November is already here. I can’t believe it. Here’s the second installment of Halloween fun at our house.

We carved some pumpkins on Monday night and a few more on Saturday:

I need to point out that this year Taylor was completely independent on drawing on and cutting out his pumpkin faces. He still requested help gutting the pumpkin as that totally grosses this kid out! But he sure had fun doing the rest himself. In fact, the next day I found he’d cut two eyes into another pumpkin all by himself. Not surprising, he’d done nothing more than cut the eyes out! He also made me put a big eye face on the mini pumpkin I put in the big mean pumpkin’s mouth. I wanted to put “x’s” on it but he said that was too mean and this little pumpkin had to show that it was going to escape. He’s got heart, that kid.

Taylor had a class party on Friday. His sister’s class are their reading buddies and they came down to decorate pumpkins with them. He opted to be a pirate for the school day because it was easier to put on and met the guidelines with no masks or makeup. He’s still a wickedly cute little pirate says I.

And here’s how the costumes turned out. This one is Cidnie’s, I created the pattern and used $1.50/yd clearance fabric at Walmart. I was pretty happy with the $6.00 investment for her entire costume!

Tay was most patient getting his face painted. It went better and faster than I’d hoped! Although I sure had a hard time finding him in the dark without seeing that platinum blond hair and pale skin!!

Mother Confessor meets Darth Maul:

We had a fun time Halloween night visiting with friends and neighbors while eating and handing out candy. The kids had a ball playing with friends and collecting bags full of treats. All in all, a most successful Halloween!

The passing of time really does sneak up on you. I was looking through pictures this morning and couldn’t help but see the serious growth in my kids just since these were taken when we moved into our new home only 3.5 years ago.

This is our fourth fall in this home. It doesn’t seem possible when it still feels like only a year ago at most. Yet here the calendar and pictures are telling me that what it feels like and what it is are not the same thing. Time really does sneak up on you when you.

Our first day in Idaho was Grandma Sherie’s birthday. Yellowstone Bear World was the first stop. Cidnie wasn’t going to get that close to her cousin’s house without stopping to pick her up. I think the two were in cahoots because Amy just happened to be playing hooky from school that day and was more than delighted when we showed up.

Taylor proved to be our entertainment on this trip. He was delighted watching the baby bears and his giggles became a bit infectious.

Then we moved over to feeding the fish and ducks where we missed a golden video moment. Taylor got right down between the railings to hand the swan a piece of bread and freaked when it reached up and grabbed it right out of his fingers. He jumped back screaming “Holy Crap!” several times followed by several “Did you see that?” questions and a final, “That was A W E S O M E!!” For future reference, swans have really long necks.

We paused for a bear picture on the way to the petting zoo…

Cidnie and Amy enjoyed petting the deer and feeding the animals. Taylor kept a careful distance between himself and most of the animals. Although he did get brave enough to get down to near eye level with one of the ducks and when it came to him for a handout he jumped up exclaiming, “It thinks I’m food!”

Our final stop was to let the kids play on some of the rides. Just when we thought Taylor couldn’t give us more giggles he put on his funniest show. He wasn’t too sure about any of the rides. He made the worker let him off the first round of the little roller coaster before deciding to go back later to stay on it. But the little lift ride left everyone within ear shot in stitches of laughter. You can see from the pictures how he has a death grip on the railing and when he started going up he yelled down to the worker “DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!”

It was a fun start to our first trip to Idaho this summer. We got home to find Grandma had one BIG bouquet of balloons waiting for her. Taylor’s next highlight was sucking helium with Grandpa and singing Happy Birthday with chipmunk voices. It was so fun to be there with Grandma on her birthday. Wish we could do it every year!!

One of our most relaxed days on our trip ended with a trip to the Alamo and Riverwalk. It was fantastic!

Taylor thought museum part was boring. Imagine that coming from our six year old boy. *giggle* I, however really enjoyed it! Then we walked down to the Riverwalk and enjoyed the streets as we went.

The Riverwalk is a fun strip of restaurants, shopping and other business that run along the river. We ate dinner at Boudro’s based on Blake’s co-worker’s suggestions and we weren’t disappointed. We sat right out on the river where the kids enjoyed learning about the different tour cruises going up and down the river, and why you wouldn’t want to feed the ducks from your table.

Naturally we had to take the tour cruise after talking with one of the boat drivers parked next to our table for a while. We ended up waiting for a little longer than we thought for the next boat, hence the kids actually sitting…but it was great.

Then we hooked up with the cousins again for ice cream! Taylor said he was “girl locked” at the ice cream bar and I almost dropped the camera from laughing so hard. He smiled and said it was okay though. Those girl cousins are so much fun!

It was such a fun and relaxed day and evening. The Riverwalk is the highlight of San Antonio and anyone who doesn’t take it in while they are there will be truly sorry!

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Family Scrapbook Sharing Motherhood Food Blogging Memories

Do I start with the laundry? Grocery shopping? Uploading and sharing photos? There’s so many options.

I’m proud to say that I did get the grocery shopping done. I made myself go right after dropping off kids at school this morning! I did some laundry before we left so I’ll put that off for a little longer and dive into some photo shares!

I have to start with a fun story of my technology working. As we approached Tucson last Saturday I noticed a mountain outline on the horizon. I was almost positive it was the one described in Stephenie Meyer’s book, The Host but wasn’t completely sure. Well, I grabbed my Kindle and typed in mountain peak in the search option. Sure enough several options popped right up for the book and I read her description matching exactly what I was seeing. I grabbed the camera and starting snapping some photos. As we got closer I found the reference in the book about Picacho Peak just before I saw the first sign. Success. It was so fun to have my Kindle put to such great use!

Next it was on to park fun at Six Flags:

The park was decked out for Halloween fun, and they even colored the water of several water rides in the spirit of Halloween!

On our second ride we got a little wet. Dad and Tay got a little soaked and dad’s phone that was in his pocket didn’t survive.

The kids still weren’t wet enough so we hit this ride and finished the job so we all looked like we just stepped out of the pool!

Dad talked Cidnie into taking on his favorite style ride. Suffice it to say there was plenty of screaming and maybe a few choice words from her.

It was a great start to a really fun week. We wrapped up the evening with a nice dinner at my sister’s where the kids had a right good time playing with cousins. We’re so happy we got to go visit them and have so much fun doing it!

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Family Scrapbook Sharing Travel Recreation Memories

Today I find myself dreaming about next week on this day. My kids start school next Wednesday and it’s the first time both will be in school all day. I’m already thinking about the projects I can dig into starting with my photos. I was scrolling through my photos to get one for Wordless Wednesday but instead found myself dreaming of getting this big project underway.

I’m a stickler for organization and backups. I like the fun scrapbook stuff too and I fringe in it but it’s not my primary device for recording memories and photos. My plan will likely evolve over time but right now I have a set idea of what I want to have done. I want digital backups of all my photos including all those that were taken long before the digital age. I also want printed copies which means a lot of catching up since the digital age for me. My goal is to get them all organized chronologically both in my software, backups and photo books. By organizing first I’ll know how much space I’ll need for books and I will buy a nice looking set with room for future additions. I’m ready to lose the many mix-matched folders I have now. Then I can enjoy doing specific books and projects with my digital scrapbooking and regular scrapbooking. It’s an elephant of a task but I keep thinking about how happy I’ll be with the results. I remember my first taste of this when I started making digital copies of all my many handouts, etc. The reduction of clutter, ease of finding what you were looking for, backups, etc. was priceless. It’s time now for me to tackle the more important content of photo memories.

By the way, I’m loving iPhoto. I’m waiting on my replacement Adobe Photoshop 6 for my Mac, but I may not use it as much as I thought I would the longer I play with iPhoto.

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Scrapbook Organizing Blogging

My summer time continues to be somewhat erratic and so today I’m just going to share a simple post with some recent photos of what’s been going on.

My sister in law sent me this picture this morning of my brother’s arm. He’s the one that lost the recent tumbling match with a boulder. This makes me glad of who I’m not.

Tay and mom conversing in his typical fashion of late.

Rescuing a baby bird - another Tay find.

Keeping cool at the pool and with water balloons.

Enjoying Arizona nights.

Cid coloring her T-Shirt. (Never too busy to strike a pose.)

Tay coloring his.

And last but not least more pool side fun with the bubble blower and new sun glasses.

When I began blogging nearly two years ago, (yipes can it be that long already?!) I wasn’t really sure what the point or purpose was. I’d watched my hubby develop his blog and it was fun, plus he kept at my heels about joining the blogging world. But I wasn’t sure what it would be for me just that I’d probably figure it out once I got my feet wet. Which I’m happy to report I did.

The first few months were fun and addicting and I networked like crazy meeting some wonderful friends, many of whom I still blog with and correspond with today. I found that my primary purpose of converting my files and collection to digital format got lost quickly in the fun of daily articles and interaction. By year’s end I had subscribed to so many fun blogging buddy’s blogs that it took me several hours to get through reading all the new articles in my reader. I had to step back.

The next year I found myself maintaining relations, joining in fun carnivals and weekly themes, even creating some of my own projects. The growth was fun and my blog was gaining all kinds of fun comments, readers and popularity - according to rankings on sites like Technorati (who even made a personal pit stop on this post.) But pretty soon I started questioning what I was doing again and why I felt so different. I’d run a decent gamut on crash course blogging 101 from carnivals, to memes to traffic groups, and more and I frequently shared my answers as I found them.

Now, nearly two years and 500 posts later I’m reflecting on my blog’s life. I’m slowing down with my writings, letting personal projects and series slide into obscurity and caring less and less about the many awards, rankings and promotional stuff. In fact, I’m pretty much a Monday-Wednesday blogger now with rarely a post on other days. My hubby’s blog, which I really enjoyed reading, has remained nearly inactive for almost a year now. Many fun friends and their blogs have quietly disappeared. Yet at the same time many friends and family are just wading into the blogging world trying to decide between private or public blogs. And still others are in the thick of all the millions of social networking and ranking sites that crop up daily or have multiple blogs now selling things, etc. Somehow I can’t help but wonder where blogging will go in the next 2-5 years.

One thing I predict and have tried to sell my husband on is the bridge between the blog and book publishing. With so many great tools available today for desktop publishing and do it yourself publishing, it’s so easy to send your entire blog out and get a beautiful, bound BOOK in return. This is cool. It’s more than just a journal, more than just a scrapbook of pictures; it’s a combination of the two in a powerful and professional way. Historians, scrappers and journal writers have a gold mine here when they see the potential before them. But I want more.

I want my hubby to develop a report program of sorts. You see, I’m not content with just printing all my stuff in a book by year or some other general criteria. I want the power to enter a key word, time frame, etc. for a specific printed work. The hardest part is already done, the content already in place. I just want a tool to go extract what I want when I want it for the purpose I want it. Is that too much to ask? For example, I want to be able to print a scrapbook of just pictures and articles for our NY trip last summer but I don’t want to go sort it all myself, compile it and then send it to one of the many publishing options. I want to print my own book of just my articles on a specific topic like motherhood or life coaching, etc. Or how about taking my digital files I’ve created by category and burning them onto a CD to sell/share or put into a published book? The potential is there, it’s just untapped.

So is this where the blogging world is going? I don’t know, but it’s a trip I’d like to take. Maybe it would breathe new life back into my motivational sails and get me sharing more tips, files and fun things like I used to. Who knows? Of course, maybe I need to stop looking for excuses or magic pills too. *snort* All I know is that this blogging world is sure a wonder.

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Scrapbook Sharing Potential Blogging

I’ve decided what my favorite hobby is. It’s creating. I love creating things. New recipes, crafts, graphic arts and especially anything and everything with my computer. I wish I had more time to just sit here and create.

While at the beach this summer I enjoyed a wonderful afternoon with my daughter collecting seashells. I didn’t want to deal with the fuss of figuring out how to clean them well enough to take them home only to sift through the broken ones and wonder what to do with them anyway. In the end most would get thrown out. Now, if I were my grandmother I would collect enough of the same type to make fun things like jewelry boxes, rock people and jewelry. But I’m pretty impatient and need more immediate results. So I made shell art instead. At first the kids weren’t sure what I was doing but as I got it going they all joined in watching and collecting. A few even made some of their own. I took a picture which is easier to bring home than a bunch of smelly shells on a plane and came home to the second wave of creating on my computer. I’m thinking about using it for some greeting cards or stationery.

When I sat down yesterday to work on some scrapbook pages I found myself spending more time designing layout elements than putting together pages. I love creating things with my own hands. Here’s some of what I came up with:

You can’t see it with these small images, but the papers have really fun textures and designs as do many of the frames. Now, if I could just bridge the gap in printing and program quality conversion I’d be hooked. In the hour I spent scrapbooking, only a few minutes went to putting a few pages together and the rest went into coming up with design sets and elements. Oh the things I could do with just a little more time to spend at my computer! What’s your favorite hobby?

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Scrapbook Sharing Potential Inspiration

So it’s Monday, December 18th. You have a few things on your list done, but maybe you’re stressing over those last minute gift ideas or holiday cards. Here’s two tips that may make your life much easier and both are free, easy and quick.

Slide
Picasa

Create a slideshow to drop into your blog, e-mail or webpage for the holiday greeting card. Slide is the answer with code to copy for a blog and links to use for sharing. Voila - you’re done in a few minutes and it looks so professional and neat with themes, etc.

Create a gift CD of pictures as the perfect gift. Picasa is a free tool from Google that not only organizes your photos and make quick edits and effects fun and easy, but it also makes creating a gift CD as simple as one click! It makes quick work out of the gift CD.

Now smile really big because it’s only Monday and you still have 6 days to Christmas which is plenty of time to incorporate both these ideas!

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Scrapbook Sharing Organizing Positive Impact Inspiration Balance Holidays