here’s your friendly reminder..

it starts today, the whole store is one sale and those classes…  those self-paced classes!!!  buy them up now, at 20% off, who can say no?  too busy to do them now?  do them later, that is why they are self-paced!!

my most favorite aspect about jessica’s classes are that the information is yours FOREVER. 

so say you take this one “photo editing” class, you love it, and when you go to use some of your newly acquired skills, you forget one step.  you think you know what it is, but you aren’t sure..

you can go back, access your class information, read it again, or watch the video..

it is still there for you.

forever and ever and ever.

awesome.

can’t tell you how many times i have gone back to the MNAY classes i have taken there to re-fresh this old brain of mine.

(i blame it on the lasting effects of having a placenta (or three) that once resided in my uterus and sucked all functioning brain cells from my noggin.

(just a theory, mind you.)

so you go there, i probably will too, and have a good day!

(now i am off to get my chores done so i really can play.  it feels like a hybrid day today.)

the night i got sick of marshmallows but quickly recovered.

one may evening, our fantastic neighbors invited us over for s’mores.  they also invited us to play in their bounce house, but some of us are too big, i guess.
(sigh)
it was a fun evening..

and then them s’mores were started..

now these weren’t just your ordinary, normal campfire, run of the mill marshmallows.  uh-uh.  my dear friend knows me.  she bought the gi-hugant guys.

and i think it’s safe to say that everyone enjoyed them.
 
a picture cannot lie, it got a bit messy.  but it was the kind of messy that was delicious.

peyton loved it.  she calls it camping, and she asks when we are going to go “camping” again.

i will not (but really cannot) tell you how many of these i ate, or how many of those giant marshmallows i ate.  roasted or not.

see, this is my best friend that i love so dearly..  and not just because she bought giant marshmallows and invited us over to eat them..

i busted out some of the leftover easter stash.  that’s right, we roasted peeps.  they were hot.  delicious and hot.  the sugar on the outside becomes this caramelized sugar coating, that is hot (have i already said that these were hot?) and the insides are all mooshy.
their eyes strangely disappeared…
(or maybe it wasn’t strange being as they were chocolate!)

it was officially the best kick-off to summer ever!
(and the girls thoroughly enjoyed their bubble bath in our tub.)
(we had to wash off that campfire smell.)
(i was not going to wash the sheets again that week.)
and that is how i developed a temporary aversion to all things marshmallow.  i was back to eating my marshmallow creme by the spoonful within the next 24 hours.
all is well.

the perfect monday.

it’s a cool, overcast, sometimes stormy monday here.

there’s stuff to be done, stuff that i want to do, but the weather is perfect for me to snuggle up with the monstrous book i started last week, and really want to finish.  at first it was so i could move onto the second book in a series i started, but this one, it was just hanging over my head.  now i am genuinely into it and want to know what happens!!

well, then there’s the many pictures i want to edit, and scrap.  so many new products i want to play with.  a couple of new sewing patterns i want to make multiples of..

and then there’s my room…

i really want to work on aspects of that, but that would also involve playing musical light fixtures with..  i think 5 lights?  i keep losing count.

so many fun things!!

so for now, i will just show you the fun stuff i have been working with this last week…

(click on image for list of full credits k?)

echo park’s new collection: “splash”.

and elle’s studio cupcake flags.  any excuse to make a cupcake!!  when i saw these, i immediately saw a banner.  add a little of my own bazzill from my stash, some double-sided tape and twine and there it is.  pretty darn cute if i do say so myself.

the recipe for these guys is here, i omitted all coconut to make them a delicious vanilla.  i would have to add, that in a pinch, soured milk to replace the buttermilk which is called for, does not (IN NO WAY!!) work.  they weren’t nearly as tasty or light and fluffy and thus, ended up in my garbage can.

(after we ate most of them.)

the only other thing that makes this monday not as perfect as it could be is that the birthday sale at jessica sprague has been delayed by a day.

so just hold on!!  it will start at midnight.

(hopefully links to the new products used above will be updated then too.)

summer hiking habit.

we are trying to establish some new summertime habits around here.  one is to hike.  so far, it is lovely.

the girls can’t wait for the next hike.

we started this day off at the 22nd street trail head.  for any one who is local, or who wants to be, these trails are fantastic!  they are not difficult in any way.  we had six kids, ages 8 (almost 9) to 1 and they all walked most of it.  these trails are wide, clear, and not steep.  they are also away from water (right now that is a good thing, a very good thing considering how much water we have right now..).  the trails also loop around and intersect so even when the kids went ahead a little, they were led right back to us.

ashley earned a new nickname: ashley butt-dragger pitcher.  my mom told me to think of a nicer way to say it, but it is what it is..

she liked to slide down some of the hills.

 

then there were the many flowers…

and cute kids..

 

abby (my niece) liked me every so often..

 

then she would make faces at me…

there is just a touch of yellow on lynn’s nose.  she likes the flowers too. :)

there were dandelions nearly as tall as peyton!!

see!!  talk about making our wishes more accessible.

  

i wasn’t the only one who liked to stop and look at the flowers though…

 

ash found herself a sturdy walking stick.  she was sad to leave it behind, but i am sure it will help someone else out.

then there was the exciting part.. 

my oldest brother (abby’s dad) is a crazy (well not so crazy since he became a dad) biker.  he and his family are used to this area because they come biking here frequently.  and jumping here.  there are jumps they have built and love.  we didn’t have bikes, but the boys wanted to show grandma where the jumps were anyway, and she suggested they pretend like they had bikes.  the kids had a blast.

 

and then right after her last jump, lynn biffed it good.

i think she was trying to be like uncle ken.

 

she is feeling much better.  amazingly didn’t pass out on the spot at the sight of her own blood (even the little bit of blood from loosing a tooth will cause her that much stress) and she is looking forward to our next adventure.

i am so happy that this is my back yard..

reading habits of my eight year old girl.

this kid cracks me up!

she loves to read.  we have busted her many times reading as she walks home, nose completely buried in her book…

and she just can’t read one book at at time.

oh no!

she is usually reading at least three at a time.

everyday, she’ll read one chapter out of each book, or a certain amount of pages, and move on to the next one.  once she as read a little from each one, then her reading is done for the day.

what gets me, is that she remembers everything that has happened in each book, details of the characters and plotlines too.

i am afraid that my mind might just jumble all of those books up, and then there would be nothing but sheer confusion.

not with her.

this particular week there were four reads going on at once, and she read to me while i painted.  that was funner than boring old music. ;)

sweet p.

our little sweet p keeps getting sweeter and sweeter as the years go (fly) by.

just a few (okay, maybe more than just a few..) of my favorites from our little impromptu photo shoot last week.  i am currently making her room, “her room” and needed some pictures of just her, to make it, well, hers..

     and then there’s the, “in your face mom!  i am still going to suck on my fingers…”   

i am in love with her.