BLOG HOP – Lovebug Scrapbooking!

Welcome to Lovebug Scrapbooking’s “INSPIRE US!” blog hop!! This is the first of 12 months of inspiration, each to take place on the last Saturday of
every month. Thanks so much for joining us!

If you just happened by this blog and didn’t realize a blog hop was taking
place, please go back to Lovebug Scrapbooking and start the Hop. You won’t want to miss all the inspiration from our members……. or the prizes

Our theme for January is “Love is In The Air”.

I have two things for you!  The first is a fun little project you can make as a quickie gift for Valentine’s Day or just to say hello…

You’ll need:

• Patterned paper, trimmed to 7 1/4″ x 2 3/4″
• 2 sticks of gum
• stickers/punch/stamps/ink for decoration
• stapler

Gather your supplies:

First trim your patterned paper to size, then make folds at: 4 1/4″ and 3 7/8″ and 3/4″.

Folding along the lines as above will create a matchbook.  Staple the bottom piece to create a mini pocket to slip the gum sticks into.

I punched hearts from paper to match the pattern I used for the matchbook and glued them onto the gum sticks…

Use stamps to stamp a message onto the inside of the matchbook if you wish.  Or decorate the outside with flowers, gems, anything you would like.  I created mine to be a Valentine gift to add into my husband’s card, so I stamped “I Chew-se You” onto the inside flap.

Voila!

Special thanks to Martha Stewart for the inspiration for this little goodie. 

The second part of my treat for you blog hoppers, is an easy recipe for yummy Hearts-Filled-With-Love Cookies!

Ingredients:

• 2-1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup shortening
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 well-beaten egg
• 2 tablespoons evaporated milk
• 1-1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• Strawberry or seedless Raspberry Jam
• powdered sugar

Preparation:

Sift flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside. Cream together shortening and sugar. Add egg, evaporated milk and vanilla. Mix well. Gradually add flour mixture until completely combined. Form into a ball. Put in an airtight container overnight in the refrigerator.Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Roll-out dough and cut-out with a heart-shaped cookie cutter. Bake on lightly greased cookie sheets for 8 to 10 minutes.

When cool, assemble cookies. Place a teaspoon of jam on the bottom of a cookie, then cover with another cookie. The tops of the cookies should be facing outward on both top and bottom. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

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I hope you have enjoyed your stop here with me.  Thanks for coming by!

Don’t forget to leave a comment here… and be sure to follow my blog in your blog reader.  My goal is to continue to showcase projects and fun tidbits… along with some yummy eye candy and the occasionally mommy bragging photo too.    Enjoy the rest of the blog hop!

This blog hop will run from today, January 30th until February 6th. There will be a prize drawing on February 7th. Check the Lovebug Blog for more details!

Follow along in our blog hop! Your next stop is: http://www.2turnbullgirls.blogspot.com/

Leaving town again…

Today is my last day to get ready to leave tomorrow for Victoria for some work-related meetings.  It’s tough leaving the little ones when I have to go out of town for work, but at the same time, it’s still a nice break.  Not a vacation, but usually a nice couple days with no cooking, no cleaning, no laundry, no photocopiers that don’t work when you need the, and no courier deliveries that always come when you’ve just stepped out for lunch. 

This time I’m driving over to the island, which is a bit different, but then so is going to Victoria for me!  Usually I’m heading to a different time zone!  My friend, E, and I are carpooling over… that’s right Girls Road Trip!  I’ve already got the iPod all loaded up with some fab old time rocker music and have got a couple playlists all ready to go.  Yesterday I got the cable to hook my iPod up to the truck stereo so now we are good to go.

Ahh, 2 hours, give or take, of driving with some sweet rock tunes – definitely will be one of the best parts of the trip.  hahaha!!!

ROCK ON people, I’ll be back tomorrow with a super special Valentine’s day craft post that will keep you busy and out of trouble while I’m away.  In the meantime, I leave you with some more eye candy:

Toby Keith

Yes, E, this means that he will be on the playlist – but I will argue that he is not all country in his music…. and he is definitely a little bad boy mixed in with that country yummy! 

More Coffee, Please

Yes, it’s Tuesday, and the concert was on Sunday, but I’m still dragging my tired butt around.  My ears have stopped ringing, but I don’t think my brain and body have recovered yet.  Did I mention that I got to see Tommy play the drums RIGHT in front of my FOR REAL, not on TV, not in a photo, FOR REAL PLAYING!  Yes, that’s me excited!!!   20 years ago, when I was first lovin’ on Motley Crue, I would have never believed I would ever see them for real.  Nikki Sixx was larger than life and growing up in small town nowhere in the middle of BC I never believed I would ever get to see them.  So even though, they aren’t a band I have followed religiously over the past couple decades, most of those great metal hair bands make my play lists and my ears perk up whenever news of them hits the airwaves, they have always been one of my faves.

Tommy Lee has just gotten better and better looking as he has aged… and even though he has a couple of big flaws, he just oozes bad boy sexuality that is so darn appealing (even if we don’t want it to be!)

The concert certainly didn’t disappoint, and maybe they aren’t as fab as in their heyday, they certainly didn’t disappoint as a bunch of aging, past their prime rockers, they still rocked hard and put on a great show.  The pyrotechnics were awesome.

I’ll be back later with some pics that I was able to steal during the show.  Nothing great – mostly grainy blurry pics, but maybe that’s the beauty of photos taken during rock concerts.  You can’t stand still enough to get a good photo, the smoke and the lights make it nearly impossible to get a good frame that is clear, but still we take the pictures and even in this digital age, we save those photos, and reserve the use of our delete button for those photos that are unexplainable from after the show, when you just had to get a photo of that ‘cool looking tree’.    C’mon you all know the photos I’m talking about, and you’ve taken them.  I know it, you know it.  ’nuff said. 

Come and join some scrapping fun!!

This weekend is an online crop at www.lovebugscrapbooking.com – it’s a space themed crop, 2010: Lovebug Odyssey.

Usually my scrap room is a bit messy during my scrapping times, but this time I have hardly even started and it’s already a disaster zone.  This is the before (shameful I know!):

Wish me luck with keeping it at least this tidy for the remainder of the weekend. 

Oh and we are now at less than 24 hours to Crue!

In approximately 22 hours, I will be drooling over…

That’s right baby!  Oh be still my heart… thank goodness hubby is accompanying me, I have to behave.  heehee!!

I definitely need to have a fresh start for this year

And first off, I need to get back to my poor blog.  I have a goal and hopefully I can at least make it last!!

Of course, it’s late now, but our last big event here was Kane turning *4*.  I can’t believe my baby boy is already 4.  When asked what kind of cake he wanted to have on his actual birthday, he said a race car cake.  Well I ran out of time to make a full cake, so I cheated and got a Costco cake from the cooler, scraped the icing flowers off and redecorated it.  Check it out:

Kane Turns 4!

And Sienna was just as happy as her brother to dig in!

Sienna eating Kane's birthday cake

Kane eating his birthday cake

Aren’t those babes just too dang adorable!!

Makes me want to pull out my scrapbooking supplies and get those memories captured in an album. 

Which reminds me…Lovebug is having an online crop this weekend.  All Space themed, so you should definitely stop by.  Even if you aren’t a big scrapbooker, just check it out.  Totally fun!!

My poor neglected Blog

and readers!  Sorry everyone!  I have good intentions, but then life gets in the way!

I was at the BC Scrapbooking for Kids Crop a couple weekends ago and I have found my creative mojo again.  I have been scrapbooking like crazy and it feels great to be creating again and seeing all those photos get showcased!

My favorite project from the crop, was definitely a mini album that I made.  Check it out:

Cool eh?  I love it – and it was so easy. I can’t wait to make a few more!

I’ll be back later with more of an update, at the moment I’m dealing with one child who won’t nap and another who insists on being the loudest possible while his sister is trying to sleep.

We survived 3 weeks

in the trailer, and are finally getting back into our routine at home.  We had a fabulous time.  My only complaint is that our bed in the trailer sucks – but with a mattress topper, we were able to make it bearable.  Actually I have two complaints, my second complaint is strictly about the holiday…. we didn’t stay in each place long enough.  We could easily have spent a week at each campground.  But it was still kinda fun getting to see so many different places.  We started out on the 30th and went:

• Valemount, BC
• Edmonton, AB
• Red Deer, AB
• Calgary, AB
• Drumheller, AB
• Medicine Hat, AB
• Caronport, SK (Moose Jaw area)
• Medicine Hat, AB
• Fort Macleod, AB
• Golden, BC
• Salmon Arm, BC

Back home on August 18th.  Although we were gone from home for 19/20 days it felt short since we were in so many different places and rarely for more than 2 nights.  We got to see so much – and we were able to determine places we’d like to go back to and explore more extensively and spend more time.  We also know which places we aren’t going to be returning to very quickly.

I’ll try to pick some pictures later on from a couple different places, but wow, there are so many to choose from.  I shot over 2000 pictures, so it’s been quite a job organizing them all.  I think after deleting some less than perfects, we are down to 1700… now to pick the ones for printing…. and pick ones worthy of uploading.  Oh what a job!!  If you’re on my Facebook, you can check out the photos in albums I have already put up.

Well, back to reality – I better get a move on and get some stuff done this morning.  Adios for now, I’ll be back for another update soon.  Maybe I’ll do a post for each place we stopped – make the next few posts a journey along with us…

Finally some pics!!

Okay, finally got pics uploaded to my computer and I’m ready to share them.  Finally!!  First off, here is our new baby – the travel trailer:

24' Mallard Sport travel Trailer

Ain’t she grand?!  I absolutely love it.  It’s so much nicer camping in this then in a tent!  We went out to Cultus Lake to Sunnyside Campground for our maiden voyage.  It was great!  And it turns out we are pretty good with the camping gear still, our need list only has a couple things on it.  YAY for us, getting it almost completely right the first time!

I can’t wait to head out on the 30th for 3 weeks.  It will be nice to have a home away from home.

And of course, no photo post is complete without a couple shots of the rugrats:

Sienna munching on pizza crust at Grandma and Poppa's

Kane having some fun with Daddy

We went back to Castlegar for Chris Ady’s wedding at the beginning of July and both these pics were from that weekend.

I better get the camera out again and get those photos from our first camping trip onto the computer. 

WOW, it’s been a long time – Again!

Over a month has passed – again.  Yikes!  Just a quick hello… it’s been busy around here.  I have been working on getting my Discovery Toys stuff up and running.  Visit my website – there is some awesome summer deals on for another couple weeks.  Also been busy getting ready for our big holiday at the end of the month.  We leave on July 30 and won’t be back home until August 17th.  Long time away from home this time!  And we bought a travel trailer!!!  A 24′ Mallard Sport.  I LOVE IT!  It’s been fun, filling it with goodies and getting everything ready.  We have a short 2 day camping trip to Cultus Lake planned for our maiden voyage next week.  Should be a good time.

Well, the babes are calling for me – I’ll be back with some pics… yeah, yeah, I know you’ve heard that one before. 

First the Zoo…

We have a membership to the zoo so we end up going quite a bit.  I’m going to end up with more zoo pics than any one person should have in a lifetime, but that’s okay.  I just have to remind myself I don’t have to print them *all* out.

Here are my favorites from this year so far:

Mr. Peacock in all his glory

I love giraffes

Kane checking out the turtles

Sienna get ready for the train ride to start

Kane and Sienna enjoying a 'bike' ride

Kane in serious thought...

Kane loved seeing Zigby... err the zebras

I’m sure there will be many, many photos to come – after all this membership is good until April 2010…. that’s a lot of zoo time. 

I’ll be back soon with some pics from Toronto.