No more babies....

Well Aiden has finally began to really recover from having his tonsils out. He celebrated his 5th birthday (will post pics later) this past weekend. I am so happy he is excited for Kindergarten but sad that now I have two school-aged children. I have decided that I need to refocus my energy and look at this positively by recognizing that with older children comes a little more me time. They can now occupy themselves longer and that is a bonus. So I am really hoping to get back into crafting full force. I already have some projects planned, including a Gin Transfer album...a technique that a friend is teaching me with transferred images, gin, and polymer clay. I just can't wait. The results are stunning! I am also going to be doing a lot more scrapping and jewelry making. So though there may be no more babies....there will be more crafting. Now onto inspiration.....as far as crafting goes there are several blogs that I visit for inspiration. So I will start to post them here for all my scrappy friends so that we can continue to inspire each other. The post for today is here:

http://octoberafternoon.typepad.com/

The layout featured in this post was inspired by a pattern paper made by October Afternoon. The name of the paper is Woolworths. Not only was I inspired to scrap a vintage photo I also journaled about my Grandmother and how she is the person who I get my crafty side from. October Afternoon is an awesome manufacturer so check out their blog for some great inspiration.

Back Again

Oh boy can't believe its been over a year since I have blogged. Life just became so busy. Aiden will soon be turning 5. I can't believe my baby is going to be in kindergarten in the fall. Aiden is recovering from having his tonsils out. The procedure was not without its bumps but he is beginning to heal. Me I am trying to fing my mojo again. I love cake decorating, scrapping, photography, and spending time with my family. My arts and crafts have taken a back seat to soccer, work, and family time but now I need to get back into the swing of things again.

A reason to Journal

I have always said that my blog to me was a way to express myself and share a piece of me with the world. Well today I need to journal. I can't believe that it has been almost a year since my last entry........................
Today I said goodbye to a great young man. His name was Reed and he was taken away too soon. He was only 23 and had a whole life ahead of him. I knew him since he was in middle school. I use to take care of him and his developmentally disabled brother. He had a heart of gold. He was so handsome, polite, caring, compasionate, and really just an all around great person. It may sound cliche to say that but with Reed its just the truth. I witnessed today a mother's grief that I never hope to have to ever see or endure again. Really the connection between Mother and child is one that stretches further than life or death. When a child dies so does a piece of his mother. Today I came home and hugged my boys for a long time vowing to never take a moment for granted.

I was reminded today that life is too short and you need to live each day to the fullest as if there is no tomorrow because really there are no gurantees in life....not even life itself.

So really I beg you take nothing for granted....never say maybe tomorrow-What if tomorrow never comes?

A Sample of My Creations

To many challenges....too little time.

I seem to be going in circles lately trying to keep up with everything in my life. It seems inevitable that something falls through the cracks and as much as I have tried I am still not doing a good job keeping up with the blog challenges so this is once again my pathatic attempt to play catch-up. Thanks to Shandy and Lisa from scrapgal for the inspiration....here it goes.

Challenge #12
Shandy wrote:
Tell us about your NAME! yep, that's right... your name. How did your parents come up with it?... is there a story behind it?.... Do you like your name?... if you could have named yourself, would it have been the same or something different?... just go with it!... no rules! We just want to learn more about ya!

Well my name is Michelle Lee. My Dad grew up in the 60's and was a big Beatles fan. He told my Mom that if I was a girl he wanted to name me Michelle after "My Michelle". My grandmother (maternal) loved the song and the name too, so there it is. It may be unoriginal but I was named after the Beatles song. As far as my middle name goes.....My Dad's 1st name is Lee my Mom's name is Deborah Lee. My Mom thought that was neat. So I was named Michelle Lee and my sister is Tammy Lee. Lee has become a family name for us. My boys are lucky and have been blessed (or cursed depending on how you look at it) with two middle names......Riley James Lee and Aiden John Lee. Lee just had to be in there somewhere!


Challenge #13
Lisa wrote:

"Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get" My challenge to you is twofold 1) Write about what this quote means to you. How have the unexpected moments impacted your life? Do you have a particularily memorable unexpected moment? Do you hate surprises or do you go with the flow? These are just suggestions jumping off points, feel free to go where the quote takes you!

I loved Forest Gump. He always had the best perspective on life and he truely lived up to the motto. For me it just means that in life you are going to be thrown some home run pitches and sometimes you are going to strike out. Life is not meant to be easy, you would be bored, you just strive to make the best of what your given. That's all you can do.

Challenge #14
Webster's Wednesdays! On Wednesdays we will play with words. We will embrace the word. We will celebrate the word. So let's Define our Needs shall we? Because Webster's, after all, is largely about definitions. You thought it was all about the spelling? Or pronunciation? Or origin? Pshawwww So here's how you play the game today. Go to the Google search engine and type in your name and the word needs For Example....Lisa Needs

This one is fun....well according to yahoo......Michelle Needs.......

1. Outcomes.......so true I need to be able to see results to stay motivated!

2. Help.......in so many ways.

3. To win......the Lotto would be nice!

4. Coffee.....someone on yahoo must have seen me at 7 am!!!

5. A "wie" bit of luck.....is there a leprachaun out there who will help me win the lotto or give me his pot of gold? I am Irish after all!

6. To accept.......there are a lot of things in my life I just need to accept but the list is too long.

7. "Sadly Michelle Needs Help" (No literally)....ok ok I can take a hint (yahoo's direct quote), really who out there designing that search engine has a crystal ball pearing into my life?

8. Advice....wasn't that already covered in 2 & 7???

9. A new putter?.......I don't play golf but I am open to learning.

10. Michelle needs to take photography and graphics classes...really it said that....how insightful! I'd love to do both if I only had the time.

-Thanks Lisa this was so fun and uplifting.

Challenge #15...I am really catching up!!! Woot Woot!
TRUTH OR DARE! Here's how we play. I pose a question. You can either choose to answer OR take the DARE! So here we go! TRUTH Have you ever "regifted" a present. If you have, tell us what the gift was, who you gave it to and why the gift was passed on to another person. Was it a hideous velvet Elvis painting? A chia pet? A sweater that was three sizes too large and in a color you'd never wear? Go to your blog and tell us about it. or DARE If you haven't or don't want to answer, go to you blog and tell us about the best gift you ever received and why you loved it. Maybe it was an family heirloom that was passed down to you. Or a special vacation? A handmade piece of pottery from your child? Share with us in your blog post why that gift, out of all the gifts you have ever received in your life is the one near and dear to your heart!

I'll take the dare...I like to live dangerously. I was actually a little suprised myself when I thought about the answer to this one........

A few years back my fil bought me a Mr. Machine off of e-bay. I had told them that it was one of my favorite Christmas toys when I was about 6 and my father in law went out of his way to win a bid on e-bay and gave it

to me for Christmas....It was one of the most thougtful things he has ever done!

Well I feel somewhat like a failure. I was really going to try and keep up with the blog challenges on scrapgal but I just am too far behind. I feel a little overwhelmed. Though I don't want this beautiful blog that Shandy created for me to go to waste.

Easter Memories

We had a nice Easter. The boys had an egg hunt everywhere they went. On Saturday we went to my parents house and after dinner we were clearing the table. My Dad was leaving the dinning room and Aiden was running in and BOOM they ran into each other and Aiden went flying into the corner of the cabinet. He had a HUGE goose Egg and a big bruise down the middle of it. We had to take him to the ER. It looked horrible. He was screaming and my Dad felt horrible!!!! This picture is almost two days later so it looks a little better.

The BIG reveal.......


Ok so how did you do?........

Yes I did have a Pajama Jammy Jam with Kid N' Play. I won a radio contest when I was a sophomore in high school. Me and 50 of my "closest" friends hung out at my house with Pizza and food supplied by the radio station. I have pictures and will try to post later. I also won a stereo, camcorder, and a 32 " TV, which is in my living room right now, amazing I just realized how old it is but it still works great! (knock on wood).


When I was a junior in college one of my sorority sisters (Gamma Sigma Sigma) convinced me to enter the Miss New Britain Pageant, a preliminary to the Miss CT pageant. I did place (My friend won) and my sister who lived in New Jersey was Nannying for a family who owned Gothem City a modeling agency and in exchange for her nannying they assisted he in finding modeling jobs/contracts as a runway/fashion model. It was the only time in my life that I felt for once that it was not just my sister who got all the looks in the family. She continues to be drop dead gorgeous!






Though this is not the best picture!





So to finally let the cat out of the bag......while I have driven over 100 miles per hour on a race track it was not in a race car so for all of you who guessed #2 you are right!

Thanks for taking the time to guess and thanks to Shandy for this wonderful blog challenge......I can't wait to catch up with the other challenges.

For anyone interested in Digital Scrapping I now have a link to Shandy's design page SV Designs....she is ubber talented so please check out her stuff!