Indian summer

at least that's what it's been like around here. It has been wonderful these last few days, sunshine and warm, balmy almost. If it could only stay like this until Christmas, give us one day of snow and then warmth again until April when it can really heat up. Oh yes, a girl can dream, right?

The kids' school is putting on a Christmas Play again this year and this time around the girls both got a big part in it. They are so excited and I am so happy for them. Up til now Gabrielle only had little roles and mostly helped out behind the stage and Rachel only sang in the large choir. This time they are prosecutor and defense attorney in the play "The not so Silent Night". Of course now they have play practice at least 3 times a week after school, plus their homework, Karate, dentist appointments etc. Kids today are so busy, how did we ever make it through life. I never had anything after school, all we did was play and that mostly outside. Looking back those were really fun times and we had no clue. I wish I could let my kids have the same childhood but I wouldn't dare let them run around the way we did.

Tomorrow I have to take Sweetie for her surgery, poor thing. It's necessary though, better for everybody. She'll be okay I'm sure...
Last Saturday we were at a friend's son's wedding, it was so pretty. They looked so darn happy, it was adorable. We didn't stay lone because I left the kids at home with Gabrielle babysitting. She was bugging me all day about having her friend come over for a sleepover and when we weren't back by 5 she kept texting me. Argh. I had told her she wasn't allowed to have her come over until I got back. No way am I having another kid over with no supervision. So anyway, we left fairly early, she had her friend over and all were happy. Sunday morning I made them Belgian Waffles, actually that was for dinner, since Helen (the neighbor we go to every Sunday for lunch, my adopted mother) was out with her girls. They were yummy, I made blueberry sauce, pudding, whipped topping, strawberries. Yumm! Now I wish I had taken a picture :) In the afternoon we walked down to the park. The kids played ball and Rachel and Michael played at the playground. There were a lot of people enjoying the sunshine with their kids.

My floor in the sunroom still has not been done, of course it has only been since July, we wouldn't want to give the guy any pressure about rushing him. I think tomorrow I will call somebody else, I can't stand this anymore. My house is such a mess with everything sitting around in the living room and the sunroom having an unprotected floor where every water spill creates a stain now. It will get to the point where we won't be able to finish the floor. It just makes me so mad... let me go back into my happy bubble and think about scrapping :)

Again, these are all in my DesignerDigitals gallery. The following are in my PixelCanvas gallery (which is down at the moment, again) She is transferring to a new site but the old one is down for malicious intrusion. It's hard to run a business when nothing works so many times. Poor thing and Heather too who is one of her designers trying to sell her stuff. Hopefully it will all get worked out really soon.

See my orchid blooming? I am so thrilled about it. It has been dormant for a few years and now all of a sudden it's blooming. Actually by today there are 3 blooms open. Little things like that make me happy (I'm sure you couldn't tell at all)

Hey, my best friend is a grandma!!! They have a brand spanking new grandson. I can't wait to be able to  see him and maybe take some pictures.

Well, maybe I'll have a few minutes now to start a page, I haven't exactly been very prolific this last week. I still have a couple of pages that I did but can't post yet. Oh well. Talk to you all soon. Ciao!

Another Black Belt in the making

Michael's big day was yesterday. We had to be in Pittsburgh at 8 in the morning, so we left here a little after 6 and had a nice quiet ride. He was very nervous for days, but everything went well and I am sure he passed. He won't find out for sure for several months, I have no idea why it would take them that long. He will get his belt at the end of January/early February. He looked pretty good, he tried hard and it showed. Another big event we can check off on the long list of things this month :)

Next weekend we have a wedding to go to, that should be fun. We are leaving the kids at home, we'll see how that goes :) Tomorrow we have teacher/parent conferences, that should be interesting.

Boy, I have hardly had any time to create these last few days, I do not like that at all.. I finished my last 365 page this morning, at least I am up to date with that

Like I said before, my facing pages always look quite the same, at least some consistency throughout the book. I started saving my 365 pages in jpeg format, so I can start uploading them to Shutterfly to get a headstart. Terry has hers all uploaded and part of them printed in a book already. Talk about organized :) I'll never get there.

Some other pages

that's it for the pages, sad isn't it? There is so little time to do it all, my usual complaint LOL. Yesterday after testing was done we took the kids to the Golden Corral to eat. They loved it, it's hard not to stuff yourself to the gills. Then we took a ride to Shadyside to visit the Apple store since I am having problems with my optical drive. Of course they didn't have the part (that's always my luck), they offered to send my compy out and have it sent back to me after replacement of the part. No way am I going to part with my laptop for who knows how long. I'd rather drive there again and have them fix it while I wait. The street the store is on is really cool, reminds me of Europe. Lots of little shops and places to sit outside. It being such a nice day yesterday, it was really packed. We also stopped at the Mall on the way home and the kids were impressed with how much larger than ours it was. The bookstore there is awesome!!! All in all it was a fun day, but we were exhausted by evening, having to get up this early is for the birds!Tomorrow the kids are off for the conferences and Wednesday again for Veteran's Day. Nice, a little reprieve.I almost forgot to mention that's Phil's test came out okay. He has some blockage, but it doesn't sound like it requires any action, thank goodness! Another scan next year to keep an eye on it, that's all.Okay, back to creating and making dinner. Talk to you all soon!

A prayer

Today hubby is going for his carotid artery studies and needless to say he is quite nervous about the outcome. I just hope they will be okay and he won't have another worry added. Please say a prayer if you have a chance, even retroactively. Thanks guys!!!
Halloween is over, yeah! All the costume angst can be put behind us until next year. I couldn't even go to the school for the parade this year, I had my hair appointment scheduled a long time ago and they are really hard to change. Saturday was trick or treating night and then the party at our neighbors, which they have every year. They transform their garage into a haunted house and it's pretty good. Rachel went through it with me for the first time this year and she had a death grip on my shoulders. Not that she was afraid of clowns or anything, never! She only watched the movie IT and was terrified of them. She was glad after she went through it though!
I got an email for a sale at Shutterfly, so I decided to use the coupon to make a book with all the nature pages I had done in the past. Man, that was not as easy as I thought it would be. It took me two days to compile them all and get them into some kind of arrangement that would work colorwise and season wise. Here is the link if you want to look at it, it's really nothing special, doesn't flow like a regular composed book would, but I finally will have all those pages in one place (until I make more :))
http://community.shutterfly.com/gallery/post/start.sfly?postId=/gallery/1/post/GMGDJgwbOGDdswbAJcE_1I
Since I was MIA for the last two days in the gallery at DD I had to spend an hour just flying through it this morning. I hate it when I don't have the time to leave comments, it takes so long to catch up...

Michael is going for his Black Belt test this Sunday. Since it starts at 8 in the morning and it's almost 2 hours away I am still trying to decide whether to go early in the morning or get a room and stay there overnight. What a pain. We have gone through this too many times for it to have any excitement left. He is nervous though, for him it's a big day. I intend to take a lot of pictures.

I haven't made a page since Saturday, that feels awful. I really enjoy that daily creativity, don't know why. Sometimes life can get in the way though, I don't know that today will be much better, with all this catching up now. Piano later and once the kids are home, they want attention. Just called hubby to give him some encouragement, he is getting ready to get this scan done. Since he is doing it between making rounds etc. he didn't want me to come with him.... We will soon know more.

Here are the few pages I got done

These can all be found in my Designer digitals gallery as usual...

and this one for PixelCanvas

I think that site is down again this morning, I tried to get on but couldn't

Well, like I said before, we have a busy month coming up, weddings, testings, appointments and then the holidays, yikes, my head is spinning already!

By the way, if you didn't know yet, Designer Digitals is having their quarterly sale starting this Thursday. Everything is going to be 30% off and Saturday is a whole day of chats with freebies. I will be in and out that day, so I will probably miss a lot of it, but they are such fun! I hope you'll have a chance to stop by!

Jessica Sprague has a free class for the end of this year, go sign up for it, it sounds like fun... I still have to catch up with the classes at Debbie Hodge's, I still didn't finish Pattie's class and she has such great little tricks in there, better get busy here LOL.

Have a wonderful Tuesday everybody!