5 on Friday - April 29th

Quick and Dirty ...

1. Will & Kate

I am unabashed in my Royalist attitudes but unwilling to get up at 1:00AM to watch it all live. So at 6:00AM (after a fairly restless night 'cus I couldn't stop thinking about the blasted wedding!) I went downstairs and zipped through my 6 hours of PVR'd footage.

He looked very handsome in his uniform.
She looked stunning in her gown.
The hats ... well, Eugenie sure gave them a run for their money!! Sheesh!

All in all, it was lovely and I wish them well.

2. Happy Birthday Andrew!!

My brother turned 41 yesterday but I was unable to call and wish him a happy birthday because he's currently in London! No, he wasn't invited to the Royal Wedding ... he's going to the wedding of his brother-in-law. I'm sure they are all getting swept up in the wedding fever in Britain (I'm a teensy bit jealous! Okay, a LOT jealous!) but I hope they took time out yesterday to celebrate him. Happy Birthday brother! Hope you're having a good time over there. See you when you get back! Oh, and say hi to all the rellies!!

3. Another Easter Pic

I could have added a whole lot of pictures here of the egg hunt out in Abbotsford last Sunday but, in the spirit of a quick post, I'm only going to tease you with one. These guys were quick and eager hunters - good thing there was plenty to go around! From the left we have: Luke, Miles, Paige, Jenna, Marley, Caleb and LC. Reid (21 months) was also in the hunt but didn't make the picture. Wee Drew (almost 5 months old) was the only one of the cousins to abstain! LOL!

It was nice to get together, let the kids run off their sugar highs, enjoy some good home cooking and then watch the Canucks lose in overtime. Okay, maybe that last bit wasn't so fun!

3. Young Drivers of Canada - Beware!!!

Seriously, should I be worried?

Our neighbours have these motorized toy Jeeps and the girls were tooling around in them last night (after Marley's field hockey practice).  The scariest part is that they (and I mostly mean Paige) tended to look at and talk to Peter and I while steering in the opposite direction!

Marley kept saying "only 9 more years until I get my driver's license!"

Ay yi yi!!!

I am NOT going to survive that. I'm sure of it!

Christine eventually jumped ship and hopped in with Marley. Not sure if she thought Marley was going faster or was a better driver ...  

5. T-minus 7 days!

Greg and I leave in one week!!!! So much to do, so little time!

Okay, that's it. I told you it would be short and sweet! Okay, okay, that's not exactly what I said! But you get the idea. Have a good weekend. Thanks for stopping by!

Project 12 - March 2011

I've been so caught up in life and other scrappy projects that I almost forgot about my Project 12! Since yesterday was a Stat and Greg was around to handle requests from the girls, I took the opportunity to tackle my March layout.

This was the sketch we were given.

And this is what I came up with. 

It actually came pretty easily this month. I knew my pictures had a lot of deep pink (when don't they!) and I also wanted to playup on the yellow in LC's rain coat so I looked through my Basic Grey stash and these papers from their Lemonade collection seemed to fit. Also, LC's birthday cake and cupcakes were made with cherry flavoured cake and the cake had cherry pie filling inside!! How perfect are those cherries then, eh?!

Here's the left side of the layout. 

And the right side. Do you notice anything different about the top right corner? 

Here's a close up. 

When I was punching out the edges, the Martha Stewart corner punch and edge punch didn't quite line up so I thought I'd just  fix it later. You know, cover it up with something. Then I forgot, until I was taking the pictures. Doh! So I scrambled back to my craft room and came up with this quick fix. 

What do you think? It works, doesnt' it? Plus it gave me another journalling opportunity.

Here is a close up of the first flower embellishment I made. I coiled another bit of the sequin ribbon I'd used already onto a 1"circle of the yellow paper. But it looked too plain so I punched out 6 hearts and adhered them to the back, scrunched them up a little and voila! A pretty cool looking flower if I do say so myself!

In fact, I liked it so much I repeated it here in the title and again at the top - see the photos above. 

Well, there you have it. Another month done ... 9 to go! LOL!

Better get it submitted before I miss the deadline!

Thanks for stopping by.

Happy Easter!

Just a quick post to share some crafty goodness with you. We are heading off to Abbotsford soon for a family Easter celebration. But I have a few minutes to get this up.

Here goes ... first up are my Easter cards to the girls. I whipped these up last night which is why they are so simple. I LIKE simple, but I think if I had thought about it before yesterday and had more time I could have made them a bit "fancier". Not that the girls care!

Then there is the card I made for Paige's 5th birthday - again, very simple.

And last but not least, the Happy Birthday banner I made for the girls. Paige got to be the first to use it but I have made it in such a way that all the girls can use it year after year. Yay for reusing!!

Thanks for checking in again. I hope you have a very happy Easter with your families!

5 on ... er ... Saturday. (Warning - LONG post!)

Oops!
I completely forgot to write a post yesterday! In my defense I'd pulled off another birthday party on Thursday (with super short notice!) while looking after one of Paige's friends all day and one of Marley's friends from 3:00 on. So I enjoyed my Good Friday day off! I crafted (can't share it yet though - it's for Mother's Day) in my pj's until noon and then in the afternoon we went over to friends and had the first BBQ of the season. The weather even cooperated and allowed us to sit outside until it was time to head home to get the girls into bed - about 7:30PM.

But I am getting ahead of myself ... here are my 5 things for the week.

1. More Paige
Grandma and Grandpa came over last Sunday to celebrate Paige's birthday. The favourite gift? A scooter!!!

I was asked what her favourite cake flavour was so they could bring it over with them. That's easy! Anything but chocolate! And a white cake (in this case Angel Food cake) with strawberries is a winner every time.

Here she is opening the scooter which had to be tried out immediately! 

Then it was taken outside for a proper breaking in! 

2. Field Hockey

Soccer season is over and Field Hockey season has started. Marley played for the first time last year and took to it quite quickly. So far this year she is dominating! Last Sunday she scored 8 of the 11 goals her team got in the two games they played!! But better than that, she is playing smart. Instead of being a part of the "bumble bee cluster" that typically forms around the ball at this level of play (U-7 means both kindergarten and grade 1 players), she stays to the outside ready to scoop up the ball if it's cleared and run it to the net. Clever girl!! Here are some pictures of the action last Sunday.

Warming up - Marley is on the far left.

A couple action shots of Marley. I tried to get ones of her scoring goals but the cluster of girls behind her obscured her too mcuh. So these will have to do! 

A little sideline soccer action! 

3. A Reason to Play Outside

When we got home from the hotel last Saturday, our neighbour was out cleaning off a plastic playhouse she'd found on the side of the road during Spring Clean up (a municpal sanctioned extra garbage pickup where you can put all your "crap" on the curb and the city will haul it away to the dump for free - also known as "troll the neighbourhood for treasures"!) She'd also picked up a pink playhouse but since she has 2 boys, she offered it to us. We got busy cleaning it and then on Sunday I hauled it around to the back yard.

Best thing EVER!!!

The girls now love to play in the back yard - sometimes for hours. It's awesome! I've been trying to get them to play out there since we moved in but there never seemed to be enough incentive. Greg and I have talked about buying a playhouse but somehow the money always needs to go to more urgent projects. So a free playhouse was an answer to prayer!

4. Paige's Pyjama Party
As I mentioned at the top of this post, I threw together a birthday party for Paige on Thursday. I feel bad that it was very last minute and thrown together but honestly, she had fun and that's all that matters. I highly doubt she ever felt it was a last minute, let's-get-this-thing-over-with-so-we-can-move-on type thing! :)
She'd originally wanted to go to Go Bananas but once she went to a friends PJ party, her mind was made up. I figured it was a fairly easy theme to put together at the last minute and with a little conspiratorial help from a friend, she even got her favourite movie to show - Tangled.
Here are some pictures ...

Busted!

Wishes really DO come true!

Do you see LC in the foreground? I blew up the air mattress thinking the girls would really like to lounge on it while they watched the movie, but it basically turned into LC's personal trampoline while the rest of them piled onto the couch!

Best laid plans and all that!!

What's a movie without some popcorn?!

The cake - sprinkle cake with vanilla frosting, sprinkles and (duh!) strawberries!!! Yum!

Hey, a picture of me! Not so flattering but ... what the heck.

Blowing out the candles. 

Opening presents. Paige received a Tangled cartridge for her V-Reader. Another winner! 

The craft was painting pillow cases. Another case of my best laid plans not going quite as I expected. But they eventually all painted one and now they are curing in my dining room. I'll pass them out after Easter. 

5. Easter BBQ and Egg Hunt

Yesterday we went over to friends for a BBQ. We haven't seen these particular friends for almost a year so it was really nice to visit again! Celia is expecting their second child - not that I knew that until we arrived and found her very much "with child". But considering they didn't tell anyone about their first pregnancy, hoping to surprise people with a baby (they're like that - it's all about the gag!) I wasn't all that surprised to see her baby belly yesterday. Just thrilled for them and glad that all are well.

After dinner we locked the kids inside while the "Easter Bunny" (Dave and Richard) hid eggs all over the back yard. The kids had a blast but unfortunately my pictures are mostly over exposed so I have little evidence of the chocolate carnage! I have been trying to keep my camera in manual mode and learn the settings but  ... obviously I still have a way to go!! Here are some of what I have.

The Man Cave! There was a lot of Canucks Playoff talk going on here! Probably explains the face Greg is making!

Yes, Paige is wearing her Easter basket as a helmet. Sigh.

This is a test of the house construction. So far so good!

Close up of Basket Head Paige!

LC on the tricycle.

Evidence that Greg is a bad father!! LOL! Just kidding. We have a picture of Paige at about 2 "drinking" one of Greg's beers so he decided to continue the theme. Afterwards LC said "where's my beer?" so maybe this is not such a good idea!

This is the post beer pic smile. Hmmm ...

Mmmmm ... can't you almost smell the burgers grilling?

LC and Charlie got a slight head start on the others.

Not that they needed it. LC very quickly figured out what was going on. In fact I started re-scattering some of the chocolates from her basket just so there'd be some left for the older kids!

The pictures of Paige on the hunt were all seriously overexposed but this one of Marley came out okay. She was good at finding the ones that were actually hidden - rather than scattered on the grass!

Enjoying her haul!

6. Spring! (Finally)

Since it's Saturday I thought I'd add a bonus entry. Six on Saturday!!

Here are some shots of what is happening in our garden these days. They were taken last Sunday and Greg and the girls were just outside weeding the vegetable patch today so maybe in my next 5 on Friday post I'll show the progress. For now, enjoy these spring time pictures!

Okay, that's it I promise. Thanks for sticking with me - I know this was a long one!
Happy Easter to you all. We are heading out to Abbotsford tomorrow for some Graham family fun and another egg hunt. Yay, more chocolate! At some point today I'm going to try and get some Easter cards made for the girls. I know my crafty posts have been missing lately but I will try and get one up soon. Until then, enjoy the sunshine!! We are!!