fun and games

template by the great Jessica Sprague and supplies from Crystal Wilkerson

A few Christmas' ago, Stumblebum was introduced to the Groves Family Christmas. Lisa brought it, and I remember the game made for the best pictures. We played again this year, and clearly the picture taking opportunities did not disappoint.

The game is easy. It is your basic game of charades, but before you act out your list of words, you roll two dice. On each die there are different things you have to do while acting out your card such as fingers crossed, hand over eyes, hand on head, eyes closed, hum a song, on one leg etc...

I recommend this game for families that need a full participation game for all ages.

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I am trying to get my christmas pictures into digital layouts right away. Digital scrapbooking is so quick, and I am beginning to utilize ready-made templates. It means that the Stumblebum layout above took me about 15 minutes to put together...not bad for getting so many pictures showcased on one page.

The template I used is up at http://www.jessicasprague.com/ as a free download. Plus, Jessica has a video tutorial of how to use the template right on that main page (just scroll down). If you have Photoshop or if you have ever wanted to get a better idea of how digital scrapbooking works, I recommend you buzz over to Jessica's website to watch the tutorial. I think you'll be glad you did.

crushes and boyfriends

I recently had a conversation with a friend who I grew up with at church. She's in college and she's got a crush. She told me every detail of every encounter she has had with this boy. And as she talked I got so excited for her and my tummy started tying itself in knots. And I felt giddy and nervous and hopeful and so happy for her.

It made me think of how fun crushes are. Every single thing she told me brought me back to that place where I would look for any excuse to "need" to call Rory. Or how I would check my email every three minutes just to see if he had dropped me a line that day.

It's amazing how comfortable I am with him now...so much so that I forget to date him. When we were on our 6600 mile road trip a year ago, we downloaded a lot of Dr. Laura. This is a radio program where people call in with their marriage/parenting/relationship issues and Dr. Laura basically tells them the very blunt truth about how they are messing up their lives. We didn't agree with everything she said, but honestly, she's got some good and painful things to say to the world and it made for fabulous car entertainment and the best conversation starters you could ever hope for while driving across the country.

I mention Dr. Laura only to say that she makes a big deal to tell women they need to be their husband's girlfriend. Even while happily married, they need to do all the fun girly things they did to get their husband's attention while dating. (and she has advice for husband's too, but now I'm just talking about the wives...) I hung up the phone with this friend, so excited that she's smitten, and decided I am going to kick it up a notch. I'm going to be Rory's girlfriend again.

a good week in blogland...

I love reading blogs. And man, oh man, my favorite blogs have been thowing out some lovely ideas and thoughts to begin the new year. Take a minute and check these out:

my cousin Elsa's pictures and words (the picture above is hers...)

marta's sharing of this memory keeper

beth's post on a BHAG

ali's use of her square punch

donald miller's thoughts on life as story

lovely, lovely, lovely.

the favorite gift I got

When I was eight years old I was sure my life would be complete if only I had the Ronco Food Dehydrator. I watched the infomercial religiously. I had it memorized. I wished myself to be one of those two little girls pulled from the audience to test Mr. Popeil's fruit roll-ups. A Food Dehydrator was on my Birthday and Christmas list for years on end, but my mom kept commenting how much cupboard space it would take up and that we could revisit this topic one day when I had my own cupboards.

Well, I have my own cupboards now. And not only that, but I have a fabulous mother-in-law who reads my blog posts and figured it was time I start dehydrating. I unwrapped this gift and yelled, "TWENTY YEARS! Twenty years I have asked for this food dehydrator!" Marlene had done some research and read that Ron Popeil's dehydrator actually got poor performance reviews (the horror! you mean infomercials don't always sell top quality?!!) She said this Nesco came highly recommended. I called my mom later that evening to tell her the joyous news of the sweet reunion of me and my dehydrator and she just laughed and laughed, happy my dreams had been fulfilled.

Rory immediately took it to the kitchen and made banana chips. Currently I am looking up recipes for fruit roll ups. I'll keep you posted. We've got many good days ahead.

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credit due to: Template: Laurie Pecotte, Digi paper and elements: Crystal Wilkerson

the favorite gift I gave

digi paper and supplies from Crystal Wilkerson

For Christmas, my two-year-old niece asked for princess stuff. Now I know a tutu isn't really princess attire, but it is immediately what I thought of because princess' are pink and fluffy and so are tutu's. So I went online and found this no-sew tutorial. Super easy, and SUPER fun to make. I made Ruby's tutu and then another for my 1-year-old niece, Penny. And then I decided that since I had Sara's name for christmas, there might need to be matching mama-daughter tutu's this Christmas. When Ruby opened her gift she started yelling, "Cool Princess! Cool Princess!" Then she put her tutu on and continued, "I'm a cool princess! Look, I'm a cool princess!" She kept her tutu on for the next five hours. So did her good-sport mama. :)