Summer Ends

The seasons come and go so very fast when all you do every day is take care of 3 little ones, a house and try your hardest to keep up with your hobby (scrapbooking). Okay, what did I learn this summer?

1. Never wait till the last minute to purchase a pool for the kids. Once August comes there will be none available both in stores and on line. Note: next summer purchase one which has a cover so I don't have to empty it out each time we want to use it.


2. D0 not keep the temp in the house at 72 because once that bill comes in the mail you will pass out from the amount of money that you owe for the air conditioning. Try setting it at 76 even if mom protests that it is hot. We just can't afford a $600 a month bill!


3. Get a season pass for Great Adventure early so you pay less and always pay the additional $5 for preferred parking so you can park right up front near the entrence. Pack a lunch so it doesn't cost an arm and a leg while you are there for food that really stinks.
   

After all I have learned, I am so looking forward to the fall. Cooler weather means we can be out doors more and use our swing set which we weren't able to use because of the brutal heat in the summer. Okay we do have to wear jackets but that's better than sweating our butts off.

If I Died Tomorrow

I would like my family and friends to remember me as being a super organized creative mom. I hope they look through all my scrapbooks and remember me as being creative and loving. I hope that my children will continue in my foot steps with creating scrapbooks for their children too.

On my gravestone I would like it to read:

Beloved Laura
Loving Wife
Super Mom
Creative in Nature

Feeling Loved/Giving Love

What do you do to let others know you love them?

I hug and kiss them and tell them every day that they are loved and special to me. I spend time with my children doing little things like playing with their toys or reading. I cook dinner and try to keep up with the housework. Mind you, I said try. With triplets it's very hard to keep the house clean and decluttered as they get into everything and the house seems to get very messy at times.

What do others do that make you feel loved?

When my husband takes out the garbage without me reminding him or any other household chore without me asking. When he spends sometime with the children to give me a break from the chaos. This doesn't happen very often because my husband works 24/7 but when he does spend time with them I am very greatful for the brief moment he does spend time with them. When he tells me he loves me without me saying it first.

When I get my children from their rooms to start the day and they give me a great big hug and kiss.

My first attempt at digital scrapbooking

I finally did some digital scrapbooking. I'm actually have a lot of fun putting the pages together. I love the idea that you can have any embellishment and paper match your photo exactly just by clicking one thing and changing the image. Way cool! Now I'm just having some problems uploading my image here on blogger. I'm assuming the file is too big? I resized it to 8 x 8 but I'm sure that too is too big bummer! Anyway, here is one which I did of my daughter Victoria today. She is just starting to talk so I wanted to capture her words. I did another page of my son but unfortunately that's the one which I'm having troubles uploading.

More Slideshow Songs

Here are some more songs I received from friends.

Welcome to the Jungle (Guns 'N Roses) Welcome to the jungle, we take it day by day...

A, You're Adorable

Boom, Boom, Ain't It Great to be Crazy?

Father Abraham

In the Gool Old Summertime
On the latest Dixie Chicks CD there is a song called "Lullaby".

'clocks', by cold play.( it's on the sound track for 'peter pan'),
(I hope you )Dance', Faithe Hill
Ice cream', Sara Mclaclan(SP?)

Title Page for Slideshow

I'm so excited I finally figured out how to make a page layout in photoshop elements. I had an awful time trying to drag and drop images onto the main page. Finally after numerous attempts I found out that you had to select all and then click on the move tool to get it to go to the main document. Yes, I'm up late again. It's 4:20 am.

Anyway this is what I came up with for the title of the slideshow. I really like how this came out the best. I also did 4 other pages (Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall). None of these had any photos. Just graphics as they are titles for the photos.

Maybe this digital scrapbooking is not for me!

I am having such an awful time trying to learn this program. I'm following the tutorials but keep getting stuck at places which takes an hour or more to figure out what I am doing wrong. It is very frustrating.

I again asked DH to help me but he just got annoyed and told me to use my apple computer to make their slideshow. So I attempted to do that. I got all the photos I wanted into another folder and then tried to do a slideshow with music. I wanted to use the song Season of Love by Rent. I have it playing fine on the computer but when it comes time to burn it. It's taken me about 5 hours to burn 3 disks. Okay this disk now works on my DVD player on my TV however, there is no sound! Bummer. I wasted 3 disks with no sound and 2 disks because the computer said there was something on the disk. What in the world? I just opened up the package. How could there be something on the disk?

Okay I got a book called Teach Yourself Visually Photoshop Elements 4 in full color. I tried to look up dragging and dropping to make new layers but could not find it in the book. I'm at a complete loss. I even asked DH about it and he tried and he too couldnt' get the images to drag and drop. I think something is wrong with the program.

Well, I think I'm going to call it a night as it was a really rough day with the triplets getting into everything. Every time I turned around they were destroying or spilling something. Tomorrow they will be 2. I'm just glad I got through the day today without hurting one of them. It's getting difficult each day. I so wish for a vacation or at least some time to myself even time to go to the bathroom without little ones.

Another Late Night - Burning DVD

Okay this is 3 nights that I have been working on these slideshows. I basically have their first year done but still need to burn this to a DVD. (more on that later).

Tonight I worked on another one which I actually copied from another triplet mom. I used most of her wording but added a few of my own and used the same song. Here is the link to her video I'm No Superman. Of course, it took all day to find the photos. I have 5,000 photos to look through. Once I had all the numbers of the photos which I wanted to use it maybe took about an hour and half tops to put it all together. That's not why I'm up till 2:20 am again. It took me over 2 hours to figure out how to burn it onto a DVD. Of course, DH won't help me so I had to search google which took hours. Now, I have the DVD recorded and I try to play it on the DVD player hooked up to our television. Well, do you think it would work? Of course not. It gives me an error saying it doesn't play that type of disk. Okay so I put the disk back into my computer and it runs on the computer but why not the TV? These computers make me so aggrivated. I don't know how my husband can be on them 24/7. I'm about ready to smash mine.

I reserved 3 books on adobe photoshop elements at the library tonight so hopefully I'll get them in like 2 days so I can learn more things. So far I think it's very limiting on what you can do with it. I'd like to add more graphics and clip art but I haven't found a way to do so. I have searched the tutorials and also the help with no luck. The program does come with a few graphics but nothing that you really can use.

My mom hopefully will come tomorrow and I can work on another slideshow. I have all the photos picked out for their 2nd year. Just need to upload them. I probably will use the song Season by Season by Rent for this slideshow. I plan on uploading the photos by season so that song would be appropriate.

Attempting to Make a Slideshow

This is the 2nd time I am attempting to make this post. Unfortunately my first attempt was deleted. Bummer.

Anyway where was I? I am very addicted to scrapbooking and anyone who knows me knows this. I've been doing it for like over 8 years now. Before the triplets were born I was basically almost all caught up. Now that they are here I continue to scrapbook but I have fallen way behind. The new cool thing in the scrapbooking industry is digital scrapbooking. In my search to learn how to do this I have found that some companies who sell digital scrapbooking software will allow you to download trial versions of their software for 30 days free. So off to adobe.com

I mainly do all my creative scrapbooking and card making at night after the triplets are asleep so 2 nights ago I downloaded adobe photoshop elements 4.0. Okay I know a bit about computers but it actually took me hours to download this program to get the trial version. Finally at 2 am with still no program I decided to go to sleep. When I awoke at 7:30 am I deleted what I had downloaded the night before and redownloaded it and guess what? It worked. Finally I have the trial version.

Of course, I have no idea how to work the program so while looking through the tutorials I found a tutorial for slideshows and since the triplets 2nd birthday party is on Sat I sat down and immedately got some photos uploaded from my apple computer to my dell laptop. I'm having a fun time doing their first year. My husband even went out and bought me a microphone so I can narriate some of my thoughts and poems to the slideshow and I found this amazing song that is perfect for their photos it is called Let them be little by Billy Dean.

Here is a list of songs great for slideshows that I have managed to compile. I will probably use some of these for their 2nd year slideshow. These are not in any particular order of which ones I like the best.

• Teach Your Children Well by Crosby, Stills and Nash
• We've Been Waiting for You by Carolyn Arends
• Father & Daughter by Paul Simon
• First Time I Saw Your Face by Celione Dion
• I Hope You Dance by Leanne Womack
• Honestly by Cary Brothers
• Dreaming of You by The Coral
• Why by Elefant
• Light of Day (Sorry don't know the artist)
• Baby Baby by Amy Grant
• Groovy Kind of Love by Phil Collins
• Over the Rainbow
• A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes
• Seasons of Love by Rent
• I Can Love You Like That by John Michael Montgomery
• With Arms Wide Open by Creed

Well it's getting late. It's almost 1o pm already and I haven't even worked on the slideshow so good night all. See you again soon.

Font Shopping

I am always looking for fonts to use in my scrapbooking. Within my search I have come across some websites that sell fonts and some which you can download for free.

Two Peas in a Bucket
ScrapNfonts
Scrapvillage
fonts for kids
Scrap Girls
Scrapbooking Fonts

Quote "On Children" by Kahlil Gibran

While listening to creative mom podcast last week I heard a quote which really spoke to me and wanted to share it with you. It is writen by Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931), Lebanese-U.S. poet and painter. “On Children,” Prophet, 1923.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They came through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you,
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

My First Post

I wanted to make another blog where I can post my creative pages, cards and ideas besides the triplets blog which I already keep. I like to be creative and I mostly do my scrapbooking or card making after the triplets are in bed so I am literally up late most nights. No I take that back it's every night.

My favorite website which I frequent often is www.splitcoaststampers.com I am a Stampin' Up demonstrator and I get lots of my ideas from that website thanks to my upline Merry who told me about this sight.

My addiction lately is the I-RAK (image random acts of Kindness) group at that website. This is where you can make wishes for stamped images and you receive images back in the mail from others. I try to send out envelopes at least once a week.

I have also been listening to a new podcast called creative mom podcast located at http://creativemompodcast.com/blog/