Halloween with the Malackos!!

First, she was a fairy....

 Then, she came home and eyed up the decorations in her pre-trick or treating Halloween outfit.

Then, she became a zebra!

Look at my tail!

And ran through the streets yelling "Trick or Treat!" whether we were near a door or not.

It was very fun! She liked giving out candy so much, that I couldn't get her to stay in bed. When trick or treaters came to the door, she kept hopping up and running out to see their costumes. And I let her have one fun size box of smarties all day. That was it! 

(Please, don't ask how many I've had. Apparently I'm better at being a mother than I am at taking care of myself... come to think about it, I suppose I should be limiting Baby #2 a little more.... I'm officially cut off!)

Hope you had a great Halloween, too!

Cricut Craft Room

I just discovered this new software that you can download for free for your Cricut, and it makes it much more user friendly. 

It's a free download for Mac or PC, and it allows you to weld images or letters together (no more painstakingly picking off one letter at a time...), plus, you can type anything you want cut out on your computer's keyboard, instead of picking your way through the Cricut keypad. 

Here's where you can find it:

http://www.cricut.com/home/craftroom

Here's a quick layout I did just to play with it. See how all of the words in the title are all one piece?? Handy, right?

Now, you can easily size things, place them wherever you want on your mat and really get the most out of your machine. 

The one thing I've found is that it runs slow on my computer.... this could be because I have thousands of photos on my Mac...

Hope you enjoy!

Gracie-isms

Her new words or sayings that make me smile:

What she says -What she means

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Ocopus-octopus

Wolverine- referee

Scary Crow- scarecrow

I love you almost- I love you always

I'm going to be a big, great mom like you - I'm going to be a great mom, like you 

(let's just drop big out of there.....)

Layouts on Sunday

Brad took Gracie swimming and skating this morning, so I've got the whole morning to myself!! It's been so long, I don't know what to do first... 

Clean the house, scrapbook, do some laundry, watch some tv, read a book... so many choices. For now, I'll get some computer work done. 

Here's a few layouts I've done this last month. I'm going for quick layouts that use up some pictures I all ready have printed. 

Here's a layout using My Mind's Eye papers. I love their new collections. Very cute and versatile. These pictures are more from our trip to Ottawa last fall. 

These pictures are also from Ottawa, but they use mostly American Crafts paper. I love this fall, pumpkin orange. I've been trying to stick to layouts using one colour, but different tones and shades of it. Here's my attempt at orange, ranging into beige, yellow and brown, with a hint of blue. 

More 7 Dot Studio

Here's another layout I did for Treasured Memories, last month:

This is more of the 7 Dot Studios' Domestic Goddess line, and here's my own little domestic goddess!! 

I really like the distressed, grungy look of these papers and stickers. Very fun. 

To give you a quick idea of why I placed things, as I have on this layout, I'll do a rundown of my process. See if you can follow my brain...

I layered lots of stickers, alphas, pictures, and small pieces of paper and clustered them in groupings of three. I like to do things in odd numbers, it's supposed to be pleasing to the eye, and I always think it is. 

If you look closely, you can see three different groupings of three. I'll work out from the pictures to try and point them out to you: 

1.The pictures are set in rows of three, and when put together with the title, there are 3 groupings (title block, first row of pictures, second row of pictures). 

2. The number groupings 1, 2, and 3 make up my second grouping. 

3. Lastly, the groupings on the outside of the background paper make up the third grouping. The Domestic Goddess cluster, the banner cluster, and the Kupon cluster.

Thanks for looking. 

Dress-Up

We love to play dress-up in this house. Gracie has a little trunk of costumes and she gets all dolled up and then puts on performances for us. We have to sit on the stairs to watch them, she needs music and a costume (and usually a magic wand and crown), and when she closes her eyes and bows, you must enthusiastically applaud and yell "Bravo!" These are the rules.

She also likes to keep her dress-up clothes on for doctor's appointments, trips to the store, dog walks, and random daily events. Here she is colouring at our table:

PS. If you like these little film strips, they were a free app download from Starbucks a few weeks ago. It's called Pocketbooth, I believe, and is kind of fun.

October Treasured Memories Layouts

The lovely folks at Treasured Memories gave me these great papers, stickers and alphas from 7 Dot Studio's Domestic Goddess line to work with this month, and I love them. The paper I used for the background on this layout is my favourite. It looks like lace and is a great combination of browns, wheat yellow, and pink. Very nice. 

I scrapped a few pictures from our trip, these ones taken in Barcelona. It's nice to get some of them done! Four down, 600 to go....

I made the large flower out of some mistables ribbon tape from Pink Paislee, which was also in my kit. I used both the small and large sizes of the tape, misted, inked and then folded and wrapped them into a little circle, making the flowers. I layered them, added leaves (which were supposed to be feathers, but turned into leaves) and added a Prima pebble in the middle. I added some of my own alphas and inked a journaling block to finish things off.

Inky, messy fun. 

Toy Hutch

There's a new place on the west side of Edmonton called the Toy Hutch that is pretty fun for kids. They have three big jumpy castles, lots of toys, a few jungle gyms, and lots of rambunctious kids. If you're looking for a way to tire your kids out, look no further. 

Check out this daredevil flying down a huge slide all by herself!

And thanks to our cohorts who met us there, we made it a great morning of playing and lunch out.

Updates

I may have things working on the blog again.... maybe...

Here's a quick update. First, my mom is a published photographer!!

Check out her photo of Gracie about 2 years ago, playing in the leaves (top right). She took this picture and sent it to Our Canada magazine and they published it. Plus, it's more than half a page big!!

Congrats to her!!

Check out those chubby cheeks and cute little teeth. I almost forgot that she was so cute and chubby, she's such a little lady now.

******

Also, we're at week 31 of our pregnancy! Is it just me, or did it take forever to get to the last quarter of this pregnancy? 

Lately, I keep shocking myself when I turn sideways. My depth, I suppose it would be called is mind-boggling! 

Luckily, this kiddo is being pretty easy on me. Besides the amazing amount of moving she does, I'm feeling good. She pushes, rather than kicks so far. Her little bum comes shoving right out the side of my abdomen, I swear. 

I'm still going to strollersize a couple of times a week and running and keeping up with Gracie, so I'm happy.

******

We had a little birthday celebration with Gracie's friends last weekend and it was really fun. Gracie was a little overwhelmed, by the end, and may have cried all of her guests out the door, but she is still talking about all of her friends and the gifts, and the balloons... 

Maybe next year, it won't be so overwhelming. We'll have a few less people, and have it earlier so we can spread out outside.

Another Layout

Sorry folks, blogger is not letting me upload photos very easily, so I've been fighting with it. 

Here's a layout I made quick based on a sketch from Scrapbook and Cards Today's blog. I tried to look for it to link it up, but it was so long ago, it's been lost. Oh well, if you like it, use mine as a sketch for your own layout!

I like it because I put it together pretty quick, and that is my motto lately. 

Loving the fall colours. 

And a few close ups:

I like the neat things you can do with instagram. This picture was taken with my phone.  I edited it with instagram and made a neat sepia picture with a fun, distressed border. I used the original and the altered version of the same picture on this layout.

Hope you enjoy. Not sure when you'll see more pictures so you may have to savour this one...

Trip Highlights 2

This is it. One more post of pictures and then I'll leave you be.

Lagos, Portugal:

En route to Seville:

 Seville, Spain:

 Granada, Spain:

Seville, Spain (we stayed there twice..)

Marrakesh, Morrocco:

Going Home:

Happy memories, all of them. It was a great trip and we had so much fun spending time together.