A huge lesson in kindness from a little girl.....

Today, I was paying for some books from the book fair at Kylie's school. One of the ladies there started telling about a little girl in 5th grade who came in with a little boy (not the most loveable one either) and her little purse. Every year, this same girl brings another child in and buys them a book with her own money. This year, this little boy was her beneficiary. Now, if that doesn't make you feel like going out and helping someone today, I don't know what will. I just had to share that. It almost made me cry, and I am going to have to go find this little girl. I just need to see her. She is so young and already is a huge inspiration to so many people much older than herself. So, lets all go out and be inspired by her this week..... buy or do something special for someone. And, don't tell anyone about it- except me. :) Please post a little note here if you did something for someone because of this little girl. I would love to hear about it!!

Some New Pages and a Challenge!! :)

Using Creashen's Pure and Birgit's Early Fall @ Catscrap:

Using Ida's Calendar @ Catscrap:

Using Syrin's Chilly Morning @ Catscrap:

Using Creashen's Bye Bye Birdie @ Catscrap:

Using freebies from Blog 4 Scrap:

Using Kasia's A Life Inspired for the Hodge Podge Art Blog Challenge (Love Letters):

And, here's an awesome challenge from blog 4 scrap:

Make a page inspired by this painting or one other (see the blog) by Vinnie Pierce!!! You can also read an interview from her there!!! :)

Love Letters Challenge....

I love this challenge and wanted to share it with everyone (whether you are a scrapbooker or not). There is a really neat idea link in it (Friday Letters) which you may want to check out!!


Here it is from Hodge Podge Art: (click on the purple words) (This is a different Angela btw. :)

Love Letters
Hey friends! Angela here with this weeks challenge. I was cleaning out our office space a few weeks ago and came across a box of love letters my husband and I had written to eachother throughout the years. We sat on our dining room floor that night reading them together. It was sweet and fun and embarrassing and thought-provoking. But mostly it just made me remember all the reasons I fell in love with my husband and it reminded me not take those things for granted. This was sort of the inspiration for our challenge.
My layout this week was also inspired by the site Friday Letters. Quite a few blogging buddies have recently posted about this site and I've been wanting to start this project for weeks now. The idea is to take 15 minutes each week to write a love letter to your children. I decided to make an album of "baby love letters" for my two boys.
I want you to scrap a love letter. You can scrap this love letter to someone or something you love, you can scrap it to yourself, scrap a love letter that was written to you, or put on your hybrid hat and make a love letter to give to someone. There's no rules here, just get your love on!
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This week, two scrappers will win the kit Tales from the Manor by Paislee Press and myself. I hope you love this weeks inspiration as much as I do!

Here is an inspiration page made by Jacque for the challenge:

Cookbooks from Catscrap!! :)

I would love to make a family cookbook that has recipies from our Grandmas , Moms, aunts, uncles, etc. I think that if I get better at making these cards, I might try to do it to preserve these recipes for my girls. Here's one that comes from Jason's family. :)

Here's what I used to make the card. It's from Catrine @ Catscrap, and it is gorgeous!! The best thing is that it is very versitile and can be used for regular pages as well. My favorite part is the coffee beans!!

We have been exchanging international recipes in the CT forum at Catscrap, and now we are doing a real recipe exchange there using this kit. I loved learning how to make crepes with lingonberry sauce from there, and now we'll have a great collection of recipes to print out. Everyone is so nice at Catscrap, and I love learning about where everyone lives. There are so many cool things that I didn't know. :) I'm excited that we will be exchanging boxes of goodies for Christmas too! We are going to draw names and then make a box from our country to send to the other person's country. That way, we will all be able to see and try some new things!! It should be so much fun!!

I made this page using the freebies from BLOG4SCRAP blog!! Thank you, girls!! :)

Fairytale Weekend...

I felt like a princess this weekend! My knight in shining armor rescued me from my not-always-so-exciting SAHM existence and swept me away to Cincinnati for a special 36 hours that I won't ever forget!! :)

Here's Kylie ready for her big sleep-over at Grandma and pa's:

As soon as Mommy was done snapping pictures, Daddy took

them off for their candy-filled, spoiled rotten, fun time!! :)

Put on your halos girls and be good- or else.... :)

On our way to Cincinnatti, we saw "Touchdown Jesus". This gives me a good laugh everytime I see it! I love this building. It's so cool! It was fun to dress up and be all girly! Lisa and I went shopping for dresses with her daughter a couple days before. It took us about 4 hours to get almost everything we needed. Jas went to get his suit the day of the wedding and was done in about 10 minutes! Guys have it so easy sometimes!
Braiden (right) home from Iraq for a little bit, Ellie (middle blonde hair), and Nicole (the bride) at the reception. Friends from Jas' work (Barry and Lisa)
Vicki and Jan sat at our table too (also from where Jas works)

They had salad, rolls, pasta salad, chicken, pork tenderloin with an awesome cherry wine sauce, and green beans. Then, there was cheesecake and a CHOCOLATE FOUNTAIN!! Yummy!

Jas only thinks to take pictures when something embarassing happens to me. Here I am literally stuck in my dress. I had forgotten that it was all pinned so that stuff underneath wouldn't show. My arm was stuck in the air until he was finished taking pictures!

I GOT TO SLEEP IN!!!!!!!!!!!

I went down for some coffee, and we sat and watched part of "A Night at the Museum". It was fun to be so lazy and to have so many tv channels!

If we would have checked, we would have found out that the

Steelers were playing the Bengals and could have gone!
We parked a ways back and walked to the place we would eat.

The houses in this area were beautiful! Many of them looked like

something from Germany. Jas and I like these tall ones too.

We were going to eat at a sushi place, but it was closed.

So, we wandered down the street and found this cute little diner!!

It was a tiny place that was started 80 years ago and looked German.

They made award-winning hamburgers.

There was a train that ran around the top.

The chilli fries tasted just like my mom's stuffed peppers... yum!

The entrance was so short.

Then, we stopped at IKEA on the way home!

It was so much fun, but I will tell about it in the next post!!

I used Syrin's newest kit Chilly Morning and Karen's Templates Vol.1 (Dagmar's LO) for this LO. Available @ Catscrap:

New Blog and Challenge with a FREEBIE!!

I just started visiting Dido's blog, and I think she's an amazing scrapper!! She has made a freebie and has just started a challenge blog. Their challenge is to use the freebie in a page!! You can visit and download here: Blog 4 Scrap

Well, if you want to scrap this weekend with some great new goodies, I've got some ideas!! Here's a new kit from Vinnie: (Click on image to take you to all her new stuff!!)

And, here's a page I made with it and some of her other kits: (click for detailed credits)

And, After 5 Designs has a ton of great new stuff!! They have a new collab that is LOADED with beautiful and totally unique elements!! And, it's only $5 for 5 days!!!! It is really worth it!! And, the great thing is, it's not just for Halloween....It's great for anything, but especially vintage looking pictures.

Nicky made this page, and I just love it!! I don't think that she's posted yet, but you can check later in the gallery for credits from her....

And this page from me uses Ah Designs' Be Bold Kit and Karla's Date a Star Kit (Both from After 5 Designs)

I wish....

.... that I could have a nice, tidy house and that neighbors just dropped in for coffee or to talk. I would love to have that kind of atmosphere, but for the life of me, I don't know how to make this happen.
*First, my house is a wreck, and I'm embarrassed to have anyone just drop by.
*Second, it makes me nervous to think about what I would talk about.

But, I think it's so fun to have people over! We used to be the place that everyone hung out at when we were first married. Jason's cousins always came over for hours of video games. But, as everyone got married, we stopped having tons of cars parked at our house on the weekends. When the girls had a lemonade stand, it was so fun to have lots of people to talk to.

I need some ideas.... Here's the site that got me thinking more about this. I've been wanting to do this for a while now.... http://www.homemadesimple.com/en_US/nbrcontent.do?contentType=cl&articleId=ar125
I need to do two things.... clean (I need suggestions on great places to donate clothes and toys. I would love to give them to someone who really needs them. ) . We have too much clutter. And, then, I need to find a way to make our place feel open to people to just drop by.

Does anyone have any practical ideas on what you would do to make this happen? Please leave a comment if you think of anything. :) Thanks!

Here's my new favorite country song.... "LOVE STORY" by Taylor Swift. I love the way it sounds!!

Oscrap's Designer Spotlight

It's Fei Fei's Stuff this week!!! And, I am always stalking her blog and shop; so, I had to go grab her gorgeous freebies and do the challenge. Wow!! This challenge was hard for me!! I don't like to cover things up and get messy (with paint in real life or digital either apparently!). But, I tried to let go and paint over my picture.... it was fun!! Here's a link to her great freebies and the challenge: http://ozone.oscraps.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9607

And, since Therese and Ann wanted to see..... here I am in all my fish kiss glory....

Now, don't you wish you wouldn't have asked?!!! LOL!!

Aren't these the cutest plates that you've ever seen? I would love to have a set of them! But, alas, they are $25 per plate! And, with my luck, we would have one broken within a week! :)