The Well Rounded Mama

We lost a day...

...yep.  Ever since we booked our plane tickets I've had it in my head that we leave on a Tuesday.  Nope.  Turns out July 3rd is a MONDAY and so we leave ONE WEEK FROM TOMORROW!  Crazy!  I know one day doesn't seem like much but it all just seems so real now.  In one week we are leaving Malaysia for good.  I know we'll be back to visit some day -- after all, Levi was born here -- but this will no longer be home.  Now I can go back to knowing how to answer the question "where are you from" and knowing what to write on forms that ask for country of residence. One more week.  Mixed feelings.

Okay, so I've been super busy. Fun stuff, but still really busy. And I am still trying to figure out my priorities when it comes to scrapping.  I love it all -- the memories, the creativity, the community, etc.  But there isn't time for everything so I have to figure out how (and why) I want to spend my time the way I do.  It's all a bit confusing but I am sure I will figure it out.

I've done some scrapping this weekend but I can't share many of the LO's.  A lot are for upcoming kit releases so I can't post quite yet. But I do have one that I just love....it's Levi's two month LO.  Isn't he the SWEETEST!?

I used Michelle Coleman's BIRTHDAY BOY/BIRTHDAY GIRL kit at Scrapartist.  I just love, love, love Michelle's stuff.  There was a 25% off sale this week so I grabbed me some goodies! 

Oh wait.  I do have another I can share. I forgot about this one.  I used Dani Mogstad's CABANA BOY kit (Love this!) and Michelle Coleman's new hand-stamped brushes. 

I got a great book this week, too.  We had some gift certificates we needed to use up so I picked up Scott Kelby's THE PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS 4 BOOK FOR DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHERS.  Oh my....it's awesome.  It just makes me realize 1)Photoshop Elements, while lacking some really cool stuff that PSCS has, is still a VERY powerful program and 2) I know how to use so little of it!  I mean seriously...I can do a lot in PSE and yet there is sooooo much I don't know about (or know about but don't know how to maximize its usage.)  So, I worked a bit this weekend on color correction and conversions.  Here's a peek...

The first one was a photo that I color corrected my "old way."  See how washed out Alaina's skin is?  The second one is my new and improved color correction.  The third one is my b&w conversion the "old way".  Notice all the yucky gray? The final one is my new and improved b&w conversion.  I still have a lot to learn but man am I liking my progress!

Okay, I think that's it for me.  I'll probably check in later in the week but I have soooo much to do.  And not just packing...but projects I am working on, gifts I am making, saying goodbye, etc.  Have a great week!

I was actually cold...

Can you believe it?  I was actually COLD tonight...yes, cold.  Here in Malaysia.  Unheard of!  But it is true...the weather has been cooler lately and the wet season is upon us.  We headed out to one of our favorite restaurants "one last time" tonight (that would be Sizzling Chicken for those who know what I am talking about).  The restaurant (I use that term loosely) is on the beach and the wind was blowing and it was raining and I was actually COLD.  Crazy.

Okay...so, our internet has been down more than it has been up lately.  With the weather and the school construction going on our internet connections keep getting cut!  And since most everyone is away now for vacation, it takes a while to get it fixed.  It's frustrating, but it shows how much I depend on internet...for keeping in touch, for employment stuff, for my scrapping, my banking, and to check the movie theater schedules!  LOL!  What did I do before internet???   It's been up for a few hours now so I am *hoping* it will stay around for a while.  I am feeling almost caught up (minus a few emails I need to write).  But since the internet has been down I am WAY behind on posting LO's to galleries. I hate to be a gallery hog but at this rate I will never get them posted if I limit myself the way I usually do.  Anyway, moving on.

We took Levi swimming for the first time on Sunday!  It was just the cutest.  We have taken all of our kids really young (Alaina at 10 weeks, Caleb at 10 weeks, and Levi at 9).  And they have all worn the same cute sun hat (sorry we never gave it back, Sally!) Isn't he the cutest??

And here are Alaina and Caleb their first time swimming:

 

We've been doing lots of other fun stuff too!  Now that w are all packed, we have lots of time to do stuff as a family...making cookies, going out to eat, shopping, etc.  Alaina wanted to paint yesterday and we have a bunch of left over rolled cardboard from packing so Jason was going to let the kids paint their feet.  Well, it didn't quite work.  It turned into body art instead.  He's such a good Daddy!

 

HAVE YOU SEEN CALEB????

And my two cuties together...

Okay, I promised you some Levi photos.  He is getting soooo big! We took him to the doctor yesterday and he weighed almost TWELVE pounds!  And he was only 7lb4oz at birth!  He are some of my favorite pictures from the last few days.  The first one is when I FINALLY caught him smiling on camera.  He smiles all the time but I never seem to have my camera when he does.  See his dimple??? Love it!

 

 

And when I saw this picture my heart skipped a beat because my little Caleb looks SO BIG!

And this is one of the reasons I am going to miss Malaysia so much:

And one more for you.  This one has a story.  Jason took Alaina and Caleb to the pool last night and Alaina came back in screaming that her leg hurt (lots of growing pains lately.)  Well, she kept crying and crying.  Jason, in his typical manner, tried to lighter the mood.  I was drying her off in a towel and he said, "Wow Alaina, you've got a mole on your bottom."  *PAUSE CRYING* "But that's how God made me!" *RESUME CRYING*

Just one more picture for you...I now have competition.  For my computer, that is.  Alaina has finally figured out how to work a mouse so now she wants to play Clifford all day.  And now three people have to fight for two computers.

And if all those pictures weren't enough to show you, I have LO's! With my internet being down and with Jason being gone every night to watch WORLD CUP Soccer, I've had lots of scrapping time!

This one is just about my collection of coffee cups! Paper is by Jen Wilson, stitching by Shabby Princess.

Caleb being silly...kit is HAPPY by Mindy Teresawa at Sweet Shoppe Designs.

Kit is SWEET SURRENDER by Mindy Teresawa.

Kit is SASSY PANTS by Dani Mogstad

Another SWEET SURRENDER kit page by Mindy.  At first I had all of this one LO and then realized it was too much and I really had two different stories I wanted to tell.  So I just made two LO's.

And this last one is a 2-pager about our trip to a Batik factory here in Penang.  It was soooo cool!  Kit is HOT CHILD by Meredith Fenwick.

Happy Wednesday!

OUR STUFF IS GONE!!!!

...And that's a GOOD thing!  We packed and packed and packed this last week and then on Thursday they came and took it all away!  Yea!  I am sooo glad to see it gone and be done packing for a while.  It is sooooo hard to go through your life and try to decided what to keep, what to give away, what to throw away.  We ended up with more stuff than I thought we would but oh well.  At least we will have a pretty functioning house when we get back to the States (uh, well, minus furniture and a car, LOL!)  It is so nice to be done now and to have time as a family.  I love just having time to ENJOY my kids.  To just sit and play and not have a bazillion other things to do.  And I love that I also have "me" time, something this true introvert needs!   I just can't function without some time alone each day.  This is wonderful!

Can you believe it?  My little Levi is TWO MONTHS today!  Two months?!?  Where has the time gone.  Please stop growing!  I don't know if he will be our last or not and I cannot bear to think that my last is growing so fast.  Kind of makes me think we aren't done yet, but you never know.  Anyway, he's getting so big on me.  Everyone we see talks about how he has put on weight.  Yea, yea.  But I want him to stay LITTLE!  My sweet little boy CANNOT go and get big and grown up on me.  Caleb already did that.  On the up side of Levi getting bigger is that he is sleeping 10-12 hours at night. Can't complain about that!  I have a ton of pix on my camera that I need to download, so I'll show pictures soon...I promise.

Until then, here are some LO's.    Man, these are all over the place.  I have no style other than truly eclectic.  It all depends on my mood at the time of scrapping.  Some are crisp and clean while others are artsy and still others are worn and comfy.  Oh well. Jason loves the fact that all my pages look different. And I guess I do too.  But with all the talk of "finding your style" I sometimes wonder if there is something wrong with me!  LOL!  Okay, so here you go...

This one was in honor of my friend Erika who asked if I scrapped anything about Malaysia.  Well, the first thing I think of when I think of Malaysia is how stinkin' HOT it is here!!  So there you go Erika.  Do you miss the heat?  =)

Here's another one in honor of you, Erika!  You're lucking out today!  LOL!

I've been wanting to scrap these pictures FOREVER.  I just loved them. 

This was kind of a crazy LO to do...I had NO IDEA what picture I was going to use.  I was just playing with the kit and put a page together and THEN picked a picture (very backwards for me).  But, I was happy because the page was perfect for a picture I had wanted to scrap.  And i just loooovvveed this font...so fun.  It's called, "AW Siam English..Not Thai."  Just in case you though that was really Thai! =)

That's it for tonight!  I really need sleep.  I have been waking up really early in the morning and haven't been able to go back to sleep.  I have taken a nap the last two days but with tomorrow being Father's Day...church, lunch out, a nice roast beef dinner...I don't think a nap is in the forecast.  Thanks for stopping by!  Have a GREAT weekend!

Sorry for the silence....

...But life has been C-R-A-Z-Y around here!  Not bad, just busy and crazy.  Our shipment goes Thursday so we have been packing like crazy.  And somehow we are trying to remain a family and have quality time together.  And in the teensy little time I get alone...either REALLY early in the morning or late at night, I have been trying to scrap. I've actually gotten a few done, which feels good.  It feels so good to do something I love so much!  So...the first REALLY FUN one I got to do was this:

Yep...that's right...I'M GETTING PUBLISHED!  I am so super excited about this!  Last week I saw a call mentioned for Memory Makers Idea Gallery special edition.  The crazy part was, the deadline was June 7 and it was already June 8 here.  Actually, it was already June 8th on the East coast but I figured if I lived on the west coast of the US, I would still be good.  So, I decided on a whim to send a few in to categories I had LO's for.  To my utter surprise, just a few days later, I got asked for one of them.  Yea!  And on top of the fun of seeing one of my LO's in a magazine, it turns out that MM has decided to start paying for LO's, starting with this call!  Woo hoo!  So...my LO has been pulled from the public galleries until the magazine release date (sometime in October).

This news was definitely a good thing...the day before was one of the WORST days ever.  I won't go into details but I'll just say I am realizing how much words can hurt.  They can cut so deep..so deep you can't eat, can't sleep, you dream about it.  Hurtful words were spoken about me (not to me) and it hurt.  But, I am learning to look for the grain of truth in what was said, however small, and then just let the rest go.  More importantly, though, it has reminded me that I need to be so careful what I say. I don't ever want to hurt someone like this.  I'm really okay, though.  It was hard but I'm learning and growing, and moving on.

So today we tried to take the kids to a movie.  About a year ago, we took Alaina to her first movie (Madagascar).  She loved it and did really well.  So, we figured Caleb was about old enough so we decided to go see CARS.  After all, Caleb who has never cared about the Happy Meal toys at McDonald's before now RUNS in and SCREAMS "I NEED!" as he taps on the display case holding the CARS figurines.  So, we went.  Caleb lasted all of about ten minutes.  He was bored and was much more interested in walking up and own the aisles than sitting and watching.  So Jason, Caleb, and Levi all went to the playland in the mall while Alaina and I stayed and watched.  I was really tired and wanted to go home so I kept asking Alaina if she wanted to go home.  She kept saying no.  Then, about ten minutes before the movie ended Alaina said, "I want to go home. NOW!"  But by then I was actually into the movie and really wanted to see how it turned out.  So I persuaded her to stay and barely got to see the end.  I thought it was a pretty good movie. However, even though there are cute talking cars I really didn't think it was meant for kids. Not that it was inappropriate or anything, I just really don't think most kids would get it.  In all honestly, I am not even sure teens would get it.  Or they would get the point but think the point was wrong or stupid.  I really think the message of the movie is to be most appreciated by us adults...who realize that sometimes you just need to slow down and enjoy the things around you. 

Okay, LO time.  I have no idea even where I am in showing LO's on my blog.  I am really behind in posting to the galleries.  Let me see where I left off...

Phew!  I think that's it.  That's about a week's worth.  I've had fun here...real variety.  Some for design teams, some just for fun. I'm sorry I'm too tired to list all the credits.  But you can see them all in my gallery at 2Peas.  Well, except the last few which I haven't posted yet.

And I did another fun project for Alaina's dear sweet friend Sarah who we had to say goodbye to.  A Starbucks tumbler!

Okay...that's all for tomight!  I've still got some time before bed and I have some stuff to do!  Bye!

A bit peeved...

I just did this long post with new Lo's and lots of chatter.  And I went to publish and *poof* it's gone.  No where to be found.  I'll do it again later.  Too tired now.

Mixed Emotions...

...yep, that's what it is.  MIXED EMOTIONS.  Tonight is graduation night.  Our seniors are now officially done and tomorrow is our last official day as dorm parents here in Malaysia.  Soooo many emotions and feeling flooding in.  Sadness at having to say goodbye and the reality of international living that says most likely I will never see most of these kids again.  Tiredness from the zillions of activities and events. Relief that we are almost done and we can be a family again. Fear of all the packing that still needs to be done.  Excitement about hanging out as a family and not having to tell my kids to wait because I have work to do.  I could on and on...so many feelings!

It's almost midnight.  I have to be up at 5 am to say goodbye to some of my kids.  Sleep will be so wonderful tomorrow.  I'll bet we'll be in bed by 8:00.  Ahhh....

I haven't scrapped ANYTHING.  I think it has been like 3 or 4 days which other than our trip to KL at the beginning of April, that is the longest I have gone since November.  Oh how I miss it!  But I am too busy and too tired!  But after tomorrow things should settle a bit and I can get back to it.  I have found that not only do I LOVE to scrap, I NEED to scrap.  It really provides me with stress relief and a sense of accomplishment.  Really, it just makes me happy. I suppose it really one of the only things in my life that I have every really passionately loved (at least anything that has lasted longer than a few months).  So, I'm sad I haven't had time but oh well.  I WILL show you the big project I finished over the weekend though.  I had soooo much fun with this and it really didn't take me that long!

I made this cute little ABC album for Alaina's preschool teacher.  Her teacher was just the best at taking lots of pictures during the year.  So, I thought this would be a fun way to use lots of pictures plus record the letters they learned along with some of the words.  To make it easy, I decided to pick just one kit to work with and stick with it.  I chose the COMPASSION KIT by Shabby Princess and Gina Cabrera just because it was so fun and bright.  I made myself about 6 or 7 "quick-pages" and then I just slipped in photos, added an element or two so the pages would look different.  I kept the same ABC paper strip at the bottom of all the pages for coherence.  I was really please with how it came out.  And now I also have a a template for all these pages so if I need to another mini album sometime I can use it again. 

Okay, off to bed now since I have to be up in a few hours to say goodbye.  Have a great night (or day!)

Oh, and for something funny....you know how I have said how much Caleb wants to be like his cat and follows him around doing what he does?  Well, this is just ridiculous!

Happy Weekend...

...I hope everyone is having a stupendous weekend.  Ours has been good.  Busy, but good.  yesterday morning was our senior tea. It is a time when the seniors and their parents gather together with the staff for a brunch buffet. The seniors have the opportunity to introduce their parents to the staff and other students, which is really great for our dorm students.  Most of them only see their parents a few times a year, so it is a really special time.

Then last night was the spring fine arts concert -- band, choir, and visual arts.  I was so proud of all my kids.  Some amazing talent there.

This morning was baccalaureate.  I missed a bunch of it because Levi needed changing.  I asked Jason where the diaper bag was.  He told me it was on the stroller.  So, I left the banquet hall but couldn't find the stroller. So I go back in and find the stroller there in the back.  No diaper bag.  So, I leave again and try to go up to the nursery where Alaina and Caleb are to see if it got left there.  I had to wait TEN minutes for the elevator.  TEN MINUTES!  It was ridiculous.  And I was not about to climb 13 flights of stairs with a fussy baby in my arms.  So, i finally make it up to the nursery but still, no diaper bag.  Back down I go to interrupt the service once again. I go back to my seat and as calmly as I can (while still letting my annoyance be very visible) I ask Jason where the diaper bag is.  He said he didn't know.  I looked under his chair and there it was.  I could have killed him.  So, I had to leave the banquet hall ONCE AGAIN.  Just let me say that I hate rude people who int erupt services by their going out and coming in and talking and cell phones beeping and watch alarms chiming.  And here I was, the once causing all the disturbance.  So I left to go change Levi.  Now since this is Asia, there are no changing tables in the bathrooms.  So, I had to change him on a rattan chair in the open air foyer.  Lovely, I tell you.  After that I didn't dare go back inside so I stayed out and chatted to another mom who was out with her fussy baby.  Ah, the joys of motherhood!

Tonight we had a time for our dorm students to get together to say goodbye to the seniors.  It was really good and a bit emotional.  It is just so exciting, though, to see this group of 14 students from nine different countries come together as a real family.  Dorm brothers and sisters who love each other.  It was a really special time.  Then, to balance out the weepiness, everyone went around campus taking crazy pictures and pushing each other in the pool.  Then we ordered a bunch of pizzas and just had a good time.

Okay, one Cabe story for you just in case you hadn't quite grasped what a BOY he is.  He was running outside as usual and fell.  Now normally when he falls he gets back up, brushes himself off, laughs, and then goes again. But this time I heard crying so I knew he was really hurt.  Jason ran out there and saw that Caleb had stubbed his toe really bad.  Caleb was screaming.  They came in and Jason tried to clean out his toe and stop the bleeding.  Jason asked if he should take the piece of skin off and disgusted as I was, I just said to put the band-aid on over it.  Well, Caleb just screamed and screamed so Jason took the band-aid off.  So what did Caleb do?  He reached for his toe, grabbed the piece of skin, RIPPED it off, and then he stopped crying.  Everything was find and dandy in the world of Caleb again.  I really, really don't get boys!

Okay, I had a little scrapping time this weekend.  Jason and I have decided to not stress out too much about packing until the dorm leaves on Thursday.  It is just too hard to take care of the dorm, attend all the graduation events, take care of our little ones, and try to pack all at the same time.  It just stresses me out too much.  So, I had a bit of computer time at night after the kids went to bed. 

I've been in kind of a weird mood so my first two LO's are a little different for me.  When I talk to people about photoshop I often tell them to just play around with it to see what it can do.  So, I took some of my own advice and played around with tools I don't use much and using tools/elements in new ways.  So, here you go:

Black paper, grunge edge, cardboard, and clip by Gina Cabrera at DDE.  Patterned paper and staple by Shabby Princess (pp from the Compassion kit, staple from Shabby Tea Party).  Paint brush strokes by Meredith Fenwick at SBB.  Tag, zipper, twill, and stitching my own.

I had fun with this one.  I picked up Michelle Coleman's FLOURISH BRUSHES at Scrapartist and just had to play with them.  I used the brushes to cut out the photo so that the swirls would mimic and bring out the deep colors of the photo.  Kit is TREASURED by Mindy Teresawa at SSD.  Brushes and stitching by Michelle Coleman. Note paper by Gina Miller from her NOTE THIS collection at SBB.

And for a fun bright and cheery one...

Kit is the wonderful ZEST FOR LIFE by MandaBean at Sweet Shoppe Designs. 

I also finished up another big project this weekend but I can't show you yet.  It's a gift for someone but I haven't given it to her yet and I don't want her to see it here, first.  I hope to get it done and given tomorrow so hopefully I can show it off then.

Oh, and make sure you visit HERE to see the AMAZING week five LO's for the Ultimate Digi Scrapper contest.  This final challenge was to produce a LO predicting the next new trend in digiscrapping.  WOW is all I can say.  Each LO and prediction were amazing and awe inspiring.  I love them all for different reasons. Make sure to visit THIS ONE for just the coolest thing.  Just look at it for a few seconds and you'll see why Robin is just one cool lady!

Okay, beddie bye time for me.  Happy Sunday!