*of my Belle being a first grader
*of summer vacation
*of sleeping in and not having to get up at 6:15AM (although the girls were still up at 6:45 this morning. that will take some adjustment)
*of a new summer schedule filled with fun, and activities as well as learning "STUFF"... i know, i know i'm such a teacher.

so first on the agenda... tori has been asking to ride horses. WHY? God knows. i am convinced that we will get there and it will come down to watching them from the opposite side of the gate.. but i could be wrong. so there is a sort of petting zoo, pony ride place over by costco... such a random place to have it, but anyway, we spotted it the other day and that is all tori has been talking about. so i told her we would go once bella was out of school. well don't think that she forgot about it. so that is on our agenda for today. there is also a really cool farmer's market across the street from this place, so i may be stopping there for some fresh veggies and fruit.

also on the agenda, Spider Man 3. alex has been waiting to see this for a few weeks now. he was wanting to wait for the hype to die down, although from what i hear there weren't that many crowds. anyway, my sister in love gave him a gift card to the movies for his birthday, and is also providing baby sitting, so we are off to a flick. thank you so much yoyo. it'll be nice to have a little "us" time, although the minute we get out of the movie we usually can't wait to go pick up our little ones.

just a thought... don't you just totally hate it when you are starting to turn things on again after the winter and find that things aren't working??? case in point - our air conditioner. so for the past few days i had been noticing that when the air conditioner would shut off, the fan would make this really weird noise. well, yesterday, i noticed it was getting rather toasty down stairs. HELLO!!! it was 82 degrees. that isn't suppose to happen in this house during the day. so i adjust the thermostat, and come to find out that according to that the air conditioner IS on. so i call alex, and after some checking of the unit in the attic, he has come to the conclusion that the motor is shot. GREAT!!! luckily, my hubby is really, super handy, and can fix almost anything. so he is on a mission today to find the part that he needs to fix that problem. all i can say is thank God it has been a cool spring with lots of rain to keep the temperature down, so we won't really be all that affected by the loss of the cool air for a couple of days.

okay, my find for the day yesterday. so i go to IKEA, seriously one of my favorite stores, and i find this HUGE palm tree (for inside the house) for $14.99. now i am talking this thing is huge. the tallest palm fr awn (is that right???) is about 9ft tall. so it is now prominently displayed in my room. amazing what a big, beautiful plant does to a room.

okay, i'm off to get ready for a day of fun. have a good one all.

*ciao*

so we are in our final days of school, and i have to say i am really looking foward to having my girls home with me. there have so many things keeping me busy, school activities, preparing gifts and meals for the teachers, birthday parties, etc. so it will be nice to have things slow down for a while.

belle had her end of the year party this week and had such a fun time. the party planners did such a good job with the games, some of which, i have to admit i will be stealing for future parties. seriously hilarious to watch the kids play some of these games. lots of water games, they ate lots of goodies, just overall had a great time.

as for me, i am just about done with a magnet board for belle's teacher. it came out so cute. i'm thinking i just may have to make one for myself. the best part is basically you can put any saying you want on it. what do you think? i also have several sayings i had printed out on vinyl that i am going to be putting up. looks like i need to make a home "beepo" run to get some wood.



one project down, and lots more on the list. maybe i'll finish some of my infamous unfinished projects.

oh, and my find for the week. so after the class party i headed over to the dollar store to find the water soakers that they used at the party (big tubes which you pull the handle out to fill up with water and then voila... soak your friends. way fun!!!) so i walk in and seriously find the best stuff for summer. i'm always on the lookout for fun, cheap, summer fun stuff that the kids can play with outside. well they have a ton of stuff. i thought that would be a good gift to give to a child... a bucket filled with lots of outdoor fun stuff. and cheap to boot.

okay, so now that basically all my immediate projects are done, looks like i can get to some of my house stuff. fun, fun!!!


okay, gotta go.

*ciao*

wow two posts in one day... who'd of thunk it. okay i said i felt a creative bug, so here is what i made. well, for mother's day alex and the girls gave me some money to do with what i pleased. so after lots of thinking, i decided to get myself a Wacom tablet for my computer. it does some really cool stuff, like allowing you to draw images directly onto the computer. so here it is my first crack at the tablet.



i'm pretty happy with the way it came out. the coolest part is that i can make different types of hair, outfits, accesories, and make personalized notepads, cards, luggage tags, etc. i am getting excited about this. what do you think?

okay, gotta go make dinner.

*ciao*

a few of the layouts i got done while on my scrapbook weekend. I have lots more pics to do but i feel pretty good about getting these done at least. i have more to post but they still need journaling, so once those are completed i will post those as well.









I have a rather creative bug today, so i think i may get some stuff done... if i'm lucky... we'll see. as for my belle, well she is still not feeling so good. kind of back and forth. hopefully she'll be better by monday. big activities for her at school this week.

have a good weekend.
*ciao*

so today was tori's last day of school, and she was so sad. at first i thought she would be glad to be off, but she kept telling me that she still wanted to go and see her friends and sing with her music teacher and do crafts with her teacher. my poor little one. she finally gets going and then we pull the rug out from under her.

as for my belle, well tomorrow will be a sick one for her. she has been out of sorts the past couple of days, and running a bit of a fever. so when i picked her up today she was really determined to convince me that she was feeling better, however i know her better. a quick check of her temperature proved me right and it was off to the doctor (which by the way, how frustrating is it that when you call the doctor's office at 3:30 pm on a THURSDAY and get a message that the office is closed until MONDAY morning? seriously people, do they not know that most kids get sick right before the weekend?) so off we go to see the coverage doctor, and a swab of a very red throat. the diagnosis... viral infection... DARN no meds. we have to just wait it out until the darn things passes. poor belle, she was so upset when i told her she would be staying home tomorrow. not even a promise of a slumber party complete with A Night at the Museum, popcorn, and cuddles could make her feel better. the worst part, she is missing a birthday party tomorrow.

on a totally different note... tonight's Grey's Anatomy. OH..MY..GRAVY.. (as Rainie would say)!!! if you haven't seen it yet stop reading NOW and jump to the last paragraph. I can't believe that George failed!!! and that Burke left Christina!!! and that it was the chief's baby!!! and that that is Meredith's sister!!! i hate the end of the season. you just know that now there is going to be all this tension between mcdreamy and the sister and animosity between meredith and the sister. and, and, and... i hate the end of the season.

okay, now that that is off my chest, i am off to get some zzzzz's. wow, maybe i'll get to sleep a little tomorrow morning since i don't have to get up to take anyone to school. woohoo!!! a little preview of future summer sleepins.

have a great night
*ciao*

don't you hate it when you have a lovely typed out poem, letter, blog entry and your computer locks up on you and you lose EVERYTHING???!!!!! so i had this whole entry typed and ready to post and now it is lost somewhere in my computer or cyberspace or whatever. ANYWAY, it is getting late and i really don't feel like typing it all over again, soooooo I will just post my pics and leave the explanation for another day. K? K!





so i just finished making this board book for tori's teacher. she has been so great this year and helped us with tori tremendously. it was so hard for me at the beginning of the year getting tori to be excited about school. she cried everytime she had to go, and it broke my heart walking away from the classroom and hearing her scream and cry. Teri said it would get better and it has. tori loves school now. she has made friends, gone to birthday parties, and just grown so much in the last 9 months. it is truly amazing.



































here is also a pic of my belle at her bridging ceremony from Daisies to Brownies.
there is a whole story to this also, but as i said... *%($*&*^)(*(%(... anyway, that will be in my next post.















and finally, in honor of my hubbies 36th birthday, my ever talented sister in love created this amazing birthday card. anyone who knows alex knows what a superman fanatic he is. so here is what she created for him. how cute is this...



okay, i'm done for the night. oh and by the way, i see lots and lots of people lurking, but no one is commenting. i'm not feeling the love people. show me the love... he, he, he!!!


*ciao*

Okay, so i decided to try this one again. why, you ask? well, i'm just not a very vanilla type person. look at my house and it is full of color and i just didn't like not being able to have a fun blog with lots of color, fun backgrounds, lots of links and music. gotta have my music. plus, i had lots of people tell me they just couldn't get into my blog and they wanted to see pics and hear what was going on. so i decided we would go this route again. some changes, some updates, some upcoming color swaps, and some tunes. gotta love it.

so what has been going on lately? LOTS!!! get ready, cause this is going to be a long post. first, we are in count down mode once again till the end of the year and the girls couldn't be more excited. tori only has two more classes left and belle has a little less than two weeks. she can't wait. i have been stocking up on lots of craft supplies (got some great deals at Wallie's last week) to keep them busy, as well as making some great file folder activities to keep them up to par with what they learned during the year. i know, i know, i'm such a teacher. i've been doing some crafts which i gave my mom for mother's day (a plaque using vinyl lettering that said, "Home is where your MOM is", and some marble magnets with the mine and marie's girls' faces. Cute, cute!!! the girls made their memaw some stepping stones and they were so excited to get to decorate them. she loved them and now i'm thinking that i'm going to need some of these for my garden. as for my mother's day, it was nice and relaxing. we spent most of the day at home (i had lots of sewing to do for belle's brownie bridging ceremony), but we did go have a YUMMY dinner at, where else, the Banana Leaf. i seriously love that place. it doesn't matter what we order there, it is all great. and the best part... leftovers for tomorrow. alex and my girls gave me a beautiful rose and $$$ for me to do with what i want. that is always the best kind of gift. what did i do with it? i ordered myself a Wacom tablet to use with my computer. can't wait for it to get here. thank you so much my loves!!!

in other news, I GOT MY SCRAPBOOKING MOJO BACK!!!!! woohoo!!! i went on a scrapbooking retreat last week with some of my dear friends that i hadn't seen in too long. we got together and went down to my friend Ashley's parent's weekend home. we had the best time. lots of girl talk, lots of scrapbooking, lots of laughs, and waaaaayyyy too little sleep. literally, i think i slept about 7 hours all weekend. but believe me it was all worth it. i got 12 layouts done. now i just need to finish up the journaling on them. i'll be posting them soon. speaking of Ashley, please say a little prayer for her. i found out this evening that she was involved in a car accident this weekend, that ended her up in the hospital. she was injured but was able to go home. the ironic part of this incident is that it occurred in almost the EXACT same spot that her husband's accident occurred two years ago. Neil was very seriously hurt, and understandably that spot holds very bad memories for them. So please say a little prayer for her.

on a lighter note, i got quite a surprise when i came home from my weekend away. i pull up to the house and see my belle riding around on a bike WITHOUT training wheels. this is huge!!! i'm thinking, "Yeah!!! daddy taught you how to ride your bike!!!" wrong... belle taught herself how to ride the bike in about 15 minutes. i'm convinced she just has really good balance. she did great with roller blades, a razor scooter, and now the bike. although good balance apparently has nothing to do with being clumsy. she is seriously accident prone (during field day last week, she could have been the poster child for Band Aid brand bandaids). anyway, alex said that he sort of felt cheated. he had been thinking of his plan as to how he was going to teach her. oh well. there is alway tori.

we have definitely been enjoying the beautiful weather here and apparently the drought of 2006 has come to an end. spring is in full swing with cool temps, lots of rain, and spring storms. we got a whopper of a storm a couple of weeks ago that left quite a bit of damage in the area. lots of trees and fences down, and a couple of traumatized little ones. the storm hit us full force with winds over 100 miles per hour. we lost power for about 14 hours, and ended up with a big mess after all was said and done. luckily our house came out unscathed, but every time we see clouds coming, belle asks what kind of storm is coming. poor baby.

i have lots of projects in the works, and my friend Rainie and I now have a local vinyl contact. lots of ideas swirling in my head. i'll update you as we start working on them.

so tomorrow is a very special day. exactly 36 years ago tomorrow the world changed for the better. a baby boy was born who would one day grow up to be a fabulous husband, great friend, hilarious jokester, devoted son and brother, and wonderful father. 36 years ago tomorrow, my fate was sealed. it was fate that i would marry this man, and that we would have two beautiful daughters, and that after 15 years together we would still laugh and play, and love each other like we did in the beginning. happy birthday baby. we love you so much and we thank God everyday for blessing us with such a wonderful man to call husband and daddy.

i'm done for tonight. have a great week and i'll update pics later.

*ciao*

Hi, my name is Deb I'm a busy mom of two little girls, and a wife to a wonderful guy who works so, so hard for his family. I have a never ending list of projects, and a mind that never stops coming up with new things to create, change, and decorate. Which usually makes my husband roll his eyes because he knows in some way he'll need to help me, but that's okay. I have to admit that my own personal highs come from finding things that are super inexpensive and turning them into something fabulous.



My two little girls keep me super, super busy. If you have girls you know how much drama comes along wtih them, and we have absolutely no shortage in the drama department. I call them the D.Q.T.s... Drama Queens in Training. They each have their own little personalities and their own little issues. But we deal with each bridge when we come to it and come out stronger on the other side. But these little ones make me laugh and cry, sing and shout, jump for joy and kneel in prayer. They are my life and my reason for being.



This is my own special place come to and vent, show off, share my obsessions, my latest finds and creations, and just hang out. I have met lots of people on here, and it is amazing just what a small world we live in when it comes to Blogland. I'm glad you've stopped by to visit.