Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Books....

I have just posted the list of books I have been reading on my new blog. I hope to add some reviews as I have time for the various books. I will continue to add to my list as I go along!

You can check it out here: www.heartslovehome.com

Enjoy!

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

New Way to Scrapbook!

I enjoy scrapbooking, although I haven't had much time to work on anything in close to a year! I mainly love taking pictures!

Ever since I bought a new digital camera in February that takes great pictures and a storage card that can hold up to 4 GB of pictures, I have been taking TONS of pictures but haven't printed hardly any of them! I do post them on my blogs, and email them to people, but I haven't done much else with them.

I have been thinking lately about looking into the options for Digital Scrapbooking instead since my pictures are already on my computer, I am always on my computer, etc. I started looking around today for sites with instructions on how to get started, what software to use, etc. I have brand new Adobe Design Standard Creative Suite 3 -- which includes Adobe Photoshop. This is an excellent program to use for digital scrapbooking! I have been playing around with doing a page to learn how the Photoshop works and how making a digital page works! I found a tutorial and a free page kit to try out at: Free Digital Scrapbooking

I will post other links as I come across them for resources for digital scrapbooking.

Here is my first digital page. I even printed it out glossy photo paper I happened to have on hand and it turned out great! I set it up to be an 8.5" x 11" page so that I could easily print it myself if I wanted to. I have been wanting to purchase a wide-format printer (I found one reasonably priced recently) the past few months but just haven't been able to. I think I will now work on saving for it so I can print out the 12" x 12" pages I make!

There are also many sites now where you would be able to take your digital pages and print them out as book in various formats...which makes for a number of options for sharing your work with others if you are doing digital scrapbooking! You can even save all your pages as images (like I did below) and make them into a movie that could be put on a DVD to send to others! I am thinking that would make great Christmas gifts for friends and family!

Happy Scrapping!

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Worm Composting

I just posted an update about our worm composting project on our homeschool site.

Check it out at:

www.tiwacademy.wordpress.com

Happy composting!

Summer Fun!

I can't believe how long it has been since I last posted....I guess I seem to say that a lot recently! I am going to work on getting a number of posts added today on my various blogs, so make sure to check the older posts for new things!

I wanted to post a few pictures from today of what is going on as we have 4 additional children in the house all day! My best friend Sarah is out of town and her kids are visiting with us today!

Hope you like the pictures Sarah! These were all taken just after lunch as the kids divided up to do various activities.




The boys with their favorite pastime....playing PlayStation!





My oldest two playing Monopoly again!



Miss Serious showing me her nails. My youngest daughter is painting the two little girls nails.


So cute!


They were looking at the little battery-powered fan that they were using to help "dry" their nails.


Very focused.....!



Kids are such fun and do come up with great things to do in their free time! What a blessing to have such good friends and kids who love to play together!

Monday, July 07, 2008

The 7th of July

My kids have decided that we must have a new tradition for every 7th of July. Wondering why?

Today we ended up sleeping in late (instead of getting up to do some school work) and then I remembered that one of the homeschool groups we are a part of was planning to go bowling today. So, considering how late in the day it already was and that I was feeling somewhat out of sorts, I decided, "Hey kids, we are going to go bowling today!". They, of course, were thrilled!

The bowling alley closest to use offers a Homeschool Day every Monday from 1pm -3pm. It is a special price for 3 games of bowling plus you can purchase drinks and some food items for way less than their normal prices (which are really HIGH!). I didn't realize they were continuing through the summer until a fellow mom posted about our group going.

Anyway, we headed to the bowling alley, and had a blast. It was pouring down rain by the time we left though. We, of course, really need the rain and we didn't mind at all! (I forgot to take the camera...)

We came home and my oldest daugther asked if they could make a cake. I said sure. So they baked the cake, then I made dinner.

While the cake was baking and while I made dinner, the kids decided to play Monopoly which they haven't played in a long time! It is so wonderful when all four of your kids decide to play together and do so nicely for an extended period of time!




Once dinner was completed, as I was preparing to leave to go help a friend with her homeschool planning, they called me down to see how they had decorated the cake.




My oldest announced to me that from now on we had to celebrate the 7th of July with going bowling, playing Monopoly and eating cake! So, I guess we have a new tradition to uphold.....! Kids are so creative!

They obviously had a great day and I was very happy about that! We will get back to our schedule in the coming days as much as we can! :)

It has been interesting to see how the kids are adjusting to mom not being so stressed after I quit working outside the home recently. The effects of my stress was apparently affecting the rest of the family more than I realized! I thank God that He loves us and works all things out for our good. He knows what we need, when we need it and will make it clear when it is time for a change...even if that change is hard.