Kelly

This summer Kelly (one of our girls from China that we hosted a year ago) came back for a 6-week program! Unfortunately due to our travelling in July, we weren't able to host her again though. But we did have Kelly over for a weekend in August and then again for a quick visit the night before she was leaving for Home again! (shown)

That night we I pulled out a chipboard book for everyone to cover with pre-cut patterned papers and some stickers/letters. We also had our Japanese Student with us - Kana - at that time. Kana was with us for 2 weeks at the end of August.

Kelly, it was soooo good to finally have one of our Students return! We pour so much into the lives of these kids and so it was a real treasure to actually see one of these faces return!

friday night scrapping

Luckily or thankfully our local Scrapbook store has free Friday Night Crops for a few hours - which is where I've taken all our girls over the years. While I had Alexa's Girls for the 10 days, I took the girls (plus Angel and Helen - the only other two girls in the group) scrapbooking on both Fridays while it was convenient for me in not having to "arrange" it while Alexa is home! Of course, they love it!
I wish I could be inspired to actually accomplish some of my own scrapbooking while I go, but no, I tend to sit for the 3 hours with not much scrapping going on. So sad.
Here are Anna and Lily:Helen and Ashley:

names

As a last minute thing to make for our new girls' bedroom - personalizing is key to a warm welcome I believe!... I drummed up these...
I bought these 2 flower shapes (that are meant to be "masks" to look through? for $1.50each...and then just traced the shape onto patterned paper, modgepodged onto the flower... added these wooden shapes and chipboard letters - voila - and since I have been terrible at showing you our house, I did take some pictures of the Student's bedroom we have set up and may as well share the 3 pictures with you... the room is a "L" shape but it's kinda hard to figure it out by these photos...

Mystery Card

Check out this fun Father's Day card presented by Heavenly Homemaker (link in my sidebar)...

Thank You

I also received a Valentine's Gift from my wonderful husband... one dozen absolutely beautiful red roses! THANK YOU!and from my dear friend, Alexa, this wonderful, beautiful card! It's so nice to receive 'made with love' cards! Thanks!!And then just in time the Post Carrier just dropped off this fancy-schmancy Valentine's card from Laurie - a friend I've had since Nursery School! Laurie, this is pretty cool - thanks for taking the time and thought and energy to sent it my way! I will show you a top view so you can see it's not just a card, but more a gift-card... enclosing some cherry Lypsyl!and the inside, in case you want to give this cute gift idea a try!Thanks everyone!

Gingerbread Train

On Monday we decided to put our train together - this is the first time we have put anything like this together besides the gingerbread men we did last Christmas Day. it was fun...(see Gabi? LOL - she is a major mess from some pudding she had just eaten on her own)

Wint-o-Green Snowflakes

Just a quick post since I have been quite busy the past week with moving, unpacking, mothering and extra children in my home yesterday and today! I want to show you what we've been up to, but not yet... and maybe not til next week since this week yet I am heading away with Alexa for Black Friday Shopping!!! :)

Today we made these Lifesaver Snowflakes. (this morning before we got into making the craft, Sammy knew we were going to be making a craft. He asked me three different times, "when are we making the hover-craft?" I didn't here the first part of the question the first time but did hear 'hovercraft' which caught my attention because I thought it was funny he knew about hovercrafts... then I caught it the 2nd and maybe third time and realized he was calling our craft a hovercraft! LOL. Too cute!)
Here is Luke, first painting some tongue depressors white:Sammy finally getting to do his hovercraft!
I found the idea on Perpetual Preschool. We did two batches of the craft today - this morning with Luke and Sammy and then this evening with Travis, Bradley, Elijah and Sammy did it again too. (Travis and Bradley's Mom, Miriam is a good friend of mine - she is on her honeymoon this week! Yea! So between her Family and some of her friends, we are taking turns watching the boys!) I think they are quite pretty and they smell nice too -- the kids enjoyed eating the ones that came broken too!I was hoping to find a package of regular lifesavers in a roll, small ones, but only came across a pack of these ones... it took 2.5 packs of them b/c I used tongue depressors and not just popsicle sticks...but that's okay!

wall art

When we were at the Scrapathon a couple weeks ago, as soon as we finished our "Be Merry" make & take all the girls wanted to do another one, but there weren't any tickets left, meaning no more kits to purchase and make. I talked to the woman who put that make & take together and arranged for her to put a different kit together for the girls. So they paid $5 for a kit to put together this. I really like it!

Scrapathon

When Elijah was a baby, I went to my first and one & only scrapathon (scrapbooking/cardmaking/papercrafting ALL day event. Jason was at home with Elijah then and brought him twice during the event to nurse, LOL. I have always been tempted to go again, but it has never worked out until this year... and what a perfect year to go since I could accompany 5 Chinese Girls too! This was yesterday, at a local church. It was great! I got lots done and quite enjoyed myself.
Right off the bat, I saw Sarah was there too! She got lots done too and had a wonderful time at her first scrapathon! (these first four photos are compliments of Sarah, thanks!)My Mom was at there too - she goes every year! These girls caught the eyes of many women at the scrapathon - the youngest girls to attend such an event and the women were all impressed with their scrapbooks and interest in the new hobby!There were 2 classes offered yesterday at the scrapathon - that you could sign up and pay extra for if you were interested. The girls and I did this 30 minute class - I am very happy with this project! (it was just $4) It's a Christmas wall hanging that says "Be Merry":There were prizes to be won; and lucky Angel and I won a double-spread layout package and lucky Lily won this Crop-o-Dile:This Scrapathon is famous (seriously) for the huge, amazing, yummy turkey dinner that is included in the ticket price... yum! The girls were all ecstatic to be able to eat turkey dinner again!and for dessert... crepes n' ice cream (not sure if it has a specific name or not, but that's what it is) with raspberry sauce:Then the girls and I had to leave early so that Jason and I could head over to a Halloween Party at some friends of ours... but we got in 9 hours of scrapping!

Welcome Fran and Amy!

Finally our Students from China have arrived! They had quite the hassle getting all of their Visas to come, but once they did they basically jumped on the plane and headed our way. We have Fran and Amy in our home. 11 (almost 12) year old Twins!!! They are not identical - so right off the bat I was able to figure out who is who and not mix that up (though I have called out "Ellen" yesterday when trying to get one of their attention... habit, I guess and she didn't hear me so it didn't matter and even if she heard me she wouldn't have a clue)...

I had two of these mirrors in my stash of this and that's... something Jason picked up for me from the IKEA As-Is section a few months ago for $1.50 each... I figured I could use them for the girls "personalized item" for their rooms. I think they turned out good.(again this picture flipped itself, grrrrr)the boys are quite fond of the girls... this picture is on Sunday afternoon, basically a 1/2 a day after they arrived and they are attached to them! The Girls arrived on Friday dinner time... and on Saturday Morning early I already had to drop them off at Alexa's for the day while Jason and I went to a wedding in "The City". So they were already there for their first real day in Canada and slept over too!! Crazy timing, but what can ya do?!
The wedding was an Indian Wedding - it was a neat cultural experience to attend the ceremony in the morning and the reception in the evening. Jason and I had 7 hours to kill between these two events but we found an Outlet Mall (in Canada?!) for plenty of shopping and some nice deals... I didn't bring my camera, but here are 2 photos I've snagged from one of Jason's reps that emailed them out to us.there were 900 guests and wow, it's all about the party! The reception started at 6:30, though we were told not to show up until 7:30 - which we did. We were early! The Bride and Groom showed up at 9:00 which is normal... and when we left at 10:15, dinner hadn't even been served yet, again what we expected! Such a different style and format - but quite fun. They even had an Open Bar for 900 guests! And not cheap stuff either (stated a man at our table a couple of times!)... here we are, a happy couple who spent the entire day together with no kids!

awe-effect

I have now turned the big 3-0...thankfully it feels no different and life goes on! Today I was surprised with 2 gifts ... can you smell these? My oh my! These smell amazing and look gorgeous on my table! Thanks to my SIL, who faithfully gives me a bouquet of flowers each year on my birthday! (she knows her beloved brother doesn't do that so much for me!)and this, well, look at this! this frame will be treasured for a lifetime and probably for generations! Thank You ALEXA for dropping this off today! Isn't it beautiful?this frame includes a photo of both my Grandmothers, my Mother, my daughter and myself! It's just spectacular! And, no, this is not an idea that crossed my mind as to what you were making for me last week Alexa, when you requested the photos of all of these people! Where'd you come up with the idea? I love it! Thanks so much!
Thanks everyone for the many blessings of words, encouragement and gifts I received!

Crafting

The girls said awhile back that they wanted to complete their names with the letters I made for each of them for their bedrooms before they arrived... so this was the weekend to do it and here they are:

treats

When I was putting away the crayons in the Kids' Closet this afternoon, I spotted an "iced tea crystal" type of container filled with art stuff... my mind somehow went from that - in a split couple of seconds - to creating a project for Ellen and May to do this evening!
A few years ago in Sarah's Stampin Up Club I was in, we covered large formula tins (as still seen on her blog, I believe) (Korinne, you may remember a Hostess Gift I gave you in the tin 2 years ago?) and so I used that idea and the girls each covered one "tin" tonight. This tin will be for chocolates, gum, candy (as you see on the label) that they can grab for recess or whatever at school, now that they have lockers beginning this week (and are integrated into the actual Classrooms). This little cutesy container will remain in their lockers and come home when it needs to be filled again... kinda fun, I thought!

this is May's:

this is Ellen's:

E is for Ellen and M is for May

I made these letters for decor for their room...

create

This is something I worked on the past couple weeks off and on. Something that has been sitting on my craft table since January! Ahh! It's a book in which I had all the photos sitting in and everything this whole time, as a keepsake gift for Jayden and his mom (Jayden was a little boy I cared for til the end of January this year). The day after Jayden left though, Jade and Sara arrived and well, you know how busy we kept with them in our home for 5 months. Anyway, thought I'd share! And I added one of the Christmas Cards I made at Sarah's this week in her 30 cards for $30 class. Nice to be able to get 30 Christmas cards done in one night! :)

(the first and last photos have been flipped somehow. Saved on my computer, they are saved the correct way, so I am not sure why slide.com flipped them, however you may not be able to tell as well since I chose the "cube" slide)
Happy Weekend All! (if you hover the cube with your mouse you can control the movement of it! cool!)

Scrapbooking

I finally got the itch last week to get back to scrapbooking so I don't fall too far behind. Thankfully Gabi allows me to do this in the evenings. So this past week I have spent every evening that I was home (most of them) scrapbooking and have enjoyed every minute of it! Here's some of what I have done... although each of these pages are not complete, I tend to leave the titling and journaling til later. Not necessarily a good thing, the journaling part to leave, but thanks to this blog, I'll be able to go back and know every detail to the day-almost to the minute!! LOL. Take a peek:

<

Now back to scrapbooking before it's time for bed...

that was a waste... I put captions under each photo and I don't see any of them on the slide now. Sheesh. Sorry.

Farewell and Update

Busy, busy, busy, as usual!
Yesterday was the Girls last day with us; so right after breakfast I got them each to make this little 'brag book' that Sarah had shown us on her blog. Since they hadn't at that time yet, been able to meet our Baby Girl, I thought I would give them the opportunity to make a special booklet/album for "her". I'll send them each 6 photos of Baby when she finally arrives and they can fill this booklet up. Sarah, love this idea. I made a couple of my own which I haven't filled completely until Baby arrives and will then give them away and I have plans to make 3 more for Aunts who are in Quebec and a Great-Grandmother... waiting for Baby though to complete!
Alexa and I arranged to let Jade, Sara and Katie go for a swim on their own yesterday morning too... for the last time. Then we got their luggage completed and went out for ice cream to DQ after dinner as our goodbye treat. I asked my Family to meet us there so the Girls could say their farewells too... Here is my Mom (Grandma) sharing her blizzard with Sammie. Yummy!
Then today we were up at 6:00 (I had insomnia from 4:15 on, so by 6:00 I was ready to get going for the day) to get the Girls off. It was sad to say Goodbye after such an experience with them. Five months is a long time and it was a VERY good experience for us. Elijah knows 'the girls are going to China' but what that menas to him, who knows. I'm sure and expecting to hear "where are the girls? At school?" for a bit here UNLESS Baby decides to come soon, then that'll be a good distraction.
My Dad (Grandpa) and Paul came to see the Girls off this morning too. My Dad works nights so he missed out on DQ last night...And us, before the tears...Goodbye Jade and Sara! I've shown them my blog last night, so now hopefully they'll be able to navigate their way to it at home and see the kids grow... oh, and tonight when we got home there were 3 messages on my machine, none of which said anything, but I could hear them in the background. My Girls already called home!!! (they are in Toronto for 4 days before returning home)


Update: (boy, this is a long post) Obviously I'm not as busy as Laurie, Rachel or Korinne who are all moving this week... nor have I had my Baby, yet. My Midwife tried today, again, to "sweep" (I'll leave it at that for those of you who will know what that is) but no luck again. I guess this Baby is quite content inside. Man, these third pregnancies are unpredictable! But, now that the girls are gone and it's obviously not a possibility for them to meet Baby, I'm completely fine with going as long as Baby wants/needs to. We even dared to cross the Border today in search of a double stroller. We found one and I didn't go into labour (we thought maybe we'd work Murphey's Law a bit and see if crossing into an other country [not the best idea at this stage of the game] would bring labour on, but nope)... so stay tuned all you faithful bloggers. One of these days I'll have a post for you. (however Alexa was the one who was going to log onto my blog to post the update for you after Baby arrived... now she is gone for the weekend... but I'll get here as quick as I can...)
Until next time...