Happy Easter & a class

I've been buying bunches of fresh flowers whenever i get into the city. they just brighten up the house since the dirty snow and brown grass is outside. I always love to take pictures of them. Right now I'm sitting on my bed at 6pm and the sun is full on in here, bright and hot. All the bedrooms in our house fast west but ours is the furthest north and the sun can't reach this far around the house before it sets in the winter. Just my daughters' room furthest south gets a bit of winter sun. It's bright out until 9pm now! And bright when we get up in the morning! LOVE the sunshine. So excited that we gain light for another 3 months! The sun gives me energy and fuels me. So I'm slowly coming out of hibernation. Shayna went for the first bike ride of the season last weekend, with rubber boots and mitts on of course.

I also started a new BPS class, Picture Spring. Registration is open until April 7. It's 30 days of email prompts. I was a little worried that it would be all about going outdoors and well, our spring is not here yet. If those types of prompts appear I'll just improvise or save them for spring really does arrive here.

The girls dyed eggs last night. Got a flat of 5 dozen at Costco. The oldest is studying the Ukraine in social studies and I lined up a local lady to come into their classroom and help make Ukraine Eggs (Pysanky). The girls did them a few years ago with this lady. Makes Baba happy that the girls are carrying on a bit of their heritage. The Ukrainian eggs are so much better because they take so long to do one egg. Versus just dip, dip, dip...mom are there more eggs to dye?

Happy Easter everyone! I can't wait until morning the girls have been whispering and scheming a surprise for Terence and I, can't wait to see what they've cooked up.

Merry March-mas

In like a lamb...out like a lion!
Merry Christmas? Merry March-mas? No it's spring time in northern Alberta!
Sunday it started snowing, it hasn't stopped and it will continue for a few more days. We haven't had snow since the beginning of January. Our neighbours yard was completely free of snow. Ours was half gone. Snowfall warning in effect. On the plus side it's only -9C and it's light out until 8pm! The Christmas lights are still up and plugged in - I'm flicking them on tonight.

Alot of the blogs I'm reading are talking about flowers blooming and trees budding. Real spring. Sigh. At least it won't last long. It's not like when we get snow in October and we know that it will last for six or seven more months. In about 9 weeks we will be able to buying bedding plants and plant gardens.

Layered Jello Squares

Whenever I make these Jello Squares people are so impressed and always ask for the recipe. They are a bit time consuming. No worse than a large batch of cookies, every ten minutes it's time for another layer. Kids and adults love them.

6 envelopes of Knox Gelatin

1 can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk

4 boxes of Jello

Jello layer: mix 1 envelope of gelatin with 1/4 cup cold water. Then add 1 package of jello and 1 cup of boiling water. Stir until dissolved. Do this for each layer (I do it as each layer is ready so it doesn't set up).

Milk layer: mix 2 envelopes of gelatin with 1/2 cup cold water. Add 1 can of Eagle Brand milk and 1 cup of boiling water. (add a bit more than 1 cup of water or else there won't be quite enough to make 3 layers of white.)

Pour first layer of jello into 9x12" pan. Put it level into the freezer. Keep in for about 10 minutes or until firm.

Pour 1 cup of milk mixture into pan, put back into freezer. Repeat with 2nd jello color and 2nd layer of milk, then 3rd layer of jello and milk, then a 4th layer of jello on top. Putting the pan back into the freezer for about 10 minutes for each layer.

It will be ready to serve almost immediately if needed since all the layers will be set. Cut into squares of use cookie cutters.

Two layers of each red and green look good at Christmas. Red and pinks for Valentines. Choose your jello colours/flavors to suit your mood or theme!

LOAD

Here's a mosaic of the 28 layouts I did for February 2010's Layout A Day. I used Big Huge Labs to do this.

Here's the 31 layouts I did in May 2009

My first attempt in February 2009:

Pretty cool to see them all together. That's 87 layouts done in 3 months of the past year.

Design Team items and other scrappy goodness

Noreen posted my contribution to Sharing Memories Scrapbooking design team assignment (yikes that was a month ago already). I had fun using the calendars. I printed them out small so I could get a whole year on the page. The 'all the days of my life' comes from being a Days of Our Lives soap fan! I got my newest items that I need to get playing with, now that I'm back from holidays.

I am proud to say that I finished my 3rd installment of LayOut A Day challenge last month. This is my thrid time completing this challenge. Can't wait to do it again in May! The 28 layouts are posted in my Flickr gallery.

Ali Edward's is dong A Week In The Life April 19-25. Can't wait to do this. Love Ali and her philosphy on scrapbooking photos + words.


My niece had her first birthday last month. I did a photo shoot of her in her birthday shirt and tutu. So so many great pictures. She's the last baby between my sister and I. That makes 4 granddaughters for my mom and dad. The good news is that my sister in law is expecting in September - around my birthday. Yeah! Another baby for me!

MIA with a good reason

I'm back! Our family was gone to Cuba for 10 days! We went for a wedding of a friend. There were 60 in the group. We enjoyed a break from the snow (which is getting close to gone now) and enjoyed the fun in the sun!

Good bye snow!

We flew 6 hours from Calgary to Varadero. But our journey started north of that, the day before with a first flight.

Running on the beach...what could be better in the winter?

Got to go in a pool with dolphins. She kissed each of us and we then had a family shot taken with her. SO ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!

Today is St Patrick's Day. We won't have much of a celebration tonight, as Wednesday is our night we are not home. Kira has piano, then I work Weight Watchers. Anyway, last year I told the girls to leave the kitchen and I made a green feast. We had green waffles, milk for them green tea for me, cupcakes and icing. Here's the layout I made.

Do you display your pictures?

A thread on the LOM message board got me thinking. Someone asked if you display pictures you've taken in your home? My answer YES! That's all I have in my home. I love photos, not art and I love the hunt for my next favourite photos. I took pictures, of my pictures to share. I have more that I need to hang up downstairs, that were once upstairs. I would love to have more displayed. Where? I don't know I'm running out of wall space! Anyhoo, enjoy and be inpsired. I have 2 new frames that are going above the chair in the living room. I wanted to still frame a few Disneyland pictures for the girls' rooms. I want to use a curtain rod and lcips to hang up some scrap layouts in my scrap area.

Living room: 3 scenery pictures above my couch. The annual picture of my girls, below a sofa table with lots of framed pictures. Underneath are my Library of Memories albums (plus a few others). End table has an easel with my latest layouts on it (lots right now since I'm doing LOAD), a new mini book I just made and a digital photo frame (my sister just got me for my birthday). The bench sits under the window, it houses my pre-LOM scrapbooks, mini books and photo album scrapbooks.





Newly renovated bathroom. I fell in love with this shelf and bought it a few years ago, but wasn't sure where I wanted to put it. The shelf holds 4 photos, then I framed 3 flower photos above it. It makes the perfect spot to hang towels. The family actually hooks their towels up, versus folding them over a towel bar. The other photo is above the toilet.



The view from my kitchen counter. Of course the fridge has to have photos on it too.

A bunny in my daughter's room. Yes he's sticking his tongue out. A 'Mom' frame in my room.

In between the dining area and kitchen. My favourite spot in the whole world (that I've been too). Lac Beauvert, Jasper National Park

The 'gallery' in my office (yes one picture is crooked, but I'll get to fixing it, eventually)

I'm still working on getting my posts here, formatted the way I want. It still seems a little wonky. What I see when composing my post is not exactly what I see once I publish, after I've played around trying to get the pictures perfect and spaced just right.