'Almost 8' birthday fun..

Noah is a Labour Day baby, which means the poor kid usually has to celebrate his birthday right around the time school starts. It kind of sucks. This year, I got it together with my neighbour to have a combined pool birthday party this week with her son, who happens to be Noah's best friend, and who also has a September birthday. She did loot bags, I did the food, and it was probably the easiest party I've ever thrown. The kids had a blast swimming and playing some fun pool games ( even though it was a tad chilly) and we had the added bonus of built in babysitters with the lifeguards being there to watch them.

A fabulous idea, if I do say so myself! ;p

I'm posting a few photos here, but I'm kind of limited as I don't really want to put pics of other people's kids on the blog, so these will have to do.

The birthday boy, floating with a friend.

Noah adores the outdoor shower. It's probably one of his favorite things about the pool. ;p

We played 'bobbing for apples', the pool version.

The cake. I used to be a great cake baker, but over the years, I've slacked on doing the Martha thing, and it shows!

a sweet handmade card from best friend's 4 year old sister. Awwww.

Lots of Bionicles were acquired, which made this almost 8 year old pretty darned happy. :)

Have a safe and wonderful Labour Day weekend. We're probably not going to be doing much 'labouring' except for a bit of much needed yard work, and hopefully just hanging out in the hammock and enjoying the last few hours of summer vacation. How did it go by so fast?

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a very lazy Saturday

Spent today doing not much of anything. Which kind of feels good, since we've been going, going, going here all summer. We went to a 'garden' party last night at friends, with kids in tow, got home way too late, and then had to get up way too early to drive dh to the airport for a business trip. So I'm wiped, and so are the kids.. they didn't really appreciate being dragged out of bed at 7am, and once home from the airport, Noah went back to bed until 1pm! I've been kind of sittin' around all day in the heat, doing a little bit of scrapping, and just relaxing. :) I'll probably head to the pool after supper for a swim, in the hopes that it will refresh me and I won't have to retire at 8pm tonight. ;p

Here's a layout I did today while the little guy slept, and dude #1 was at a playdate. So happy to have completed a page, b/c I've been feeling rather mojo-less these past weeks. Getting my DT box from AC kind of helped that along, the new lines are incredible, and I can't decide which one I like best. This layout uses the travel line, with some travel stickers by Martha Stewart thrown in. It's a bad stitch, it really is very straight and lines up nicely irl, but I was way too lazy today to rescan it. *yawn*.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend! Summer's almost over, and I'm kind of depressed about it..

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Flickr fun...

Since I'm still photo-less ( not counting my vacation pics, and some taken after the crash) I thought it would be a good excuse for a blog post to do my version of Melissa's Flickr quiz. I *heart* Flickr- so many beautiful images to look at and get inspiration from. And the mosaic maker is so cool. I've done a few layouts using it, and it's an easy way to get a lot of pics on a page in a perfectly lined up sorta way, which I like. ;)

I'll post links to the photos individually once I figure out how to go back and find each one. If you want to join in the fun, type your answer to each of the following questions into Flickr search. Using only the images that appear on the first page, choose your favorite image, then copy and paste each the URL's into the mosaic maker (3 columns, 4 rows). ( I totally copied and pasted these directions from Mel's blog, lol).

Enjoy!

Here are the questions:
1.What is your first name? (Melanie)
2.What is your favorite food? (sushi)
3.What high school did you attend? (Saint John High)
4.What is your favorite color? (lime green)
5.Who is your celebrity crush? (Ben Harper. Oh yeah.)
6.Favorite drink? (red wine)
7.Dream vacation? (Australia, same as Mel. :))
8.Favorite dessert? (chocolate cake)
9.What do you want to be when you grow up? (photographer)
10.What do you love most in life? (my children)
11.One word to describe you? (passionate)
12.Your Flickr name? (notes from home)

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Every scrapper's nightmare.

My external hard drive bit the dust this morning. Bob's taking it to a dude now to see if they can recuperate the files. It's still under warranty, so that's good. And as it figures, I hadn't backed anything up since at least the beginning of summer, except for my Maine vacation photos, b/c I've just been too busy.
Crap, crap, crap.
I know, I'm an idiot.
Please say a little prayer for me that they can retrieve everything- I'm freaking out thinking about it.
Sick to my stomach is more like it. :(

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The Lake, lovely no matter what the weather

So, we did end up going to my friend's cottage last week, and alas, the weatherman wasn't wrong. It did indeed rain for the 3 days we were there, but it was ok. It's a perfectly lovely place, no matter what the weather. My kids are troopers, and I love that they're not easily put off by a little ( or in this case, a hell of a lot) of rain. They swam, they fished, they played, caught toads, picked blueberries, and Bobby learned how to drive the boat- an amazing 3 days of adventure for 2 active boys. Someone needs to figure out a way to bottle that mountain fresh air too. My boys are very hard to get to bed most nights, but up here, they're almost begging to sleep by about 8pm. It always amazes me. I've already scrapped about the lake in this layout, but here's a few photos I took to show you how beautiful it is, even in crap weather. My friend Norah and I had so much fun together, and I'm always so grateful that she invites us up here to spend part of her vacation with here every year. Love her!

Here's a particularly ominous looking shot taken shortly after we arrived Wednesday afternoon.

Then a sunbeam gave us some false hope...

The kids didn't care about the rain. They wanted to fish and swim...

We ran out of dry clothes. Not so fun.

Here's Lily enjoying the scenery. Her fur is almost normal again. And soft from the lakewater.

Ahhhh, the good life. We didn't want to leave.

I went to work on Saturday, and came home with some new American Crafts rub-ons and more papers. I just couldn't resist, I'm so weak. It's foolish of me, since I should be getting my AC box any day now... pretty please?! This collection is N I C E. Really, really, really nice. I'd say it comes close to being my fave.

I had to sit down and scrap with it Saturday night, even though I was exhausted, and should have gone to bed. I made these note cards... easy, cute, and very quick. I think these kinds of little cards are going to be perfect for those teachers gifts I always seem to be scrambling to make on December 21st or so, so I'l be whipping sets of these up every week or so until I have enough. Famous last words. ;p

I'm particularly fond of this awesome, funky flower paper. Yum!!

Ok. That was the longest post ever for me.

I'm off to watch the rest of '21'... hope it's worth staying up for!

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Weather woes

The weatherman is messing with our heads here. I know, everyone's talking about it, but it's enough to depress even the most optimistic person. (that would be me) After enduring massive amounts of snow this past winter, I was looking forward to a lovely hot & sunny summer, but so far it's been a bust. It's rained almost every single day this month, and most of June too. The kids and I are supposed to go stay with a friend tomorrow at her cottage, and because getting there entails crossing the lake by boat, with the 40 mm of rain we're supposedly going to be pelted with tomorrow, it's not looking good. I tried to get a pic from the weather network's website on here, but can't get it to work- let's just say that the 10 day long range forecast is enough to make me want to move to Arizona! While we were in Maine, we had only 2 1/2 good days of beach weather. For me, beach weather means laying on the sand, reading a good book with a hard ice tea next to me, and sweating enough to make me have to dunk myself into the frigid water every 20 minutes or so, but I only managed to wade up to my waist a few times on the days that were hot. We did, however, enjoy many beautiful morning walks on the beach in the fog, ( see above photo) which was lovely, albeit chilly and damp. It was amazing to be able to walk there in 1 minute. We took day trips to Boston and Portland b/c of the rain, and got stuck outside of Boston in one of the heaviest downfalls I've ever seen. But it was cool actually visiting 2 beautiful cities, and it was thanks to the rain that we went, because if it had been hot and sunny, you know where I would have been. ;)

I'm not in a blogging mood lately. I've been scrapping up a storm for assignments, and am gladly taking a little breather from scrapping for the next few days. I did however get my hands on some of the new AC stuff ( no, did not receive the box yet, but I'm hoping and praying it's soon!) and man, this is probably my most fave collection ever from what I've seen. It's pure deliciousness. Hopefully by the weekend, I'll have enough mojo back to actually use some of it!Speaking of American Crafts, if you haven't checked out the DT's stuff on the blog using their fab Kid's line, go now! Some totally cute projects there.

And lastly, a huge congrats to my uber talented friend Moon who made the AC team earlier this week -I'm seriously thrilled for her!

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