I am married to the strongest man in the world!

My husband just tore a phone book in half. Yes that's right. Well, it wasn't one of the HUGE ones, but still probably 2" thick. These are the things you can learn surfing the internet! I've been out of the blogging mood this week- I couldn't think of anything to talk about and I didn't really finish anything until this weekend. Miss B put on her train conductor hat and put a beaded purse around her neck the other day and came to ask me if she looked "cool." I told her she did, and snapped a couple photos and had fun making this layout for them:

I did finally get out the paint get busy on a couple things I've been putting off- I covered a piece of metal to make a magnet board for my kitchen:

And made some X's and O's for Valentines- I think they need something else- maybe ribbon or ric rac? Any creative minds have suggestions for me?

I have discovered that spray adhesive works much better than Modge Podge for stuff like this. It doesn't bubble up and wrinkle the paper at all. I think I will spray the top of the letters with some kind of clear paint to protect them a little. These are just the wood letters from Michael's or the scrapbook store.

SNOW for my birthday!

I got the best gift for my birthday- SNOW! Right here in the desert! We were having my birthday dinner at my parent's house Sunday night when a neighbor came by to tell us that it was snowing. By the time we got to the door it had started to rain but there was still some snow on the ground and the cars. It was so exciting! I haven't seen snow here since I was a little girl and then it was just flurries. We drove home and put the kids to bed and I was still reeling with excitement over the snow when Sam's friend (Louie) called to tell us that over by his house there were inches on the ground- people were lined up along the road and throwing snowballs and sledding! I had to see it for myself so I jumped in the car and drove over to that neighborhood. Sure enough for just about a square mile it was like a winter wonderland! If you see snow regularly, you just can't understand how exciting this was. I pulled into an Arby's parking lot and took this picture: This morning we got up and went out to breakfast as a family and then the girls and I detoured over to the snow neighborhood and I was so excited to see that it was still there! We rushed home to get shoes (not flip-flops) and coats and gloves and headed back over there. It was pretty slushy from the sun melting it and all the hundreds of people that had probably been on it since it fell last night but it was still beautiful and very fun. The rooftops all around were still covered with snow. I sent a couple pictures into the news (channel 3 of course) and they actually showed them on the evening news! It was really fun- I had just turned the TV off for dinner when Keri called to tell me she saw my pictures on the news. Luckily we have a DVR and I was able to rewind and watch it.

So it was close to a perfect day- I have waited a long time to see snow on the ground here.

This one was funny to me- some of the city workers were building a snowman.

Even getting one year closer to being 30 couldn't bring me down today. I got a new mattress pad for my bed- I really wanted it and now my 8 1/2 year old bed should last me a few more years. Thanks Sam! And some spending money from my parents and my mother in law and some great cards from great friends. Other hi-lights of the day- we had Rosati's pizza for dinner and I made bread pudding for my cake. It was the first time I ever tried to make bread pudding before and it was super easy and really good. Even Miss B who was a little suspect when she saw me cutting up bread to make my "cake" loved it. I'm going to type up the recipe and post it on my recipe website later this week if you want it.

One year older and wiser too, happy birthday to me.

Blogging since birth...

I finally figured out how to post a picture with my profile and I love it so you get to see it here too. I always thought I was such a cute kid, until I had kids of my own and they were SO much cuter! But this was always one of my favorite pictures of myself. As you can see I was a knock-kneed chubby 2 years old, in my nice "fur" coat, holding my new Payless shoe boxes tied together with string. And I thought I looked Chinese in it and that was cool. I wonder if that pixie hair cut was in style then or if it's just what they did to me at the local beauty college.
So something you should know about me if you know me at all is I have been a blogger for as long as I can remember. I narrarate my life in my head. It comes and goes now, but as a child it drove me crazy because I couldn't turn it off. "Katie walked down the street and noticed the yellow flowers growing in the Fosters grass. She stepped over the weeds growing in the crack and then started counting by twos, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16.... And then she stopped because she saw a weird looking bug and she wondered why it was running around in a circle. And then she looked at the sun and thought "it's getting hot..." and ON and ON and ON! I thought everyone did it at first but then I found out it was kind of weird so I didn't talk about it. When I was 8 I got a special microphone that "broadcasted" my voice onto a certain AM radio station if I was in range of a radio. I had my own show- "Kadio Radio" and I would talk about whatever I wanted to, and sing songs and it was SO cool. So is that at all like having a blog? I don't know. Luckily for you I can't sing on it. I hope I can make this more interresting than my random thoughts and Kadio Radio. No luck so far...

Bad dreams...

I'm not sure why, but lately I've been having a lot of bad dreams. This morning I happened to wake up before any of the girls so I stayed there for a few minutes thinking about all my random dreams when suddenly I realized that the one about me crashing Sam's truck into his motorcycle, and it falling into my car in the garage, wasn't a dream and it actually did happen last night. Crap. Here's a lovely photo of the damages to my rockin mini van. There's some dings and scratches on the truck and motorcycle but my car defiantly got the worst of it. That's the bad news.

The good news, is I finally finished Jessica's Advent Calendar! Mine is next... Here's how it turned out:

Hard Freeze

What is a hard freeze? Those are 2 words I haven't heard in relation to the weather here, until this weekend! It's been SO SO SO cold. We had pipes freeze and break out in the horse pasture and the pond in the shade froze solid. It hasn't been this cold since 1990 according to my favorite 3TV weather guy. The cold air has kind of immobilized me. So that's why it's been almost a week since I posted, and I still haven't finished the advent calendars I've been working on. I'm planning on finishing them by this weekend and I will post pictures. There, no more excuses, now I have a deadline so this project that started in November will finally get done!

My other favorite artist...

Meg Harper is an artist I love in real life~ I used to work as her media buyer when we both worked at an advertising agency. She started as a graphic artist, then became a great salesperson for the company but she worked hard to get her house and car paid off and quit to become who she really is- a full time artist. I do a little PR for her from time to time and am earning my way to owning my first Meg Harper original! Here's a link to her website: Meg Harper.com
She recently was accepted into a gallery- Naked Horse Gallery- they are focusing on her animal paintings. They are so much cooler in person because she uses pearls, beads and crystals to add dimension and sparkle and they are beautiful!

Digitally Challenged

I consider myself somewhat of a computer nerd and I love my laptop but the truth is I'm not really very computer savy. I want to change the look of my blog but I can't figure it out. So that's what I've been wasteing all my free time on the past couple days- unsuccessfully. I got sick of it the other day and put together this digital scrapbook page for Miss B- my mom took my 2 oldest and my sister's 2 oldest to the Polar Express last weekend and they got to play in the snow.
I was trying to duplicate a page I saw in a gallery somewhere. Well today I found that same layout as a free download! (By Shabby Miss Jenn) So I think I wasted an hour on this page but oh well- I got experience right? Here's the link to the free page if you want it- it's really cute to use as your computer wallpaper or something.

If it's free, I'll take it

Something I neglected to include in my little bio on here, is that I'm a freebie junkie. I'm also a sucker for a good deal. I saw an Oprah one time about people having financial problems and one husband said "My wife's biggest problem is a four letter word: S-A-L-E." I think my husband could say the same for me. I cannot shop at Target without dropping $10 on "Dollar Spot" items! I love scouring the clearance racks or sifting through things at Ross, Big Lots or Tuesday Morning to find good deals. I think I am getting better about passing on things I don't need though but it's difficult. This passion of mine led me to Coupon Sense. They track the coupons that come in the Sunday paper and a lot of the printable online coupons with a handy numbering system, and then match them up to the items as they go on sale at the grocery store. Here's my coupon file:There are free things every week and lots of other good deals. It is now painful for me to pay more than $1 for a jar of pasta sauce, $1.50 for Cascade, or pay anything at all for toothbrushes and toothpaste. In fact, I get so much of those things free that I can donate a lot to food & supply drives throughout the year. (also cheaper brands of hair products and deoderant that we don't use) Another great thing about Coupon Sense is the message board- I used to spend too much time online searching for freebies and good deals but that's silly, and unneccessary with CS because people post the freebies and good deals they find right there. I can't share all the stuff on there because that would be stealing, but today I found a free razor- here's the link if you're interrested: http://www.noxzemashaving.com/shavingSquadForm.asp Now you can never say you don't get anything from reading my blog. You're welcome.

Holiday Pictures

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I was so excited to find this new thing! I was really bad this year about taking pictures for some reason but here's what we got. It really was a great Christmas this year I wish I had better photos- there's always next year!

Oh how I've missed you Mary...

I love Mary Engelbreit. Looking at her art just makes me happy and when I was a worker I always got her daily desk calendar, plus the weekly desk calendar, and then the monthly wall calendar and they surrounded me and brightened my day. When I "retired" I cut back to just the wall calendar but this year my sister in law got me the daily calendar and I just love it! (Thanks Ginger!) It's right here next to my computer and I look forward to tearing off a new page each day. Before I tore yesterday's off I had to take a picture because I am the girl in the picture "putting myself on view" with this blog- and I hope some talents will come to light! (No, I wasn't in that Blind Melon video...)

New Years Hike

Sam is full of good ideas and so we spent the first day of the New Year on a little hike around the Superstition Mountains. The girls were great- surprisingly there was almost no complaining and they really seemed to love it.

Even the plain ham and cheese sandwiches we packed for lunch tasted really good out there. We took a little 1.5 mile trail around a mountain. Miss E got a little heavy but Sam carried her most of the time. Thanks to Jessica for letting us borrow her Hip Hammock to carry Miss E!

One of my hopes for this blog is that I will be more motivated to finish projects to share on here so here's something I made for myself and I loved it so much I made one for my mother-in-law for Christmas too. It's a birthday reminder book. We made it in the Love Notes class at the scrapbook store last month. Each page has numbers for each day of the month and you put the person's name on the line on their birthdate. Then that page is attached to a large envelope where you place the card you want to send them. If you're birthday is in August I haven't forgotten, I just haven't filled it out yet!

New Year, New Blog!

Here's my latest attempt at a blog! I am going to be serious about it this year if I can think of things to write about. One of my goals for the year is to be a better homemaker and get my chores done so I can work on more creative projects! Thomas S. Monson said: "No plan. No objective. No goal. The road to anywhere is the road to nowhere, and the road to nowhere leads to dreams sacrificed, opportunities squandered, and a life unfulfilled." (yes that was from my YW lesson yesterday!) So I have made some plans, objectives, and goals and I'm going to get to work and acomplish stuff this year and still be a good wife and mother. I will post projects here as they are completed to share and inspire you!