Pictures, Pictures, PICTURES!!!

Yippee! After at least two months of not being able to upload any pictures because our hard drive was too full on the laptop I was finally able to download a ton of pictures today! My lovely, wonderful, amazing husband got the two external hard drives to do whatever they needed to do and with the additional purchase of Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 I now have a pretty sweet way to manage all my pictures on the big computer upstairs! 

 

I won't unload all our summer pictures on you at once but here are a few that I fell in love with as I was downloading them.

 

Miss L on our "Mount Splashmore".  My Sister got the kids a huge inflatable bouncy house that turns into a waterpark thing when you attach it to the sprinkler.  Unfortunately its a pain to dry out so we only set it up and put water in it a few times this summer but we have been blowing it up for the kids to slide down and bounce in dry and they quite enjoy it. 

 

 

My beautiful Miss S, I took this with the new camera when we were camping this past weekend.  Shes such a little cutie. 

Mr. C - I totally can't call him Baby C anymore.  Hes 13 months old, walking and gets into all kinds of TROUBLE!!  I took this picture of him when we were camping this past weekend as well.  It drives my husband nuts that there is a big tree in the foreground but I love this picture - Mr. C just looks like hes getting ready to make a break for sweet freedom and trouble!

I am SO happy to have my new camera AND an awesome way to now store all our photos.....and by all I mean we have a ton....I seriously need to go though them and get rid of all the duplicates, blurry ones, finger shots and all the "why did I take pictures of my feet" pictures but thats for another day. 

I did manage to get a little sewing done today but I'll save that for tomorrow! 

Bring on Blogtoberfest 2012!!

I must say that I love, love, LOVED Blogtoberfest last year.  I think I did 29 days of it or something which for me is amaze-balls and I was pretty happy with myself for blogging almost every day! 

I haven't been able to find the 2012 sign up "sheet" but I keep looking for it - and worse comes to worse I will make my own button and sign MYSELF up!  ;)  I'm hoping to blog every day and have at least half of the days related to something sewingísh.  Might have a few days of fun pictures that I want to share thanks to my awesome new camera that my husband got me for my birthday last week. 

I did however dig out a few WIPs that have been haunting me lately - the Eye Spy quilt is still quite a work in progress but I can't wait until its done, my kids are going to love it.  The Domestic Handbag quilt has me in a bit of a quandry trying to figure out how to square up all the blocks since I didn't piece them all the same size.  The last quilt that I REALLY need to finish is the Crazy Cat quilt, I started it over two years ago but I keep falling out of love with it which is sad since its super cute and I need to finish it to give it to my Mom!  Hopefully Blogtoberfest will give me the kick that I need to get these projects finished or at least make some serious headway with and get back into the wonderful world of blogging more.

Until next time my friends - sorry no pictures today.  Hopefully tomorrow I will have some to share! 

Camping Fun

Well, its now almost the end of September and hopefully life can slow down for us since Birthday Season is over (for our family at least but we are still smack dab in the middle of prime extended family birthdays for the next few months), although Miss S has her friend birthday party on Sunday but since its at a bowling alley and not involving me massively cleaning my house I'm not too concerned about that party!  

Camping season wrapped up for us this past weekend and boy did we go out with a bang - 6 kids (ages: 10, almost 6, 5, almost 4, 3, and 1 {the 5, 3 & 1 year old are mine - the others are my nieces and nephew}), my husband, my Mother-In-Law and I were all out for the weekend in our new trailer.  We went to a great campground just north of Rocky Mountain House and had a blast.  The pool was open so we loaded all the kids up and took them to the outdoor pool for one last bit of summer fun before the cold rolls in and we are elbow deep in snow!  ;)  

Unfortunately my husbands still hasn't fixed the memory space issues on my laptop so I STILL can't upload/download any pictures and I hope I got some good ones with my new camera!.......But I did manage to take a few with my trusty iPhone but even that isn't cooperating with me tonight.....  ;) 

Mr. C really enjoyed playing at the park and had a ton of fun on the bouncy ducky!!  

Now its time to put Mr. C to bed, partially unload the trailer, do a TON of laundry and get some sleep before having to start the week off with Monday morning tomorrow.  

I hope you all had a lovely weekend!

Happy Birthday to ME!

Today is the last birthday in our house for the 2012 year - and its MINE!  My husbands birthday is in January, Miss L is the end of July, Mr. C is the end of August, Miss S is the 15th of September and mine is today (September 19th).  I love birthdays but when birthday season starts in July its go go go go go and we have four family birthdays within the span of 53 days!

My AMAZING husband got me a fantastic birthday gift:

Its the new Canon Rebel T4i and I can't wait to figure out how to use it!  We had been tossing around a few different cameras but we liked how this shot good video as well as took amazing pictures so the Rebel won out.

Hopefully my husband can offload our 8000+ pictures (what can I say - I like to take pictures!!) to our external hard-drive soon so I can actually start to download all the fantastic new pictures that I can't wait to start taking!  Our laptop is past capacity and needs a serious cleaning/wiping/scrubbing since it has zero room for any new programs or pictures which is seriously hampering me uploading photos lately!

We are off camping this weekend with our three kids, my two nieces, nephew and my mother in law - wish us luck!  I'm hoping to share some picture of that when we get back - and I seriously need to get to work on my Domestic Handbag quilt since its due for my SIL in a little over a month!

Time just keeps on ticking.....

Ever have one of those days where you feel like time is just grains of sand slipping through your fingers far too quickly?  I guess I'm having one of those days.

I knew life with three kids (5, 3 & 1) would be busy, and I do love them all to death I just have no idea how to manage life so I can get it all done!  Between cleaning, laundry (the never ending laundry!!), meals, school - both kindergarten and preschool, grocery shopping, organizing my house and trying to play/get one on one time with each of my kids done every day is the master juggling act that I feel like I'm failing miserably at.  

Ok to say I'm failing miserably is probably taking it a little too far - my house does NOT look like something out of Hoarders nor does it look like something that Martha Stewart would be proud of!  My kids are always in clean clothes, are happy, and most of the time get pretty good food to eat (although McDonalds has been visited far too much in the last week because I have been so sick with this darn cold to feel up to making dinner a few nights).

I think I just need to find my groove and now that the girls are in school I can actually make a real plan to get stuff done (like a major purge of my kids clothes that they have all grown out of recently - what is it with siblings needing brand new wardrobes at the same time?!?) and then I can cross items off "The List"

Sorry, I feel like this has been one long rambling post.  Mostly I just feel like I needed to write some stuff down to figure it out so if you have stuck with me for this long I should at least reward you with a sewing picture!  ;)    As I said earlier it was Miss S's 5th birthday this weekend and she requested that we put up a LOT of the DIY Streamers even the 'boy' coloured ones, she just wanted the party to be colourful and happy (lord I love that little girl).  So I made a few more streamers to add to our little collection and we have 7 different streamers taped to various parts of my ceiling (it looks like a streamer factory blew up in here but the kids liked it!).  I also made the bunting in the picture below.  I've been eyeballing them all over the internet and finally decided to make one and I love how it turned out.  I think I'll be making a few more of these for future parties!

Hopefully I'll get a handle on life one of these days (or at least fake it until I start making it!!) until then, sew on my friends!  ;)

Holy Crap, I quit my job today!

Wow, today marks the first day of the end of my Maternity Leave (we get a full year off for mat leave in Canada) and I'm quietly terrified and excited!  I let my work know that I will not be returning and everyone was very supportive which helped make the decision to not return easier.

One small part of me is totally going to miss the social interaction that comes with working in an office.  I had an AMAZING group of women that I worked with and I worked for a fantastic company with incredible benefits.  The other part of me - the 95% part - is so glad that I get to be at home with my kids.  I get to be the one to drop them off and pick them up from school (both kindergarden and preschool for the girls this year) and I get to experience Mr. C's 12-24 month old stage.  I missed that stage with both girls because I was working and they were both at dayhomes and its going to be so neat to see how much more growing he does in the next year - the girls too!

I know I am going to have periods of "OMG, what have I DONE?!?  How could I have quit my job to stay home with screaming little banshees" but I'm hoping those days will be far outnumbered by the awesome days like I am having so far with my kids today!!!

On a different note - it was Mr. C's first birthday yesterday!  We took the kids to Heritage Park and I managed to get a rare picture of me with all the kids - and they were even ALL looking at the camera which is a major bonus!

Thanks for checking in with me and I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend.

I have embarked upon Insanity!!

I've been searching for a great workout to help get me back in shape and the best workout that I've found has got to be Insanity!  Its not for the faint of heart - and when they say its HARD they really really really mean it!  ;)

I started the program on Monday and go until October 18th - 60 days to seriously kick myself in to gear.  That being said I can't/won't go as hard as I possibly can since I still have to carry a little guy around quite a bit (I still can't believe my little Monkey turns ONE tomorrow!!!) and run around after a 3 and almost 5 year old and they need a functioning Mommy rather than a sore/exhausted/out of commission mommy.

Every two weeks they have you do a fit test and I'll do a quick update on how I'm doing with the program and if I'm still enjoying it.  I figure even if I hate it I will stick it out for the 60 days just to say that I've actually stuck with something lately and see what kind of results I can achieve.

I've got about 30 minutes until the girls go to bed and hopefully I can embark upon workout #3!  Then I have to wrap one of Mr. C's birthday presents for him to unwrap tomorrow morning before we go to Heritage Park and celebrate his birthday with a Train Ride!

Tidy it up Tuesday!

Wow!! Two posts in two days, oh my goodness I'm on a roll! ;)

I managed to get the kids cupboard cleaned out today and man do I ever love it when its easy to sort through all the cups, baby food, snackies and everything else!

I'm still trying to figure out uploading pictures from my iPhone so sorry if they turn out wonky!!!

Hopefully tonight I can get a few more blocks done on my Domestic Handbag quilt along with getting going on day #2 of the workout DVDs Insanity!

Happy Tuesday everyone.

Summer.....where did you go?!?!

Oh my goodness, its August TWENTIETH already!  Where oh where did the summer go?!?!  It seems like Miss S just finished preschool a few days ago and I was stressing out about what to do to keep the kids busy for two months.   School for both Miss S and Miss L starts in fifteen days and although I'm so excited for both of them to start school since I know they will have a ton of fun part of me is just dying that my little girls are growing up so fast.  Don't get me started on Baby C - my little man turns 1 this Thursday!!

Let me first back up and try to recount where our summer went - we spent 5 days camping at Gull Lake  a few hours from home which was a ton of fun and the kids loved it.

Then we entered the start of Birthday Season with Miss L turning Three (I still can't believe my little girl is three already!!)

After that we went to Mara Lake in beautiful British Columbia and spent 11 days camping in our beautiful new trailer (I haven't uploaded pictures from my camera and phone yet but they are coming!!).

Next up is my Little Mr. C's (I can't call him Baby C anymore - especially since hes walking already!) birthday this week and then we have one week of relative calm and then the long weekend and BAM its back to school.

On a positive sewing note I'm so happy to say that I've actually gotten a little bit of sewing done the past few days - which as been an amazing boost personally since its nice to get something done that is just for me that doesn't involve cleaning sometimes!  I've been working on my Domestic Handbag quilt for my Sister In Law and I am loving how its turning out so far.  I wish I could post pictures 'in progress' but I don't want to spoil the surprise for her.  We have set a drop dead finish date of the weekend before Halloween to finish each others blankets (shes making me an afghan and I can't WAIT to see it!!!) so I need to seriously get my butt in gear since this is the largest quilt that I have done to date.

So there you have it.  My summer life in a nutshell!  Thanks for checking in and hopefully I'll have some lovely sewing goodness to share with you in the next few days.

DIY Party Decorations

I can't believe my little girl turned THREE this past weekend!!  Miss L is the biggest girly girl I have ever seen which is funny since her bigger sister and I are so not into dresses or anything too fru fru so I'm not quite sure where she gets it from.

When I asked her what she wanted for her birthday she kept saying she wanted princesses so I decided to take that theme and run with it!

I saw This post last summer and totally forgot about it until I saw it again on Pinterest (my goodness how I love that site!!!) that shows how to make your own ruffled streamers.  When I saw it last summer I knew that I'd have to try it for one of the girls parties one day!

I am SO bummed that I didn't get better pictures of the streamers or other decorations - we had 31 people over for a 'small' birthday party and it wound up being crazy busy.  Needless to say I didn't get nearly as many pictures as I should of and I totally forgot to take pictures of my awesome decorations (which totally bummed me out!!!).  I can still show you how I made the streamers though.

I took two rolls of crepe paper and put the stitch length to the longest it could go and the tension to the tightest and with a little 'help' from Baby C I sewed the two rolls together overlapping them slightly.

Ahhhh the ruffled goodness!!!!!

For some reason my first try was way loser than the second and third rolls but they all still looked super cool.  

I'm planning on reusing these streamers and making a few more for Miss S's birthday in September - I'll be sure to take LOTS of pictures of that party.

I know its not quilting, but I feel fabulous for finally posting something about sewing for the first time in a very LONG time!  Thanks for sticking with me.....Have a fabulous Wednesday everyone!!