Halloween Card

I found the cutest stamp set at Michaels a few weeks ago. It is by Recollections and is called "My Little Monsters". It was only $6.99 and with my handy dandy 40% off coupon, they only cost me approximately $4.20. I think this set has quickly become one of my all time favorites.

I colored the "monsters" with my Copic markers (which is becoming another favorite very quickly!) and then matted them on black cardstock. I matted all four of those on some purple cardstock. You can barely seen the purple, but I thought it gave the card a nice extra touch.
The Ghouls Rule stamp is an old Studio G $1 stamp that I had. The green glitter paper was cut with the Martha Stewart Goo punch. I pop dotted the sentiment so it stands up a bit.

So the card actually came together pretty quickly. The longest part was the coloring of the monsters. I will be making some more these. I just love those "Little Monsters"!

Thanks again for visiting me!

A final post on last weekend.

Last Saturday after Connor's soccer game, we went to the Festival of the Little Hills. This is located in Old St. Charles. I went there a few weeks ago and showed it in this post. It is located right on the Missouri River.

We ended up finding parking by the kid's area. They had a bunch of inflatables....
a tent to do some crafts....

which we probably should have waited until later in the day to do because the boys got quickly bored when we went to look at all of the crafty booths.
Chris and Connor leaving the kids area and heading up to what I came for: the crafts and bad food!
It was very crowded. With the weather being so nice I think everyone had the same idea that we did.
I thought these bird houses were cute. This booth had a ton of cute ones.
These next two items were my favorite. First up, a "Shutterbug". Get it? Isn't that just adorable! ?
I can't remember what this next one was called. But being a scrapbooker/card maker, I loved the scissors being used for the head. The body is made out a shovel and I think the name had something to do with the shovel.
I didn't purchase any of those because they were a little pricey, but I sure did like them! I actually didn't purchase anything but food. :-) The last time we went to this festival it seemed to have a lot more holiday items. I like to get my Halloween and Christmas decorations from these type of vendors so we can have some unique and different items to decorate with. Not this year though. There just wasn't that much there. The boys did get a puppy marionette. And I bought deep fried Oreos for the first time. They were okay. I had to force Chris and Spencer to try them, but I couldn't get Connor to try them at all.

So that is what we did last weekend! Thanks again for visiting me!

Connor's First Soccer Game

This was how we started last weekend. Connor had his first soccer game of the season. The weather was perfect. It kind of felt like fall.

This is Connor's 2nd year playing. He wasn't very aggressive last year and we are hoping that this year he gets in there a bit more.
He has a different shirt on in the above picture because we didn't have their shirts yet. The coach had sent them out to get their names put on the back of the jerseys and I think he forgot them at home and had to send someone to get them. Which is understandable because his son got sick as they were walking out the door and had to miss the first game. Poor guy! We had the jerseys by the 2nd half though.

Look at Connor's form kicking that ball. Watch out David Beckam! (That is the only famous soccer player I know. lol!)
He did get in there a little bit more this game. But what he mostly does is dance around the outskirts of the action. And by dance, I kind of mean that literally. He does this hippity hop thingy. I think that he thinks if it looks like he is moving, no one will notice that he really isn't anywhere near the ball. At least that is my theory on the hippity hoppy action he does. I need to catch that on video and share it!

I have one more post to share of what we did last weekend. I will share that in a few days.

Thanks again for visiting me!!!

What a Weekend!

We had a great weekend! A busy, fun weekend. Instead of showing everything in one post, I decided to split it into three separate ones. That way I won't have a boring blog this week!

I'm going to start with today and work my way backwards. First off, I have to say that we had the best weather. It was in the 70's both days. This is just unheard of for Missouri in August. It is usually in the 90's and so humid that it feels like you get hit in the face with a wet towel every time you go outside.

Because the weather was so nice we took advantage of it and pretty much played outside all weekend. Today we went bike riding on the Katy Trail. This is something we have been talking about doing for a while now. Today was perfect for it! My pictures didn't turn out as well as I would have liked because we took the small point & shoot camera instead of the big SLR. Next time I think I will bring the big camera. :)

Chris has been wanting to get a bike and today we found this one for sale on Craig's list. So we picked it up early this afternoon and then hit the bike trail.
I haven't found a bike for myself yet so I rented one. And we rented a tag-along to go on the back for Connor. Oh my! I haven't rode a bike in a long time. And then to top it off, I was pulling an extra 50 lbs. behind me. Although he kept telling me the whole time that he was doing all of the "work" to pedal. Trust me, he wasn't.

We had a lot of fun riding the trail. We only lasted about an hour but I don't think that is too bad since we are just starting out. I think we are going to try and hit the trails a couple of times a month.

After our bike ride, we found a restaurant at a local winery. For all of you folks that aren't from this area or have never visited our part of the country this is probably surprising to hear of a Missouri winery. There are lots of them! We don't go very often because neither Chris or I are wine drinkers, but the part of the trail we were riding today goes right through the wineries.

We sat outside on the patio.

The view is really pretty. I wish I had my SLR with me to really capture how pretty it is.
Here are the boys after dinner walking through the grape vines.
See... they do grow grapes right here in Missouri!

I will post later this week about what we did yesterday.

Thanks again for visiting me!!!!

Rainy Mondays + Stubborn Dogs

Equals a very frustrated Christie!

This morning I could not get Maggie to listen to me at all. It was raining outside, which she normally does not like and you pretty much have to force her to go out. Today I could not get her to come back inside. She would come to the back door, scratch it or whine to be let in, and as soon as I opened the door to let her in, she would run off. This went on for an hour. An Hour!! I know some people will say I should have just left her out there, but if I did that she would just scratch up my back door. I offered her treats to come in, but as soon as I got her to the door she would turn and run back down the stairs. I finally went and got my Flip Video camcorder to record my frustration.

If anyone out there can help me get this dog to listen to me better, I'm willing to take any and all tips! We are doing puppy training at Petsmart right now, but I honestly don't think it is working very well. Somedays she does okay and then other days (like this morning) if she isn't in the mood to listen, she won't. Help!!!!!

Thanks for visiting me.

Hot Air Ballon Sightings and Cards

Last Thursday I woke up, opened the blinds in my bedroom and was greeted with this sight.

It isn't very often that I see a hot air balloon floating by first thing in the morning. Actually I have never seen a hot air balloon first thing in the morning. lol! I thought this has to be a good sign that the rest of my day was going to go okay. I was a little nervous because I was scheduled to get a wisdom tooth pulled later that day.

My appointment went well though. I think it helped that I opted to get sedated while having the tooth pulled. I think it makes it much easier to just go to sleep and then wake up 15 minutes later and have it all done. I was pretty tired all weekend. Just felt like napping a lot. I'm not normally a napper so that was pretty unusual for me. Today I feel pretty good again. My mouth doesn't feel swollen anymore, so I think I'm on the road to recovery!

And since I felt pretty good today I decided to go in my scraproom and get a little creative. It has been awhile since I created anything, so I kept it pretty simple. I got the Everyday Button bits stamp set from PaperTreyInk.com a while ago and have been wanting to use it. It has so many cute images that incorporate buttons. Even though these are pretty simple, I like how they turned out. Hopefully I can get into my room some more this week and really get to some scrapping and card-making! I haven't been on a good creative roll in a long time.

Thanks for visiting me!

The River City Rascals Game

I mentioned in my last post that we went to a minor league baseball game on Sunday night. It was the end of season get together for Connor's baseball team. We have never been before and this place is about 15 minutes from our house. And it was a lot of fun! I think we will need to go back. :)

As you can see from the 1st picture there, they don't have huge crowds. Since this was our first time going, I don't really know for sure if this is normal or not. It was really hot Sunday, so that might have kept people away.

My two boys looking handsome and sweet.

At least for the moment this picture was snapped. lol!

Remember in the last post when I said we saw racing hotdogs and tacquitos? Well I forgot to add that there was also a racing eggroll, the River City Rascals Mascot, and a giant tortoise. I'm still not sure why the giant tortoise was there. I must have missed that part of the introduction. These guys all represented a certain section of the ball park. You have to feel sorry for the section the tortoise was racing for. I mean they had NO chance. The tacquito was racing for us. And he won! We all got coupons for a free energy drink from Quik Trip. I really don't drink those but it was fun to win!

And of course, you have to have some sugar disguised as

sticky Cotton Candy.

Can you see that sugar racing through his veins? :-0

One very cool thing about these games is we can get so close to the field. One of Connor's teammates was given a ball by one of the players. So after Spencer saw that, he decided he had to go hang out down by the field too. He wasn't so lucky.

Remember that sweet picture of my boys looking into the camera at the beginning of this post? Yea, that lasted about 2.1 seconds before it turned into this:

Tomorrow I'm having that wisdom tooth extracted. I just want it to be over with. I think the part I'm dreading the most is not being able to eat or drink anything for 6 hours before I have it done. My appointment is at 1:30. It is going to be a long day.

Thanks again for visiting me.

Yea, I am a bad blogger.

I'm still here. I just keep forgetting to update this blog. We are starting to get into our busy season again with school going and both boys starting soccer. Spencer started practices last week and Connor starts this week. So I am once again a Soccer Mom. :)

I do have some exciting news. I got me a Mac! A Macbook Pro laptop that is. I have been wanting one of these for years, and last weekend it was the Tax Free weekend here in MO for back to school shopping. One of the perks of this weekend is that computers up to $3500 are tax free. So we decided to go ahead and get one. It is so pretty!!! Here I am right after we made our purchase. I don't know if you can tell in the picture or not, but there was a huge line to get into the Apple store. Chris waited in the line for us and it took about 45 minutes to an hour just to get in the store.


I signed up for the one-on-one tutoring they offer in their stores. My first class is this Saturday. I hope I feel well enough to go. I forgot that I'm getting a wisdom tooth pulled on Thursday. Ouch! I'm not looking forward to that. But it has to be done. So I'm not sure if I will get on here again this week. I hope too. We went to a minor league baseball game last night and I have some pictures to share. We have never been to a minor league game before. It was a lot of fun. And I felt like I was sitting in a scene from the movie Bull Durham. LOL! There were cowbells being rung and racing hotdogs & taquitos. Good Times! I will try and get the pictures posted before I go under the dental knife later this week. After Thursday, I plan on being sedated on some good pain killers. I hope!

Thanks again for visiting!

Some Project 365 Pictures

I'm still going strong on my Project 365. I will admit that I have missed a few days of taking a picture, but I'm going to go back and fill in those gaps with some generic shots. You know, things like the kind of shampoo we use, groceries, etc.

I said I was going "strong", but now that I think that over, "strong" might have been the incorrect word choice. I have been taking the pictures, but getting the pictures printed and journaling about the pictures has not been done for months. I did just order 100 prints from Shutterfly, so as soon as I get those, I plan on sitting down and getting caught up on my book. It will probably take me a week to get caught up.

Anyways, here are a few of my recent favorites.

Spencer blowing bubbles at Maggie in the backyard. Maggie wasn't sure if she should be afraid of the bubbles or play with them.

This is cabbage plant that Spencer brought home from school last year.
It was for a contest to see who could grow it the biggest over the summer months. Let's just say Spencer isn't going to win this one. I'm just really happy that it is still alive! I saw this butterfly flying around it one morning and grabbed the camera to get some pictures. I was pleased with how this one turned out. I do wish the butterfly had more color so you could see it better against our house, but it is still a nice pic.

I love these next shots!
I went to take Maggie for a walk one evening and saw this huge storm cloud in front of us.

And then I noticed lightening in the cloud.
So I said, "Sorry" to Maggie and I ran her back to the house, dropped her off and got my camera. :-)

The lightening in that cloud was so cool!
I took about a hundred pics and got some really neat shots.
My favorite is the one below.

Thanks again for visiting me!