HELLO

Hi. I'm Amanda...a happy wife and mom to three awesome guys. We've lived here in Fort Collins for more than 20 years and are proud to call it home. Before moving to CO, I worked at a city attorney's office, making use of my law and Master's degrees from Duke. After settling in Fort Collins, I homeschooled my three (now teenage and older) sons and was delighted to experience music classes, soccer, karate, swim team, archery, Science Olympiad, First Lego League, parkour, and climbing (not all at the same time!). From 2005-10, I was also a contributing editor for a national scrapbooking magazine, authoring a book and a couple of monthly columns. From 2009-10, I founded and ran the Good Grief Blog. I enjoy learning new things, spending time with my family, volunteering with The Matthews House, traveling and indoor rock climbing.

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Entries from November 1, 2008 - November 30, 2008

Sunday
Nov302008

Wanna win some Prism papers?

I'll readily admit I still haven't really gotten into actually using my Facebook account (hanging my head). But. I just found out about a cool site that's basically a paper crafter's version of Facebook. It's called Paper Craft Planet. How does that information get you free Prism paper, you ask? Well, the lovely design team leader for Prism, Tami Mayberry, has just started a Prism group over there and is hosting a giveaway this week! Pop on over and join the group for your chance to win!

Sunday
Nov302008

The trouble with being both a crafter and a blogger...

...is that you can't always post what you're working on because certain people who might happen to be the intended recipients of said work may be reading your blog. ;) Yup, happily finishing off more projects here but can't post them. I can, though, post this:

I'm silly happy about this little piece that I finally got around to making. I've been saying that I'm going to do it for a long while now. See. I collect coasters at restaurants. I don't really know why. I kept saying that I was going to do something with them, and now I finally have. This isn't all the coasters I've collected, obviously, but I think it's a nice little representation. I simply cut them into squares and arranged them on some nice white Prism cardstock...stuck it all in a 12x12 frame...and hung it in the kitchen. Totally simple, but isn't it fun? :)

So, what are you creating lately? (It's okay...chances that the recipients of your gifts will be reading the comments of my blog are slim, right?)

Okay, I'm going back to those other crafty things now...

Friday
Nov282008

Happy day after Thanksgiving to you!

I thought about making a list of things I'm thankful for yesterday. I didn't quite get to it. :) Yesterday, we went down to my brother's new house about 45 minutes away...the first time we've ever spent Thanksgiving with family without being in Washington with a LOT of family. It was a quiet but nice changing of the guard. We had a delicious meal and ended up with the inevitable leftovers. The kids had a seemingly good time without incident (which is saying something for having had an 8 year old, two 6.5 year olds, three 3 year olds and an almost 3 year old, lol). Sadly, we're going to have to thank the Wii for that one. This is pretty much how the older kids spent the entire day:

The two little boys (Micah and Aaron) spent much of their time watching their big brothers. The two little girls watched Strawberry Shortcake and played with the dollhouse in the other room. :) I'm sure if we'd turned off the Wii and involved them in some other activity, they'd have done fine. But we let them have their fun for the day.

Not much else to report right now. Today's been a very lazy day around here. No Black Friday shopping for me. :) If you did venture out, here's hoping you had a good time and found some great deals!

Tuesday
Nov252008

A random list...just because.

Now that we've firmly established that I love lists... :)

1. Did you realize that Christmas is ONE MONTH away?!! How the heck did that happen? (Actually, by the time I finish typing this post, it'll be less than a month...oy!)

2. Asher's kindergarten teacher at Options was recently offered a full time position elsewhere. This past Monday was her last day, and we're all rather bummed. (Given the nature of only seeing her one day a week and all that, we only found out on Monday morning that that would be her last day.) While I completely understand that a full time position with benefits is fantastic compared to one day a week without benefits, and while I'm sincerely happy for her (this is her first year teaching btw), Asher's still pretty down. He's such a relational sort of boy...cares so much for the people in his life. Sigh. On the plus side, though, I did happen to have my camera with me Monday, as I'd already been planning to help her with a craft after lunch. Here's Asher and his teacher:

Sweetly, Micah's pretty sad also. He loves seeing Asher's class every Monday (I do lunch/recess duty every week) and had taken to calling Asher's teacher on his pretend phones. Micah, now, is mad at me because I didn't think to take a picture of him with Asher's teacher.

3. Thanksgiving is in two days! We're heading to my brother's house (about 45 minutes away, so not bad) and will hang with them and another friend and her kids...should be a fun time! In preparation, today, I printed out some coloring sheets for the kids to do Thursday. We adults might even join in. Not sure whether you saw my little sidebar in the November issue of CK, but I did a layout there about our turkey coloring contest last Thanksgiving:

We were all instructed (by my mom) to color one of these turkeys (she'd borrowed a children's menu from a local restaurant and made copies) during the day. After dinner, my youngest sister's boyfriend came over and was made the judge of our little contest (turkeys had been hung from the bookcases without names). Appropriately, my mom won. :) I'd forgotten how much fun just coloring could be. With that in mind, I drew this simple turkey coloring page if you're interested. I also found some fun ones to print out here. If you do end up coloring turkeys, I'd love to see them! :)

4. I love this!

5. I also think this is a very cool idea.

6. I'm trying really hard to justify why I simply need this. (Having already purchased some of the tags and owls and numbers...)

7. Oh! I just remembered something I need to do! Gonna cut this list short and continue it later in the week...in the meantime, in case I don't get back tomorrow...Happy Thanksgiving!!

Monday
Nov242008

Happy Hour

If you love me or if you just have some time to kill, stop by the Creating Keepsakes message board tonight from 8-10 pm MST (that's 10-midnight EST and 7-9 pm PST I think). I'll be hosting Happy Hour fun...discussions and at least one giveaway. Come keep me company, okay? :)