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!!!