What can you buy with $16?

All of this if you have the coupons and put them to good use! That is 10 cans of Progresso, 6 boxes of cereal, 6 boxes of popcorn, 2 boxes of GoGurt, 2 Pillsbury breadsticks, 3 Pillsbury Grands biscuits, 3 boxes of Pizza Rolls, 3 cookie mixes, 2 muffin mixes, and 3 Warm Delights all bought at Albertson's today. Woohoo! I also got a loaf of bread, bananas, carrots, celery, lunchmeat and salsa so my overall total was $28 but that's pretty good! I couldn't have done it without Coupon Sense- I saved $102.86 today.

Is it Monday already?

This weekend I went through my Creating Keepsakes Top Ten magazine and recreated a couple of my favorite layouts with digital scrapbook stuff i have. (I guess the technical term for copying someone's layout is "scraplifting") It's the only way I can do it, my brain just doesn't work in layers yet. Today will be spent restoring my house to pre-weekend condition.

The Cowgirl page is made with the Neopolitan kit from AMS DigiScraps and the other ones are from "Two Soon" from Shabby Princess. Nothing else to blog about, I just wanted to share those!

A Hero

I love being a mother- I love my children more than anything, but I will admit that there are times when I daydream of the day that my children are grown, and my time can once again be MY time. When I can mop my floor, and no one will track mud on it, when I can prepare a meal with no one complaining about it, and when I can spread scrapbook supplies all over the floor and no one will walk on them, rip them or try to eat them! I was thinking about this last night when I had the opportunity to babysit a 5 month old baby for a woman that I visit teach. She is a 70 year old widow, who has been raising 3 grandchildren for 12 years, and does emergency foster care for infants. AND she has been a primary teacher for the 3 year olds every Sunday for about 20 years- maybe longer actually. She has photo albums filled with pictures of infants who were brought to her at all hours of the day and night, taken from unsafe environments. Often they come with no clothes and a dirty diaper. Sometimes they are abused, sometimes they are homeless, sometimes they are premature infants, addicted to drugs- thanks to their birth mothers. She remembers their names and their stories. And she is sad each time she says goodbye to one, but she continues to welcome them over and over. She is not in good health herself, but she doesn't complain. It is difficult for her to get around, and to wake up and feed hungry infants through the night, but I don't think she thinks about doing "what she wants". She looks for ways that she can be useful to others- to her Heavenly Father, and then she goes and does what she can. She is truly an angel to her grandchildren, and to the dozens of babies who she has cared for over the years, and she is a hero to me.

I have 1,003 fonts

I collect fonts. I wait for Lettering Delights to have the $1 sale and I have bought a lot there, but DaFont has a ton of great free fonts to download. I have so many that I waste a lot of time scrolling through them to choose the right one for whatever I'm doing so I was SO excited to find this free program called All My Fonts Professional! It lets you print out all your fonts so you can see them on paper- a lifesaver for Photoshop because you can't see them in the menu in that program. (At least not the version I have) I printed mine out at 28 point and I have a stack of paper an inch thick but it's great. So if you want to do it, you can get the program HERE.
And I did finish a couple of my dishtowel aprons- I just need a model and then I will post a picture. They aren't that special, I don't know what I'm going to do with them!

The Genius of Craftster

Have you noticed my little link on the sidebar to Craftster? That is a great website to waste time on. There are so many original ideas- some good, and some not so good, and some of the people on there are pretty funny. I wasn't going to blog tonight but I saw this and I just have to share it- a personalized Guess Who game. It's a little late for Valentine's, I'm sorry, but maybe you have a birthday coming up for a friend or family member who is particularly hard to buy for... or you could customize it for your own family. OR make it a primary or FHE game by putting different prophets on there! Hmm, the creative juices are flowing...

My life is not perfect

If you know me, you probably are saying DUH- but I realized the problem with blogs- it's like the Christmas card photo and letter- everyone puts out their best side, because who wants to see or hear about the bad? But then you start getting all these Christmas cards, and seeing the perfect beautiful families, reading the letter of their awesome accomplishments, and start to think boy my life is pretty dull and my family is pretty imperfect. But the fact is, a picture is just a moment. And while I totally admit my life is nothing to complain about, it is far from perfect. I want to keep my blog positive, but I am going to do a "reality check" a couple times a month in case I start making things sound too good. Here is a perfect moment from today.

I should point out my bed is unmade- and it remained unmade all day! But my reality check picture for today is my kitchen floor. It actually looks much worse in real life. I haven't swept it in almost 48 hours. See- very imperfect.

P.S. I did sweep tonight because luckily we were having friends over for dinner. I need the motivation.

Happy Birthday Arizona! (yesterday...)

And happy Valentine's Day too! This card came from a free 4"x4" Valentine's brag book by Dani Mogstad that you can get here. I also made a cute card to give to the cousins and grandparents and ordered them from Winkflash but they didn't get here in time. I used stuff from the (free) Seasonal Sampler from The Shabby Princess to make it and you can download that kit here.

Yesterday was a fun day! We made some YUMMY heart shaped brownies for Sam, and put them in heart shaped box that started out really ugly (red with gold foil chocolate box you know) but I think we made it kind of cute. And my favorite Valentine's Day tradition- heart shaped pizzas- Miss B and Miss G each get to make their own- Miss G wouldn't let me take her picture.

Now I have to go take care of the laundry I ignored for the past couple days. You will find me chained to the washing machine all day...

3 Black Shoes

I have a hard time throwing things away. I've been hanging onto 2 of these shoes for a very long time- they both lost their match at some point but I just knew it would turn up somewhere... and I could not throw away perfectly good, hardly worn shoes! The dogs ate the match to the third one the other day and I decided it was time for these 3 lonely shoes to go- together. Maybe there's a charity that collects shoes for girls with one leg? Well I couldn't actually throw them away, so they are off to DI. (where they will probably have to throw them away...)

I've been looking at a lot of blogs lately- and came across 2 really great things I had to share- first of all, these aprons for little girls. They reminded me of the stack of cute dishtowels and ribbon I collected last summer to make into aprons. Click here to get the idea. I'm going to finish one this week and post a picture- they won't be as cute as these ones though.

Ok next, this is the cutest digital scrapbook kit I have ever seen! They have it at Sweet Shoppe Designs. I don't know if I can wait for it to go on sale. I love all the layouts they made with it!

Digital Scrapbooking...

Here's what kept me up late tonight. I made this page with Angie Briggs Tomboy kit- I'm pretty sure it was a freebie somewhere. Miss B no tomboy but it worked for these pictures and it's my favorite layout I've made yet. I am trying to do a digital album for Miss B (and print it with Shutterfly) and I'm doing Miss G and Miss E's the paper way to see which one I like more. I think digital is winning, but I love the feel of real paper- and I have a lot of supplies to use up!

Young Love

Miss B has her first love. They sit together after school each day next to the tree while they wait for their moms. I knew she liked him but as she was signing each of her valentine's cards she took one and put the "big heart" sticker on it, and said "This one is for Isaac- I love him so much." And then she wrote "I luv yo" on it just for him. Fortunately, I think it was kind of short lived because when I picked her up after her class party, she couldn't stop talking about how much she liked Evan, because he gave her a little box of chocolates and a heart necklace. I can't believe it starts this young... I especially liked how she did the fancy lettering on her name. We made some pretty heart shaped, red velvet cupcakes decorated with white frosting and pink and red heart sprinkles- they were way cute.

Oh- I have to share a good deal going on right now- if you use paypal, they are offering a $15 rebate on a $30 purchase from a PayPal store- including e-Bay. Checkout www.paypal.com to find out the details. Trying to think of what I need...

D. T. was here...

Today was a very productive day- my kitchen is a total disaster, but I changed all the two-tone hardware in the girls bathroom to a pretty satin nickel set, (I used the power drill and everything!) I put up a shelf I got from Ikea 5 years ago, and I installed a ceiling fan I've been holding onto for 4 years. So that left no time for anything else, and I confess to putting the gate up to lock Miss E out while I was installing the fan. In that time she got a red permanent marker and left some lovely drawings on the counter, chair, some BBQ tools, and several body parts. I am just relieved she didn't do anything with that huge knife or nail that was for some reason sitting out... She also got my pink hammer and hit Miss B on the head with it. And ate some pieces of styrofoam. And that's just the stuff I know about.

Double Trouble

Miss E is into everything- we call her "Double Trouble" now-a-days because she really is double the trouble her sisters ever were. (or more) She's figured out how to push the kitchen chairs all around to get into even more stuff. She found this red stamp and immediately rubbed it all over her lips. I didn't get a picture of the tantrum that followed when I took it away...

I have a header!

Hooray! I found great SIMPLE instructions and I was afraid I would lose them so I had to stay up and create a header to stick on here tonight. Now I am going to bed- if you are interrested, here is the link to the instructions I used: http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/2006/09/adding-graphic-to-your-blog-header.html Goodnight!

Fun in a box

One of the best things about being a mother is seeing your kids sleeping. Miss G created this bed in a box for her nap today. She didn't care that my bed was much more comfortable. Or that this one kind of looks like a coffin. She's so much fun.