Summer Swimming

Yesterday, like most days, we spent the evening in the pool. Did i mention that we have awesome neighbors? Our kids have spent the last few years over to their house swimming in their pool as often as they could. This year they bought a bigger pool and offered up their smaller pool to us. It's not so tiny though. It's a 18' around by 4' deep. The kids absolutely love it! We love it. We actually use it more than we thought we would. The two older kids still go swim over to the neighbor quite often, but DarRell and I swim in it at least 4-5 days a week. It's great.


ok - back to what i was saying. Yesterday, like most days, we spent the evening in the pool. Yesterday the kids decided they wanted to invite some friends, and then DH sister and her kids came over to swim too. We had 11 people in that pool! Can you believe it!? It was chaotic! Good thing that Sam doesn't like to stay in the pool long cause that was just way too may people for me.

Rianne. She's such a swimmer and soooo independant! She refuses to wear her floaties now, which totally

gives me a heart-attack every time she gets in the pool. She just jumps right in and swims though. Crazy. She still plugs her nose when she goes underwater but Daylon, the boy who sinks, is trying to teach her to go underwater without plugging her nose.

DarRell is such a goober, but he's a great dad

Sam started taking his first steps about a week ago. He'll walk if nobody is watching him, but when he catches someone watching him, he starts to show off and falls, so he'd rather crawl.

Daylon and his new best buddy, Preston. I think he's spent more time here in the last week than he's spent at home. That's ok though, i love that Daylon finially has some friends that aren't "family"

One worth watching

ONE AMAZING MOVIE!!!

definately one to watch.
check it out: The Painted Veil

MEN!

particularly my DH (ya... call it what you want)

would it hurt to have a opinion... any opinion... good, bad, indiferent..... just something! COME ON!!!

It's impossible to have a conversation with him. I just wish this man would think for himself! Man! I hate being married to a drone! GRRRRRRR!!!

I guess it is true. Don't ever ask a man what he's thinking, it usually is nothing!

Road construction

There are times in a persons life when they should have a camera attached to their wrist. I missed a perfect picture opportunity.

We were traveling to visit my parents this last weekend... a three hour trip north. There was a bit of road construction on the freeway and we were moving along pretty good, watching the road crews and whatever, when this big caution road sign comes up. Guess what it said!

"PLEASE DON'T KILL US"

HAHAHAHAH - i've never laughed so hard in my life! I've never seen a road sign like that before. And it was a honest to goodness construction road sign. I WISHED i had my camera then. Of course we were traveling at about 50 mph so i wouldn't have gotten a good shot at it anyways but, it was such a hoot!

anyone seen these signs ever????

gotta love the rebellion... or lack of?

I guess I'm living vicariously through my kids or something and I know I'm begging for trouble and i will be cursing myself when it actually happens. But, why when you give them the permission to just go crazy, they don't.

A few years ago my dad sat Daylon down to give him his summer haircut, and he came out with a Mohawk. I wasn't super upset but it did take a while for me to accept it. Last year we did the same thing only i was the one to give him his summer "Mohawk". It wasn't as crazy as what my dad did and when it was down, it looked like a decent haircut.

This year as we were cutting his hair, i asked him if he wanted a Mohawk. He said no. My heart about broke. I have to admit it... i LOVED his Mohawk. I miss it. But he did say he wanted green hair. I had some leftover color gel from Halloween so we started experimenting with colors. Black, blue, gold, red and hot pink... it was a no-go on the hot pink. He finally decided that he wanted to go permanently blue. After turning it around in my head for a few weeks, i thought I'd be OK with it. While visiting my parents, my sister and i were out shopping and passed by a Taylor Maid shop and decided to stop in. They had blue dye! I was so stoked! I brought it home to Daylon and he was just beside himself! After him talking himself blue in the face trying to get me to do it right then and there, we finally broke out the dye.

Here's the hour long process:

Bleaching out his natural color so the blue would be more bold.

I think he changed his mind about it all right about now.

he was liking the bleach blond... i wasn't so sure.
EVERYONE has bleached blond hair... EVERYONE.

Putting in the blue dye... this was fun! Rianne was even hoping she'd get in on it.

Yes! It was THAT blue!

The final blue product. I didn't leave the blue in as long as it said. Guess i got chicken. It still turned out really blue though.

It's faded quite a bit now since he's been swimming everyday. But i still have almost a whole bottle left of the blue dye so if he wants a "touch" up, I've got plenty.

Funny thing about all this? One mother came up to me during school lunch at the park, and asked me how i dared do this! Her kids were NOT allowed to do this ever! This is coming from a mother whose kids are rough. You know, the mega tattooed momma with the wild kids who terrorize the town. I mean, come on!!!!!!!! it's just hair. When summer is over, it's getting cut off, and is not allowed to have it during the school year at all. I think it's reasonable. He could be doing sooo much worse... my kid is a mild, even tempered quiet kid who wouldn't hurt a fly. He's just looking to be different and i love it.

This totally cracked me up though: There was one kid there that had a tall Mohawk all slicked up and he looked over at Day and then looked at his mom and said "i want blue hair like that!"... LOVED IT!!!!!!!

Here is how it looks right now........ still loving it but I'M wishing it were a bit more blue.... maybe it's time for a touch up.

He looks like a geeky rebel with the glasses on. So terrible of me to think so and even worse of me to say out loud. But hey! He's my geeky rebel and i love him to death!

i swear they know who i am...

It NEVER fails! NEVER!

Let me explain. I HATE Wal-Mart. Don't get me wrong, Wal-Mart is where i shop.... several time a week. Yes, so incredibly red-neck of me but it's true. But then again, what do i have to choose from really? Living in a little town... Wal-Mart is about as big as it gets unless you are made of gold, which I'm not.

I used to love to go there and get my pictures developed. Who can beat the 12 cent prints or whatever they cost? But when i started getting a little more creative in my scrapbooking, i decided that i liked having my pictures different sizes than 4x6 and started printing them out at home. I still go there to copy my pictures to disk once my memory card gets full though. But can i tell you that if it weren't for Wal-Mart being the only place around here that does it, I'd stage a boycott? The last two times I've gone there to have my pictures put to disk, they have lost them both times!!!!!! Not only lost them but gone as far as saying that their computer doesn't even state that I've been there to upload them! But lo and behold, i have the receipt (OK - it's not a receipt because it very plainly states "NOT A RECEIPT" but this is what you get when you have an order)... from their computer!!!!! Here's the proof:



It frustrates me to no end that it happens to me every time. I swear they know who i am and they watch me as i upload my pictures and then they purposely erase them off their computer to see if someday i'll go off the deep end. Today i almost went off the deep end. It's beyond words how angry i was. Thankfully, i've learned not to erase my card until i know that the pictures are safe and sound on a disk and that it actually works.

I guess it's my fault for letting my card get that full. I really wanted to get everything to disk so that i could take more pictures of my kiddies. I got as far as taking some of Daylon and ran out of space. Here are a few i took:

I'm still trying my hardest to figure out how to take pictures without getting a funny light or glare off his glasses.

Anyone have suggestions? i think i've run out of ideas. Obviously there is only so much you can self-teach yourself and get the results you want.

new room in the works? maybe...

well, last night i vented to DH about how frustrated i was that i can't get motivated to go downstairs and scrap. It's just too cluttered and too small of a space. I told him that we REALLY needed to finish up the basement and get the kids into their own rooms so i could reclaim my scrapbook room back again. Although, that's not the arrangement we settled on, this is:

* We could move the kids into the big tv room downstairs where it is unfinished but it has the necessities like a finished bathroom down the hall, lights, carpet that is just kinda layed down, a tv, and stuff like that. We just don't have all of the electrical done yet so we can't put up sheetrock just yet (grrrr on our electrician! we've been waiting for over a year to come back and finish what he started... bad thing is that he's our neighbor... UGH!)
* I can get back into my scrapbooking room and have it set up the way i'd like it finially! YAYAYAY!


I know that it's going to take MUCH longer than i want it to but here's hoping i can get a fire under DH's butt and get it done sooner than later.

*white bead board chair rail height
*sheet metal walls - i'd love to show you a picture but i can't find one anywhere! We have a local mexican resturaunt here called Pepperbelly's. It's such a cool place. It's got sheet metal walls, and sheetmetal tables. They use magnets to hold up their specials on the walls. Which makes me think, i really need to get some of those REALLY small, REALLY strong magnets.
*upper wall shelving for all my mason jars full of ribbon and buttons. A great place to put all the stuff that i don't really need right away.
*a 40" tall center work table. A kinda large one. One that i can spread out on and create up a storm and still have room to see what i'm doing. I want to be able to work standing up if i want. I could always get a tall stool if i didn't want to stand. But it seems that i do great stuff standing up... i don't know why.
*old antique frames and such. I have some GREAT old frames that had been sitting outside for ages. They've got old white paint chipping off them and they have such an amazing feel to them. I'd love to hang them on the wall in my room. Oh and i wanna find a old screen door to do the same thing!
*i'd really love a picture curtain too! maybe a line with clips on it to put my favorite pictures on? I don't know... i'm still playing with that idea


I have a few ideas in mind on how i want my room to look. But i'm really needing more ideas... like paper storage.

I have these...





but i want these....











would they work in a kinda smallish room? They are quite the pretty penny aren't they? I'm not sure i can justify the price. Is there a better idea?

AHHHHHHHH - so many ideas and not enough income to put it to a reality! First thing is first though... getting into my room. And this weekend, it WILL become a reality!

COLOR is our friend

Lisa, head principle of The School of Scrap, put up a monthly challenge on the School Website. I was actually VERY excited about this challenge! Using crayons on a layout is something I've NEVER done before. After thinking about it for some time, i remembered that i had the perfect pictures to go with the topic.



I'm sure I'm going to be hearing it from Rianne when she gets older about putting her bare butt all over a layout and then spreading it across the whole WWW!

But, as for right now, she's tickled pink that she's on, yet another one of my scrapbook pages. And she finds it hilarious that she's got a naked butt! LOL. Ya we thought it was pretty cute too!



For this layout i was flipping through all my piles and piles of paper to choose from and come across this funky, natural fiber paper stuff. I thought that it'd go pretty good with my layout and i was using it before i even had a second thought about it, which is VERY unusual for me. I usually fret over my papers. In fact, more times than not, i spend much,much, MUCH more time picking out paper than i do putting the whole thing together. Ya - it's a pretty sad sight. I had three pictures of my naked beauty to work with and decided that all three were just too cute to pass up so i used them all. I enlarged one, shrunk one down, and then left the other as a 4x6. I really wanted to make the emphasis of the page on her naked little behind. I sewed the edge of the larger picture to frame it and matted the head on one to make it stand out a little bit more. I printed out the words and the arrows and then colored in them using my kids crayons. Cut them out and then outlined them in black marker to make them pop out a little. Used some of my favorite AC flowers as a accent and VOILA! a cute layout! Although i think the pictures make the layout, not so much the layout itself.

i don't care what you call it...

Just doing some surfing on the web looking for some Damien Hirst exhibits (because, ya.. .well, he's at it again if you haven't heard) and i happen to stroll upon this. Perhaps its the old pre-med student in me or just the plain fascination of the human body but i absolutely found the whole place mesmerizing.

I found myself looking through a lot of weird stuff. Lots of awesome stuff. And well... just stuff. Which then spurred on the thought that gets brought up so often with scrapbookers: what makes a artist an artist, and can you really call yourself a artist if you just put pictures on a piece of paper. I've come up with my own little conclusion: Art is in the eye of the beholder. Art comes in so many forms. There is art everywhere you look. If you don't see it than you aren't looking hard enough. Or maybe it is because you are looking too hard.

I personally don't really call myself an artist. It's not because i don't think i am, but because i really don't think the title suits me. I'm not exactly sure what i would call myself. But i do know for a fact that art is a part of my very core. Always has been... Always will be.

*I believe that you don't have to love someones work to call them a artist.

*I believe that EVERYONE is a artist in someway or another.

*I believe that my daughter and my two sons are artists and they are at the top of my very long list of AMAZING artists! (as is my incredibly talented brother. I just wish he could make a living at it, he totally deserves it!)

*I believe that life isn't worth living if you can't see the beauty and art in everything around you.

I don't care what you call it! If you feel like you are an artist then you ARE an artist! Who cares what people think anyways?

*SIGH* What i wouldn't do to just go wandering around museums. Walk towns over looking at street-side art. I want to be in the middle of it all. I'm craving it more now than ever. But... no... i have to live in a tiny town where there isn't so much as a few fields, open skies, and mountain backdrops to look at. Beautiful and comforting as it is, the homeyness of it all is almost stifling. I know people would give up everything they own to live in a town like this, who could blame them. I, for one, am one of them, expecially since the chaos of busy places stresses me out. But then again, who can say? Small towns are all i know. Someday. Someday i'll do it, and i'll have my small town to fall back on.