photo shoot - sneek peek

A friend at our church did some family portraits for us and they turned out wonderfully! This is just a sneek peek, cos I wouldn't want to ruin any Christmas surprises ;)

And I uploaded small copies so no printing these photos - you have to wait until Christmas :)

food, kids and crafts

Just sharing some pictures:

Crispy roast chicken and sweet potatoes, recipe found here.

Chocolate cheseecake squares, recipe found here. It's made using some reduces fat ingredients to make it more healthy. I used calorie counter to analyze the recipe and each square is 250 calories. Not bad for cheesecake (not the biggest pieces either, but still.)

My cuties playing together

Some cards

and a fall layout (scraplifted from Creating Keepsakes)

another BOM challenge

Finally another Book of Me challenge on the MSS blog. This time to do a layout about yourself using some favourite supplies. I used flowers, buttons, stitching and a new favourite: Paint! I love how the orange paint looks on this layout!

Busy weekend

It was a busy weekend for our family. My bestest friend Pamela came from Chicago to visit. We've known each other since we were 5. It was great to get to see her again, it had been quite a while. It was her first time meeting the kiddies.

On Sunday we dedicated DS at our church. It was a nice service. I hope that we can raise both kids to have God as an important part of their lives. He has blessed us so much!

It was a really nice day out on Sunday (19 degrees!) so DD had fun playing in the leaves

and afterwards we came inside to play Andrew's Rock Band Beatles. Fun for everyone! I really want that game. It's so expensive though :(

The Vintage Pearl

The Vintage Pearl has a giveaway for a really gorgeous necklace here. I get an extra entry for blogging about it. :) I soooo want one of these! (hint hint DH! Order now so it arrives before Christmas!)

What I would like is the dainty eclectic necklace with 2 charms. One would be the hammered dainty heart with a L in the capital cursive font and the second one the hammered dainty star with an L in the lowercase cursive font. I would also get a longer chain (I would have to measure one of my necklaces).

So pretty!

Prayer Requests

We got some bad news last week. My Mom has been diagnosed with breast cancer. It looks like it was caught early enough to be hopeful, but still - this is a very scary time for our family. I'm still having trouble believing it. It's so unfair.

So if you pray, please include my mom in your prayers.

Weekend update with pictures

It was a busy and fun-filled Thanksgiving weekend here. On Saturday we had the Unrau's over for dinner. I made Texas Enchiladas with salad and Lemon Meringue pie for dessert. It was lots of fun getting to hang out with them, and their boys are such sweeties. DD and DS had a great time too :) We definitely need to start making dinners and inviting our friends over more often. Life always seems to get busy, but we need to make time for things like this cos it was lots of fun.

texas enchiladas

lemon meringue pie

On Sunday after church we went to my mom and dad's house for a full Thanksgiving turkey dinner. It was soooo yummy! My favourite as usual was mom's stuffing. If I had to give up all but one part of thanksgiving dinner I would keep her stuffing. YUM! I made the pumpkin pie. It's easy to make them look pretty if you roll out the extra dough and use mini leaf cutters to decorate the edges of the crust. And note to self: don't turn on the stovetop to scald milk and forget about it and go downstairs. It was such a mess when I realized what the burning smell was and ran upstairs to turn it off. Oops!

On Monday DH's family and grandma came over for dinner. We all made something, and I made a dessert. It's my Great Great Aunt Jessie's Pumpkin Pie squares. Sooooo yummy! I got DH to bring the leftovers to work cos it's too dangerous to leave them around me all day :)

the flour, oatmeal, brown sugar and margarine base (ignore the lumpy brown sugar clumps!)

After the pumpkin, evaporated milk, egg and spices layer had been added and partially baked

a pecan, brown sugar and butter crumble was added on top and baked some more. This is the finished dish.

A delicious slice of the pumpkin pie square

Recent Crafty Creations...

I've been busy during the past few weeks doing lots of Christmas cards, and a couple of layouts too. I just haven't had the time to upload the pictures. Here they are!

a layout about a typical day as a SAHM. Of course not everything is included, lol! This layout was scraplifted from a Creating Keepsakes magazine. I pretty much copied it exactly with my own pics and info substituted. I loved the freehand doodling and journalling! (click on pic to enlarge for details)

a birthday waterfall card:

a wedding waterfall card. I decorated the inside pretty too, but forgot to take a picture. Note the sparkly embossed detail on the edge of the pictures. I burnt my fingers heat embossing it, but it was worth it cos it's pretty!

Christmas Cards:

And last but not least, the fifth month layout for DS's first year scrapbook. Made using the awesome Sweet Baby Kit of the Month from Creating Keepsakes.

Great weekend

Whew! It's been a great Thanksgiving weekend with friends and family. Lots of cooking this week prepping for the weekend, and then lots of eating this weekend. Although I'm happy to say that although I ate lots (it IS thanksgiving after all!) I didn't eat nearly as much as I normally would have. I have some pictures of what I made, but I haven't uploaded them yet. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get around to it.

Back to making healthy choices. My first choice was to do Turbo Jam Live Cardio Party Remix. Short but intense, and all of the best songs and moves!

I have such a great family, great friends, a wonderful husband, beautiful and sweet children, and a loving God. Life is good, and I am thankful.

DT Call submissions

Well, the new members of the My Scrap Shoppe Design Team have been chosen. I'm disappointed to say that I wasn't chosen :( although I'm proud of myself for being brave enough to try.

Congrats to new shoppe girls Nicole and Flo - I can't wait to see what you have in store for us. :)

Now that the decision has been made, here are the layouts that I submitted:

this one was a challenge to use 5 patterned papers,

buttons (I heat embossed mine silver to go with the layout)

and staples (I stapled on strips of ribbon for added texture).