Around Our House

Hello friends...popping in with a card to share for the current Reverse Confetti sketch.  This is my first time playing along with the sketch challenge.  This card was a made to order card for my niece, Madeleine.  She'll be 22 on Thursday.  Hard to believe she is already 22!  She's away for the semester interning in Columbus, so we won't see her on her actual birthday.

With the start of the new year, here's what's happening around our house:

• Jonathon and Ryan have started show choir season. Their first competition is this weekend (I can't wait!)  Below are a few pictures from their preview show from Saturday.  Jonathon has changed so much from last year.  Love to see his confidence grow on stage.
• Collin is playing basketball and loving his drum lessons. We've just increased him to an hour a week (from a 1/2 hour) lesson.  Here's a video from his lesson last week. He's a happy guy when he's playing!
• Marcel is going with the flow. He's participating in wrestling this winter...and is ready to try out for the summer play (Peter Pan) at our local stage company...we have a few months before that and baseball start.

Life is good...We're running around getting everyone where they need to be!

Merry Christmas {and Time Out Reminder}

Popping in to wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas.  I hope today is a day where you are surrounded by those you love and wish you all the happiness of the season from our family to yours.

It's time for a reminder for the current Time Out challenge to be inspired by words:    Christmas is Love with All the Trimmings.  My tree could use a few more trimmings but isn't it fun to trim your tree!  I love when we put our tree and look at all the ornaments the boys have made throughout the year.

We love seeing how you are inspired by the challenge at Time Out.  Be sure to pop on over and check out the design team's creations and play along with us.  You will not be disappointed!

{Photo Shoot - Out Takes}

Happy Christmas Eve my dear friends. We'll be heading to mass this afternoon and going to my mum's to celebrate Christmas. It will be the perfect evening with our family. Christmas day we'll have a relatively quiet dinner (meaning there will be less than 10 people!) and on the 27th we'll have the whole gang over for brunch.  The card above is for my niece Olivia.  A friend I met through blogging lent me several horse stamps. I know Liv will love these.  You can't see the shimmer, but the white fur has lots of Wink of Stella and looks fabulous IRL.

Below are our out takes from our family photo shoot (me behind the camera and a random stranger took all six of us together).   I love how these capture everyone's personality!  As you can tell by most posts for the last several months, I am a huge fan of the Project Life app.  The app is on sale for $0.99. Definitely worth the investment!

{Photo Shoot} and a Quick Card

I love stamping only cards...this card is one to be added to the stash as I always need thinking of you cards. I played along with the CAS(e) this Sketch challenge.  Before I go...I am popping in to share pictures of the boys. I'll share our family picture on Christmas day, but thought I'd share some of my favorite individual ones of each of the boys.  Love seeing how they grow up each year.  I can't get over how much Jonathon has changed in one year...he's gone from a baby face to a young adult. Time is flying!

Congrats Grad!

This week I'm go to have a hodge podge of cards to share with you.  Today it is a graduation card for a co-worker of mine recently completed her under grad and I wanted to get her a little something.  I had originally made this for the Runway Inspired challenge, but waited too long to post it!

I'll leave you with a picture of Collin all dressed up for his band concert last week. He was really pleased with his tie and hair gel when I got home. Love that although he normally avoids his picture being taken he was proud to be "dressed handsome."  And of course, Marcel had to sneak in the picture too.

Thanks a Million {more Thanksgiving pics}

In yesterday's post, I mentioned I needed to quickly create two thank you cards. This is the second one that I made last week. It is based on the current sketch over at CAS(e) this Sketch.  I'm back to my go to PaperSmooches Reflections set (and I'll have more cards using it later this week).  Not completely in love with this card, but it is already written and out the door!

Below are more pictures from Thanksgiving weekend.  On Friday, we were at Pat's parents house for dinner and relaxing.  Pat's dad asked Ryan to bring his guitar to play a song to the family.  It was absolutely fabulous. Ryan sang a few songs as did Pat. Then Jonathon surprised us by wanting to sing in front of everyone too. He was awesome. Jonathon is in show choir too, but doesn't sing very often in front of us so it was great to hear him by himself.  Pat's mom had a go too!  The girls had perfected their dance routine from Thursday and were ready to perform too!  Love the smiles of everyone watching the performances.  This type of time together truly makes my heart happy.

Fall Pictures

Hi there...no card today, but I thought I'd pop in a share a few of the pictures that I took of the boys on Saturday. It was simply too gorgeous out to not try and get a few family photos.

First up...individual ones of the boys.  Their smiles show their personalities.  Of course, it helps that Pat was standing behind me messing around and saying all kinds of things to the boys.

Then we went for a shot of all four boys.  The top left is the first picture...Ryan stood behind Jonathon and said, "well...I guess we can't do this shot anymore."  Nope...can't order from oldest to youngest in front of each other and see Ryan or Collin :)  On the bottom two, I asked them to touch each other like they love each other.  Collin went for the tackle of Marcel on the bottom right...Ryan and Jonathon went very literal and put one finger on the other brother, "we're touching."

And finally, some in between shots from what was about 20 minutes of pictures. By now they know the family picture drill, but don't look forward to it :)  We have a nice family picture too...but that's lined up for Christmas!

Congrats {and conversations around our house}

Hi there friends.  I'm tired :)  So I'm popping in quickly with a card for a co-worker who recently received a promotion. I thought this would be a great card for a male co-worker and it is quickly getting sealed up in an envelope.

As I type up this post, the little guys have just gone to bed. Here's the conversations happening around here tonight that make me smile:

Having their Own Rooms:

• Marcel:  "When Ryan goes to college will I get my own bedroom? Will I get his room?"
• Collin:  "Jonathon's the next oldest so he gets first choice."

Foot Wars:

• Lots of chatter about what is fair when they've been having foot wars.  See below :)
• Sword fights were happening too, but I didn't get any pictures that weren't blurry!

Pickle Ball:

• Have you ever heard of this? I never heard of it but my mum played today with two of her friends and I ordered her pickle balls from Amazon tonight. 
• Google it...it looks like a combination of ping bong and tennis
• Love that she's playing this and having a great time.  The boys thought that pickle ball was a hilarious name and were laughing their heads off at dinner.

Thanks So Much {and vacation pics}

Happy Tuesday my friends. Popping in with a card for the current Cutting Edge Challenge and several pictures from our vacation to share with you.  

First up, pictures of my guys.  I got a new camera right before we left on vacation, so I was happily snapping away last week.   I love the close up shots of the boys.  Collin does not like the camera at all...so quite often I was getting a nasty look after I did snap a picture!

Here's a few pictures from when we weren't on the boat.  Kayaking, fishing, playing cards, jet skiing, playing card games or Risk (it should be noted that I beat Pat at Risk...he has never been beaten by the boys!) and singing/playing the guitar.  Collin loves to kayak and fish...he was in heaven out on his own.  One of my absolute favorite pictures is the one in the bottom middle of the collage. This is 100% Marcel...cuddled up next to one of us chatting our ears off. He's a very happy little man.  And who can resist Jonathon's smile in the upper left...love catching them with true smiles on their faces.

And last, but certainly not least...lots of fun tubing off the back of the boat. It was a great week away with our family and my brother and niece.

Wishing You a Happy Birthday {and Easter pics!}

Happy Tuesday, I'm back with a card for the CASE this Sketch and Runway Inspired combined challenge.  I love playing along with both of these challenges...so cool that they are hosting a combo challenge.

I'll have more Easter pictures to share tomorrow too...today I'm popping in to share pictures from my brunch at my mum's house.  It was beautiful and we all enjoyed being outside after we had a fabulous brunch.

Here's my whole gang...thanks to my sister-in-law Cindy for snapping this picture.  You can see how fast everyone is growing.  One quick picture and we were all smiling and had our eyes open.  It looks like Ryan is taller than Pat in this one, but he's not...must be the angle of the photo.

Here's the whole family on my mum's back deck. Thankful for my mum's neighbor who popped over to take this.  Super thankful that Pat's parents were at brunch too and in the picture.  Very thankful that everyone is healthy after Pat's dad's quadruple bypass this past September.

And here's a few pictures showing how much everyone enjoyed the absolutely perfect day.

Thanks a Latte {and my guys!}

 

Hello my friends...popping in to share some pictures of my boys from this weekend before I get to my card.  I took advantage of the nice fall weather to head down to the Loveland Bike Trail.  My goal was to get a picture of at least the boys for our Christmas card.  We got extra lucky that a friend and his son were going for a bike ride and I got them to get a picture of the whole family.  I'll be sharing the family picture on Christmas day!  

So here goes...

{Ryan 16}

{Jonathon...almost 13...I think he has grown about 6 inches in the last year!}

{Collin...10 years old...my shy guy}

 {There's that adorable smile!}

{Marcel...8...Mr. Outgoing}

{His reaction when I asked him if his friend Chloe is his girlfriend!}

Yes...I know I'm biased, but I think they are pretty darn handsome!

And if you've hung with me this long, here's a card for the current CASE this Sketch challenge.  I pulled out my new Verve to make this card from Erin. Erin is always so generous and has sent me goodies in the past.  I'm popping a few PTI dies to her and of course, I had to indulge her coffee habit!  She's a coffee girl...I'm a diet coke girl...she likes red wine...I like white.  One of these days here's hoping we get to share any of these types of drinks together!

 

Thanks {and Weekend Recap}

Hello friends...and happy Monday!  I'm popping in with a super CAS card.  This card will be going to a co-worker as a thank you for a job well done.  Hopefully it doesn't look to Christmas like with the color combo, but it is for a guy so I didn't have any other enamel dot colors that weren't feminine!  

We had a super busy weekend and I thought I'd share pictures of everything that went on around our neck of the woods.  Saturday morning started off with Ryan, Jonathon and me running a 5k to benefit prostate cancer. It was an absolutely gorgeous weekend. Ryan quickly left us behind running it in 23 min 15 sec and Jonathon finished at 30 min 9 seconds with me next to him at 30 min 12 seconds. Ryan has just recently started running.  I think his time was amazing!

Next up...Marcel started fall baseball. Doesn't he look adorable?  He asks Pat every day to throw with him or to pitch to him. He's certainly caught the baseball bug since the spring season.  I think he looks pretty adorable in his uniform.

And we finished off the day with Ryan heading off to homecoming.  One of the moms was super kind and had all 18 kids over to the house for dinner.  They went as a big group instead of with specific dates for them and they had an absolute blast.  I think they all look so handsome and gorgeous!

It was a super fun weekend...and we were ready to relax with a glass of wine/beer on Saturday night!

Ingredients: 

• Stamps:  Simon Says Stamps Stamptember Really Big Thanks
• Patterned Paper:  SN@P Color Vibe