the last of 2010 layouts!

not really having anything to blog about......i'll just post all the layouts that I finally finished for my 2010 book.....which is now at 150 pages and I can't afford to have printed yet! lol......oh well....once i DO get around to printing it, it'll be cool. I hope!

So here's the hodgepodge of layouts I finished up over the New Year's holiday and the last week or so......there's a bunch, so kick back!

The kids' Christmas photo shoot.....i couldn't NOT use the 'out-take' pictures...they were too darned funny!


A Disney LO.....this was done for a speed scrap a week or so ago....i like how it turned out...very futuristic! Can't believe that trip was so long ago already! I gotta get to work on finishing that 2009 trip! sheesh!


a Halloween layout:


the ultimate 7-year-old toothless grin:


Matthew/Zach's Thanksgiving programs at school:


First (of many thus far) snow days:


Sledding in our yard on Christmas day (yes, that's the dog going along for the ride!):


Our scout troops donating a fridge to the local food pantry:


the gift that keeps on giving.....Guitar Hero!


PreK trip to the Pumpkin Patch:


The Jungle Cruise at Disney:


Carving our jackolantern:


The kids visiting Santa:


Our family picture:


Halloween parties at school:


Girl Scout outing to the Nutcracker:


Girl Scout Christmas brunch (PLUG TIME! Haynay's kit Fun and Fancy)


Building our Gingerbread House:


Cub Scout food drive:


Cub Scout Christmas party:


Christmas:


Alaina's soccer season:


Dinner at American Girl Place in Chicago:


and lastly......my year-in-review page....this layout took SOOOOOO LONG TO DO! OMG! it's cute, but SHEESH! time-consuming!

Farewell, Twenty-Ten!

2010 is quickly coming to a close. I suppose it's time for some thoughtful reflection on what this year has brought to our family....so here's the deep thoughts I've come up with in that regard:

2010 brought more video games to our household than I care to admit. The upside to this is that Matthew's now best buds with another boy who's similarly obsessed with gaming. oh boy.

2010 had Alaina becoming more confident in her abilities as a musician (flute/voice), but very unsure of herself in her schoolwork. My goal for 2011 is to help her feel more confident.

2010 started off with Zach sleeping with his momma, and thankfully ended with him sleeping elsewhere!

2010 started off with me not being able to run much farther than a couple miles. Now, I can run about 7 miles. I'm training for a half-marathon, if you can believe that! and all that running has helped me lose about 15 pounds over the course of the year...always a plus!

Our Christmas season was full of all the fun things everybody enjoys. I did lots of baking/candy-making/fattening-cooking......The kids enjoyed their presents.....Karl and I enjoyed our time off from work! we visited with my family and the inlaws and had good times all around.

so now a new year will soon be upon us, and I am pathetically far behind in my scrapping. It's sad. I'll admit it. I've never been this far behind before! What happened? LIFE! 3 kids, a house, a hubby, a job, dogs.....whatever. i've been busy! Plus, lately I've been kinda unmotivated to scrap (if you can believe such a thing!).

So I'll leave you with the last layouts I'll post for this year.....

Christmas kits from designers I was CT-ing for at the time (talk about being behind in the blogging, sheesh!). Chelle's Creations was my guest CT gig in the month of NOVEMBER, and she released a kit called "Holly Jolly Holiday" and this is what I scrapped with it....the entrance to the Magic Kingdom...all decorated for Christmas:



And Haynay's Christmas kit, "Fa La La" inspired me to scrap this:



(yes, they DO close the parks at Disney World...that's when you know it's CRAZY-CROWDED!)
Amazingly, this is the first New Year's we haven't spent at Disney in awhile.....I'm suffering some serious withdrawls here! :P

And this kit, from Haynay, "My Magical Place: Ship Ahoy", I scrapped this: Donald's Boat in Toontown at Disney.



That's all the plugs I've got....because I've been too much of a slacker to be a good CT member lately. My apologies. :D

SO here's the other stuff I've done though.....for your amusement.....in no particular order:

Zach and one of his many, many, MANY worms/"catterpitters" that he 'played with' this summer:



Zach's new Thomas bedding (bought in an effort to keep him in HIS bed at night....it worked BTW!)



Matthew, in his new Wolf uniform for Cub Scouts:



The SIU Homecoming game we went to this year.....go Salukis!



And random pictures from around the SIUC campus:



Picking out pumpkins at Eckert's:



My first 10K race, back in October (yay me! I'm still shocked I did it!)



Matthew's Soccer Season:



Matthew scoring 2 goals in a game!



So now you're all caught up with me! Have a great New Year everybody......here's to an amazing 2011!!!

The Happiest Season of All!!

Hello cyberfriends in blogosphere! Greetings from the midst of candy-making, cookie-baking, present-wrapping, last-minute-shopping madness! But I just LOVE Christmas. I'll even take the cold weather for this week, because we've done the beach at Christmas and it just seemed "wrong". So a White Christmas would be fine with me.

Happy Holidays to all our friends and loved ones from our little family. I hope that 2010 was a great year for you and that 2011 will be even better.

XOXO, The Herman family

Like a Fine Wine, my friends......

I only get better with age! :D At least that's what I'm telling myself today......this 35th (yikes!) anniversary of my entrance into the world....

I wanted to post lots of cool pictures of myself growing up....but alas, there really aren't any. Perhaps this is why I generally walk around with a camera around my neck....so that when MY kids are sitting at their blog (or whatever social medium they'll be using at that point in time) they won't have to lament the fact that there existed so few pictures of them when they were children. Anybody that knows me can attest that my kids will have NO problems finding pictures of themselves. :D

So anyhoo. Happy birthday to me. Looking at the few pictures I did manage to find on a whim......I honestly think I look better now than I did 10 years ago. Funny how that seems to be working for me!

so here's my life in pictures (kinda)

As a baby (love the hair, Mom, and GROOVY pants, Dean!)


toddler (where'd my curly hair go? *sigh*)




Glasses at age 4 (oh yay!)


another family picture, age 6 ish:


I'd guess I'm about 13 here? no dates on any of these old pictures of course...I'm guessing by bad hair styles:


This was 8th grade, I know that much:


Sweet 16-ish.......oh yeah......early 90's big hair:


Senior portrait:


Engagement Picture.....so I'd have been 21 here:


Wedding.....at 22 years old (gosh that seems YOUNG to me now!):


Fast-forwarding a few years......this was in '02, so I'd have been 26ish:


2003, Graduate School....preggers with Matthew, age 27:


2004, age 28:


2005.....subtract 100 pounds and you get this (my "victory dress", which I actually haven't really worn since, now that I think about it.....red's not really my color I don't think), 30th birthday:


2006, age 30


and yesterday.....35 years old:


so....I hope you got as good a laugh out of that as I did.......I'm just like a fine wine....getting better with age, right? :D RIGHT!

Happy Birthday to me!!!

Hello Holidays!

The fridge is bursting with Thanksgiving leftovers......I'm mourning the end of a long weekend.....the family is all napping......the bank account is starting to feel the hurt of the holidays thanks to online shopping (lol), and I'm happy as a clam because I LOVE this time of year. LOVE IT!

Plus, my birthday is next week.....who doesn't like their own birthday after all? :D Although, I love to remind people that those of us with December birthdays totally get the shaft......not only did 90% of my birthday gifts come wrapped in Christmas paper when I was a kid (a huge pet peeve of mine now)....but I just KNEW.......that I was basically getting one less gift for Christmas. bah! I admire the people that celebrate their kids' December birthdays in June instead. BRAVO I say! But I digress....rant over.....for now anyways!

The holiday festivities started off with the kids' programs at school. Matthew was a Pilgrim AND an Indian. I'm still not sure why, but whatever. He said his lines, he did well....he didn't humiliate me by inserting the words "poop" or "terd" in his monologues, so I was happy. At his age, that's saying a lot!

Zach's PreK class had a feast, but since I was watching Matthew's program, I missed most of it. They even made their own butter....how cool are they!

We hosted Thanksgiving here at our house, as we've done for the last several years now. Too much food was cooked and consumed.....and is still in my fridge. I pondered for the 12th year in a row WHY I bother making cranberry sauce when maybe 2 teaspoonfulls of it actually gets eaten! :P because it's tradition, that's why! and I've been told I make an awesome green bean casserole......but I don't eat the stuff, so I'll have to take their word for it.....again, tradition!

So then I started pondering other traditions that my family has...... My father always says the blessing before the meal. He and Karl argued for about 30 seconds over who would say Grace, but we all knew that in the end he'd do it. Because it's TRADITION! :P Mom and I made way too much food. Again, TRADITION! Dean and Stacy were late getting here.....which has become a new tradition (one that irks me, but eh, during the holidays, you pick your battles, kwim?). The meal that took me roughly 3 days to prepare was consumed in about 20 minutes.....tradition! then once everyone was done eating, we all disappeared, leaving Karl to do the majority of the dishes.....tradition! then it was dozing in front of the TV and chatting......and then a fairly-new tradition.....the impromptu photo shoot.

my SIL stacy is a photographer.....i sometimes like to think I'm one too. :D we have the same camera and flashes, so we set up a backdrop and attempted (note I said ATTEMPTED) to take some pictures of our dog for our Christmas card this year. eh, it didn't work out so well, shockingly....dog didn't exactly cooperate!

Then she wanted me to take pictures of her, Dean, and their little foster baby, John. So I got to play photographer then.......the instant i noticed one of the external flashes wasn't going off, Stacy jumped up and raced behind the backdrop (where said flash was) and started screaming.....I go and look and start screaming.

My fancy external wireless flash.....had melted. O.M.G. for those of you out there with expensive photography equipment.....share my grief for a moment. I get the sniffles just thinking about it. Apparently those "hot lights" (hence the name, duh) get way hotter than either of us had anticipated, and having a flash too close to one of them results in disaster for anything made of plastic. *sniff*.....goodbye, nice external flash. Expensive boo-boo! So since it was my flash and stacy was the one that put it where it was....she took the blame and is buying me a new flash. I'm guessing that's my christmas gift from her! still.....that totally stinks. poor little melted flash. *sigh*

That was enough excitement for one evening.....once that drama had subsided, everybody started to leave......and thanksgiving was done.

Black Friday: We didn't participate this year, woohoo! Karl was disappointed I think, because he's a morning person, so getting up at 4AM and fighting mobs of angry women over a $3 crockpot I don't need is his idea of a good time. Me? I'd rather sleep 'till noon and go to Amazon.com and shop there. :D And this year, online sites were offering some of the same prices as the early-bird specials (at least on the stuff we wanted), so there really wasn't much need to get up and fight the mobs. fine by me!

Saturday and Sunday were fairly relaxing. We went out to run some errands and took the kids through the Way of Lights (drive-thru light display) after dinner (there's only so much leftover turkey/ham a person can realistically take, kwim?), and they loved it. it's beautiful! Highly recommend it if you're in the STL area!

and now the Holiday weekend is over and regular life is back in full swing.....which includes all the homework/activities we usually cram into a week! So with that I'm off to stop one child from stuffing another in a box. Yay for family fun!