Whew!

Just ordered my Christmas cards, calendars for the family (um, spoiler alert. but you expect them now, right?), and even made this birthday card for my Grandma's 95th birthday. Woo hoo! So now I can blog, but probably tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Damask Birthday 5x7 folded card

Birthday party invitations and cards by Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

PS. Shutterfly's Cyber Week specials run through Dec. 1!

big Memphis tourist day...Peabody Ducks, Blues City Cafe & a trolley ride!

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Friday Fun

So I should be finishing up the last of my homework for the semester (yay!) but I'm in a blog groove, apparently, so I"m going with it. Miles and I had a fun day today. Our plan was to run a couple of errands and end up at the University Center at UT to eat - what else - Chick Fil A (which we did NOT have when I was there!) and go bowling at the lanes in the basement. Unfortunately there was a bowling class going on so we redirected to the Center for Children's and Young Adult Literature. My program runs the Center, so I'd heard about it but never visited.  It was amazing!  Miles was impressed too.  Basically they receive a copy of any youth book as it is published and it is displayed for 18 months.  The Center is open to the public, so you can come in and read all these great books hot off the presses.  The only hitch is you can't take any with you.  I did see a pile marked "Book Sale" so maybe they have one when things rotate out.  I'll have to keep my eyes out for that.  Miles is pointing to one of his favorites, Dodsworth in London, and we also read Shrek!, Even Monsters Need Haircuts, and Superhero School.  They had the brand new Magic Tree House and several others I wanted to grab and read.  May have to spend a day there without the kiddo!

After that we swung by my friend Emily's office and she needed some photos of Ayres Hall, so off we went.  Miles loved running around the lawn on the beautiful afternoon.  We'll have this kids fully indoctrinated to the Vol life before he hits middle school.

And not to leave out the princess, here's her happy smiley face.   Have a great weekend everybody!

creativity

Many years ago I read articles on a blog somewhere about corralling kids' artwork.  At the time Miles was in school a couple of days a week, Audrey wasn't here, or was just barely here, and he was bringing home a few paintings or drawings a week. I liked this cardboard box storage and we started painting.  I used USPS flat rate boxes turned inside out and painted by the boy-wonder himself.  (Of course now that I'm ready to do some with Audrey, USPS has started printing their logo all over the inside.  Guess they got sick of giving away boxes to be shipped by FedEx.) I was guessing we'd fill a box every year or two, slowing down in grade school of course.

Next I started taking a snapshot of everything, saving only the best and recycling or sending grandparents the rest.  I occasionally go back and edit even more.  I save anything with a handprint or footprint on it, and try hard to remember to date them.  I even got one of the old library date stampers, but I'm not very good at keeping up with them.  I upload all the pictures to each kid's online Picasa gallery (yes they have gmail accounts too!)

Miles' Artwork

Audrey's Artwork

Where am I going with this? Miles has become a very prolific colorer! I'm worried we may exceed our maximum box capacity too soon!  He loves to draw stick people and they are evolving very nicely.

This is one of his earliest free-hand sketches, done around his 4th birthday.  It's a self portrait!

 Soon after that he drew this cute hermit crab.  I was really impressed with the spiral.

This picture of his house was this past summer.  The sideways figures in the top left are he & Audrey in bunk beds.

And recently we've had a big series of group portraits.  Many of these have been mailed to the subject, as they were all drawings of Miles with various grandparents and other family members.

 Now we start to see other objects.  This is the crosswalk at the park near our house.

 Here's his Halloween collage. Clockwise from top left: Haunted House; Bat; Mummy; Skeleton; Ghost; Witch; Pumpkin.  But you knew that, right?

 Wayne and I love this tree.  I'm thinking about printing it on some art paper and framing it.

 And he finally drew Audrey in the picture of the family.  Guess which she is.  The other new addition is Apollo.  Poor Chelsea didn't make the cut yet.

 And now he's getting into office supplies.  He likes to make books, stapling many of his works together.  And he discovered my label maker!

 Not sure about this one.  Witch? Pickle? Oopma Loompa?

 This is rain falling on our house:

 He learned about exclamation points this week! Now they are everywhere!

 Sorry, forgot to rotate this one.  Dude has on a fedora!  He's a detective! Love it!

Here's the boy himself. Replicas of the Nina and Pinta were he this week and we went on a rainy day to see them. Still fun!

he likes the arby's shake!

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat....

Wow, it's November!  If I want to stay on top of things, that means I need to start thinking about ordering Christmas cards!!  We have ordered Shutterfly photo cards for the last 4 or 5 years, for everything from Christmas to birth announcements and even party invitations.  Usually I use my digital scrapbooking goodies to create a card and then upload it to Shutterfly's blank template for scrappers, but last year the photos that Angela Acker took of us fit perfectly with one of the photo card templates:

I couldn't complain, it was adorable and saved me a lot of time messing around in Photoshop!

Shutterfly has lots of cute templates again this year.  If I can get my act together and find some cute outfits for us, you might even see a card from us in the next couple of months! If you want 50 free photo cards from Shutterfly - which I'll be getting for sharing this information with you ;) - click here for more info.