Are you sure we didnt skip Spring? Because it sure feels like Summer.

Geez! It is HOT HOT HOT here in Sunny Arizona already! And I am scared and sad to say I am sick of it already! Only 7 more months of it! I am all about going green, but one thing I can not do is cut out my ac in the upper 90 degree weather. I keep the windows open as much as possible until it hits about 82 in the house and then the ac has got to come on and the windows get shut.

Everything is blooming like crazy, well, all but my sad little flower pots on my porch. I think early next week, I will be transplanting all my baby veggies to their spot of growing glory! Hopefully I can figure out how to keep our insane dog out of it.

Digital or Paper Scrapbooking?

This is a question I have been asked a lot, and I see a lot.

For me, I totally prefer paper scrapbooking. Scrapbooking is therapy to me. Using my hands and getting into it. Feeling it all, being able to freely rearrange, and work on it, and not be limited to what I can do or know how or google on techniques. Having that finished work right there in my hands and being able to put it up to see or neatly in the book. This is a page I did at my moms last week just using stuff she had.

HOWEVER!

I do both! Sometimes, I do digital. For one thing, after the costs of the computer, and the software(s) and elements and papers (but you can get so much of this for free!) it is cheaper. Its less of a mess (a LOT less of a mess) to clean up, and you can get it printed into whatever size you want. I started a digital scrapbook before Jaden turned 1. I was trying to keep up with printing the pages so that I never lost them if they were stored on the computer. I also do some digital cards now. I find that doing the cards are a lot better than dragging all of the stuff out only to have to clean it all up. and I can quit during it if the boys wake up from a nap. And sometimes I see a technique in a magazine or something and want to try it so I do a page.

One word of advice though, always save your work as you complete steps. You dont know how many times I have done a page and lost all my work because I didnt save as I went.

Here is the first page I ever did. And digital scrapbooking has come a LONG LONG way...more than I am capable of doing at the time. Sometimes its hard to even tell if its digital or paper! This is obviously digital.

But you know what is really fun? To mix it! I like doing this because it gives it more elements to the page.

So they might not be the greatest examples to use, but there ya have it! Never limit yourself to one or the other, thats part of the fun! Always be willing to try new things, you'll never know what you will like or learn until you do!

Amish Friendship Bread...

...is so yummy! Like melt in your mouth moist goodness! When I was younger, I remember my mom getting this starter bread mix and it spreading like wild fire all over where we lived and back in Mascoutah (the town we all were born in as well as where my grandma still lives). So I was stoked to get this a few weeks ago from a friend of mine, Erin!


Like any saga of ours, something went wrong, and before I could stop it, I realized as the milk was pouring into the mix, that it had expired (thats what happens when your poor sweet husband buys milk at Circle K two days beforehand.)

The starter mix takes ten days before it can be baked, and I had babied and loved it all ten days. I was crushed *ok disappointed, so I called my sister in law Melissa who had also gotten it at the same time. She came to my rescue and I was off and running again with a new starter batch, yay!

The first time I made it, we were shocked and amazed at its goodness. Whoa. It was gone fast. I did my part and dispersed it to three friends and then we ate it up like crazy! Since it begins with 4 starter bags, I happily kept the fourth and started over!


Today I made my second batch and it was just as good as the first time! Jaden helped, since I am still not feeling spectacular (dont worry, i washed my hands and i did not infect it an any way, really i didnt. :)) and away we went! Let me say though, it took every bit of strength i had to make it, and if it wasnt for the fact today was day ten and i was "following the rules" and oh so scared of the consequences, I would have skipped it. But off topic, I think i am getting better...no fever for the past few hours!

Heres the background:

day 1: mush the bag
day 2: mush the bag
day 3: mush the bag
you get the picture...lots of mushing! On day 5 you add some ingredients, then you mush more every day and then on day ten you make it.

Ok, starting off with the recipe and the starter bag

all your ingredients

my patient helper


dump in the starter mix into a great big bowl

then add flour sugar and milk

Then stir it all together....

Then put a cup into four bags

Then mix the other ingredients on the list with the remaining batter (you arent supposed to use metal anything...anyone know why? and all my mixing spoons were in the dishwasher and i hate washign dishes by hand!)

Grease two large loaf pans and dust with the above cinnamon/sugar mixture, then pour the batter into both, and pour over the remaining cinnamon/sugar mixture

Bake for an hour and then let it cool....

Then enjoy!! This is Monster Jaden enjoying his bread....

And now its time to pass it on to three more people. Hollar if you want one!

Total whine alert.

I am going to whine here because as Mommy, I can't do it too much at home, so here goes....

I am soooo sick :(

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.
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Shoot. That didn't make me feel any better.

So I still have the fever, the body aches and pain (the worst part), the headache and the cold/cough but now I also have the stomach flu that JJ had (or hopefully I DID and thats over). And I think both of the boys have the body aches and pains but not the fever because all they did today was lay with me and cry every once in awhile if someone was touching them or not getting their way. Pretty pathetic huh? (I wont say that I was crying with them.....not really....ok maybe once)

Lets hope that Micah doesnt get this! Because if he does... 1. i will no longer be allowed to be sick (which at this point doesnt seem like thats possible) and 2. he has one more day of work tomorrow and then church sunday, lesson planning and church tuesday. not good.

Right now he is at cosmic bowling with the youth (lucky! stomps feet). He will get home around(hopefully as early as) 1 and then get up for work at 4:45 am.

The boys are both in bed very peacefully *yay for mama tonight!* and although in between writhing around and crying, they slept a lot today, they were very grateful to get tucked in.

And now I will go to bed too. Too bad I dont have a good movie to watch, sleep is not coming too easily for me right now (although I am trying to super hard!!)

So lets pray for a better night than last night (waking up about every 15-30 minutes and struggling to fall back asleep due to my own fever and body issues and my husbands snoring, which in almost 5 years i have never heard so bad as last night. he couldnt even fake what he was doing. jaden getting up from about 3 until 4:30? and a whopping two solid hours of sleep from 530-730 that i prayed so hard for, thank you God!)

Happy Birthday Meliss!

Happy Birthday to my sista in law, Melissa! Her birthday was yesterday and tonight the family all got together at their house to celebrate!

.....Too bad the sick ones were trapped in their home, missing out on the fun. :(

Micah did make me relax today and he made dinner and cleaned up, so I did the design team pages that are due next week. Unfortunately, my medicine that kept the creative juices flowing has now wore off and I need to take more, but thankfully, Jackson didnt throw up his jello at dinner! Lets cross our fingers that it stays that way....green jello+ sick mommy+ sick baby= scared mommy & scared carpets!

Anyway, here are the pages.

The first one was a page I did just using the products given to me. I dont know how these need any extra push in selling, its beautiful paper and the sticker letters are fun, and I LOVE blank chipboard (the centers of the circles that i made into peace signs)! (I added the blingage, ribbons, c/s, chipboard flowers and paint, along with the scalloped edges made by a random punch...fun fun fun!!)




The second was products used by three of the design team members all doing our own page. I can not wait to see what the other two fabulous ladies did! (and I want to know who did them too!! :)) The bird was a plain white bird so she HAD to get some glitter and blingage! I handstitched the swirly flourishes by eyeballing and added some polka dots randomly here and there to tie in the polka dot paper. The products given to us were the paper, the bird, the pinkish orange ribbon, and the scalloped paper accents (or journalling circles)

I am very pleased with them this month!

Signing off to take some medicine and go to bed.

Photography...

Today is rough for our family of four. Jaden is recovering from a mysterious fever he had for a few days, I now have this horrible flu with fever, head and body aches, sore throat and chest stuff, Micah is having car issues and is fixing it at work as I type this, and Jackson has the worst of it all....the stomach flu (after getting over HIS fever this weekend). I believe he has now thrown up 6 times today. At lunch, he SMELLED food and threw up. My poor baby.


But right now, I have a little down time, so I thought I would write about randomness.

A little background on this train of thought I am about to babble on about.

Since I was 6 years old and recieved my first camera as a gift from my new baby sister's birth, I have been in love with taking pictures. My first camera had the cassette film and the attached flash that only had a specific number of times it could be used, where you had to wind up the film to process it...and then wait forever to get your film back only to see they are all black or crooked or there is a thumb in the picture.

I was always the girl with the camera at all the birthday parties I went to, the hking trips I was dragged on, the vacations, the youth camps and events and of course just random school snap shots. I loved taking pictures.

I have gone from the little flat camera to multiple types...a bright orange one, a couple of black ones * all 35 mm film of course...digital...whats digital?

When I was 18, my mom gave me a 35 mm slr camera with all of the lenses a girl could ever dream of. Of course I had no clue what I was doing (yet!) but I was on love. Then, like an IDIOT 18 year old careless girl that I was, I left it overnight in my boyfriend's car that was in our driveway and some jerk broke in his car, left all the cases for the lenses and the bag but took everything else. I was heart broken and STILL kick myself about that stupid mistake. Of course I never got it back either.

Then I got my first digital camera, then another, and my first born son was born. I had no clue what I was doing except for the fact that I knew how to point and shoot, use the flash and upload them. Wow, what a missed opportunity, but I do have a lot of pictures. Then I got another camera and my second son was born and I was starting to figure some things out with pictures. Over the summer, I officially decided I needed a better camera and recieved one for my birthay.... my first "prosumer camera". In the last 9 months or so, I have learned so much...one being I have so much more to learn! There is so much that goes into getting a good shot. Aperture, composition, so much that I want to increase my knowledge in!

Now I have my first SLR...being very cheap. I scrimped as much as I could and had my first "job" this month, which helped to pay for it and have just a little amount left. We are in no way able to just go and make a purchase like that, but the oportunity from that job made it possible and it didnt hurt us in any way. I didnt run out and do this on a whim and I did this for one purpose...to make a profit off of something I love and kind of think I have a bit of a talent for, an eye for? (Sorry if that sounds kind of full of myself, how else do you word that?) Now that I have this new camera, there is SO much more to learn about! I hope to take a noncredit class or two in the near future and learn learn learn! I have also learned that you can get GREAT pictures no matter what the camera is, and that it is more of the photographer that factors in than anything else.

Soo....all of that to say, I hope to be able to make this into a career. Its probably more of a dream, but my goal is to do maternity, baby, children, family, and engagement portraits. NOT weddings! Weddings are too stressful, and there is too much riding on the photographer. Once you take the fun out of it (and adding stress), its no longer worth it.

And thats about it in a nutshell. Those are my thoughts of the day. :)

Earth Day

Yesterday, as some of you may know, was Earth day, and we as a family decided to do some things yesterday to honor it!



For about a year now, we have been slowly doing things to go "more green".

• Almost all of our lightbulbs now are changed to cfl's (except for those that havent blown out yet).
  



• We started doing heavier recycling and now have about two smaller bags of garbage a week and therefore don't have to take out the garbage to the curb every week because its never even full.
  



• JJ is also cloth diapered now, and with Jaden being potty trained, we are hardly ever buying diapers. We still use disposable diapers for nursery at church or if we are leaving the boys with someone.
  



• We have pretty much eiliminated all fast food from our diet....which is a huge waste creator in itself. And we feel better AND it helps with money for groceries!
  



• We reuse as much as possible within the house too and have gotten creative with some of the stuff we would normally throw away.
  



• We stopped drinking bottled water and bought a water cooler last year, which has eliminated the use of so many plastic bottles and waste.
  



• All of our junk mail and paper we would throw out is shredded and recycled....a space saver AND it helps reduce the chance of identity theft!
  



• We keep our water heater at warm instead of hot...helping with energy usage and the life of the water heater (although it still seems like super hot water coming out!)
  



• Our windows are open as much as possible to not use the AC but we shut them all as soon as the ac is turned on. We dont keep our house as cold as we used to (or as hot as we used to i nthe winter) but its actually not as horrible as I thought it would be!
  



• We use rechargable batteries as much as possible and I dont remember the last time we have had to buy any (except maybe on the fly but I cant remember when we did that).
  



• All computers are shut down at night and nothing is kept plugged in if we dont use it often.
  



• We skip as many bags at the store as we can and will eventually be using only canvas bags (as soon as i can find affordable and durable ones)
  



• Our plants are also becoming more "desert" landscape, which helps on water consumption.
  



• And because of the price of gas, we have really taken a step back on how much we use (although this is still very unavoidable) but we try to never take two cars somewhere and carpool as much as possible.
  



• As long as its affordable, we also try to buy as much recycled products as possible.
  

It is sad however, that a lot of things that we would like to be able to change to are just too expensive for us to do.

Not only are all of these changes helping the planet, but its also helping with our pockets! It is so expensive just to live these days and we are trying to do what we can to help in all areas of our life! Plus, we are trying to take care of God's planet!



...and the corny quote of the day....we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, but instead we borrow it from our children and grandchildren!
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So now that you know probably more than you care to about our views on "going green" (and not just doing it because its the "trendy" thing) here's what we did yesterday!



First, we kept off the computer. Shocking, I know, but we actually didnt miss too much.



Jaden and Jackson woke up super early with a pretty high fever (Jaden's was 102 and Jacksons was 101.6 for two days) so they hung out in our bed all morning until we went outside to plant some seeds for a vegetable garden. Tylenol kicked in and they felt a lot better but still werent quite themselves all day.



So we went outside and planted seeds:..the whole project was about 4 bucks (we already had the seeds) and if we can get vegetables from it, it will save so much money and eliminate all those yucky pesticides from the store!

Jaden's pumpkinsReady to grow!

Then before church we had to do some errands so we went and got new bpa free sippy cups *a toxic chemical used in most plastics ....even baby bottles. ...side note, Canada just banned this and the US may be right behind them* The boys have their names on them and these will be their main cups now. Plus they are a lot sturdier platic and wont fall apart like their other ones we are always replacing.

Thats all for now! I'll have non earth day stuff to post later :)

JJ's two new onesies

I bought some onesies and tshirts for the boys for me to do appliques on....I made two for JJ and I am going to make a couple for Jaden tomorrow...






The tree is for earth day :)

You're the most beautiful girl in the world when you smile....

....thats what Micah always tells me :)



SO, i did a spin off of that and did a page about me :)

1 Scrapbook page, Rainbow Jello and 2 cakes

What a mix!

I did this yesterday trying to get back into scrapbooking a bit again after a long break. Its ok.

Rainbow jello that I saw last week online *and I wish I could remember where it was from!

Here is that frog cake I did for my mom's best friend :)

And all my sister "has ever wanted" was a barbie cake....so she got one for her birthday

My brother's contribution

And then Jaden dashed her dreams by blowing out her candles