Oklahoma is 100 Years Old

Thanks to everyone leaving comments! They're fun to read and it's nice to hear that the word art is appreciated.

As for the question about how Cambryn got her name, I found it in a baby name book. It means crooked hill in Welsh. I have some Welsh ancestory, my husband's seen a crooked hill before, it just all fit together.

Now then. I do have a son and I've been working on a particular layout of him forever. Every once in awhile on the digital scrap boards someone new will post the question "How long does it take you to finish a layout?" Well, the following layout should make everybody feel better about himself because I started it in November.

I've changed kits several times, I've created new alphas only to delete them, I've rearranged over and over and over, all because I wanted to fit so much onto the page even though I don't do well with clutter.

So here is my labor of love (or insanity).

Collin's great-great-great-grandfather on Bill's side, Choctaw Chief Allen Wright, proposed the name "Territory of Oklahoma," which means "Territory of Red People," in an 1866 treaty with the U.S. Although the name wasn't used in 1866, it's how Oklahoma got its name at statehood in 1907.
Click image to view larger.
Credits found here.

Oh, guess who'll be out of town for three nights very soon. I may be painting again, lol. This is a long trip for him! He likes to sleep in his own bed so unless he goes to either coast, he's usually back the same day.

So what I'm saying is that almost four days without him only happens about once a year. And that's about how long it would take me to paint the formal living room.

I'm just saying.

Anyway, it's very very late (early) so I'm going to bed now. Happy Hump Day!

Cambryn is Funny

Another quick post today because I don't want to forget something Cambryn said.

At about 12:30 last night Cambryn stumbled into the office saying she needed her blankie and she didn't know where it was. She said it might be in the car and she insisted that she woke up because it wasn't in her bed and she just couldn't sleep without it.

So I looked just about everywhere, but no blankie. I went back to her room and said,"Cambryn, I think maybe you left it in Mommy and Daddy's bathroom when you took a bath but I don't want to go in there because it might wake Daddy up."

(My husband is a very light sleeper and I didn't want to turn on any lights.)

Cambryn sat up in bed, let out a big sigh, and then using hand motions to help explain the situation said, "Mom, you're Daddy's wife, and he loves you very much, so you can go anywhere you want to. It's the truth."

Of course I went straight to the bathroom and found the blankie. I asked my husband if he heard us last night and he said no.

Who knows, maybe she's a future psychologist.

Word Art Freebie

I finished playing with the companion quotes to my first set. These are a little more random in topic and I just threw in the scrapbook quote because it always makes me laugh.

Download here.
Please leave a comment here on my blog.
If you use one of these in a layout, I would love to see it. Please send me a link.

Maybe I should make one for my mom that says "Blessed are the children of genealogists because they shall inherit the genealogy notebooks." Every last million of them, lol.

Well, did you happen to notice how well my dining room photo matched my blog header? I'm certainly consistent in my color schemes although I don't get credit for choosing the paint color. A decorator is helping me.

And speaking of paint...you should see the color he chose for the formal living room. Not only would my husband notice this one, it would be like hitting him over the head with a 2x4!

I'm not brave enough to post the color here because it might freak somebody out but if you want to look it up on Sherwin Williams' website, it's coconut husk. Don't tell me if you don't like it, though!

Everything the decorator has done has been really cool so I have no reason not to trust him. It's just a little scary to make such a drastic change.

Enough about paint.

We had a fairly typical Sunday except for a couple of things, both involving my husband. First, he played nine holes of golf in 33-degree weather. It was freezing! He said it was perfectly fine because there wasn't any wind. Maybe it helps that he always walks, but still! Wind or no wind, that's cold.

The second thing was the highlight of my day. My husband actually loaded the dishwasher and started it all by himself. Don't laugh! I told him it was the sexiest thing he's ever done. I thought he had a dishwasher phobia because he rinses his dishes out and sets them on the counter over the dishwasher every time. For thirteen years, people. I made a big, big deal out of it. Talk is cheap but washing dishes is major in my book.

Okay, hello to Julie, Tina (from Oklahoma!) and Phoxy4. I hope everyone has a thrilling Monday and from the wisdom of Yogi Berra, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it!"

Quick Post

I'm short on time but here are a couple of new things to look at. The first is a picture of a wall. My mom wanted to know what color I painted my dining room so here it is:

The walls were previously a deep red with blue tones and now they're a deep red with yellow tones, aka "flowerpot."

Are you curious about what my husband had to say?

Husband: (home for an hour) "I smell paint. What have you been up to?"
Leslie: "Oh, nothing."

The end.

He hasn't noticed that the walls are a different color. Hmmm.

The other thing to look at is this new layout of my sister and me.

Click image to view larger.
See credits here.

I hope to post another freebie sometime this weekend. OK, back to my domestic kingdom for laundering of royal garments and washing of silver goblets. Bye!

Secret Mission

My husband had to fly to Portland, OR this morning so it seemed the perfect time for a secret mission, one involving this:

But before anyone (Mom) gets all worried, yes I'm wearing a mask.

See, I enjoy painting, mostly because I'm a perfectionist and of all the four professional painters I've hired in the past I, the amateur, am the best. So not only do I enjoy painting, I can't stand the thought of paying someone else to do a worse job than I would.

The trouble is that my husband and perhaps my mom think that painting makes me sick. That might be because during one paint job I went to the doctor with bad chest pains and was diagnosed as having a severe asthma attack when I'd never had asthma before.

However, after months of medicine and more tests I was finally diagnosed with GERD (acid reflux) - induced asthma and I distinctly remember that I never ever drank any of the paint while I was putting it on my walls.

Okay, then there was one other time I got sick but that was probably just a cold coupled with a bad reflux episode again. There have also been times when I didn't get sick at all.

Anyway, to avoid hearing my husband tell me I shouldn't paint, I figured I would just get it all done while he's out of town. By the time he gets back tomorrow evening the dining room will be completely finished (yay!) and I'll be completely healthy (fingers crossed).

The reason I've done so much painting is because we completely redid our last house, I've helped a friend paint, and now this house just needs some freshening up and I want new colors. With all my experience maybe I should write an advice column:

• It's not a good idea to wear 2 1/2 inch platform flipflops on a ladder while painting the top of a 10-foot wall.
• Reconsider starting large projects between Thanksgiving and Christmas hoping to be finished in time for your Christmas party when there's a major stomach virus going around at school and your kids have never been afraid of a few little germs.
• If you scoot backwards on the floor painting around the baseboards while wearing nylon sweats, don't be surprised when your pants slide down to your knees.

Okay, keep those in mind next time you start a painting project and if you need any more pearls of wisdom just let me know!

Back in School

Woo hoo! After a week of iced-in togetherness the kids are back in school. Now I can reclaim the house and try to get it in working order again. If that's possible.

Here are a some photos taken when I ventured out for a couple of cold minutes, LOL.
We don't get pretty "snow" this often so I wanted a picture of our house in it. Remember, though, it looks like snow but it was ICE, or at least a heavy layer of ice covering the snow.
Cambryn wanted to go outside and slide around so I went out and took some pictures, mostly blurry. I asked her to stand still for this one so she decided to strike a pose, which is why she looks so, er, posed. What makes this totally Cambryn is (1) she has one blue mitten and one black mitten and (2) she had marked all over her face with a marker (forehead and nose, maybe not so noticeable here). Thankfully it wasn't a permanent marker this time.

Collin spent a lot of time with his friend Alex who lives two doors down as they alternated houses every few hours. Cambryn's playmates had to be imported, LOL. We don't know any girls her age in our neighborhood.

Thanks to all who have left comments about the quotes freebie. Judging by the number of comments it seems mildly popular but when I looked at the number of downloads I was shocked. Now I know why everyone always begs downloaders to leave comments: because hardly anyone does. It would just be nice to see who's actually grabbing it. I'm happy that people seem to like it, though.

Well, off to tackle the house and laundry. An exciting day, for sure!

My First

Someone may actually see my blog now because I'm going to link it up after I post. Maybe I had better introduce myself a bit more. If you're from DST and don't recognize my name it's probably because I'm just not that outgoing. I do post in the forum and gallery. Before DST my main gallery was at SBB.

I'm on the awesome Michelle Underwood's creative team. I was also on Jomi's (SBG) creative team but she left design work at the end of the year. I'm quite content to stick with just one now. I scrap my kids, my family, vintage photos and heritage pages.

So, since we were iced in all week long I had some time to work on a freebie. My first! The blogging, saving in .png files, zipping (instead of unzipping!), uploading to rapidshare, etc. are all very new to me. Hopefully there aren't any mistakes along the way.

After two years I'm pretty much a digital veteran. Or so it seems when people start posting that the first kits they ever bought were all from last fall, LOL. I have used sooo many freebies along the way that I just want to try to pay back some of my gratitude.

Download here (4shared).

Download here (rapidshare).

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I hope you like it. I have another set ready to upload in a few days. Enjoy!

Never Say Never

I've been wanting to give back to the digital scrap community that has been so very generous to me with their freebies and a blog seems to be the way to do it so here I am, the person who didn't expect to have a blog.

Maybe my family can hop on and catch an update on the kids when they want. Maybe I'll actually document some of those funny things my kids say that I never write down. First, though, I'll do a practice run to make sure I can do this. It took a lot of determination to get that custom header in place!

It's Wednesday and we haven't had school all week because of ice. Tomorrow's a bust, too. My friend Christi wants to call the principal and report that her kids would be a lot safer going to school in hazardous driving conditions than they would be spending one more day at home with her.

The major streets are cleared but everywhere else is solid ice. It looks like several inches of picture postcard white snow but it's not! You don't walk in it, you slide on top of it. No footprints. It could be worse, though. My parents haven't had electricity since Saturday. Just a generator for the fridge and a couple of space heaters, plus lots of candles and bulky clothes. Luckily they still have hot water.

Okay, for my grand finale I'm going to post a layout done for designer Michelle Underwood. She has really been cranking out some great kits. I have no idea how she designs so quickly. My brain just doesn't go that fast.

Click image to view larger.
Credits found here.

Until next time, keep warm!