Enough already

Today was the third straight snow day in a row for the kids. And the fourth day of snow for us. Tomorrow will probably bring a bit more snow, but nothing like we have seen for the last few days. Photo Above: the little man making a tunnel in the snow. Photo Below: my mailbox. Not sure the mailman even made it to our home today. That flag was up this morning and at 5pm it was still up and waving. What's that old saying about the postman ... whether rain, or sleet, or snow.... oh really now?


And hey Mr. Winter. As for you. It's time for you to be on your way. Go on, get out of here. We've had enough already!

Going Stir Crazy

So Monday started out normal. Actually it ended normally too. But Tuesday, my work day ended early when the kids came home from school due to an early dismissal. Wednesday .... snow day. Thursday .... snow day. Tomorrow, which is Friday .... will probably end up being another snow day. It's not even the nice kind of snow in which the kids can go out and play in or build a snow man. This snow is literally wet slop. It needs to go ... but I couldn't help snapping a few photos while the snow was still pretty (this was before the wet slushy gushy stuff). Trying to enjoy the magic of winter since it is obviously here to stay for awhile.

And now I am off to snuggle on the couch & play some games with the kids before bed.

Raspberry Trifle

Raspberry Trifle is awesome!


My mom, daughter and I had a girls night "in" recently and made this fabulous desert.
It is super easy to make. There are a ton of recipes out there, but I prefer my trifle to be on the simplier side. I don't care for the pudding or other filler. Give me just the basics.


Here is how we made ours.

Shopping list:
1 bag of frozen raspberries
2-3 TBSP seedless raspberry jam/preserves
a lemon or two
store bought pound cake
1 pint or 1/2 qrt of heavy cream (depending on how much whipped cream you like)
fresh raspberries to garnish the top (if available)
1/4 cup of sugar
1 tsp of vanilla extract

Prepare raspberry filling by draining thawed raspberries over a small bowl. Press on raspberries to extract as much juice as possible. Then add the juice of 1 or 2 lemons (depending on your taste preferences) to the juices that you extracted. In separate bowl combine raspberries and raspberry preserves. Whip the heavy cream with sugar and vanilla until peaks form.

Now you are ready to assemble your trifle. I found my trifle dish at the Christmas Tree Shop for $6.99. Slice pound cake into 1 inch thick slices. Make one layer on the bottom of the trifle dish. Drizzle with a bit of the raspberry lemon juice. Add a layer of raspberries and top with a layer of whipped cream. Repeat until pound cake is gone. We had a small pound cake and were able to make 2 layers.

The plan was to garnish the top most whipped cream layer with some fresh raspberries, but we just couldn't find raspberries that looked fresh enough. Oh well, maybe next time. This trifle still turned out great. My girl enjoyed licking the whip cream. :)

The trifle is delicious when the juices have had time to soak, so this is definitely a desert you can make ahead of time. If you give it a try, I hope you enjoy it!

P365 and saying GoodBye

Week 5 was a tough week. We had news that we lost our Grandma Betty. I didn't take any photos that week except the photo of the lovely white flowers from the service. Even though I hadn't taken any photos all week long, I simply couldn't pretend this week never happened. So I went back in time and pulled some favorite photos of GB from years past.

Text reads:

Day 29 Today we lost our Grandma Betty

Day 30 I didn’t take any photos this week, decided to highlight favorite memories with our GB

Day 31 Emma’s 2nd Birthday

Day 32 GB with Pops at a park in San Jose

Day 33 GB watching her grandkids at play

Day 34 GB writing her postcards to send to family and friends, she still believed in snail mail

Day 35 White flowers from the service... pure like our Grandma Betty

You are Missed!

A Plea for your vote!

So I entered this contest on Wacom's PenScrappers' website. Its called 10 Things I Heart and here is my entry:


All you have to do is click the Vote button to cast a vote for me. Super quick, super easy. It literally will take five seconds of your time (assuming you have a fast internet connection :). Here is the link to my entry 10 Things. Please, please PRETTY PLEASE vote for me.

If you are a digital scrapbooker or are handy with Photoshop ... you can also enter or at the least download this awesome free kit by Anna Aspnes ... pretty cool!

Supplies:
Anna Aspnes: ArtPlay Palette 10 Things to Love
FeiFei's Stuff: Love Thee

P365 continued

I finished my digital collage for Week 4. Seeing that we are actually in Week 7 of the year 2010, that means I am catching up. Yay me!


Somehow Emma ended up in just about all of these photos.

Text reads:
Day 22 Brownie Troop at the Ceramic Studio.
Day 23 Getting ready for indoor soccer.
Day 24 Keegan’s sketch of a rose, incomplete.
Day 25 Emma gets a zhu zhu pet.
Day 26 Emma doing her Daily reading.
Day 27 Pretty in Posie hair pin that I made today.
Day 28 No school today ... it’s SNOWING!

P365 A little behind

I've been keeping up, for the most part, with Project 365. (See my original post here.) By keeping up, I mean taking my daily photos. But what I have not been keeping up with is getting those photos into my digital collages. Trying to do that this week while hanging out on the couch at the end of the days.

Here is Week 2:



And I realize (after not doing this for Week 1) that I should repost the text so that it's readable. So here you go ...

Day 8 Emma creates a beautiful picture with pastels.
Day 9 Eating ribs at the newly opened TGIF.
Day 10 Keegan doing his daily reading (Harry Potter) for school.
Day 11 Keegans painting with his new oil paints.
Day 12 JackJack snuggling on the couch.
Day 13 Mark & I went for a walk on the rail trail.
Day 14 My messy studio needs a reorg!

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend ... because Monday is President's Day, we have a three day weekend here in the US. :)

After a morning hockey game, we are having a quiet Valentine's Day at home ... watching the Olympics by the fireplace and snacking on way too much junk food.



Just wanted to share the cute mail boxes I made for the kids for Valentine's Day. Mailboxes from Target's Dollar Spot and template from iKari Designs found here at JessicaSprague.com.

These cute little mailboxes were so easy to make because of the template. I just filled them with yummy goodies. Adorable!

Mission Accomplished ...Almost

I nearly completed my major task of cleaning and reorganizing my studio space. Here is what it looks like from just outside the room.


Below is the right hand side of the room. I have two sitting chairs tucked under the windows.


I call this the Storage Tower ... love having ample room to hide things behind doors so the space doesn't look overly cluttered. I took the storage blocks right up as high as I safely could.


Here is a close-up of the Storage Tower. All this white space gives my eyes a place to rest in my otherwise visually stimulated space. Keeps my eyes happy. :)


Moving along the far wall to the desk ... this section of my work surface area is where most of my creating takes place. I have almost everything I need within arms reach.

The corner section of the work surface area is where my laptop resides. I have my printer and shipping supplies within reach ... so this is the perfect spot to prepare my accessories for their journey off to their new homes. I love sitting in this corner under the large window.

Moving along the left wall ... you can see my printer, sewing machine and the edge of one of the two ribbon racks my Dad made for me several years ago. Under the table are two containers chock full of felt ... however the felt needs to be better organized and I just didn't have time to get it done. I also desperately need to redo the spools of ribbon on the two ribbon racks. I'll have to save those two projects for another day.

Here is another storage tower. This one is from IKEA. You can see a big pile of lovely reclaimed wool awaiting a new life in the basket on top of the storage shelves. The vintage basket on the floor is stuffed and overflowing with wool roving in every color of the rainbow.

My island in the middle of the room is directly under the chandelier and provides yet another work surface and storage area.

My studio is actually the formal living room of my home. I choose this space because even though we have a finished basement, I am in my studio so much that I really needed and wanted my space to be in the heart of my home surrounded by my family rather than down in the basement where I'd feel disconnected from everyone. Since there are no doors I decided to add some curtains (also from IKEA) to frame out the entrance to the space and set it aside from the rest of the home a bit. And when things are really messy in there, I can close the curtains down. A big plus!


That's it for now. I'll have to go back and take some more shots of some close-ups areas. Hope you enjoyed taking a peek at my creative space.

Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better.

So we all had a snow day yesterday ... everyone was home. (The big bad storm only amounted to about 3 or 4 inches, even though it seemed like it snowed all day. Whew!) The Mr. worked from home and the kids had a day off from school. I've learned a long time ago that having everyone home in the house does not lend itself to a productive day in my studio. I just can't seem to get the time to concentrate long enough on new projects because someone is always in need of something. So, after putting in just a few hours doing only the necessary ... I decided to take apart my studio. I thought at least I would be accomplishing something, and it wouldn't be a big deal if I had to stop and restart a million different times. I started removing things from shelves and drawers and making huge piles all over the place in an attempt to clean and reorganize my studio. Now, I know when I started there was a master plan in my head ... but amidst making meals for the kids, refereeing moments of sibling rivalry and keeping the kids entertained for the day ... somehow that master plan sort of dissolved along the way. Here's some photos of how bad and totally unorganized things looked only 1/3 of the way into this project.



I finished another 1/3 of the reorg today. And hope to get the rest done tomorrow. Hopefully the next time you check in, I'll have photos posted of a neat, and tidier new studio. :)

Making Valentines

I think this might be the last year for my daughter to bring in Valentines for her class. Sad!



This year we decided to print out some cards that I found online as a freebie. There was a cute pink and brown set with little birdies and cupcakes for girls & a pirate theme in black and red for the boys. This worked out perfect because I purchased Hershey Kisses and Hugs for the treat. The Kisses and Hugs came in pinks and reds ... so we filled each boy classmate's Valentine Goodie Bag with red ones and each girl classmate's Valentine Goodie Bag with pink ones. How sweetly they matched. We simply cut the square Valentines out after printing out the sheets. We also cut out white squares from cardstock as the backing. We filled little clear bags with a few chocolates, lined up the printed Valentine square on the front of the bag, lined up the white cardstock square on the back of the bag ... allowing the top of the clear bag to be "sandwiched" in between the two paper layers and stapled! That's it.


How cute are these? Handmade ... no store bought Valentine's here! Here's the link for the Valentine Freebies in case you haven't gotten around to making your own Valentines yet.