is an amazing new book by Kelly Rae Roberts. I am so happy with this book. I haven’t made it all the way through yet but she has already inspired me to try something new. I have started my first mixed media collage today.

On some overdue projects.

You can also see a couple of the magnets I made awhile back. Scott’s magnets and magnet board have made it into his Man Room downstairs and my other two magnets have been hijacked by Isabella for a third magnet board in her office, aka study spot.

As you can see, my craft room walls are not yet blue. But they will be whenever I get off my rear end and paint them.

Let’s see, I also worked on a digital layout today because I am trying to finish up my 2007 album and get started on my 2008 album. This was a photo shoot in my mom’s backyard last December of the four grandkids. They have already grown so much since these pictures. I will try to get them to do this again for the next few years.

And finally, I made this book, all from scratch, about a week ago. I made it for my friend Lori so i couldn’t show it to you until I knew she had gotten it in the mail. The inside is regular school notebook paper. I used scrap chipboard covered with patterned paper and little leaf embellishments., both were from my Cocoa Daisy August kit.

and Isabella is loving it. And that makes me happy. Yesterday was the first day of school for us. Isabella has the same teacher she had last year, which is NOT common in our district, but was a great transition to third grade this year. We love love love her teacher and are very pleased with this option. Anyway, Isabella could hardly sit still last week, she was so ready to get back to school.

Happy first day of 3rd grade pumpkin. I love you very much. Now go kick some butt girl!

These are Isabella’s composition notebooks for school. We don’t know what they will be used for so we just made them cute and put her name on them. They are all digital projects so they will lay nice and flat in her desk and nothing will get ripped off in her beautiful creative 3rd grade fingers!

We are tired. So very tired. Scott is having a rough week, I’m driving Isabella back and forth to the museum for day camp every day, she’s staying up way too late watching the Olympics (but really, how can I say no to that? talk about inspirational!), and we’re just pooped.

On a good note, my nephew Varren came over last night so we could start a plan of action for getting him into college and finding scholarship money. We got him set up with an SAT online class, FastWeb for scholarship and college info, etc. I’m going to help him with some time management ideas as well to make sure he gets all his homework done, studies and does well on the SAT, is an upstanding member of the marching band, gets to spend time with his girlfriend and friends, AND gets a job. Oh the pressures of high school. I don’t miss it. But he’s a great kid and I know he is going to make me proud when he graduates from college in six years. I know it.