Trying

I am having a day where I feel like I am trying, but not accomplishing. I did accomplish getting my new release of Luau Hanna posted, though. I love this set, probably due to the fact that I love Hawaii so much. There are (I am told) an amazing lack of craft stores on the Hawaiian Islands. I have been to 2 of the islands, and did no specific looking for crafts, but when I return to Hawaii, I'll do a thourough search of all the islands and give a full report if I should return to the mainland.

I am trying to clean the house, trying to feed the kids (they eat non stop), trying to find library books, trying to do laundry and pack... Scott and Noah leave for Memphis tomorrow morning, I'll be on a flight to Dallas for the weekend and Seth will be with friends. Meanwhile, the boys just wrestle and fight like they no of no others who they could go play with. Arrrggghhh!

Oy Vey!

Blogger is having issues today and I am going in search of the Excedrin.......Here's Teacher Hanna. To make her more realistic, I should have put a bottle of booze under her chair. (Oh don't get all righteous on me here, you know a happy teacher is a teacher with a hidden bottle of booze.)

I am so tired.....

We had a busy weekend and then spent the ENTIRE day at the zoo yesterday. I drove home exhausted in rush hour traffic only to have to run some errands last night. Today we are off to a local water park for the day, I have been promising the kids all summer that we would do this, and plans for today's activities were made in advance, so I feel I should stck to the schedule, no matter how badly I want to crawl back into bed and pull the sheets up over my head.

The card a bove was made from the new Hanna Stamps Pirate set, and the item below is a composition book I re covered. I used the new Teacher set for the book. Both sets will be released on Thursday around midnight at the SCS Release Party. In real life the pirate does not look quite so sun burned. I used the coins and the sword and the parrot from the accent stamps to round out my card. I love the sentiment that comes with this set. Perfect, eh?

Here is a shot of Seth from the zoo. I asked him to stand still for a photo and he struck a pose. Two nights ago we had been at Target and he had his eyes on some sparkly silver shoes. I guess I shoud not deny his true calling as a drag queen and just let him have his way. As long as he grows up to have disposable income to spend on his old Mama, all will be okay in my word! (lol)

And now it looks like the composition book may not have loaded properly into blogger. I am too tired to try to fix this problem!

Yes, We Are Home

Auntie (of the comments) wants to know why I haven't updated the blog, since I am home and must have time on my hands. Let's see, I had a good night's sleep in my king size bed, ran erands, worked on laundry, and got the dog back from the "dog camp".

While we were away Noah learned to kayak. He really wanted to do this, and claims he enjoyed it a lot, but every time we looked at him, it sure looked like he was working hard. He was very happy, though.
We grilled out, went to Mackinac Island, went to an indoor waterpark, swam at the pool, and played at the beach. Seth drank hot chocolate day and night. No kidding. The place we stayed had free tea, coffee and hot chocolate. seth ran back and forth to get hot chocolate as often as he could. The weather was beautiful and never above 80 degrees. I tell you, Northern Michigan is heaven in the summertime.

Best of all, the boys slept soundly everyday. They hate photos like this, so I just had to post it. In between them is Mumbles, from the movie Happy Feet. He goes almost everywhere with Seth, but especially to bed. Mumbles can't go to school, but Seth would take him if he could.

Vacation Day is Almost Here!

WooooHooo we are leaving for a few days near thew ater and I'll be back to check in at the end of the week. Then I leave in a few more days for a trip to Dallas. I am happy to be on the road. I am never quite so happy as I am when I am somewhere new and fun. If some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, then I was born with a backpack over my shoulder.

The card is from Hanna Stamps' sketch challenge. I used the provided sketch and the bonus was to make it a Christmas in July card. I used Riley Moose in the chimney and added all sorts of extra touches, snowflake brads, star brads, ribbon, glue and glitter, a white gel pen and some marvy Uchida punches. The paper was scraps I had around, so I don't know who made them. sorry.

We are trying to convince the boys to clean their rooms. It is amazing how much laundry they find that needs to be washed when they do a good cleaning. Or even a half hearted cleaning, we aren't picky. We just need to pack up and hit the road tomorrow.

Poor Scott

If it wasn't bad enough that Scott drove his car into our garage about two weeks ago, with his bicycle attached to the top of the car, it only gets worse for him. The car was fine, and the bike survived, but the top of Scott's car on the sides where the bike rack attaches is really dinged in quite a few places.

The boys heard about geocaching recently are are in love with hunting for things in the woods. Scott searched a bit for a GPS system and finally decided to borrow one from a friend who no longer uses his. Scott and seth set out last night to geocache at a local park. Enticed by Seth to play at the park, Scott sat down on some type of park equipment and completely broke the GPS in his back pocket when he sat on it!

Trying to make the most of a sucky situation, he played with Seth at the park for a while. He spun and spun Seth on something and then put him in the car to go home. (Yes, moms, we all know what comes next.) Seth threw up his spaghetti dinner in the back seat of the car. Scott pulled over and made Seth get out and finish at the side of the road. At a graveyard.

Seth came home all excited to tell me about the broken GPS and barfing at the graveyard. Seriously, as tired as I am of playing with my kids right now, Scott needs a vacation worse. I feel so sorry for him. Well, not sorry enough to clean his car for him, I do have limits.

Over at Splitcoast there was recently a challenge to make something in miniature. I stamped the bird from Natural Beauty, colored it with copics, cut it to 1 inch square, and mounted it onto a piece of Acrylic by Tim Holtz, called Fragments. I then added it to a cord to make a necklace. If I could buy small fragments only, I'd make a ton of these. The problem is that the fragments come in various sizes in the box and I really don't know what I'll do with the hugs (3x3) pieces or the tiny pieces. The idea to make these came from Rebecca Oehler, who is a goddess of decorative items.

Crab Bake

I made this as an invitation to a good old fashioned Crab bake. Hanna is holding stamps from the Stampin' Up set, Crab and Co. I used the pot from "Basket Full of Fun" and put them on a charcoal fire. Hanna is from the set "Fun in the Sun". The background was kept plain, as the card itself is already very busy.

(* Editoial note to friends....of course I am not having a Crab bake. Are you kidding? I live in Indiana, where the heck wuld I get fresh crab? And if I got it, do you think I would share? I would be rollin' in the crab cakes, baby! I just had to come up with some sort of story for when I posted it at Splitcoast. It sounds better than saying "My mind is whack, I don't know where I get these ideas, but I made it, so you'd better like it.")

I also made some tumbled tiles today. The one on the lower left stays home but the others are for the Teacher's Lounge at Seth's school. Scott and I painted it a couple years ago and tried to add a couple of homey decorative touches. The lounge was expanded this summer, so I thought I would add a few different tiles to the enlarged space.

My main goal is to keep the kids seperated from each other. They enjoy running through the house and pounding on each other, but if one if otherwise engaged, the screaming and pounding is less. Yes, I am anxious for school to start.