All That I Am

What is happening!!!???

2010-07-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

Not really sure what is going on with this blog?? Is it me or is it blogger! Yesterday posted about my friends shower and the pictures showed up but no dialogue. What the heck???

Frustrated for sure!

Hopefully this will show up so that you all don't think I am coocoo for cocopuffs!

I hosted a shower along with my friends Shelly and Ellen for our dear friend/sister's daughter in law to be Sara! It was an awesome day showering Sara with love and blessings! Our decorations were a total hit. I will tell you though putting one of these shin digs on it exhausting! We had tons of help thank goodness! Stacie and Ellen's mom Colleen is a rock star in my book. Scroll down and gander at the decorations. Super easy and pretty cheap really. Deco tip...tulle and tissue paper! You can do wonders with both of those. Just don't skimp on cheap tissue paper. buy it at Papyrus. It will be worth the extra 20 cents!

I have another great project up my sleeve hopefully I will be able to get it done to show all of you next week.

If you haven't checked out mambi's blog in awhile...GO! I posted an easy fast home decor project there!

Ciao Bellas~

Sara's shower

2010-07-27T11:43:00.000-07:00

Summer is well on it's way and to say i have been busy is really not the case! It has been somewhat of a slow start to our summer. The weather has been darn right uncooperative. Gloomy and sometimes cold. A couple of weeks we could have worn ugg boots and lit a fire. Really puts a summer girl in a bad mood! The kids have stayed busy. Ed and I even had 2 days with no kids. Kinda sad really. Didn't think I would ever say that but we really don't have that much longer with them. Man oh man when the older folk tell you to enjoy this time with your kids because it goes by so fast...they ain't lyin! So from an older folk to the younger folk it may seem like ages before they are independent and not hanging on you for every need LISTEN UP...it is gone before you know it...REALLY!

A couple of weeks ago I had the honor along with my friends Shelly and Ellen to host a bridal shower for Stacies' oldest Jordan who is getting married this August to a wonderful girl...Sara. Wow, showers are hard work. Not really in that mode of hosting showers. I have hosted a shower or two before but that was a long time ago. You know when all your friends are getting married and it seems like all you do is go to weddings. Like I said a long time ago. It was so much fun and if I do say so myself we did a FANTASTIC job. It all just came off fantastically. We worked very well together. It was a great day to spend with friends and the Maslyn family.

Below were our centerpieces. Soup cans collected and then covered with Mambi paper. distressed and inked edges. Then I gathered 3 to make a grouping and tied together with tulle. Bargain tip- tulle. man that stuff is cheap and can add just the right touch. It also comes in a plethora of colors.We also made a ton of tissue paper poms. Super easy and again super cheap. another little tip-don't skimp on cheap tissue paper. The pink poms are made from cheap target tissue paper and the brown and cream colored poms are made from tissue paper from Papyrus. They definitely held their shape better.

this is the mini banner I made for the stair rails. I used the coffee filter flowers glued them onto ribbon and then swagged them from the railings.

This was our center stage for Sara. I made a banner from the leftover material we used for the tables and made a banner for the stage. I cut out triangles and sewed them onto brown ribbon and then we added tulle and ribbons in between each triangle. I also made some little pom flowers out of coffee filters and then sprayed them with pink glimmer mist. Hmmm...maybe a little tutorial for those in the future.

This is Stacie with her daughter in law to be. An awesome picture of those two. Look what fun they are having already! Love it!

It was a great day and Shelly, Ellen and I were pooped after it was all over. We had a ton of help from Makenna to Stacie and Ellen's Mom Colleen. It really takes a village to pull one of these off.

Gotta jet I need to post on Mambi's blog later today. Head on over there tomorrow to see the cool home decor project I am going to post.

Ciao Bellas!

Let Summer Begin!

2010-06-24T15:32:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was the last day of school and I have to tell you it seemed like we were the only ones left still in school even with all of our furlough days!

I now have a 7th grader and a senior in high school. Really not sure when that happened! I swear I was just in high school. With facebook now and all the re-connections I have made it really seems like I just graduated. But then I get knocked down every morning when I get out of bed and I just don't seem to pop out as fast as I use to. Them old bones are a creaking and stiff. Such a huge bummer. With school out beach days will begin! Love the beach days. I can remember having weekly beach days when I was a kid. I hope my kids remember them as fondly as I do.

At the office I had to bang out a couple of projects/layouts for Dubai believe it or not. This mini album is from our family kit. Everything in this album comes in the kit except for the ribbon. Pretty rockin if you ask me. I also used the "zutter" for the first time. My head is just swimming with endless ideas now. It took me a while to get the hang of it but once I did Oh My Heck it is pretty awesome.

Pictures are totally out of order. Blogger is being quirky today or it just might be me! My favorite page is the back cover. I added a little card on the last page. Love it!

Tomorrow if you are a local gal come and join me for my dear friend Veronica's first book signing. She has an amazing story and her book is compelling, keeps you on the edge of your seat and the most amazing example of God's grace, love and dedication to His children!
Come meet her in person and of course I will be there and not to mention we will have some yummy treats! I am so excited for her and to be on this awesome journey with her. Really you must come if you can.

Have a fantastic weekend my friends!

Honor thy Father

2010-06-17T15:30:00.001-07:00

Is everyone as busy as I am??? The end of the school year always seems to be packed with activity after activity! Jaxon will be promoting from 6th grade next week. I can't believe we are done with Elementary School??!! When did that happen??? I think I am ready to be done and for him to be moving on. I don't know how some of you with more than two kids keep the excitement of elementary school going. Although you gotta just love those kindergartners! I mean they are just the best!

Father's day is around the corner and so I thought I would show a few cards I made for that occasion. I used mainly paper and very few embellishments. Only because I don't want to waste great embellishments on men who don't really appreciate the frou frou-ness of it all. Some do I am sure but none of my Dad's do. :0 Most of the paper is from our "Journey" line out now in Michael's and our newest Dad soft spoken and stickers. All at your local Michaels and LSS. I love love love the "Journey" line. The colors are fabulous. A little edgy and rustic. Not too much though. Go check out the whole line. It is what you see in the cards and more. Transperencies, a travel journal, soft spoke and tons more!

As you can see so very simple.

What are you doing to honor the men in your life?? Are they like my wonderful husband and want to sit in front of the t.v watching the U.S. Open? Do you BBQ? Or go out? Not sure what we are doing yet.
Still looking for a buffet or hutch or something on Craigs List to refinish. I seem to be just missing the boat on that. I don't want to spend a lot of cashola and I am thinking you have to look a lot during the day which I don't really have to the time. Something will come up and when it does I am ready with my spray paint.

Have a fantastic weekend spending time with your Dad's.
Ciao Bellas~

Another season ends!

2010-05-24T10:45:00.000-07:00

We are coming to the end of another baseball season. It has been a rough one to say the least. What is it about parents and all the whining and sneaky business in kids sports. I just don't get it!Jaxon moved up to play in the Juniors division. He is 13 and not that big so when I saw what I can men-children I was a bit nervous. But, he did great and loves playing the game. Sad to see it end as I love watching my kids compete in anything but like I said earlier ready for all the baseball drama to be over and to have my husband back and not have his phone attached to his ear listening to all the whiners!

My niece plays softball and made All Stars for her district so in honor or her I made 2 layouts for her using our sports chipboard embellishments. They are perfect as they are not cutesy and add a perfect element of sporty to the layouts.

On another crafty note I have been surfing a lot of different blogs in regards to decorating on a budget. There are tons of blogs out there that have a ton of ideas, tutorials, etc. One of my favorites is http://allthingsthrifty.com they have redone some furniture that is amazing. That gave me inspiration to refinish some shelves that we had that were pine. I painted them black and they came out fantastic! I love that it cost me less than 20 bucks and made such a big difference in the look. So I have been on Craigslist and am trying to score a buffet or hutch and I will post pictures of when I start that project! Wish me luck!

Have a fantastic day my blog friends!

Weekend happenings

2010-05-17T10:50:00.000-07:00

*picture heavy

This was a BIG weekend for the Gurzi household. Makenna's Junior Prom somewhat took over the whole weekend! I am exhausted from all the activities. We not only spent Saturday getting her ready but we then hosted an little after party for her friends. I am CRAZY! I just kept telling myself it is way better to know she is safe and sound after prom then having her at someone else's house. Funny story which seems to be the case with us. Her date had not answered any of her phone calls or texts all week. He doesn't go to her school so she needed to give him the 411 on all the details for Saturday. Saturday at 11:00 Am we still could not get ahold of him. This put Ed and I on high alert and were snapping into action. Since parents don't get to talk with these kids nowadays as they all have their own phones we were searching for his parents phone numbers. Long story short the date finally called and told her his phone had been taken away and his Mom had put it on silent so she wouldn't have to deal with it. Hayden's Mom was so apologetic but I can tell you we were a bit worried. All worked out! Just a little drama to add to the memories. sometimes I could do without a little drama! Other than maybe being a little forgetful Hayden was a great Prom date and they both had a great time. This is my favorite picture. So stinkin cute. Can't believe my baby is a Junior!

They rented a Coach bus for all 25 of them. Gone are the days of a limo for 6-8 kids. They have gone "Big Time" and now need coach buses. Don't get me started!

These 3 and their poses. They are always good for the Charlie Angels pose and their "Sasha Fierce" pose.

This is just part of their group. A great group of kids.

This shot was for me. I made her flower for her hair and I love the corsage and flower together. Matched her dress perfectly!

Best memory of the night... my daughter gets pulled off the dance floor to get drug tested because she is dancing so crazy. She of course tested clean. They just don't know that she is a big ole dork! She won't show me her dance moves but assures me there is no "grinding" moves at all! Oh how I wish I could have been there to see that!

It was a great weekend for her and fun to experience it all with her and her friends. The whole weekend had me thinking about my Prom memories. Something a girl never forgets!

A couple of Layouts

2010-05-11T10:44:00.001-07:00

First off I must say THANK YOU to my faithful followers! I can't believe I still have a few of you left! You people are GREAT! The last few months here at Mambi have been extremely busy and needless to say I have tons of eye candy to show you! This layout is out of the "FRIENDS" kit. I love the colors of the papers...pink and green love it! The only thing I added to the LO above is the pink ribbon. That is one of the characteristics I love about our kits. It includes everything you need to create awesome layouts. And not just one but multiples.This next LO is out of the "sassy" line. Again loved the color combinations.

This by far is my most favorite to date. A little inking and distressing adds a ton of dimension to any layout. Plus this is from my favorite line. Ah man I can't think of the name right now and can't find anything in my office. Ugh!

My most very favorite line to date is about to make its mark in Michaels the end of this week so stay tuned. Some freakin fantastic papers, embellishments, and kits. Oh the colors!

On the home front we seem to be heading into a busy season... End of the school year. Although I will say this when is the slow season??!!! Summer is around the corner can't wait but I shudder at the thought of putting on a bathing suit already!

Love summer and the beach and everything about summer. The slow lazy days I can't wait for. Have you made any summer plans yet?

gotta jet adhesive is calling my name!

Ciao~

Let's try this one more time!

2010-05-06T16:12:00.000-07:00

Well if I have any readers still thank you so much for sticking with this neglected blog! I am going to give it one more college try and see how this blog thing turns out. I have been cranking out some good stuff so maybe just maybe I will stay with it! I have no good excuses for you all just that I always feel like I have nothing of importance to say and I hate my camera so my pictures are never just like I want them. So with that said it is Mother's Day this Sunday and if any of you watch The Middle it was classic and a great take off on what Mother's Day is really like at least in my house! My little ol' opinion on Mother's Day...LAME SAUCE! Let's all get together so that we Moms can cook and probably clean before hand to have family over. What??!! In my case let's make it to my BIL house in time to watch the Player's Championship! Ahhhhhh!!!! Whatever! I just want a really great gift and then I don't really mind if I cook on Mother's Day!

So in honor of Mother's Day I am showing a cute little banner I made for my mantle. I used our friends kit and a couple of other soft spoken for added embellishments.

Happy Mother's Day

See you all back here soon!

A little eye candy for you

2009-08-06T12:38:00.000-07:00

This Mom can hardly hold her excitement in because as you can see FOOTBALL is right around the corner. Tackle football no less! I have been waiting for this year since, oh I don't know, we found out Jaxon was going to be a boy! You think I'm kidding...I AM NOT! Football is my very favorite sport to watch. Something about kicking somebody's butt on the field and not getting in trouble just appeals to me. I know I know I probably need some serious counseling, I already knew that. It really isn't just the actual playing of the sport. It is the whole kit and kaboodle. The band coming out on the field, the drumline, the National Anthem, the cheerleaders getting the crowd revved up for their team, the fans, even the stinkin announcers! I love the energy about the whole game! If you ask me nothing better. Now I get to cheer my boy on to get in there and kick some booty! Oh my goodness I just can't wait. We will be in football mode for weeks months even. I am getting butterflies in my belly just thinking about it.
I love pictures of teams with their backs to us and names on jerseys.

Walking into the first practice. He wasn't even nervous just excited! I was too. Ed and I stayed to watch for about a half hour. I told Ed what is there to watch at this point?? But before we knew it a half hour had passed and we really didn't want to leave but we had things to do other than staying there for 3 hours! Love it!

On to the eye candy!

Here are some pictures of some of the projects I have done in the last couple of months. The layout above is for our calendar kit that will be coming out soon. It happens to have one of my favorite pics of my kids from last summer. It is a great calendar kit. Pick one up at Michaels.

These next next few pics are from the box kit that I did for the make and take at CHA consumer show this past week. A 10 minute project start to finish. Everything I used came in the kit except for one soft spoken sheet. I did not ink, distress, or add ribbons. Very easy to do for the beginner scrapbooker. Some of the gals at my table were saying speed scrapbooking at it's best!

This is the front cover. Again no inking or any added elements. Just strictly what came in the kit and the added soft spoken. Oh and some cardstock.

I did decorative punch one page to give them an idea of what they could do with it once they got home.

What I really like about this box kit is that you can make a mini album and put it back into its' original box and wrap it up for a gift. We have them at Michael's of course. You could also check with your LSS to see if they carry them as well. There a few different kinds. Love, baby boy, baby girl and of course "A Kid Like Me". Not sure if any of you know or have seen that we brought back our original stick kids in honor of Mambi's 10 year anniversary! Can't believe that it has been 10 years!

Gotta jet

Ciao Bellas~

to blog or not to blog...

2009-08-03T10:03:00.000-07:00

that is the stinkin question I have been asking myself for months. I really enjoy reading other blogs...A LOT! Maybe too much sometimes. :) I wish it was easier to upload pictures. for some reason that is a complete chore to me. My friend Shelly gave me a few tips so I will try that. I also feel like I don't have a lot to talk about and sometimes get redundant on my kids activities. I have heard from a few of you and you all say otherwise so I am going to continue on with the blog for now and see how it goes. Here is a card that I made for Renee's wedding shower. I used our black and white wedding paper pad. I love that paper pad. It is how can I say... glorious! It has a couple of transparent papers in the collection as well. I made a little pocket for the gift card inside. Simple and pretty darn easy. I love the look of the satin ribbon. It says "wedding" all over it!

At the office we were at the CHA-summer show last week. It was held in Florida. I had no idea it rained SO much in Orlando. YUCK! We stayed at the Peabody hotel. They are known for their cute little ducks. They hang out at this fountain all day and then they have this Duckmaster and I might add he is a little creepy looking that takes them back to their "Duck Palace" for the night. Interesting. People go gaga over these ducks.

When we are at trade shows we do get to have some lovely dinners. So I took a picture of our desserts. They were fabulous! I wish I would have taken a picture of our "patronitas" at our first dinner. It was just girls for this show and we were treated to a dinner at the Capital Grille. If you have never heard of it check it out. It was quite the dining experience. Our patronitas were to die for. I love me my margarita. This one did not disappoint! Had to have two! Needless to say we girls had a great time!

The show was busier than we thought, which was good. The best part was the Scrapbook Royalty event and the CHA consumer event. Both were pretty packed. I ran a make and take at the consumer show and ran out of my 130 kits! At the Scrapbook Royalty event I was reacquainted with two women that recognized me from taking a class of mine 9 years ago at an event in Orlando! How funny is that! Too bad they didn't say man you have lost some weight...LOL! That was fun to meet them again. Scrapbooking is so funny that way. You really get to know people on a more deeper level and you just take off right where you left off. I really am in a wonderful industry and I hope it continues to bring people happiness!

I am now ready to tackle getting ready for the next event...Scrapfest! And guess what Jaxon is getting involved in tackle football and this Mom cannot be anymore excited about that! So for sure you will be hearing about that! As for Makenna she is starting her online driving today, the excitement for that is not so much. That just freaks me out. One that she is old enough to be driving and two, she is DRIVING! Ahhhhhhhhh!!!

Gotta jet my friends. If you have continued to check for blog updates, I thank you and if you are new to my blog...Welcome!

Ciao Bellas~

Where does friendship end...

2009-05-05T09:10:00.000-07:00

Did i peak your interest?? Friendship end? Your thought might be what did Suezi say to have a friendship end? Nope I did nothing but...BAKE!Not sure if you can tell what that lovely picture is. It is two starters of Amish Friendship Bread(that's right 2), the recipe that you send with your starters to your friends, and a finished Amish Friendship Bread. It makes me laugh almost out loud that it has the word Friendship in it's description. I am on my 3rd batch of this stuff which means I have given out 9 starters to my friends. Now you may think not so hard. Well, i am here to tell you it is HARD! I for one don't have that many friends that want to take on the 10 day process, let alone bake. Plus it takes on a pretty fermenting smell which grosses some light weights out! I am almost ready to start a stand in front of the grocery store!
My friends see me and start to run. Family members turn their backs!
I have two starters going right now which means in a few more days I will have 8 more friends that I need to find to give these starters to! Needless to say I am RUNNING out of friends people!
I am not going to keep any starters for myself. I am done and don't want to see another Amish FRIENDSHIP Bread for a couple of years. Which brings to mind this little thought...the Amish. Aren't they a small community? Don't they run out of friends? Seriously, how do they keep this going? Don't they get tired of eating this stuff? Let alone the calories that are in one loaf of bread!
I am now resorting to my blog friends. Any of you interested? Live in southern Orange County? Heck I would drive anywhere in Orange County to get rid of the stuff. Let me know. Please don't turn your backs when you see me comin!
Off to cut a slice of friendship bread and remember when I did have friends! LOL!

Monday Monday

2009-05-04T10:45:00.000-07:00

I do believe I have a hate/love relationship with Mondays! I hate Mondays after a very long and busy weekend...like today! I am dragging. But on the other hand Mondays are a fresh start, a new beginning, new week. A time to regroup and start all over. Love that just not this Monday.

What about you out there?? How do you feel about Mondays?

I have so much to do this Monday and I am just not feeling it. Gotta get my project finished for Scrapfest. I love it! I will post a sneak peel when it is done. Love the paper, and the project in general. Good stuff!

Also, need to get a couple of layouts done. Luckily I got some great pics to get those done.

I will say this though... I really want a good camera! I am tired of just okay pictures. I am going to start saving for one. I get picture envy every time I go to Maggie Holmes or Karen Russell's blogs. Don't even get me started on Tara Whitney. If only!!!!

Here are a couple of pictures from our weekend.

We had a family baseball bbq yesterday! We obviously don't get our fill of baseball!! This is my niece Chloe getting to hit off the tee for the first time! A softball player in the making! Love It! It was a great day! But I will say this I am getting way too old to be chasing baseballs!

This is Jaxon eating his oh I don't know 10th smore??!!! Or maybe it was his grilled cheeses sandwich he grilled over the fire pit! Jaxon's team had a bbq pool party this weekend. It was a great time and the boys were in and out of the pool for 8 hours! Not sure how they do that?? We parents all get along famously and the boys do too. Very lucky this year to be spending so much time with friends you want to be around other than on the baseball diamond. Good times!

On another note, I want to post a challenge on my blog so keep posted. As soon as I figure out what I want to do I will post it here. Sounds like fun... don't ya think?

Gotta jet for now...

A sale and a Loss!

2009-04-30T10:29:00.000-07:00

First the good news if you haven't already heard...MAMBI WAREHOUSE SALE!

When you ask?? May 15-16

Where? Mambi Headquarters

Time? 9-5 Friday 9-3 Saturday

There are going to be some GREAT prices and AWESOME products! Don't miss out!

Added Bonus... you will get to meet the wonderful people I get to work with.

Last time we had the warehouse sale we had a blast and tons of laughs. Should make for some great blog stories!

Now onto the loss story.

If you are not into baseball you can skip it. But really I am here to tell you I am one sick fan! Jaxon's team played great last night. We were down 2 and then up 3. Bottom of the 6th inning(that is all Little League plays) 2 outs. We got this right? WRONG! We walk the 11th, 12th, 1st batters in their lineup. That means bases loaded. Say it isn't so. We get the 2nd and 3rd batters out. Clean up hitter is up. We still need just one more out. My thought as my hands are sweating and I am pacing like a caged animal, what are the odds that he hits a grand slam?? Well we got to find out. Our pitcher fires one right down the pipe...SMACK! You just knew it was going out. It went to the other stinkin field! They win 6-5!

UUUGGGHHHHHHH!

All you can do is applaud the other team and congratulate that young man for his hit! He will tell that story probably to his grand kids. I can just hear it, I was 12 years old playing for the Dodgers...

Whatever, it is only little league ball right?

You will not believe that it kept me up tossing and turning. Really! I really need to get a life! I still can't believe it! Our sad little boys were so bummed. I am pretty positive that they didn't lose sleep.

Tomorrow is another day and another game!

Tomorrow is also the big day.

Reflections is tomorrow

If you live in the OC area or close to, I believe that there are still a couple of spots open. Should be a great weekend. Plenty of fun classes and great make and takes.

One always need time away and what better way to spend your time away from your family is with other scrapbookers and awesome teachers!

I am off for another day in the office. Things are a bustling around here.

Ciao Bellas~

A little chuckle in everyday life

2009-04-28T10:20:00.000-07:00

This is just a random post for today.

I was driving home the other day and this man cut me off and then gave me "the bird" if you know what I mean. It really just made me laugh. Why do people get so angry on the road?? Was I driving too slow?? I am going to go out on a limb and say highly unlikely. Was I just in his way? Was he late picking up kids? I don't know what the reason was but really PEOPLE life is way too short and complicated to add getting angry on the road! Phew! got that off my chest!

My friend Stephanie posted about your life wishes, dreams etc. It's a great post. Go read it after you've read mine, of course.

It got me thinkin what is my wish, dream?? I am not really sure I have one. I have the usuals. Kids grow up to be great humans with strong morals. Happy marriage. Do you all have a life wish? It can be anything. Trivial or over the top! I am going to start really thinking about this and see what I come up with. Off the top of my head would be to meet Paula Deen! She cracks me up and has made a life for herself and family from just cooking! Cooking really good and fattening food, but it has to be something else that got her where she is today and I would love to know the trials and triumphs first hand. That would be one wish.

Here is what else is on my mind...other peoples blogs. I blog hop almost everyday! That is right EVERYDAY! Part of it is for my job. To get inspiration, to see what is out there, but really it is because I have gotten to know these blog people and I am very interested in knowing what is going on in their lives. This blog in particular I love. Her name is Stephanie Howell and her blog name is "just me and my two chicks" She is a young mother of 2 little girls with a husband in Iraq. She's a very talented scrapbook artist and a witty writer. What gets me coming back almost everyday is their families journey in the military. She is one strong woman! I am not really sure I could be as strong as her. She has brought a tear to my eye more than once. Her journey makes me stop in my tracks and pray for all those brave men and women over there and everywhere else we have our military. Go check her blog out. If you do please let her know that you are praying for her and her family. This blog world is something else. It really brings this big world closer together. It also makes me realize we are all the same out there. Lovin our families, trying to be the best we can be and maybe a little scrapbooking too!

That's all I got for right now. I will leave you with another baseball pic. Why you ask?? Because like I said it is what is consuming us right now and we LOVE it!

Okay I must laugh(really hard) because I went back to look at past posts and this picture is the SAME picture I posted last time! LOL! I have to get to work and have no time to adjust and replace so just pretend it is a dfferent pic! Some of you that know me will say typical Suezi! Just go with it my friends!

UNCLE UNCLE!!!

2009-04-23T11:12:00.000-07:00

I Give In!

I guess I should update my blog since I have many of you asking why I haven't and when do I plan on doing it! Truth be told I wasn't feeling that inspired and was feeling a bit blue these past couple of months! It has been a bumpy road for my little family and didn't feel like putting on a happy face. I think the fog has lifted and there is light out there! I apologize for not updating and will try to get back to regular schedule programming.

What has been keeping me busy is just life. You know how it is when you are a Mom, Wife, etc.

There has been this...Color Guard. Little did we know that it would almost consume our lives! Mak's season just finished. They placed 2nd in the State finals and 9th in the World Finals. Needless to say They rock! Was is worth it??? That's a loaded question! We are so proud of her but we will be glad to have her back home more often and she will definitely be glad to have a life other than guard!

There is also this...
Baseball...Dirt Bag Baseball! This consumes us every spring and although we would not have it any other way it can be a bit exhausting! I think I know why it is exhausting. Trying to find quick dinners to make during this season. How stinkin ridiculous is that...worrying about making dinner! LOL!

We had this...Jaxon's 12th Birthday. 12 boys plus to Dad boys at Laser Quest. Loud and funny to watch. If you have a Laser Quest near you I highly suggest hosting a party there. Easy, somewhat economical and the boys, Big and little had a great time! Nothing better than blowing your candles out while you are sucking down pixie sticks! Oh My!

We celebrated Easter with my side of the family. These three adorable little ones are my nieces and nephews. The only ones that participated in an Easter Egg Hunt. My punky kids didn't even want to color eggs. So sad that they are getting so old!

I have been working and these two layouts are some of the stuff I can show you. The rockstar one is from the paper pad Urban Youth and embellishments are from A Kid Like Me line. The Urban Youth pad is perfect for your teen. It's kinda edgy and not a cutesy look at all. I LOVE it! I can see some great projects for Jaxon's room out of this paper. A Kid Like Me line is all the stick kids that Mambi is known for. Believe it or not we are celebrating our 10th Anniversary this year! I can hardly believe it! It has gone by so fast. Mambi has evolved into such an unreal company. The products that keep coming out of our design teams are UNREAL! We keep getting better and better! Just make sure you keep your eye out for our stuff! You will not be disappointed!

I've also been really into flowers! I made this flower chain from the Making Memories Slice . I cut out all different sizes of flowers from our Fashion District line glued them back to back, punched a hole with a crop a dile and then cut out a long skinny triangle rolled it up, glued the ends and put one between each flower. Put them all on a coordinating piece of yarn. Super easy and super cute! I got the idea from Rachel.

The second flower is hand drawn in 6 different sizes. Distressed the edges, ink the edges and and crunched. When you think you've crunched enough...crunch some more. Then you just layer all the flowers. I use glue dots between each layer. Add rhinestones, buttons, prima flowers in the middle and Voila! A beautiful flower to add to a layout, card, whatever! I want to make one with fabric and put on a headband. Darling!

I want to give a shout out to an event that is taking place May 1-3.

Reflections

It is being held at the Newport Regency. It is being put on by Susan Lyons and Scrapbook Oasis. I believe that there a few more spots open. Friday night there are hosting a Isle Carnival. There will be make and takes, Vendor Faire, and a yummy dessert bar. You can attend this event for 25.00 bucks. I will be there with a make and take. Come for a visit. It is going to be a wonderful weekend. Stephanie Ackerman, Maggie Holmes, Shannon Tidwell, and Jamie Waters are just a few of the awesome teachers that will be teaching at this event.

Suzy Plantamura will also be doing a make and take. Go check it out! I know Susan and she is one of the best entertainers I know. Not a detail will be overlooked!

I gotta jet. Scrapfest projects are a callin' my name!

So glad to be a bloggin'!

Ciao Bellas~

lots o' cards

2009-02-05T10:30:00.000-08:00

Today I am going to post 3 cards that were made by Shelby here in the office. She takes care of all of our shipping. Making sure our product gets to where it needs to be in a timely fashion! She also loves to create like I do. She will sometimes show me what she makes and this time I needed to post them on the blog.

First card was made strictly from our fashion district line.

Second was done with our wedding soft spoken and the third from our modern milan line. I especially am favoring the wedding one. Great shower card!

On to other news...

Trying to get organized in my office. Going to tackle some cupboards that have been EXTREMELY ignored for a couple of years now. I am hoping to find some good stuff once I get them emptied. don't you love when that happens. You clean something out and you find some really great stuff that has been hidden in the depth of unclean closets. Almost makes it worth all the cleaning time you put in.

Here are some pics of the class that I taught at CHA.

I used the two mini albums (6x6 & 5x9) from the fashion district line and added some soft spoken from the same line. A little ribbon, inking and distressing Voila a cute little album!

I really LOVE the colors of this line. I used sepia toned pictures for this album. I am just learning the photoshop thing and the funny thing about those pics is they're all different sepia tones!

LOL!

I am so stinkin intimidated by photoshop. If any of you out there would like to teach me and can teach in a very simple way feel free to call me! I am so envious of all those pictures that look fabo and come to find out they photo shopped them with certain actions & extras! ugh!

Did you know that the best time of the year is right upon us??? Can you guess???

Oh maybe not to all of you out there but next to football season it ranks right up there oh I am going to say they are dead tied. Guessed yet??

That is correct my friends...Baseball season!

Jaxon was drafted onto the Long Beach Dirtbags this season. Love the name! Get it dirtbags?? For you non baseball fans..is there any? They are named for the bases...diret bags get it??

A little baseball trivia.

Anyhow, if you are still reading and are interested. Pregames start in just a a week or so. Games start beginning of March. I have got my spiritwear ready, my heater ready, seeds bought and am biting at the bit to get on the field! Call me crazy!

Now not to play favorites of the kids, Makenna is starting her second year of winterguard. This is where color guards perform to recorded music in gymnasiums. She is now in Open Guard which is much more intense. 25 hours of practice in 4 days. That is right 25 hours! that was just 4 days of her practice schedule. We are so proud of her and though sometimes she wants to quit I know that she would miss it.

She has her first performance this weekend and we are ready!

Here is the thing. Some Suezi, trivia if you will...

I LOVE LOVE LOVE and would put more LOVES but you all might call and think I am crazy but LOVE competition. It makes me happy. Everything about it. The practices, the accomplishments on and off the field, gym whatever or wherever you are competing, the winning and even the losing. Although I hate to lose, it comes with competition and we must all learn how to lose and grow from it.

Now with sports you can scream, encourage, yell and not look to kooky. In a color guard comp you can't really yell all that much. Plus their performances are only 10 minutes long. Fast!

I am not saying I prefer sports I just think it is the yelling that I like better and for longer periods of time. Does that make sense?

It really doesn't matter because watching my kids in anything makes me happy and sometimes makes me cry! Weird and freakish...i know!

Okay I have babbled enough and need to get cleaning.

Ciao!

Show pics

2009-02-02T13:27:00.000-08:00

I forgot to post the few pics i took at the show.
Stephanie looking quite intently at one of her make and take customers.
Jane Seymour was there to promote a floating canvas for some company. she is really pretty and a tiny tiny thing. Shelby loves her and was a crazed fan! We also took a pic of Shelby with this strange man that was Jane's marketing director or something of the sort.
Last is a cool display from one of the booths at the show. I really like all the different takes on the same project.
all in all a great show and the Mambi booth was rockin as usual!

Can it be February???

2009-02-02T09:25:00.000-08:00

Oh my Heavens what a game yesterday!! Winning touchdown in the last 35 seconds!!! So flippin exciting. Each team deserved to win that game. Bummer it was the Steelers but I am very happy it was an awesome game! Water cooler talk is all about the Superbowl this morning. What did you think of the commercials? I can't really say I enjoyed them. I think they are building up to much expectation and they are not living up to that expectation. don't get me wrong a few were funny others not so much. What is up with daddy.com and their "enhancement" commercial? Can you say... TRASH!

On to better stuff,
We have now entered the month of LOVE! Poor February. For one it is a short month, sometimes gets an extra day but only every 4 years, for California usually our wettest month. Credit card bills are coming in from the holidays so not alot of spending going on and time to tighten up the hatches. What this month does get is LOVE and lots of it! I saw an interview on the View with oh now i forgot what actress but she said that Valentine's Day is being geared more towards the kids. I might have to agree with her. Although I have kids and am not single so I don't really know how true that is. What do you think?
I have a a cute project that was super easy peasey and a lovely layout to show you.

Love the colors. Both really easy to do.The great thing about the layout is I used scraps and old embellsihments. With the way the economy is we must all go to our scrap bags, tables, drawers wherever you store your goods and start using up all the stuff that you buy and then somehow never use.It is amazing what you will find at the bottom of a drawer. You may have looked at it over and over. Wanting to save it for something special. We all have a scrapbook store with tons of "new" product feet away from us. Just start going through it all and put it to ggod use.
The candy bag took minutes to make. Great teacher gift, or if you are feeling like you want to tackle these for valentine's for the class...Go For IT!

Here are some pics of a couple of ornaments that I made for the holidays. sorry for the lateness of them. Knowing you crafty girls out there you will be able to use those ideas and run with them during the year!

Off to start creating for the month of LOVE! Spread some LOVE today! You will be surprised how it warms your heart!
Ciao Bellas~

CHA recap

2009-01-30T19:54:00.000-08:00

Hello My blog Friends,

* i need some help in adding a video. did it before but it isn't working this time. will have to wait until i get to the office on Monday.
It has been awhile and I am so sorry for lacking in my posting. The holidays came and went and when i returned to the office CHA was right on my tail. I had tons to do and I mean tons to do.

With that said CHA was this week and we had fun and i think overall it was a good show. It was slower than in the past but that was expected with what the economy is right now.

Steph and Rachel both posted some great pics of the booth and Paris Hilton made an apearance because apparently she likes to scrapbook she says she does it on the plane and she now has a line of scrapbook items...That's Hot!

I was lucky enough to do a video of our booth and our new releases. here it is. I want to add that my hair is not at it's finest. Curled it that day and now that I see it i need to wait until it gets a bit longer for that look. And, why didn't anyone tell me i needed lipstick!

Shelby and I also were able to see Jane Seymour. She is super tiny and looks pretty good.
I was able to hang with Jodi from Making Memories. She cracks me up and I only wish she lived closer so we could hang more. Love her!
I am going to admit something to all of you. One of the other reasons i was not posting was i am a bit addicted to facebook. I am going to have to balance both facebook and blogging. i love blogging and reading and posting so I am going to put my facebook addiction aside. It really can take up way too much time, Most of my friends are people I see everyday so why do I need to check it so often. Why i ask!

Off to wash the dishes. Stinkin dishwasher is broken. Memories of when I was younger. Grew up without a dishwasher. My mom didn't like the way dishwashers cleaned the dishes. Which strikes me funny because she didn't do the dishes I DID!

I am glad to be back!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Ciao Bellas~

HAPPY NEW YEAR

2008-12-31T17:19:00.001-08:00

I am stopping by quickly to wish you all a very safe and Happy New Year! This time of year always gets you thinking about the past year and things you would like to change,choices you wish you would have made differently.

I am so thankful for so many things.

My husband

My faith

my kids

friends

family

my work

my creativeness

so many more things i could go on and on.

With the way this world is going right now, economically, wars, sickness it would be so easy to focus on the negative and roll up in a corner and put a cover over my head and rock back and forth. But, I am going to focus on what we have and it is so much! I am also going to make some changes both physically and mentally. Oh, i say that every year...this YEAR will be DIFFERENT!

Okay I am off be safe and I will sign off with what I tell my kids almost everyday

"make wise choices"

Blessings...

See you in 09!
with pics! :)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2008-12-24T12:04:00.000-08:00

I wanted post real fast and let you all know that I am so grateful for my blog friends. I promise to be better at posting this next year!

Still finishing up last minute wrapping and a little gift purchasing as well. Not sure why i am so late this year. Might it have something to do with being on a BUDGET...Yes!

I pray for all of you out there to have a wonderful Christmas season with your friends and family. Blessings to all of you for 2009!

If you are local and want to hear a great Christmas message head to Saddleback Church. Or if you aren't there will be a service on Fox News channel tomorrow.

I am done with the office and celebrations and off to Old Navy and then home to get that family and head on over to the in laws.

Merry Christmas

and a

Happy New Year!

Blessing~

Suezi

Dec. 4th and lots to say

2008-12-04T10:13:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it is December 4th! I am slinging through the Christmas shopping list little by little. We have knocked off a few this year only getting the kids (which i don't really enjoy to be quite honest) so I should be done with my shopping pretty quick!

I wanted to post this before Turkey Day but totally forgot and to top it off forgot to take pictures of everyone on thanksgiving in order to put in my mini book..Yes I am a dork! I wanted to take a picture of everyone that day and then each page would be journaling on why I am grateful for them.

I love the cover. I made the flowers with this little diddy that my awesome friend Jodi sent me!
If you don't have one of these I suggest you run to your nearest Michaels or LSS and get yourself one or give it to your scrapbooker sister, friend, wife for Christmas. It is awesome! (what is it about that word that I love so much)

Back to the mini book. Did a little doodle for inside and then I will embellish and take those pictures and finish it up.
I made all the pages and cover in about an hour and a half. Super easy!

Here is another present I just received a few minutes ago. Terri just returned from Hawaii and in her travels once again goes to an unbelievable beach and it is nothing but sea glass. In fact, she tells us that the sand wasn't really sand in reality it was all sea glass. It was once a dumping station back in the day. I want to say WW2 but I might be wrong about that. Needless to say I was quite envious and pretty much not happy for her finds. Was in her office with Stephanie and was letting Terri know how much I was envious I might have even called her a rhyming word with witch. :)

I am happy for her but she has bottles of sea glass and I can count my sea glass on two hands. some of you may be thinking this is just weird why so into this sea glass thing. Well I didn't really get it until I found my very own sea glass. It is rare and some of it is just the hunt itself.

Anyhoo, back to my story. Are you tired of reading yet?

Terri walks into my office with this

She filled up a little box with some of her treasures. How flippin sweet is that!!!! This definitely made my day. It is not even Christmas yet and this might just be my favorite gift thus far!

One more thing...

If you have not visited this blog The Pioneer Woman I suggest that you do. She is a great writer, very witty.She calls her husband the Marlboro Man and if you remember him he just may well be the Marlboro man.She lives on a cattle farm and all that they do in their everyday life is so foreign to me. I love reading her blog. Her blog is a daily read for me. She is a farmers wife that was once a big city girl. She also has great gardening tips and wonderful recipes. I made these yesterday and then were pure goodness!

I believe that they are called French Breakfast Muffins. They are rolled in melted butter and then cinnamon sugar right out of the oven. To Die For! They would make a great neighbor gift in a basket with some coffee beans and mugs.

I am off to start designing some things for work. But before I go, for you local girls.

Saddleback Church is hosting for the first time a craft night. It is called

We are setting up the whole Refinery for just us crafters. We will have room for scrapbookers, knitters, quilters, etc. If you want to bring your Christmas cards and get them done do that. If you just want to come and socialize with all your friends and meet new friends you can do that too! Come in your jammies, come how you want. There is going to be yummy food too! Can't beat that. The cost is 10 dollars and you can pay that at the door. No need to sign up just come! We are also offering classes. ( that is an extra fee of 10 dollars) Moi will be teaching a Christmas frame. If you haven't had a chance to check out the Refinery this is your perfect chance.

There is more info at Stephanie Ackerman's blog. go check it out. If you read my blog and you make it there tomorrow night please stop by and say hello! Make sure you bring a friend!

That is all I have for right now. Oh no it isn't. go check this out too. Freckle Friends is having Merry Days all month long. I will be doing a prompt for them this month as well.

I better go lots going on and it is already 11:00 am. Oy Vay!

~Ciao

First Day of December

2008-12-01T10:13:00.001-08:00

Wow! December 1st! Shall I say let the "Games Begin" or "Ready, Set, Go!"

I hope that all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day or if you don't celebrate Thanksgiving, just a great Thursday!

As planned ate until I was very and I mean very uncomfortable! 2 helpings of yams and pumpkin pie! Pretty much rolled home and woke up still full! A very successful Turkey Day. This year we did something different. We went bowling. I am tired of sitting around after we eat and watching football. I am not a real big fan of Pro football. I prefer college ball. So we went and had a great time.

This is my nephew Cameron with Ed. Cam wanted to beat Ed so badly. He missed by just a few pins. The winner was my brother in law Dan and guess who came in second...Yeap that would be Me and (my mother in law). This is one sport that Ed can't seem to beat me at. He beats me at everything else but not bowling And guess what I don't let him forget it! Not just by one pin either... 132 to 118! LOVE IT!

We decided that we will make this bowling thing a tradition. Gets the food moving down. If you get my drift!

Since Ed and Jaxon went motorcycle riding for the weekend,Makenna and I got up early and hit the stores. We also went to Laguna Beach and Fashion Island for the day.
It was a glorious day down at the beach. We certainly are blessed where we live. Here are a few pics.

Mak and I had a great weekend together. Hard to find something to do with a 15 year old girl without spending a ton of money. We did stop here and had some of these.

This picture is so stinkin funny because I was asked to not take anymore pictures after this shot. Why I asked myself?? I don't get that. Whatever. At least their cupcakes are delicious! Worth the $3.25 for each cupcake!

I am putting on the finishing touches of my Christmas organizer. I used an accordion file, covered it with paper and then added chipboard inserts covered with paper for each file. I am going to try and be very organized this year with my shopping receipts, thank you cards etc. Hopefully this will help.

My hope for this year is that I can take some time to enjoy this beautiful time of year and soak in as many memories and blessings as I can!

Ready, Set, Go!

Ciao~

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-26T10:14:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday...hands down! I love the smells, decorations, the colors, and of course the delectable food! I also love the anticipation of the season right around the corner. Christmas. I love Christmas but I really love the the weeks before Christmas. So needless to say I am very excited for tomorrow.

I am praying for all of you out there in blog land that you have a beautiful and wonderful Thanksgiving with your family and friends. That you are able to sneak a moment to yourself and ponder on what you are thankful for and really appreciate what a wonderful world we live in!

I found this picture on this blog. I love the simplicity of it. Not to mention a great blog!

Here are a few things that I am thankful for:

*Fall like weather here in So Cal.

*supportive friends

*My family

*yummy vanilla coffee and creamer

*The Slice from my sweet friend Jodi

*pumpkin pie, latte and ooey gooey pumpkin cake

*inspiration from Blog land from people that don't even realize that they are inspiring!

What are you thankful for? Leave me a comment and you just may find yourself thankful for a little prize.

One more thing before I go.

Have you purchased this yet?

Lain's book came out this last week. A great little read. Link to her blog and go get a little snippet of her book. She is so stinkin funny! You will not be disappointed!

Also, this came out this week as well.

Not only a great read but a great not so expensive gift. Great for teachers, mailman, milkman, your barista, neighbors. If you live in Orange County give one to your non church friends with an invitation to join you for the service at Saddleback.

I have tons to and not a lot of time to do it all in.

Happy Thanksgiving dear sweet blog friends!

Ciao~

a busy checklist

2008-11-17T12:06:00.000-08:00

I am going to do a bullet point check list of our weekend activities. it is the only way that I can really keep sane with all of the busy ness in our weekend.

Friday
*11:00 meeting at church- check
*race home for jaxon...minimum day
have i told you how much I loathe minimum days!
*pick up house-check
*get jaxon ready for a night of BMX racing-check
*get ready for Mission's last home football game- check
beat the pants off of Capo- check

Saturday
*5:30 a.m. bake sugar cookies for baseball party-check
*help Ed hang stuff on walls-check
*decorate cookies into baseballs for party watch news on wildfires-check
*a Target run for secret sister gift and other needed household items-check
* take Mak to Mission for comp tonight(20 minutes away)-check
*come home and get ready to head to band and color guard comp-check
*wait for Mission to perform...at 10:00 PM!-check
almost fell asleep...Jaxon did!
*wait to hear results from comp-check
Sweepstakes BABY! Best Auxiliary! (which means best Color Guard, just figured that out and we have been coming to these comps for a year)
*in bed by 12:30 AM

Sunday
*finish cookies and wrap them up-
oh wait no bags for cookies~ BOO that means no check
*3 loads of laundry-check
maybe a half check, all 3 loads are folded but not put away :)
*head off to party store and get coaches gift cards-check
*now wrap cookies, wrap gift cards-check
*get to 12:00 baseball game-check
*get to Ball Park pizza for party, make sure we are in the right spot-check
*give out coaches gifts and party favors for boys-check
*leave husband at Ball Park at 5:00 to fall on couch and RELAX!-check
*watch Desperate Housewives and get an update on fires-check
*fall into bed at 10:00 pm-a BIG FAT CHECK!

that makes me tired redoing it all over again.
Not one picture was taken...not ONE! I didn't have it in me to carry my camera around with everything else that was with me. I barely got me and the rest of the family out the door!

Now I will go home today after work and wonder why my house is a disaster. No time to pick up. That means a new week to regroup and start all over again! Gotta Love It! This crazy thing we call life!

Please keep southern California in your prayers as we are in Firestorm 2008. Seems to be an every year occurrence. My heart just breaks for those families that have lost their homes to the fires. And again the fires are under investigation. some lunatic just may well be responsible for all of it! I just really don't get that.

Happy Monday to all of you today!
Ciao~

much needed attention

2008-11-12T08:11:00.000-08:00

Today is my bible study day and lunch with the girls. This day I look forward to every week. It is my time to refuel and regroup. Mid week. So much going on right now. It has been hard to catch my breath at times.

So i am going to come home and attend to what I have been ignoring or at least doing the bare minimum. You know like not running out of underwear. Although i have been known to tell the kids to turn their undergarments inside out...not really but it has been a thought. Or maybe go commando.
so here is what I will be doing after lunch today

is this plant hideous or what. i am done trying to nurse it back. It ain't comin back. will be putting that in the trash today and finding a new pretty plant for that spot.

Lots and lots of laundry. I not only have every day laundry but the rugs need to be cleaned, curtains need to be tended to. Oh my so much laundry!

Last but not least...

Yard work. I love Fall. Love it. I hate leaves. I used to make fun of my MIL in regards to leaves. She never and i mean NEVER has a loose leaf on her yard. I now get it! Plus weeding needs to be done and there are some dead plants as well that need to be replaced.

I am going to put myself out there and probably not really going to get to the yard work but at least I know it needs to be done.

Here is a little sneak peek of a project I did a couple of weeks ago. Again with our cornucopia line. I just really love this line, The colors are FABuLouS!

A little hint a fake pumpkin, mambi cornucopia paper and embellishments and a little tacky glue and you might just be able to figure it out. :)

For you local gals there just might be a little news that I hopefully will be bale to tell you about after Friday. Her and I have something up our sleeves!

One more thing:

Let's all try to be thankful this month. After all, it is the month of Thanksgiving. No other time to be thankful for where we live, what we have, who is in our life and all the little things that add up to this great life.

Ciao~

Happy Veteran's Day and a little of that and this

2008-11-11T09:36:00.001-08:00

so today the kids are off...for the second day in a row! AAAAHHHHH!!! Today though I get why...yesterday not so much!
These days off are really a nuisance for the working Mom. Why is it they always plan their days off when I am working. I really have no room to complain because I do only work part time but since it is my blog and I can say what I want I will complain!

Don't forget to let your veteran's in your life know how thankful you are for going our there and fighting for our FREEDOM! Thank you sometimes just doesn't seem to be BIG enough!

Yesterday at Mambi we had a somewhat of a little Red Alert. Michaels needed stuff and it needed to be there ASAP! Those mock up girls needed some serious help so I was in the mock up room cutting and glittering, and whatever else that needed to get done so they could ship off what needed to be shipped off by 5:00 p.m. yesterday. We got it done and so today they can relax a little. Here are Jen and Mona working not so feverishly today.

Not the best pics of those two but they were being uncooperative! A little camera shy you might say. These girls work very hard and usually at a very fast pace because something always needed to be done yesterday. Hats off to the mock up gals!

A very dear friend Lain has a her first book being released this month. Lain is a contributing editor/writer for Simple Scrapbooks. I am sure if you have read that magazine you have read her work or seen her work!

Here is a link to get a sneak peek and preorder if you find you must have it! Which I know you will want to do. :)

http://community.creatingkeepsakes.com/store/products/snippets_mostly_true_tales

Here is a little picture of the book.

From what I have already read from the actual book it is a must read! Lain is one of the funniest gals I know. This book will make a fabulous Christmas gift for that person who loves scrapbooking. All the little scenarios that take place because of the love of this hobby scrapbooking. You will seriously relate to all her stories! Go out and get yourself one and then pick one up for your friend! Plus who doesn't need a good laugh every once in awhile!

Alright I am off to get to work. Have yourselves a beautiful Veteran's Day!

Ciao~

just had to post another

2008-11-06T14:37:00.000-08:00

i have been doing some blog surfing. wanting to see what everyone else out there is thinking and feeling since the big election.

i found this here I just happen to stumble across Elizabeth's blog from some other blog. You know how that goes. Great blog. Very thought provoking and she encourages comments. Read her comment rules though. She will kick you off the comment section if you are not nice. Although I know we are all nice. :) Great back and forth in regards to the family the Duggars. That family with 18 kids. Go read it. Good stuff!

this made me laugh out loud!!!! Seriously out loud belly laugh!

I wonder how long they would last before being voted off? What would their scores be? Oh the comments that Bruno and Carrie Ann would have for them! That just brings a smile to my face and little chuckles aloud.
Enjoy the rest of your day!

A Bit Depressed and Movin On!

2008-11-06T09:33:00.000-08:00

I know that a lot of you are ecstatic about this

I am not. I am happy that we have crossed racial lines. That is wonderful. I am happy for all of you that finally can tell your kids that they can be anything they aspire and dream to be, even President of the United States! I get all of that. But this man SCARES me! Change is scary. Needed...Yes! His changes, just really not sure about those kind of changes. In his speech Tuesday night, not sure if anyone realized that he said we will have to make sacrifices. All I have to say is...OH Dear! I am giving myself one more day to be sad and then I will move on. I will be a respectful citizen. I will not throw hateful words at him. I will just PRAY. Pray for his family, his kids specifically, this country, and I will sit back and see what God has in store for this beautiful country!

Enough said!

This is a LO i made on Tuesday. Black and white paper is from our black and white specialty paper pad. Orange paper from Cornucopia paper pad. Halloween soft spoken. A little sewing, specialty scissors, ink and voila a Halloween LO!

Some of you are probably wondering has she forgotten, is she losing it. Pick a Winner dog-gone-it!

the winner of the Christmas line is....

Summer, Andy and Audrey has left a new comment on your post "Back to regular scheduled programming": You're back!! So glad you are!! And it looks like I'm the first to notice :) Love the recipe book.... great gift! Fave Halloween Costume memory: My college girlfriends and I really wanted some free candy, so at the last minute we put on old bridesmaid/prom dresses and really REALLY bad make-up and hair and went trick-or-treating in a wealthy neighborhood. We had no idea that the 3rd house we went to belonged to our college's dean. It's a small college, so he knew us!! We were shocked when he and his wife invited us in for dessert!!

Summer, send me your snail mail address and I will get it out to you ASAP!

patsy, are you wondering when you will get your stuff. I will get it to you tomorrow! sorry for the delay.

I also want to highlight a new blog from a really dear sweet person in my life. I cherish her friendship immensely! She is not so crafty in fact not crafty at all. What she is, is a fabulous writer and was an awesome speaker! Her family is hysterical! Love every one of them. Go check it out. I promise she will make you laugh. At least her pics will for sure!

gotta jet~

things to do,people to see, crafts to be made!

Ciao

GO VOTE...TODAY!

2008-11-04T09:33:00.001-08:00

Go VOTE Today! Right Now!

Why??

It is our right.

VOTE because it is one of the most important elections of our lifetime

VOTE because women before us paid a high price to give us the right to VOTE

VOTE to counteract your friend, husband, family member, goofy neighbor

VOTE to get a longer lunch today

VOTE because your VOTE does matter

VOTE because I told you so

VOTE because there are a million other reasons and too long to list

Go out there and VOTE and take a friend!

So Tired...Thank God it is almost OVER!

2008-11-03T10:55:00.000-08:00

We just came off one of the most hectic weekends we have had in a long time. PHEW!

First off we have Halloween. We celebrated at our friends the Acosta's. Good Times! We have just recently started hanging with this group of friends. We have met most of them through school. I will say this about them they are stinkin hysterical. I laugh so much when we are around them.

Here are a few pics from the night.

This is our friend Dave. He loves Halloween and scarying kids and ME! He would follow me around and it was FREAKING me out! Another reason why I really don't care for Halloween!

Group photo of the kids. Poor Alyssa was the only girl. She doesn't realize how lucky she will be when she is older and has all these boys at her back and call. The boys don't realize that she is going to be a knockout one day!

Which leads me to the best costume of the night...

Alyssa was a black widow. Her Mom did her hair and make up. She looked fabulous!

We then were up and off to football and then home to get ready to head to San Diego for a color guard competition and then a football tournament in Del Mar.

there she is twirling away. They won the Sweepstakes award for the second week in a row. Best band and color guard on the field that day and night! Rock On Diablos!

jaxon and his titan team. Wish I could say that they were just as good as his sister's team. At least they had fun. I've been told that is what it is all about. The kids having fun! Whatever!

We then headed back to Huntington Beach for our nephews 15th birthday. No pics of that. I was exhausted and pretty much pictured out!

Here is a cool pic of what we passed on our way down to San Diego.

They were doing some sort of training at Camp Pendleton on Saturday. I just marvel at how stinkin big those copters are. Really makes you stopped and think about our men and women overseas keeping us safe and sound. Thank you to those of you that sacrifice your husbands and family members for all of us!

Here is what a lucky winner will be getting sometime soon. Just leave me a comment on your favorite Halloween memory/costume and I will be picking a winner tomorrow!

One last thing,

Don't forget to get out there and VOTE tomorrow! If any of you are as smart as me you sent in your ballot via mail already! Hee Hee!

Get there early or go between the non busy times! I am not going to get political here, that will just open up a can of worms...no pun intended! I think they are all worms! Really though, it is our right to vote so why not take advantage of it. If you don't vote...no complaining, debating, arguing is allowed. That means you must keep your opinions to yourself. What fun is that. If you ask me who wouldn't want a good debate, argument!

I will just be glad when it is finally done...over. It is stressing me out all this mud slinging, protesting etc. I can't remember an election that has had so much contorversy and passion. I will say this. Must we be so disprespectful of our leaders? I know that it is ugly right now. Money, war what have you. But Bush is still President and if you ask me he should get our respect! What do we teach our kids by mud slinging and name calling. So not nice! Joy Behar of the View is the worst! I won't watch that show anymore because I can't stand the disprespect of our leaders. Get a grip people. Ooh I said I wouldn't get political. I am climbing off my high horse now!

Enough said!

Ciao~

Back to regular scheduled programming

2008-10-30T13:05:00.001-07:00

So it has been a month and a week since I last posted. I would sit down to type and say hello to you all and it just wasn't in my energy to get anything out. I would think about all of you in blogland and know that some of you were getting frustrated with no new post. I know I get pissy when my regular blogs I visit don't post. Why? I don't know. I look forward to catching up so to speak. But did that make me post a new post...NOPE!
It has been a little stressful around the Gurzi household. I won't bore you with details but life just happens and you have to sometimes just punt and see where the ball lands.

Let's see football season is well on it's way and with that brings a very busy schedule for us. Practices, practices, and more practices! Makenna has started her competition season of Color Guard and they have already placed first TWICE! so stinkin proud of her and her whole team! They work their butts off so this is very well deserved! In fact, I will go out on a limb and say they work harder than the football team! God knows they are at that school longer than any other sport!

We are off this weekend for a flag football tournament and a color guard performance in San Diego. A jam packed weekend! Looking forward to it!

As far as work goes this for me is a catch up time here at the office. time to clean up, get organized. Who am I kidding...haven't organized nothin!What I do need to do is start thinking about my CHA winter class here pretty quick.

Here is a recipe book that I made for Michael's few months back. All out of chipboard and then covered with our Cornucopia paper and lots of cornucopia soft spoken.

I love this project. The colors are Fabulous! Each page has a pocket so that you can add recipe cards every year when you get new recipes! Yummy!

These next two projects were made for us from Adrienne and Irene. They will design things for us when we need them to. They are the best!

Are they not the most cutest things EVAH! All cornucopia soft spoken and paper from cornucopia paper pads. Wreath and glittery banner thing amajig from Michaels! I so love the banner!!!! It has been hanging in my office for months. I am going to be very sad when I have to take it down. It just makes me happy. Which is funny in itself. Why you ask?? I loathe Halloween. Never have liked it not even as a kid. I hate dressing up! HATE IT! I consider myself a pretty fun person and this is where my fun stops. I mean really dressing up?? for what? I just don't get it! I do love the little ones coming to my door. Now that is priceless. Just don't ask me to do it. I have boycotted Halloween parties for years. For my friends that want to have a Halloween party don't feel bad if you don't invite me. I won't feel bad RSVP'ing NO! hee hee! Enough of that silliness!

I am off to Jaxon's class party. I am the official class photographer. I have to tell you I feel a lot of pressure with this job. Not sure why?? Give me room mom duties anytime over this. hmmm... i do have issues, don't I? Maybe this is why I haven't blogged lately all my issues!

Anyway, here are the goodie bags I made for his class.

I got the idea from here.

I love this website. Great teacher gift ideas, party ideas, etc. Bookmark it and refer back to it. You will not be disappointed!

I am going to run a contest so that I can get some regular viewers back. I am sure some of you have given up on me. Always check back because you just may miss a great giveaway!

In honor of Halloween, post your favorite Halloween costume adventure. Be it your child or your self I will pick a winner on Tuesday. How does some beautiful new Christmas paper and embellishments sound??

That is all I have and I gotta jet! Have a great weekend with the families. make wise choices out there if you do go to a Halloween party and go through the candy lots of weird emails going around about stuff in the candy this year! Weird!

Ciao!

Back to regular scheduled programming

2008-10-30T13:05:00.000-07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABEALICIOUS

2008-09-25T09:48:00.000-07:00

This week was babealicious' birthday. Who is that you ask??? Babealcious is Ed, husband extraordinaire! I've always called him that. don't really know why. It fits him perfect!

The bummer about babealicious is, he really doesn't care too much about celebrating his birthday. He never wants or gives me hints on gifts. We still take him to dinner and get him something though. Even if it is against his wanting. If you ask me who doesn't want to open presents every once in awhile. I say bring it on! This year we had to break the celebrating up. We just have too many practices and such going on during the week. So this past weekend we had his family over for dinner,his actual birthday we went to Ruby's for dessert and then yesterday we had our birthday dinner at Islands. Our family's favorite!

Here he is with the kids. Just can't get those two boys to be serious for nothing!

Happy Birthday Babe! We love you tons!

I have gotten some stuff done here at the office. I was finally able to use one of my very favorite soft spoken...the zoo one.

Love Love the zoo embellishments. The little girl in this layout is our very own Cindy our HR gal at mambi! We just love Alyssa. She has been coming to the office since she was i don't know 12 weeks old. So fun to watch her grow! This might just be one of my favorite layouts i have done in awhile. Even if it is simple!

Here are a couple of projects I did for Michaels. Love the Cornucopia line.

What i did for this was covered a tin vase with our cornucopia paper using modge podge. inked all the edges. Using the cricut is cut our tons of different flowers at different sizes inked all their edges glued them together back to back and added buttons, ribbons etc. Glued a dowel in the middle of the flower wrapped different colored pipe cleaners around the dowel and then stuck them in some flower foam and placed it all in the vase when I was done placing the flowers where I wanted them. I then covered the flower foam with moss, gluing down here and there. I added some of our pretty soft spoke cornucopia flowers and Voila and pretty centerpiece or fall accent for your home!

I wanted to post the recipe book that I made as well but I don't have the pictures. I will post later. It is pretty cool if I say so myself!

Looking back I never did post the mini hanging album i created out of our "sunshine" line.

die cut a large flower out of chipboard and cover it with paper. I then accordion folded some yellow cardstock adhered to both chipboard pieces. Added some mats of different sizes and varieties. Embellished with some soft spoken, then added ribbon to add texture and color. You can use this as a mini album or hang it up.

Stephanie has started the countdown. 90 days until Christmas. That is right 90 days or 3 months if that makes it seem longer away! where has this year gone. I say it every year. It seems to go faster and faster as I get older! so as crafty as most of you readers are. Get your supplies together. Start thinking about your Christmas cards. Buy or order your ribbon for presents and crafts. I am going to try and make this year a crafty year. simple little bags, frames, etc. Let's see how I pull this off. Should be a fun adventure! 90 days my friends.

Gotta jet. Lots to do!

Ciao~

Happy First Day of Fall!

2008-09-22T10:07:00.000-07:00

I am so very happy that today is the First Day of Fall!!!! This is my very favorite season, time of year. Fall time means cooler temps here in the OC. That means 75-80 degrees, with some low 70's upper 60's here and there. Fall means pumpkin lattes at any of your coffee places...YUM! Fall means Football! Fall means time to break out the crock pot for some scrumptious meals. Fall means Thanksgiving and EVERYTHING that comes with that. I can almost smell the turkey and pumpkin pie. Can you tell I LOVE Fall! Love it! Late last week you could feel the air change. I just knew fall was around the corner.

This is what we get for the sign of fall. Not much but it does make me happy. Some color on our trees.

A jam packed weekend we just had. Lots of sports to attend. Ed and I actually were able to sneak a date in. Love when that happens. Both of our kids are chatter boxes (not sure where they get that from) so when they are around we are all fighting for the floor. We had Ed's parents and brother over for Ed's birthday. I am blessed to have great in laws. They crack me up!

Weekends just seem to fly by. Before I knew it it was another Happy Monday. Just bought this at the store...

Saw this at the store last week and thought this would make my life easier in the mornings. Now a little something about me I hate making lunches and breakfasts for my kids during the week. Weekends I will make anything, I just don't like it during the week. Weird I know. That is just how I roll. :)Such a dog gone chore. Plus with jaxon so picky it just isn't any fun. Jaxon is growing and he is hungry! I remember this from my brothers eating constantly. I tried this stuff this morning and it was GREAT! You don't have to make a full batch of pancakes, you don't dirty a bowl and utensil and it was fast! Go pick your family up a can. You will be so happy!

Gotta jet...

at the office and we have lots of deadlines. I am for sure going to pick me up a pumpkin latte and breathe in the fresh fall scents! Enjoy your first day of Fall!

Ciao~

It's a long one

2008-09-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

Just a warning if you are not a scrapper you may want to visit another day. :)

I am back and somewhat feeling amongst the living. It has been quite a few weeks around here. Scrapfest was everything I thought it was going to be and then more! Loved every minute of it! For my new friends that I met while I was there... Welcome! I will be posting farther down in this post exactly what you are looking for. I want to welcome you and hope that you just don't come to visit once. I try to post inspiration of what we are doing at mambi as much as I can. I also like to give you little snippets of my life. Sometimes great and fun sometimes cranky and not fun! Just real i guess.

Didn't really get to see much of Minneapolis. Just the mall. And to say it is huge is an understatement. You can get lost in that darn mall. Maybe even spend the night and no one would know. I did buy a pair of shoes. Funny thing is I am sure I could have gotten them at my local mall. A pair of converse tennis. I would post pictures but true to form brought my camera but with no battery in it. I know I know LAME!

The family did well without me. In fact not sure if they missed me. The kids are older so really it is just carpooling and making sure they are fed at the time they are hungry. Of course they will let you know when they are hungry. Jaxon will not miss a meal. Be it that he is the pickiest person on this planet he will not miss a meal. Always asking what is for dinner...not that he will eat it. I call him the beige eating child. Everything he likes with the exception of pizza sauce is beige.

Now on to the make and takes at Scrapfest.

Best friends layout-Products used: PADX-04 Reese Specialty pad, CC-247 Alison notebook paper, CBP-19 doodle chipboard BFF, RW-143 Dahlia rhinestones singles

blue,black,& pink cardstock, blue rick rack,staples, white gel pen, black ink.

Family Reunion card-Products used:PADX-03 Renee- Family Specialty paper pad(4 3/4x 5 1/4 ), CC-256 Alison Swirls Plant cardstock (5 1/2 x 12),SS-256 Family reunion Soft spoken. Dark brown cardstock,lacy ribbon(5 1/2").

Hanging Dad Frame-Products used: PADX-03 Renee Family Specialty Paper pad, SS-219 renee-dad Soft spoken, various ribbons, chipboard (3x3) jump ring, dark ink.

I am posting all products used on each make and take. I do have project sheets for each one. I just can't figure out how to link them on the blog. Sooooo, if you need the directions email me and I will email you with the attachment. suezig@meandmybigideas.com

I don't know what is going on with blogger. The last few times I've wanted to post pictures it won't let me. So glad i got to the make and take before it wigged out on me. I have been thinking about switching to typepad. Anyone have an opinion with typepad?

I gotta jet. Lots of projects need to be tended to. I feel like a chicken without it's head again.

See you tomorrow!

Ciao~

Back in the Saddle

2008-09-16T14:05:00.001-07:00

Oh my it has been awhile since i posted. I am back from Scrapfest and it has been a very long week and a half! I am making this short because we are having computer issues so I need to get off. I promise to have pictures of layouts, of my trip and catch you all up on the happenings around Mambi and at home.

For those of you that are visiting my blog for the first time...Welcome! I will have all the info you are looking for by the end of the week.

Peace out!

It is Monday... Monday

2008-09-08T10:15:00.000-07:00

What is it about Mondays??? Just hard to get started onto a new week. I do like Mondays sometimes. You never know what the week ahead will have in store for you, which can be exciting. Sometimes you know what is ahead and that's when you might want to throw the covers over my head and tell the week to come and get me when it is all over! Ever feel like that?? This week is a little like that. We are still dealing with Jaxon and getting him moved into a new class. We are at this point waiting. I am not a waiter! Is that a word?? I like action and getting things done and then move forward either to recover or to begin! Does that make sense? It is hard. This Mom job like Stephanie has written about is frustrating, and intense sometimes. I just never know if I am pushing when I should be standing by and standing by when I should be pushing. I am sure God feels like that a lot! At least with me. I will say this if it wasn't for my FAITH I just don't know what it would be like. When those feelings start to conjure up I look up! So this week I will be doing a lot of looking up! A LOT!

Okay enough rambling...

I am one happy Sports Mom. Football, baseball, color guard have all started! Yippee! I would have had pictures except my camera was at the office! ugh! To me there is nothing better than watching your kids in a sport of some sort! Love Love Love it! So as you can guess that is where we were most of our weekend! Good Times!

We also got in what might be our last day at the beach. With everything starting it will be hard to get to the beach on the weekends. That is when you know summer is over. Except that is was 95 degrees all weekend!

I am flying on a jet plane on Thursday to Minneapolis to the Mall of America for Scrapfest! We will be doing over 3000 that is right 3000 make and takes and 5 classes this next weekend! Sounds exhausting but I really do love it! The energy I get from the class participants and from the event is so flippin awesome! Best part of my job! The other best part of my job the locations I get to visit! Mall of America...Oh My Heavens! I think I have said this before the shoes that will be awaiting for me!

I can't believe it has been a year since Stephanie and I were in South Africa!! Wow! Again blogger is not letting me post pictures. What is going on??? Chalk it up to Mondays!

Stephanie A. will be leaving in a month over to SA. I am so excited for her. Those women over there are in for a treat! It was probably one of the most memorable experiences of my life. Aside from my kids and husband. The people we met, her, them, them, and of course her, and him. They made it that more memorable! Good People! I can't forget about Glenda, Louise and Val. They are the fabulous women that put on that whole event! Talk about incredible women! This event hosts 1000 women for 3 days. Tons of work and then they take us out for a week of sight seeing. Just incredible!

Okay enough rambling I need to pick a winner!

Patsy is our winner! Since you live so close I will swing it by your lovely abode. Especially since you still might not be driving yet.

Patsy said...
I've spent the summer with a broken, then operated on, then casted up ankle. It hasn't been to "fond" of a summer. But my camo cast equipped with rhinestones and ribbons got a lot of compliments, and my new walking boot (even though I'm not walking) is bedazzled and ready to go. I am very fond of my supportive family who have been trying very hard to take care of me and our house, but the look on their faces when the doctor said "three to four more weeks of crutches"...well let's just say it was....priceless!
August 26, 2008 10:25 PM

Thanks for participating girls!

I am off to finish up a layout or two.

Ciao

NO blogger award here!

2008-09-05T11:12:00.000-07:00

Okay so for some reason I am not getting to this blog. I really have no real great reason other than been school shopping, beachin it with the family, bbq's, 50th birthday celebrations, baseball, (yeap you see that right baseball), football, color guard, oh yeah and maybe this might be a good reason...

Okay blogger is not letting my download pictures.

I will just have to tell ya..

Flat tire on the toll road. Unfortunately I cancelled our AAA. At this point I can't remeber why I did that and will be signing up again for it! this meant Jaxon and I spent about 3 hours dealing with that fun little adventure! Luckily our friend just happen to drive by and saw us. Thank Goodness! I loathe car issues!

If you could have seen my yesterday I was doing the happy dance! Why you ask...SCHOOL STARTED! Yippee! Not that I don't love being around my kids but as they get older they seem to cost me a fortune during the summer! Plus I seem to be a referee more often as well! Makenna is ecstatic to start and I can't believe she is a sophomore! Yikes! She has been at the school all summer with Color Guard but she wants to see everyone! She called me during lunch and I could hear the excitement in her voice. I totally remember being like that! Here is a little mom advice...make your kids get involved in school! I am telling you it makes a HUGE difference! Ed and I were involved and we both loved high school! Those that weren't hated high school! Plus the memories you will have are priceless!

Jaxon started 5th grade and we have a little bit of an issue with his class this year. 4/5 combo class. Yuck! We are in the process of meeting with the principal and getting him out. Other than that he loves his school as well. We really are so blessed to live in an area with awesome schools and that our kids love school.

I did have time to do a project and a page. I will post pics later when blogger is cooperating!

I bet your thinking what about the contest!!!??? I am going to post pone it until next week. So what that means is you get an extra week to thing of your favorite summer memory and leave me a comment!

I will pick on Monday I promise!

ciao~

2 in one day...

2008-08-26T17:43:00.000-07:00

Say it isn't so! I must have missed blogging more than I thought. Actually i just received my copy of this.

I knew of course that it would not disappoint me. The last 3 issues have been fabulous to say the least. Well I was right. Another homerun by the ever talented Stephanie Ackerman!

If you have not gotten your copy of this beautiful mag go out and get yourself one. i promise you will not be disappointed!

I am going to write CK Media a little letter telling them they have made a huge mistake by not continuing on with this beautiful magazine!

On another note...

If you have not stopped by Terri's blog

she announced that Me and My BIG ideas was awarded

Vendor of the Year Award!

We are just beaming with pride over here at the office!All those long hours put in and hoops to jump through was all worth it!
To quote Terri

Mambi Rocks!

See you tomorrow!

finally some time

2008-08-26T10:06:00.000-07:00

Alright Alright i will get back to regular schedule programming!

I guess I just needed some down time. Not to be tied down to anything.

It has been 12 days since my last real post

Here are 12 things that have been taking up my time.

1. this was fantastic!

It really made me think. I went in knowing who I was voting for. Not that it changed my mind it only solidified it that much more. But I tell ya that Barack is very charming, warm, smart, and convincing

2. this guy and all the other competitors

Were any of you as tired as I have been staying up late to watch the Olympics?? Thank goodness they are over! I will miss them though!
3.Boxes upon boxes

Been keeping very busy at the office getting ready for Scrapfest!

for you non scrappers...this is a huge consumer event in Minneapolis.
My office is consumed with boxes of product, kits, trash and whatever else!

4.this of course

beach time with family and friends. summer is coming to end for us and I am going to miss it. The weather this year has been awesome! We finally just this week had to turn on our air conditioner! wouldn't you know it starts to heat up right when school is to start! Poor kids!

trying to do 2 layouts a week. I have the finished one on the left and one in progress on the right. Really I am 2 behind! ugh!

6.Just plain ol' cleaning the house

7. carpooling has begun. Makenna has started band camp with the color guard so she is gone from 8am until 9 pm. so proud of her and how she stays so dedicated. Not that it hasn't come with the grumpiness! We are trying not to engage!

7 thru 12.

Just not motivated to blog! Ran out of things to say i guess??

In honor of me coming back into the blog world I am going to have a little giveaway! You heard me right a giveaway. I haven't done one in awhile and the other girls here at Mambi are pretty good about giving things away so now it is my turn!

On Monday I will give away some of our newest line...

Cornucopia!

Maybe even a new paper pad???

Here is what you have to do

In the comments let me know what has been your fondest memory this summer! I will be picking late afternoon on Monday.

If you do leave a comment remember to check back in case you win.

I am also going to think of a challenge to start posting on this little ol' blog. have any ideas??

I really like the OLW blog.
Maybe something like that. I also like Lauren's idea of 52 pages in 52 weeks...hmmm...

I am going to have to put some thought into this.

Alright gotta go start pulling paper and kitting!

Ciao Bellas~

i'll be back

2008-08-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

I have been missing in action! I will be back with what i have been doing! Please don't give up on me. Just the dog days of summer!

See you tomorrow...

Ciao Bellas~

a sunset and a layout

2008-08-14T17:34:00.000-07:00

I will start off with the Olympic update

USA

Gold- 10

Silver- 9

Bronze-15

Total medal count- 34

We are behind China by 1. Yesterday we were ahead of China by 1. So we are flip floppin everyday.

Another great exciting day in the swimming arena. Lots of records being broken by numerous individuals.

I will have to say the biggest jaw dropper was the win for James Blake straight sets to beat Roger Federer.

WOW!!!

Freakin awesome!

Our girls gymnasts really struggled the other night. Those girls are powerhouses!!

Did you happen to watch the weight lifter that popped his elbow out and is out! His very first Olympics and he is out. Was attempting to lift 363 pounds. Just don't really get that sport but still fun to watch. The faces they make are hysterical!
Here are two pics that represent team work to me. Love It! I wish I could find some pics with a parent and their athlete.

Alright,alright i will move on. I am sure some of you are not as excited as I am about the Olympics...Shelby. :)

I actually was able to get 2 layouts done today.

Today I was inspired for the "Friends" layout by my outfit I was wearing today. My top had circles on it. My earrings were circles and my necklace was circles.

I love the look of the palm trees on the "beach" layout. There were palm trees on the paper and then I added a palm tree chipboard sticker for a layered effect.

Also,

Renee is having a giveaway on her blog. Go check it out! She is giving away product that has been open from all of us and then we put it into a box never to be used again. We try and use it but it never fails the one sticker or sheet of paper we need has been used. So what she has decided is to pass our box of opened product onto you. When I read this on her blog I told her that I would add to her pile. there is a string. Once you receive your goodies you must post what you have done with some of the goods.

Here is what we say last night on our way to Wal Mart yesterday. Love a sunset like this. It always reminds us of Hawaii.

Just beautiful!

gonna go start dinner. sometimes i really hate making dinner. I love to entertain but not really make everyday dinners. Doesn't make sense really. Plus for the OC it is humid! I hate HUMID!

if any of you have quick fast everyday dinner ideas let me know.

Ciao~

US pulls ahead and 2 more GOLD

2008-08-12T09:56:00.000-07:00

Olympic Update-

Gold- 7

Silver- 7

Bronze- 8

Total count 22

we are ahead of China by 2. They do have 13 gold medals though :(

Lots of exciting events yesterday.

Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor women's beach volleyball won their second game. they have won 108 games in a row!

Michael Phelps won his third Gold!

Natalie Coughlin won her first Gold!

Aaron Piersol won his first Gold!

USA has been doing some kicking butt in the swimming arena. Watched synchronized diving yesterday. We missed the bronze medal by 1/2 point. Bummer! One of the divers is only 14 years old! Seriously how does a 14 year old dedicate himself like that. Our basketball team whopped up on Angola(?).

A little Olympic trivia for you.

Did you know that the Chinese have spit buckets on their public streets?? Can you say GROSS! Well, they don't as of right now. they have gotten rid of all spit buckets. They are not allowed to spit in public or wear their pajamas out and about in town. Hysterical! Now I will not wonder when I see Asians wearing their pajamas out and about around here and wonder why they wouldn't put on street clothes to do errands. It is just part of their culture!

Alright enough about the Olympics.

I just received and awesome email from my church. You see we go to Saddleback Church and we are hosting John McCain and Barack Obama this weekend with Pastor Rick Warren as the mediator! Well, as you can imagine their are going to be thousands attending. The tickets are pretty hefty in price. What Saddleback did was open up tickets in all of our different venue tents for free. You just had to put your name in a drawing which I did. Thinking no way will we get them...guess what we DID! Ed and I will be in one of the overflow tents listening to the feed. So flippin exciting! What is really funny about this is that I am really not all that political. But, I do have my opinions.

This has been sited in and around town. This is the last issue of the once known -Homegrown Hospitality...Heart to Home..now Holiday Home. So don't forget to pick yourself up this beautiful issue. From what I hear it has some great ideas inside!

Was feeling a little homey myself last night. I just haven't really baked or cooked a really great meal in awhile I use to do this at least once a week. Last night I got a bug and went and purchased blackberries and a pie crust from Trader Joe's and made blackberry pie! Scrumptious!

Served it with whip cream, fresh and hot out of the oven. Was going to get vanilla ice cream but wanted to try and save some calories! LOL! Who am I kidding...save some calories!

I highly recommend the frozen pie crust from Trader Joe's. It was light and flaky! Very semi-homemade!

gotta jet...

Medal Count and she's Home

2008-08-11T10:38:00.000-07:00

I decided that I will give you updates of the games for the next 17 days. Just in case you missed something because I did not!

Medal Count for the USA

Gold-3

Silver-4

Bronze-5

total count 12

We are behind China by 2. They have 9 gold medals though. :(
Did any of you catch this event???

Fr those of you that don't know what race caused this reaction from Michael Phelps it was the 400M relay race. We won the gold in one of the most exciting races I have ever seen. We literally beat France by hundredths of seconds. A blink of an eye! Michael is on a run to be the first to win the most gold medals in an Olympic game. He needs 8 gold medals. He has 2 down. Let's not forget the bodies on this swimmers...hubba hubba is all I will say about this. Forget the fact that some of them could be my child! Yikers!!

Okay one more pic..did you catch this event?

Men's basketball against China. great game..we won of course. Although Yao Ming gave us a pretty good run for our money. Note the name change of Yao Ming in my last post I called him Ming Yao.

Women's gymnast qualified for the team events. Not without some mistakes. Still looked pretty sharp though.

Love Love Love these games.

Go USA

Are you wondering who is home???

My Mom is home!

You see my Mom and Dad moved to Utah about a year ago.My Dad's company moved their main office to Salt Lake City. So now they go between their home in Park City and their home in Orange. I don't really like it but it is what it is. On the bright side of things we now have

a home in Park City that we can visit and get some great skiing in!

Soooooo, Mom is home for about 3 weeks. Even if I don't see her too much it s nice to know she is not far! How funny am I that I am 43 years old and still need my Mom!

Mom's are th greatest aren't they???

We,meaning my side of the family were all together to celebrate my niece Rylie's first birthday. We were at the beach. Fun times. Great to see all the cousins playing together. I will post pictures of those later in the week!
gotta jet.

probably should get to work!

Ciao~

Let the Games Begin!

2008-08-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

So the Olympics have started! As some of you may guess I am going to be glued to the TV for 17 days! The Olympics are probably hands down one of my very favorite sporting events to watch! The opening games were incredible. If you didn't get a chance to watch them check them out online. Ming Yao (NBA player) brought out the China flag with his team. He was walking along side a little boy age 9 who was in the earthquake in May. His classroom was crushed and he lost I believe 10 of his classmates. He crawled out of the rubble and then went back to rescue 2 of his classmates. When asked why he went back his reply was I was the class representative and hall monitor it was my job to go back! Although not an athlete that little boys attitude pretty much sums up the inspiration and dedication all 11,000 athletes in Beijing have for their sport! My favorite sport by far is swimming. I was a swimmer in high school so that is a given. But I will be honest I will watch badminton as well. I think it is thinking about all the time, sweat, money has gone into getting to where these athletes are. All the support of coaches, family, friends,sometimes towns. When the national anthem starts and the medal winners are looking at their countries flag and the look on their faces- just gets me every time! Can only imagine the pride, and love parents have seeing their child up their. wow! Awe inspiring! Love it! So I will be glued watching everything I can. NBC, USA, MSNBC coverage! Now that Tivo is alive and well in the Gurzi household i may not have to miss a thing!!

This summer has been somewhat a lazy summer. With that being said I have become lazy in other areas as well. I am not an overly organized person. In fact, I fly by the seat of my pants most of the time. I do have to have things in order when school starts. We usually have a sport or two gong on as well so I do need to have some order. this summer though I have let things just fall away. Quiet time. I am not in the Word at all! Housework...ugh! I hate cleaning in the summer but I really have let it go. Blogging has started to get few and far between. So I am going to take some of the inspiration from the Olympic athletes and rededicate myself to some of my responsibilities here at home! I will let you know how it goes!

Olympic medal count

USA-1 gold

1-silver-bronze

Inspiration

2008-08-05T09:47:00.000-07:00

A real quick post today. Makenna has been coming to work with me for the last week and we have been kitting for Scrapfest next month. It has been fun having her with me but I will be honest also a little exhausting! She doesn't stop talking and she is pretty social so I had to keep her focused and not wanting to go and talk with Shelby downstairs or really just go hang with others in the company. Wonder where she gets that from... hmmm.....

Stephanie found this awesome designer here a month or so ago and I always get there emails but I never really put a lot of effort into the website. Until yesterday! I took some time to surf the site and found so much inspiration! It was overwhelming! So I updated my profile and uploaded some layouts. Go check it out and if you haven't signed up over there...Just Do It! while you are at it send me a comment and let me know that you are now a Sister.

I gotta go. Lots to do! Kitting awaits me!

One more thing,

Heart to Home you know that wonderful magazine comes out this week if it hasn't already but you need to know that, they, meaning the suits at CkMedia changed the name again to Holiday Home. It will be at all the big stores, Michael's,Joann's,Wal Mart etc. Go here to see the cover. Not to pat myself on the back but okay I will pat away I have a project in this issue! Although I would say this is the best issue it really isn't. What I mean is that all 4 issues have been AWESOME! I can't believe that the powers that be would not keep this magazine in production! Fools I say. But don't get me started! Stephanie did a magnificent job on this magazine and I know that God has a different path for her because her talent just oozes out of her so I know He will not have her just stagnant for long! Creating she does and creating she will continue to do!

go out and pick up an issue. You will not be disappointed!

Peace Out!

one word

2008-08-04T13:07:00.000-07:00

I am going to play this little one word game. I saw this on Lauren and Stephanie's blog and thought it would be fun but never sat down to get it on the blog and then lo and behold i got an email from Kelli with the same one word game so i am taking that as a sign that I should play!

Answer with one word only...copy and add your answers

1. Where is your cell phone? purse

2. Your significant other? handsome

3. Your hair? short :(

4. Your mother? faraway

5. Your father?with her

6. Your favorite thing? mac lipsticks

7. Your dream last night? hmmm

8. Your favorite drink? diet coke

9. Your dream/goal? great kids

10. The room you're in? messy

11. Your hobby? creating

12. Your fear? bridges

13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? here

14. Where were you last night? home

15. What you're not? quiet

16. Muffins? not so much

17. One of your wish list items? meet Gwen Stefani

18. Where you grew up? O.C.

19. What are you wearing? bermudas

20. Your pets? Lola Grace

21. Your computer? frustrating!

22. Your life? rick rack

23. Your mood? good

25. Your car? dirty

26. Something you're not wearing? not telling

27. Favorite store? Target

28. Your summer? fun

29. Like someone? many

30. Your favorite color? blue

31. When is the last time you laughed? today

32. Last time you cried?yesterday...Remember the Titans...everytime

Okay so I answered some with more than one word. Kinda hard!

Paste and post your answers on your blog and let me know!

This weekend was really about not much.

Beach time

The sign that fall is soon approaching

Football evaluations were this weekend. I am so glad! This sports mom fan is having a hard time with nothing to take up our time!

We did this on Friday in our backyard! Fun stuff! I will be honest though. Roasted marshmallows do not taste the same when you are not camping! Go figure!

Not alot going on and a very laid back weekend. Not complaining I am just a girl that likes a little more action.

Ciao~

Gurzi Look-alike Meter and an Award

2008-07-31T18:46:00.001-07:00

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity - Collage - Morph

Susan had this on her blog a week or so ago. Kinda cool. Don't know how realistic it is though. Makenna is a look a like of me. Always has been. This will make her Dad happy since his kids really don't look anything like him. It is definitely the mexican in us. Very strong genes those mexican genes. Although i will say this..Jaxon is Ed. mannerisms, laid back and easy going. (scroll down for Jaxon's look a like meter)

So do i get to give a speech or anything?? I want to thank God and my family for always supporting me. My husband Ed for always being there for me, loving me for who i am.

hahahahahahahahahaha!!!

What in the world am I thinking??? Can you imagine having to get up in front of millions and giving a thank you speech and making sure you are politically correct in thanking the right people. if you don't thank you husband/wife you must be getting a divorce. What if on the way there your hubby irritated you and you just didn't feel like thanking him at that moment. You know they can irritate you at just the right moment. So funny to think about...or is it just me that thinks about this stuff and can go on and on about it on their blog??? Funny!

Now what I need to do is nominate 7 other blogs and let them know.

Here are the rules:

1. paste the logo award on your blog

2. Link your nominees on your blog

3. Let your nominees know by leaving them a comment on their blog.

so here are my nominees-

There are my 7 oops 8! 4 of them i work with and have got to say that they have great blogs. Christy is a blog reader of mine and she cracks me up and that girl can find a deal anywhere! gives great tips on coupon saving etc.!

Lain is a new friend from the show! And Stephanie A. needs no introduction. Most of you visit me through her! A great blog! One of the best in my opinion!

Okay now I am off to let them all know! Congratulations my friends!

Ciao

Gurzi Look-alike Meter

2008-07-31T18:42:00.001-07:00

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity - Collage - Morph

took a break

2008-07-29T14:18:00.000-07:00

Hello there!!!

For some reason I just needed to chill out and stay away from blogging for awhile. Not that I did not think of all of you blogging friends everyday. I always get bummed when my favorite bloggers don't post for a few days. I look forward to catching up. so I apologize for my break. I am in a much better mood and ready to tackle whatever I need to tackle!

Last week I left you with a rundown of CHA. I did meet some great new friends. Was able to go to dinner with a couple of them. Great women! Creative and stinkin funny!

Donna and Lain were just a hoot! Go check their blogs out. Very talented gals! Of course that is Stephanie and her sister Jen. Love them! Steph, Jen and I hung out in the city for a few hours. Had so much fun. Went to the American Girl store. If you have not been..GO! It is quite the treat. The little girls are everywhere and just a crack up to listen to. 3 year olds saying...oh snap! Definitely had a grin on my face for awhile.

These mannequins were up and down the streets of Chicago. All made out of recycled material! Very cool! The key one is my favorite. I will say this Chicago has got to be one of the cleanest cities around. Their curbs are trash free! Crazy. Certainly wouldn't see that in downtown LA.

Since it is kinda quiet around the office it has given me time to do some layouts.

This layout is the first layout that I have ever done of myself. I went out of the box on this one. I am a clean line kinda of gal. Wasn't sure how i felt about it. It has grown on me.

We spent sometime down in Newport this past weekend with our neighbors. Had a great time. The boys just kept us in stitches. Love the colors. Of course I would, it is from my very favorite line "Coastal Culture".

This is a card I made for another neighbor who just lost her beloved Grandmother. I like the binding i made. Been sewing alot on my layouts. Following her, her, and her. Like where it has taken me.

Hoping to squeeze a couple more out before we start getting ready for Scrapfest in Minneapolis in September. I have never been so I am looking forward to it. Plus, the largest Mall in America can't be too bad. The shoes that one will be able to get!! Ooooooohhhhhhhh, my feet are starting to do the happy dance already!

Well I think I have rambled enough. Have to get Makenna to color guard practice.

Ciao~

First recount of CHA

2008-07-22T12:12:00.000-07:00

First off, it was a fun show and always fun to see the new lines. If you are a crafter of any kind this would be the place that you want to be. So I consider myself very lucky to get to see the new stuff first hand.I will start by showing you all the graphics and our "Sunshine" area in our booth.

This picture is of our black and white papers and our "modern milan" line. The graphics are fabulous. They look awesome so big! One of my favorite parts of our booth.

This is area was dedicated to our black and white paper pad. Probably is my favorite line right now. But as you know that can change daily.It really is an awesome paper pad. If you don't have one go and get yourself one! Go here!

This is all of our new "soft spoken" and "sunshine". The sunshine picture is upside down and I am being lazy and not going to go back and fix it. You get the picture though.

These next two pics are by far my very favorite part of the booth. Although it is taking up the space where I used to do make and takes...which I love to do.

Don't you love the look and feel of it. All projects were created from our "sunshine" line. Love Love Love the hanging flowers and lanterns. The pinwheels have a little story behind them. The beach pail they were in had a ton of sand and flower forms in them. I did not want to ship them with the booth because I was afraid they would get squished. so I empty the sand put it in a ziploc bag put it in my suitcase. Wrapped up the green flower forms which had sand in them, put that in my suitcase. I thought which is a bad thing...thinking, I had wrapped everything real good. Well, when I got to my hotel room and opened my suitcase...I am sure you have figured it out...SAND EVERYWHERE! Piles and piles. I still have sand coming out of the suitcase. But low and behold pinwheels arrived safe and sound and not squished! Moral of story,even if you feel very confident in your wrapping skills the sand will always win in that situation!

Here are some of my class participants.

These ladies are from Brazil. I am sorry that I never got their names. They were so very appreciative of all the goodies that we gave them in their kits and very good listeners in the class.

Here are some of my class repeaters. They have been to my classes before at the show. I love that they continue to come back. Teaching is near and dear to my heart! I love how class participants come in all excited and then watching them create what we have created for them. Everyone always puts their touches on their projects which I like to see what they do. Scrapbooking is an art so everyone is different and sees things differently so no two are ever the same when we are done at the end of a class. Love it! Plus,. for those of you that don't know me well...I absolutely LOVE a microphone! If I could be famous I would be a singer! Gwen Stefani it would be!

This is Nancy owner of my LSS-Timeless Treasures. She was a lifesaver! She helped pass out the extra supplies before the class. She was waiting in line to get in and it was a long one and she just knew I needed help. so low and behold she stepped right in! She is one awesome lady! I owe her big time!

Last but not least the shows first day! Let the games begin!

It was a great first day and I have more pictures to show you! The saga continues tomorrow...

i'mmmmmm baaaaacccckkkk!!!!

2008-07-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

What a fabulous last week I had! So much to tell you about and pictures to post. I am in the midst of getting the family situated (code for overflowing laundry baskets,fingerprints on every possible appliance, and crumbs everywhere) and of course spending time with my kids before i start my work week. So glad that I took this extra day off today. I will be back with all kinds of eye candy! I just have to tell you that the one thing that was the most exciting was learning about the corner rounder from Zutter. I know not a new product but NEW to me, Linda and Renee. It is AWESOME!

Go here to see some highlights until you come back to visit me tomorrow. I will say this I need a Flip to video everything. That way it would feel like you were right there with me! Maybe next year!

See you tomorrow~

Ciao~

much ado about nothing and oh yeah..A Winner!

2008-07-15T11:06:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the delay. I came home from work and things are just hectic over here. Totally went to bed without picking a winner.

So without further ado our Mambi Monday winner is...

A. R. said...
My dog was lost, I was really sad. But on Friday a nice person found it and saw the flyers that me and my son made, so I'm grateful for that. The layouts are really beautiful!
July 13, 2008 5:19 PM

A.R. if you could email(suezig@meandmybigideas.com) me your snail mail address I will get your goodies in the mail on Monday of next week. I will be in Chicago the rest of this week so I can't get you your goods until then. So sorry but I promise you it will be worth it.

I made one more layout this morning before I started packing and putting all my stuff together for my trip. I really like how this one turned out. Love red white and blue together. Plus these pictures just make me smile. This was this year at June Lake. We have been many times during 4th of July and have never seen a parade in the campground before. This was a hoot. All the "old timers" who stay there for weeks on end put this together. They decorate their golf carts, and off they go. This year they recruited the fire department and some other locals from the June Lake. The kids loved it. Plus they throw candy at you.

I better get off blogger and get my stuff done. Still need to do some laundry and put together some dinners for the family while I am gone. If I don't do that Ed will have them eating out breakfast, lunch and dinner!

Ciao~

A new home

2008-07-14T09:30:00.001-07:00

The sea glass story continues...

I went out on Saturday to find the perfect glass container for my new found beauties. I searched at Target, Kohl's, and then I found it at ZGallerie. A perfect little glass container that wasn't so big that the sea glass would get lost and when I collected more it would seem like I have been collecting for years.

Check it out~Snuggled right there on our book shelves, a new home for my new little pretties. I can look at it every time I come down from upstairs. It is the first place I look every morning. Here is a close up excuse the dust.(didn't realize it had been that long since I've dusted :(One fun little tidbit. The votive candle in the container is not really a votive candle it is battery operated. Have you seen them?? they even flicker! This made me giggle!

So there it is the sea glass story. With a little happy ending. I just can't wait until I can collect more!

So I am off this week to Chicago and I need to tie up all the loose ends that go with that and of course pack! I always get a little bit sad right before I leave. I don't really like to fly and I don't like leaving my family! Especially during the summer. I get a little bit of guilty Mom issues floating around. They will be fine and they won't even notice that I am gone for 4 days. But you know as Moms how it goes! I hate that! And really once I am there it is always fun and seeing people you only get to see at the show twice a year is a blast and I am spending a day in Chicago and I am going to dinner with Jodi and Matthew. Love those two. I should say three. They adopted a little baby boy last December so I finally get to meet Carson and snuggle him to pieces!! Can't beat that!

What kids??? HeeHee!

FYI~

Stephanie's magazine Heart to Home is now going to be called Holiday Home for it's last issue. Should be arriving in stores sometime in August I will keep you posted. I hear it is a beautiful issue. I can't wait to see it! It is such a bummer that the magazine is no longer after this last issue. It is a beautiful magazine, a magazine that you would keep for inspiration and wonderful ideas! Stephanie has some sneak peeks on her blog make sure you check it out!

Off to start my day at the office~

I bet you thought I forgot that it is Mambi Monday...I did not. I will pick a winner at the end of the day and post them tonight. That means you have a few more hours to comment on what you are grateful for. Make sure you leave your comment on the mojo returns post so that you are included in the giveaway.

Ciao Bellas~

I see the light!

2008-07-11T16:44:00.000-07:00

So this is how this story had transpired. Stephanie, Terri and Lauren are avid sea glass collectors. They collect together and separately. When Stephanie and myself were in South Africa she went crazy at a beach in Cape Town. Apparently it was sea glass heaven! I just didn't get it. They have these little jars filled with their treasures from years of collecting and I will say this they are not overflowing by any means.
There are tons of sea glass collectors out there. They obsess over this hobby! Terri says that it is addicting and I said I have ADD and wouldn't stick to it

Well...I have seen the LIGHT!

We were at the beach today. Calafia in San Clemente. We go there all the time. This time there were lots of rocks and pebbles at the shore line. I have never seen so many rocks and pebbles. So I told Makenna lets go down there and see if we find anything!

The first piece I found was a cobalt blue and if I can recall the cobalt blue pieces are a rare find. Now mind you, it is the size of a grain of rice. Check it out!

See it right in the middle???

The other pieces are just a small portion of what we collected. Here is the stash..

So let me tell you this hobby is addicting. You don't want to stop. I can't believe how excited we got when we found the larger pieces. Crazy! I can't wait to get back there. When I text Steph with our finds she was dying to know where we found it all and I have to be honest I didn't want to tell her where. It was going to be my little secret. But I did let her in on the whereabouts and I will bet you she will be there tomorrow!

Seriously I am going to Pier 1 tomorrow to find me a little decorative jar to put my beautiful sea glass in. I also am very bummed that I didn't listen to my friend and start collecting with her in South Africa.

Crazy!

I also did get to finish a couple more things yesterday at the office. One layout and one shadow box frame.

This frame is from Michaels and I covered it with our black and white paper from the black and white paper pad and then added the silver glitter letters and the Happy soft spoken. Easy peezy. I think it still needs a little something else but for now it works. sometimes I need to walk away from a project and go back to it later.

I am into printing wallet size prints right now. All paper and embellishments are from our "Sunshine" line. I cut out 8 different prints all the same size. Then added pictures and embellishments. Again super easy! I think I inked all edges. Love this layout.

Don't forget to leave a comment on what you are thankful for in the last post. Mambi Monday will be here before you know it!

the mojo has returned!

2008-07-10T13:23:00.001-07:00

I finally have gotten down and dirty at the craft table and focused on creating just for me! I don't get to do that too often. I am always creating for work. Don't take that the wrong way...I love it. It is just that I don't always get to post what I have created because it is either for an ad or a magazine or something that is top secret for awhile. Since I have gotten all the kits shipped off to Chicago and everything pretty wrapped up here at the office I rewarded myself to let the mojo go wild and bang out some layouts! I used some new product that we are releasing at CHA next week. The golf page is new soft spoken. I love the page of Ed with our nephew Waylon. All the paper is from the "super cool" paper pad. Finally the page of Makenna is paper from "Reese" my favorite soft spoken butterflies and our notebook paper that is new. This page I did from the Summer Challenge on Stacy Julian's blog. I love this picture of Makenna and thought this would work perfect. This page literally took me 15 minutes. I did exactly what she said pick the picture and then journaled away. Super easy!

I am hoping I can get a couple more done before the end of the day. I do tend to have a little bit of ADD like my friend Stephanie and get easily distracted so you never know. I swear it gets worse as I have gotten older.
Getting excited for the Big Show next week. I am teaching and then walking the show to see what is new out there and then I am hanging with Steph and whomever else we pick up along the way. I will get to meet her friend Lain. From her blog she sounds like a hoot. Fun stuff! Good times, good times! Again, I can say that I am truly blessed. Not many get to do what they love, work and meet awesome and creative people and call them friends! Truly grateful for the path that God has carved out for little ol' me!
I think we might need a little giveaway and this is how it will work. Leave me a comment on what you are grateful for in your life. I will pick a winner this next Mambi Monday. Some new soft spoken, a new paper pad and a fun kit or two!
Can't wait to read your comments!
Ciao!

I'm Back and trying to recoup!

2008-07-07T10:13:00.000-07:00

What is it about a vacation and needing a vacation from your vacation??? We had a fabo time! Perfect weather and an all around great time!

To sum it up...

roasted marshmallows- 100

pebbles in shoes from hikes- 100's

corona beers drank- 24

mojitos and margaritas enjoyed daily- lots

frogs in shower- 3

fish caught at numerous lakes- 40

games of double solitaire- 100

happy, laughing kids-priceless!

We did so many new things up in the Sierras. Lots of hikes. The views are spectacular! Even if we had to hike vertically to get there...nice family hike my butt!

I will leave you with some pictures of the week! The waterfall pictures are from the vertical hike and oh yeah Ed and our dog Lola almost went down it. Ed says he was in control the whole time but from our view he was not! A very scary few moments!

I have to finish up kitting for the show in Chicago so I will post this week with some sneak peeks of some fabulous layouts of our new lines. Can't wait to show you there are FABULOUS!

The hike to Fern Lake. did I mention vertical?? This is only halfway up!

Our hike to Parker Lake! Absolutely gorgeous!

The infamous waterfall that Ed and Lola almost took a ride on!

One of many fish caught this week. I just don't get the fishing thing??? You catch and then release them and you do this over and over!!! Hmmm...

jaxon finally face planted after a week of fun! I will post more pictures throughout the week. Some of them are just too beautiful not to let you all see the majestic scenery we tend to take for granted when we are going about our daily lives. It really makes you stop and give thanks to God for creating such beauty for us to enjoy!

And we are OFF!

2008-06-27T10:19:00.000-07:00

I did not think that this week was going to ever get to Friday!!!! It has been crazy busy at work. You see I needed to get 75 kits kitted and ready for shipping before I left on vacation. Now this isn't all that difficult...it is if product is not in or ribbon not ordered and several other little details that always seem to hold me up. Really not any ones fault or because someone dropped the ball it is just the way this industry works. You see we are made up of a lot of artists and we tend to work at an unusual fast pace at the last minute. But never fear it my boxes are always in my classroom when I arrive...ALWAYS! So at the office lots of running around and no time to get ready for our family vacation.

So today I am grocery shopping, packing, paying bills, last minute laundry, cancelling milk delivery, stopping the mail, blogging, and loading up the car so that we can leave at the ungodly hour of some early morning time. To beat the heat of Mojave Desert! Whatever is what I say!

I will do my darnedest to post during vacation. I will miss blogging! I look forward to reading other blogs and posting on my own.

I have a couple of ideas that I want to put into motion when I get back. Reading Stephanie and Lauren's blogs they have some cool ideas so i need to step it up! I wanted to do a layout so badly but just ran out of time. I have many layout ideas running through my head so I am going to sketch them out and have them ready for when I get back.

Have an awesome day today and take some time to enjoy the view!

Peace out!

It was a SCORCHER

2008-06-23T14:22:00.001-07:00

It was definitely a scorcher this weekend! We pretty much did this all weekend.

Even Lola got into the pool. Although you really can't keep her out of any kind of water!

At one point it was 106! That is just way too hot for June!! I don't like it one bit!

I wanted to get a layout done with the pool pics I took this weekend with our latest and greatest line "sunshine" but did not get around to it. I am starting to kit my class for the show in Chicago and that took up most of my time today. I need to get it all packed and shipped out before Friday because we are taking our yearly family trip to June Lake! I don't know what I was thinking when we booked this trip. Actually it was the only week they had left so it was that or nothing at all.

I will take picutres of what my office looks like when everything is out and ready to kit. It gets quite crazy!

Not sure if I will be able to post from June Lake. Check back just in case periodically. The pictures that I will get will undoubtedly be beautiful! It is definitely God's country up there. For those of you not sure of where June Lake is, it is up in the Sierra Nevada mountains just pass Mammoth Mountain. My family has been going there for as long as I can remember. I will be honest not really my cup of tea...it is camping which means a lot of work for the Momma. It is worth it when my kids and there cousins get to hang out together. We will miss my Mom and Dad this year which is a bummer...next year! although next year hoping for a hotel and some beautiful beaches with room service and fufu drinks!

I will try and post those layouts for you this week! Keep your fingers crossed! For sure we will have a Mambi Monday when I get back!

Hmmm...what can I give away when I get back...

Bring on Summer!!!

2008-06-19T09:48:00.000-07:00

It is official...SUMMER IS HERE!

The last day of school was yesterday and the scorching heat has settled in! We are ready for summer at our house! I will not bore you with all the pictures that I took yesterday. Here is just one of Jaxon and his buddies at the pool.I don't get any pictures of Makenna and her friends because you see she is a freshman or rather a sophomore now and I did not see her until 9:00 last night. I don't really like that. I know that I am missing out on some great photo moments. but I must realize that she is a teenager and making her own photo moments! Every year on the last day of school I get a little teary okay okay a lot teary. It is such a great day for kids. They work so hard and grow up so much during the year and it just happens a slide show, a graduation ceremony, the pomp and circumstance song, something will set me off! This year I really didn't think it would happen...tears that is. As you know I wasn't in the classroom all that much so I don't know the kids names really. But then, a stinkin slide show! Just seeing the kids from the first day to the last and the friendships that have either gotten stronger or developed,missing teeth, funny haircuts, I don't know what it is but I just get teary! I don't know how teachers do it! I would be a mess every year!

I am ready for slower schedules, no homework and lots of beach time! With as hot as it is right now we are starting right away. Beach tomorrow!

So here is to a fun and happening summer for all of us out there! Enjoy these times with your kids they go by so fast!

Ciao

Clutter and More clutter

2008-06-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

I am going to admit something to all of you that I really don't like about myself! I am a clutter ignorer...is that a word?

This is what my office looks like pretty much on a daily basis. this is my desk...papers and stuff and whatever else i put on the desk. the funny thing is I can tell you where everything is. I clean it up and within an hour or two...CLUTTER! I just don't get it. Remember the post about Makenna's room awhile back I am really starting to think she gets it from me. Shhhh- don't tell Ed!
Okay another shot...This is where I create and kit anything and everything. It actually is pretty picked up at the moment. If you look closely there is a picture of my CHA class. I will say this probably is one of my very favorite projects I get to teach.
Now the sewing areaThis is not all my messyness again... is that a word?? The mock up gals use this area too.
All this clutter is even starting to get on my nerves. I am guessing I probably should take an hour or so and pick things up. But then I ask myself why? I can just ignore it. I really don't have the time right now to clean it up and to be quite honest I work better in a cluttery area... go figure!
That my friends is what I tell myself when I walk into my office every week! Thank goodness I don't share space with anyone!!
I have so much to do and not a lot of mojo to get it done. Last day of school is tomorrow and I still have one more teacher gift to make, wrap and get to our room mom. This is the first year that I wasn't real involved in the PTA etc. and I will have to admit it was nice but I do miss the relationships and I feel like I am missing out on things. I really am not but you know how it goes. I was just enough involved that it didn't over run my life. I will be at the Jaxon's school tomorrow for the last day activities. My baby after tomorrow will be a 5th grader...say it isn't so. Such a cliche but time flies! I really do enjoy that the kids are older though. With that comes some freedom for Ed and I and we are not tired! I watch some of my friends with toddlers and just watching them I get tired.
I better get...gifts to make and clutter to ignore!
ciao

Father's Day and a Birdie

2008-06-16T10:18:00.000-07:00

This weekend for us was filled with lots of sports! Now if you are not a sports fan you would have thought this weekend was yucky but for me I loved it!

Ed was asked to umpire the championship AAA TOC game on Friday. It is quite the honor to be asked so off he went with me, jaxon and jaxon's friend tagging along with him. Ed really loves to umpire. He is quite impressive actually. He is consistent which is hard to find in ma ump...believe me! He is fair and he knows his rules. There is a little green book that you will find him reading constantly! Here he is making a call at third base. I like that the fence is the focus. Really wanted him in focus but I would have gotten in the way of the parents of the child that was running to third and since I wasn't a parent of any of the kids thought I better mind my p's and q's.the kid was out and it was a good call! The best part was that he was given a $25 gift card to Shell gas company. With gas prices they way they are this was an awesome idea!

We then had Angel tickets and this is where we sat...Nosebleed! But fun to be in the park. Angels were wiped up by the Atlanta Braves. Oh well still fun.

And then Father's Day. Ed went golfing with 3 of his favorite people in the world. His Dad, brother Bill and good friend Brandon. This is what Ed loves to do and with those 3 you couldn't ask for a better day for him! Then Ed came home to watch the U.S Open and Tiger Woods certainly delivered yesterday. To say he is unbelievable is an understatement! A birdie on the 18th hole to tie with Rocco and force a playoff is what amazing endings are made of. What an ending and as I type they are playing right now. This was a Father's Day made in heaven for Ed and I am sure for alot of other Dad's out there. And to top it off the Lakers are still alive! So this was my weekend and I loved it all! I especially loved that Ed was happy and did what he wanted.

Try as I might to get a good picture of those three. Never can I get them to be serious! They set this up that when I said 3 they would all turn their heads. ugh! You should see the other pics I got. this was the best of the 5. Goof balls!

It was a great family weekend. I am truly blessed to have a healthy family that actually likes to spend time with each other. Even a teenager!

Lots to do at the office. CHA is around the corner. Yikes!!! Will definitely be posting some sneak peeks of layouts and projects that will be coming in for the show.

Oh I almost forgot...

Susan emailed me the number on what we raised for the Me and My Freckle Friends Crop Event. We raised $1400.00 for Autism Speaks! How about that! Thank you to all of you that participated in this event. It was so much fun and this is just the cherry on top!

Lots to do so I better get off this blog and get'er done!

Ciao

My Wednesdays

2008-06-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

Well I think I have caught up on my sleep and Jaxon is recovered. I really think that the Gurzi's just needed some good down time. Not that we really have had a lot of it. A day and night of nothing and that is about it!

You can now link onto the Me and My Freckle Friends on the sidebar and that will take you to the gallery of all the layouts that were created on Saturday! Here is a picture of what I did on Saturday. This is Jaxon's teacher gift. I painted a canvas threw some paper from our sanctuary line, doodled a title and voila a perfect gift!
I want to show you this cool chore chart I made a few months back that I can now let you all see. It is in the paper crafts kids projects magazine. It is coming out in September so be sure to pick one up when it comes out. There are some great ideas in it.
I used my favorite Mambi paper the leopard print and then our chalkboard letter stickers and our boys will be boys soft spoken for this project. It was super easy. The clipboard I had to take apart and move the actual chip. Nothing a screwdriver can't fix! This is a great tip. When looking for things to alter make sure to step out of the box and see if you can change things up by just moving something in a different direction or simply getting a screwdriver and changing things up. Don't let little details make you sweat!

What do I do on Wednesdays...Wednesdays are a very sacred day to me. I try not to go into the office at all costs. Wednesdays are my bible study day! Our group has been together for I think 5 years. Maybe more??? Some of us have been together since our MOPS days. Which means 13 years! Yikers! The reason I don't miss a study well for one it is at my house and secondly,these women are my rocks and inspiration!These women are some of the smartest, godly, loyal, beautiful,loving women EVER. We have been through everything you can think of. Money issues, house issues, substance abuse, dorky and that is being nice ex-husband issues, court battles, teenagers, and an adoption. That is just to name a few. Sounds like a very dysfunctional group. But really just life! We not only study the Word together we pray together and laugh and do we ever laugh! I feel safe when I am around them! Not very many people are blessed to have 10 women in their life that truly love you for you! Yesterday was our end of the year brunch. We do that a lot...EAT! We love to Eat! Veronica has just moved only about a month ago and when you walk into her home it looks like she has been there for years! Just beautiful! She has a knack for decorating and hospitality! We love going to her home! So we break for the summer but that doesn't mean we don't get together. We just now meet at the beach or a dinner or two. It is funny since our kids are getting older we just may have a beach day or two where it will be just us! Crazy! Wanted to give you all a glimpse into something that I hold very dear in my heart!

I have a couple of deadlines that need to be tended to. Linda and I must get some of our creative mojo going so I better get going!
Ciao!

Wow! Good times

2008-06-09T15:22:00.000-07:00

WOW!!!! Our Me and My Freckle Friends Crop was a success!!!! All the planning and attention to details paid off! It was an awesome day. Meeting new friends and getting together with old. It really went off with out any glitches except for the darn air conditioner but no one complained!

Okay so now I have tried to post pictures 3 different times. Hopefully this time it will work...

This is the crowded room. We had to use our big industrial fans to suck the hot air and blow in cool air from the warehouse. Thank you so much for not complaining those of you that attended.

This is Laura.

I have heard so much about her from Annie, so it was great meeting her. She is a super cool chick! Her layouts were fabulous.

These two ladies Amy and Linda were the big raffle winners at the end of the night. Amy won the really cool Canon printer and Linda won this really cool embellishment trunk from Tammy I. The trunk is super cool and as soon as I get a website address for her I will pass it on to all of you.

I would post the pictures of our fabulous make and takes and the teachers but for some reason they won't download. I will save those for another day.

Suzy Plantamura was our first make and take and she did a cute girly layout. Suzy does a lot of design work for us when it comes to the shows and such. I might add that she just made the Creating Keepsakes Hall of Fame. Very talented gal!

Second was the ever fabulous Stephanie Ackerman she made an adorable book from mambi's newest line "sunshine". She also doodled all the names for our name tags and made her famous chocolate chip cookies for us. She is just one amazing gal and I am so blessed to call her friend. I will add that she did this all in the same week she was chairing the Family Fling carnival at her kids school. Really she is incredible!! Thanks Steph!

Annie was the third make and take. She is now working for Canon and so she brought this new little printer took pictures of all the ladies and then printed them out so that they could make a layout right then and there. I am telling you we had some awesome contributors for this event.

Although it was a very long day and lots of hard work working up to the actual day it was really all worth it. Annie sums it up on her blog. Watching all these women take pride in their art and creating something for their families is so rewarding!

I have met some pretty incredible new people that I can now call friends. I am looking forward to getting to know them all that much more and to see what else we can pull out of our sleeves. Susan was so much fun to work with. We just clicked. Thank God for Debbie and her knack for numbers. It was an event that I will never forget. As soon as I get a final number on how much we raised I will pass that on to all of you. All of you that attended were definitely generous! Thank you for that!

I also wanted to give a shout out to Tutto Fresco. They catered our dinner that night and par for the course it was delicious. We only paid half price for what we got. So if you live in the Rancho Santa Margarita area go to Tutto Fresco and make sure you tell them thank you!

That pretty much sums it up. Susan has set up a gallery of all the layouts that were created that day. As soon as I get the link I will post it here. There was some good stuff coming out of that kitchen area!Very talented women!

Thank you all who attended. It was so nice to meet all of you and I look forward to the next big mambi/freckle friend event!

I am off to start with the next big thing here at mambi...CHA-S show. Off to pull paper and start kitting! That is my life and I am sticking to it!

Ciao Bellas~

we are live

2008-06-05T15:21:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to let you know that the silent auction is up and live. you can go HERE or click on the logo on the sidebar and that will get you there as well. We have some very awesome projects and products that you can bid on. There was some new things added and I would let you know here but I want you to find out on your own. So don't delay and hurry your little selves over there before you miss out on something GREAT!!!

I am off to finish things up.

Peace Out!

chicken without her head

2008-06-04T13:55:00.001-07:00

So this is what one looks like when things start getting crazy around the office!! I have been up and down the upstairs hallway what feels like 100 plus times. Up and down the stairs just as many! It is getting down to the nitty gritty of our big event this weekend. Susan came to help me kit my make and take and get some of our last minute details figured out. We are both so excited and it is going to be a great time for all!!!
Here is a little peak of the make and take I am doing on Saturday. What is funny about this project is it was a banner and then I went to get ribbon down the hallway and they way I was carrying it I realized it would make a cute star.
Here are the kits that are bagged and ready to go!
This is my messy desk with the tags for the bags and a little peak of Wilna's project she made for us for the silent auction.
This is a just a small portion of what will be in the goodie bags and a little peak at Donna Downey's project.
the silent auction is going live sometime tomorrow so check back and I will have it posted with a link. How fun is that. You may not live our area but we thought it would be fun to be able to give you all a chance out there to participate in this event as well. Remember all proceeds are going to Autism Speaks a wonderful charity that is making great strides in the Autism arena.
I gotta get going...i think the chicken might have just found its head!!!
Check back tomorrow for the silent auction!
Ciao

away for a few

2008-06-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

I am going to be away from my blog for a few more days. With this coming up.

I am running around like a chicken at the office and at home! I am very excited it is going to be so much fun. I will definitely post tons of pictures on Monday. Don't forget that you can link from the logo on the sidebar and it will take you to Freckle Friends website where you will be able to bid on some of the silent auction items!

I know that I had previously stated that I would not mention baseball any longer but people The Titans are in the Big Show! We made the championship game! (i might add 3rd year in a row Ed has taken his team to the championship game) We must win twice because the other team has not lost a game in double elimination. So say your baseball prayers for Jaxon and his team! Us parents would greatly appreciate them! Will be great fun!

I also wanted to wish my Mom Happy Birthday!

Hopefully we will be able to celebrate together soon!

Love you!

I gotta go finish die cutting for my make and take!

Don't forget to go to the silent auction!

Ciao!

is it Monday or Tuesday???

2008-05-27T13:54:00.000-07:00

It feels like Monday but yet it is Tuesday. So hard to get back into the swing of things when Monday is a holiday. Although for the most part Monday is the hardest day of the week we really do need our little Monday to help us get our week started!

Our Memorial weekend consisted of cruddy weather and Ed working most of the weekend. so needless to say we did not do much! We did get to the movies to see Indiana Jones...don't bother! so disappointing! It was good for the first hour and a half and then the bottom dropped out! Plus, why are movies do freakin long??? I really think they make them longer so we don't complain about paying 10 bucks! I say make them shorter and go back to 5 bucks a ticket! My first job was at the movie theatres. I can remember when we raised the prices from $2.75 a ticket to $3.25 a ticket. People threw rocks at our windows...I am dead serious!

I am posting a layout I did last week. I finally got a picture of it. I also did a couple of cards for Makenna's bible study teachers.

It is starting to heat up here at Mambi.We have our trade show in about 6 weeks. I need to start kitting my class real soon and next weekend is our crop event with Freckle Friends. So I need to not be blogging so much and get going.

We did get to church this weekend and it was really good! It was about God's mission map for us. some of us think that going on a mission is going around to the other side of the world. That is good and all but we have our own mission fields here in our own backyards. I like that! I like that my Jerusalem is where I live...Orange County! I can do that!

For the layout I used some of our new soft spoken that is being released at CHA-S. For the "thanks" card i used paper from our new "Sunshine" line and some of our new glitter alphabet. Love the colors of the alphabet. The "Thank You" card is from our Renee Family collection. I love the more masculine feel of the card.

I am off to finish up here at work!

Ciao!

here comes summer...not!

2008-05-24T09:31:00.000-07:00

Okay so we have had the weirdest weather ever the last couple of days. The sky just opened up for 2 days and poured. something us Californians are not use too!! At the office we all stood and watched the rain. Like we have never seen rain before. Which we have but not that much rain in about an hour or so. Streets were flooded 2 feet across, mudslides in the fire areas, tornadoes that is right tornadoes!!! Now I am sure for those of you that live in the midwest are thinkin buck up girl we get that kind of weather yearly. Seriously we just don't get this kind of weather and it freaks us Californians out! It is officially Memorial Weekend. Kickoff summer weekend and we are stuck in the house. Not sure what I will do with a 11 year old boy stuck in the house. We already have had nerf dart wars and fort building going on. Which I will have to say is not really my favorite. I am going to let you in on a little secret of mine. I am not a FUN mom. I detested going to the park when they were little. I did it but hated every minute of it. I am not the Mom that gets on the floor and does puzzles. I can count on one hand how many times I let them build forts in the house. I really envy Moms that did and do this with their kids. She is one of them and when I read her blog about the activities she does with her kids I marvel at that! Now this is not to say that I don't do other fun things. I sound kind of mean actually admitting this. I am going to go out on a limb and say I have other Mom gifts. I am sure I do. Not sure of what they are right now. haha!

So we have officially sold out the Me and My Freckle Friends Crop Event. You can click on the logo on the sidebar and see what we have in the silent auction. Even if you can't attend you can bid on the awesome projects we have up in the auction. If you do live in the area you can also put your name on the waiting list. You never know. Things do come up. You just may get lucky!

I am going to post some of my favorite pictures today. I still don't have a camera but I do have pictures on my library!

These are just a couple of photos that bring smiles to my face. Jaxon and his buddies at the desert riding. My South Africa trip and the "group". Park City at my parents house. Makenna taking the many pictures of herself. What is it about girls and taking pictures. She has tons of these kinds of pictures. Her alone and her with friends. Cracks me up!

I gotta go nerf dart wars are still taking place and I need to get it under control.

craziness and busy-ness

2008-05-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

How many of you are burning the candle at both ends these days with school about to end, baseball season coming to an end, graduations, weddings, birthdays. This time of year for some reason for me gives Christmas time a run for its money! I received 2 graduation announcements yesterday in the mail. I know of another young man graduating on Saturday. Family birthdays are almost every week. That started about 3 weeks ago. It is just crazy!

The events that I am looking forward to the most are the graduations. One is my nephew Griffen. Pretty handsome guy. He can be quite reserved and quiet. So very proud of him. He really has turned into a great human being! I love how he interacts with Jaxon. Who by the way just loves his big cousin. Graduating is such a great accomplishment. It is so hard to remember that far back...26 years ago..can that really be...say it isn't so?? Back to remembering...the world was wide open. So many goals and ideas swirling around in my head back then. I am sure that I will shed a tear or two that day. Seeing him in his cape and gown. I can feel it welling up already. Such a cry baby I am! What is it about cap and gowns. Pomp and Circumstance song. So flippin exciting for these kids. Go out there and conquer the world Griffen we will be cheering you on!

Since I can't really add pictures yet I added a slide show to the sidebar. I posted all my projects and layouts that I have done lately. I will continue to add to that as i finish them.

I am going to sit back and think about what I wanted back in 1982 and ponder on if I accomplished anything that I thought I would.

You can go here if you want to see a picture of me back then. Not 1982 but pretty darn close! Gotta love big hair!

I better jet. Gifts to buy, projects to make and memories to think about!

Ciao

feeling blue!

2008-05-21T14:13:00.000-07:00

So we went from 98 degrees to 70 degrees in about 60 seconds here in sunny orange county. We are officially now calling it May Gray. I thought it was June Gloom. Global warming my butt!!! When it gets like this I sometimes get a little blue. Not feeling real motivated to do much. House could use a good cleaning, closets to clean, car to get washed. So many things I can do but are refusing to do. So what do I do instead...BLOG! Post a new post and then read blog after blog. Makes the time go by fast. Such a waste of time though. But today I don't care! I also can't post with pictures because the camera is still not working and i don't think that it will turn on again. Refer to last post. so until i get a new one no new pictures with my posts.

I love reading blogs with pictures. It is a funny thing the blog world. I feel like I know all of you. Like you are part of my everyday world. Which you are but not really. Does that make sense?? I am sure it does to my blogger friends. What makes that statement more of a reality is the pictures on the blogs. The kids, husbands, extended families. Inspiring projects, layouts. I am just rambling on about nothing.

So very thankful for my blog friends to keep me busy!

Haven't forgotten about Salad of the Month. This next recipe has been around my family for years. It is the best and one of the fastest dinners ever!

Taco Salad

I am sure you all have some sort of version of your own but I do like mine the best!

1 lb. hamburger can use ground turkey

3-4 green onions-chopped

2-3 tomatoes-chopped

1 head of lettuce- chopped

1 can of pinto or red kidney beans drained

1-2 cups of mexican cheese

Doritios Corn chips-crushed about 2 cups

Wish Bone French dressing

Brown meat and drain fat when done.

Add beans and lower heat just to warm beans. I season with salt and pepper at this time

Toss together lettuce, tomatoes,onions. Put in crushed chips and cheese. Add your meat/bean mixture on top of cheese. add dressing. I add abut 1/2 cup to 1 cup of dressing I think?

Toss salad. I toss until everything looks well coated. Add more or less dressing depending on your likings.

You can also add a can of corn to this salad. Also, adding some taco sauce or Pico Pica. My family likes the spiciness added I do not so I let them add their own.

this makes a ton of salad. I like to put some aside before adding dressing. that way you have yummy leftovers the next day that are not soggy. Unless of course you like soggy salad.

Enjoy!

Well i did put some laundry in that needs to be folded. At least i am some what productive!

Ciao Bellas~

so Thankful!

2008-05-19T09:30:00.000-07:00

so much to tell and show you! Here is Orange County we had an unbelievable HOT weekend! 98 where i live. I am a summer kind of gal but as I have gotten older I am getting less tolerable of the heat! the family did get to get out there and enjoy it and I am so very thankful for that! We of course had baseball. 97 when those poor boys were out there. Makenna was pretty much gone most of the weekend until Sunday when I insisted that family time would take precedence over baseball! You see Ed not only manages Jaxon's team he umpires and is on the board. So needless to say we are either at the field or he is or at a meeting or whatever!

I am going to show you the weekend in pictures. So here is a recap...

While Jaxon went to the Angel game with the neighborhood boys-Thanks Davey Family, and Mak spent the night at Chica's, Ed and I went to our nephews baseball game. (because apparently we just can't get enough) and then went to dinner with them. They are two of the most adorable boys EVER! I just love them so very much! The make my hear t soar! they had the giggles that night the picture gets them in action. On Sunday we went to the beach. It was glorious! Apparently a lot of other baseball families had the same idea. I told my friend Twila apparently when we get a free day with no baseball we get the heck out of dodge! We saw a ton of dolphins one even jumped out of the water for us. I tried to get a picture of them but try as I do every summer I never have accomplished a dolphin picture. The only bummer of the weekend is I put my camera in the cooler and it got wet somehow.No the best move on my part! So now it won't turn on! if any of you have any grand ideas of how to fix it let me know! I am just sick about it! I am so grateful to live where I do. Thankful for a healthy family and wonderful friends!

Mambi Monday is today and the creative team is going to feature some of our new soft spoken. I already have my favs picked out and as soon as I finish the layout I will post it so that you can see. I will also sneak peek a couple of others as well. So make sure to stop by again!

Ciao Bellas~

Winners and A shower

2008-05-16T13:38:00.000-07:00

Better late than never! Seems to be my motto these last few weeks. I have the winners of the mambi kits and card.
montanafam is the winner of the kits and card
nanbeth and jenn are the winners of the kits.
All 3 of you please email (suezig@meandmybigideas.com)me your snail mail addresses and I will get those out to you! Have fun creating with them and let us know out here in blog land what you made!
We seem to always have a birthday or some sort of celebration here at Mambi. Today was celebrating Tonya and the birth of her first child. so much fun to get together with everyone you work with and just chill and hang out. Eat good food and just spend time with each other. We are usually running the hallways meeting deadlines and such. Not alot of time to chat! Love working here. Great atmosphere and great people!
Lots of stuff to do around here. Deadlines and projects to be made. Always seem to be waiting on product to arrive. Will be kitting CHA class stuff pretty soon. I love doing that. Means I am going to be teaching soon and that is the best part of my job!
Seems to be that tonight both of my kids will be gone tonight. Hoping to get some date night in with the hubby! We need it! Baseball has taken a toll on us. I know I said i wouldn't mention baseball anymore but it has been a week of it and it didn't go our way! bummer! So maybe a margarita and some chips and salsa will cheer us up! Sounds good to me!
Wow, this post has gone all over the place. Not alot to show you so i guess a little chatter is what I think might keep you interested.
Have a wonderful weekend and will hopefully have some great photos to share next week!
Ciao Bellas~

Recovery and movin on

2008-05-14T14:45:00.000-07:00

Okay, so last night Jaxon's team lost. 10-9. Great game...for TEXAS! I am a bit bitter and sad. Jaxon...already over it. The rest of the 10 year old Titans moved on when they found out we were having pizza for snack. Me, Ed and I am sure a few other parents...still going over the game in our heads. Maybe it is just me. There is a line in the movie Remember the Titans (how relevant is that) where the assistant coaches daughter says after he lost the Hall of Fame coaches award she says to her Dad "I wanted that Hall of Fame REAL BAD! I know how she feels. I wanted first place REAL BAD! I need to move on like the rest of those boys. Take a lesson from them.

I AM MOVIN ON! No more baseball talk...it is just RIDICULOUS!

I just found out that we have abut 12 spots left for the Me and My Freckle Friends Crop event. So if you are waiting I wouldn't wait too long! click on the logo and it will take you to where you can register. Stephanie has a sneak peek of what she has made for the silent auction and make and take. We are going to start posting pictures of the silent auction items in the next couple of days. Don't forget all proceeds will go to Autism Speaks. What a better day. Spending time with friends, scrapping and putting your money to a great cause.

Stephanie is doing on her blog "Inspiration to Creation" once a week. She is taking a picture of what ever has inspired her that week and then posting a picture of what she created from her inspiration. Kinda of like what Project Runway has done. It got me thinking of how we go about our daily lives and not really pay any attention to the little details all around us that can give us so much inspiration. Color, texture, etc. It also kinda of in a round about way goes with my bible study my group just finished. It is the Dangerous Surrender study by Kay Warren. There are so many different aspects to it but what touched me is to pay attention to where God is leading me. To surrender my fear of where His path is for me and open my eyes and ears to Him. I always want to focus on the Big Picture just like focusing on getting my errands done and missing all the inspiration around me. So here is a picture of what touched me today. Not really touched me but stood out.

Tons of color and lots of hard lines. Soft and hard texture. Not really sure what will come of it but I am going to put on my thinking cap and see where it takes me. Should be fun. Go on over to Stephanie's and check it out.

Last but not least the Salad Recipe.

This one is one of my very favorites. My suggestion is only make this one in the summer as it can be quite pricey any other time of the year.

Summer Spinach Salad

1 lb. of spinach

1 cup strawberries-sliced

1/4 lb. bean sprouts

1 cup red seedless grapes- sliced

1/4 cup bacon bits-make your own way better than the store bought

Toss in large bowl- set aside

Dressing-

1 cup oil

1 tsp. kosher salt

1/3 cup white vinegar

1 tsp. worchestsire sauce

3/4 cup sugar

1 small white onion- diced

Wire whisk all dressing ingredients. Toss with salad mix.

Enjoy!

Okay now I sure haven't gotten many salad recipes and don't forget I am picking a winner at the end of the month of the best salad recipe. So post those recipes!!

And...

you have until tomorrow to post a mom anecdote to get into the drawing for the Mambi kit. Leave a comment on yesterdays post for that one.

I am off kids are home and dinner needs to be thought of soon. Ugh!

Happy Mother's Day and what not

2008-05-13T09:59:00.000-07:00

**Edited

What a week last week!!! We have been going non stop with baseball,bible sutdies, school work,work, and whatever else made our week fly by!. We are coming towards

the end of the baseball season and it is getting pretty intense. We are in 1st place and must win tonight to win the season which means we will play in TOC for you non baseball people means Tournament of Champions. Oh my Heavens!! Trying not to make it so stressful that Jaxon feels it. Very hard though.

Mother's Day came and went. I don't know what it is about posting on holidays. I have great intentions... thinking about something clever to post and then BAM gone is the stinkin day that I wanted to post on! I did have a fabulous day. Since my Mom and Mother in law were both out of town it was all about ME! I just asked for a very low key day. No fighting, whining kind of day. They did their best! We ended up meeting our friends the Murray's at Maggiano's for dinner! Yummy! I did manage to take some pictures of course none with my children.

This is what these four do when they get together! Goof Balls!

This is Ed and I, Doug and Torre! We just love them. We don't get to get together as much as we would like but when we do we always laugh and have fun! They are what you call "Good People"! Love them!

I missed spending time with my Mom! Happy Mother's Day Mom! Thanks for making the women that I am today! I Love you!

I also missed "Mambi Monday".
We are highlighting our new stuff that will be coming out at CHA-S. I am making a project with it. As soon as I finish I will post it. Great colors and love love the new soft spoken. I am not going to put picutres in it and will give it away to a lucky winner. When I post it tomorrow leave me a Mom anecdote and I will pick a winner from that.

I bet you are thinking she forgot about Salad Month! I did not! I will post that tomorrow as well. Susan from Freckle Friends posted a salad on her blog. Go here to see it. It sounds delicious! Speaking of Freckle Friends...did I mention the fabulous crop event we are hosting together.It is June 7th and I have a link on the side that will take you directly to the spot to sign up at! I promise it will be an event not to miss! We have some amazing stuff that we will be auctioning off. Ali Edwards has sent us something, Wilna Furstenburg has sent me a beautiful book to auction off! I am telling you that is just the tip of the iceberg! So sign up space is limited!

I am off to finish up the project I was talking about earlier and to think about baseball! I have to say I am stinkin excited!! Go Titans! What is one going to do when it is all over???

I finished the project faster than I thought. So I am posting the pictures of it. I used a kit from our new releases it is called the Renee Family kit. It is finished and all you would need to do is add pictures.

The template is from Louis in our graphics department. He made a ginourmous one for his Mom for Mother's Day. I had him shrink it down to fit a 12x12 piece of paper and Voila! A pretty simple card that took about an hour and a half to do. I will get a pdf file and post it tomorrow for the template. Don't forget to leave a Mom anecdote... be it for babies to teenagers. I will pick a winner on Thursday!

The Renee Family kit is on the left and the other two are some of my favorites from the release. This is what you will also get when you post an anecdote! So let's do this... winner number 5 will win the finished card and the 3 kits and winners number 10 and 17 will win the 3 kits. So post your anecdote comment! You have until Thursday.

One more thing that us here at Mambi forgot to mention on our blogs is Mambi has gone primetime tv!

If you are a fan of the show Desperate Housewives you might have seen it. Susan received a cookbook as a gift and on the front cover was the "Family" from our Modern Milan collection. How lovely is that?

Ciao!

What Have I DONE!!!

2008-05-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

Man oh Man...

I found this new website that downloads blog templates...trouble! Who am I kidding that this would be an easy task for a not so savvy computer girl! I downloaded this cute new pink scrolly flowery template saved it in blogger and BAM a new template. It looked great until I realized that all of my page elements were GONE! Never to be found by me! So I have spent that last hour re-doing my blog, adding links and song lists and blog counters. Now my blog counter is at zero again. I don't like that. It was fun to see how many blog friends have visited. It was getting to be a somewhat big number. I liked that. I wasn't going to post because quite frankly I was tired of the blog thing today. But then I remembered that I needed to post my salad recipe and I have a proud Mom moment to tell you about.

First the Salad. It is called Cabbage Taco Salad.
1 head of cabbage-chopped( when I am in a hurry I use the bagged cabbage)
1 bunch of cilantro-leaves only chopped
1 medium red onion-diced
1 small can of mexican corn-drained
1-2 cups of mexican cheese in bag
1/2 bag of your favorite tortilla chips-crushed
1 Tbls. of cumin
1-2 Tbls. fresh lime juice
1 jar of ranch dressing( I like to make mine from scratch when I have the time)
Toss the first 6 ingredients in large salad bowl
Mix together cumin, lime juice and ranch dressing at least a half hour before serving salad. Toss with salad mixture about 5 minutes before serving to let the cabbage soften a tad and the flavors to all come together.
I have taken this to many of potlucks. I also like to add grilled chicken to make it a main course. I promise you your guests will eat this one up. I never have leftovers of this salad.

Now my proud Mom moment. Some of you may think this is just silly. Some of you may think no big deal but in the Gurzi household this is HUGE!
I only wish that I had a before and after photo to get the full picture of the situation.
Makenna has an issue with keeping her room clean as do most 14 year olds. I know this only because all of us parents talk. This is one issue that we all bring up and realize they are all the same. We go round and round with her about this. Ed will go to the mat on it. I have come to an understanding that it is alright to close the door. That way I can pretend it really isn't as bad as I thought. We decided that she needs to have it clean before the weekend in order to do what she wants on the weekends. Now I will admit we have forgotten sometimes and we go up there and enter at our own risk and then kick ourselves all the way down the stairs. She had juped us again! Ugh!
This week was another story. She had piles upon piles of laundry. I don't even know how she had anything left to wear. But she did. She did laundry all weekend. But what was happening was it was piling up all over her floor and I just knew that all those clean clothes would end up in the laundry basket not to ever be worn. I told her she absolutely had to get them folded and put away. Here is the proud moment...only once did i have to tell and her and look here is her room absolutely nothing on the floor. I opened drawers and closets because I was just astonished. Clean clothes folded put away and hung up! Say it isn't so. So I had to take a picture.

Although her bed is unmade.You can see a floor and the trash basket is EMPTY! A very proud moment! It really doesn't take much to make me happy!

Here is another easy project done with our "Sunshine" line. I love these projects that take no time at all and add so much color and fun to your home!

Thanks for taking the time to read about my Mom moment. It was a little wordy. I just had to put it in writing though.
Enjoy your day
Ciao

Life Lessons and Sunshine~

2008-05-05T10:54:00.000-07:00

This weekend started out fantastic. We went to our friends the Murray's for dinner. We have known them since before Jaxon was born and the kids get along like sisters and brothers. A wonderful friendship. We Love the Murrays. I was coming off a somewhat stressful couple of days. So for me it was great to enjoy a glass or two of wine with my friend and just relax. But then baseball came on Saturday and with that comes issues! This year more than ever!I think it seems like more than ever because Ed is not only a manager, but he is an umpire and is the safety officer on the baord so needless to say we are baseball 24/7! Although I try to stay out of things and really just be a sounding board for Ed this was a hard one. It had to do with integrity. A huge issue in my book. This word seems to be creeping into my life alot lately. Hence the stressful couple of days last week. Not sure if God is trying to teach me or I am to be an example. I feel pretty strongly that I am to be an example. I don't really compromise my integrity since I feel so strongly against that. I just really HATE Dad's...who are coaches/mamagers that will do anything for a win. Even to their own son. People~ as competitive as I am, meaning I LOVE winning it is not worth it if you cheat, hurt, or whatever else to win a 10 year old baseball game. Lots of talk amongst parents and gossip. You know how that goes. Parents talk even if they don't know the specifics and don't get me wrong I have made the same mistake myself. I guess what I am trying to say here is I am learning from this guy and trying to put things into perspective. 10 year old ball is not going to make my life better whether we win or not.

Okay, onto other fun stuff....

Did you know that the Month of May is salad month?? I read that somewhere last month. Is that hysterical! Who knew!!

So in honor of May the Salad month. I am going to post a new salad recipe every week with a picutre of the delicious salad. I would love it if you would either send me your favorite salad recipe or even link us to your favorite salad recipe in the comments. I will pick my favorite recipe at the end of the month and will send the winner a small gift card to a grocery store in your area! How does that sound?? Should be fun and by the end of the month we should have a pretty good collection of recipes!

I haven't forgotten that it is MAMBI MONDAY!This fabulous Monday the creative team decided to post on our perspective blogs a project that we all used our new line "Sunshine" with. So after you read my blog hop on over to Renee,Rachel,Lauren,Stephanie, and Terri's blogs and go check out their projects. I have seen Renee's and it is stinkin cute and a great idea! Especially for a summer birthday party...just a little hint!

Here is my project. It was fast and super easy. It took me about a half hour to complete!

I really like the colors of this line. It will make for some great summer/vacation layouts and projects! You can get this new line at Michael's.

Go check it out and let me know what you think!

Have a fantastic day and don't forget to start gathering your favorite salad recipe. I will post mine tomorrow!

Ciao Bellas~

winner winer chicken dinner!!!

2008-05-02T11:49:00.000-07:00

serena (scrapbooking fiend) said...
scraptastic taste!!! luv the products! can't wait till tomorrow morning.
Serena is our winner!!!
Send me your snail mail address and I will get those fun products out to you pronto!
Next time I will take a better picture! (suezig@meandmybigideas.com)
I am off and out of the office to go enjoy the beautiful day that the Lord has made! I am excited because I am meeting a friend and gettin a pedicure! Yippee!!! If you have never treated yourself to a pedicure...DO IT! It is the best ever!!!
Check back on Monday. The creative team is posting a sneak peek!
One more thing,
I am deeply saddened that CKMedia has decided not to go forth with the Home and Heart magazine. The May and August issue will still be released but after that...GONE!
So go out there and buy up this magazine so that the Big Wigs at CKMedia have made a tremendous mistake!
If you would go on over and send sunshiny thoughts to her I know that she would really appreciate it!! If you have never ventured over to her blog you will not be disappointed!!! She is inspiring and a very talented gal!!

Now I am off !
Ciao Bellas~

A new blog

2008-04-29T12:03:00.000-07:00

A quick post today as I am on overload from creating something that I know you are going to LOVE and yet I can't quite show you right now!!!
We have a new addition to our "designer" blogs here at Mambi.

I would like to inroduce you to my boss...Terri Gick!

She is the engine behind Mambi. She has a gazillion ideas twirling around in her head. Sometimes so many she can't quite put them all down on paper! She is extremely funny. I really like her a lot. A great person to work for. I have actually known her for 20 plus years. I used to do her nails back in the day and she actually persuaded me to come to her house to do her nails and her friends nails. It turned out to be something I looked forward to every other week. This is how our friendship started and who knew back then that I would be working for her and Stephanie today! You must go visit her site. You will not be disappointed!

I purchased these tins at Target in the $1 section. Don't you just love that little section??

I brought them to work and covered them. They are a perfect desk organizer.

These papers are from our "supercool" paper pad and then circle chipboard and the doodled alphabet jelly stickers. so easy to do and fast. I punched a hole in one just to see if i could...which I could. So you could make a cute little basket add some yummy treats and wrap it up with cellophane and you have yourself a cute little gift. Just in time for Teacher Appreciation season!

I forgot about the large letters. They are awesome as well. these might just be some of my favorite product TODAY! It changes all the time! Don't forget to post a comment on yesterdays post to get in the running for the 5 faves giveaway! You have until Friday!

Ciao Bellas~

MAMBI MONDAYS and weekend nonsense...

2008-04-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

Here at Mambi we are going to have what we are calling Mambi Giveaway Mondays. The five

of us, Stephanie, Lauren, Renee, Rachel, and myself will pick 5 of our favorite mambi products, post them on our blogs every Monday and then we will have a raffle on each blog from your comments that you leave us on Monday and then on Fridays each of us will pick a winner. HOw cool is that!!! We are definitely having some shaking and moving around here. Lots of exciting stuff that you all out there will get to partake on!

Here are my 5 favorites right now...they change all the time but these 5 are what I like today!

Don't forget to check back often in reagrds to our charity crop. We have an official name now. Me and My Freckle Friends Crop. There will definitely be more info as we get closer to opening registration and such. the great thing about this crop is that all proceeds will go to Autism Speaks. We are going to have some great giveaways and an awesome silent auction. We already have Donna Downey, Wilna Furstenburg, and Cosmo Cricket on board. So flippin cool!!

Onto the weekend~we had baseball of course. The great thing was the Titans were Challenger Buddies this weekend. The boys had to go out on the field with the challenger team and help them with throwing or just plain cheering them on. Such a great opportunity for these 10 year old boys! Here are a few pics from the game.

The middle picture I love. the challengers all get a chance to hit and no matter what they did they would run around the diamond and slide into home plate. We all would cheer and the smiles that came across those boys and girls were priceless!! The Titans would high five and tap them on the helmuts. It was a great time for everyone! The one thing as a parent that you sometimes question is... are they listeneing? do they have compassion?? This was definitely comfirmation that they do listen, they do have compassion and they are becoming awesome kids of integrity! Love it!

I am going to post my favorite picture of the weekend. Actually two.

This is my niece and nephew Slade and Chloe. they had the best time on that chair. Hysterical that a chair can be so entertaining!

This picture is my Dad (he is recovering from a broken hip) and Slade and Chloe again. All 3 were playing with the hose. It was 98 degrees yesterday so this was the 3 of them cooling off! Nothing better than playing with Grandpa!

I better get to work. I have a big project that I need to finish...who am i kidding start and finish by tomorrow!

Ciao!

Drum roll Please...

2008-04-22T13:20:00.000-07:00

The Big Exiting news is...
are you ready...
sit down...
MeandmyBIGideas and Freckle Friends are teaming up together to host the first ever Charity Crop on Saturday June 7th here at the mambi offices.
More details to follow.
We are going to have some great stuff for all that come and join us. I am so excited about this. Meeting Susan Lyons from Freckle Friends has been such a delight! It is like we have known each other for years. Fast friends we have become. We have so many ideas swirling around for this event. It definitely will be a great time by all!! You don't want to miss it.
Check back often so you don't miss the launch of registration!
Hope I didn't build it up too much. Especially for those of you that aren't scrapbookers! Oh well...I am excited!
Two posts in one day...WOW!

Earth Day is today

2008-04-22T09:23:00.000-07:00

For those of you that don't know today is Earth Day. It is treat your environment kindly day! Reuse Reduse Recycle Day!
Now I must admit I wasn't a big recycler ever! I would toss a can or bottle in the recycle bin if it was near. I would turn off the lights etc. We Gurzi's have just hopped on the Recycle wagon with Ed trailing behind.
I will say it is more out of laziness and I really hate to admit that! But so very true. Also, my kitchen is not that big to have two trash cans. What I did was bought a magnetic hook and put that on my trash can and hung a grocery bag from it and we out all our cans, bottles, and papers in there and take it out every so often. I figure every little bit helps!
I also unplug appliances when not in use as well as all the electronic chargers.
Today you must go outside and soak up the beauty that this amazing place we live in called Earth and that was made just for us I might add and soak in its beauty! Here are some fun things you can do today to celebrate Earth Day:
*pick up a pretty plant and plant it in your yard
*take a hike with your dog
*collect trash at your local park go through pick out the recycleables and take it to your local recycling place.
All of these you can do as a family. You just may see the Gurzi's at the park today!
Here are some pictures that represent Earth to me...

The lizard was on our fence yesterday "sunning" and then we have Yosemite. Maybe one of the most beautiful places on Earth. If you have not ever been...GO! El Capitan is MAGNIFICENT. The sky is a blue you won't see anywhere else. Colors are unreal! Seriously, when God made this place He definitely was on His "A Game"!
On to what pretty much occupies Ed and Jaxon's time this time of year. Baseball.I just need to give a shout out to a boy on our team that is in one word Inspiring! He is always happy, ready to learn and ready to do his very best when he is at bat or on the field. He is not one of our strongest but it really doesn't matter because he gives 110% ALWAYS!
Let me set it up for your bottom of the sixth 2 outs we are tied 9-9 with the USC Trojans I might add(this will be the only time you hear me not cheer for the Trojans)We are at the bottom of the lineup... Cisco is ready! He has been here in this same situation before a couple of times. 1 strike,2 balls. We are all thinking there is no way Cisco Kid that is what I call him will do it again. We knw that he can smack the ball seen it and he believes it. Pitcher throws it and Cisco Kid smacks it over th second baseman right in the hole of the outfield bringing in the 1 runner we needed to win. Unbelieveable. We came back from 1-9 in the top of the fifth to win that game! Cisco Kid did it again. the team comes out and gathers around him, high fives every where... a great moment for this 10 year old Titan team.
Here he is..

Ed gave him the game ball and he asked for all of the coaches to sign it. Even our team umpire had to sign it. He was so stoked and it was a moment I will treasure!
I am off with a meeting on the secret news. Check back today and I will post the news..I promise!

Peace out!

Exciting News...

2008-04-21T09:49:00.000-07:00

Got ya!!! I can't let the cat out of the bag about the news I can share about a little something I mentioned in my last post that will come tomorrow so check back later! I will say this in regards to that little diddy..so freaking excited about it!

this exciting news is we have some new bloggers here at Mambi
First off is Renee Benjamin Renee is the Art Director here at Mambi ( I just made that title up) she really is so much more than that. Stephanie hit the nail on the head when she described her as the most organized person we have ever met! Plus she can't possibly sleep to be able to do what she does...simply amazing!

Next we have Lauren She is Stephanie's sister and Development manager her at Mambi. She is one cute chick! I love her and her zest for life! I will say this she has a real knack for accents and will have me in stitches in seconds! Such a fun person to work with. I will also say that she has accomplished so much and that seeing her develop into the beautiful human being she is with that hard work that she has put into her life is just inspiring!

last but not least...Rachel Simonsen. Rachel is one talented gal! She came into this company less than a year ago and you would have thought she had been in the craft industry for years. She just gets it! I tease her because she is young but one of those very mature young persons! She is going to make some future mother in law out there very happy! So pleasant and adorable to boot!!

Each one of these gals have so many different takes on our company and should be fun to look at different perspectives on Mambi! We are trying to Stephanie and Lauren's Mom, Terri to start her own blog. Talk about driven! When I met this woman I really had no idea how smart and talented she was. I have known her since I was 19!! I can't wait for her to get her blog up and running so that you can get to know her! She is awesome!

On my weekend...
Color guard is officially over! Mak had her last competition this last weekend.although they did not make finals but they still shoud hold their heads up HIGH! These freshman girls and (2juniors) really did not have any expectations from their coaches or anyone else for that matter. What they did accomplish was moving up 2 rankings and then conitnued to place first and second all season. We parents are so proud of them. They are going to kick some color guard butt next year and I can't wait to see it!
I wish I could post some pictures but unfortunately blogger won't let me! ugh!

Baseball is baseball and I could go on and on about that but I won't. It is so very hard to not be a parent that gets out of control! It is that darn competitive thing. I want to be an example to the boys out there..plus Ed is the manager and on the Board so I really have to watch it. I truly just pray beforehand and sometimes during to help me out! Thank goodness you blogger friends can't witness me out there.
OH and how could I forget...
Ed and I went to see Elton John at the Pond on Saturday! This is my third time seeing him and he did not disappoint!! We were in a suite which was rockin enough! We were literally a hop, skip and a jump from the stage! I could see every detail of what Elton was wearing! Atone point they let people rush the stage and I so wanted to go down and I staked out the route but Ed said no! Such a voice of reason that guy is! I use to go to alot of concerts when I was younger and we would buy cheap tickets and then get to the front! Always! All you had to do was be just a little flirtatious and bam you were in the front! I even got on stage at an INXS concert but that was a bad choice on my part! Hopped on some guys shoulders and jumped! Was escorted off before I knew what was going on! Crazy girl! Sorry Mom...never told you that little tidbit of info!
It is so much fun when you know every word to every song!! His Yellow Brick Road album brings back so many childhood memories!! Amazing how that man plays the piano!
That is it in a nutshell. Sorry for no pictures. I hate posting without pictures but something is going on and won't let me post. So I hope to have something tomorrow. Check back tomorrow and get the latest and greatest!
Remember to post a comment on what inspires you..from a previous post! there just may be something worth your while. And don't forget to check out the new bloggers I promise you will not be disppointed!
ciao bellas~

So Inspiring

2008-04-16T15:56:00.000-07:00

Do any of you watch this??

Love this show!!! It is amazing to watch these "normal" people come in and weigh themselves on national television and the work out like fiends and accomplish their goals. For the most part they all look pretty rockin FABULOUS!!
I always pick who i want to win from the get go and then of course change my mind when things progress. This season for the first time a woman WON. Ally! She was unbelievably dedicated. I would have liked to see Kelly win only because she fought hard. But I will take Ally. Finally a girl beat those darn men who can lose weight so friggin fast!!!

We actually here at Mambi started a Biggest Loser club. There are about 20 of us and we all put in 10 bucks and weighed in...privately i might add. We had a trainer come and weigh us. So only him and I know the "true" number. this led to all kinds of discussions. This is one thing in my marriage and friendships that no one will EVER know. Never ever, ever, never know. Not even if i weighed my dream weight. I will tell you why. When i needed to lose 10 lbs. geez about 20 years ago I went to Weight Watchers got on the scale and the rude, mean lady says " Oh, I wouldn't have thought you weigh that much". I am not kidding and I will never forget that. I could even tell you what she was wearing. I might need to let that go. But that is why no one will ever know that correct weight! NEVER!
We even all workout together on Thursdays! Even if I don't get to my goal weight it is successful that I am working out consistently and have changed my eating habits. It has been fun and some major smack talk has been going around. Nothing like office bonding!

Reading back on my posts I sure do watch alot of tv!!! I better get off the couch!!!
What inspires you on a goal that you want to achieve?? I would love to hear it. Post a comment and there just may be a little prize for the most inspirational comment! A little mambi product maybe???

Check back this week there is some exciting news on the work front for those of you that live in the area. Something that we have not done before! I am really excited and will get to work with some amazing women. Can't wait to spill the beans!!

Ciao

Monday Monday

2008-04-14T10:23:00.000-07:00

Here we are another Monday. I really don't mind Mondays most of the time. This Monday I wish it wasn't really here. We had such an incredible weekend of awesome weather here in So Cal. It felt like summer. A bit hot for this early in the year but shorts, flip flops, suntan lotion and hanging at the beach with friends! Love it!! We had baseball and just about roasted out there. Thank Goodness the boys are young and can handle it. Ed cancelled practice yesterday and the team and other friends hung at the pool. So much fun!! I only wish that we would have had enough time to get to the beach!

Don't you just love the smell of sunscreen and the beach. To me there isn't anything much better than that. If I am smellin' those two things it means I am relaxing with the family and friends and soaking in the sun. Although as I have gotten older I do wear the sunscreen instead of just smelling it and I try to stay in some sort of shade. We were talking yesterday about how we use to go to great lengths to get tan. Any of you out there in your 40's remember Bain de soleil?? Smothering baby oil all over you.I even had a friend us Crisco oil at one time. HOw about taking foil and putting it up to your face while you were laying out. Climbing on the roof to get "closer to the sun"??? Back then I wore NO sunscreen whatsoever!!! Now I have little freckles all over my chest. A mexican with freckles??? Crazy beans is what I say now. If only we knew then what we know now...although I don't think I would have listened.
This weekend gave us just enough of a tease that we all wished summer was here. She said the same thing. Jaxon and his buddy Hayden wanted a sleepover last night. Had to tell them not till summer can a sleepover happen on a Sunday. That went over like a fart in church!
Well I better get going. Gotta get a project done for a magazine submission...due today. Good thing I work great under pressure!
Enjoy the weather if you live here and if not may spring come soon!
Ciao!

Shout to the Lord

2008-04-11T07:24:00.000-07:00

Here is the performance from the Idol contestants that I mentioned in my last post.
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They sang it again last night on the elimination show. Wow is all I can say that cynical television would actually put on a worship song more than once. I watched the show again...Idol Gives Back. It really made me think what can I do to help...how can I get to Africa...
I realized that maybe Africa is not the right time for me I would really like my whole family to go. So I think I need to look right here in my own backyard and get out there and do something.
More on that as I try and figure out where the "Big Guy" is leading me. Have a wonderful beautiful Friday!!! If you live in Orange County get to the beach and let me know how it is. I want to go so bad...CAN YOU SAY BASEBALL AND COLOR GUARD!!!
Happy Friday!

American Idol and a party hat

2008-04-10T10:43:00.000-07:00

Did any of you watch American Idol gives back last night??? If you did not I hope you tivo'd it and will catch it later. It was so inspirational and eye opening and flippin hysterical!!!
Fergie was over the top awesome...can we give it up for Heart. One of my very favorite bands and those two women can rock! Loved it!!!
There was so much that I loved. One word...Bono! He is by far one of the sexiest alive!!! Some of you may disagree but really Brad Pitt has nothing over Bono!
Robin Williams and Jimmy Kimmel were so freakin funny. Love them!
But enough about the entertainment. The kids all around the world. Cryin like a baby when Foresst Whitaker and his wife were in Africa talking about malaria and how every 30 seconds a child dies over there. How about the town up north here in California where the average yearly income is $9000! What is that all about??? That just sickens me that we are one of th riches states and we have a town that can barely survive! But don't get me started because I am already out of this world angry with this state and the education dilemma we are in. I just want to strangle the "Terminator" Has he no clue???
I was so fortunate to go to South Africa this last fall with Stephanie to teach at a scrapbook convention and while we were there we had to travel through towns that you just knew they were just "survivng". I one day would like to go back with my church and really help out in someway. One day...

The last part of the show was the idol contestants singing " Shout to the Lord" one of my all time favorite worship songs. They were awesome. I always cry during that song no matter where I am at and this was no different. It is a very powerful song and I encourage all of you to look up the words or find it on itunes and listen to it. Beautiful!
I am really impressed that with all the dysfunctionality in the entertainment industry, that this show can take some time and give back. Show us all what is really important! People... not clothes, not singers, not Britney...Human Beings!
Alright enough heavy stuff I forgot to show you in my last post a very special hat that I made for a very special friend.
Shelby at work had a birthday this past weekend and this is what she had to wear all day in honor of her special day.

Pretty darn cute I say! Happy Birthday Shelby!

That is all I have for now.
Go watch AI if you haven't already.
ciao bellas and bellos~