Thanks Antimony Kids!!

I teach music at Antimony Elementary once a week. I haven't been back since before Hadley was born in February, and last Friday was my first day back. When I got there, I was surprised with a baby shower! The kids all brought cute little gifts for Hadley. Here is a picture of all the kids - Yes, there are only this many kids Kindergarten through 6th Grade! They made the darling quilt you can see them holding, and they all signed it. What a treasure! It was so sweet and we had a lot of fun. I think this was probably the first (and will be the only) baby shower that the boys had gone to! I really love working at the school. The kids are so great. There is just something special about a school that has less than 25 kids. And I really enjoy working with Julie, Mary Jean and Natalie. They have become dear friends to me. So...Thank You Antimony Elementary! You guys are great!!

Digital Scrapbooking

I've had a lot of comments about my digital scrapbook pages, so I thought I'd explain a little bit. First of all, I AM NOT AN EXPERT!!!! I love working with the computer and I enjoy scrapbooking, but I was getting WAY behind because I got tired of the mess of traditional paper scrapbooking. So I started to look into the digital scrapbooking thing. At first I was confused and overwhelmed by the many options for programs available. Then one morning I was watching television (it was like around five in the morning, I was still pregnant with Hadley, she was kicking so much that I couldn't sleep, so I was up watching infomercials) and on came this infomercial about Polaroid's "My Memories Suite" scrapbooking program. Of course they made it look fabulous, so I ordered it. Before it came I was feeling a little bit of buyer's remorse, hoping that I wouldn't be totally disappointed with the impulse purchase. Totally the opposite occurred....I love this program!

I paid about $100 for the program...I know it sounds like a lot, but wait! The research I had done before found that I would pay anywhere from $60 and up for a program like Adobe Photoshop, and those programs did not include any papers, embellishments, etc. The "My Memories Suite" comes with hundreds of papers, embellishments, etc., it is extremely easy to use, has some photo editing capabilities, and the possibilities are endless. Wow, I should get paid by Polaroid for this! Anyway, because of this program I have done more than 100 scrapbook pages in the last 3 months (I'm not kidding!). I am so excited that I am actually getting caught up on years of pictures! In fact, I used my program to make the title for my blog.

The Pros of Digital Scrapbooking:

1. No mess! No papers, scraps, nothing! No cleaning up afterwards! And hey, it's good for the environment!
2. I don't have to worry about the kids getting into the stuff, ruining pages, they can be right with me while I'm scrapbooking!
3. I'm not spending so much money on supplies! I bought this program and that's it! I can reuse papers and embellishments as much as I want. I've even downloaded THOUSANDS of freebies from the internet.
   
4. I can crop, resize, adjust pictures as much as I want without the expense of buying them from a photo shop. It's all digital. I've even gone back and scanned in pictures that I had already printed and finished pages that I needed to do years ago!
5. I can easily print the same page several times for several books - one for each kid and one for a family book if I want!
6. I can print the same page in several different sizes for any use!
7. Archival quality....forever! I can save my pages on CD or DVD and have them forever. The colors and pictures won't fade or rip or anything! If the pages printed don't look good in 20 or 30 years, my children have the digital images that they can print out again!
   

The only possible disadvantage might be the printing. I know there are a multitude of places you can have your pages printed at. I have two different places that I've had my pages printed. I order from a site online and it costs anywhere from $1.50 to $3.00 to print, depending on the paper (cardstock or normal weight paper). Or I've had them printed at Costco for $3.00 a page (12x12 size on photo paper). I probably prefer the Costco prints because of the quality of the photo paper, but I have been very pleased with my online orders and they cost less. So it may seem difficult to pay so much for pages, but I figure it costs about the same by the time you add up the cost of the paper, pictures, and embellishments you would use on regular scrapbook pages. Also, Polaroid and other places offer books already bound that you can have a whole book made up if you want!

Here are some pages I've done with "My Memories Suite":
This is an online freebie that I found. All I had to do was add Hadley's picture and then I added the title at the bottom. Simple page, yet so cute and so easy!

Here's a fun page. I used a picture as the entire background of the page and then added photos on top of it. This would not be possible with regular scrapbooking!

This page was pre-made by the program I have, I just added journaling, my pictures and I was done!

I always have "odd" snaps that don't really fit with other pages. So I've made these fun snap
pages that are so easy to do with digital scrapbooking!

I've even made some "little" pages that I had printed at Walmart on regular 4x6 photos to give to family and friends.

Well, I've rambled on long enough on this post. Hope this peaks some interest to you! I LOVE doing it. Like I said before, I'm not an expert and I'm definitely not perfect at it, but I love the end result and love to see my kids look at their books over and over again. Next to my children themselves, these books are my treasures!

Oh Yeah! Easter

I realized that I never put up anything about our Easter. Maybe because it was kind of a crazy blur. With Hadley, we weren't able to really go anywhere. We usually like to go to Capital Reef on Saturday and picnic, roll eggs, etc. But it was way too cold to do that! We did go to the "big" Easter egg hunt at the elementary school and the boys got lots of candy. And we also did take them to Richfield for chinese food and bowling (I know...thrilling isn't it?). We did enjoy that. Kyle really enjoyed it because he kept getting spares....even if his ball did go so slow it would almost stop halfway down the alley! My brother John and his girlfriend Kae came to visit that weekend too.
Easter came and Kyle was sick with the stomach flu all day long. Needless to say, I was glad to see that day end. Well, here are a few pics from that "lovely" weekend.

I'm Gonna Be a Bear

My dear friend sent me this email and I absolutely loved it...so I thought I'd share it with all of you!
"In this life, I'm a woman. In my next life, I'd like to come back a bear. When you're a bear, you get to hibernate. You do nothing but sleep for six months. I could deal with that.
Before you hibernate, you're supposed to eat yourself stupid. I could deal with that too.
When you're a girl bear, you birth your children (who are the size of walnuts) while you're sleeping and wake to partially grown, cute, cuddly cubs. I could definitely deal with that.
If you're a mama bear, everyone knows you mean business. you swat anyone who bothers your cubs. If your cubs get out of line, you swat them too. I could deal with that.
If you're a bear, your mate EXPECTS you to wake up growling. He EXPECTS that you will have hairy legs and excess body fat.
Yup, gonna be a bear!"

"We're From the Country"

Last night was Circleville Elementary's annual Spring Sing where the kids perform songs and dances that they have learned. I was asked to help choreograph their dances this year...I really love doing it! The kids are so cute - even the 6th graders who "hate" doing it! The theme was a Country Roundup and the classes all picked different country songs to learn. Preschool: "The Old Grey Mare"; Kindergarten: "Hey Good Lookin'"; 1st Grade: "Little Bitty"; 2nd Grade: "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys"; 3rd Grade: "Beverly Hillbillies"; 4th Grade: "Should've Been a Cowboy"; 5th Grade: "Rockytop"; 6th Grade: "Cotton-Eyed Joe." The kids all did great, as always, and I think they really enjoyed the country theme. Here are a few pics. I felt really bad because Kyle got too scared and wouldn't do it. Although he did give a private performance for us at home afterwards and we were able to video it. But Mason did perform and he did a great job too in his Hillbilly outfit. If I can figure out how, I'll post a video clip of it. I know that most of you reading this come from a small town around here and remember how little the school is, but some might think that 140 kids (grades Preschool through 6th) isn't very many - but that's alot for us country folks!!

"Time-out"

I just had to share this funny picture. Kyle got in trouble and had to spend time in the chair for yelling at Mom. I know, a 3 year old losing their temper...shocking, isn't it? Anyway, he was sitting on the chair crying and before his 3 minutes was up (I'm a Super Nanny fan, can you tell?) he got real quiet. I looked over and he had fallen asleep! Mason couldn't resist and got the camera out. Luckily, after a long nap, Kyle was much happier.