Thanksgiving

The first image is our seasonal display, including Christopher's "Winter Garden" he made in preschool. They start with a wooden board, then add clay, then plants such as an evergreen sprig, berry cluster, etc, and is topped off with a little gnome/person made of wool and a little baby. He still plays with/changes his around a lot even 2 years later:)

I found the pumpkin candle at Target, and it smells DIVINE. I bought a smaller one we kept in the bay window of the kitchen.

All three boys ate huge amounts, the first Thanksgiving they've done so. Even William sat there in his high chair and stuffed himself with delicious food:) We topped the meal off with a "drunken apple pumpkin pie" which is basically pumpkin pie with chunky applesauce inside, then a small amount of flaming rum poured over it at serving time. Sorry, no pics of that! We were too worried about burning the house down to try to photograph the event;)

Poor neglected blog

I am dusting off my blog; hope I still have some readers out there to see;) Let's see, what have we been up to? Oh yes, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and most recently: MAJOR snowstorm and cold snap. Yes indeedy, winter has definitely made its appearance!! Christopher has had 2 days off from school due to 12+ inches of snow, then the bitter cold.

Some explanation regarding William's turkey costume below...Jeff started calling him our little Butterball when he first started getting chubby around 3 months of age. I got the notion to find him a turkey costume for Halloween, and found this one on Ebay. It still makes me giggle:)





Due to an illness in the family, our Thanksgiving plans abruptly changed the evening before. So we ran out to buy a turkey and invited my parents and in-laws here to our house. Between the things we were going to take and the things Mom and Dad were going to take to the extended family get-together, we had about everything we needed:) Including a good excuse for not having deep-cleaned the house before company arrived;)

Thanks to the enormous snowstorm and 2 days off from school for Christopher, we now have all of our holiday decorating done. And I put in a huge photo order online today, including enlargements of the family and each boy for us and grandparents. So I'm feeling pretty productive and think I might just kick back for the rest of the evening, heehee. Or perhaps I could kick back with a cookbook and think about cookies; Christopher keeps asking if we can make some Christmas cookies...

Busy Day

Today is a busy day! In other words, I should be doing what I need to do and not posting on here;) The preschool Halloween party is this evening (figures that it would rain heavily today). I have a pumpkin pie to bake, a cream cheese jack-o-lantern to make (cream cheese ball for dipping crackers), and pea soup to get in the crock pot. 5 people need to be costumed and at the party by 5:40 tonight to finish setting up for 6:00. There are supposed to be multiple stations outside (good luck with the rain), including pirate me, "Sea Salt Mommy" unless someone can come up with a better piraty name for me, lol. I will have a bucket of dry ice for effect, and a treasure chest of beads for all to choose from.

The Jen Wilson challenges have been dwindling a little:( So here are a couple pages I've done recently for me and/or my friend Amy.

Ami Collofello space kit
Art Warehouse title
Jan Hicks Coin Folder chip styles
Amanda Sok Ponder (solid paper)
Heather Roselli Spaced Out (purple rickrack)
I "pimped" the title quite a bit. The base is a chipboard rocket from Ami Collofello, unchanged. The words were primary colors with no outline from Art Warehouse. First I gave them a white mat outline, then I deleted the white part that was underneath the letters. I gave the white part a chipboard style to raise it up and make the letters look embedded in. Then I changed the blending mode on the primary colored letters. Now they are darker with texture...ah:)


Yin template
Amanda Sok Alluring Autumn
Amanda Sok Folded Flowers digital stickers
Syndee Nuckles Cinnamon Suede
Sarah Batdorf Color Match shadows

Happy Fall Y'all :)

William is now a FAST crawler and of course is curious about all the stuff in the house he couldn't get to before...we deal with tipped over dog water, constant reminders to everyone to keep the bathroom door shut, etc. Our dog now knows how to scratch to ask for her water, lol.
As of this week he is saying his first word other than mama and dada, which he seems to say purposefully as well. Dah, dah heheheheheh, he says this every time he sees a dog IRL/book/statue :)

This is more a reminder to me than anything: Christopher surprised me by announcing that he doesn't want Santa to bring him Legos this year. He wants a drum! I casually (hehe) asked him more questions and he wants a bongo/hand drum. I think I even know where to find a cool one! They usually sell them at our preschool's holiday fair, which we are not having this year. But of course the teachers will know which vendor was selling them and I can contact her. Oops, I mean Santa can contact her...

Michael loves preschool and has made good friends with Maddy and Madeleine:) Sofia doesn't like it when he scares her, and he and Landon tend to fight a bit. And an undisclosed person bit him one day and he still talks about it. I can only feel a tremendous sense of relief that he was BIT, not the BITER :) He was very disappointed around 10am today when he asked if he was going to preschool and I said this wasn't a preschool day for him.

We had family photos taken a couple weeks ago by a good friend of mine I've known since high school. She is in the Kansas City area. Visit Cynthia Gullett Photography for a sneak peek!


Week #38 Jen Wilson challenge. We had to pick a Book of Me question we liked from a website and I chose "If I could change the world" and was supposed to list 3 things. This awesome oak tree is out at McFarland Park for all you nearby readers!
If I could change the world:
1. Reverence for nature
2. Love for your fellow man
3. Peace for all
JWD Forest Glen
JWD Graphic Tagboard No 2
JWD Project 52: Dated Stamp Circles
JWD Zachery striped paper
JWD Complete Boy stitching
Brandy Murry Mossy Collection Biggie
Amanda Sok SSTools Wires 6401 styles
Melissa Renfro Downtown Brush Set
Keri Schueller Patternologie
Cheryl Barber stitching style
Trish Jones circular word art


Jonah learned to knit this summer when he broke his toe. One of the first things he made was this adorable hat for William. Jonah was offended that William didn't wear it (in August) so I made sure to put it on Will's bald little head on our trip to the apple orchard in October. All the other preschool moms wondered who made his hat and I pointed at Jonah each time.

Week #37 Jen Wilson challenge to SB a meaningful item of clothing.
JWD papers from: Nostalgia No 7, Sunburst, Mango Sunrise, Breaking Free-Rush Mountain
Template from Heather Lee
JWD Shimmer Edges overlay
JWD Doodlepad Pages (heart/love)
JWD Laundry Line Buttoned Looped Blooms, Laundry Bag Strings, and Garment Tags
Dragonwick font (title) and Amethyst Zucchini (journaling)
Brandy Murry Knitting Basket style

Latest Jen Wilson Challenge pages

Week #34: SB about growth
I used the challenge of "growth" a tad bit loosely...I'm talking about birthdays here but never actually mention getting bigger, lol...
Journaling: William arrived exactly three years after Michael was born -Who would have ever thought we’d have two children with the same birthday?! After all, no important event happens 9.5 months before January 12;) This phenomenon seems to run in the Murray/Meyer family. Twins Ron and Ruth were born on Great-Grandma Darlene (Murray) Meyer’s fifth birthday. She married Great-Grandpa Bud Meyer, whose birthday is four years and 364 days before hers, Their third child, Great-Uncle Gary, was born on Grandpa’s birthday.
VT Portable Remington font
Jessica Sprague template from Beautiful Evidence class
JWD Laundry Line Zachery (stripe and blue)
JWD Academy English paper (brown dot)
JWD Fading Days circular tag
JWD Rekindle (yellow dot)
JWD Nostalgia No 3 chipboard word art


Week #33: SB the start of something new
JWD Academy Phys Ed (red and brown striped paper)
JWD Canvas Backpack Labels
Syndee Nuckles School Edge Paper Templates
Melissa Renfro Star Bright styles (silver spirals)
Dani Mogstad It's Elementary word art and buttons
Katie Pertiet Art Class Frame
Angela Barton Sixteen (alpha paper)
Sarah Batdorf Color Match shadows styles
Sweet Blossom School Days (ruler ribbon)


Week #35: SB something you learned
Christopher was elated when it was his turn to bring Starry home for the weekend. Starry has his own light blue backpack he travels in, complete with his journal (which we turned in to a scrapbook by adding a photo). Each child brought Starry home one weekend in the fall and again for one weekend in the spring semester. It was so much fun to see how far Christopher had progressed in that short amount of time. By spring semester Christopher was able to phonetically spell out several things Starry did with us all on his own. I started and finished the process with him. Starry even attended cousin Joe Borg’s wedding with us in Pella. So he really is a well-traveled elephant! Michael always loved saying hi to Starry in Mrs. Fisher’s classroom, even the next year.


JWD Beginnings Solids
JWD Complete Boy 01 and 02
Heather Roselli Life's a Circus
Raspberry Road elephant (lower right)
Carina Gardner Back to School Titles
Angie Briggs Dirt Road (stitched star)
Circus font


Week #36: SB a fall page, using the color orange
JWD Laundry Line Xander
JWD Little Autumn Bits
Katie Pertiet Stacked Photo Clusters
Summer Driggs Gratitude title
Doreen Stolz autumn tree, ribbon, fastener, and buttons

Daddy Love

Gotta keep going on the tiny baby William pages so I can get to the Big Boy William pages:)

Scraplift of sjford0419 at Sweet Shoppe Designs
Dani Mogstad Father Knows Best
Sarah Batdorf Deep Shadow actions
Sarah Batdorf Color Match styles

By now William (also called Will or "The Will") is pulling himself to standing, doing a little walking around hanging on to furniture, has his first tooth (bottom right) as of this past Saturday (luckily was only grumpy for a day), and is on the verge of crawling:)

The Meeting of the Brothers

A just-because-I-love-these-photos layout:) (In other words, not a challenge for a change!)

One technique I did for this layout was to select the portion of the focal photo outside of the smaller frame and apply a gaussian blur. I wanted to include the larger portion of the photo, in part b/c you can see my hand and arm around both boys, but I also wanted to keep the focus on their sweet little faces.

Dave & Pauline had just arrived in the snow when Jeff returned from getting the boys from Dan & Amy's house. M stopped by the bassinet to briefly glance at William (who of course was still New Baby/Mr. No-Name then), then both of them greeted Grandpa & Grandma, then C settled in on the window ledge with Jeff's iTouch to play games, completely ignoring the baby. Michael took a nice turn holding William at his own request and commented on how he had little ears, a little nose, etc, then tried to TAKE the baby by himself over to Grandpa, because he hadn't had a turn yet. After C played games a bit and after Grandpa & Grandma left, C wanted to hold the baby constantly. He held even his head alone, very gently. M looked on for part of the time but especially C was very interested in baby's little parts...he gently moved his hat aside so he could examine and touch his ears, see how much hair he had, touch his nose, etc...was very interested that he had no teeth (gently moved his lips so he could look, and William very cooperatively opened his mouth wide), and both were VERY interested in his belly button and its very recent function. The really fun part was that William was awake and checking them out most of this time also.
Amanda Sok Sea Glass
Keri Schueller Tiny Love -Boy (frame)
Thao Cosgrove Emb Templates: String Fling
Cheryl Barber Paua Shell styles