Is she messing with her blog AGAIN?!?

Yes. Please stand by.

Bachin' It KATE STYLE

I am on my own this week as DH is away for work. So me and my darling little sons are whooping it up! It's only day one and we hit Auntie's house, the gym and the video store. Are we wild or what?!? Big plans for the rest of the week with more gym, playdates, movies and of course scrapbooking! I have several almost finished projects on my desk right now that are just to die for. I have been very happy with most of my work lately...now there just has to be MORE of it! LOL I am also LOVING the photos that Sheryl took at DS2's first birthday the other day. It's a weird one, but here is one of my faves. I had HUGE sparklers for the older kids to run around with but they were not fun to light. Everyone was anxiously awaiting their turn. And just because it is ADORABLE, I thought I'd show the totally cute cupcakes that my cousin brought the kids when she was in town last week. That is one thing about small towns. The bakeries are so FAB! So a big shout out to the Tisdale Bakery. You ROCK!

A Whole Day's Worth of VERY Cool Stuff...in no particular order

Cool Thing #1:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my darling younger son! He turned one yesterday and there was no blog post because I was too busy outdoing Martha. Check it out:

Seriously, the CUTEST cupcakes I've ever made. Poor Elmo had a couple mishaps but hey, it's nothing that couldn't be hidden with mounds and mounds of buttercream icing!

Cool Thing #2:

Allison Orthner visited my blog. I know, shut up right? It happened. And she left a comment to prove it. That makes me really happy! Click on her name to view her blog, she has some great pictures of Camp Croppin' on there! Best weekend of my scrapbooking career (so far!)

Cool Thing #3:

Leica Forrest has very cool friends. No, I am not talking about myself here. But you are all very funny for thinking so. :0P She has some FAB pals and I like to visit their blogs. There is one gal I have been hearing a lot about for a while. Saucy is SO COOL. She bakes. She is THE Martha. She digs Pioneer Woman. All in all, she sounds like a good egg. I stalk her blog weekly and dream of meeting her one day. Are you with me? I already think she's way beyond cool. And then she goes and pulls something like this:

win a trip to see the jonas brothers with saucy and loopy!
To celebrate my third blogiversary AND my 600th post, Loopy and I have decided to have some awesome fun and share our good fortune at the upcoming Jonas Brothers concert in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on July 2nd!

Ok, are you freakin' kidding me with that??? That has to be the best blog post I've ever read. My niece would lose her mind. She already asked me if I would take her...notice how she didn't ask her Mama who is 9 months pregnant and not into concerts that much anyway! LOL I've been to over 30 concerts in my life and those are just the ones I could think of off the top of my head. My sis came up with 3. So Auntie it is. So my little Poopsie who is 8 asked me to take her to see the Jonas Bros in Edmonton. I talked it over with her Mama and the general attitude was that it was maybe a touch expensive for her first concert what with travel and everything. So drooping and disappointed, she sat in the back of the van with a looooong face. But if I won tickets from the amazing (and never to be topped) Saucy...maybe Mama would say yes??? Stay tuned people. AND check out Saucy's blog and leave her some love whether you are entering the contest or not. A serious RAK like that deserves some serious love. Now ante up.

Weird Randomness

So ever since I put the Feedjit on my blog it's my new favourite hobby to check out where people are viewing me from. There are some cool places like New Zealand, Germany, France, etc. I'm pretty sure the New Zealand one is DH cousin and the Germany one is an online friend but sometimes I like to imagine it's famous European scrapbookers. So sue me, I'm a dreamer. The Feedjit also tells you where they came from and how they left your blog. For instance, Arrived to Scrapdivalicious through google.com, left via braunc13.blogspot.com (which is Corinne Braun's blog, one of the links to the right). It's WAY cool. The part where the randomness comes in is when it says they arrived through google. At first I thought "Why would people be googling me?" Then I smartened up and realized they were googling other things and my blog just happened to come up. So now it's my new favourite hobby to see what they've googled. You can do that. And whoever set it up that way is a freakin' genius because it was killing me trying to figure out what they could possibly be googling until a little voice in my head said "Why don't you click it and see what happens." What led me to that is another Feedjit feature...it tells you which pages people have viewed and there was one specific page that kept coming up over and over again. My locally famous Pudgy Pie post. So I did a little more investigating (ie. I actually learned how to use Feedjit) and found that when people google "Pudgy Pie Recipe" my blog comes up on page 4. How cool is that? Ok, so it's cool in my world. I don't get out much.

The part where the weird comes in is the other stuff that has shown up through google. Namely someone from Istanbul googled "your babes" and my blog comes up amidst some "other" stuff that you can probably imagine without too much trouble. Innocent on my part...because of this post. And a G rated one is somebody googled "Phillipians 4:13 mug" and came across my blog because of the scripture in the title.

That is my rambling for the night...some of you may wonder "Hey Lady! Where are all the new scrapbook pages?" Do you think I have time to scrapbook? No. I sit at the computer thinking about the cool features on Feedjit. Sigh. It's just how my mind works. Okay, I'm kind of kidding. I actually scrapbook while thinking of Feedjit.

5 Minutes? For Real?

So I got one of those forwarded e-mails from my friend Katherine (I know, it's a good name) and usually I just delete them without even reading them. Not just from Katherine...from everyone. I hate forwards. Just e-mail me personally to see how I'm doing, ya know? Anyway, I was going to delete it when something caught my eye. The word CHOCOLATE. So naturally, I immediately read it. Here is what it said:
5 MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE
4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
A small splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug (MicroSafe)

Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly.
Pour in the milk and oil and mix well..
Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract, and mix again. Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts.
The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed!
Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.EAT ! (this can serve 2 if you want to feel slightly more virtuous).
And why is this the most dangerous cake recipe in the world? Because now we are all only 5 minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of the day or night!

So me being the anti-microwave person that I am, I thought this was NEVER going to work. In my mind the microwave does not cook food. It makes popcorn, heats tea water when I forget to fill the water cooler and unevenly tries to reheat leftovers. That's it. I really thought this was just going to be a great way to occupy the children for 5 minutes. I have my 8 year old niece for a sleepover and all I've been listening to all day is VERY high pitched squeals of delight as the kids chase each other around, in and out of the house. Sorry to all the neighbours on my cul-de-sac. LOL So we gathered up the "cast of characters" as The Pioneer Woman would say (I LOVE HER) and I started measuring things out and the kids had a jolly good time dumping stuff in their own personal mugs. Well knock me over with a feather...a few short minutes later we had CHOCOLATE CAKE! Dry ingredients first:

Then egg, milk, oil and vanilla.
Pop them into the microwave for 3 minutes per mug. So 6 minutes later...
We had this:
At this point, my ever critical Martha-ness came out and I thought "We are NEVER going to be able to get that out of the mug." BUT true to the recipe, they slid out of the mug onto a plate with no effort at all. SHUT THE FRONT DOOR! I was shocked. So then came the taste testing and no, it's not the best I've ever tasted but for 5 minutes? It's darn good.

Notes for next time:

-One mug is PLENTY for 2 kids to share. They each had their own and they are climbing the walls now.

-I would cut down on the cocoa just a smidge

-For sure add the chocolate chips. I omitted them to just try out the actual cake part. It's a little lacking.

-I'd use 1 tbsp oil and 2 tbsp applesauce.

-Eat it right away. When the cake cools it gets pretty hard.

This is something I'd for sure try again! Great for a rainy day like today!

You Bug Me!

This is one of the new paper lines by Bo Bunny. I took a class at Camp Croppin' featuring this FAB little project (Ok, not so little...it's 12x12 but it's still SUPER cute!).Above are the stock photos from the Camp Croppin' website and below is my project. I can't wait to get some pictures of the boys in here! The pictures were snapped quickly but you get the gist of it I'm sure! The flap on the bottom right was supposed to be closed there, oops.



There are little flaps and swivel thingies to hide photos! So adorable.
The class was taught by Jeri Tanner. She's from Utah and was totally FUN! What a great gal to chat with.

I think I am going to adapt this into a 6x6 project for the Boys and Girls Club for Mother's Day. The kids are going to love it!

A very merry Easter to you

First and foremost...all the glory to Him this weekend. No, I am not talking about the Easter Bunny. Get your minds out of the chocolate gutter! Our Lord died and rose again so that we may be saved. Celebrate your Faith!

We don't do the whole Easter Bunny thing at our house. We do hide chocolate eggs for the kids to find but they know full well who makes the Easter treats. And I don't have a fuzzy tail. A haystack "nest" loaded with candies, complete with a cute little peep. Martha, eat your heart out.

Camp Croppin' win and I promise it won't be as long as an Oscar speech

Anyone have a few photos for me from Camp Croppin'? So many people to meet, projects to do, make n' takes to squeeze in I did not even touch my camera. And I call myself a scrapbooker! For shame. I know Lizette snapped a couple photos with two different cameras of my table of new scrap buddies Jody, Donna, Kelsy and Sarah. So whoever owned those cameras, shoot me an e-mail! Donna has a great on-line store based out of Fort McMurray, AB. Fab prices and she SHIPS! Check her out HERE for the latest and greatest in scrapbooking supplies!

At our table, Jody got a nod for one of her cards! She won a great product package. And Kelsy walked away with a HUGE door prize!!! It was a Xyron Personal Cutting System with ALL the cartridges and a carrying case! Shut the DOOR! That is a FAB prize.

Barb Riley (Saskatchewan) won "Best Journalling" with her AMAZING layout "Chicks Dig Scars". I was SO happy for her as I have seen the layout up close. The journalling was from the heart, all about her family's emotional battle with her husband's heart condition. He is well and back to his old activities which makes the win that much sweeter! Congratulations Barb!

Forgive me my scatterbrained tendencies but I don't know the names of the other winners. Maybe Leica can help me out with that??? There was a prize for "Best Photography" that last year's overall winner won. Beautiful photos of her two boys. Then there was the third runner up, second runner up and overall winner. Forgive the long post, but for me this is rather awkward to blog about. Initially, I thought I had a great shot at the Journalling prize, then when Barb won it I thought I was done. All the other prizes were announced and we were all cheering and having a great time. Then Katarina announced the overall prize winner. And it was me. Well shut the DOOR. Or HOLD THE PHONE (as Sue Sykes would say) Did I ever lose my mind. I bawled the entire way up to the front and the whole thing is one big blur. Photos were taken (Lord help me, I hope THOSE don't get published!) and I carried my prize back to my table. The box was so huge I couldn't carry anything else so Leica shoved the gift certificate down the front of my shirt! LOL So I got $500 worth of scrapbooking supplies all by American Crafts who I LOVE (Thickers...oh how I adore you), a weekend for two at the Bloomin' Inn one of the BEST scrapbook retreat centres in Canada and my winning layout will be published in the Fall edition of Canadian Scrapbooker Magazine.
It's a dream I hope I don't wake up from anytime soon. So please, please, please help a scatterbrain out and if you have any photos to share, please do so! Photos of any of the winners, people having fun, shots of your table (or mine for that matter!), pics of classes, etc. Shout them out! Thank-you to all the sweet gals who had so many nice things to say. Can't wait to meet up with you all again soon!
***ETA PHOTOS*** Thanks for the photos Kelsy!!!
Sarah...the nice face. The photo before this one was HILARIOUS!

Donna and that WEIRD banana holder. At least I HOPE that's what it is...LOL

Our AWESOME table of scrappers! From left, Sarah, me, Leica, Jody, Donna and Kelsy.
Thanks again girls! xox

"My Oath as a Big Brother" will appear in the Fall 2009 edition of Canadian Scrapbooker Magazine!

Camp Croppin' Hangover

SO much to share here...and SO tired. Spending time with my babes today and recovering from the weekend. I am ashamed to say that I did not break my camera out even ONCE. So if anyone has photos to share from Camp Croppin' please e-mail me!!! Leica Forrest, Allison Orthner, Becky Fleck, Katarina Doyle and Janelle Smith, just to name a few. HUGE sponsors, HUGE excitement. Megan, thank-you so much. Camp Croppin' was wonderful. More later.