Sweet Shoppe Designs

I would like to wish all my friends overseas a very happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy the times with your family!

Here in Europe we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. It’s a typical American holiday and most people over here  only know it from the movies. I got to know it better since I began scrapbooking and joining CT’s, lol, because every year I get to scrap with Thanksgiving kits for them.  And I’m really glad that I got to know it because I think it is such a meaningful holiday!

Having to scrap with Thanksgiving kits is great because it makes me stand still to think about the things I’m grateful for as well. We live in a self-centered, material society and so many people feel unhappy about the things they don’t have that we almost forget to be grateful for all the treasures we do have. I’m thankful for having a good health and a wonderful family who is in good health as well. I’m thankful for so many other things and every year a scrapbook page is added to my memory keeping that documents this. This is something I wouldn’t have done if it weren’t for my CT work. So I’m grateful for that as well.

The other day I was surfing on Pinterest (again!) and I found this great idea on the website lillightomine.com. This lady has invented the ‘Light ‘em up project‘. If you haven’t heard about it, you should definitely go check out her blog. Basicly what she’s doing is teaching her kids to do Random Acts of Kindness for others and to thank people who serve them every day all through the month of December. You could do it as a variation on the Advent Calendar and have them do a RAK every day, or you could just put a bunch of RAK’s in a bowl and have them grab one occasionally through the year. There are even teachers who have adapted her idea to use it in the classroom.

photo from www.lillightomine.com

She provides a list of 50 possible RAK’s you could do with your kids but once you read through them, lots of other possibilities will pop up in your head. Some of her examples for showing gratitude are:

• Leaving a small present and a thank you note for the people who pick up your trash every week.
• Leaving an anonymous chalk message on the driveway of your neighbours to thank them for being such great neighbours.
• Leaving a note in the public restroom thanking the person that cleans that stall
• Leaving a note and a treat in your mailbox for the postman
• Thanking your local police station with a heartfelt note and Christmas treat

Happy thanksgiving!

Well, I know during the spring I shared that we were going to use our tax refund to remodel the main floor of our house on a very tight DIYer budget… we had found some kitchen cabinets at the Habitat for Humanity Restore and that was probably the biggest chore for us was piecing them together and tearing down the wall and creating a kitchen island… well, we are getting really close to being done with the remodeling project and I thought I’d give you all a little update.

OK… so these are some pics from when we looked at the house for purchase… it was a short sale and in very bad shape and none of the appliances worked and Mark hated it but I saw it’s potential and fell in love with the house right away…

after 6 months of waiting for bank approval on this short sale, we finally were able to move in and get to work! I had wanted to totally re-do the kitchen because most of the cabinets were broken and it was just a terrible layout, but alas, I had to let go of my dream kitchen in order to do some other major repairs to the house, there just wasn’t any money left over to do any remodeling in the inside other than painting. So we painted the cabinets an espresso brown which I totally loved compared to the nasty dirty looking creme cabinets…

Well, fast forward 3 years, and we are now looking at a dream kitchen, I never thought I would have and actually is even more awesome than my original vision. I never had planned on tearing down the wall and adding even more space. I just thought we’d leave the walls the way they were and just do an “L” shaped kitchen… I’m soooo incredibly happy with how this dream has happened and how it’s come together. I can’t wait for us to finish it!!! Here’s how it looks today…

All day yesterday Mark worked on tiling the kitchen back splash… he’s an up close pic of it… I’m seriously in LOVE!!!

Monday we’ll be grouting it with “mocha” grout and then the next project will be mostly the finishing touches, we’ll be putting a nice finished trim at the top of the cabinets… we’ll be building the support collumn which will have some outlets and the HVAC controller. I’m working on setting up the school room now and LOVE that I have a locking pantry that I can put school supplies in to keep the little one out of them, LOL… then we will be painting the whole house, FINALLY!!!! Lastly, we’ll be installing new hardwood floors and staining them a dark mocha!!! I can’t wait, and hope we’ll be done before winter LOL!!!

Thanks so much for sharing in my excitement about our home renovations, I’m just soooo thrilled and have to share how totally awesome my hubby and father are!!! They did all the work on it and I couldn’t be more proud of them for doing such an amazing job!!!

Yesterday while you all were celebrating with the winners of the Summer Games, I was at my church for our “Leader Launch” and then having pizza with several of our friends from church and their families. We then came home and everyone took naps since we were exhausted. I then spent the evening working on a layout that had been on my mind to do earlier this week, while Mark worked on our kitchen island, getting it prepared for next weekend’s countertop installation. You would have never known that it was actually our 11 year anniversary, LOL. We actually went out to dinner last weekend while my parents were in town, so we had free babysitters. It was so delicious and so fun to just be kid free for a couple hours and enjoy each other’s company. We had dinner and then went for a walk along the river and then stopped for ice cream before heading back home to put the kids to bed. Our marriage hasn’t always been this blissful though. We definitely had our valleys when we went through the infertility and multiple miscarriages, loss of our dream to work with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Dallas, and my post partum anxiety which turned into my ADHD diagnosis last year. The thing is that those things that were things that could have pulled us apart were the things that actually brought us closer together. I always say that I know our marriage will survive after going through IVF, all the constant prodding and testing and hormones and everything were probably the lowest times in my life, but Mark stood by me through it all even though I wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around. What’s cool is that this is the first year that I’ve finally let myself be loved by my husband. I thought I had to be perfect… I just had such horrible self esteem issues and totally felt like I couldn’t be loved until I was a certain weight or able to run 3.1 miles or whatever excuse I could find. The awesome thing is I’ve recently gotten close to a group of ladies who are helping me turn my head around in my thinking and make me realize that I’m already loved and I will never be perfect and I deserve this amazing wedded bliss that for so long I never thought I deserved or was worthy of. Every day I’m so incredibly thankful for these women, and Mark is incredibly thankful for them to because for so many years he’s been trying to tell me these same things, but for some reason I just wouldn’t listen to him and he’s so thankful for them to finally show me how imperfectly perfect we all are and I deserve the happiness that I always dreamed of that day 11 years ago when I said “I do” to my best friend.

So, here is the layout I worked on last night while Mark was putting Asher down to bed and working on our kitchen island.

(click for credits)

Heather here, and I’m about to talk about a project I’ve been working on this year and have been totally LOVING!!!! For years I’ve been trying P365 and last year I wanted to do P52 since Asher was born the first week of the year. For some reason I always got burnt out by March and even with P52 I was burnt out by June and just had no excitement for the project. I was really bummed that I lost steam so quickly. I think it was the pressure of having to take a picture everyday and not just taking pictures whenever I felt like it and having that email reminder every week to take Asher’s picture just made me not want to do it anymore. So, then Project Life started becoming really popular and I figured I’d give it a try and not set myself out to force it and not feel like I have to do a weekly layout and just do it whenever I felt like doing it. I don’t know what happened, but something clicked in me and I’m having such a blast with this. I don’t know if it’s the inspiration on Pinterest or the fact that everyone seems to be adding 3×4 cards to their kits or what it is, but it’s been such a joy this year and I’m so thankful I tried to give a yearly project one more chance. Even though I said I’d do it whenever I felt like it, I’m finding that I’m actually doing it weekly and even adding in extra pages for special events. Every week when I’m updating my layouts in the Project Life/P365/P52 layout thread, I’ve been having fun looking through to see everyone elses’ layouts and it’s fun to see the excitement and fun you guys are having with the project too. If you haven’t seen it, you should definitely take a look through it.

I really like Tracy’s book and how she’s doing hybrid and able to even add her cup from the 7-11 free slurpee day or movie tickets and stuff like that… I guess with doing it digital I don’t get to do cool things like that, but at least I can scan things in if I wanted to.

I’ve been so impressed with Marla’s P365 pages, she’s been using Cindy’s templates and they look awesome!!! And she switched it up a bit the second half, and here are those layouts.

Nikki’s decided to go simpler this year with her P365 pages and I’m totally loving hers and how she’s totally capturing all the moments and writing about them and I love the block style she’s using… She’s been using Penny’s This Life series and she’s been posting a new post every month… January, February, March, April, May, June

One thing I have noticed that as we got to summer and we’ve been spending more time out of the house, my pages have become not as decorative and have become mostly big pictures and a little bit of journaling. I still really like it though because I feel that just really represents how our life is right now that I’d rather spend time doing fun stuff with the kids than making elaborate layouts. Here are my layouts together… and here’s my most recent 2 page spread, using Penny’s This Life: July! I really love her This Life series and she includes both 3×4 and 4×6 cards in them. Since I’ve been doing them digitally, I’ve been using Traci’s Slip Ins and  her Document Life freebie. I’m also using my personal font by Darcy, which I highly recommend everyone does, especially for these special projects. It just gives that personal touch to have your own handwriting in them.

I’d love to see your Project Life pages, feel free to post pictures in the Project Life/P365/P52 thread even if you aren’t using SSD products, I know we’d all love the inspiration.

Seriously, I’m asking for your help! I know you all love pretty designs since you’re all here at Sweet Shoppe, so I’m asking for your help in helping me design my kitchen!!!! Oh my… it has been a whirlwind of a month since I’ve last posted here… Hubby and I were talking about what we wanted to do with our tax refund. Those that don’t know, we bought a fixer-upper a couple years ago. We’ve ton a ton of work on the house from getting rid of mold and fixing cracks in the foundation to totally changing the look of the outside of the house by changing the siding from stucco and cedar to vinyl siding and replacing some of the windows that were broken or just in terrible shape, including the sliding glass door which didn’t even close all the way and the track was in terrible shape… we don’t even know how the door was still standing LOL. We’ve replace what little carpeting there was with hardwood floor in the upstairs hallway and the stairs and then replaced the laminate flooring in the lower level and the vinyl tiles in the bedroom with the laminate.

A few weeks ago my parents decided to visit us with a last minute trip. The week before we had all been sick with the flu and it made me realize that we just needed to make the downstairs bathroom functional. I don’t need the shower, I  just need a working toilet and sink, and to fix the flooring. So, we all met at Home Depot and we picked up a sink, faucet and some parts of the existing toilet that needed to be replaced and some vinyl tiles for the floor. There is a crack in the foundation behind the shower so we didn’t want to actually finish the bathroom since we’ll need to take out the shower to fix the crack… so after picking out the cheapest faucet and the only sink that would fit in the bathroom, my hubby and Father got to work. Isaac even got involved as much as he could and took out some of the old vinyl tiles… btw, we just went with cheap vinyl because some day when we have the money we’ll fix up the bathroom the way we want to and put in ceramic tiles and a better shower LOL.

Here’s some in progress pictures of the bathroom…

All These Photos 1 by Janet Phillips
Good to Great: Little Fixes by Janet Phillips (coming 3/10/12)

I’m thinking when we’re done with it, I’ll paint it a fun teal color, or maybe sea-foam green like we plan on painting our bedroom

While they were working on the bathroom, my Mom was playing on her laptop and Moriah was watching her. Without us knowing it, my Mom had designed a remodel of our main floor of the house and she was showing it to Moriah. From the day we saw the house, we’ve been complaining about the kitchen design and how terrible it was. I mean, when I’m emptying the dishwasher I can’t even reach the cabinets to put the glasses and stuff away… I have to empty it all on the countertop, close the dishwasher and then put everything away… not real efficient, is it, LOL! When I close the dishwasher door it gets caught on the broiler handle… did I already tell you this kitchen was poorly designed? We’ve had dreams of remodeling the kitchen but we ended up having to pay for other things, because the mold in the house was WAY worse than we initially thought and then we had a surprise pregnancy, so the money we had planned on spending on the kitchen ended up going to hospital bills and rebuilding the whole lower level along with sealing several cracks in the foundation. Oh well, I can live with the kitchen the way it is for now. So, in the back of our heads we’re thinking about what we’re going to spend our tax return on and we really thought we’d be buying new furniture… did I tell you that we’ve had our couch for 10 years and it’s falling apart? So. back to my Mom showing Moriah the kitchen plans she had for us. It looked pretty awesome and it meant turning the whole main floor (kitchen, living room and dining room) into a great room which would have meant tearing down a wall and moving the door that leads to the garage over and having a huge bar/countertop for school and just really awesome. So, I told Mark to take a look at the plans. He really liked it and we started talking cost. We decided this would really be perfect for our family and we might as well enjoy a remodel rather than remodeling to sell the house down the road. We decided just for fun that we’d go to the Habitat For Humanity Restore near us, just to look. My Dad is a handy man and woodworker so he just likes to look anyways, and finds great joy in it. The thing is… we found these cabinets that were in really great shape and there were tons of it and my Dad said that we could really make it work since there was so much. We wrote down the measurements and went home to think about it and well, we decided this was meant to be… we couldn’t beat the price for how great of shape they were in and how nice they were and there was enough to piece together and make it work for our kitchen. We went back the next day it was open and bought them… the next day hubby and a buddy went back with a UHaul and picked them up and now they are sitting in our garage waiting for us to figure out what to do with them LOL.

So, that’s the latest, we’ve been tweaking floorplans and think we have finally figured out the plan we want for the cabinets, now it’s time to figure out the style I want. That’s honestly, super stressful for me because it has to be something I’m going to like for a very long time. I have to go pick out countertop, flooring and hardware next. I’ve been looking through magazines, Pinterest, books and design blogs and nothing really stands out to me…

So here are some before pictures, along with some pics of the cabinets, and please excuse the mess… we had to bring in a bunch of boxes from the garage to make room for all the cabinets and fit the van… and a certain little toddler snuck into the school room today and left his little tornado leftovers LOL…

All These Photos 3 by Janet Phillips
Good To Great: Little Fixes by Janet Phillips (coming 3/10/12)

so, this is where you guys come in… I’d love if you guys linked me up to pins, or pictures or blog posts or anything that will get my juices flowing… HELP!!!!!

Heather here and I can’t believe it’s February already… did anyone’s groundhog see a shadow yesterday? It was super foggy here, so there was no way the groundhog would have seen it’s shadow around here. We’ve had the most unseasonal weather this year too. I remember last year we were digging out after a huge blizzard and I was still recovering from having Asher so our neighbors came over to help Mark. This year, we’re out biking around the neighborhood with only a sweater and jeans on and we’ve hardly had a chance to bring out the snow pants or jackets to play in the snow. We’ve had a couple good days of snow and that’s it. It’s really bizarre for this time of year. I’m used to staying inside most of the winter, but I’m enjoying playing outside with the kids this year. I definitely can’t complain, that’s for sure.

Today is Friday which means it’s Sneak Peek day in the forums, have you seen the peeks of some of the new goodies coming this week? Every week I think the designers have outdone themselves only for them to outdo it again the next week. If you haven’t seen them yet, be sure to check them out. I also hope you all are really enjoying the portfolio this month. I’ve seen several that I can’t wait to do. Speaking of the portfolio, I have a fun little bonus challenge for you today. This will be for 1pt and you can add it to the end of your portfolio as, “blog recipe challenge”. Since this is the month for Valentine’s day I thought I’d play around with the numbers of the date to come up with the recipe for this challenge… so here goes…

2/14/2012 turns into:

2 – circles
1 – solid paper (you can have as many patterned papers as you want)
4 – hearts (can have more, but must have at least 4 hearts)
20 – elements (no more, no less… doesn’t include the hearts)
1 – journaling card
2 – frames

and here is my page using the recipe:

ENJOY and have FUN and have a great weekend!!!

Can you believe it? I can’t!!! It seems like yesterday I announced on Twitter that I was pregnant and it was a surprise and I was asking for prayers because I didn’t want to miscarry like I had so many times before. I remember getting a message from Traci Reed saying that she was pregnant too and it was so fun having that little secret and encouraging each other along hoping and praying that in 9 months we would get to hold our little ones. The community here at Sweet Shoppe was so fun, checking up on me and then waiting to meet Asher for the first time. I remember the morning we went to the hospital it started to snow, and it was literally storming outside by the time we got to our room and stormed all day. I was thankful we had to be there before the storm had started and that my parents were already in town from Michigan to watch Moriah and Isaac. I remember Mark texting Laura the news so that she could let you all know the news on the Sweet Shoppe forums, and then I remember having to text her again, asking for prayers since he had fluid in his lungs and he was with the NICU doctors and we didn’t get to be with him for several hours. I remember posting pictures and I had even pre-made a layout so that all I needed to do was add a couple pictures and the stats to it and shared it with you guys as soon as we got home.

Do you remember this layout?

This past year has gone by so fast… on one hand it feels like he’s been a part of our family forever, but on the other hand, it seems like he was just born yesterday. For many years, I wanted three kids and I had given up on the thought that that would happen because of our infertility and chronic miscarriages… but here I hold my sweet boy who is my third child and such a miracle!!! I’m so incredibly blessed to have him in my life.

So, here’s a little pictorial walk through of him growing up this past year…

We had a birthday planned for him this past weekend with just family, but with a crazy series of events and both of the boys being sick we ended up canceling his party. My parents still come from Michigan even though the snow storm was supposed to be bad around the lake, but they made it and only stayed for a couple hours before heading back home. We ended up just getting some takeout and will postpone his party for the spring. Surprisingly, this is the only party we’ve had to cancel considering we have two winter babies.

I’ve been joining in on the Project Life bandwagon… it’s kind of my replacement for P365 and P52. I really like not having the pressure of taking pictures every day or picking one picture for the week and scrapping them. I’m really liking the simplicity of Project Life and still making it my own. I didn’t buy the actual Project Life kit, but am using Traci’s Document Life Sampler freebie from the shoppe and enjoying using a different kit for each 2 page spread. It’s still cohesive using the same template but still has a ton of my personality using different kits. I’ve also been really inspired going through the thread in the forum of everyones’ layouts. You guys are totally rocking these projects!!! I can’t wait to see as we have more weeks under our belt how they’re looking!!! That being said, I did one side of my 2 page spread with Asher’s birthday celebration or lack thereof LOL. It has a little sneak peek of something coming from Jenn this weekend… which was so fun to play with!!!

Sooooo…. I wanna thank you all for letting me share my sweet little miracle boy with you all. It means so much to be able to call you all friends and to share this amazing journey of life with you all!!!