paulabarber

Toilet Paper, huh?

So I told you all that Matt was my favorite photographer in the whole world.
Well, he offered up a bit of a challenge on his blog,
and I thought it would be fun to play around.

Toilet Paper as Art.
hmmmmmm.

His version is amazing. 
Really.
Click on his link up there and look again,
Cuz my version can't hold a candle,
But, it was seriously fun to do.
My kids thought I had lost my mind.
Noah said, "Mom, just because I always stick my
tongue out at you when you try to take my picture. . .
is that why you are taking pictures of toilet paper?"

Cute.

Thanks for the challenge Matt.
I think I'll call this one

"Like the Rings of a Tree, so is the Toilet Paper of our Lives"
(I think my next subject might need to be some cheese.)

The end of the school year.

Although we technically don't have anyone 
"in school" yet, we are still gearing up for the
end of the school year at our house.  Noah
attends the Mother's Day Out program at
our church.  (and love's it!)  It follows
the local school calendar, so we
will have the last week of MDO next
week. 

And you know what that means. . .
TEACHER'S GIFTS!!

I always have more trouble with
the end of the year gifts than I do
Christmas.  I don't really know why,
I just do.

This year I decided to go with a
homemade gift.  I made a set of
monogrammed notecards for each
of his teachers.  Then, I used a little
bucket from the ever-popular
Target Dollar spot, and
I'm DONE!  I think it turned out
to be a cute little gift, and it was
very inexpensive.  Especially
since I just used paper strips and
circle punches to decorate the cards.

For the monograms, I used this Technique Tuesday stamp set.
It allowed me to make 8 cards for each teacher without worrying
about running out of letters!

Are you making teacher's gifts this year?  I would love to see them.
 

Matt, Memories, and Moo.

I wanted to share some things with you today that I am just LOVING!
Stuff that has come to be a part of my daily routine.

First of all, this is Matt. 
I think Matt is my favorite photographer in the whole world.
After you spend the next few minutes looking through his
amazing images on his new blog (don't you just love the
massive photo size?)
you'll want to reserve a couple of hours to
check out the eyecandy on his old blog.
Matt is a local Dallas area photographer and my
wonderful Hubby stumbled across his blog back in March. 
I've been stalking reading it every day since. 
I love his openness, his spirit and, of course, his amazing talent.
Be sure to check out his business site too. 
Loads of gorgeousness HERE.

Next, have you seen this:

I mean seriously.  How gorgeous is this piece of paper?
Making Memories was my first love in scrapbooking.
But for a few years there, I have to admit, I went astray.
Oh sure, I still dabbled in the MM, I mean once your hooked
and all, but I seemed to have lost that giddy, euphoric,
love that I had at the very beginning. 
Well.
That was until the Noteworthy line came out.
Now, when I look at this piece of paper, my palms get
all sweaty, my heart races.  I just can't wait to touch it,
glue it, cut it up!  Yes, Making Memories, you have
certainly fanned the flames of love with this one.
(And if anyone needs a link, scrapsupply has it!)

And one more. . .can you say "Moo"?
Do you eat yogurt?  I love the stuff.  Eat it daily,
sometimes twice daily.  Recently, I found this:

Brown Cow yogurt!  This is heaven in a wee-little
plastic tub.  Do you see there on the bottom where
it says "cream top".
Um.
Yeah.
That's the stuff right there.
This layer of cream on top of the regular yogurt
that will make you swear you are eating some
3000 calorie, super-sinful dessert.
Just try it.  If you like yogurt,
You.
Won't.
Be.
Sorry.

Hello Blog, old friend.

Man, it's been a while.
What have you all been up to?
Me, I've been doing lots of purging,
a little traveling, and a whole lotta
picture taking.  I've seriously gotten into
my camera these days.  I'm trying to learn
how to really use it, now that I've had
it for a couple of years.  It's amazing
how much there is to learn.
Overwhelming, actually.

Here are a couple of my favorite recent
shots.  We took a little trip down to
San Antonio and Corpus Christi a couple
of weeks ago.  These were taken out on the
beach.

And here's a little album that I finished over National
Scrapbook Day.  It was for Steph's Mini-Album
Challenge over at Scrapsupply.com.  And I was even able
to use one of  Debi's Sketches for the cover!  I love it
when I can multi-task like that.  I'm usually horrible
at doing more than one thing at a time, so this small
little accomplishment means a lot to me!  :o)  I used
the photos of Keira  and the little fairy tale story
that I posted here a while back.

I just love those Maya Road binder albums!
Steph's sketch allowed me to finish this entire 6" x 6" album
in under three hours!  Now that is a great feeling! 
And Keira just love's
looking at her own little book.