You have to check this out...

...ok, so I am not really a scrapbooker, per say... Let me explain... I have always been crafty and such... I get it from my mother, the "craft-a-holic" and admitted pack rat, you know, the "there might be a use for that sometime in the next millenium" hoarder of all things good, and even kinda crappy type...

Anywho, the summer after my senior year of high school I spent hours and hours scrapping every picture I could find from my birth through my senior year of high school... My whole life up to that point fit neatly into about ten or twelve 2" binders with the extra pics stuffed into shoeboxes on a nearly shelf... I was so proud... I even took a few of the binders with me to the dorms that first year of college...

Well, the summer following my first year in college, while no one was home (my mom, my pop, and I were all working that afternoon), an overloaded electrical outlet in my room shorted out... The outlet was near my bed and soon a small fire turned into a 3-alarm blaze... It destroyed everything I owned in the world from pictures to clothes to stuffed animals and even melted the $2000+ computer I had bought with my own money the previous summer... poof! just like that, all my memories gone forever... Hours and days of works destroyed in a matter of minutes...

The upside is that no one was injured... We even had a brave neighbor who broke down our front door, knowing our 2 dogs were inside, and searching for both of them until he was able to get them out of the house...

Anywho, I guess I was sort of disheartened... not that I was deterred from ever crafting, but more discouraged from scrapping... But lately especially, I have been feeling the pinch to put something together for the kids to have when they get older...

I found the perfect contest to keep me motivated this summer:




So, go! Check it out!

So I noticed something immediately after I posted...

...alot of the pictures I take of the kids are of their backs... I'm sneaky like that... j/k... I don't know what it is but when they know that their picture is being takenm, I get the goofiest faces, or half shots... But when I sneak up behind them to capture the moment, they look so calm and peaceful... Don't get me wrong, I look the big cheese smiles, and have buttloads of toothy grin pics, but the pics I gravitate toward, when I look at them on the commputer, after they have been uploaded, are those that show the kids just taking everything in... Like this one with Allie looking out the window on the ferry:


They did stop for a couple of face shots, I got creepy smile and apathetic look here:

And just plain, stop taking pictures mom!

So, there you have it...

I've been busy, I swear...

...I really do... It has been a busy birthday month and much more... I figured I'd take some down time as an opportunity to show you all some pica of what I have been working on... wanna see?

In no particular order, mostly because sometimes the picture uploader thingie just leaves me completely baffled, and also because sometimes I upload pics and hide them in folders, not so much on purpose, but more because I figure I'll remmeber where they are later, and never do...

Last week we took another trip to NYC, we took the ferry over to Ellis Island, which the kids thought was too awesome:


My mom's friend's daughter had a baby shower, and I made the invites:

My aunt came into town, so I made her magnetic goodies to take home with her:

And of course a giant clothespin to match:

My mom's (my kids call my parents, greyma and a-pop) birthday was this month, so I gave her this big altered chipboard photo frame, here's the front cover:

Here's the left interior:

And the right:

I also played with my camera a bit, especially when we had some freaky weather. These clouds came rolling in randomly one Saturday afternoon:

And on the first warm weekend, we took a day trip to the shore, (oh and by warm I mean it went from 30 degrees to 80 degrees in one week), here's the girls by the water:

I also snapped some pics of the shed in my parents yard. Something about the new spring green, the clear blue sky and the rustic, worn look of the shed just grabbed me:

It has been busy around here as we prepare for the end of the school year, moving, again... grrr..., my birthday and our anniversary... I ordered some new supplies to play with and am thinking about adding some new items to my Etsy shop, so stay tuned and I more to be more diligent in my posts... Cross my heart... (not my fingers)... :)