Sharing Some Favorite Things.

I already have a super-cute bathing suit, but I really love this one from J Crew. The Seaside color is so pretty!

I also really like it in peacock...

If I got the Seaside top, I could probably wear it with bottoms I already have. LOL. It may match... ;-)

And here are my faves at The Container Store right now.

This Daisy print is SO cute. Only this one is available online, but in the store (in our Closet department), we have SO many different sizes. Perfect for scrap storage, I think! ;-)And I bought this file to hold my current month's Studio Calico kits (I'll try to take a pic today). I don't put file folders in mine. I put all my embellishments/alphas in the front slot, my patterned papers in the middle slot, and my cardstock in the last slot. It takes up VERY little room on my workspace, and I can thumb through it as I like without making a big mess on my work space. LOVE it. :-D

Our Brocade line is SUPER cute! It's so shabby chic! LOVE it. :-) I love that this board can be used with both magnets and tacks.

I have TONS of these magnets. I love them for the fridge and in my scrap room to hold up notes, photos and my layouts. They are SO strong, and they're the *perfect* size to stick a glue dot and a chipboard shape if you want to jazz them up! ;-)

And this next item (from the Serenity line), I'll admit, I didn't like from the photos that Corporate sent to us. But when we got them in, I was singing a different tune. They are SO much cuter in real life! And they look *awesome* with our orange Stockholm line. Unfortunately, none are large enough to store 12x12 paper, BUT I have a bunch of the Stockholm boxes (in red, orange and white) all over my scrap room for embellishments and ephemera, and I LOVE them)!

Most of these items are on sale right now for the Work Smart Office Sale, and they will be for the next week (ending on March 28th).

Also! There is a 20% off coupon for The Container Store in the April issue of Real Simple! You can't use it on top of the sale price, but you can use it on anything that's *not* on sale... like elfa. :-)

Budgeting Scrap Supplies.

This morning, I have our budget/finances open (in Microsoft Money), and I'm inputting transactions from our online bank statement into the Microsoft Money program, and I put in a transaction from Archiver's (for only $11.16, thank you very much), and after I push "save," it pops up with a little message...

"Would you like to set Archiver's up as a recurring transaction?"

As in, you spend money there so frequently that you may want to think about adding this as a weekly/monthly transaction. Umm... tee hee.

p.s. It's not as frequent as Studio Calico, but then again, SC *IS* set up as a recurring transaction... LOL.

Recording Uncommon Traditions.

Usually, journaling is pretty easy for me. I'm long-winded. I talk a lot. I tend to babble and provide you with irrelevant details. I come by this honestly though... you should talk to my dad's dad! You want a rundown of any family member's minute by minute plans, you go to him. He's our family crier! ;-)

Anywho, there I go getting off on a tangent again... I digress.

This month's Journal It challenge actually made me *think*... quite a bit. It was easy for me to come up with Christmas traditions, but I wanted to do something a bit different. I thought of EVERYTHING I possibly could. I flipped through quite a few family albums, looked at hundreds of photos. Then I called my sister, and she re-iterated everything I had come up with. LOL. But one stuck out for both of us, and she encouraged me to run with it. (Plus, I loved this photo, and thought it would look awesome with those Dear Lizzy flowers! Tee hee.)

She and I pretty much lived at Disneyland when we were kids. We were 4.5 miles away, we had annual passes, and seriously... they really lost money on us! We went ALL.THE.TIME. And sometimes, all we did was eat lunch. LOL.

Anywho, this layout records that time for us and our tradition of eating clam chowder in bread bowls in New Orleans Square. (Photo is summer 1996.) Do you see my hidden Mickey?! ;-)

(Cardstock is Bazzill Basics. Papers and Thickers are American Crafts.
Butterfly punch is Martha Stewart. Ribbon is Maya Road. Pearls are Crystal.)

After I turned in the layout, I added the yellow mat and ribbon. (Hopefully, they'll update it, but if not, no worries. :-) ) I really like how it turned out... clean and simple, keeping the focus on the photo and story. :-)

Do you have an uncommon tradition? I love hearing those! :-D You should totally join in the challenge!

Listening and Creating.

Okay, so for like... WEEKS now, I kept hearing this song at work, but I could never figure out the words *enough* to look it up. And I couldn't get back to the back of the store to see who sings it or what it was called. But today... I did. :-D

*sigh*

I was positively GIDDY after I found out. The thought that I new *exactly* what it was, and I could get it on iTunes the second I walked in my front door... awww... bliss. Pure bliss. Seriously, I think my co-workers though I was high or something because I was literally *bouncing* up and down excited about this song...

Crack the Shutters by Snow Patrol (I don't like the video, but I LOVE the melody and lyrics.)

Poor Jeremy... I will have this song on repeat for the next month... LOL. (Best $0.99 I've spent in a while! ;-) Tee hee.)

And here are a bunch of pages I've done with Studio Calico's March kit:

That layout above (all papers are Cosmo Cricket's Material Girl and one from JoyRide) is from Halloween 2008. My sister, her best friend, and I went as the Three Blind Mice. :-) SO fun! I love homemade costumes! We got those glasses from an eye doctor (for free... LOL). The ears were from a costume shop, and the canes were just dowels from Home Depot. We stuck them in the grass and spray painted them black. LOL. We had HUGE band-aids on our bottoms... where the tails *should* have been. ;-)

And this layout about my nieces (all Sass papers, except the type which is SC), and how I tried SO hard not to cry as I left them... to no avail...

And the next layout is my FAVORITE layout I've done in a *long* time. It's just *so* me. If I had to choose a layout to define my "style," this would be it. And it totally defines me too... I'm so goofy and dorky. ;-) (And I LOVE, LOVE this paper from Sassafras. A new fave for me too! What is up with me and their blue paper?! Blueberry Grove is also a FAVE! LOL.)

Can you tell I LOVE this paper? I've already used it on three layouts, but I had to devote this next layout to it. Oh, and this adorable photo of Kissa! LOL. (This blue, though, does *not* photograph well. It's more like a pale navy in real life. Ah well.) And what I think every day when I see her, I had to put on this page... it says: "I am so glad she found us."

And a layout about a Jeremy-ism. :-D He says this ALL the time to me, and I love it. I'm going to make it a point to scrap all the silly things he makes up and says to me. They're so cute! (Look Steph and Paige, I used TULLE! Yay!! Go me. :-D )
Only the papers are from the kit (exclusive SC this month)... the others are stuff I had in my stash. :-)

Thanks for stopping by today! What's your favorite song these days?

Fawning Over My New Nephew.

So... I never announced my new nephew here on my blog. It was probably because I didn't have any PHOTOS! LOL. I know, I know... I could have announced his arrival though. (I did on Studio Calico, so that's probably why I forgot here! LOL.)

He was about four weeks premature and in the NICU for about three months after he was born. That was VERY scary. But now? Totally thriving and ohmigosh, this is the first time I've seen *real* photos of him (not in an incubator), and seriously... how CUTE is he?!?!?

Gauge Steven Amos Klein*
born June 10, 2009 - 6lbs 13 oz
(sheesh... what if he had been to TERM?!)

Here he is with his mommy, my brother's wife...

And here he is with my cousin, Summer...

And oh my, I could just kiss him all over!

I'm not sure when I'll get to meet him. Probably August?! He'll be 14 months old by then! Sheesh!

Anywho, just wanted to share. I can't get over how CUTE he is! And it's funny... he looks like an exact mix between their two other kids! (Which makes sense because Cullen looks JUST like my brother, and Reysa looks JUST like her mom. LOL.)

Thank you for stopping by today! :-D

*His name is pronounced like "Gage," but they spell it "Gauge" like the gauge in a car. *sigh* My brother for ya. ;-)

Announcing the Winner!

So okay, to be fair, I used Random.org's True Random Number Generator. I put in the numbers, and clicked the "Generate" button only once. ONCE. I didn't keep trying for a certain number. That would be cheating. And I'm just going on and on about this because you will NEVER guess what number it randomly spat out...


Eight?! Seriously?! It's my EIGHTH Blogiversary, and it gave me EIGHT?! Hey, folks, you can't make this stuff up. It's random. :-p

So... that makes the winner...

Congratulations Valerie! YAY! Please email me your name and address, so I can get this wonderful prize package out to you! :-D

And you know, I always feel bad for the first and last commenters. I feel like they are never "randomly" chosen. I feel like they're always left out. So you two will get some earplugs sent out to you as well, kay?! :-)




And well, I do have more earplugs to give out, so let's just pick a few more! :-D
Poor thing! She REALLY needs them. :-)

And look! It was her birthday yesterday, so she should get some...
Looks like Melina and PaperDiva need some earplugs too...


I wish I could send stuff out to EVERYONE! I really do. I'll do more cool giveaways again soon. Promise. :-)

Thank you EVERYONE for commenting. I really appreciated each and every one. Thank you all for reading my ramblings. You all rock. :-)

Creating Into the Night.

I stayed up LATE last night. Why? Because I got my Studio Calico March kit! WOOHOO! Well, I missed out on the Main, but I got the Wedding Ring add-on, and all the paper I could POSSIBLY get! HA! LOVE, LOVE these papers. Oh my!


I love taking my puppies in the car with me. Ruby enjoys it a *bit* more than Amber does, so I actually take her with me more often, but in these photos, we went to visit Jeremy while he was working in McAllen, TX. It was a 5-hour road trip to visit him, and they were SO good the whole time. :-)

As soon as I saw those Jenni Bowlin journaling cards, they looked like photo mats to me, so this idea instantly popped in my head. And I had tacked up these photos to remind myself to scrap them this month... perfect. :-) Alphas and that Dear Lizzy brad are American Crafts. Twine is Studio Calico... which now I'm thinking perhaps I should have used red twine instead of yellow. Ah well. :-p I went with yellow because I wanted a softer look.

And I totally didn't get around to posting this layout I did a couple weeks ago. I LOVE Dear Lizzy! LOVE.

All this stuff is Dear Lizzy (paper, alphas, Flair badge, stickers)... except for the October Afternoon mini alphas. Don't those match so well?! I was totally stoked on that! :-) Also used a Martha Stewart butterfly punch and a Marvy scallop square punch to make the photo corner. :-)

That's all for today. I feel totally wasted. I'm going back to sleep until work tonight. :-p

Celebrating EIGHT Years of Blogging!

Happy Blog-iversary to me!!

Eight years ago today, I started my blog at Diaryland. (It was called "Trail-Mix... a little bit of everything." Tee hee.) I have since moved all my entries to Blogger (though, I have still to transfer 2006... *sigh* Ah well... I'll get around to it).

Very exciting.

So I thought I'd do a giveaway*! Yay! :-)

First, I have some Autumn Leaves stamps by Katie Pertiet. She was kind enough to send some, so I thought I'd give a bunch away! :-D (These *are* taken out of the hard plastic because they would not photograph, and they would be too bulky to ship in original packaging. Brand new though!)


And then here is a bunch of scrappy stuff from past Studio Calico kits. One of the coolest things?! These vintage, mini Kentucky postcards! They're from the Simon Says add-on in May 2009, and they are SO cute! There are also a bunch of *exclusive* Studio Calico kit papers! WOO!

(Other stuff is Cosmo Cricket, Paislee Press, Jenni Bowlin, Crate Paper, My Mind's Eye, and Collage Press.) I'll actually throw in a whole bunch more scrappy stuff! Rub-ons, Maya Road pins, rhinestones, pearls, etc. And most likely, some Dear Lizzy Thickers... :-D

And of course... I could *not* do a giveaway without giving away stuff from The Container Store, right?! Of course NOT! Here are a few things I love for organizing scrappy items. Lock-ups hold buttons, ribbon, pins, etc. Amac boxes (in several sizes) can hold smaller odds and ends or... your kids' lost teeth! ;-) (Hey, I had a customer who bought the teeny ones for that very reason!) And those cute, lime-green bins? There are three! How cute! :-)

All this was given to me by The Container Store for their National We Love Our Employees Day. I'm spreading the love because I already own most this. :-)

Ooh, we're getting to some of my favorites! Micro-fiber cloths are awesome for cleaning your computer screen, photos, etc. The wash bag can hold delicates and hand-wash clothes in the machine. LOVE this! (Oooh, maybe I'll throw in the Bra Bag too!! Would you like that too? I LOVE mine!) And that awesome bag-gripper also is an ID tag. :-)

Three of my VERY favorite products are next! The book light (super fab!). The BRAND NEW Cord Catch by Good Grips. This is AWESOME to keep by your computer to hold your camera cord, cell phone cord, etc. LOVE this. :-) And the iSlice... you can use it to open up mail, Thickers packaging (tee hee), cut coupons, even cut scrapbooking paper! AND it doesn't cut your finger, so you don't have to worry about it getting into little hands! :-)

And my "sponsor." Tee hee. Sleep Pretty in Pink! Remember my layout about my earplugs?! Well, the company's president/CEO saw it, and he decided to send me a WHOLE bunch of earplugs to share with you guys! (Thanks, Doug!!) YAY! I'll have enough for future giveaways too! LOL. Seriously, BEST.EARPLUGS.EVER! There's a nice sleep mask too!

Last, but certainly not least... everyone loves The Container Store, yes?! Well, here's a $30 gift card for you! Even if you don't live near one, they do ship, so you can still use it! :-D You'll be organized and happy in no time! ;-)

Thank you SO much for reading! I can't believe it's been eight years that I've been recording my life online. Craziness. LOL. It's been SO much fun!

Please leave a comment to be entered to win the giveaway! ONE lucky person will receive everything! :-D

You have until the end of the day on Thursday, March 11th, and I'll choose a winner on Friday, March 12th! :-)

*Sorry giveaway is only open to people in the US. I do love you guys outside the US though! :-)

Creating a Mantra.

I'd been feeling kinda down... *so* not me. I needed a motivational and inspirational mantra. I saw the quote, "Be you. Find you. Be happy with that." on Elizabeth K's blog. I liked it, but I needed to change it a bit to fit *me*...

"Be inspired to be you. Be inspired to find you."

Hakuna matata, yes? ;-)

I decided that I wanted and needed to look at this every day. But I wanted the colors and patterns to be inspiring too! Enter greens, blues and yellows... and throw in some white cardstock, some October Afternoon papers (Hometown is my absolute favorite paper line of all time), and a super-cute birdy stamp. ;-)

Alphas: American Crafts and Basic Grey, cardstock: American Crafts,
Patterned papers: October Afternoon, stamp: Studio Calico, punch: Fiskars

Oh my! How stoked am I?! (Tee hee. That rhymed.)

Can't WAIT to hang this baby in my scrap room. Now to find a place for it... :-D

Do you have a mantra too? A daily affirmation or words to live by? Please share! I'd love to hear. :-)