Summer Break

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WootWoot Summer is finally here. Thursday was our last day of school. We are both off now for the next 8 weeks. Speaking of which does it seem we go longer each year? Seriously, we ended right at the end of June this year and we go back September 1st or 2nd! Ok so can you tell I need a break? Kelsey and I ended the school year with the flu. Fun stuff. She had it last week and me this week. Fortunately it was fast and furious and we each only missed a couple of days. Kids of course are so much more resilient. Fever of 103 one day, swimming in a meet the next. She won two of her three races and came in second in third. Was that confusing? Won two and second in the third? It's not even 7 am as I type, I'm confusing myself. I've only had a few sips of coffee and by now I usually have had two. We are leaving soon for vacation and I'm not wanting to drink too much. We are leaving soon for vacation and I'm not wanting to drink too much.




We have had so much rain my daughter has been going out and trying to swim in it. I'm sure the neighbors are saying geeeez get the kid a pool already!!


Anyway before I head out to Lake George for some much needed RR I thought I would post a few pics. Wish me good weather! Have a beautiful summer!

Pay It Forward

I found this on my new blogging buddy, Jeanette's blog. So I copied the direction from her blog, it looks like alot of fun!

Do you remember the movie "Pay It Forward" with Kevin Spacey? The story is repaying a kindness to you by passing a kindness on to someone else. I think that is a very nice idea. That is why I signed up to be part of this version of "Pay It Forward" on Jeanette's Blog

Now I am going to receive a very special, made just for me, gift from Jeanette. I want to pass along a very special, made just for YOU gift, to the first FIVE people leaving a comment on this post. Doesn't that sound like fun?
I'd really like to send a special gift to you. Please sign up to "Pay It Forward".

There a few rules tho (not hard ones).
1- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make but I hope you will.
2- What I create will be just for you. I’ll be lurking around your blog to see what you might like
3- this will run until the end of July.
4- You have no clue what it's going to be and neither do I so it'll be a big surprise to both of us!

The catch? Oh yeah. There's a catch.... You must repost this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog.
So the first five people who post, and are willing to pass it along, will get a handmade gift in the mail from me. Your gift will be sent to you in July.
Once you receive the gift, please be sure to post a pic on your blog.
Let the gifting begin.

Busy Stampin a Stack!

I've been a busy girl these last few weeks. Spring strings, field trips, field day, swim practice, swim party, swim everything whew! Oh and I work a full time job too. During all this craziness? I started a new hobby. Don't worry, I'm not giving up scrapping just broadening my horizons and trying my hand at stamping. Now mind you. Stamping is how I got involved with scrapping. I had a friend who was a Stampin Up demonstrator. I went to a couple few parties. I bought a good dozen stamp sets and then started scrapping and never touched those stamps again. If I were to be totally honest I would tell you that at least 5 of them were still new in the package uncut. Up until 2 days ago 7 were uncut. A couple of my scrapping friends well they swing both ways and stamp too. Anyway they invited me to a Stamp A Stack and now I'm addicted to stamping and card making. I've also fallen in love with Gorjuss Girl and Whiff of Joy stamps. The Gorjuss Girls have arrived and I can't wait to play with them. Swoon. It's kind of picture heavy but here's what I've been up to.
Here are my Stamp A Stack Cards



Here is my little fish and her coach at the swim party. I'm so proud of her, she made captain. By September she will move up from Bronze level to Silver. She's happy at the thought of moving up but sad about leaving her coach. They truly have bonded and we both love her.

Yup even my Mother got into the action. That's her there shaking her booty! She'll kill me if she sees this but hey if she's gonna still shake it at 60 I'm gonna have to photograph it!!

Spring Strings was quite the experience. My daughter has practiced her Viola ohhhh MAYBE 10 times the whole year and 5 of those times was the week before the concert. To my horror she informed me that she and another girl were 2 of the best players in her group. UHHH OH. You know I called the family and told them all to bring ear plugs. I cannot tell you how wrong I was!! I never saw anything as amazing as 60 third graders PLAYING strings. They were really good!! Unfortunately she doesn't think she wants to do it again next year. Here she is the night of the concert. I couldn't get any of her on stage it was just too dark.

We also had a couple of surprise visitors this month, or maybe last month. It's been so busy I'm losing track of time. May or June we were happy to see Baby James. They had a great time playing together and Kelsey even gave him his own private viola concert. My SIL said he was saying brabo(bravo)more, brabo Kelsey, brabo Kelsey more..and he said it over and over and over from our house in NY to there's in NJ. Ooops. Who knew he would like it that much.

Then Sean came to show us his new skillzzzz and his black eye. He's still working on the skillz. What is it about a kid with a black eye? Adorable right?

OK. End of super long post!

TSR Sketch Class

So I haven't gotten as many of these done as I like but fortunately I have until the end of the month. Insert smile here. For Sketch #9 I was lucky enough to part of the Guest Design Team. The sketch I had to work with was called Wrong Way Runway. It was a 2 page layout with a twist. You had to look at the sketch in the traditional side by side manner and then???? Flip it and create a 12 X 24 vertical layout.

For this one I used Sketch #3, One Size Fits All. The photo is of my daughter and my SIL, taken in Animal Kingdom but I didn't think Disney paper worked with the dark pic. You can check out the sketches here.