Just a quick note to tell everyone THANK YOU for all of the well wishes yesterday. It was a great day. And last night Mom came over and watched the kids while Marty and I went out. Thanks Mom! Right now, it's very early and we're packing for our trip to Houston/Galveston.
If you're looking for the freebie, scroll down to the post from July 27th. The contests run until Tuesday, July 31st.
I'll leave you with a video. No music today. One of my contests is to tell me your best joke. Well, Debi sent me some links to a few Will Ferrell videos. I LOVE Will Ferrell and this one is cracking me up! Enjoy! Talk to you on Wednesday when we get back!
Good morning! Guess who is 37 years old today? Yeah ... that would be ME! So, being my birthday and all, I get to do whatever I want. Unfortunately, we can't have a weekend-long blog party like we did last year because I'm headed out of town tomorrow. So, we'll just have to make the most of the day! Let's get started with some music!
Are you dancing yet? Don't worry. You will be by the end of the post so don't go away. There's a contest and a freebie. You just have to get through all of my blabbering first.
I sat down yesterday, like I have for the past several years on the day before my birthday, and created a layout to commemorate another year. I had the idea to put a circle for every year I have been alive. Turned out to be a lot of circles! But here is the end result. See the layout credits here.
FREE SHIT!
What fun would this party be without a door prize? So here you have it ... a brand new kit called The Grand Illusion. But before I give you the download links, I have to tell you to keep reading because there is a contest in just a minute. And now, proceed to download the papers and elements.
Here are some layouts I have created with the kit.
What's that? The song is over? Here's some Rihanna to keep you dancing!
THE CONTESTS
Contest #1 ... WIN MY SHOPPE! Use the above kit to create a layout. That's it. No other rules. I'll pick my favorite and that person will receive a link to every one of my kits! To enter, email me a link to your layout before Tuesday, July 31st. My email address is Robyn at ScrapArtist dot com.
Contest #2 ... TELL ME A JOKE! Most of you know by now that I have a pretty warped sense of humor so don't worry if the joke is a bit 'off' because you won't offend me. Just leave me a comment with your best joke. I'll pick my favorite 3 and those people will win a limited edition ATC kit. I made the kit a few months ago as a prize for 22 people. But three of the prizes went unclaimed so I'm giving them away here.
I'll announce the winners on Wednesday here on the blog. That's it for now. Like I said, I will be out of town starting tomorrow so have a great weekend!!
I challenge all of my blog readers (well, those of you who are digital scrapbookers) to take both of my challenges this week. I know a lot of you already play all of the time but I would love to see some new faces! Each week on Tuesday, I post a new Heritage Challenge and Christine (Fiddlette) and I alternate weeks for the Altered/Collage Challenge. So what are you waiting for? Get scrapping!
I'm still in Little Rock and I need to get to work. But before I left Dallas, I got a request for some blog music. Just call me DJ happyrobyn! Here we have Rascal Flatts: These Days going out to a very special friend!
As a sidenote, Rascal Flatts will be in town on Friday night. They must have heard it was my birthday! LOL!
Here's a fisherman's wet dream! (Oh don't be such a prude. You know it's a good pun!)
We went out to the marina by our house yesterday. It has been pretty much under water most of the summer because of all of the rain. But the water has gone down a few feet with the last couple of days of dry weather so we thought we would give it a try. The kids like to go out and feed the fish. You can see why by looking at these pictures. There are SO MANY fish that it's almost scary. I think they would eat you alive if you fell in! In the last picture, you can see that the water is still way up by the sign.
Marty and I used to come out to this marina when we were dating. There's a restaurant called The Oasis and they have a bar upstairs that has live music on the weekends. Lots of fun times there! But a different experience altogether with kids.
That's all I have for today. It was a pretty uneventful weekend. However, I did manage to give Nick and Mackenzie a haircut and we talked Austin into going and getting a trim. He's not so shaggy anymore. Today we went to see Ratatoulle with the kids (it was good) and then lunch at Spaghetti Warehouse. And tonight I have to pack. I'm going to Little Rock tomorrow. Our full-time girl at our gym there is going to part-time and I have to make sure they are transitioning well. So ... it will be a few days before I post again.
How about a good fishing song? Here's Brad Paisley: I'm gonna Miss Her.
It is a well-known fact that I hate shoes! I would say that I spend at least 95% of my life barefoot. I don't know when this happened because I used to be one of those girls who had about 100 pairs of shoes in her closet. But over the years, my shoe supply has severly dwindled. I think working barefoot for the last 5 years has played a huge role in my disdain for shoes. Currently, my biggest requirement when buying a pair of shoes is that they are easy to get off! Hands-free is preferred.
Where is she going with this?
I promise ... I am getting to the point! Anyway, I was at Kohl's yesterday looking for an anniversary present for Marty. And there they were ... right in the center isle ... my perfect shoes! I think the proper term is "slide sandals" but I always call them "soccer sandals" because that's what all of the soccer players wear. Anyway, I have pretty much worn out my current pair and this pair at Kohl's was screaming my name! I grabbed my size and off I went.
(Photo note: Lauren wanted to take a picture so here we have me and Austin right after I got home from work today. I know, I know ... he needs a haircut but I can't talk him into it!)
Well, I put them on this morning and had no idea that my feet could feel this GOOD! LOL! Every step is like a mini-massage for my feet. I didn't even realize the sandals had these "little spikey things" (as Lauren calls them) that are just awesome! So what are you waiting for? Go get ya some! Here's a link: Adidas Addisage. You won't regret it! Here are some close-ups.
And I have just officially proven that I can post about anything! Let's see ... music about shoes? Hmmm? How about Barenaked Ladies: Shoebox? Michelle will like this. I know she's a BNL fan. Check out her post here. Lots of great pictures from the concert she went to not very long ago! Front row seats at a BNL concert in Canada ... unheard of!
Off to a pool party with the kids. We're going to one of those places with the big water slides so it should be fun. I think I'll wear my new shoes!
It's no secret that I love cowboys and country music! Those of you in my Digital Art Quirks ATC swap received this Country Chic ATC last month. And you all must remember "hot cowboy" who made an appearance at my blog birthday bash last year. WHAT?! You don't remember him? Let me see if I can refresh your memory...
Anyway, when Christine posted our Altered/Collage Challenge at Scrap Artist this week, I was all over it. The theme? The Wild, Wild West! Actually, I thought I would go a different direction with my layout but this is just what evolved. I saw these Cowboy 10 Commandments on a nice framed picture at a roadside shop (see above ATC) a couple of months ago and thought I would use them because they cracked me up.
The Cowboy 10 Commandments 1. Just one God. 2. Honor yer Ma & Pa. 3. No telling tales or gossipin’. 4. Git yourself to the Sunday meetin'. 5. Put nothin’ before God. 6. No foolin’ around with another fellow’s gal. 7. No killin’. 8. Watch yer mouth. 9. Don’t take what ain’t yers. 10. Don’t be hankerin’ for yer buddy’s stuff.
Credits:Everything is by Maya at Scrapbook Graphics (except the cowboy). Background paper, journaling paper, hinge and rusty brads from Weathered Treasures. Gun and bottles from Wild West. Bandana and sheriff badge from Howdy (kit is now retired). Hand from Free Spirit. I found the jointed cowboy on the Internet at a party supply store and I fiddled with him and blended him into the background. Fonts are Antique Type and Typewriter. Created in Photoshop CS2.
And now for some music. I confess: I love Will Smith! I have ever since The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. However, this song is from one of his worst movies ever (Wild, Wild West, 1999) but the song is great. And the video cracks me up. Poor Salma Hayek. Good thing Will Smith was there to stop that pesky spider from crawling all over Salma's boobs!
How cool is this ... my good friend Krista thinks I'm rockin'! She has nominated me for a "Rockin' Girl Blogger Award." Thank you so much, Krista! This means I get to nominate five people. If I nominate you, it's your turn to nominate five others. Let's see, I'm going to nominate:
I've had Fergie's Big Girls Don't Cry video on my blog for a few days. She's lookin' pretty hot in the video so I thought I would cool it down a bit today. Here we have little Stacy Ferguson in about 1986 when she was in Kids Incorporated. I know it's hard to believe that is Fergie singing a Lionel Richie song to some random creepy clown! But here she is...
And speaking of random stuff, another friend emailed me this quiz today with random questions so I thought I would just answer them here instead of emailing the responses.
What time is it? 11:29 pm
What's your middle name? Marlyn (See scrapbook page here.)
What is the most recent movie that you have seen?Hannibal Rising (Didn't like it.)
A movie you have seen more than 10 times?Valley Girl (Love Nicholas Cage!)
Place of birth? Saginaw, Michigan
Do you lie about your age? Nope. I'll be 37 next week.
Favorite food? Steak (medium rare)
What's your natural hair color? light brown
Ever been skinny dipping? Hasn't everyone? (That's a yes.)
Ever loved someone so much it made you cry? Yes.
Ever been in a car accident? Several but never a bad one and none that were my fault!
I don't feel like talking today. Between kids and work, I'm all talked out. But I have listened to this song by Fergie about a thousand times with Lauren today. It's kind of a teeny bopper song but after about the tenth time listening, I realized it has a pretty good message. And I can't stop singing it.
Have you ever had one of those days that just seems to go on forever? Well, I had one yesterday. Not that it was a bad day. Marty and Austin are out of town so that left me with only 3 kids at home. I had to work since it was Saturday morning. My 9:15 class was packed so a few weeks ago, I made this really dumb decision to add an 8:30am class. What was I thinking? Oh well. It just means I have to get up a little earlier. But since Marty is out of town, I had to take the kids with me to work. My alarm went off at 5:55am like it always does but I pushed the snooze button for almost an hour! Then I got ready, read my email and told the boys to get dressed. Then I had the unpleasant task of dragging Lauren out of bed. We were all ready and headed to work at 8:00. One of the kids snapped this picture on the highway.
The kids were really good while I taught my two classes so I took them to Chili's for lunch as a treat. Of course, they noticed right away that the 2 banks right next to Chili's were having a big grand opening celebration with bounce houses, firetrucks, balloon animals, a rock wall, etc. So I told them that we could go for a few minutes after we ate lunch. Lauren immediately found the face painting booth and got a pretty little flower on her cheek. I thought it was cute.
Right next to the face painting booth was the 24-Hour Fitness booth. I filled out an entry form to win something so that we could spin the wheel. Prizes were t-shirts, key chains, day passes to the gym, etc. The wheel must have had about 30 spots on it and the grand prize was a 6 month membership to 24-Hour Fitness. Well, I let Nick spin the wheel for me and what do you think it landed on? That's right! We won the grand prize! So, lucky for me, the gym isn't even built yet. But when it opens in November, I'm going to be really in shape! LOL! Actually, it's right on my way to work so there really won't be any reason for me not to go.
After the fun at the booths, all of the kids wanted to attempt the rock wall. They have tried them a few times in the past but none had ever made it to the top and rung the bell. Here is Lauren's attempt. You have to realize that Lauren has the patience of a gnat! She looked cute in all of the gear and went up a few rocks and then jumped off. She was done and wanted to go back to the face painting booth.
So while Nick and Mackenzie had their climbing turns, Lauren was doing this to her face! ROFL! I thought the flower was cute but this butterfly was just awful! However, those of you who know Lauren know that she does everything her way and doesn't care what other people think! I guess this is a good thing.
Back to the rock wall... Mackenzie's turn. He is a little guy with lots of determination. Up, up, up he went and rang the bell. He's a money-oriented guy like his daddy and asked if he could have a dollar for making it to the top. I said, "sure." And then he went up another time and is expecting 2 dollars now!
That was a lot of work so he had to get a big drink! That's some high quality H2O! (Has anyone else watched The Waterboy with Adam Sandler a million times? Cracks me up every time I see it.)
And now it's Nick's turn. Nick is my very cautious kid. He really, really wanted to get to the top. I think he tried about 10 times. But he got too hot and just didn't make it. However, he did get further than he has in other times he has tried. I give him the big heart award!
Obviously, the whole time the kids were climbing, I was standing at the base of the rock wall taking pictures. After all of the kids came down, the guys that were helping everyone with the gear told me it was my turn. Um ... I have never climbed a rock wall before but it seemed like fun. I was wearing flip flops so I went barefoot (I hate shoes anyway!). Surprisingly, it was pretty easy. So I thought I was done. But they made me go up again so they could time me and take my picture. I made it in 32 seconds.
After all of the fun at the grand openings, we finally went home. Lauren wanted to spend the night at a friend's house so I packed her up and drove her over there and that left just me, Nick and Mackenzie (my two!). I say that they are "my two" because Marty and I always joke about the kids. Lauren and Austin are just like him and Nick and Mackenzie are just like me. It's so true in so much that they do.
After we dropped Lauren off at her friend's house, we headed to the pool. We have had a couple of really nice days with no rain! It was in the upper 90's so it was good swimming weather. We stayed at the pool for a couple of hours and then went home and waited for Mom to come over. She came to babysit while I went scrapping with some friends.
I am NOT a paper scrapper so I mainly went to eat, drink and chat with my friends. I did manage to get one page scrapped in the 4 hours I was there but it is terrible! There were 6 of us and we laughed so much! Somehow we got to talking hot country music artists. And then they wouldn't shut up about Keith Anderson. I have heard his music before but had never seen a picture. (But I have now ... look to your left!) A couple of them had been to his concert recently and told me I had to go to KeithAnderson.com. Somehow this turned to talk of tattoos, belly rings, tan lines, and other unmentionable things. Don't you see the correlation here? I guess you had to be there.
I actually got home fairly early. I think it was only about 10:30. Then Mom and I talked for a little while. I went to bed a little after midnight after the longest day in history!
I will leave you with a Keith Anderson video: Picking Wildflowers.
You may have noticed that my blog got a facelift. I hope you like it! I missed the red bike so it's back.
I've been going on and on for months about our new house. Thanks to all of you who have suffered through pre-construction talks, realtor problems, construction, closing, and my inability to get everything organized. Well, I told you that while Lauren and I were in Cleveland, Marty pretty much finished organizing the house. Of course, I have been home for a few days now and some of his work has been undone! LOL! But this is about as good as it gets at the England house so, as promised, here are some inside shots. I'll just do the downstairs today. The floor plan is below. However, our house is just a bit different than this because we have a third car garage and our patio is extended a little. But the rooms are all correct so come on in for the tour! (If you want to see any of the pictures larger, just click on them.)
Of course, you walk in where it says entry. If you look straight ahead, you will see the staircase and the living room through the foyer. I gave you a close-up of the plant thing in the nook. Why??? Well, because I made it and I'm proud of it!! LOL! I'm not very crafty so this is about as good as it gets. The vase was like $100 bucks but it had a little chip in it so we got it for $8. And then we found the sticks and marbles at Michaels. So the total cost was under $20.
We're still standing at the front doorway. If you look to your right, you will see the messiest room of the house ... our office. I'm a little embarrassed. I thought of cleaning it for the picture but why even try. This is just what it always looks like. In our old house, we could just close the doors. But now we have French doors. We didn't think that through very well! Now look to your left and you will see the formal living room. This is one of my favorite rooms. I have lots of old family pictures on the walls. The couch and chair are Marty's grandparent's furniture. And the rocking chair was a gift to me from Marty when we had Nicholas. You can't see very well but the table has a bunch of old photo albums on it. A couple of them belonged to my great grandmother. And inside the table, I have some old books, family bibles and other memorabilia.
Finally, you get to move out of the front doorway ... but not far! If you walk into the formal living room, you will see that it is connected to the formal dining room. There is a hallway that goes past the butler's pantry and into the kitchen but we will come back to that.
Now you need to go back in the foyer and walk straight ahead and you will see the living room. We decided not to have a television downstairs (except in our room) so this is mainly just a sitting/reading room. The walls still need more stuff on them. And if you look on the fireplace mantle, you will see stuff that needs to be moved. Somehow that picture of me and Marty just landed there and I need to hang it up at some point. My mom loves the picture frame because it just has some random family in it ... you know how picture frames come with pictures already in them?
Are you keeping up with me? Now we are walking out of the living room. If you look up, you can see the walkway upstairs and if you look straight ahead, you will see the foyer, staircase and formal living/dining rooms.
Now turn to your right and there's the kitchen. I love the kitchen! I'm not sure why because I don't cook much but it is a really nice kitchen. The island is huge! All of the countertops are granite and there's a nice tiled backsplash. If you look at the picture below right, you will see both of the most controversial items of the house!! LOL! I NEEDED the double oven and a larger sink (you know ... for when I'm soaking the pans I don't cook with!). Marty didn't think we needed either one. Well, as you can see, I got both of these things but I did have to compromise a little. I'll show you where in just a second.
Here's the compromise! I wanted ceramic tile all through the living room. But Marty wanted carpet. As you can see, he got the carpet and I got the double oven and big sink. Now back to the tour. You are now looking at the breakfast nook and just past that is a little computer desk. It currently has Marty's REALLY old laptop on it. Sometimes it will connect to the Internet and sometimes it won't. I never use it but the kids do sometimes.
We've been in the kitchen too long. Let's walk past the refrigerator and you will come to the little hallway that connects the kitchen to the formal dining room. To the left is the butler's pantry. I had to look that up online. Apparently you use a butler's pantry to keep your fine china for dinner parties and stuff. Whatever. We use it for storage and booze! You can see Lauren is eyeballing it already. I suppose we will have to have a locking butler's pantry before long! And to the right, we have our pantry. You can't really tell from this picture but this is the biggest pantry I have ever seen!!! From the door to the back wall, it's almost 9 feet! Crazy big but very nice for holding lots of snacks for the kids.
Now we're going to go past the living room and down the hallway. You will pass the coat closet and a powder bath. And then when you get to the end of the hallway, we will turn right. Now we're in the room I spend the second most time in ... the laundry room! Pretty exciting! We're going to get another refrigerator for this room but right now, it just has the washer and dryer, a cabinet and the litter box. Let's get out of here! Turn around and go straight ahead. You can see my bedroom.
But before you get in my room, turn right into my bathroom. This is a pretty cool room. It's like a big hotel bathroom. Marty decided he wanted slate all on the floor and in the shower. It turned out really nice. I couldn't get a very good picture but Marty and I each have separate sinks (not a double sink ... totally separate vanities). And the bathtub is nice but I haven't used it yet. It's really just a glorified drinking fountain for the cat! If you walk all the way into the bathroom, you will come to some sliding mirrored doors. If you open them, you are in the closet. It's big but it's a mess. It holds our clothes as well as Marty's baseball card collection.
And that concludes your tour of the downstairs of my house. I know I didn't show you my bedroom but the bed isn't made and there's nothing on the walls yet. Very boring. It's just a regular room with 3 windows and a door out to the patio.
Thanks for coming along. I'll try to get the pictures of the upstairs this weekend and take you on that tour although I can't promise clean kids' rooms or playroom!
My music selection today was easy. The radio station the kids listen to must play this every third song. I like the song but I'm hearing it a bit too much. It's Chris Daughtry: Home. And I'm playing this because I finally feel like we are home. Marty and I will celebrate our 12th anniversary next month and the whole time we have been in transition, knowing that we would be moving in just a couple of years. We plan to stay in this house until all of the kids are gone ... and maybe even longer than that.
Good night! I'm off to enjoy my evening. Marty took Austin to Arkansas with him this weekend so the house will be more quiet than normal. I'm planning to go scrapping with some friends tomorrow night if I can talk Mom into babysitting (what do you say, Mom??!!).
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