HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!

Well, we had a wonderful Christmas Eve and a wonderful Christmas day!  Being away from the family is very difficult this time of year.  We are so thankful to have moved into such a great neighborhood and to be surrounded by great friends! Tonight we are having a party at our house with our surrounding neighbors, 6 families!!!  It is going to be FUN!

I have managed to keep a couple of layouts listed during the hustle and bustle of the holidays.  A task that wasn't that easy.  :)  I think the part that wasn't easy was actually staying out of my office..  I DREAM scrapbooking!  :)  Here is what I have listed this week.  I did change my listing days to accommodate the holidays since they both fell on my regular listing night of Wednesdays..

I was also able to get a couple boarder, piecings and photo mat sets finished.  I LOVE doing these as a way for my customers to "catch up" on their scrapbooking for the year.  My original intention was to do 4 or more sets a week - haven't reached that goal so I may continue doing a couple through January.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Here is our official Christmas photo for 2008....  Not an easy task this year.  Tyler just didn't want to take the picture and I swear he was making a face in every other photo.  I was concentrating on the girls to make sure they were looking cute and little did I know what Tyler was doing.

So the family letter is done and waiting to be printed, I have sent the pictures to Walgreens to get printed - love how easy some things are - the family video is 2/3 done, the Christmas shopping is no where done, and I have a few things to catch up on and then I am going to take a week off.  I haven't done that in a long time - thank goodness I love what I do!  :)  I am sure I will sneak into my office to do something, how can one really stay away from scrapping!  

From my family to yours, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!

I couldn't resist putting this one in....  Sorry Tyler, maybe the next time, you won't make it so hard!  :)

Santa, can I please have more hours in the day? :)

Yep, that is what I would ask for.  :)  Sometimes I just wish I could have one extra hour a day. During the holiday season I would love two!  Today I spent quite awhile on the phone with the postal service.  Our mailman drove right by my house and didn't pick up my scheduled pickup.  I know that he looked my way and saw the size of my outgoing mail and did not want to touch it.   I finally got someone to come back out, at 5:30 pm to pick them up.  Guess I am tipping the mailman a little more this year.  :)

Here are my listings for tonight.  I really do love doing the Christmas house series. I have gone through 3 bottles of snow and two bottles of glitter in the last couple of weeks.  I walk out of my office everyday with glitter on my clothing, face and hair.  :)

I could not get the third one to load!  I will try again in the morning.  

 

CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS

Here it is November 29th and our house is completely decorated for Christmas. This year, Alexis was extremely excited about decorating and we figured we didn't have too many of these "excited" years left, so why not. Tyler is 16 this year, Cat is 12 and Alexis is just 6. She already has her letter written to Santa, though I am sure there will be edits along the way. The older children have decided to hold off writing their letters till they find something that they just can't seem to live without - well for the moment at least. :) Brian is a district manager for Kohl's so he had to get up at 3am yesterday and worked a 12 hour shift, visiting each of his stores, for Black Friday sales. He missed the entire decorating but Lex was thrilled to point everything out to him when he did finally get home. I really should have taken the photo's yesterday. We got a good 4 or 5 inches of snow on the ground last night so the light coming in from the windows are really bright, so bare with me on the lighting. :)

BTDL'S BLACK FRIDAY SALE!

Yep we are having our own black Friday sale at the BTDL Boutique. Check out some of the savings on Friday November 23. Some sales are only lasting one day, others maybe extended through the weekend. Come early for the best selections! :) You will find a link to the boutique in the top left hand corner of the side bar.

TUESDAY Trivia on BTDL's blog

Just to let you all know, the Tuesday trivia is still without a winner... Up for grabs is an adorable gingerbread house piecing done by Juliespieces. Head on over there and submit your guess! :)

http://btdl.blogspot.com/

Halloween 2008

The children LOVE to carve pumpkins. We missed just about every pumpkin patch this season so I picked up a couple at Walmart. Not as fun at the pumpkin search at the patch but this year it had to do. Here are the children with their creations. Our neighbor had a little pumpkin patch in her yard and gave us the little one they ended making into a football. :)

This year was the warmest Halloween we have had since we moved to Colorado in 2000. Of course, Alexis picked a very warm puppy costume to wear. It was total over kill for the weather. By the middle of the evening, the head was off and she was hot. Oh well, she made one cute little puppy! Caitlin decided at the last minute to invite her friend Kennedy over so we scrambled for a costume. Thank goodness her red witch still fit! Tyler, of course being to old, didn't want to go out. But when his friends came to our house, out came the old costumes again and he went out with a cape and mask.

Tonights listings.......

Boy, this week went by way too fast! I did manage to catch up on the things that needed to be done around the house but have fallen a little behind on my orders. Sorry. :( I wanted to post a few quick peeks at my listings for tonight. I am especially happy with the little girl dress up layout. I love to do princess or dress up layouts because of Alexis. She loves to playing dress up and has tons of little princess dresses, what better inspiration than your own little princess! I tore the little bear without any pattern and she is tiny! She measures about 2 inches tall and 1 1/2 inch wide...

I also created a new gingerbread man for this Christmas. I wanted one with a little more personality then the ones that I have done in the past. It worked so well with the Heide Grace Papers.

Well I am off to finish up my photo's and auctions. Oh and check back later this week, I have some great ideas brewing in my head for some adorable Christmas cards.

Tonights challenge listings....

The challenge is actually supposed to be listed on Sunday nights but I just have not been able to get much done during the weekend. This weekend was no different. It was my birthday on Saturday. :) We went shopping all day and then met up with some friends for dinner at my favorite Japanese restaurant. We then packed all 13 of us into our local Baskin Robbins. We all had a great time! The children also enjoyed this Halloween. This is the very first Halloween we have had here in Colorado where we were not freezing or under a couple of inches of snow. I'll post those pictures some time this week.....

Well here are my challenge listings. :)

A sneak peek at tomorrow nights listing, and BTDL's 8x8 challenge

Well the lighting wasn't so great when I took the picture, but here is a sneak peek into one of my listings for tomorrow. Once again, my all time favorite colors to use together. The princess carriage was real challenge to put together but I am thrilled with the result. Full layout will be listed tomorrow along with 3 others and a piecing.

BTDL ® introduced its newest monthly challenge this Sunday. Of course, I was a day late in my listings but will try my very best to make the Sunday deadline every week. I LOVE participating in the challenges and am looking forward to listing every week...

The BTDL® Design Team is delighted to introduce the “Just Right” pages, perfectly proportioned pages for the increasingly popular 8x8 albums. Each Sunday night, search BTDL on eBay to find an excellent selection of 8x8 premade scrapbook pages by a variety of talented artists on our design team. Because 8x8 albums are "just right", they are easy to display, pass around to show off, or give as gifts. You’ll have a complete scrapbook faster than you can say “Happily Ever After.”

Here are my listings for the challenge...

What is YouData and InBoxDollars?

While doing my many searches for coupon deals, I came across a few sites that were talking about YouData and InBoxDollars. I thought I would go ahead and try them to see if the they really were as great as everyone was saying.

YouData, is an advertising site that actually pays you surf the Internet. Pays you to surf the Internet, shoot I do that for free so why not!? They send you to various sites which fit your personal profile. You click onto the site - which many of these places I would not have found without this service - view the site or advertisement and you are paid to do this! I have been sent to some very well known brand sites that were giving away free samples. Bonus! :) They transfer your dollars every Friday afternoon to your paypal account. This is an exceptional site!

InBoxDollars is basically the same thing. There are a couple of difference, 1) they send you emails to read, and you get paid to read those, 2) you can play games on line as well and get paid to play those, 3) You get bonus dollars for purchasing items from the sites they send you to, 4) You get paid to take surveys and 5) They pay you $5.00 just for signing up. :) There payment is different, where as YouData automatically pays you every Friday, with InBoxDollars, you request your dollar amount from them.

Both great deals and I would advise you to try them! :) All links are on the left hand sidebar! :) Goodluck!

This weeks layouts, coupons and Primas!

This week the children are home for Fall break. Brian also took the week off, needless to say, it has been a busy hectic week.

I am also beginning to think that I have been spending WAY too much time searching blogs to find the best deals and the best coupons. The time that I used to spend on scrapbook research has now been turned into coupon research! I must admit, it has saved me so much money and it is cute to hear the children ask "Mom do you have a coupon for "insert any random item here :)" so that they can get what ever it is. I have also hooked some of my fellow design team members on couponing. Couponing - is that even a word? It is fun to share your deal of the day with your friends.

I also got my order of Prima flowers in from Michelle's Scrapbooking this week!!!!! Okay so my love of Prima's border on obsession! Here is just some of my "back stock". I literally have shelves of flowers, I just can't stop using them on my layouts. I just love the way they bring life to even the simplest of piecings. I also find myself using them on boys layouts - why not? :)





Yes, that is 17 sleeves of Prima Sprites. My favorite all time color has to be the green. YIKES and I only got 2 in this order. Looks like I will be making another order shortly "OH Michelle!"

This week I had the best time making this fun piecing. I think I will be offering just the jeep and animal piecing next week. Maybe I will change it up and offer a choice of animals who occupy the jeep.



Another one of my layouts this week is my Pumpkin Halloween House. I know, I tend to make way to many houses during the Halloween and Christmas season, but I truly enjoy doing them. An average house can take up to 4 hours to piece. Many times I will leave the rest of layout a little simpler so the house - and of course the photo's - can shine.

I really had fun making the igloo in my "Baby it's Cold Outside" layout. I had hand drawn the igloo, cut out two pieces and used one for the ice bricks. I then chalked each brick before gluing it to the original cut out piece. I ran a line of Snow Writer down the cracks and filled it with Glamour Dust! We were expecting snow this week so I figured I would get a head start on Winter.



Well I hear the buzzer on my dinner going off. Please feel free to leave comments or suggestions for future layouts!

Sneek peek of tonights listing.

Alexis is out of school this week and the older children will join her next week at home for their fall break. Needless to say, it has been a busy week. :) I just wanted to pop in and give a sneak peak into one of tonight's layouts.

Sneak peek into tomorrows Haunted House listing...

I have been working on this one all day! It took me 4 1/2 hours to piece this house! I will be listing the entire layout tomorrow night on ebay. Just search seller "TYCAALAK" or BTDL....

Mommy come and look at this.....

How often are we asked to do just that? Alexis is always the one to be getting into one thing or another. She was in the loft, very quite I might add, when I hear her ask me to come in and take a look at what she was doing. Of course, I have no idea what I am going to walk into, could it be some Littlest Pet Shop monkey hanging from our fake tree as the rest of the assortment play in the moss surrounding it and now all over the floor? Aspen - our Chihuahua dressed up in her dolls clothing? Well low and behold, she has lined all of her crayons in a circle around the table.... How cute is that?!

While looking for this picture I found some others to post here. :)

This is Caitlin enjoying a summer day on our newly built back porch...

We also watched this tornado form right near our house. It looks really close but we were about 10-15 minutes away from it. It was the FIRST tornado I have ever seen. I know, we should have been taking cover but we were in awe of it.

It is a worrisome time

Times are tough for everyone. We see it everywhere we turn. Friends loosing their homes, their jobs. My family and I have had to cut costs in every way that we can, after all my husband is a district manager in the very volatile world of retail. I very recently, returned to clipping coupons. I just can not believe how much you are able to save! I have also found a great deal of blogs that are set up just to discuss coupons and where to combine them for the best savings. My friend Shannon started me on this quest and together we share idea's, unused coupons, and websites. Here are just a few that we have found that offer a ton of ideas to aid in our saving quest:

PRINTABLEGROCERYCOUPON

SHORTCUTS

MONEYSAVINGMOM

SUPERCOUPONGIRL


I would LOVE to hear your success stories with saving money at the register!

IT IS WEDNESDAY.............

My busiest day of the week! I have two layouts to complete, photo's to take and edit, and auctions to load.... Brian is out of town - again - so that always adds a little stress into the mixture.

I have so much that I have been thinking about adding on here but I won't be able to do so today. I just wanted to pop in and tell you about our newest contest. It went out in today's BTDL® NEWS LETTER... Here it is:

We at BTDL are excited to announce another contest for our wonderful customers. We always wonder what happens to the piecings and embellishments you purchase from us on our website and thought this would be just the way to get a peek! So click on the logo to be taken to our site for all the details on the contest. We look forward to seeing your submissions:

My very first blog post.....

Many people have been blogging for such a long time and I have FINALLY made that leap! Yep for me it was HUGE! There are just so many things to figure out... but... I did it and I couldn't be happier....

A little about myself. My name is Tina I am a SAHM to three of the most generous outstanding children. TYler is soon to be 16 and is a junior in high school. CAitlin is 12 and a 7th grader in middle school. ALexis is the baby of our family, she is 6 and in the first grade. I have been married to Brian for the past 19 years. He is not only a great husband and father - he is my best friend. I was born and raised on the island of Oahu and graduated from the University of Hawaii with a Bachelors Degree in Business. I worked at Anheuser-Busch for over 12 years in many different positions, the last one being Credit Manager. Brian got a transfer with the Colorado Springs Police Department and he promised that should we make the move, I would never have to work again. We made the HUGE move to Colorado back in 2000. Though I miss the islands and my family TREMENDOUSLY, we do now call Colorado home. Of course, the idea of not having to work again was short lived. What could I do from home and still be around for my children?

So enters Ebay. I had been scrapbooking for about 9 years and while searching ebay, I found the wonderful world of premade scrapbook pages. Finally something I can truly say I LOVE! So I began selling. I started meeting people from all over the world, what a great JOB! How many people can actually say that about what they do? Can you actually even call something you love doing a job? Over the years, I have been blessed with the greatest customer base and some of the most talented scrapbookers I call friends. In 2006 I was approached by an up and coming design group - BTDL or Better Than Doing Laundry. At the time I wasn't quite sure what a design team was all about. I decided to join and see! What fun! These girls now mean the world to me. They are a HUGE support team and we are all such great friends! This past summer I had the pleasure of actually meeting one of these women in person! Julie (better know as BDULE on ebay) came to spend a couple of days with me in Colorado. Of course we bonded immediately! We speak almost daily now on the phone and almost every conversation starts with "I promise, this will only be a minute." Of course, it never is and an hour later, we are still chatting. We are looking for a way that whole group can meet. This is not an easy task. We have 13 members living in 13 different parts of the US. We do meet daily on our chat boards. Since our inception, we have registered our name, opened up a webstore, donated to a number of charities and we are looking into some special adverting for our webstore. NOTHING can stop these ladies and I am proud to be a part of such a group.

Well I guess that is it for my very first post! :) I have an order sitting on my desk and my fingers are itching to start scrapping!!!!!!!