SrapZ n' More

Awesome Gracie Moment...

A while back I had taught Gracie the saying, "girls rule and boys drool" and she thought it was just the greatest thing ever.  While we were going to sleep last night we were talking about personalities and how people behave.  Gracie is in a small class of only 5 children and only one of them, Ryan, is a boy.  She was telling me how mean he has been this year and I explained that he was probably acting out because he was the only boy.  So she thought about it and said, "yeah, that's true. Last year when he had friends he only regular drooled, this year he super drools!"

Can't make that stuff up!!!

Scrapping Gracie's Birthday

Taking some time on this rainy Sunday morning to scrap Gracie's 5th birthday celebrations, while watching Independence Day (a favorite feel good movie).  Gracie and Daddy have gone to Shop Rite and I am enjoying some quiet time and my favorite hobby.

Using Melissa Bennett's Party Palooza from Sweet Shoppe.

Scrapping in My Hotel Room

Here I am in rainy DC trying not to fall asleep until later tonight.  This would not normally be hard except that I've been up since 4AM to catch the train down here.  I promised Gracie we would watch Wipeout together via phone at 8pm so...here I sit, propping my eyes open.  What better way to keep awake than to keep my fingers busy scrapping right?  Here's a little something using Laura'sKathi's Gabs kit.

Here's a couple I did of Father's Day. I worked on these on Sunday, I think...

I'm on a roll this week!!!!

Three more layouts.... all featuring Mary Fran's Summer Splash Kit

These are a tribute to my brother Michael and the house he bought on the lake so that we would have a family retreat.  We are so thankful to him!!!!

Meet My New Niece!!!!

Meet Angel Altiero!  She's 8 weeks old and the sweetest little thing!!!  I am hopelessly in love. She's 100% German Shepherd and her Daddy is a police dog with 134 confirmed take downs!!!  My brother Michael just brought her home yesterday and she already follows him around everywhere and seems more comforted when he is near.  She is the most adorable puppy!!!!
More pictures to come ;-)

Finally some new layouts!!!!

Getting some scrapping done.  Don't look for too many credits.  I'll do what I can.  I have combined a page quick page from Dani Mogstad's Country Fair Brag Book with one of her backgrounds and the alpha from Circle of Friends and come up with page one of my summer album:

A star is born!!!

Gracie took to the mic for the very first time last night and we were all truly blown away!!!  She got a lot of awesomes and strongs in her scoring and she made it though the whole song w/o anyone needing to save her!!!  Better than I did on my first song. 

After you've watched it once, go back and look again to watch my nephew in the background.  It's priceless.

Gracie's Pre-School Graduation

I'll start with the layouts.  The long story later ;-)  I'm using Melissa Bennett's Lil'Grad kit.

Scrapping good time

I'm really enjoying playing with Kathryn and Velma Balint's more recent kits.  This layout uses a background from their Social Butterfly and elements from Velma's Bloomin' Retro. 

PMS can be good ;-)

As I slowly make my way into "the changes" I am finding that my PMS symptoms are getting worse.  Last night I got a whole two hours sleep of a very non-contiguous nature.  Nightmares and hot flashes were my companions in the wee hours as well as a few M&M's.  Well it's not like I was going to suffer alone, LOL.  My nerves have been a little frazzled for about 4 days now, which is much longer than usual. 

So why the title of this post?  Well, I realized last night that around that time of the month all of our emotions are on overdrive and not just the "negative" ones.  For the past several days I have had moments where I have been so overwhelmed by my love for Gracie that I have been moved to tears.  Last night as I was not sleeping and she was I gently stroked her hair and the depth of emotion was heavenly.  The joy I have gotten from her hugs and snuggles over the past few days is totally worth the lack of sleep and irritability that goes with it. 

Maybe the trick for me to survive this change will be to focus on the positive and beautiful things around me when my emotions are raw so that I get more overwhelmed with the love and joy than with the anger and frustration.  I'll let you know how that works out for me!

Finally it's been a while since I have shared some Gracieisms.  So here's some new ones for you:

1.  "I'm going to cut you into sauce" to be used when smack talking someone while playing a video game. Kind of like "I'm going to kick your butt".

2.  "My little sister Jess and I"...there is no little sister in reality, but the casual way she throws this into conversation is adorable.  Jess is short for Jessie, by the way.

3.   Ryan at school hit Gracie in the head the first day she went to school with her haircut.  He did this because he didn't like her hair.  She tells me that everyday he tells her that her hair is stupid.  I think he likes it and doesn't understand why he can't keep looking at it, what do you think?

4. "Boys are silly"...yup I always said she was gifted ;-)

5.  "When is Daddy coming to bed, I like snuggling with him".  That one made me very misty last night ;-)