TGIF and more.....

Never was I so happy to see this week end!  I swear the days get longer and longer (and not in a good way)!  Today there is "supposed" to be sunshine, I'll believe it when I see it.  It has rained here for what seems like MONTHS!  The state of Texas is under a drought, which from the latest reports are expected to last for the next 5-10 YEARS!  Holy sh*t!  I'm not super religious, more faithful I'd say, but damn, I gotta believe, someone is trying to tell us something!  Earthquakes, tsunamis, raging heat, drought, pouring, unending rains, starting to think that this "Global Warming" thing is true.  Well, I'm going to try to be optimistic, I'm hopeful everything will turn around soon, not just for me but for everyone.  The economy has to turn up at some point, the jobs situation will improve, and hopefully everyone will benefit.

Like Ive said before, I'm still reeling from the death of my Dad, the collateral damage that has come from his passing.  I guess I really never thought that I'd still be in the "soup" so to speak.  I think it's funny though, the friends who turned away from me and weren't there for me in the darkest hours, are now ignoring me and acting as if I owe them attention and I should reach out to them.  Really?!  Are you kidding me?  How can I allow you to treat me so crappy and then act as if nothing has happened?  WOW!  I'd love to know what it's like to live in their world, I guess Peter Pan and the Easter Bunny are truly real in their heads, cause let me tell ya, there's no way in hell I'm going back to be treated like the bastard at the family reunion again. 

I know, don't hold onto the anger, "let it go", I'm not knocking all the theories of forgiveness out there, but for once in my life I'm not going back for more grief.  I've lost enough over these past few months. 

I don't want to be such a bummer, but someone has to say it. I found out the hard way, people aren't who or what they say or portray themselves to be all the time. Take inventory of yourself and trust those who have time and time again given you reason to be joyful, to be happy, to feel love.

Would you believe it Wednesday?

Well after LOTS of rain and flooding, my craft room is somewhat back to normal!  We are still having water seep in, because it has literally rained EVERY STINKIN' DAY for weeks since Hurricane Irene.  With the ground so saturated the only place for the water to go in in my craft room!  UGH!  I am optimistic that it'll all be over soon! 

Here's my creation for Erica's Cricut Craft Room's Can you believe it Wednesdays?!  What that means is I can use ANY Cricut cartridge, but I can only use the feature keys, not the main image keys (so if you open up a cartridge handbook, the big picture on the left is the main image, off to the right are all the extra , wickedly cool, fun things that we sometimes forget about!)

I used Car Decals for my creation this week!  LOVE LOVE LOVE this cartridge!  So much fun stuff!  The "I "heart" Cats" is from the phrases keys, while the cat on the left is actually 3 layers cut from, the Athlete, & Sports keys.  My cat's name was Casey and that was cut out from Cuttin' Up! 

Casey was an amazing companion and we miss her very much!  She passed away in October 2009 and we all still have a special place in our hearts for her!

A Captain & A Chef!

Busy week here at our house! Jordan was picked this week to be a captain at her field hockey game! So proud! Her and her fellow Lady Hawks tromped the Gateway Gators 6-0! Impressive huh! She has been playing since 3rd grade and I have been fortunate enough to be the assistant coach for her middle school for the past 2 years. This winter will be my last season coaching field hockey. I'll have coached over 11 seasons! I just love it!  Kinda of sad though, Hannah wants no part of playing field hockey!  She's "sticking" with the flute!

Jordan #29 

Speaking of Hannah....

Hannah is our in-house Sous Chef, who has since graduated to full Chef this week!  She has always liked to help me in the kitchen, but just a few short years ago (Jordan was about 9 and Hannah was about 6) my kitchen was a diner.  Let me explain... 

 I was making 3 different meals every night.  Jordan only ate hot dogs and chicken nuggets, Hannah only ate rice, and plain pasta, with an occasional yogurt thrown in.  Then I was making a meal for David and myself.  One summer a few years ago, after weeks filled, with Build-A-Bear, Chuck-E-Cheese, the movies, playdates and a trip to the toy store, one of my cherubic children, informed me that they were bored, and that we never do anything fun. 

OMG!

Talk about the proverbial straw that broke the camels' back!  I freaked out!  I said,

"THAT'S IT!  I QUIT!  NO MORE COOKING, CLEANING, DRIVING ALL OVER THE PLACE!  YOU CAN CALL ME LISA, YOU CAN CALL ME 'HEY YOU', BUT DO NOT CALL ME MOM!  I AM DONE!",

 and with that I retreated to my room and "retired".  My husband came home to two crying, confused kids who told him, Mom's gone nuts!  When I explained it to him, he got it but was really worried about his dinner situation, MEN!

So after about two days, I caved.  (I let them eat whatever they wanted for each meal, if I remember correctly the meals consisted of chips, chocolate and pretzels.  Apparently the girls were shooting for the all-carb diet those two days). 

I sat them down and told them that from here on out they will eat what I cook.  They don't have to love it, but they have to try it.  They now eat, pasta, meatballs, chicken, pork chops, tacos, steak, stew, vegetables, salads, fruit.  Not bad huh?!

Oh yeah, when I asked them what they wanted more than anything, Jordan responded with, "I just wanna call you Mommy (insert sobbing here with TEARS galore)", Hannah on the other hand answered with, "I'm good with Lisa." (Lord give me strength!)

So jump forward to today, Hannah's favorite dinner is Chicken Marsala over pasta, with broccoli, cauiflower and a salad.  So she now cooks for us at least one day a week (with me as the Sous Chef of course!).  Who said freakin' out never paid off?!

Chef Hannah!

It's Fall Ya'll!

My utmost favorite time of year!  No, it's not because the kids go back to school, I honestly love having my girls home!  I just love the chill in the air, the smell of  leaves, the start of another field hockey season, fireplaces burning, when it gets dark early.  I just love the colors!  This is yet another "first" in my year of "firsts" without my Dad.  I made it through the "first" summer, which honestly sucked.  It's really hard.  I just miss him so much.  I just hope as time moves on that the hurt will become less and the memories I have will fill the tears with smiles instead.

Here is some new pictures of my beautiful girls! Another reason to love fall, they are too busy to complain about the camera being constantly in their face! LOL!

First Day of School 2011!

I can't believe my babies are back to school! I really don't want them to go back! I love having my kids home! But they're back, and so far so good. Jordan started 8th grade and Hannah started 5th grade. Hannah is a school safety! Her post, cafeteria doors! She's very responsible, watch out!  Jordan starts field hockey practice tomorrow!  So excited!  I'm the assistant coach and we have SO much fun!  Here's to a great school year!

 

Erica's 100 Cartridge Blog Hop (http://www.mycricutcraftroom.com is our proud sponsor)!

Welcome! If you landed here then you've been following Erica's Craft Room Monthly Blog Hop you should have come over from
 Laura http://laurascraftsandmore.blogspot.com/ !
So glad you hopped on over to me! I'm a little sad to say that I only have one project posted. We were hit by hurricane Irene and my craft room flooded! Still assessing the damages! You can see by the pictures I have quite a mess to organize! But we are all okay, and in the grand scheme of things, we were very lucky!

So here's my project!  My daughter Jordan had a school project, called A Hero's Journey.  They watched the Wizard of Oz and had to write 12 different prompts about the story ranging from ,"The Ordinary World" " Call to Adventure", "Meeting the Mentor", and "The Resurrection", just to name a few.  They had to write examples from the movie and discuss in detail.  Keep in mind Jordan did this in June, in the 7th grade.  They also had to make a poster detailing the journey.  Here's what Jordan creating with some help from me!  (PS:  She got an A+ and the teacher used it as an example for the entire 7th grade!  So proud of my girl!  She even had it laminated!  Gotta love her!  Definitely the kid of a crafter!)

For the barn and silo we used Country Life and for the fence we used My Community.

This is Munchkin Land!  How cute!  We used the Paisley cartridge here.  Patterned paper can really mix things up!  Love it!

The Wicked Witch of the West!  No better cartridge for this than Happy Hauntings!

Glitter pens = SPARKLE!

One can never have too much SPARKLE!

The woods were cut using Zooballoo!  One of my first cartridges and still one of my favorites!

Swirly Yellow Brick Road, we used Accent Essentials.

The Corn Field we went back to Country Life.  Of course GLITTER!

And last but not least, my favorite font of all time!  Cuttin' Up!

I hope you enjoyed your visit!  I use my Cricut for so much more than cards and scrapbooking.  My kids love coming home and telling me they have a project due because they know that I'll help them, but I really think they enjoy creating fun stuff as much as I do!  Thanks again for stopping by!

You should head on over to:

 Karey http://www.creativecraftcorner.com  next!

Here's the complete line-up if you get lost!

My Cricut Craft Room http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com

Mayra http://gettingcraftywithma.blogspot.com/

 April http://curlsandgrins.blogspot.com/

Melissa http://pinkpolkadotscrapping.blogspot.com

Erica

 http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com/2011/09/my-project-for-100-cartridge-blog-hop.html

Pattie http://sweetpsscrapbooks.blogspot.com/

Patricia http://micraftygal.blogspot.com/

Ricki http://manicexpressionsdesigns.blogspot.com/

Rosa http://kleymanr.blogspot.com/

Samantha http://samanthascricutcreations.blogspot.com/

Sharon http://simplysweetbysharon.blogspot.com/

Shelly http://kccroppers.blogspot.com/

Suzy's Crafts http://suzyssimplecrafts.blogspot.com/

Tammy S. http://thepurplemuse.blogspot.com

Tanya http://nonnascraftcorner.blogspot.com/

Tracy http://www.scrappininthewoods.blogspot.com/

Yvette http://gammascreativecorner.blogspot.com/

Amanda http://craftsbyamanda.blogspot.com/

Giveaway

http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com/2011/09/surprise-giveaway-saturday-september-3.html

Autumn http://autumnsbuggycreations.blogspot.com/

Connie http://conniescraftycloset.blogspot.com/

Courtney http://craftingwithcourtney.blogspot.com/

Gayle http://gscraptime.blogspot.com/

Heather F http://www.papercrafteranonymous.com/

Heather S http://operationcricutdesign.blogspot.com/

Holly http://hollys-hobbie.blogspot.com/

Jen R. http://memorieswithjen.blogspot.com/

Jenny R http://myimagitivity.blogspot.com/

Laura http://laurascraftsandmore.blogspot.com/

Lisa http://www.allmadebylisa.blogspot.com/ YOU ARE HERE!

Karey http://www.creativecraftcorner.com/

Kat http://katscrapfever.blogspot.com/

Lezlye http://lezlyes.blogspot.com/

Lucinda http://thegrowinggibson.blogspot.com/

Blog Candy http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com/2011/09/reserved-for-this-weekends-blog-candy.html

An Earthquake, a Hurricane & the Flu....Oh My!

Talk about a crappy week!  Let's re-group, shall we.

I live in New Jersey, right outside of Philadelphia, PA.  The whole "Jersey Shore" thing is a bunch of crap, yes I know what grass looks like, and no, my family is not part of the mob (not that I know of, LOL!).  I live NO WHERE near a fault line, so explain to me how in the hell we got hit with an earthquake?!  I was sitting in my basement, watching TV (yes, I like Maury!), when I hear what I think are footsteps in my kitchen.  Albeit, my cat is a bit chubby but these were footsteps.  I started to panic.  Ya see, back in February, my neighbor walked in on a burglary in progress in his house, so I was a bit freaked out.  I started yelling and then full blown panic set in when I thought the footsteps went up the second story steps.  I grab the phone, call 911, and tell the dispatcher that someone is in my house and to hurry!  I run outside as directed and see my entire neighborhood outside.  Pretty strange for 2pm on a Tuesday afternoon in August.  They are pointing to my backyard, so I think the robber is running away, the poor dispatcher is trying to calm me down when I have my moment of clarity and hear,"OMG it's an earthquake!"  Huh?!  I tell the 911 guy to forget it, he has to send the police out anyway.  Two police cars pull up, they realize that this isn't the first call they're gonna get like this today.  Thank goodness I knew the cops, I live in the same town I grew up in and 90% of the cops I went to school with (that would of be handy when I was in high school!).  So an earthquake in NJ.  Freaky but interesting.

Shall we continue.......

Let's move onto the end of that week.  Hurricane Irene is heading up the east coast.  I live about 50-60 miles from the Jersey coast.  I can make it to beautiful, white sand beaches (LBI baby!) in under and hour and to the beautiful Pocono Mountains of PA in about 3 hours.  Hurricanes are not something we have alot of here.  Yes, it rains hard, we get winds and even hail at times but hurricanes, not really.  This was definitely front page news here.  The TV and newspaper and Internet had us all doomed.  Kinda scary I must say.  So I stocked up on the essentials, bottled water, chocolate, chips and cereal.  Hey, we gotta survive!  We hunkered down on Saturday and made preparations.  I lifted everything off the craft room floor, we secured porch furniture and all trash cans.  Well, that biotch Irene decided to hang out and take her sweet ol' time getting outta here.  It rained liked hell, and the winds whipped, but we suffered no major damage.  My craft room flooded :(  .  But in the grand scheme of things we were lucky, we never lost power and we still have a roof over our heads.  However just when Irene began to start churning, I began to feel like hell.

Stuffy, achy, fever, the whole thing. REALLY?! Come on! I think that the pressure from the storm is now in my head and ears. There is nothing the doctor can do, and I just wanna pop my ear drums and vacuum out my sinuses! This week has got to end soon! Here's a few pictures of the river down the street from us:

That fin is actually a "sculpture", there's about 5 of them.  Don't ask.

This picnic table is about 50-75 yards from the actual river.

That little patch  of grass is supposed to be about 25 yards away from the river's edge.

So when you are having a bad day, stop for a minute and think just how crappy my week was!

Wanna trade? :)