Card Creating and Organizing

Well, since my return to my normal life after being with Adam, Brooke, and adorable Jack for a week, I have been working on scrapbooking pages, cards, and today, I worked on organization.
Brooke belongs to the Junior League in Tallahassee and they are having a sale to raise money. She has asked me to make some cards for them to sell, so I have been working hard.Libby has also asked me to make some cards for her to sell in her shop in Hot Springs, NC. Here are some examples that I will be sending both of them.

          

   

I will be mailing them out this week.
I also spent some time labeling my accessories. I have wanted to do this for some time, but have not taken the time to do it. It looks pretty good now.

 

My media specialist supervisor is retiring this spring and all of the elementary media specialists have been asked to do a scrapbook page for her-right up my alley. She opened the media center at the school I am working, so I asked around and received some pictures from 1992 of Barbara at Folsom Elementary. I think my page turned out pretty good.

My dear friend Lynn made me a crafting apron for my birthday. We had been talking about having crafting aprons for a long time, but I never seemed to get around to buying any fabric. Thanks Lynn, I love my apron and wear it every time I craft.

A Week With Jack

Well today is Friday and I have been in Tallahassee since Sunday night. It is so great to be here with Adam & Brooke and especially Jack. He is such an  adorable baby-of course I am not prejudice at all. He seems to be settling into a good routine for Brooke. He goes about 4 hours between feedings and sleeps most of the time. Monday we took him to his doctor's appointment and he had gained 4 ounces. Wednesday we went to the mall and shopped for about an hour. Thursday we took him to Adam's place of work and then went to Ruby Tuesdays for lunch. Jack slept through it all. He's a real trooper. Today we took him and Chelsea on a walk around the block. The weather has finally decided to cooperate. It has been below freezing here for 15 consecutive days. We finally uncovered the plants outside this morning too.
This is one of my favorite pictures so far of Jack. He is just so sweet, I can't get enough of him.

Here is another really cute one with his Captain Jack jacket on.

I have had some time to work on some scrapbooking pages, especially at night when everyone is asleep. I am not too busy during the day either. I have done the cooking and cleaning and I have played with Chelsea every day and I have tried to leave the baby care to his mommy. He is really starting to bond with Brooke and knows when she is talking to him. When Adam gets home he spends a lot of time getting to know him too. But, I do hold him, rock him, and sing to him once in awhile.Anyway, here are some of the pages I have done. The first one is for my 8" x 8" magnetic photo frame.

 

I also made one for Brooke and Adam's frame and one for Frances and Christophe's too.I gave them both 8" x 8" blue albums and will do a page a month for them so when their babies are a year old they will have an album of their first year of life.

 

Francois is now two months old. This is his one month page. I may try to do the two month page tonight.

I have a 12" x 12" beautiful blue album for myself for Jack and have started on some pages for it. I have to wait until I get home to type some journaling and print it out so I can add it to the pages, but you can get the idea.

 This page is of the ultrasound. I got the lazer die cut at the Scrapbook Expo in July in Atlanta. You open up the lady's tummy and insert the ultrasound picture inside.I need to color in her eye, eyebrow, and lips but I didn't bring my chalks so I will have to do it when I get home. Gee, I thought I brought everything but the kitchen sink when I came.

This is a double page spread of the baby shower I came up for in November.

This of a double page of Brooke and Adam checking into the hospital and of baby Jack being born.

I guess I should take individual pictures of the pages instead of putting them together because you can't see the detail too much this way. Oh well, next time.
Frances has been a good girl and has remembered to send me monthly photos of Francois, so I can do her photo frame pictures and fill in the months of this page for my album. I have one for Jack too, and plan to put them side by side so I can watch them both grow. I can already see a change if Francois.

Better go for now, baby Jack is crying and maybe I can hold him for awhile.

Our new grandson

Well, Jack Thomas Spicer has arrived and as you can see in the photo, he is beautiful-all 8 lbs. 2oz. of him. He arrived on Saturday, January 2nd at 11:06 pm. We were there and got to see him about 30 minutes after he was born. I will be going up next week to help take care of him and his mommy. I can't wait!!!!

Christmas 2009

 Well, we have a new grandson, François Louis Michel Leonardi and he weighed 3.480 KG and was 50.5 cm tall which is a little over 7 pounds and about 21 inches long. He was born November 10th in Ajaccio, Corse France. He is a little cutie and his mom says he is such a good baby. He just eats and sleeps and doesn't cry.

We are awaiting the birth of Jack Thomas Spicer who could make his appearance any time now. We just can't wait. I have two of the pages in the picture below for my album. One is for Francois and one is for Jack. I think it will be neat to put them side by side and watch them grow this next year.

 This is what my Christmas cards looked like. I bought the stamp and got the idea from the stamp store in Marietta, Georgia when I went up there this summer. I love Gingerbread Men designs and this is really a nice stamp.

I took a class at Violettes in Lakeland and we made these two beautiful Christmas pages.

 I got a Kindle for Christmas so I have been busy reading the directions and downloading books, magazines, etc. to it. I really like it and can't wait to start reading a book on it. I also got a food processor. I have wanted one for a long time now. I used it to make the mashed potatoes yesterday to go with the delicious Prime Rib we had. If you are ever looking for a fabulous Prime Rib recipe (Click here), this is the best I have ever had. I have used it for 2 years now, and the meat comes out perfect. I used the food processor today to chop up some turkey and shred some lettuce and slice a tomato for a turkey wrap. It is really cool and fun to use. I ordered it off of HSN. I love HSN and QVC for quick shopping.
Santa brought me some new stamps for Christmas. Actually I got them at the Scrapbook Expo in December in Tampa. Several of them were from Stamps by Judith. She is the designer and was actually there selling her product. She has been an artist all her life and sketches all the time and has turned her sketches into stamps. She really had so many beautiful stamps I had to control myself. I did buy a tree stamp from her and several small stamps on dowels to add decorations to the tree. So this year, all my cards for the different holidays will be trees with the appropriate decorations for the holiday. Below are some examples of what they might look like.

I got some other stamps too. I have a couple of these stamps-Love and Thanks-but now I have Get Well and Thinking of You.  They take awhile to color but I really like them, especially with bling and glitter added.

I have finished taking all my technology classes (though I am taking some over just to better understand what I am doing) so hopefully I will have more time to create and more time for my blog. I hope everyone has a wonderful and happy new year.

Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving-I know we did. Adam and Brooke were home and split their time between our house and the Reid's. We actually had Thanksgiving dinner at their house. It was really nice having both families together for the holiday.
Above are my Thanksgiving cards. I had them ready 6-8 weeks before but, of course, didn't mail them until the Monday before Thanksgiving so most people probably received theirs after the fact. Oh well, I will try to do better with the Christmas cards. Actually they are all done, but I have to write my usual Christmas letter to go inside.
I have made a really cute card to welcome Jack into the family and will post it when he is born. Only one month left-I can't wait.

cards, cards, and baby shower items

Oh, my goodness. I never knew I could be so busy. Wearing the media specialist hat and now the technology hat at school is at times really overwhelming. But, I am managing to learn some things and actually fix some things. I just have to remember to focus on the positive and not worry about those things that don't get fixed by me. I do have an area tech person for the bigger problems. I have been taking classes-7 in all- so they are taking up a lot of my time and I seem to get home later now since I have "2" jobs.
I did my Halloween cards early, because I knew I wouldn't have a lot of time in Oct. and I was right.

I made this diaper cake for Brooke's baby shower on November 14.

Frances, Christophe, and Sasha finally moved into their new home so I made this card for them. I used the new stamp set I bought from Close To My Heart. They had a similiar example in their catalog.

Below are the thank-you notes I made for Brooke. My friend, Lynn, helped me stamp, emboss, and cut them out. We made almost 60 of them, using all different papers. They are held closed at the bottom with velcro but open up for her to write her message.


My Thanksgiving cards are also done. I really like this scarecrow stamp.
Adam and Brooke and Chelsea will hopefully be in town for Thanksgiving. Brooke's mom had invited us for Thanksgiving dinner.

I have been working on redecorating the guest room (Adam's old room). We bought furniture at IKEA and a crib from Craig's list for the baby. I am now trying to find the time to make the bumper pads and dust ruffle. Hopefully Frances, Christophe, Sasha and their new baby will also come for a visit. When we get the room finished, I will post pictures.

Babies, Babies, Babies

Well I guess my friend Teresa was right, once school started I would not have much time to keep up my blog. Oh well, I will do my best.
When I got back to school in August I had a new job waiting for me. Not only am I the Media Specialist and in charge of inventory for the school, but now I am the Technology "Expert." I use that word, "expert" lightly, because what I know about computers could be put in one of the thimbles in my collection. Luckily, or not so luckily-I haven't figured that one out yet- the school district has classes to help me become the resident computer "expert" at my school. Unluckily, most of them are 7 hour classes on Saturdays, but luckily I do get paid $24.50 an hour to take them-so things could be worse. I have now completed 4 of the 7 classes and my head is swimming. I haven't even be able to learn any new phone numbers in the last few years, my head is so full of numbers, and now I have to learn all about computers. So far, I have learned about networking, I can make a local printer a shared printer, I can find the 3 servers at my school, and the switches, and I can install a hard drive, a CD Rom drive, and memory. I can also create a "golden image" and use it to reimage computers. Yesterday I learned about a software program we have called Altiris. It lets me work on computers from my computer without going to the classrooms. We will see how that goes! I have been working on cleaning up some of the mess left by our previous computer person. I have installed some printers, renamed lots of computers so they will work in Altiris, and almost completed my inventory (which is a monumental job). Of course I added to my work load by having a bookfair this week-0h what was I thinking. They sent me a new, high-tech computer cash register which is a pain in the a__. It takes longer and I have to push more buttons than just using my old regular cash register. So much for technology making your life simpler and quicker. I now have to push 8 buttons to sell one book!
On to more interesting things. I have completed 80 baby announcements for Frances. She says they don't do baby showers in France and she wanted these to use as announcements/thank you cards. Everyone knows everyone in her town, so that is why she needs so many. My friend, Lynn helped me with them. Thanks so much.


Here is what 80 announcements look like.


My next project has been making invitations for my daughter-in-law's baby shower. Here are 28 invitations. Jack is due December 30. We can't wait.


My next project is a diaper cake for the shower and some thank you notes for Brooke. Stay tuned!