It's COLD here!

And we were out freezing our fingers and toes off trying to bring a little joy to those in our neighborhood. We sang Christmas carols (in the freezing cold) while they enjoyed it (in their nice cozy homes). The princesses have done this with the same friend for several years now, but this was my first time joining... unless my memory fades by then, I think I'll be one of those enjoying the carols from my warm and toasty house next year. His Royal Highness thought we were nuts for going out, but I just keep thinking about the memories it will make for the princesses... that's what it's all about, right?

Will try to post some pics later and also put some updated pics. Haven't had much time for scrapbooking, but hope to get some done over the holidays.

The Littlest Princess

No time to create any layouts with school being in session. Hoping to get some pages done when I head to Cali in October. Of course, every time I plan for that I end up just going shopping. Wanted to get these pics out though.

Simple Pleasures...

Here's my latest LO from a speed scrap last night at Go Digital Scrapbooking. It's growing on me :)

Such a Joy... Princess Belle

I want to make one of these for each of the princesses... just changing the pic and the descriptors. There are days (like earlier this morning walking into church) where I *need* to look at this and remember :)

Dare To Dream

Princess Belle had her first gymnastics meet today... actually, it was a "mock" meet to get the jitters out of the girls. Her first meet is in about a month. She did really well, earning two blue ribbons (highest level), and two red (next highest level). Timing was great as the Olympics are going on and the All-Around Gold Medal winner is from this area :)

Dare to Dream word art is from Go Digital Scrapbooking.

Blessed

Wasn't able to do one of the speed scraps on Go Digital Scrapbooking recently so I went ahead and did it on my own. Everything is from Verena Karolyi off of that site.

Peek-A-Boo

I took this pic of Princess Boo a week or two ago and loved it but since I've been in Atlanta for a HS convention and to visit a friend I haven't had a chance to look at my scrapbook stuff. Anyway, you know how much I LOVE the speed scrapping :) and it was on my calendar for last night. Wouldn't you know it... the theme was "peek-a-boo"... how cool is that? So I did one for the speed scrap and then this morning I blew the picture up and changed it a little... if you're browsing, let me know which one you like best :)

The Big Snow

I did this page while we were in Oklahoma City yesterday. The frame is from Dani Alencar's Miscellaneous Templates off of Go Digital Scrapbooking. Oh - the snow was earlier this year before I started digiscrapping. It was definitely a big one... by Texas standards anyway :) Check out that snowman that His Royal Highness built... it was HUGE! His Royal Highness is 6'4" tall and our snowman pal was just about as tall!

Armed & Dangerous

Here's a picture I threw together last night. I think I need the speed challenge for me to break outside of the box and add things - otherwise, the layouts look kind of plain. After looking at the one below I've decided to just keep it as is :) Hope you had an awesome 4th of July. We had a relaxing day at the pool and home, topped off with fireworks at the end. I'll scrap some of those next, but will also post just pics in the other blog.

I'm Addicted

To Speed Scrapping! What a blast! I did my second one today because I REALLY wanted the giveaway for participating... it was a beautiful kit. Anyway, this one was more challenging than the last since I wasn't familiar with some of the terms like "sunray paper" and "bracket mat". Of course I ended up having neither in my limited stash, so I spent over an hour purchasing and downloading kits from Go Digital Scrapbooking. With a $10 purchase I ended up getting the July Collab Kit for free, so it was worth it. Anyway, I ended up having to rush and get my page done. Here's what I came up with. I'm going to re-do it and make a few minor changes and post those later. The great thing about this is I never would have thought this up on my own... never would have put flowers in the layout because it doesn't seem like it "goes with" the picture and theme. Oh well - I'm learning to stretch myself. I do kind of like these last two from the speed scraps though.

Speed Scrapping

Oh my gosh... I just had the most fun doing a speed scrapbooking challenge over at Go Digital Scrapbooking. I've never done anything on their site, but since they have daily freebies I tried to visit just the blog daily to see if there was anything I could get to build up some supply. So today this challenge was posted on the blog and I thought I'd explore new waters. (Oh - and you got a freebie for doing it). It typically takes me hours - if not days - to complete a layout. Mostly because I still have no clue what I'm doing, but partly because I obsess over where things should be placed, should I change the color, etc. I'm about as Type A as you can get. So every ten minutes she posted something different that you had to do to create your layout. After the instructions were presented, you were given one hour to pull it all together and post to the gallery. Here's what I came up with. I love how we were all given the same instructions but came up with such different ideas! I used the Shabby Princess Shabby Mom collection for the striped paper and the Marie Mini-kit from Verena Karolyi for the ribbon flowers.

PIXEL FAIRY PRINCESS ROCKS!

I am sooo excited! I won a subscription to a Digital Scrapbooking magazine after posting on Pixel Fairy Princess' blog. If you haven't already checked out her blog, it is a MUST SEE. I'm constantly in awe at her layouts and photos. Her blog is actually what inspired me to start blogging and to jump back into scrapbooking. As a result, I've completed more digiscrap pages since starting this blog than I have traditional scrapbook pages in the past few years! She also does photo shoots, so if you're in Georgia or a neighboring area, check her blog out. If we lived there I'd already have her booked for a family photo shoot. If I remember correctly, her fees were very reasonable. THANK YOU Pixel Fairy Princess... you're AWESOME!

My Baby Went to Camp

Princess Tom-Girl is off at her first camp this week. It's a week-long camp with the church and one that I pressured her into going to... hopefully she's doing okay and having lots of fun with the 500+ other kids!!! She's there with a couple of friends so that should help, but she's my melancholy child and that means she can be down in the dumps before you blink an eye. I can't believe how difficult that first day was sending her off. I was fine until I pulled her aside to pray with her and the tears started flowing. I'm sure she thought I was losing it and didn't quite understand. The only time she's seen me cry is on adoption videos and she's just fascinated by that. Anyway we are half way thru it as of today. The next two days I'll be at a training for using a homeschool curriculum we're going to try out this year so that'll help me to take my mind of her being gone. I'm excited to hear how it went.

My Diversion While Princess Tom-Girl Is At Camp

Been working on these two pages for a while but I forgot how to use the layers function on PSE6. His Royal Highness came to the rescue and showed me last night. I'm needing to do something to get my mind off Princess Tom-Girl heading to camp this week. I think I got a small foretaste of what it will be like when college rolls around and I'm not sure I like it. I used Verena Karolyi's Marie Mini-kit for the "Gobble Gobble" page as well as Earwig Factory and Lucida Handwriting fonts from PSE6.

Proud to be an American...

While in Virginia we were able to take a few hours and walk around the capitol. I had not been since I was a child and, of course, this was the first time for the Princesses to visit. I know they won't understand the importance of these sites and neither did I at their age... however, I do remember visiting them as a child and wanted them to have that experience as well. At some point in their lifetime, I think everyone American should visit the capitol.

One of the most emotional sites we visited was the Vietnam War Memorial. It's not quite as tall as I had always pictured, but it is so powerful. The silence as we walked among the people was deafening. I'm not sure if it was like that because it was Memorial Day weekend or if it is always that way. I tried to explain to Princess TomGirl and Princess Belle the significance of this site and couldn't do it without tears streaming down. As I told them, we owe our servicemen and women a great deal for their willingness to sacrifice their lives. Even if we don't agree with the politics of a war, we ALWAYS support those who serve so that we can have the freedoms that we enjoy. While there, we also saw a few protest banners. While this elicits some rage within me, I am so glad that they have the freedom to express themselves as they do. Despite its imperfections (and what country doesn't have any?) - it is an honor and a privilege for me to call the United States of America my home and I am Proud to be an American!

Princess Boo is 4... well, actually she turned back in January :)

I'm going back to the beginning of the year to do this page for Princess Boo. At this rate I'll be doing 2008 pictures for the next few years... I just keep taking more. How in the world do people stay caught up with this????

Free 2b Me!

We've been visiting Williamsburg, Virginia, and it hasn't quite been what we were hoping for. Princess TomGirl spent the entire school year studying early American history so we really expected her to just soak it all in... instead, all of the girls constantly asked when they could go back to the beach area of the James River. At one point, we looked around and found that there were a lot of grandparents... without their children or grandchildren... We figured out why after that first day. The adults loved it and wanted to spend time doing everything and learning about it all, and the kids were happy just playing in the water. This is Princess Boo at the James River. She was the only one brave enough to pick up this little crab!

The ribbons are from the Shabby Princess Sweet Sprinkles Collection.

Surprise!

We are *officially* done with school - hooray! As a special treat for the princesses, I surprised them and took them to Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine, Texas. They had absolutely no idea what was happening. They were watching a movie in the van when Princess Belle looked up and said "oh look, there's Great Wolf Lodge." Just at that moment, I turned into the parking lot and said, "yes, that's where we're going. We're not actually picking Dad up at the airport... instead we're going to Great Wolf Lodge!" As you can see in the pictures, they were so excited, but they still didn't get that we would be spending the night and playing for two days! They were also thrilled to find out that their friend was going to be there as well. She had been with us during the day, but just before going to the hotel we met her mom and switched off kiddos. She had Princess Boo and we had her oldest daughter. They were told they were going to check out this hotel for a convention and had no clue either. We had been planning this since January and it was so hard to keep the secret, but so much fun when we could see the kids expressions!

Frisco Horse Park

Princess TomGirl has a love for animals that I wasn't aware of... at least I wasn't aware of the degree of it. She was able to tag along with her sister to a birthday party and had a blast. She looked so happy being up on the horse and being around the animals in the petting zoo. Princess Boo, on the other hand, was not a happy camper and ended up getting to leave early with her dad. I can't even imagine what her reaction would have been had she been up close and personal with the horses. To be fair, her introduction to the horse park was a goat climbing up onto the table trying to taste the potato chips that she was wanting to eat. Only able to get one layout completed today. My learning PSE6 is going a little slower than I had planned :)

Enter the Tween Years

Well... it's hard to believe when you look at her stature, but Princess TomGirl is officially entering the elite group of Tweens. I just set her up with an email address yesterday and she's already hooked (hmmm... could it be that His and Her Royal Highness have made it look so enticing with the amount of time they are on-line?). Anyway, she's been emailing us, her Grandma and a friend. She's called everyone else to see if they have an account too (no need to thank us parents of her friends :) She sent me an email with the title "Humiliation Nation"... totally cracked me up. In it she proceeded to tell me that she didn't want me to humiliate her by having people sing Happy Birthday to her at a restaurant like they did last year... oh - and to not say "did it just get up and walk away?" when referring to missing items. I tried to explain to her that our family tends to be a little sarcastic, but she didn't want to hear any of that. So now I'll walk on egg shells as I figure out how to relate to my Tween.

On another note. I had been encouraging her to go to a Christian camp this summer and she just did not want to be that far away from us. There was a part of me that was thinking she really needs the time to explore and be with other Christian friends (under the watchful eye of someone I trust, of course!). However, there was another part of me that was like "yay!" as she really loves being with her family and that is so precious to me. We've always looked at other families where the teen and older kids LOVE spending time with their families and wanted to emulate that. So here I was thinking we were doing a great job. A week or two passes and after talking with a friend one or two days she changes her mind and is now gung-ho about going. The power of peer pressure is unreal.

A Splashin' Good Time

This didn't quite turn out like I wanted, but I got tired of trying to figure things out. Slowly, but surely, I WILL figure this out. If anyone has ideas for an on-line scrapbooking tutorial using PSE6, feel free to forward to me. Anyway, this is the three princesses taking a breather on our way back from Kentucky. Life in a plush Odyssey Limo with all-new videos, video games, and unlimited snacks and beverages just wasn't enough. Ahhh... the life of young royals.

This was purely PSE6... no kits used.

The Royal Family

This was my second PSE6 layout and it showcases our Royal Family. At the top, we have Princess TomGirl. In the middle, we present Princess Belle. And last, but not least, we have Princess Boo. Of course, His and Her Royal Highness are in the family photo. Special thanks to one of our Royal photographers - Kevin - this picture is being used for many things since it's one of our few family pictures!

Scrapbook kit is from Shabby Princess Sweet Sprinkles collection... I just altered the colors.

A New Beginning

Welcome to my first attempt at blogging! It's not like I don't already have enough on my silver platter, with three princesses running around, schooling two of them, trying to manage the palace, and keeping His Royal Highness happy. But - a friend of mine (thank you very much, Holly... said with sarcasm) sent me a link to this page http://www.pixelfairyprincess.blogspot.com/ . I browsed and was in awe. I love how she uses her blog to share her scrapbook pages... so I thought I'd do the same! Because I'm just learning (on my own, mind you) Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 you'll have to bear with me as it may take some time to create my pages. As I do though, I'll add them to the site. Once you've visited pixelfairyprincess' blog, just erase those images from your mind as mine will not even come close. Her work is amazing!

Okay, so here is my first page. This is of Princess TomGirl's adoption into the King of King's family. It's so fitting that it took place at the beginning of a new year... and that it's the first post for our royal blog!

This page was made using Shabby Princess Promise collection.