A Good Start

Despite my struggles to revive my creativity, I managed to produce two 2-page layouts Monday night during my first "focus on scrapbooking" time.  That means that Micah's scrapbook is just one layout away from being totally completed.  I'm probably going to do some kind of culmination layout where I tie off his first 12 months with a nice, neat little bow. 

Click on any of the photos below to see them larger.  The whole image probably won't show up here without being cut off a bit.

The Big One! - This layout is probably one of the more simple ones I have ever put out, but I really like it just the same.  I was able to include all the photos I wanted and I was able to use odds and ends to make it.  Scrap cardstock, random ribbon, and I even used a "zero" in place of the letter "O!"  Just proof that scrapbooking can be done on the cheap!

Cake Victory - Gotta love those cake photos!  The polka dot paper, journaling sticker, and bracket are all from the same collection so they went together nicely.  The striped patterned paper is from Bo Bunny.  I also used some random ribbon scraps and pop dots.  Voila!

Piggy Toes - This is a layout I actually did during my scrapbooking blitz before Micah's birthday, but this is the first time I am getting to share it with you.  Magical things happen when you pair the perfect patterned paper with some scrumptious Thickers letter stickers!

Someday - Another one I did right before Micah's birthday.  Have you ever bought a gorgeous piece of patterned paper and then held on to it FOREVER before you finally.....finally found that perfect photo to use it with? 

That's what happened here.  That glorious vintage-inspired patterned paper sat in my stash for months and months before I took this photo of Micah with his Grandma.  As soon as I sat down to scrap it, I knew it was time to use that paper!!

The cardstock and paper flowers are by Bazzill, the letter stickers are Thickers by American Crafts, and I also used the Threading Water paper punch by Fiskars.

Thanks for checking out some of my recent scrapbook work.  I'm looking foward to sharing more with you as I spend more of my time cutting and pasting with a scissors and Xyron rather than a mouse and keyboard.

Project Life Tuesday - October Week Four

Welcome once again to Project Life Tuesday! I am taking a photo every day in 2010 and putting them together in an album to create a unique keepsake of this year for our family. Be sure to check in on what others are doing with their project over at The Mom Creative!

 
Sunday, October 17th  - I love using pureed pumpkin in recipes (to throw in a sneaky vitamin boost) almost as much as Isaiah loves to help me cook!



Monday, October 18th - We redeemed Evan's airline miles from his business trips to score a new toy for our family....for FREE. 



Tuesday, October 19th - I tried to get Isaiah to help me scoop out the guts of the pumpkin, but he said it was too "icky."  Instead, he wanted to prance around in Mommy's t-shirt I had him wear as a smock.  This one might make the wedding slideshow.



Wednesday, October 20th - Tonight I took Isaiah to his very first football game.  I taught him to cheer "Go Eagles Go!" on the drive over and he didn't disappoint.  For a full half of a quarter, that kid sat on the stands to support our team.  Then we had to wander around for a while and play in the sand of the long jump pit.  Hey, he's still a two-year old. 



Thursday, October 21st - (Evan's photo)  "I dub thee Sir Isaiah Buckethead."



Friday, October 22nd - Guess what big purchase we're saving up for?  Yup, our roof is in BAD shape.  Evan had to hop up there and snap some photos of our worthless shingles to submit to the company. 



Saturday, October 23rd - Micah has really started to enjoy munching on snack out of this little cup and will sit there for a good long time working on it.  Brian (our dog) enjoys this too.



See you next Tuesday!

Catch 22

Here's the problem with taking a break from blogging to focus on scrapbooking.  Once you actually get down to the scraproom and are faced with the mountain of photos in need of attention, suddenly all creativity leaves you and all you can think about is....

...you guessed it.

Blogging.

It doesn't help that I just accidentally released a mouse I had caught in a trap.  I'm not even going to pretend I didn't pee my pants a little when the nasty bugger lept out of that thing and scurried to safety faster than a heat-seaking missle. 

Scared the motivation right out of me.

But I'm only six seven months behind, so that's not so bad.....right?

Hiatus

I'm taking a little break from blogging. Don't worry, I'm not shutting things down or anything. Project Life Tuesday will still carry on as usual and I'm sure I won't be able to resist throwing out a random post here and there if something cool happens (like when Micah finally decides to walk).

However, I am not going to be focused on getting a post up every day (or even every couple days) for a little while for a very good reason:

I NEED TO SCRAPBOOK!!!

I'm going through paper craft withdrawal and I'm afraid I will slit my wrists with my Fiskars paper cutter soon if I don't get down to my scraproom and bust out some layouts. I've been focusing so much on uploading & editing photos and blogging that I've completely neglected my scrapbooking. That great Halloween kit I ordered from Scrapbook Steals showed up on my doorstep the other day and it was a great big slap in the face that I hadn't made a scrapbook page in FOREVER.

Sometimes when you need to make something a priority, other things need to wait. Blogging is just going to have to wait for a while.

On a side note, this is perfectly in tune with the book I am reading for the Bloom Book Club. "Sabbath" talks a lot about purposefully making time for rest and recovery. That's what scrapbooking is for me and I'm looking forward to spending some quality Sabbath time in that beautiful creative space my hubby made for me.

Until we meet again.

Pumpkins Don't Eat Broccoli

Let's get caught up for a moment, shall we?

When Isaiah played on the Wii for the first time, it went a little something like this:



When I tried to get Isaiah to carve a pumpkin for the first time, he got all squeamish and refused to touch the "guts" because they were "icky."  So I ended up doing all the scooping and all the carving.  Isaiah took the credit, though.  Typical male.



He then got a hoot out of trying to feed the pumpkin broccoli.  I tried to tell him that pumpkins don't eat broccoli - that broccoli was for little boys to eat to make them big and strong.



He found this absolutely ridiculous and instead shoved the stalk in the poor pumpkin's mouth and left it there.




The floor of the backseat of our car looks like this:


How's that for random?

And now we're all up to speed.  I feel better, don't you?

Wild Thing

The Wii has landed. 

It's only been in our house for a few days and it already threatening to take over.  I tell Isaiah he has to wait until Daddy comes home to go downstairs and play, but about every 8 minutes or so he is still asking, "Go play game?"

When it finally is time to go play, he loves it and gets totally into it.  In fact, he was kicking his Daddy's butt in the swordplay game on Wii Sports Resort the other night.  Of course, once I was tagged in I figured out Isaiah's weakness (use a vertical attack rather than the random flailing about that my darling husband was doing) and wiped the floor with him.  That's right.  I whipped the little bugger in Wii swordplay and I didn't even feel bad about it.  He was still jumping up and down yelling, "Isaiah wins!!" even as his Mii was falling head first into the water below.  I would high five him and agree, "Way to go!"

Mommy doesn't like to lose.

The problem with this technological wonder comes at 7:00 pm.  That is the time we have deemed to be the cut-off for Wii time.  We give Isaiah his 10 minute and 5 minute warnings and then remind him when he's on his last round/match/game/whatever.  But the second we try to take that controller from him and turn off the console.....the wild beast emerges.  He starts to scream, cry, kick and flail about as he hollers "Want play game! Want play game" for the next 30 minutes.  He is literally inconsolable as we carry him upstairs.

I'm sure it has a lot to do with the novelty of this whole thing, that the Wii is still new and exciting.  It will wear off eventually, right?

Right?

(P.S.  I do have photos of Isaiah playing with this new toy, but I haven't had time to get on my laptop and upload them!  I promise I will as soon as I can.)

Project Life Tuesday - October Week Three

Welcome once again to Project Life Tuesday! I am taking a photo every day in 2010 and putting them together in an album to create a unique keepsake of this year for our family. Be sure to check in on what others are doing with their project over at The Mom Creative!

 Sunday, October 10th - It may be 80 degrees out, but the colors are turning something gorgeous around here, even our little maple tree in our front yard.


 Monday, October 11th - Micah's squeals with delight over his Daddy's tickle attack were probably disturbing the neighbors' dinner!



Tuesday, October 12th - While Isaiah and Daddy manned the grill outside, Micah and I worked on the rest of dinner in the kitchen.  When he started to squeal at the delay, I was a bad Mommy and gave him an Oreo to munch on.  I think it's safe to say he liked it!




Wednesday, October 13th - I had a day at home with the boys today so Isaiah and I made pumpkin pancakes together.  Believe it or not, Micah liked them too!



Thursday, October 14th - I finally busted out my two Halloween decorations!  I bought this skeleton guy and his cute doggie a couple years back and they've always had a place in my living room during October.  Aren't they cute?



Friday, October 15th - (Evan's photo)  Isaiah was playing with his sticker book in the car and could think of no better place to collect his stickers than on his face.  It was as good a canvas as any!



Saturday, October 16th - We were fortunate enough to be in attendance to see my Wisconsin Badgers defeat the #1 ranked Ohio State Buckeyes on an absolutely perfect night at Camp Randall Stadium.  When time had officially expired, thousands of frenzied fans rushed the field in celebration.  It was an experience I will never forget!



Have a wonderful week and thanks for stopping by!

Bear with Me

It was the kind of weekend where I got NOTHING done.  In between work, an absolutely insane Badger game, an absolutely digusting Packers game, errands, and goodness know what else....I'm pooped.

I have 99 unread blog posts in my Google Reader.

I had 48 unread email messages in my Inbox when I opened it finally at 10:00 pm last night. 

Did I charge in there, hunker down, and get reading?  Nope.

We watched 3 episodes of The Tudors instead.  Once Queen #5 got her head chopped off, we called it a night and hit the hay.  Always a good end to a crazy weekend, don't you agree?

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take a nap.  I'm still pooped.  :) 

When you say "Wisconsin....You say it all!"

Thanks to the generosity of my in-laws, Evan and I were at the Badger game tonight where we knocked off the NUMBER ONE TEAM IN THE NATION!!!!

I have lost my voice almost entirely from the massive amounts of screaming.  I promise to share more photos and videos from this football game of a lifetime after I get a chance to upload them tomorrow after work, but for the moment, let me leave you with this teaser:

Honestly, I will remember this game forever.  I can't wait to tell you more about it as soon as I can!

Lo Siento

Today I am subbing for a high school Spanish teacher.  This is what I wrote on the board:

Senora Kooiman
(No hablo espanol.)

Lo siento.

The kids will either groan at my lameness or chuckle at my cleverness.  My money's on the former. 

Wait....it's Fall??

When did that happen? Usually by this time of the month, I have busted out the four Halloween decorations I am allowed (more on that later), the candy bowl has already been depleted due to my love of chocolate and absence of self-control, and I'm running around 24/7 in an over-sized UW-Platteville sweatshirt.

Not so this year.

It's been dang near 80 degrees for the last couple weeks so fall has kind of escaped me.  I mean, we've done a couple fall-esque things.

We've visited the pumpkin patch a la horse-drawn hay wagon:

And picked the perfect pumpkins once we reached the patch (try saying that 10 times fast!):

We've even taken a moment to appreciate the changing colors on our very own maple tree:

But still, fall has somehow nearly escaped me.  I realized today that October was already nearly half over yet my skeleton candle holder with his matching skeleton dog candle holder, the "Trick or Treat!" door sign, and my candy bowl are still in their box down in the basement.  Long ago, Evan made it clear he didn't really want to "do" Halloween, but I fought until I was allowed those 4 items.  He was against trick or treating too, but he changed his tune when he saw Isaiah in his monkey costume on his first Halloween!

Anyway, the point of all this rambling is that I need to get on the ball and start noticing fall before it disappears on me.  I'm going to wake up in the morning and it will be January (and below zero!) and then I'll really be kicking myself for not enjoying fall when I had the chance.

What are you doing to enjoy the season?

Project Life Tuesday - October Week Two

Welcome once again to Project Life Tuesday! I am taking a photo every day in 2010 and putting them together in an album to create a unique keepsake of this year for our family. Be sure to check in on what others are doing with their project over at The Mom Creative!

 Sunday, October 3rd - Tonight was closing night at American Players Theatre.  There's a tradition every year on closing night where the entire APT family gets to take the stage and take a bow.  Read all about it here!


Monday, October 4th - The boys and I took advantage of a gorgeous afternoon to head to the park after school.  Micah liked to bury woodchips in the sandbox.


Tuesday, October 5th - Isaiah "read" his children's Bible to me today.  Baby Jesus is his favorite, but he loves to tell about how Goliath is big and strong "like Daddy."


Wednesday, October 6th - While on a sub job today, I started to read Boys Adrift by Dr. Leonard Sax.  I just finished his first book Why Gender Matters and I feel like I'm reading the instruction manual for raising boys.


Thursday, October 7th - (Evan's photo) Isaiah made his second "book nest" of the week tonight.  This time, he perched himself among the pillows and couch cushions to read a library book.


Friday, October 8th - It was a wild day at the middle school today!  We took a break in the middle of our day to head outside and watch the Homecoming parade go by the school and then followed it with a pep assembly.  Our football team came through for us and defeated Portage!  Go Eagles!


Saturday, October 9th - It was 78 degrees and sunny today.  We took the boys out to Treinen Farms where they got to ride on a horse-drawn wagon to a pumpkin patch.  Isaiah got filthy and we forgot the stroller so navigating the corn maze was out of the question, but we still had a really good time.


Enjoy your week!

The Heart Attack Grill

I received this video attached to an email this morning and I watched it in stunned disbelief.

Then I realized that this restaurant is nothing short of a stroke of genius.  Twisted, disgusting, target audience pin-pointing, unapologetic genius.

Prepare to be introduced to "the taste worth dying for":  Heart Attack Grill.



I'm curious to hear your reactions to this.  Is this lunacy?  Are you craving a hamburger?  Do you feel the sudden urge to wear a labcoat and play doctor? 

Seriously....I was at a loss for words after watching this so I'm dying to hear what you think.

Scrapbook Steal! American Crafts Halloween Collection

UPDATE:  This deal has SOLD OUT!

The deal at Scrapbook Steals today is AWESOME!  Save yourself the trip to the scrapbook store and order this super-cute Halloween collection from American Crafts for only $16.99 plus shipping!  You scrapbookers will know, if you look at all that's included here, what a great deal this is if you add up what all these pieces would cost individually.  You'll have plenty to create several wonderful Halloween layouts.  Did I mention you get 4 packs of Thickers?? 

You had me at "Thickers."

Hurry and get yours before it sells out!

Smell Like a Monster

This is so cute!  It's even funnier when you realize it's a spoof on the Old Spice commercial I wrote about previously.  In case you forgot, you can read about it here and watch the video below. 




I love Sesame Street!

My New Favorite Photo

Can I just put that in a frame and carry it around with me everywhere?  Please?

Isaiah's Birthday List

My little boy is going to be three years old next month.  THREE.  He's going to be talking even more than he already is.  He's going to want to learn to ride a tricycle.  He's going to want to start doing more "big boy" things.
 

I'm scared. 

Since making lists are what I do, I've whipped up a handy dandy wish list for Isaiah's birthday for those of you who read this blog that are going to be joining us for his football-themed birthday party (invitation will be coming on soon) on November 14th!

The List
Superhero capes and costumes:  wait until after Halloween to score some great costumes at super-cheap prices.
Undies (size 3T or 4T)
Pajamas (size 4T)
Winter gear - 3T  (Winter coat, snowpants, boots size 8, gloves, hat, etc.)
Winter and spring clothing - 3T
Lightsaber
Shoes (size 8)
Leapster Explorer and Games to go with it
Sports stuff (baseball glove, baseball, football, etc.)
Wii games (Mario Kart, Toy Story 3, or other age-appropriate games)

Is there anything you've found is PERFECT for a three year old that is missing from this list?

Isaiah's Bible

Isaiah loves to read his little children's Bible.  On this particular day, he pulled every stuffed animal, pillow, and blanket off his bed and piled them on his chair to form a kind of nest he could nestle himself into to read his Bible.  Doesn't he look so grown up?

For the most part, he "read" it to me and made sure he pointed out his favorite parts.  I love watching him make connections between what he reads and his life.  Heck, that's what I'm trying to get my middle and high school students to do all the time!  Now that I think about it, that's exactly what I strive to do when I read my Bible.  It's all about taking God's words and finding a way to relate to them, interact with the message, and apply them to our lives. 

Funny that a toddler can do that better than I can.  One of his favorite stories is the birth of Jesus.  He loves to point out that Mary is riding a donkey and he has a special love of babies, so he gets all excited when he can point out that the baby Jesus is sleeping in a barn with "moos and sheep and horsees."

The best part is when we get to the story of David and Goliath.  After we read that Goliath was "too big and strong," Isaiah always comments "Like Daddy!"  I love it!

It's so wonderful to watch these stories come alive through a child's eyes.  You should hear him "Rarrr!" like the lions who are in the den with Daniel. 

I think he wants to learn to use a slingshot, but I'm afraid he would be chucking rocks at his Daddy's head.

It will be so cool this Christmas when I can use this book as a reference point to explain that we are celebrating the birthday of the Baby Jesus!  It still amazes me how much his little toddler brain is actually starting to be able to process and understand.  He's even starting to take an interest in reading more advanced books at bedtime, like a collection of children's literature we have that contains stories like Snow White, Thee Billy Goats Gruff, and other fairy tales.  I'm a little wary of this because so many fairy tales are a little horrifying dark in their original form, but I'm excited that he's taking an interest in a greater variety of books.  Maybe we can start reading a chapter in Charlotte's Web every night soon! 

What are you reading with your kids?  What are they particularly excited about reading?