New Stuffs and some actual WORDS

Well, hope everyone had a great weekend, sucks that the work week begins again for me in about 8 hours! We went out to the in laws for Easter dinner yesterday, and today was a catch up on sleep day, had a nice three hour nap this afternoon. I have been feeling so crappy for the last three weeks and it's really kicking the crap out of me. My ear has been ringing for the last week and a half, and cracking and popping for the last two days, I've been stuffy on and off and have been hacking and coughing throughout. I went to the doctor the other day but he says it's just a recurring virus (or different viruses) and gave me some antibiotics to take if I'm not better by next week. I'm so tired of being sick! Three weeks is a little excessive, but it does feel like it's starting to let up, so hopefully by the end of the week I'll be back to normal. I did up an Easter card using a new kit by Lliella, this kit was so frigging cute! I actually used the QP freebie on her blog and cropped it to 5X7, and added my title and our names and the date, but I love it and I bought the kit too!The kids are doing great, the dayhome they have been going to is awesome, it's the same one Chase was in before I had Rayna, and they both are doing well. Chase is doing lots of crafts and Rayna is doing her own thing I guess. She has good naps there in the afternoons, and comes home pooped anyways, so I think that's a good thing that she's played out! Work has been challenging, as I learned the system they were working on for three weeks and then they brought a new operating system in, and it really wasn't ready to go. For invoicing purposes, it has been a nightmare. None of the customer coding was right, the prices were all coming up wrong, and it has been a real learning curve for everyone in the entire company trying to just fix the errors so we could do our jobs properly. We were about two weeks behind all month and the other girl in invoicing and I have been working weekends to try and get caught up, last week I put in 51 hours! Plus coming home to the kids and scrapping. SO needless to say, my house is a wreck, and I'm pretty behind on everything in my home life! My next task will be to get our tax stuff in and done. I'm really looking forward to a scrapbooking weekend retreat that my sister has put together, a few of us girls are going to rent a hotel room for the weekend, and do some scrapbooking, maybe go to a movie or two, and just have some child-less fun! My husband told me I need to have the taxes done or I can't go, so you better believe that tax stuff will be the big project for this week! Other than that I'm pretty boring, I still need to update my book blog, which has been sadly ignored, and I have a baby blanket I need to get put together ASAP, as my sister in law had a baby girl two weeks ago, and there will be a shower and I won't be remotely close to being finished! Anyways, that's the latest chit chat, here are the new kits for the week from Scrap That Idea, I have some from Kathy Winters and Dream Big that I'll probably post tomorrow, I'm runnning out of time so tomorrow's post will be for them!! But in the meantime, check out the April collab kit called Step into Spring from STI:
And my layout (**template by the digichick blog):Vicki also has a new kit out, called Forever. I can't even begin to tell you how much I love this kit, the papers are beautiful, and I'm so in love with my layout, it's one of my all time favorites. I also really love the alpha in this one:
my layout (**template by Anna, photo texture by Shadowhouse Creations)Stacey has a new kit out this week called S is for Spring, and she has a contest going on over on her blog, I think you have to guess what the "T" is for, for the next alphabet kit, so make sure and head over there for that! You could win the next kit if you guess right! She's also having a contest on her facebook fan page, all you have to do is become a fan, and you could win one of her kits! Check that out too :)

My layout:
And Mel has a new kit out this week too, I love the colors in this one, the black with all the bright ones is so pretty! It really catches my eye, and I love the textures on the black paper too. She has the Splatz full kit, and mini kit as well:

My layout (which uses bits from the mini as well) (**template by Kaiser):

You can view each page individually here and here for a closer look :)

Well that's all til tomorrow! Have a great week, and as always, happy scrapping!

Ketchup

Ok, so what I meant was Catch - up. Tee hee. I promised you some Easter egg decorating pictures so I figured I better get on it, plus one of my "followers" (there has to be a better word for that) gets antsy if I don't post every other day. Must have nothing better to do hey sunshine? bahaha. But before I post those, check this one out!! Proof that spring has really sprung in my lil corner of the world. {huge smile}. This is a rhubarb plant that I planted last fall in the flower bed my husband built for me late in the season. I can't wait for it to be huge and productive! This is what my yard looked like two weeks ago...

So it's nice that it is all gone (there are a couple ice chunks that refuse to dissipate due to the sun not hitting them directly) and I can't wait for everything else to start turning green! I love the re-birth of everything in spring.

Also on another note, my headstone for my cat came in the mail last week, and I just picked it up the other day.

I purchased it from the site Always Remembered and will place it when we go bury Bud at my mom and dad's acreage later in the season. I think it turned out wonderful and the pricing was very reasonable for a pet memorial.

Ok, so this year we did a traditional egg-dipping decorating kit rather than the sponge ones or painting ones or just stickers. Chase did really well with it and we had lots of fun at Grandma's house decorating!

Chase got to do most of the eggs himself.

Then my mom came up with a neat idea to wrap elastics around the eggs to create stripes and patterns.
So we did. This is how they turned out.


I think they look neat with all the solid colored ones!
My mom also had some fun stickers to add to them after they were dry. I like these guys!

So I hope your Easter was as good as ours. The day itself was pretty relaxing, we went for brunch with my in-laws and took the kids to the park and had a big afternoon family nap. It was a nice day with family. This is a shot of the Easter lily my father in law bought for me.

And I also told you all that I had made a table runner for spring or Easter. I love the colors. The charm pack was Soiree by Moda and the pattern is called Stacked Coins, (which I originally purchased from Quilt Taffy I think, but is no longer listed there {eyebrows raised in surprise!} unless I am mistaken and picked it up elsewhere, but I've purchased a few of these charm pack patterns through them). It worked up pretty easy but I did have trouble with my rows lining up at the end, and ended up trimming it to square it up, (because I was too lazy to rip it all out) and it didn't really help because it just made the rows look crooked because of the way I trimmed it. It's not awful though and I can live with it lol. This is the second sewing project that hasn't turned out the way I wanted, I hope I'm not sensing a pattern here! Also, the edges of the table runner are a bit wavy, and I'm not sure what causes that?! If it wasn't for myself I don't know if I could give it away the way it is, but since it's only sitting on my own table and Chase will probably spill God knows what on it, it'll do. Like I said, I love the colors and overall I like the way it looks. The backing, binding and sashing material I picked up at the local fabric store.

And last but not least, here are a couple pics of my lil cutie pie children. Rayna hanging out in her bumbo chair and Chase riding his bike on the deck, he's really been enjoying the sunshine. We are so ready for this weather! I've taken the kids to the park a few times this week, maybe I can post some of the pictures later this week, since I've covered so much in this post!


So have a great week! I have a couple small projects I'd really like to do right away, so maybe I'll have some creative stuff to share as well. TTFN!