Celebrating Advent

A few years ago, if you'd asked me what I knew about "advent", I'd have told you, "Umm, nothing?"

I knew there were candles in a wreath, but I didn't know what they meant, or what order you light them in. Nothing.

But our new church (I still call it new even though we've been going there for over 2 years now!) has been very intentional about teaching about advent.  They've made it completely accessible to families, and have taught us how to teach our children about anticipating Christmas in a new way.  Two weekends ago, the family ministries department put on a "Take it Home Event" where families got to come and listen to a little presentation and then take home some fantastic advent resources.

...and I am EXCITED!!

Then, this past weekend, we had a Faith Family Fun Night, where around 15 families gathered to fellowship and make advent calendars.  Depending how how you 'do' advent, it's anywhere from 25-28 days - 28 days being if Christmas falls on a Saturday, where the first Sunday of Advent falls at the end of November (hope candle).  So anyway, I made my calendar for the full 28 days, and I gotta say, I'm pretty pleased with it!!  :)  It's so simple, but it was so fun to make; the kids got tired pretty quickly, and while Graeme helped a bit with it, he did have to chase Meaghan and make sure she didn't grab more cookies constantly.  So I ended up doing about 80% of it myself, but I had a lot of fun being in my "creative space"...  all I was given was some felt (color choices were not really given) some decorations, a pair of scissors, and a hot glue gun.  This is what I came up with:

Yesterday I stuffed the pockets with different activities... rolling up and tying those little things was tough!!  Sure fun to create an atmosphere of greater anticipation, though... and it's hanging right inside our front door.  

Birthday Thank-You's

More MemoryMixer fun... I've been letting this one sit in my 'drafts' folder for a few days because one of my blog readers was going to get these in the mail and I didn't want to spoil her surprise!!

My thank-you picture for Dustin's birthday:

My thank-you picture for Meaghan's 'family' party:

My thank-you picture for Meaghan's 'friends' party (yes, I sort of copped out and just replaced the pictures, but since there is no overlap from one event to the other as far as guests go, I figured it was OK):

How fun is THAT?  I still wrote actual thank-you cards, though... even though these pictures are a LOT of work, something about just whipping out a picture without a hand-written 'thanks' doesn't quite cut it for me.  That being said, this past year and a half, I've really been slacking on the thank-you notes.  Time to become more intentional!

I got them already!

So last night I'd uploaded my chore charts for the boys and me to the Staples Online Print & Copy Centre...

...and they were ready for pick-up today!

They look better in real life than they do in the jpg, too.  :)

A friend came over last night to swipe some pictures from my computer of her kids (wow, I can't talk tonight - sorry this is terrible sentence structure, but my lone brain cell is not functioning at 100%...)... and she saw my chore charts and was so impressed (?? really?) that I offered to make one for her little guy... just by replacing Dustin's name with Hudson's.  So now Huddy has an identical chart to Dustin's... won't they be surprised to find they're chore-chart twins?

Anyway...

Today I went for a workout with a friend.  She wanted to borrow my 30-Day Shred DVD to try, so we actually met at the church and worked out together.  It was a great workout - she was thoroughly impressed with Jillian, and even though she was tired & sore, she wanted to go ahead and try level 2, too.  We made it all the way through - what a trooper Monica is!  She may feel it tomorrow... this was her first time ever Shredding.  :)

Came home, made lunch, hosed off the driveway from the big pile of dirt we'd had on there before the weekend, showered, made lunch, put Dollie to bed, ran errands (including picking up chore charts and dropping Hudson's off to him), came home, woke up children to go swimming... swam with them for 1 1/2 hours, came home, made dinner for us and the Engbers family, had said Engbers family over, ate dinner, watched their 16-month old daughter puke all over the floor (wow, she ate a lot of dinner!), cleaned up, put kids to bed, cleaned up some more, and now... Graeme is watching a movie and I'm cleaning up our picture files.  And blogging.  Barely awake... so now, going to bed.

And there's my last 24 hours.  Full, very busy, but very fun.  We are blessed.

Melissa's Daily To-Do

Okay, okay, here it is!  :)  I couldn't resist attempting one of my own... it's not necessarily the be-all and end-all to my own personal chore chart, but it's *a* design.  I'm trying to be a little more girly... *sigh*... oh well, at least the boys won't mistake my chart for theirs!

Chore Charts

I've been having fun with my MemoryMixer software, as you can tell.  Blog layouts, birthday thank-you cards, and chore charts!!  I've just uploaded these to the Staples Copy & Print centre... and was even able to order "laminating" on them online... so I can write on them and wipe off as chores change. The kids (well, maybe not Dustin) have been begging me for something like this.  I hope my hours of design will pay off and the boys will be as excited about this as I am!!  :)

(I'm so excited, I might even make one for myself...!)

Sneak peek

'S nothing special, but I sure had fun creating it anyway!

Some progress

A few notes:

I am *close* to being able to tell you the cause of all the stress. Since some of my readers live really close to me, I still have to be careful. :) Be patient, mes amies, be patient! But the stress is sending me over the edge... leading worship yesterday was a bit painful and very much exhausting.

Meaghan has been ca-rabby lately! Not like all day or anything, but just cranky. Her gums have been swollen, gone down, tooth popping up, tooth popping down... but TODAY, the tooth is here to stay!! And guess who has a happy Dollie again?

Life with the boys is really hard right now. I am struggling.

I made my first digital scrapbook!! :) I can't share deets yet... sorry... it's a gift for someone. I am using a program called MemoryMixer. I like it a lot, but am running into a few glitches here and there. Not sure why....? But anyway, I have it mostly tweaked and mostly uploaded to Shutterfly.

I leave you with this: a note from yesterday's sermon: The question is not "Is God on my side?", but rather, "Am I on God's side?"

Tag - I'm it!

It's apparently a new thing out there - Tagging different bloggers with this survey.

A - Available or Taken: Totally Taken

B - Best Friend: Graeme, of course!

C - Cake or Pie: Pie....mmmm....pie.....*drool*

D - Drink of Choice: water

E - Essential item you use everyday: Computer & stamps

F - Favorite Color: Blue - or brown (like creamy caramel)

G - Gummy Bears or worms: Gummy bears, but either if they're sour!

H - Hometown: Vilna, AB

I - Indulgence: Buying myself new stamps

J - January or February: February - my birthday, Valentine's day, and my anniversary!

K - Kids & Names: Joshua (2 1/2) & Dustin (9 months)

L - Life is incomplete without?: My family and my stampaholism. And singing/music.

M - Marriage Date: February 27/99

N - Number of Siblings: One brother. Two brothers in law. One sister in law. One soon to be sister in law.

O - Oranges or Apples: Apples

P - Phobias or Fears: Mice, spiders...

Q - Fave Quote: "Give very little of yourself to others, and soon very little of yourself will be worth having." I used this as my high school grad quote.

R - Reason to Smile: They're upstairs sleeping right now. Joshua and Dustin.

S - Season: Fall...no wait, winter...no, umm, spring...I like 'em all!

T - Tag 3 or 4 People: Oh dear, I'm afraid I can't do this one...

U - Unknown fact about me: I'm a really insecure person.

V - Vegetable you don't like: Umm....I don't know - can't think of any!!

W - Worst Habit: Comfort-eating.

X - X-rays: Lungs, foot, teeth...I think that's it.

Y – Your FAVE food: Chocolate, peanut butter, or any combination of the two.

Z - Zodiac Sign: Pisces.

There. Now that THAT is out of the way, I can get on with regular blogging!

This is a card I did for Graeme's Dad for his birthday, for the "staff" party at the pharmacy. It's pretty simple, but it looked really cool in person. At least I think it did. I love the Weathered background stamp most of all, and I just can't seem to get away from the "direct to paper" technique. "Celebrate" is embossed.

The card I'm doing for our family gathering is WAY cooler, I think - I discovered a new technique the other day that I'm working on perfecting. I can't post the card, though, until a) it's finished, b) I give Sharon her birthday card, 'cuz it uses the same technique. I'd hate to spoil it for her, since she's always checking out my blog!

That's all for now - I'm going to try and post some more pictures since the operation seems to be up and running again. Wish me luck!

More Change...

This is a portion of the letter I sent to my Stampin' Up customers tonight:

Greetings, fellow stamp-and-scrapaholics!

Another year has nearly transpired in my endeavors to be a Stampin’ Up demonstrator, and what a year it has been! I enjoyed the company of 5 great ladies on a delightfully creative excursion in the Stamp’n’Cramp Club that we started last March and completed in December. We met on a monthly basis and created some really nifty projects – from basic stamping and embossing to more advanced techniques such as soot stamping, shaker cards, waterfall cards, velvet stamping, and faux metal. It has been just as fun for me to learn new techniques as it has been to teach them!

As much fun as it has been, it’s time for me to move on. My own scrapbooking projects have been sadly neglected in my efforts to pursue and meet business goals (as minimal as my goals have been). I’m still stuck on Joshua’s 9th month of life in his scrapbook (I haven’t touched his book in well over a year), and now Dustin is 9 months old and I’ve got to get back into the mode of preserving the memories of my children while they’re still fresh in my mind! I can use the 3-5 nights a month that I previously used on “business” activities and dedicate those to scrapbooking and creativity for my own purposes, which is the part of the reason I got into Stampin’ Up in the first place!

I also want to use those 3-5 nights a month to pursue other personal goals of mine, including musical endeavors, exercise goals (now I’m accountable, aren’t I? J), and spending more time with my family and friends in a non-business environment. The irony of it all is that home-based businesses are supposed to give you more time with your family, but I found that in my case, it was actually taking away from family time!

(some inapplicable content deleted here - basically about my plan to "make it" until the new catalogue comes out, and some current specials and promotions...then to have my demonstratorship terminated.)

I’ve appreciated every single one of you, not only on a business level, but also on a personal level. Please know that my “door” is always open for stamping questions and hints, even after my demonstratorship is terminated. I still love stamping, and my passion for creativity will likely not fade anytime soon!

If you have any further questions, want to schedule a “play date”, or want to get in on my “final hours” as a demonstrator, please don’t hesitate to call me ... or e-mail me ...

Blessings to each of you on your creative journeys!

In trouble

Good morning, world!!

I just got *blasted* from a friend for not posting in over a week! Ack!! Well, maybe that was a bit melodramatic, but I do feel badly that my blog has been neglected as of late.

Yes, life has been busy. After the pharmacy card project was finished, I then had to proceed to try and tackle Christmas!! Our personal Christmas cards will be late this year - sorry to all my faithful recipients. Oh, speaking of the pharmacy cards, I realized that even though I gave you all the stats on them, I neglected to tell you the grand total of actual cards all that hard work created...it came to 476 cards! So now you all know why your own card will be late. Joshua has been helping me make cards this year. He loves sitting next to me and stamping or playing with my punches and such.

Besides that, I have had some time away from the kids to do some much-needed errands. The other day, Graeme's parents took both boys for the entire afternoon while I ran to Ikea and other places around the city to do some shopping as well as some regular household errands. I didn't quite get done in the 4 hours I had, but that's OK. Yesterday, I had to drop off Graeme's mom's sewing machine back to her, and Charis (Joshua's cousin) was visiting there as well, so Gramma offered to keep Joshua for me as well so they could play together. Dustin was sleeping at home and Daddy was working from home yesterday, so it worked out so that I could run about 1 1/2 hours of errands and do my grocery shopping as well.

When I got back to pick up Joshua, Gramma was just about to take the kids out for a walk. So the 4 of us packed the sled and two small children to Bigfoot and proceeded to sled! The funniest thing happened - just as Graeme's mom was about to "lead" the kids gently down the hill, the knot came out of the rope holding the sled and the kids went careening down the hill while Gramma was left holding the rope!! It was hilarious - the kids almost ran into me (I was waiting at the bottom of the hill to take a picture). The snow was quite deep and I couldn't move out of the way fast enough. It was so much fun and the kids had such a blast that we let them go down another 3 or so times solo!! Such fun! I tell you, though, I was exhausted and my lungs were burning!!

Then last night Graeme and I started installing our new office furniture. There is some space in Graeme's building that was being leased out, but the old tenants' furniture was still in there and for sale. So, we got used desks that wrap around the wall (L-shaped) for a laughably cheap price. And we installed one of them last night! We had to redo the flooring in the office (long story!) before we could install these desks, so we've had our garage taken up with this stuff for a week but last night we got one set up and I have to say it looks amazing...it's going to my new craft area. And there is "under-desk" space for more than one set of legs, so now I can have a few friends over and we can all work in one space instead of me having to haul everything out to the family room. We are also installing part of the other one for our computer and "office" space, in the same room. Basically this is our Christmas gift to ourselves. We'll likely install desk #2 tonight. We want our garage back!

I've attached a picture that we had taken on Dustin's dedication day (oh yeah, we had Dustin dedicated last weekend!) - it's been a long time since we've had a family picture done (like, never before), so we figured we'd have an impromptu photo shoot when we got back from church that day. Hmm....maybe we'll have to wait on that picture. Something's not working, so you'll all have to wait a while longer!

This is long enough - and I have some more Christmas cards to finish!! Have a super day!

All Done!!

The pharmacy Christmas Card project is done!!!

It took:

• 1190 cuts with the paper cutter
• 238 scoring (fold) lines made
• 4284" of cord (or 357 feet)
• 952 brads (paper fasteners)
• 7140 stars embossed in batches of 15
• 21, 896 non-embossed stars stamped
• 1428 non-embossed images stamped in black
• 952 places colored in brown
• 2380 places colored in beige
• 952 holes punched (thanks, Sharon & Graeme!)
• 2 sore hands
• 1 blister (thanks, Sharon!)
• 38 man & woman hours

But the project is DONE!! What a relief!!

Running late!

Ha! I forgot all about my comment about posting pictures of the coasters and the Christmas tree the day after my last post! (By the way, I edited my previous post about Bob the Builder to make the pictures bigger. The way I originally did it, somehow they ended up really grainy and small...but I uploaded them again with a different format and they worked better. I was just experimenting the first time. So, if you saw poor quality pictures before, look back again and they'll be better.)

Okay, so as promised, here are some pictures. The coasters - I created one set as a gift for a friend who is babysitting for us the next two days. Click on the picture to see the enlarged version, and you should be able to read what's on the coasters. And the other set, the sunset & trees one, I re-created for another friend who wanted me to make some for her sister as a Christmas gift. I basically tweaked my original design that I posted a few days ago, and added some Night of Navy into the sky as well as a bit onto the grass to darken it up. I think it's better - but that's just my humble opinion!

I will post a picture of my Chrismas tree, but I want to wait till it's darker outside and we can turn the lights on, etc. So...I can't promise that'll happen tomorrow...but it will happen soon! :)

Tomorrow, I have a dress rehearsal for choir - our Festival Singers is putting on a concert this coming Sunday December 3rd at 2pm at Festival Place - tickets should be available at the door, I believe! So yeah, I have a big concert on Sunday, which I'm really looking forward to. I love the music - it's really great stuff! And this year they're adding strings and brass...it's gonna be GOOD!

We had a meeting last night over coffee with the lead pastor and his wife from the church we are considering attending. Who'da thunk that li'l ole us, who aren't officially attending The Park, would be significant enough that the senior pastor of a "big-ish" church would actually take time to meet with us? We had a really blessed conversation with them - talking about everything from spiritual gifts to staff accessibility to the church's history to baby dedications and everything in between. So yeah, we're fairly certain that we will be calling "The Park Pentecostal Church" our home church. And...Joshua has actually been excited about going to church there, so that's always a good sign - he hasn't been much excited about church for the last year or so, so this is a nice change. And he is such a sensitive little guy that we know that his opinion of things (in how he acts) is valuable!

That's enough for today! Have a good one!

Christmas and stampin' mania

On Friday and Saturday, I had a coasters & candles stamp camp. Eleven ladies came - 8 on Friday night and 3 on Saturday night, and it was a blast!! Even Joshua got into the stamping fever!! He got to help Gramma stamp some of her tissue paper for her candles. He was quite pleased with himself. I know they don't look like they're having much fun, but they're really just concentrating quite hard!

I plan on posting some of the pictures of the items the ladies made, but I need to get their permission first. In the meantime, here's a couple of items that I do have permission to post ('cuz they're items that I did myself in order to demo at the camp)!

Yesterday we also started decorating our Christmas tree. Joshua was quite beside himself with glee when I asked him if he wanted to help Mommy dig out the tree and start decorating it. "Christmas tree...LIGHTS!!!!!" He was fairly excited. He did a great job helping me decorate. It's not finished yet, as I ran out of time yesterday, but it's coming along. Even Dustin got into the spirit and went straight after...you guessed it...the cords!!

Baby sleeping...

Okay, I have to say I'm pretty proud of this. I know it's nothing earth-shattering, but let's just say it's better than a little sticky-note taped on the door!! It doesn't show up super-good in detail, but I did some distressing, lots of embossing, lots of direct-to-paper, etc. I also made a black "faux metal" piece, and used pearl-ex to shade in the lines of the sleeping baby - and in real life it looks quite amazing. Then I finished it off with ribbon and buttons - now I just have to get a proper hook to put on the door so I can hang this sign up when my munchies are sleeping! I guess you'll have to swing by for a visit if you want to see the real deal and not just a picture of the real deal!

Today is a "regular" sort of a day - well, not really, I guess! The "regular" stuff such as laundry...dishes...etc...but I also accomplished some other stuff already - I'm painting a mirror and some picture frames to stamp up and see how they turn out. And tonight is THE NIGHT!! What night, you ask? Well, not quite as romantic as spending the evening on a candle-lit beach dinner with Graeme, but it's the next best thing, I think.

Nope, tonight is girls' night!! A group of us have been trying to get together for home-made pizza for a while. The menu: home-made bbq (or is it tropical? I can't remember) chicken pizza, chicken wings of some sort (I think honey garlic), caesar's salad, cookie dough brownies, sweet'n'salty popcorn, and drinks of some kind, non-alcoholic, of course.

Then, they are going to teach me how to play dominoes! My experience with dominoes is limited to standing 'em up in a pretty little pattern and then knocking the end one down and watching them all fall.... I've been told you haven't lived until you've played a rip-roarin' game of dominoes!

Well, back to the "regular" until tonight....but even the "regular" is rewarding. Clean bibs? Oooh yeah, baby!

Have a gooder!

Bless you!

Oh, my latest creation...I've been eyeing up this set for a while, and finally got it. And I played with some different types of embossing - and I'm rather pleased with the result! Of course, scans don't always show through quite the same, but I think the ideas come through. I did a mixture of black and silver embossing powder for the "U", and did "bless" part with a variation of the faux metal technique. If my Clubbers are lucky, I'll show it to them next meeting! :) The only thing I'd change is to put the "bless" word on top rather than on the bottom, but I didn't want it to block off the top of the "U". So I'd have to find a different way of fastening it. But overall I'm happy!

Likely more later...or tomorrow, depending on how eventful the day is today...

Play-time!

For my stamping buddies - here's my latest creation! WOO HOO!! The kiddies are napping, and I'm PLAYING!! Dare I say it again? WOO HOO! I won't say it too loudly, though, lest they wake up...and I'm not done playing yet!

Hmmmm...who do you think will be the recipient of this card?

Time to go keep playing...enough of this blogging bit! Priorities, priorities...

Date night

Okay, so here's the deal. We finally found a babysitter. Her name is Cherie, she lives around the block from us. She's young, but Joshua loves her and we like her and she seems to like us. So we've been easing her and Joshua (especially) into the babysitting thing, and he's doing well. Last night I nursed Dustin and had Cherie put him to bed while I was still here. Then we left - and left her to deal with Joshua and try to get him to bed! It took a long time, but she did it, and we're so proud of both of them! Joshua sure milked his time for all it was worth, though - and apparently didn't stop singing until 9:30!!! This, from a kid who would normally be in bed between 7:30 and 8:00. She got him down a bit later, but he sang, and sang, and sang...he obviously had a lot of happiness in his soul! Here is a recent picture of my sleeping beauty:

So anyway, Graeme and I left the house, and proceeded on "date night". Let me tell you, when you haven't had the chance to go on a "date" in a while, and you don't really want to spend the next 3 hours eating, there's not much to do in Sherwood Park!! We drove around for a while, and discovered the only pool tables that we could think of in town were in a BAR. So yeah, we weren't going there. The bowling lanes were packed; not surprising for a Friday night. We coulda gone to a movie, but we were going to turn into pumpkins at 10:00, and besides - we get away from the kids so we can have some US time - not so we can sit in the dark and not say anything to each other for two hours! So we ended up at Second Cup where Graeme had a white mocha that was so bitter I almost died (I'm not a coffee drinker and I don't think there's much hope for me). I had a vanilla bean hot chocolate topped with whipped cream and cinnamon, vanilla sprinkles, and chocolate sprinkles. Mmmmm! I'm in heaven! It was SO yummy! We got home around 9:50, Cherie left around 10:00, and then we watched an episode of a TV series Graeme's brother downloaded and lent us. Then we went to bed. ZZZZzzzzzz.......

The point of this story is that it's almost like we're dunces when it comes to the dating scene! If you're not into bars, or eating for 3 hours, then I guess you have to get pretty creative!

On another note: can you post comments, yet, Mom?

On another note: I DID get to Ikea the other day, after Graeme got home. He let me out on parole. :) Heh heh. Anyway, I got to go, sans children...I felt like a kid in a candy shop! I got my stuff...and my craft room is in chaos as I'm in the process of rearranging and reorganizing. Ooooh! I'm so excited! Graeme thinks it looks great. When he was at a meeting the other night I took his Hitachi cordless drill and installed my wall units...woo hoo!

Here is another little piece of work that I've created in my craft room...the technique is called "ghosting". My Clubbers loved it...at least I think they did, either that or they were faking it! If you look closely, there are 3 layers to the flowers - an outline, a light purple part, and a white "ghost" in behind that. That's why it's called "ghosting"!! LOL! Where DO they come up with these names?

Well, that's all for now. I believe Dustin is awake now, so I should go feed him and such. Tonight we're off to a meeting for Pioneer Bible Camp - their annual general meeting. Should be interesting - we've never been to one before, but are going tonight.

Ta ta for now!

Nifty stuff

Okay, so most of you know that I'm a Stampin' Up! demonstrator. I LOVE experimenting with new techniques ALL the time!! - making cards, doing scrapbooking, etc... so occasionally I'll post one of my latest creations. This one is from my last Club meeting (I meet with a SUPER bunch of ladies - I love 'em to bits!). The technique below is "reflections"...or whatever fancy name you want to call it. I didn't put a sentiment on the front because I wanted to leave it blank for when I need to use it! Ain't it pretty? Bah da bum BUM bum...I'm lovin' it!