. The next priority is getting this big garage roof shored up, reroofed and replace all the wiring in it. We are hoping to shore it up in September and immediately get it roofed before the "rainy season" hits in full force. Luckily we can roof half at a time and be okay. We bought the shingles off Craigslist and have then stacked in the small garage, the plywood and 2x4's are in the big one and now I'm hunting down tar paper and deals on flashing. Next summer we should be able to repaint the big garage to match the house, put a peaked roof on the little garage, rewire it and complete turning it into an oversized shed.


Now to get back to digiscrapping. My daughter is a huge Tim Burton fan and when I saw this new kit created by "Digital Reality" it reminded me of the photos I've seen of Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter in the new Alice in Wonderland movie Tim Burton is filming. You can check out the entire kit at Divine Digital. There is an absolutely awesome string of paper lanterns in the kit.

...about updating my blog!

You would think that life would slow down during the summer and the hockey offseason. I don't know how I juggle it all during hockey season. I've about decided that it's because I get lazy during the off season and as such don't get as much accomplished.

We spend last weekend at the ocean and visited Westport for Pirate Days. We did a little geocaching, beachcombing and kite flying. I took some new photos of Washaway Beach . We took a family photo at Grayland Beach on a giant stump that washed up onto the shore and had fun just hanging out with our friends. It turned out to be a great weekend weather wise and this coming holiday weekend is supposed to be another great weekend. Weather should be in the high 70's/low 80's which will be perfect for camping and enjoying fireworks.

Since my last posting we have acquired a 5 month old, female German Shepard. We named her Hemi and she is cute as can be. I had my doubts about a "big" dog but she has actually done very well adapting. No fights between the dogs/cats and no "accidents" in the house. Which is pretty impressive considering she was a "farm dog" the first 5 months of her life. The upside 0f her becoming part of our family is that I no longer have backyard "poop patrol". After 17 years of being the main member of that patrol (the guys mulch it with the mower instead of picking it up) I was tired of doing it. So they agreed and we picked her up two days later. I will admit that she must of known that I was the one she had to butter up to when we went to see her the first time. She pretty much ignored everyone else except me that afternoon.

The kids are getting ready to gear up for hockey season. We traditionally take the month of May off and then in June they start Skills&Drills and add some Drop-in sessions in July so that by August they are ready and in shape. This year they both decided to take May and June off from hockey. They are excited because for the first time in four years they are looking forward to having the same coach as last year.

I just realized that it's been almost a month since I last blogged. My friend Kim has been making comments here and there about how she was looking for a message letting her know that I had blogged but I didn't realize how long it's actually been. Needless to say it's been a whirlwind of a month and May just seemed to be a real short month. So I'll give a quick recap of what's happened around the Burress House this month.
I decided to do some followup emailing for my family reunion scrapbook project the first week of the month. I had sent out a second batch of group sheets for family members to correct/update so their scrapbook page could be as current as possible. Some photos started coming back in and I've noticed that either I get no answer at all or a quick answer, photos and updated info.
Then my mom, brother, sister and niece made a quick trip down to Banks, Oregon to visit my aunt who had been diagnosed with Tissue Cancer. She had been experiencing flu-like symptoms for several months and having an extremely hard time just moving around. Six weeks ago she found out it was cancer, had three to six months to live at the most and treatment might give her a month or so more but no guarantee of it and she would probably be sicker as a result.
So we spent a day with her and I was lucky enough to see two cousins that I had not seen in over 15 years. We stopped at the Factory Outlet Stores in Centralia on our way down and did about an hours worth of power shopping at Bath & Body Works, Nike Clearance Store and the Vanity Fair/Lee Outlet. I bought work pants for Mike, my sister bought tennis shoes for friends down in CA, Rachael and Michael bought some aromatherapy "Pillow Spray" that smelt like lavender that's supposed to help you relax and go to sleep.
Then we spent a day getting Christina's graduation annuncements done. (I still have 50 left to make tonight). We have decided to have a party/open house/luau on the Friday after graduation. The dollar store proved to be a treasure trove of luau decorations and even had "Graduation Party" stuff with a Hawaiian theme. Christina's Cap & Gown arrived mid-month so it's becoming "real" to us that she is almost a "full fledged adult" and could actually get married/move out if she was so inclined....but I doubt that will happen because she recently informed me that she plans on living at home until she is 41.....I think NOT!!!! Now we have begun "Graduation Gift" negotiations.
I think part of the reason that the month has "flown by" is because Memorial Day weekend was earlier than normal. We went to Millersylvania for three days of camping with the Kelly's. Sam and I took the kids geocaching. Turns out the boys had dabbled in Geocaching while at Camp Goodtimes. We set out to find two caches (one of which was a two parter) found the first half of one then found out from some fellow geocachers we ran into on the trail that the second half was missing. Found "The Big Tree" cache, dropped off a Travel Bug at "It's Miller Time" and we planted a new cache. I still need to go upload the coordinates for the "KB Toy Box" at www.geocaching.com and update my log book to reflect dropping off the Travel Bug.
Last week I got news that my Aunt's cancer was more involved than originally diagnosed and that three months was on the "extremely optimistic side". While camping over Memorial Day weekend my mom had to call me and let me know that my Aunt passed away.
So this week turned into another busy week. I went back to work on Tuesday then left for Oregon with my niece and son on Tuesday night. Attended her memorial service on Wednesday then took an extra day to visit with cousins and my uncle who had flown in from Utah. It was a nice visit and all agreed that we needed to make an effort to get together and reconnect more often under happier circumstances. I took the opportunity to update everyone's family info in my genealogy program and was even able to have some family members identified in old family photos.

Hummie has decided to kick of National Scrapbooking Day (May 2nd) with a Cool Guy Scrapping Contest where you scrap about the men in your life/family. The contest will run over the next seven weeks with the winner being announced on Fathers Day. Her guys (she is the only female in the family) are going to be the judges.

Leave it to Hummie to dangle a contest in front of me that I just can't resist. She is kicking it off on Saturday and you can get all the info on it HERE at Hummiesworld.

She was thinking ahead and has even created a thread for "guy kits" so we have sources! Deb (Scrappin Cop) has a great kit you can get for free on her blog. I've posted a couple images from the kit so you can see them.

So...if you have a guy in your life who is into tools (what guy isn't) or who is a construction worker this may be the kit for you. Now I'm going to have to figure out if I can somehow coordinate doing a couple layouts for this contest and complete my other scrapping project in time.

Mathilde stopped by my blog last night so I naturally went to her blog to go leave some love and check it out. Even with my non-French speaking skills I was able to figure out that she had the most beautiful free kit available!!! Go check it out at her blog!! Its a huge collab kit from Soval, Joey, Penny57, Scoubidoo and Cjournet13. If you follow the link to this kit there is also an opportunity for 4 more free kits designed by Joey!!

I completed the first page of my Smith Family Scrapbook project. This is the first "album" I will have completed that has a recurring theme. I have done pages here and there for my family but never have I tackled a project of this magnitude. I am going to be creating one page for each family that covers five to six generations of our family. This is giving me an opportunity to update our family history and share it with the entire family. Lucky for me our family has consistently held family reunions bi-annually for the past 26 years so we have a contact list that is pretty extensive and current. The finished book will be auctioned off during our family reunion this summer. Every year there is one "Big Item" and this will be that item this year. Money from our auction gives the reunion committee for the next reunion some seed money to make deposits for venues and other administrative costs like printing and stamps. Each family will get a copy of their page before the reunion.