Heather Ann Melzer

Scrappy goodness

Lots goin' on - lots lots lots.  And I actually have quite a bit of scrapworthy news to share today - how 'bout that.

First, Raven has her 52 week challenge going again and this one is a must-do.  I love layouts like this - showing how someone has grown.  I think this one definitely qualifies, but I've been wanting to do this one for awhile now, so it was the perfect excuse.  Brandi's got a great one her of her little guy, too.  Love this theme!

Please post your pages in the challenge gallery here - challenge layouts do not need to use my products.  We'd love to see what you come up with!

Next up, I'm a featured artist on the Shutterfly Digi Blog!  Check in this week and next for a coupon offer and some GREAT giveaways!

Speaking of coupon offers, my buddy Jen Caputo has a huge offer going on right now in her shop.  Details here.

And my last bit of scrappy news is that CHA Summer is this week in Chicago!  For those of you that have asked, the CHA trade show is put on by the Craft & Hobby Association twice a year for members.  You can't purchase anything directly at the show, but store owners can place orders and peruse booth after booth of freshly created scrap (and other crafty) goodies.  The eye candy is a definite perk, but I love going to see friends I haven't seen in awhile.  If you aren't a CHA member, but still want to hang out with your online friends, check out the 2peas social on Saturday night - details here.

I'm almost ready for my buds to arrive this week.  I took tomorrow off so I could do some shopping and finish picking up around here.  We're planning to hang out downtown a bit, go to the show, have dinner with some friends and hang out and talk photography - love that.  I pick up Raven and Brandi tomorrow night and I can't wait!!  I think maybe I'll let my camera rest until then, because I think it's going to get a serious workout this week ;)

Storm clouds/dust clouds

That pretty much sums up the last 3 days.  Would you believe these were the only two pics I took all weekend?  Tom took the day off Friday and we tackled our clutter-overrun garage.  Our garage is cleaner than it's ever been and we now have the most ridiculous load of garbage on our street and I'm praying the garbage man will take it all today (please please please).  Maybe I should whip up some cupcakes and run out there when I hear the truck pull up - lol.

Is it not amazing how much more clutter-filled your house seems when you have guests coming?  Piles of junk I would have walked past before without a second glance become shining beacons of horror when you realize someone else might see them.  We're doing spring cleaning for the past 5 years all at once it seems.  It's hard work, but it's amazing what it does for your psyche.  I feel like I'm walking on a cloud when I walk through that garage.  It's still probably a million times worse than most people's, but amazing for us, so I'll celebrate it.  I have lofty plans to make my old office a toy room for the kids today, but that means cleaning out all of my scrap supplies, which is the most daunting task of all.

Tom and I decided that after we clean the rest of the house and finish the patio project, we're taking the entire rest of the summer off.  Lots of lounging, BBQ'ing, coffee drinking, cocktail hours and guilt-free nothing-doing are in our future.  We work too hard.

Stresssssed

I am going absolutely out of my mind this week.  I felt myself almost having a panic attack at one point this morning and then I forced myself to turn my chair around and just stare outside for awhile. 

Work is completely insane, I'm finishing up a project, I'm trying to get my house in order, and then there are dentist appointments and haircuts and birthdays and dog grooming appointments and my soon-to-be goddaughter's baptism that we need outfits for.  Whew!  I was up late last night, which means I'm making silly mistakes with work today that are frustrating me. 

Allright, enough stress talk.  Let's talk about something fun, like...

Chocolate :)  I made these for our Pot Luck Pokeno on Monday night and Kenzie went crazy when she saw the extra ones I had on the counter the next morning.  I thought for sure she was going to ask me to hide them from anyone that came over so she could eat them all, but instead she begged to take them to school to share with her friends.  How nice!  So, I sent them with her and she was SO excited to tell me how much her friends loved them.  She said they were hugging her and thanking her - very sweet.  Of course, I did leave some for myself and MAN are they tasty!  The key - Ghirardelli chocolate chips.  They didn't have them at Target, so I had to make a special trip to the grocery store - and it was so worth it.  Not a difficult thing to make by any stretch, but I've decided that the recipe album isn't just a place to put recipes that I need to remember the steps for, but things that I cook/bake for our family.  A true recipe book and scrapbook - love that. 

As soon as I get enough pages complete I'm going to package them up and sell them on my site, which should be soon.  I had a couple of folks interested in making them for xmas gifts, which I thought was a great idea, so stay tuned.

I actually need to get some more chocolate melting.  My Dad's birthday is today and he loves these things, so I'm going to make some for him and wrap them up with the gift card he asked for.  Did I mention that my Dad is going through radiation now?  They found a tiny bit of cancer on his bladder, so he's got 6 weeks of radiation for a few minutes every day and the docs say that should take care of it.  He's doing great, so hopefully this will all be past us soon.

Other than spinning in circles, I've got some really fun stuff coming to the Shutterfly blog that I need to finish up today.  I'll definitely keep you posted on that.

Happy hump day!

Tree hugger

I've been completely obsessed with the Juno soundtrack the past couple of weeks and this is one of the songs that I cannot stop singing.  I sing it so much that the girls have learned all of the words and now we sing it together. 

I was visualizing a whole video for it in the shower this morning and was wishing I knew how to do animation, and then I thought that someone had to have done this already.  One quick search on You Tube and I found this. 

I can't wait to show the girls!

The song is Tree Hugger by Kimya Dawson and Antsy Pants.

Now, go hug someone - I know you want to :)

An awesome fourth

We ended up having an awesome 4th of July.  Katie threw up many times during the night Thursday, but then insisted that she felt well enough to go to the parade the next morning.  So we frantically packed up the car and got there in time to get a great spot to see the whole thing.  Jack could have done without the loud sirens, but other than that he was really into it.  The girls caught their weight in Tootsie Rolls, so it was well worth it for them.

The girls both raced, but neither placed this year.  We ran into our neighbor who reminded Kenzie that it's great she even tried at all, which was a great lesson for her to learn.  Tom missed Kenzie's race when he was putting stuff back in the car, so she was a little flustered standing at the end without him there. 

We ran into my sister at town square afterwards and then headed home to put the kids down for naps.  Then we had my parents and other sister over for a BBQ before we headed out for the greatest fireworks ever!  Our town's show has been less then mediocre the last couple of years, so we went to the next town over, which is actually closer to our house, and were directly across the street from where they were being shot off.  They were amazing - so glad we went.  The kids didn't get to bed until 10:30 and were up at 6am (of course), but it was worth it.  Man, I love that holiday :)

I was so happy scrapping these cute pics from the day.  My sister took that family pic of us in the park, which I love (even if Tom did just give the kids chocolate chip cookies which they have shoved in their mouths - lol!)

Saturday and Sunday were spent working on, let's see... 2 guesses ;)  We made serious progress and Tom and I both injured ourselves pretty badly, but we are absolutely loving our new space.  It's completely shaded and about 20 degrees cooler than in the sun, so we're adding serious living space to the house.  We didn't go out nearly as far as we intend to someday (since wall blocks are 4x the cost of the pavers), but it will still be great.

I was just telling Tom that I'm going to be so bummed when we're done with it for the summer.  It's been my only exercise for the past month and I'm at my lowest weight since before kids.  I would so much rather get my exercise and have something to show for it rather than doing jumping jacks in place.  Then again, the summer is flying by and we haven't even bought our season passes for this place yet.  

Allright, I'm off to get ready for my Pokeno game tonight (which I WILL be home at a decent hour from - unlike last month).  We're having pot luck tonight, so I made some chocolate covered pretzels (and have been munching on them all afternoon) - YUM! 

Reminder: My Great American Holiday Kit is on sale through tonight (Monday) at midnight CDT!

Happy Fourth!

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday today!  It's about 3am on the 4th and I'd love to say that I've started my celebrating early, but instead we're taking care of a very sick Katie who woke up a couple of hours ago with a stomach bug.  She's made several trips to the bathroom already and now Tom is laying with her on the couch next to a big Home Depot bucket.  We may have a very low key 4th ahead of us today.  If we have to do our celebrating later that's fine by me.  We've got matching 4th outfits and sparklers on hand and I'm not afraid to bust them out on the 5th, 6th, or whenever she's feeling better! LOL

Great American Holiday is now available and is specially priced through Monday the 7th! 

I absolutely LOVE the 4th of July, so this was a total joy to put together.  Even better, I had a chance to play :)  Here's a layout about our tradition of going to the parade on the morning of the 4th every year (although this year we may break our streak)...

It's a little hard to see in the preview, but this kit includes 2 really big round, layered mats - one with fun stitching and doodling.  It also has some very cool glitter spills (12x12 in size), pretty frames, way cool stars, awesome word art and more! 

Ok, I'm off to try and get some rest before the sun comes up. Have a GREAT holiday!!

In training

There's been a lot of talk around our house this week about a very special event happening on Friday following the town parade.  We live in a very small town that has been exploding over the past several years, but many things are still very "small town" in nature.  The 4th of July parade is pretty low key and is followed by free carnival rides for kids, food vendors and... the annual foot races.  Let's take a walk down memory lane...

2004 - Kenzie first foot race where she took first place!

2005 - Kenzie takes second place!

2006 - WAY too hot to run - we left after the rides.

2007 - Kenzie ties for first place and Katie has her first race.

The winners get silver dollars, which the girls go crazy for...

A certain someone was very upset about not winning last year and has been talking about it all week, so I think we might have some participation gifts ready this year :)

After that we'll head home, let the kids nap, and then have family over for a little BBQ.  I absolutely LOVE the 4th and I've seen so many fun things on Martha's site the past couple of weeks that I might have to try.  This would be so fun to try with the kids.  And these, too.

But before I go gettin' crafty, I have some patriotic goodies to finish up for the site - coming soon!

Spiderwick

We actually had a movie night last Friday night before the patio madness of the weekend.  I love having movie nights on Fridays when I go downtown.  I have to get up super early to get myself and the kids ready and so I'm exhausted by the time we get home - relaxing with a movie is the perfect way to end the day.  Tom and the kids usually drop me off at the train and pick me up so we're able to talk about what we're going to watch on the way home and then I pop in to Party City for some treat ideas. 

As usual, I had no idea what this movie was about, I was just worried it was going to be too scary for the girls.  They closed their eyes on quite a few parts, but overall they were fine.  Tom said it was about trolls, but I couldn't find any troll-like treats (go figure), so I settled for some big spiders on top of big cookies.  No complaints (and a steal for 60 cents!). 

I actually found one of the spiders on the patio this morning and almost had a heart attack.  Looked real from a few feet away - lol.

Here are the pics...

And here was the scene before we headed up for movie time...

Crazy boy's been doing that all week.  The girls are always drinking water through their toothbrushes and now Jack does it every chance he gets.  I think it makes him feel big :)

Allright, it's back to work I go!  I'm working on a new kit for later this week and a challenge layout that I'll (hopefully) post tomorrow.  Happy July!

Transformation

It was another heavy work weekend - back to-back 8-10 hr days and we still have a ways to go.  The funny thing about it is that we thought this was the easy part.  HA!  Tom and I were more broken Saturday night than we've been this entire project.  Tom from being hunched over leveling sand and placing stones and me from hauling sand and carrying stones.  Totally different muscles and completely body-breaking. 

We had a ton of help, though.  Tom's Dad and brothers were over all day on Saturday to work and help watch the kiddos.  And then yesterday, we had Uncle Chris and Grandpa Melzer working, and my parents watching the kids so I could help, too.

We also had the greatest stone delivery guy on the planet.  Kenzie and I returned from a donut/coffee run at 7:30am Saturday morning to find a guy on a large piece of machinery moving pallets of paver bricks all the way to the backyard.  I almost started balling right then and there.  We thought for sure we'd have to move each brick ourselves since we have a walkout lot that isn't very conducive to moving stuff like that.  He was compensated well for his gracious act and then came back later to delivery some more sand to the backyard.  But that was after the first sand delivery guy said he couldn't do it and dumped it in the driveway (and my back is thanking him for that - not!)

I got my camera out a bit this weekend to document the transformation...

The girls were a huge help in carrying the small stones...

And Katie only stepped onto the leveled sand once - lol.  I was yelling for her to get off and she was just running in circles trying to figure out what she did wrong.  Goodness!  Of course, Sebastian ran through it a couple of times, too.  Never a dull moment with the 4 of them.

Jack kept busy by trying to drive Dad's tractor...

And then I discovered that the patio may be my new favorite place to take pics.  The shaded area makes the lighting perfect :)

 

He got his haircut last Friday - isn't he handsome?

So, in the end, we almost finished what we had originally planned.  But, it turns out that we have an extra 200 sq ft of stone, 3 tons of sand, and another couple tons of gravel, so we need to do some more digging.  Here's where we ended up...

I am absolutely kicking myself for not taking a picture of this area before we got started.  Think tons of weeds, spider webs, permanent living quarters for a couple of large toads.  Really swampy and nasty.  A place that you wouldn't even want to walk through to get to the swingset.  So, looking at this is surreal.  Like, is that really the same space?  Such a cool transformation.

I'll be working with the hose today trying to lay out the rest of the patio to see what kind of sq footage we're looking at adding on if we were to finish it completely.  I know it will be more than 200 sq ft, so we need to see if we can even come close to working it in the budget (or if our bodies can handle that much more torture - ughh).

Just scrap it

I was up way too late working on this last night, but it was so much fun that I couldn't help myself.  Just me, the Juno soundtrack (freshly downloaded from iTunes) and a tall glass of cranberry.  Ah, heaven.

That soundtrack is like sunshine in music form.  Makes me very happy.  Tom and I watched the movie the night before last and I loved every song in it.  My favorite is the last song in the movie that Michael Cera and Ellen Page sing together.  So sweet.

These pics were taken during our deck planting last Spring.  I can't get over how tiny Katie is here - and how much hair she didn't have.  I'm going to live vicariously through her hair - it's wavy and thick and just perfect.  Lucky girl.

I just sent out a reminder that the sale on my new kit and word art set ends tonight at Midnight CDT.  If you don't currently receive my newsletters and you'd like to, you can sign up here.

My head is spinning this week with design ideas.  I've found myself tearing through the house looking for a piece of paper to jot stuff down on more than a few times this week.  Love it when the juice is flowing - just need to keep at it and get some more goodies up.

I finally got my butt outside and measured the perimeter of the patio today and called and ordered the stone.  We're putting a soldier course of half stones around the entire patio, so I had to add that on to our order.  We decided on these pavers, in Sandstone, and this pattern.  The DIY seminar we went to the other night was very information.  Nice to see someone else do it before we dive in.  I'm still nervous, but we've had good luck with tiling in the past, so I'm hoping for the best.  Tom is more detail oriented than I am when it comes to stuff like this, so I'm putting my faith in him (no pressure, hon).

Before I go I have 2 WAY cool things to show you.  The first are these.  WAY too cool - nuff said.

The second is this piece of awesomeness that our friend, Mike, told me about last night.  The idea of having the weather forecast right next to my head when I wake up is lovely.  Beats sitting in front of the TV, feverishly switching channels looking for the daily forecast.  But even better is the ability to hook up to a Flickr account and use it like a digital picture frame.  Neato cheeto! 

Alright, I'm off to get a caffeinated soda and some lunch before I fall asleep here at my desk.  Hasta mañana!