THE FOOD FAIRY

My in-laws came for a SHORT visit last week. It was so nice to see them and the kids were so excited!! While they were here, my mother-in-law made me my very favorite dish of all time - paella. YUM. She's made it for me lots of times before and I've even watched her do it, but I've yet to try it on my own. It's SCARY! She wrote down the recipe for me this time AND even she brought me a paella pan from Spain. No pressure. I'm going to try. I promise. Here's the paella in progress:

They also brought so many goodies from the garden back home; tomatoes, green bell peppers, Spanish peppers, cucumbers and zuchini!! I forgot how good 'real' tomatoes are - so different from store bought ones. I have GOT to hit my local farmer's market!

Have a great week y'all! :)

QUIET SUNDAY

I just dropped the kids off at my sister's. I just needed some quiet time for me. I took an uninterrupted shower - can you imagine? THAT is the highlight of my day!! LOL I'm going to Archiver's in just a bit to take a class on these cool clear cards I saw there. Until then, I'll be cleaning up this scraproom; it looks like a tornado hit it.



Here are my LPSC DT submissions for the month. I know, I know - completely unimaginative and boring. My mojo has disappeared and I can't find it anywhere :( Oh Mojo....where are you???

I also started a Facebook account (why???). My sister talked me into it. I have yet to figure it out but if you're on there, look me up! I'm WhimsyPics on there too :)

Have a great Sunday, everyone!

THE PARTY'S OVER

and it was great! It was an awful lot of work but I'm so relieved now that it's done. I can back to real life (ie creating for etsy) again. Here are some of the pictures I got - I'm still waiting to see what other people send me because I didn't get nearly as many as I'd hoped! The sign is one of 3 that I painted for the different areas of the party. I had pink, white and green paper lantern circles hanging from the gazebo and cupcakes with pink icing on 3 tiers of cake pedestals in green and white. The pink/green toile tablecloth was a STEAL from Williams-Sonoma that I happened to find about a week before the party. It all just came together so nicely!

And here are some pictures of Ava on her actual birthday and the day after:

PARTY FAVORS

I just finished these party favor boxes (thank you Cricut). How cute are they? I can't wait to try all of the boxes on the Tags, Bags, Boxes and More cartride! These are pink for the girls and I'm making green ones without the flower closure for the boys. For inside the girls' boxes I've made these little matchbook notepads and I'm waiting for the flower shaped crayons to come in (from etsy, of course). The boys' boxes will have notepads too but in army fatique paper and their crayons are spiderman shaped!! I got the spiderman crayons from AurorasThings. I also wrapped the Hershey's chocolate bars in the same patterned paper that I used for the invites, boxes, etc. It's all coming together!

We went to a friend's house for dinner on Friday (July 4th) and were having such a great time when one of their little boys had an accident and got a cut on his forehead! Oh my word - you would not believe the amount of blood that was POURING down his face!!! I thought I was going to be sick. Thankfully, they were able to use derma-bond to seal the gap in the ER. Oh, but it was a horrible sight. I felt so bad for his mom! We (Henry & I) kept big brother while Mom & Dad took little brother to the ER. They ended up getting back just as the town fireworks were starting so we watched them from the deck out back. Of course, I didn't get any pictures! Every year I say I'm going to get some pictures to make a nice page and it never works out.

Remember how I said 'no more custom orders'? Guess what. I said yes to a custom request. Remind me later when I'm yanking my hair out that I could've said no!

Have a great week, everybody!!

INVITATIONS

Here's what I've been working on:

These are the invitations for Ava's party. They're slide out cards - you pull the top and both the top and bottom slide out with the info. I got those custom labels from etsy (of course). Nella Designs made me these, the matching address labels and matching 'Ava's First Birthday/July 20, 2008' labels for the party favors. They came out so cute! Thanks, Nella Designs! I got the tutu in the mail on Saturday. I 'd purchased that from Nathalie (a doll!) from Kennedy & Co. I can't wait for her to wear it! I've got the fabric to make the table runner. I just ordered the fabric to make the ballet slippers. Got the tent, table and paper lanterns in pink and green. It's all coming together! YAY!

Gotta go - TTYL!!

FALLING OFF

So sometimes, if you have a contest/promotion going on in your blog, you want to tell people about it, n'est pas? LOL. Yeah, I've been a little busy and failed to mention my super exciting contest (see below). Obviously nobody won. *sigh* Have I mentioned I need a nanny?



Nothing too exciting going on over here. I went to the Archiver's crop last week with some other MOMS club moms and had tons of fun. I made these little note cards with my new Stampin' Up set:

I'm in the planning stages of Ava's first birthday party! With Ethan, we had it at a restaurant and invited SOOOOO many people - it was a whole 'thing'. For Ava, it's going to be a little affair but fabulous nonetheless. I've custom ordered labels, pendants for the little girls and spiderman crayons for the boys - all from etsy. I'll be using cotton napkins, real dishes, cutlery & cups and empty baby food jars in an effort to not make unnecessary waste (and save some money!). Hopefully it'll turn out ok.

Ava's screeching - gotta run! Have a great week everybody!

MONDAY, MONDAY

Happy Father's Day to all the wonderful dads out there!! We spent a quiet day at home yesterday. It was actually kind of nice not to have too much to do. My dad and father in law live in NY so we didn't really have anyone to visit.


The crop on LifePreserversClub.com was a success - lots of fun challenges, games and I actually got some pages done! Of course, they were the pages I needed for the challenges I had set up so I didn't have much choice LOL. Still, 3 pages in one day is no small feat for me. Did you complete any of my challenges???? I'm giving away a prize if you do. You will have until Friday, June 20th, 10pm EST to complete any one of my 2 challenges. If you complete both, you get two entries. A winner will be selected (randon drawing) from all eligible entries. Simply leave a comment on my blog linking back to your layout. For those of you who are not members of the message board, here are the challenges:


ALL MIXED UP Challenge: All right ladies, you know our alphabet packs (be it chipboard, stickers, thickers - whatever) never come with enough of the letters we need most. So, my challenge to you is to make a layout using a mix of letters from whatever you've got lying around! Here's my example: (how do you like my 'high school' handwriting? LOL)

FATHER KNOWS BEST Challenge: In honor of Father's Day, I want you do make a page honoring a special dad in your life. It could be your dad, your kid's dad, your dad-in-law, a mom who is both mom and dad - anyone! Here's mine:

And this is the page that I did just for myself:

So, get to scrapping ladies & gents. I can't wait to see what you come up with!

Have a wonderful week everyone!