Guest Designer

I am very excited to be Guest Daisy Diva for November at Cocoa Daisy. The November kit was designed by Karen Russell and full of beautiful papers and embellishments. I still have a good amount of this kit left to play with and have loved working with it. I highly recommend it to those of you who like kits. Here's what I've created so far...






You can purchase this kit starting November 1st and from what I hear there will be some great add-ons, including a Karen Russell designed stamp set from Fontwerks. Be sure to check it out!

Happy Monday!

Halloween Fun

Last night Stephanie came over for a little Halloween crafty time. I had bought the Martha Stewart pumpkin glitter kit at Michael's a few weeks ago and was very excited to glitter some pumpkins. I knew Stephanie would be up for it too. We glittered 4 pumpkins. I sent one home with Stephanie and here's my three on display in my living room. Aren't they fun?

I'm thinking I'm going to need to glitter more things. I have lots of glitter left....wonder what else I can make sparkly shades of orange? I also had the stuff to make some fun Halloween cupcakes. I bought cute little Halloween paper liners and silly little decorating stuff. They turned out a bit silly, but fun and quite tasty!

Last week I was looking at this ridiculous black feather boa that Jessie tried to get me wear on my birthday and wondering what in the heck I should do with it, when I remembered the boa wreath I made for Christmas last year and knew a black one would be fun for Halloween. So I bought 2 more boas and found a wreath form at the dollar store and added some orange ribbon. I think it's the perfect Halloween wreath!

Here's a couple more Halloween decorations. This little ceramic pumpkin and witch set was made for me by a childhood babysitter and my mom passed it along to me last year to add to my Halloween collection.

Here's the fun little candle lantern I ordered at Stephanie's Partylite party. The spider web piece on the front is magnetic, so after Halloween I can change it to one with leaves for the fall and one with snowflakes for the winter. Pretty fun I think.

I was hoping to get some work done out in our courtyard this weekend, so that I can make it look all nice for trick or treaters....not sure it's going to happen though. It's a bit warm today and I don't really feel like digging out the garden, which has been over run with mint, or cleaning off patio furniture and such. I'm wanting a nice 70 degree day so I can work out there and enjoy myself!

Week 2

Here's my card for week 2 of 52 Card Scrap Up. This week's theme "You Time" was issued by me. My card isn't exactly what I was envisioning as I am a bit pressed for time...who knew you would need 5 layers of paint plus drying time to cover one side of the card...I really love how the front turned out.

Here's the back...not quite what I wanted, but such is life this week!

I used the ace of spades, in case you're wondering. I originally grabbed the ace of hearts, but decided I might want that perfectly centered heart left alone for a card of another theme.

I am looking forward to a weekend with minimal plans. I think I shall make a good dinner tonight and than crawl in bed with this book or one of 3 new magazines I have yet to read this month. I do also have a little pumpkin project waiting to be done....stay tuned for posts of my new Halloween wreath and future pumpkin project....

Happy Friday!

Dear families....

Dear families,

Effective immediately, I will no longer be providing music therapy services during the weeks in which the moon is full. This is especially important during weeks in which the moon is full and Halloween or other such events are just around the corner. This policy is being implemented for my safety and more importantly, for my sanity. Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Your music therapist

Oh how I wish I could issue this letter to my clients this week. Work this week had been so lovely. I have been coming home exhausted both physically and mentally, not to mention injured, all week. I have 3 more work days to go.....

Additionally, we have had issues with getting Shawn's wedding ring fixed. Even though we have a warranty, the jeweler is not being too helpful. This morning the garage door broke...and by broke I mean, the one inch thick screw that holds the spring mechanism bent almost in half! At least it didn't happen yesterday morning when I left the house at 6:45 am! After we dealt with that, I learned that the card for the camera was not working and needed to be completely reformatted. Luckily, we didn't loose any irreplaceable pictures, just some that I needed to email this morning....urgh!

Now I'm off to work....wish me luck!

Mimosa's and Massages

This lovely little drink is how my day started out yesterday. My mother in law, Ellen, is in town and treated me to a day at the spa for my birthday. Ellen, my mom, sister and I headed to the Camelback Inn for a day of relaxation and pampering. We started off with a little poolside lunch, where Kellie and I enjoyed yummy peach mimosa's. The food was very good and thanks to Kellie's connections (she works there as a Pilates instructor and teaches some of the resort's VIP's) lunch was on the house! After lunch, we changed into bathing suits and robes and lounged around by the pool for a little while. It was a beautiful day yesterday, about 80 degrees and windy, so it was quite nice by the pool.



Next we headed inside for a little steam room and jacuzzi time. Poor Kellie had to leave for work about the time Ellen, mom and I had massage appointments. The massages were very nice and we needed a good twenty minutes in the quiet room to recover from our very relaxed, post massage stupors! The three of us decided to head back out to the pool, where we enjoyed a bottle of wine, some appetizers and conversation. We didn't leave until after 6pm! It was a great relaxing day and something I should do more often! Thanks Ellen!


If any of you want to play along with 52 Card Scrap Up, see previous post, I have started a flickr group for posting cards each week. Find it here. We will be posting challenges or topics and our cards every Friday for the next year. This weeks topic is my choice and in honor of my spa day, the topic is "you time." How do you spend time just for you, relaxing, recharging and treating yourself? If you want to play along let me know and will add you to the group. Have fun!

Weekly Cards

For awhile now I've been inspired by daily or weekly art cards. These are basically just altered playing cards that reflect you and your daily or weekly life. See here and here and here for a few examples. As much as I love the idea of daily cards, I just don't think I can keep it up. I already feel bad for falling behind in other areas, so I think a weekly card better suits me. Originally my plan was to start on my 30th birthday. I asked Jessie and Andrea to play along and gave them each a pack of cards. Due to schedules and our crazy lives, we are just starting the cards this week...2 weeks after my birthday. It's pretty much anything goes with these cards, but we will be taking turns giving prompts and challenges. We would love for other people to play along with us. I know I have lots of blog lurkers out there with creative spirits who should play along....hint, hint. Let us know if you want to play or post links to your cards on one of our blogs. Here's my first card...we decided it should be a sort of title card to our deck of 52. Enjoy and come play with us!

Updates and going on's

This weekend was a busy weekend. After work on Saturday, I met up with my mom to help her find a gift for an engagement party. We went to Crate and Barrel (check out their fun Halloween inspired home page), Anthrophologie and Z Gallerie (this homepage is amazing too....love the mirrored dressers). I'm totally in love with Anthropologie and was drooling over some dishes, sweaters, dresses and other fun things. I told my mom I need a bigger kitchen so I can buy more dishes and she said it's a dangerous obsession, don't even start it....too late mom, you did this to me!

Saturday evening I met my online friends, the AZ girls from SIS, in real life for a little eating, drinking, scrapping, and giggling. We had so much fun. I wasn't sure what to expect, you never know if people are themselves online, but these girls are great. We did a little round robin, where you work on a page for 15 minutes, than pass to the next person for 15 minutes, than pass...until you end up with your page back and everyone else has contributed to it. The first time we all used the same photo of the four of us. I love how mine turned out. See it here. We had so much fun with this round robin, we decided to go for another one using our own pictures. Here's mine. It was a great night and I'm glad I found some local ladies who are as obsessed with scrapping as I am!

On Sunday, I met up with Michelle for a little belated birthday celebration. We had lunch...well I had lemon pancakes...at Wildflower and did some shopping. Michelle treated me to a very cute cropped eyelet jacket and the most adorable pink tweed coat from the kids section at Target. Yes I did say tweed coat, I know I live in Phoenix, but I'm in love with coats...I can't help it! This one was in the kids section, we were looking there for Michelle who is tiny and buys kids clothes sometimes, and the XL fit me just fine. I love it. I'll have to post a picture later when I wear it for the first time....and since it's still in the high 80's here, that may be awhile! Maybe I need a trip to somewhere cooler just so I can wear my new coat! Michelle and I also treated ourselves to ice cream and I had my first pumpkin ice cream of the season. Mmmm....I love pumpkin anything, but good creamy pumpkin ice cream is definitely a treat!

She tells lies

Don't believe this girl when she tells you I ate half her cheeseburger--see comments from previous post--she tells lies! Truthfully, I wouldn't touch her cheeseburger with a ten foot pole...gross! My car actually smelled like cheeseburgers too after the trip to In and Out Burger....yuck! I haven't had a cheeseburger, or any other meat for that matter, since I was like 13 years old and never liked it much prior to that. So, don't let her fool you. Just because she suddenly craves gross cheeseburgers again, she thinks I need to as well. Bleh!

Jess, you know I love you, but I had to clear this up....I did not nor will I ever join you in the cheeseburger consumption.....seriously, I almost lost my breakfast when I read your comment!

Random updates

I promised more stories of my fun birthday weekend, but the week has been a bit full of other things and I haven't had a chance, or an interest really, in updating the blog until today.

In today's news, I was chosen as a runner up in the Kristina Contes design contest at Cocoa Daisy for this page

For my prize I get to choose a past kit. I'm having trouble deciding what I want. I'm looking at add on kits, since I've gotten each monthly kit since April. A lot of the add on kits I love are sold out, but I do like this and this, although I should probably clarify that I can choose an add-on kit and if I can pick one from the current month....anyway, I'm excited to have been chosen runner up.

As for more weekend stories, we had a great time. Saturday was spent shopping at Forever 21, eating lunch at P.B. Loco and more shopping at the mall, where we (meaning one of us--Jessie, Nicole, Kellie and myself) made purchases at Anthropologie, Nordstrom's, Lucy and Ann Taylor loft. After a little afternoon siesta at my house, we headed to Postino for a little wine and dinner. I love the atmosphere at Postino! They had the garage doors open (it used to be a post office and the garage doors were left as part of the atmosphere) so we had some nice cool air from outside with our comfy seating on the couch. It's such a fun place and has the most amazing bruschetta--we ordered one of each--yum!

Sunday was spent having brunch at my parents. My mom made "pumpkin pancakes yum," her words, with an apple and pecan topping. Very delicious. I would love to post more pictures, but blogger is not letting me, so you can imagine that we had a lovely brunch by the pool in my parents courtyard, surrounded by flowers and hummingbirds with temperatures in the high 80's.

After some time at my parents, we headed to Verde Maison, for some paraben free shopping...more on this some other time....and to In and Out Burger, where to my shock and horror both Jessie and Nicole ordered cheeseburgers!!! What is this world coming to?

Before leaving for the airport, Jessie and Nicole flipped through my scrapbooks and some idea books, I do pretty much have the idea book library, while the boys chased down a Koi from our pond and packaged it up for transport on the plane to Oregon.....boys.....thankfully, the fish made it to Jessie and Tim's pond safe and sound.

All in all we had an amazing time and I miss my girls desperately. It's really not fair that we live in different states. At least we've been able to see each other pretty regularly over the past couple years.

Happy 30th to me!

Thanks to my amazing friends and family, I just had the best birthday weekend! It started out with a drink after band rehearsal Thursday night, which I later learned was set up as a ploy to keep me out a little bit later.....I was out a little too late however and didn't get home until after midnight. The first thing I saw when I got home was a clean house, which was really exciting, but than I walked in to my living room to see Jessie and Nicole sitting there with Shawn...patiently awaiting my arrival. This was a total surprise! I had no idea they were coming to visit and though I found a couple things suspicious in the past couple weeks, really didn't have a clue they were planning a trip here to surprise me. According to Jessie, my face was pretty priceless and I'm quite certain she'll be posting pictures on her blog soon.

Friday, my birthday, we went to Einstein's bagels, where Jessie announced it was my birthday and I got a lovely rendition of Happy Birthday, free bagels and a birthday muffin from the staff.
Later, Stephanie picked us up and we met my mom and sister for lunch at Chelsea's kitchen. The food was delicious and I got yet another rendition of Happy Birthday with some key lime pie and 3-0 candles. After lunch we got pedicures at this adorable new nail shop called Sundrops. The place is very cute and very girly! Here we are sitting on the cute little banquets getting pampered.

That night we gathered the boys and headed to my parents house for dinner. We had a lovely dinner of salad and gumbo cooked by my mom, my dad's famous gin and tonics, a bottle of wine or two and the very special carrot cake, which after some kitchen disasters nearly caused my mother to opt for purchased cake and ordering pizza instead of slaving away in the kitchen. Tim took lots of wonderful pictures of the festivities. Here's one of the girls.

After dinner and before opening presents, Jessie and Nicole read me a list of 30 reasons why they love me. The list was too wonderful and very sweet. Tim captured several shots of my reaction to the list and most of them look like variations of me in hysterics....

They did also manage to make me cry.....I have the best friends ever! Jessie and Nicole I love you both!

All in all it was a great 30th birthday celebration! I will post later about the rest of our weekend escapades, as there are more stories and pictures to share. Jessie, Tim and Nicole left for the airport a couple of hours ago and I now need to catch up on the usual weekend routine of laundry and such. Here's wishing my 30th year remains as good as it has started out to be!

Say Goodbye...

Today is my last day in my 20's....tomorrow I will be turning 30! Crazy, I know! What shall I be doing to celebrate the last day of my 20's....not much out of the ordinary Thursday. I have sessions at Chrysalis, 3 other kids, band rehearsal....and than probably a little pre-birthday drink with Stephanie and some of my fellow band geeks after rehearsal.

Yesterday my sister did buy me a pre-birthday lunch and delicious cupcake at LGO. Thanks Kellie! I arrived home from work last night, opened the garage and let out a gasp....it was clean, like really clean and organized on shelves even! Shawn and his brother spent yesterday cleaning and organizing the garage! Believe me, this is huge. Since the arrival of the new project car and the removal of shelving from Shawn's office, the garage has been a HUGE disaster....you can now see the ground and walk through it without fear of getting swallowed up by car parts and boxes! Now if I could get him to move the cleaning inside......one step at a time I guess! Definitely a pre-birthday gift to have a clean garage! Thanks Shawn!

Today I am also saying good bye to Last Scrapper Standing...I didn't even make the first cut in the competition, which is kind of disappointing. Here's the page I did...I really like how it turned out, but I guess it's not to innovative.....


It may be time to take a little break from contests and challenges in scrapbook land. I'm finding myself a little too caught up in them and too worried about what other people think of my stuff. It really doesn't matter, I like it and making pages and projects makes me happy. I don't ever want to be some one who makes stuff just to get noticed or published or win competitions and contests....

I'm off to prepare for the final day of 29......looking forward to tomorrow and celebrating with my friends and family!

It's OCTOBER!

So, this is not the greatest picture in the world, but it's shockingly one of only two pumpkin pictures that I have in my files! I'm definitely going to have to remedy that situation....I need a trip to the pumpkin patch I think!

Happy October! I love October!

October means:
my birthday (in 5 days)
pumpkins galore...did I mention I love pumpkins...
temperatures dropping, at least a bit, here in AZ...it's supposed to be only 80 today!
leaves changing, at least in N. AZ
Halloween
Martha Stewart Halloween issue (the only one I every buy)
Fall

Here's wishing you and yours a wonderful month of October!