my latest project

Ok well I guess at this point I will have to leave this photo on its side since I have no idea why I have uploaded it three times and it comes up this way each time. Frustrations set in since I have better things to do than sit here to try to figure out why when a photo is horizontal before uploading why it comes up vertical. CRAZY!! So here is a layout I did with the sketch from a class I did awhile back online but never got around to doing the layouts and it was also the same layout that Down Memory Lane had for their Challenge this month. I did take my layout into the store but of course since I am still employed there, I could not have mine in the competition. It is on display in the store by the cute Crate Papers that I used in my layout.

I thought I would give you a little close-up shot of the butterflies on the layout. I actually cut four butterflies out of the backgroud paper before assembling the layout. I planned everything out so I could cut out the butterflies yet cover up that area with some of the strips of paper that I added to the page. It was super easy and then I didn't have to search for embellishments to go with the theme. I also bent up their wings a bit and then put some foam pop-up dots under them so they would stand out.

Onto other things in life...

So I have been busy teaching those lovely elementary school students and of course I knew it would happen, I got sick. I got a nasty sore throat for 24 hours which soon turned into a head cold with painful sinus troubles. And as we all know as parents that sometimes when we are sick we don't get any time to rest or time to ourselves. On Thursday night Nathan had to work late and I was stuck watching Jaidyn. This was when I was at my sickest point...if that is a word. Noah went to his mom's house this weekend so I thought for sure that Nathan and I could get a babysitter on Saturday and we could go golfing or to a movie or something. Well that did not happen as Friday night Jaidyn did not sleep more than 30 to 45 minutes at a time. I seriously saw the clock once an hour all night long. That was totally draining and we all felt yucky. Nathan is still not used to the coolers at work now that he delivers for General Beer and I was already sick. So with daddy have 101 temperature, mommy sneezy and coughing, now Jaidyn has a terrible runny nose and won't sleep. We kept waking up to her screaming. We slept on the couch, we stood by her crib, we rubbed her back...nothing seemed to work. We did finally run to Wallgreens and get her some Benadryl so her nose isn't so runny and that has helped. Now daddy is doing ok, mommy still feels yucky and Jaidyn is also doing ok. She is finally sleeping better but is exhausted from lack of sleep. She did finally take a 2 hour nap earlier today... THANK GOODNESS!

Here is my little, rednosed, sweetheart posing for the camera this morning. As I went to get the camera from the kitchen to upload a picture of the layout that I had created she stook in the doorway giggling and smiling for me to take her photo. She learned how to do this at Grandma's house when she was standing on one of Noah's toys that she knew she should not have been. She has a nasty red nose from all of the wiping and runny nose.

Jaidyn is getting big!

Well all is pretty good here. I know I have not taken much time lately to post because I have started teaching in Chippewa Falls until November. Last week I was exhausted to the point of sleeping at 7:00 p.m. I was at least able to get back up at 10:00 p.m. to go to bed. I just could not believe how hard it was for me to stay awake last week. But the first week of school is done and things are getting better. The kids are LOUD and cannot sit and listen but at the end of the day things are still ok. That tells me that teaching is still a good job for me! School must have taken a toll on Noah last week as well. Noah missed school today (his fourth day of Kindergarten) because he had a fever. Of course he went to his mom's house last weekend and got sick there. He is doing just fine now and will be going back to school tomorrow. He says he loves school - which is great!!!! He always is glad to see me when I pick him up each day. I can tell that a whole day of school gets long and tiring for the little guy.

Well since Jaidyn was 14 months on Sunday, I finally decided to take her to get her one year pictures done. She did good but it is hard to get a 14 month old to cooperate!!! She was standing on a table and the lady expected her to stand there and not fall off.....like RIIIGHT! Jaidyn did fine. Here are a few pics of the cute little tyke....

Jaidyn is doing well and getting herself into plenty of trouble. I stopped into Down Memory Lane a couple weeks ago and she got into so many things. It is nothing like before when I could take her into a store and she would sit on the floor. Now she is RUNNING around, literally, and touching everything. She loves the garbage the most at home and loves to open and close everything. I think she enjoys driving daddy and mommy crazy. When the two of us are home together, she gets into everything but when she in home with just mommy or just daddy she plays just fine. It is the craziest thing!! She is so precious and so much fun to play with. I really miss playing with her on my days off since I now have none for awhile. But all is good and Thursday I have my first class to teach at Down Memory Lane since I started teaching and someone excited about getting back to that. It shall be fun!

Long Days and Short Nights are all I see now...

New adventures...

I know I have talked to a few people lately about my new adventure but not many. I figure now is the time to let everyone know what I will be doing for the next couple of months so if you go into Down Memory Lane, you will not see me. As of a couple weeks ago I accepted a Long-term Teaching position in Chippewa Falls and will be teaching Elementary Art. The girl I will be filling in for just had twin girls and plans to be out until November 14th. That is the special day that I will be done teaching and hopefully making my way back to Down Memory Lane. Yesterday was my last day at DML and it was somewhat of a sad day yet a day to look at the future as well. I am glad I am getting this opportunity but I am going to miss the scrapbook store. I love working there and teaching my classes. I am however, going to try to keep teaching classes at DML throughout my teaching in Chippewa. I have already designed most of the cards for the next three months so I am able to just come in and teach the classes without much preparation during that time. I also am looking forward to making my way back to Down Memory Lane when I finish teaching but I am just so glad that I am getting this experience at the elementary level. I will greatly miss the people that I work with at Down Memory Lane and all of the customers. It is hard to leave a place where I know so many people. Some days of work, I would know every customer that walked through the door and others I wouldn't know a single person. It is so fun to see the people that walk through that door to shop. It is a fun place to be and as I mentioned previously...I can't wait to go back. As we all know, time goes by too quickly so before I know it, November will be here and I will be saying goodbye to all of the little kiddies in Chippewa and making my way back to the scrapbook scene. I will have to post a photo of come cards that I plan to do in September as well. Photo to come...

Surprises are always fun!!

So as many of you know, I am a Certified Fiskars Demonstrator and have recently joined a Yahoo group that was just created for our group. Well I am a member of about 4 different Yahoo groups so I get many e-mails daily from the groups letting me know everything that has gone through the group and it gets somewhat boring but I usually browse through them. Well the last two for the CFD group I had not looked at because the group is just starting and the posts are always the same "Hello" messages. For some reason this morning when I did my e-mail check, I decided to look at yesterday's e-mail. As I browsed down through the e-mail all of the sudden it mentioned a surprise prize give-away and it said it was going out the some random new additions to the group and as I read I thought I had to go somewhere to sign up for this prize but as I clicked the mouse one last time I saw the first three winners and MY NAME WAS ON THE LIST!!! It said Stacie S. from Eau Clair, WI...lol. I love how people always spell Eau Claire incorrectly! But at any rate...I am going to be getting a surprise package from Fiskars and I am so excited. I will be watching my doorstep everyday for my prize!! I will have to post more when I get it.

Why is it that good days often times don't end good...

So the weekend started out someone poorly when Noah's mom called and said she would not be taking Noah AGAIN. It will be 6 weeks again since she has seen him since she did not take him the last time he was suppose to go. Might I add, he has been without shoes for 6 weeks as well since the shoes that she had bought him were "lost" at her house and he came home with flip flops on. Now you tell me how lovely it is for a 5 year old to be wearing flip flops for 6 weeks straight. So you might say..."why don't you go buy him some new shoes..." Well we figured that he would have been back to her house two weeks after he had come home with the flip flops. So we decided since Noah cried for 30 minutes straight about not getting to go to his mom's house that we would take him to McDonalds to play. That went well! Then we decided that Saturday would be a good day to take off for a trip to the Zoo. Saturday morning came and yes, we did decide to take a little trip and off we went. But of course one thing had to cramp out day...Noah had no shoes. So off to Shopko we were just so he could have shoes to go to the Zoo. Got the shoes and we were off. So I have not been to the Como Zoo since I was little and when we got there I had never seen so many people and so many cars. We ended up parking down some residential street and walking a ways but we finally got there. We had a good time seeing all of the nice animals...I will have to post some of my giraffe photos. He was an interesting creature!! So we were at the Zoo for about two hours and Jaidyn seemed fine. I did notice that she was getting a little warm and gave her some tylenol, figuring it was her teeth. So off we were to the car at the end of our Zoo excursion.

We then decided since we were in St. Paul that we might just as well make a trip to the Mall of American since Noah had never been there. So we drove over there so we could take Noah to the Build a Bear Workshop. Basically the mall was a good time but I noticed that Jaidyn was acting kind of quiet but we thought she was tired as she had not gotten her afternoon nap. So after the Build A Bear and both kids getting an animal, we went to a few more stores, including Archivers and then were on our way home.

On the way home we stopped in Hudson to eat some dinner and boy was that an experience!!! At this point Jaidyn was acting normal, being her silly self and eating and drinking fine so we thought it was ok to stop to eat. Before our food came we noticed that Jaidyn needed a diaper change...and boy did she ever. Nate took her outside to change her in the van and ended up calling me on my cell phone telling me to get outside right away because she was dirty all over and he had no diapers left. So the spectacular mother that I am, left Noah inside and ran out to help Nathan. Jaidyn is standing outside scared to death, naked, and bawling. Nathan is trying not to get sick and clean her up. Once we finally got her cleaned up, I had to take her inside with a onsie half on and a blanket wrapped around her bottom. At this point Noah was already chowing down on his Mac N Cheese and our food was cold. So needless to say, when Nathan got back with diapers we didn't have much for appetites but ate as much as we could. On our way home Jaidyn slept but we could see that she was a little uncomfortable and was lay her head funny and tilting her head really far back in her carseat as she slept. As we were nearing Eau Claire she kept waking up crying and you could tell she was in pain and when I tried to take her out of her carseat at home she cried as it hurt when I moved her. So we got her inside and she had a temp. of 104. Nate started to freak out and we got her in the tub, which actually did nothing for her temp. I called my parents...and by this time it is 9:00 p.m so she could see if my brother was around to watch Noah for the night incase we decided to take Noah to the Emergency Room. Well that didnt last long and Nate said we had to take her in. So at 9:15 we were on our way with Noah in his PJ's. When we got there the nurse said that Jaidyn did not have a fever which made Nate mad. As we got her into a room and was getting checked out her fever rose again to 102. She got checked out by the doctor who said she looked fine. She was definately not herself though. She layed on the hospital bed and didnt even try to get up. She was definately exhausted. So we sat in the ER until midnight when they finally released her. She did have a bad urine test so they thought she had a urinary tract infection and sent us to Walgreens to get a perscription filled. They then took another urine sample so they could test it again to see if it was the same. On Sunday the test had come back negative and so is apparently fine. But she still had her temp. throughout Sunday but the doctor said it must be something viral. That was so scary when we were rushing her to the emergency room. I just wanted to hold her tight and not let her go. Now that Monday is here and we got to rest up on Sunday, I hope the week starts off better.

new blog background

I came across this website http://www.thecutestblogontheblock.com/ today as I was blog surfing and thought it was time to dress up my blog. I have wanted to create my own blog header but just have not had time lately as summer has been so busy. I think this background will do for awhile and I will see what I can come up with in my header designing.

Dell Inspiron

Alright!!! So a Dell it is. I was so excited when I called Best Buy on Thursday after work to find out that I could indeed go in and pick out a NEW COMPUTER. It is somewhat strange however that I am the one that called them yet again to find out the details on the computer. Maybe it is because I was just always one step ahead of them and waiting waiting waiting for updates. So Nate and I went to Best Buy last night to pick something out and instead of explaining the entire story here (and they are never pleasant experiences!!!) I will just spare the details and say that 2 hours later I had finally picked out somthing that I was happy with. I really wanted to get the RED Gateway but I could tell that Nate wanted me to get the Dell. And it was someone stupid to choose the RED Gateway over the Dell because the Dell has double the hard drive. This computer is a ton better than the one it is replacing but that is the good thing for everything I have had to go through with the last one. Now I will hopefully be able to update on a more regular basis here!!