Scrapbooking

I'm reading Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life and it really resonates with me. I think it helped me find my voice. Simple Scrapbooks gurus Stacy Julian and Cathy Zielske both recommended it so I picked it up and am enjoying it. Although I can see that it would not be everyone's cup of tea.

This evening we sat outside and watched the neighbors' fireworks. Oskar and Kardynn slept through it but the other two girls sat outside with us. I was snapping pictures and Dwight was recording with one of his numerous devices. He has some cute audio of the girls.

[sound of mortar explosion]
Annika: "Daddy, hold my hand!"
Kiersten: "Daddy, I not tared."

Dwight and I with our hobbies...it's so wild how you develop a passion for something and then get such enjoyment out of it. Right now I can hear Dwight down in the basement beating away on his drums. I've been sitting here playing around with a scrapbooking layout...tweaking it here and there throughout the day. We're both so into our things. We used to have a lot more overlapping interests but I think now that our free time is such a precious commodity, we both retreat to the hobbies we're most passionate about. So he's delving into his music and I immerse myself in my various "family historian" pursuits - captioning my photos, posting to my blog, et cetera.

Well, it's about two hours past the time when I should have gone to bed.

Scotch Shortbread Cookies

My friend (Mockingbird) sent me a link to *her* friend's site so while I was poking around, I found a recipe that I totally want to try. As usual I'm doing the friendly bookmark that let's others share in my great discoveries. :) I would have already given it a try except that our house is already loaded up with goodies - including shortbread - so I'll wait until the sweet supply diminishes a bit. Of course it might take a while...I think we still have Halloween candy from '06. Not to mention, we all know that I was scolded by the doctor for my excessive weight gain. But we love shortbread in this house!

In the meantime, it's a pretty cool site. She seems to be a very creative, artsy person so it was neat to see her handiwork. I need to get on the ball with my digital scrapbooking. Lately it just seems like I have so much other stuff to do...but I think it's all just warped priorities. The last week or so I've been spending all this time updating our community directory. Have I ever mentioned that I'm on my HOA's board of directors? And then as if that wasn't enough I tried to informally get a social committee up and running. Never mind that I'm pregnant with my 4th child and my oldest is only 4. Never mind I'm a stay-at-home-mom with tons of housework. I'm just a little crazy...apparently. At least I had the good sense to tell Oskar's teacher that I could not be a room mom and probably wouldn't even be able to make play dough...although it pained me to say no. And meanwhile I volunteer to provide food at every party that comes down the pike. Okay, I guess I've digressed just a little. But yeah, Magpie's Nest is a neat site.

And even though this isn't my scrapbooking site, let me just mention that there are some great sales going on now and it pains me to not take advantage. But I haven't been working on any pages so I don't even know what I need. But Scrap Girls is having a 25% sale and Digital Freebies just had a 50% sale. *sigh* Designer Digitals had a huge sale too. I will remember this for next year! And in the meantime, I'd totally love to subscribe to this magazine.