your kindness is what i'm thankful for

a quick post today. made this fall-ish card. can you see the glossy wings?! and butterfly wings are wet in spots as they emerge from their cocoon.....me & the boys witnessed that firsthand!a few cards i made for OWH . go check that site out. i know we all have tons of handmade cards just sitting around.....find out more about this organization and make use of those handmade cards to brighten up someone's day. i will be digging up some cards in my stash to add to the ones i will be sending.

thanks for stopping by! thankful for you all leaving sweet comments and letting me show off my boys (not on this post but on every other post!)

1st grade

brandon started 1st grade on september 1st. he is loving it so far! this pic is of him on the 1st day.

brybry won't get to start kinder until september 2012! he missed the cutoff by 1 month! poor thing is SO ready for school!

all smiles!
his desk

this is on the 2nd day. still all smiles which is a good sign! i was worried that he would be disappointed since many of his kinder classmates ended up in other classes. he only has 3 classmates in his class this year from his kinder class---1 boy & 2 of them girls and 1 of the girls, pushed brandon off the slide last year. [he doesn't like her all that much....i don't blame him.] but there are 2 boys from his pre-school that are in there. i think i was more worried than him. brandon makes friends with everyone!

so i have 6 hrs and 15 mins (i'm still not counting the time) that i have just 1 kiddo. so i get to make some cards.

a card here for a mom friend who just had a baby. she has 2 girls and she waited to find out on her 3rd one. so happy for her!

a belated birthday card. still not in the mail but it's made =)since i had everything out, the design above worked for 2 anniversaries card i needed. again, 1 is late (story of my life) but 1 will be early [or on time]!!

side note here, this morning, the phone rang. i heard caller ID say it was my son's school. 99.99%, it's a pre-recorded message telling us need-to-know-news for the week. NOT this one! i heard it was the nurse so i dove for the phone! brandon threw up at lunch time. she took his temp and has no temperature. so she let me talk to him. i asked if he was jumping while eating and he said no. but that is usually how he ends up upchucking his food. i asked if he was well enough to stay in school or if he wanted me to come get him. he wanted to stay.....good thing. i didn't want to start the school year off on a bad note! AND good thing it wasn't like he got into a fight or sassed an adult! so many things were running through that little head of mine.......we never know with brandon!!

be happy

hello! just brought brandon to his 1st day of of 1st grade this morning. i will have 6 hours and 15 minutes with 1 less kiddo. not that i'm counting the minutes or anything!! excuse that teeny tiny picture! more pictures to come later. such a hassel for me to download pics onto my backup computer. i miss my computer!the above picture is a birthday card i made for a friend that she already received. i still owe a person or 2 a birthday card. i'll eventually get to it!

the card below is just an everyday card.

this card here below, i made for a blogger friend. i won some blog candy from her and i thought the little package was just 'tweet'!!have a great day! i will find something to do with brybry during our 6 hours of free time before picking up brandon. maybe craft, clean house, shop?

butterfly or moth?

hi all! about 2 weeks go, we had about 7-9 black caterpillars latch on to out stucco ceiling above the front entrance of our house. and 2 that didn't make it up there but hung themsleves upside down on the front entrance posts. i don't know why we had this huge infestation but the boys were very interested---especially brandon. so we saw the black caterpillars one day and then the next morning, we's find them in their next stage of life. everyday, the boys would look to see if there's been any changes overnight. a little over a week later, we got to witness what became of the black caterpillar!

i'm not sure if that was his cocoon or just decided to latch on to it. so what do you think?? butterfly or moth? anybody knows the difference? well, for now, they boys would like to say they are all butterflies!

look at how excited brandon's face was when he saw the wings open up! we spent a good time being patient waiting for the butterfly to open its wings. i had to explain to them that their wings are wet when they emerge. then they slowly dry them by opening up their wings.

the picture below is brandon, right after the butterfly flew right onto his arm! he was so excited!!brybry was sad the butterfly never fly onto his arm BUT, he's my happy-go-lucky boy!saturday, i got to go to a card class taught by sally traidman (hero arts card artist extrodinaire) at stamp fever in orange. this was my favorite out of the 5 cards we made.and here are all 5 cards finished.

here is kelly alvarez of lawn fawn stamps and nancy. it was nice to finally meet kelly! super nice!from L-R: nancy, kelly, me, sally and tiffany. a late post but this a make-and-take from stamp fever's grand opening weekend a few weeks ago taught by tiffany.

i am so behind in posting since my laptop crashed. i still don't have my laptop. crossing my fingers i get it back this week!

catching up [trying to]

hello! just getting back in the swing of things after spending 6 days in SF!! the weather was not the greatest but typical of summer SF weather (foggy, misty, COLD). i did have a fun time spending it with my sister & family! she is due near the end of october. sooooo excited and cannot wait to spoil the baby!! and best part----it's a G I R L !!!!!!! i can finally buy girlie things and justify it!

if i haven't been around your blogs, i apologize. some of you know my laptop crashed and it's currently sent out to the manufacturer to get fixed. it has a bad memory chip or so the best buy's geek squad told us. at 1st, they said they they would give us the same computer in exchange for the one that crashed but the next day, told us it would be sent out to the mfr for repair. hmpfff!! i just want my laptop back. i don't think i can use hubby's little laptop much longer. screen is too small. plus, i had all my fave links bookmarked and everything. i just hope all my un-backed-up photos are recovered!! hubby got to extract some but i know some pics were not extracted from the kaput laptop. teaches me a lesson. anyways...............

a fast & easy card made from punching shapes out of vintage dictionary sheets,

this is a magnetic memo board. getting ready for brandon's 1st grade school year. this is made from a thin sheet of magnetic board, covered in pretty papers. the middle panel is stamped. the owl is backed with a thin flexible sheet of magnet paper. all the apples are laminated and backed with magnets. the once sterile tongue depressor (thanks to hubs for getting that at work) is painted with chalkboard paint. i can change out the message as needed. it wipes off so easily----just like a chalk board!! finished it off with some fun pom pom trim! will use to keep track of his week to week activities.also made a tag for his backpack. everything has to be labeled at school! sweatshirts, bags, jackets, etc... poor little brybry---- when he gets brandon's hand-me-downs, they'll all say 'brandon'!!! hahah! i should just start labeling BMW since both of them have the same initials! [brandon matthew & bryan marcus]

and the tag on his new backpack. i actually bought him 2 this school year. he had a hole in his last year within 2 months of the school year. boys!!i will probably put this tag on the inside of the pack.

thanks for stopping by! it's going to be a HOT one today! you can find the boys in the kiddie pool!

BTW, any suggestions on what fun things to pack for brandon's lunches this year?

have a nice day & look who won some chicken poop

hello! sharing a quick card. that sun just makes me smile =)been busy getting things ready for my sister's baby shower. made the invites and sent those out. now, i'm working on the decorations. here is a sneek peek at the fabrics i'm using for a flag banner. plan to hang this at the shower and perhaps, my sister will want to hang this in the baby's room after.

wednesday, we got together with one of brandon's classmates and went to the farm. they were having free wagon rides and pick-your-own-corn day (79 cents each). farmer kenny telling us how to pick corn and how they grow their corn. he told us that they can chop off the tops for us IF we didn't want to see the worm on the top. WORM???? apparently, when they grow corn there, they place a worm egg on the top, the stalks grow over it and as it grows, it secretes some sticky liquid to seal off the corn to prevent pests, bugs, ants and other things from getting into the corn. i am sure i am not explaining it completely correct but it's something like that! it's an organic method. kenny's grandfather owned the farm who passed it on to his father (kenny's). here are the boys picking their corn. best part was that we could eat anything there---as many corns as we could while at our stop. raw corn is especially sweet & yummy! we had 1 [or 2]!

brybry said, 'farming is hard work'! yes it is and we thank all the farmers who work so hard to grow us food that we don't even think twice about before we eat!

the tractor wheel pulling our wagon. (BTW, brybry dressed himself---black socks and all!)

we also got to stop off to pick tomatoes. has anyone ever tried a yellow watermelon? they grow those there too and we got to sample some at the end of our trip. SO SWEET!! try it if you haven't! you will be pleased!

finally, from my post here, the winner of chicken poop is........................donna. sorry this took so long to post. i actually used random.org but cannot figure out how to post the box where the random generator picked #1. so the #1 commenter from 13 comments was donna! go figure---how many people win who were the 1st commenter? i have your info donna =)

5 boys for breakfast

what a treat to meet up with a friend from NorCal that i haven't seen in 20 years! we went to the same high school and ran track together back in the days! we met up this morning to have breakfast together before their drive home. it was my 2 boys+his 3 boys. that ='d FUN! the boys got along just great, playing with all their ultraman figures and monsters. (just look at the table covered with all their figures!) thanks for a great breakfast jonathan!! your family is just lovely!we cooled off a little today in the mini pool.

busy making tooth fairy pillows. this one is my 4th one AND i made some moolah! the mom asked for it to be in these colors. this may be my side job! i am finishing up 1 right now for a special girl.

backside to put the tooth in the smaller pocket and a dollar bill or mini toy in the bigger heart pocket.these sunflowers were ginormous! these were at the farmer's market we went to saturday. was going to buy them until i saw a billion ants on the backside. i DO NOT need those in my house!love the summer cropsstopping to smell the flowers except he doesn't know these don't smell!yum!

bryan's mouth was never empty at the farmer's market. fresh fruit samples galore! a tip: you can actually have a light breakfast at a good farmer's market. LOL!