Today: The Zoo.

The weather here today is stunning. Just gorgeous. So the boys and I joined our neighbors and went to the St. Louis Zoo. Along with the rest of the city. It was seriously crowded! It took forever to get through the traffic and find a parking spot. I really think the entire city that didn't have to work today (sorry Chris!) was at the Zoo. 

The boys at the front of the zoo 

when we first got in there.

We saw some fish. There were hippos here too, but I didn't get a good picture of them. 

We saw elephants.

And more elephants. The elephants were really out today. These two would bang that green container and food would drop out of it. 

And we saw penguins. 

We also saw cheetahs, brown bears, black bears, reptiles, gorillas and other assorted animals. It was a great way to spend this beautiful Friday. 

Unfortunately the nice weather is ending today. This weekend is going to be rainy and possibly some snow mixed in. Yuck! And tomorrow is the first day of Spring! I want this nice weather to stick around! 

Thanks for visiting me! 

Spring Break Fun

The boys are on their spring break right now, so last weekend we decided to drive to Ohio to spend the weekend with family. We went up to Columbus, OH and went to their science center, COSI. (Be warned now: this post is extremely photo heavy. These are all pictures of our visit to COSI.)

This is their Grossology exhibit. The boys really liked this one. :-P

Here is Chris carrying 

Connor out of a LARGE nose. 

Next up was the Ocean exhibit. Here are the boys in a submarine. It was a pretty tight fit in there. 

Around the corner from the submarine was a really fun cave with all kinds of water activities. The boys ended up a little wet after this. Thank goodness it was a really warm day! 

I included the picture below because I was really impressed with how well our new point and shoot camera did in these low-light conditions. We got a small Canon camera to have on hand when we didn't want to lug the big DSLR around. I was very happy with these pictures! It is not as good as the big camera, but great for these kinds of outings.

After the Ocean exhibit and getting a little wet, we went outside for a little while. It was a really gorgeous day in Columbus, OH. 

I think it was around 70 degrees. 

The boys are "lifting" a car in the photo below. 

Next up was the Gadgets area. 

Here is Spencer getting a little wind-blown. :-)

We also got to see our very first (and hopefully our last) game of RAT BASKETBALL!!!! 

Those are real, live rats playing basketball. 

And here is Connor cheering on his Rat. (Our rat won!)

We finished up our day with a little experimenting in the Gadgets area. We only had time for two experiments, but as you can see from the photo below, it was an "explosive" experience! 

We dropped Mentos into some soda and got ourselves a soda geyser. This was a very easy one to do, and we are going to try and replicate it here at home. It was a huge hit with the boys. 

So if you made it to the end of this post, THANKS! We finished off our weekend by having dinner with Chris' family and the boys got to see their cousin Brocke play some hockey. I also got to do a little outlet shopping, which is always fun for me! 

Thanks again for visiting me! 

I'm so excited!!!

I just found out that my Maggie layout (from the post below) was featured on the Club CK (Creating Keepsakes) Gallery highlights page. Woo Hoo! I have never, ever had my scrapping noticed by anyone but family and friends. 


Here is the link to the page at CK.  I'm the second one there. This is so exciting to me. 


And this isn't even the message board that is holding the scrap olympics. I made it for that event (I didn't win there), but went ahead and posted in the CK gallery too. I'm so glad I did! 


Thanks for visiting me! This has just turned out to be an extremely awesome day! 

I made a Layout!

I honestly don't think I have made an actual layout in about a year. That is shameful, isn't it!? I seem to be more into card-making and mini-albums lately. 


One of the scrapbook message boards that I frequent is holding a Scrap Olympics this month. The idea is every week there are different "events" held and we can sign up for them. This week the event I signed up for is Best Sketch. This is really good for me because it is getting me back into the "scrap zone". 

So here is the sketch we had to work with and below is my layout: my first of Maggie. 

I'm really please without how it turned out! Below are bigger pics of each individual layout. 

I made the flourish swirls myself! I took a straight row of bling that I had and curved them into the shapes that I wanted. I'm really pleased with how they look. 

The butterflies are rubons that I placed on a piece of white cardstock, cut out (very carefully!), and then adhered just the body down, so the wings would pop up. 


When I saw that sketch with the butterflies, I knew that I had the perfect pictures for it! 


Thanks for visiting me! 

My Busy Week

Last week was our spring Book Fair at school. This time around, my two Book Fair co-chairs and I decided to tackle the Spare Change contest along with the Book Fair. We actually held this the week before the book fair. The idea is that the kids bring in their "spare change" and at the end of the week we add up all of the different classes and the top classes get a gift certificate for a free book to the fair. 
Since the theme of our book fair was the Book Fair Diner, I used my cricut to cut out these ice cream scoops to show our progress all week. Every day we earned $100 in spare change, we added a scoop to our cone. If we made our goal of $1,000 for the week, we got to put the cherry on top. As you can see by the picture below, we made our goal!!! 

I cut all of the letters and the scallop border around the window out with my cricut too. And now that I'm looking at the picture, I can see that we forgot to put how much we collected for Free-For-All Friday. We were also setting up the book fair on Friday, so I think that got lost in all the other things going on by that time. Oh well! 

This spring fair went much smoother for us than the fall fair. The fall fair was the first one for the three of us and was a huge learning experience. We were like pros this time around! 

The picture below shows Spencer shopping with his class at the fair. The picture isn't the best, but it is the only one I have. 

I forgot to get a picture of Connor shopping. :-(


I spent pretty much all of last week at the school. So I haven't been able to do much creating lately. I hope to get back in the swing of things soon. I have some birthday cards to make for this month. Plus one of the message boards I visit is holding a Scrap Olympics this month. I already missed the first week of competition, but I'm hoping to enter a few events. Since I was the big loser in our family Olympics the boys held here last week, I'm hoping to redeem myself in the Scrap Olympics! 


Thanks for visiting me! 

My DIY Stickles Storage

For awhile I have been trying to figure out a way to store my Stickles upside down. I know this is the preferred way of storing them so that way they are ready to go when you need them. 
Yesterday, I was in my scrap room cleaning it up and reorganizing some things, when my lightbulb went off! I finally thought of what would work for me. So then of course, I stopped organizing and started making my new Stickles storage. 
After much trial and error, it finally ended up like this:

And I love it! 

This is basically what I used to make it. My Cricut, Gypsy, and a left over plastic divider from my Cropper Hopper paper holders. The baskets hanging on the wall are from Ikea. What I designed is a plastic holder to be placed in the middle of the basket to hold my Stickles upside down. 

I designed this on my Gypsy. I made a rectangle shape to fit snugly inside the basket. Then I placed nine circle holes that fit the Stickles. This is the part that took some trial and error. I kept thinking I had the measurements right on the rectangle, but then after I cut them, they would be slightly too small or slightly too large. 

This is what the plastic insert looks like. It fits perfectly in the basket right on top of the middle bar. I cut two for each basket and glued them together to make it sturdier. 

And here are a couple of close-ups. Since I have 3 baskets hung, that gives me room to store 27 bottles. I have 5 open spots right now, so I have a little room to grow.  

I realize this won't work for everyone, but it was the perfect solution for me! Those baskets and rails from Ikea are super cheap and since the plastic inserts are something I don't use for their intended purpose, this was a very economical way for me to store my Stickles upside down! 


If this is something you think you might want to make, here are the measurements I came up with. 

Rectangle:

Width - 4.81

Height - 3.61

Circle

Width - .84

Height - .75

I set my Cricut blade on 6 with Pressure on Max and the Speed on Medium. I did a multi-cut of 7 times on the plastic. 


It took a while to cut them, but I just set it and went onto to do other things while it was working. It didn't cut them all of the way through, but it was enough for me to punch the shapes out of the plastic. I do not have a deep-cut blade for my Cricut, so I did this with just a regular blade. It would probably work a lot easier with a deep cut blade. 


I'm so happy with my new storage! I love the way it looks!


Thanks again for visiting me! Have a great day!

A Few Cards...

These are some simple, easy, fast cards that I made last week. Even though they are pretty simple, I thought they turned out nice. 

This is a Valentine card I made for a friend of mine. I stamped the hearts, filled them with red stickles, tied the twine around the red cardstock and then finished it off with some black lines to frame it. 

And this is the birthday card I made for my brother. Happy Birthday Craig!  I stamped the candles, colored them in with Copics, tied the twine around the top and stamped a Happy Birthday sentiment inside. Super Easy! 


I think I like this easy approach to card making. Sometimes I get too caught up in making bunches of layers and adding all kinds of elements. Less can be more! 


Thanks for visiting me!