Madison's Mini snow book

Madison was a big help to me when I was kitting up my January class. She was right beside me helping me die cut and count ribbon. Every die that was cut or stamp image that I had stamped I had to make her one too. She had her little pile on the side so she had to make her a mini circle snow album too. Her's measured 4" and was sooooo cute when it was all finished. She had fun making her album.

a few pages to share

January "Snow" class project...here's what the cover looks like. Plus I wanted to share a few of my pages with my pictures on them.

Enjoy....

Digital snow layout

okay call me crazy...but I made the girls get back into their snow gear this morning so I could take a few more pics of them during the daytime with all the snow. Although it was much colder today than it was last night so we couldn't stay outside for too long, I did manage to get some pictures of Kaitlynn & Madison playing in the snow together. Yeah!!!! I got my pictures for my snow album for next Saturday's class... unfortunately today's snow was much more powdery than it was last night when it was still falling, we were unable to actually build a snowman. Almost couldn't even pack it together to make a snow ball. I played with my digital scrapbooking a little this morning and made a collage layout to showcase some of the pictures I snapped this morning.

The Powells Christmas 2007

finally managed to get Marty in a picture with the 4 of us.

Snow.....

Back to the blogging world.

Hello everyone, sorry I have been so distant on my blog. Things are finally getting back to some sort of normal balance for the New Year. Not a great start so far, I have had my jeep in and out of the shop for repairs. After the third trip they finally found the bulk of the problem and it seems to be all fixed.

Now I am getting all ready for next Saturday's "Snow" themed class. I have felt a bit more motivated these past few days, as we have had some snow. I was able to snap a few pics tonight during our small snow shower. I will try to get some more pictures in the morning before it all melts away. I am hoping we will get more this year, but just in case I had to take pictures for my new Snow album.

Happy 15th Birthday Kaitlynn!!

Kaitlynn turned 15 on January 16th. Can you believe she is almost driving. YIKES!!!! She had her Birthday party today and had a few friends come over and as luck would have it... it snowed so they got a chance to get out and play in the snow!

Christmas Morning

Even after all of the drama Christmas Eve with my oven, we did manage to have a very nice Christmas morning enjoying the girls opening their presents and having my Mom, Dad, Brother & Niece (Amber) here with us. Just thought I would share some pictures with you.

Christmas Eve at Grandma's

Every Christmas Eve we go over to Marty's mom's house for our Christmas Eve Party with family. When we leave Grandma's we almost don't need for Santa to even come to our house, the girls always get so many nice gifts from everyone.

Happy New Year!!

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas...mine was very eventful.
As many of you know I had my Mom, Dad, Brother & oldest Niece here for Christmas week.
It was go, go, go from the time they arrived until the day they had to leave. They arrived Saturday before Christmas and we already had to make a trip to Walmart on Sunday.
Christmas Eve night we went to my Mother in laws to do our Christmas with AuntTeresa, Uncle Mike & Grandma. As usual the kids got lots & lots of nice gifts, after leaving Grandma's Santa doesn't really even need to come to our house.

After getting back home on Christmas Eve we were going to cook the turkey overnight so we could do all of the other cooking on Christmas morning after the rush of presents is over. Well that was our plan anyways......when the oven timer beeped at 2:00 a.m. letting us know that the turkey was done, my mom got up to turn the oven off and it would not turn off!!!!!
It was heated at maximum heat and would not shut off....we had to turn off the oven from the breaker. We finally fell back asleep around 3:00ish. got up early morning to see what Santa had brought.

After the presents were all opened, we turned the breaker back on to see if the oven had reset itself and was back working properly.....NOPE!!!!!!!!! It was doing the same thing as soon as you kicked the breaker on the oven heated up to maximum heat and would not turn off no matter what button you press.....do I need to remind you this is Christmas morning and we have lots of cooking to do!! Mom & I had to jump into some clothes, leave the kids at home with the guys and prepare all dishes to load up and drive to my Mother in Law's and use her oven to cook Christmas dinner. Then load it all back up and bring back to my house so we could at least feed everyone back at home and eat our Christmas dinner. If that wasn't enough drama for one day, we cut into the turkey only to find that the turkey never cooked the whole time it should have and was not done, so we had to throw out our turkey.
Could anything else go wrong!!

So you know what that means, the day after Christmas I had to go shopping for a new stove/oven. Finally found one that I liked at Sears but it was not in stock and they couldn't deliever it until the next week. That did me NO good, I need a stove the same day!! So finally they found one that was in stock, a closeout model in the back stock room, but the kicker was Marty was working out of town wed-fri. So we had NO truck to deliver it to my house. We had to leave half of the family at the mall (mom with all of the girls) Dad & Robby loaded the stove in the back of the van in the pouring down rain and deliever it to my house, unload it, then drive back to the mall and pick up mom & the girls. Did I mention it was pouring down rain...

finally we could actually cook at my house again. But we were on the go everyday after that, taking the girls shopping to spend their Christmas money we were not home much, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Then they had to leave Sunday to go back home. :(

Mom & I only managed to squeeze one small trip to Memories Galore on the Saturday before she had to go home, other than that we did not spend much time just the two of us the whole entire trip!!

Polar Express Pajama Day

Today was the 1st grade "Polar Express pajama breakfast" party. I volunteered for Madison's class and helped make hot chocolate for all the kids. I took lots of pictures and videos of them singing songs, doing the Reindeer Hokey Pokey & gathering around for story time. The kids loved being able to go to school in their PJ's, they all brought in such yummy breakfast goodies.

OMG!!!!! New Stampin Up catalog

I got my demo copy of the new Spring~Summer collection 2008 Stampin up catalog in the mail yesterday....and let me tell ya there are some very cute things in this new catty. I couldn't help myself but to share a little bit with you before the new year arrives.

You will just love the new papers, 3 new punches, rub-ons, stamp sets, felt flowers in a tin, new stripped grosgrain ribbon & more... it is still all about circles, scallops, flowers & swirls. Lots of bright and vibrant paper packs using springy colors. So many new stamps to choose from you will find yourself wanting them all!!

Enjoy the sneak peak :)

Don't forget you may want to wait to place your first order from the new catalog in February. As it will be Sellabration period once again for the month of February only, you will be able to earn FREE Sellabration stamps with every $50.00 purchase. The Sellabration stamp sets will be available for viewing on the SU webstite on February 1st.

Snowman Soup

Madison made Snowman Soup treat bags for all of the 1st grade teachers, all of her specials teachers (music, computer, P.E., Art & Librarian) plus she made them for all of the ladies in the office. A total of 20 kits. The next morning arrived at school a little early and hand delievered them around. All the teachers & staff were so surprised to get their snowman soup with hot cocoa. We got lots of thank you cards sent back the next day.

Madison had fun making them and handing them out. She made the little comment, "what a nice thing I did to give everyone snowman soup".

Field Trip

Today I had the pleasure of being a chaperone on Madison's field trip to Swift Creek Mill Playhouse to see a Christmas play. They put on such a cute play we really enjoyed it. After the play we went downstairs and had pizza, cookies, carrot sticks & juice for lunch. While we were eating, the characters from the play came around and you could take pictures with them. Santa came over to Madison so it was a perfect opportunity to snap a pictures with Santa. After the play was over we rode the bus back to the school and Madison was able to go home early with me. On our way down the hallway we stopped to see some of Madison's Christmas artwork she has made this month in school. The Santa she is pointing to is hers, plus the reindeer on the far right top corner.

Decorating the Tree

We finally got our tree up...thought I never would get it up and all decorated. I set my camera to the candle setting to capture the glow from the lights on the tree. Madison was really excited this year to set out the Christmas decorations in the living room and the ornaments on the tree.

Creative Cafe project

I took Madison with me last week to Memories Galore to make the Creative Cafe project. One of the projects was to make a mini Teacher's album. We did some extra stamping to all of the inside pages and even stamped the teachers name on the cover. We will wrap it up really pretty and Madison will give it to her teacher, Mrs. Castle for Christmas. She had so much fun making it herself.

January Class

January Class Agenda
Saturday, January 26th 2008 11:00am
(the last Saturday of the month)

~ Snow themed 8x8 circle album $ 45.00
The covers of this album will be chipboard
and the bound together with the zutter.
~ “Brrr…” 12 x2 Double Page Layout (see below for pricing)

If you sign up for both projects the double page layout will only be $15.00
If you are only doing the page layout the cost of the layout will be $17.00

There will be some colored ink pads you will need to bring for this class. I will
let you know in advance which colors they are incase you need to order
them for class day.

* All day class
* Covered Dish
* Class supply list will be emailed separately one week prior to class

**Sign ups & Payment for January’s class will be due to me by this
Thursday, December 6th. Very important…if you are interested in this class all sign ups and class fees have to be collected by the deadline date!!! There will be no extra kits or late signups.

Happy Birthday to my Mom

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday
Dear Mom.....Happy Birthday to you!!!
I love you :)

December class

I want to first welcome two new ladies that attended Saturday's class; Rose & Pam R. It was a pleasure to have you at one of my classes. I look forward to seeing you again next month. What a good time we all had on Saturday, everyone brought such a variety of yummy food. I hope everyone enjoys their completed class projects and has fun adding their holiday pictures to them.

What a good ending to a great year!! We have had some great times at class in 2007, can hardly wait to see what happens in 2008!! I want to send out a special thanks to all of the ladies who have attended my classes for the past 2 years. I have been blessed by a wonderful group of ladies I am privileged to call my friends.

Here is a digital layout I made with our pictures from Saturday's class on it.

Shopping Day

What a day I had yesterday....Wati & I went on our annual fall shopping excursion. We had this trip planned for several weeks to go to Ashburn, Va to a scrapbooking store there to meet one of our scrapbook idols.... Danelle Johnson of Art Warehouse.

She is the wonderful designer of the Art Warehouse clear stamps that we have all been buying and loving to use. She is also one of the creators behind the masterpiece of the new, awesome Creative Cafe.

What a pleasure it was to meet her and talk with her. She is such a nice lady and had lots of wonderful news to give us. Plus as an added bonus, she gave us a free prize...(each of us got one of the new flower die cut sheets for Creative Cafe)

After we left Ashburn, we headed south on 95 and stopped at Potomac Mills to shop at Recollections. I love that scrapbook store, they always have such nice Christmas displays out to show. If that wasn't enough, when we left there we quickly stopped by the big Micheals right next door to Recollections. We did not get too excited, as they didn't have any different scrapbooking items than our local Micheals. So then we got back on the road and kept going more south. Only to find ourselves in Fredericksburg... we had to hit all of the scrapbooking stores there too. We went to The Croppers Corner, Scrapdoodles & A.C. Moore. We finally finished shopping at 9:00 p.m., only because we had to all the stores closed at 9:00. By then we were starving, we ended our day of adventure with a nice meal at The Olive Garden.

It's a good thing we only do this trip once a year!!! We didn't make it back to Colonial Heights until midnight. It was all worth it!!

Can hardly wait until next year :)

School Portraits

Yesterday Madison brought home her Fall School portraits. Kaitlynn had gotten hers back a few weeks ago. I waited until I got them both so I could post them together.

• Kaitlynn age 14 9th grade


• Madison age 6 1st grade