these are days

KI projects

I participated in Celeste's challenge to scraplift a layout from the KI Memories Idea Gallery. I chose one of Rhonda Bonifay's beautiful layouts seen here. I love the top portion of the page with the tone on tone stars and tried to create the same effect with flowers. The flowers are actually glittered flowers cut from paper from the Friends Theme pad. I used the glittered brads from the Joyful line for the centers. 

 

Thanks for the inspiration, Rhonda! I've always loved her work so much. :)

I also made a card for Shannon's challenge to make a card for a friend. I used the KI theme products again, and added a felt flower from the La Di Dah line. Simple card.

 

Thanks for looking, if anyone's around! :P

"think fast" challenge

I wanted to participate in Kelly's challenge over at the KI blog this week...to finish a page in under 30 minutes. For me, my quickest layouts are usually 8.5 x 11 so that's what I did. I already had this series of 2x3 pics of Carli & Abby printed up, so that made it even easier. I chose landscape, an easy blocked design with 1 pattern, a border, and a glitter title & accents. Very simple!

 

Paper is from the little guy line and you can find the border, letter, and floral stickers here.

Thanks for the challenge, Kel! I have to do that more often. :) 

for dad

I decorated a little gift bag and made a matching card for Tracy's challenge over at KI. Very simple, but turned out cute. All papers and embellies are from the Little Guy line. You can find the black sparkly letter stickers here. 

 

I'm excited to be going to watch the gators in the SEC tourney over in Tampa tonight. The game doesn't start until 9:45 so it'll be a late night for me. But I love March Madness...always have!

The boys started baseball season, continue to swim (along with Abby), and are finishing up soccer season so we're keeping busy daily after school. Joey made the 3rd grade "battle of the books" team and Sam made the principal's list once again. Abby continues to do gymnastics and they all are still playing the piano. I'm proud of all of them. They are happy kids, for sure. :-)

Have a great night everyone.

KI lovin'

Just sharing my challenge from a couple of weeks ago on the KI blog. My challenge was to "dress up your photo." I added lots of fun embellies directly on the dead space on the photo of my little princess, Abby. (picture taken almost 3 years ago already!) I used products from the Girly Girl and Princess lines.

And before that one, we were asked to create a page about friendship. All papers, title work, and chipboard accents are from the Friends, Girl, Princess, Daydream, and Cute lines.

And while I've just shared girl pages, you can see the DT's cute boy pages here. Lots of fun theme paper pads and embellishments to choose from, including travel and pet lines! Go check 'em all out! 

KI Challenge

It's been so long that I've almost forgotten how to post! :-)

I'm sharing a layout that I did for Lisa's challenge over on the KI blog. Her challenge was to use Lace Cardstock X 3. So for this page, I chose three different colors of the Pop Culture Disco ball lace...it features a picture of my girlfriend's little girl, Riley. Love her bathing suit!

 

Of course this is kind of late, but I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season! :P

happy thanksgiving

I am so happy to be home this year for Thanksgiving. My mom and dad came in on Tuesday from Illinois. My sister, Toby arrived yesterday from Atlanta with Philip and their three girls Lily, Rebecca, and Amanda. Jen came today along with Sean and their two dogs from S. Florida. (my oldest sister, Shari, is in D.C. for the holiday with Rich and her baby girl Halle) 

John made the turkey on his big green egg, I made cornbread stuffing, sweet potato casserole, a broccoli dish, an apple pie and pumpkin pie, my mother made the corn souffle, cranberry salad, and her 7-layer salad. We usually have at least one "flop" each year, but I'm happy to report there were none today! Everything was yummy. And I completely stuffed myself. :-)

The boys have a soccer tourney for the rest of the weekend, so that will be consuming most of our time. The weather is supposed to be perfect, mid 70s, so I'm looking forward to being outside.

I'm sharing my most recent layout for KI. It was for the dt's focus on "giving thanks" last Friday...this picture of my three is from Spring of '06! I love that I've been able to dig through my drawer and make use of some favorite old pictures for these weekly challenges.

 

Gotta be sure and plug my gators before I go...big rivalry weekend up in Tallahassee. Fingers crossed!

Anyway, hope everyone had a wonderful day of eating and spending time with your family!

it's been way too long...

...since my last post. I knew I'd have trouble staying on top of it, but didn't think I'd be this bad!

A lot has gone on, needless to say. Here's a little bit of what's been happening:

• We took the boys to a World Series game!! It's something I think they'll always remember, and John and I will, too. Still haven't edited Sammy's ray-hawk pics yet, though. :P

• Abby lost a front tooth, and is about to lose the other one. Just in time for holiday pictures! yay.

• Sam made the principal's list at school. We're so proud of him. Go Sammy!

• Joey qualified to swim at a meet up in Gainesville (UF) in the O'Connell center. I'm super excited for him. Ya know, Dara Torres was a gator swimmer...so he'll get to see her old "digs."

• John took a guys trip down to Miami for a weekend. He went to a UM game, played golf, and got to see a lot of old friends. Mostly, he had fun. He needed it as he's been so busy at work lately.

• The kids are playing chords on the piano now! The songs are actually starting to sound like "real" songs now. :-) Very exciting.

• Reconnected with a very, very good friend of mine, Ms. Shelby Gregory. She found me through my blog! Met her as student at Berkeley and she used to watch the boys for me when they were infants. She'll be back visiting over the holidays and I can't wait to get together with her. :-)

• The kids had so much fun on Halloween and came home with lots of loot. They're still making their way through it...slowly but surely. Sam was an Evil Jester, Joey a Zombie, and Abby went as a Leopard.

• Been doing lots of work for Ruban Rouge, KI, and BHG lately. It's kept me busy, but it's all fun stuff. Here are a couple of things I can share:

For Ruban Rouge, we participated in Scenic Route challenge recently:

     

And here's one I did for KI featuring their Glitter Lace Cardstock:

• And last, but certainly not least...I voted. :-) Congratulations to President-Elect Obama. It was a historical day and I loved watching it all unfold...I stayed up until 3 a.m. that night.

I think I'll stop here today. I really want to get in the habit of doing shorter posts, less info, more often. That's my goal. Blogging is hard...I don't know how everyone seems to do it so easily!

for KP...

...and for the millions of readers on my new & already neglected blog...

crowdSPRING, hire Kelly Purkey for your new Community Marketing Manager!

I will update, I will update...promise. Today. :-)

odds and ends

No real reason to post, just trying to keep current.

• My sister asked why I didn't title my blog "these are the days." It's actually named after an old (like 15 years or so?) 10,000 Maniacs/Natalie Merchant song I used to love. I found it on youtube and was going to link it here, but I didn't really like this particular version. So i'm not linking. :)
• So excited all my sports team won/are winning right now. Gators big time over LSU, Bucs big over Carolina...and the Rays are about to win and go up on the Sox 3-1 in the series! yaaaay!
• Last week I caught up on 90210 and it is very quickly becoming my new favorite fun show to watch. Heard this song on one of the episodes by Signal Hill Transmission and then downloaded it onto my ipod.
• Been scrapbooking, mostly assignment work. I can share this page, though, I did for ruban rouge. My layout shows a sort of out-of-the-box way to use the fiskars "leave it to weaver" punch:

Abby is just 4 in this photo--still in preschool! Hard to believe these were taken 2 years ago. Anyway, I used the border punch to make the rays for my sun. (Patterned paper is older American Crafts, letter stickers are Pink Paislee and Chatterbox)

I think that's about it for now...gotta go skim through and see who got booted off "Dancing...!" I'm actually {more than} ready to see Cloris go...

Joey in action

Honestly, I do take pictures of my boys! They're typical 8 year old boys, they're goofy, sometimes too wild, lots of energy. They don't particularly like their picture taken. So these days, I get this:

   

He's not the most consistent pitcher, but he does throw pretty hard. And this was his best outing, by far.

and this:

I love his face in this one. I love that you can see the heats/lanes written on his arm. And he looks so determined! I have to mention that in this 50 butterfly, he made his first ever Florida Junior Olympic cut. He was very pumped about that.

Anyway, I took these photos last weekend in my never ending quest to get some quality sports action shots. I'll actually settle for decent quality. I'm liking the composition in these, but neither one is in great focus. And I know, with fast action--it takes practice--and a bit of luck. Any advice?

I do enjoy trying, though. And luckily for me, it's something that involves a couple of my favorite things: sports & photography. :-)

Have a great weekend everyone! GO RAYS!!!