Things that crack me up...

Rees has an "almost empty" box of Count Chochula cereal that he got for Halloween from one of his grandmas. Everytime he asks for it in the mornings he calls it "Hot Chochula". It's so funny that I just can't bring myself to correct him.

Speaking of things that I can't bring myself to correct... Arissa used to call nail polish, "pol nailish". Years of that. She finally figured out it was nail polish (oh she was probably about 7 when she got it figured out) but every once in a while now she'll slip up and still call it "pol nailish". Makes me smile every time.


OK, finally. Arissa is putting on a clean pair of pants this morning. She says "Hey here's my sucker from ______" (I can't remember where it was from... but some store). Then she says "And the wrapper is still kind of on, but it's a lot smaller." I said "Did you eat some of it?". She says "No, it just went through the wash." Lovely! Some batch of my clothes from last week was washed with a half wrapped sucker in the pocket. :) lol!

I'm working on some Christmas projects and have been trying to clean out some rooms (yeah, rooms, not just drawers... lol!) in the house! We finally have our first snowfall of the year here that stuck longer than 2 minutes! It's not much, but we are enjoying it!

A very very important blog post!

OK, this one really is important. It's something I was going to write about ALL summer long and just never did. But I'm going to do it now (oh, yes, I asked my brother and had his permission to make this story a BLOG post for you all!).

It's a post about Skin Cancer. Earlier this year my 29 year old brother was diagnosed with Stage 1 Melanoma. At this point I feel it necessary to say that my brother has the nice darker "olive" skin - unlike me with the pasty white freckly skin. My odds would not have been on him to be the sibling of the family to be diagnosed with skin cancer. They caught it early and removed it completely and he's going to be fine. Consequently he's had the rest of the family all in to the dermatologist for a full body check (which I REALLY felt I did not need.) I had one little tiny spot on my leg that was kind of dark that I was a bit concerned about. But it met NONE of the "characteristics of melanoma" so I really thought it was "OK". I even asked my regular doctor about it and he assured me that it was "nothing to worry about".

So last week I went for my "full body check". I showed the dermatologist the small dot on my leg. She measured it to chart it and it was only 1 millimeter. (Very small!) But, it was darker than any other moles or marks on my body, which was just a bit different. It wasn't raised at all, and she said "Well, with your family history and because it concerns you, let's just go ahead and take it off so it's nothing you have to worry about". I was like "OK, let's do that". So she removed it (had to stitch my leg up with one stitch because it wasn't raised at all) and she removed a skin tag on my arm at the same time. So I wasn't worried about either of the things she removed. Until Halloween. That's when she called our house to "talk to me about the biopsy results". And she needed "me" to call her back. I called back and we played phone tag for a few hours (those were kind of nerve wracking hours) and she finally got me on my cell.

Come to find out the tiny, 1 mm perfectly round, perfectly symmetrical, dot on my leg was "atypical". She said on a scale of 0 to 10 with 0 being "benign" and 10 being "melanoma" my tiny dot was about a 5. She was shocked - she admitted that she really did not think it would come back as anything atypical. I have to go back and have more of it taken out because it was growing "in" and not "out" and the end of the biopsy she took still contained "abnormal cells". But she's on top of it and will get the rest of it out. So that's a good thing. Better to have it out now before it could evolve and become a melanoma later.

With that said: The ABCD and E's of Melanoma are:

A - Asymmetrical - if you draw a line through the mole, the two halves don't match up.

B - Borders - the borders of it are uneven and irregular.

C - Color. Having a variety of colors within the mole.

D - Diameter. Melanomas are usually larger in diameter than the size of your pencil eraser (larger than 6 mm)

E - Evolving. If it changes over time. Any change in a mole in size, shape, color, elevation, etc. can signal a problem.

If any of your moles have any of these signs (or like my funny little dot - they have ZERO of these signs, but you just think somethings a little "off" about it) please have them checked by a dermatologist. They say most adults should go in for a full body check every year. Your dermatologist can chart and measure your moles so they can see if they are growing or changing in time. I'm just adding "dermatologist" to my list of doctors to visit once each year - it really could save your life!

OK, with that out of the way.... I've seen a few posts from people wanting to talk to me about purchasing some of my older retired stuff. If you are interested in any of it - you can drop me an email at (ange) (dot) barton (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll chat with you about it! :)

Hope you are having a fabulous Fall and thanks so much for reading this very important post! :)

My two new favorite Fall TV shows

are Carpoolers and Private Practice.

I know a lot of Grey's fans are watching Private Practice, and although it's "different" than Grey's, I'm really liking it so far. And if you haven't watched Carpoolers yet, check it out sometime. It's a bit off the wall, but some pretty funny stuff. It's made it's way onto my "watch" list.

I'm posting my "Fading Fast" ad... I can't believe that my time as a designer is ticking away by the hour... lol! Last day to catch any of my stuff at SSD is on MONDAY... ah, so soon! Anyway - I still do feel that it was the overall best decision for me, but that doesn't mean it's easy to walk away from it... lol!



Have a great weekend!

Announcing a BIG decision

Oh, I know... I haven't updated FOREVER! lol! Actually I've decided to cut back dramatically on my "computer commitments". I just dropped my last CT (which was a hard hard decision, but I just haven't been up to scrapping much lately!). And, the even bigger decision...

Yep, I'm retiring from designing. That was a SUPER hard call to make, and honestly something that I've been tossing around in my head for a while now. I think my designing "mo-jo" has just left the building. Is it coming back? Um, not in the "forseeable" future. I think part of this is me being picky and critical about what I'm creating. Part of it is the family schedule. I've thought about it for a while now, and slept on it for more than a few nights, and I think I know it's what's best for me and my family. Will I ever go back to designing? I'm not sure. I think only time can tell! In the meantime I just need to return to the "basics" of digital scrapbooking. I haven't made a layout for my kids books for a long time, and it's just time to rediscover some of the excitement I had for digital scrapbooking back when I started! I'm looking forward to that!

The worst part about retiring - missing working with my CT and the other designers and Sugar Babes at Sweet Shoppe. I've been fortunate to be surrounded by some awesome supportive people, and I hope we will all stay in touch! Maybe I'll be just "around" to chat some more now and that would be nice!

I haven't decided if reducing my "computer commitments" means that I'll not be blogging anymore. Maybe with less on my plate, I'll feel more like keeping this blog up to date. So I'll make that decision down the road.

Oh, I'm leaving with something that Arissa said that totally cracked me up this week. She says to me "Is gooder a word?". I said "No - you say better". She looks up at me and smiles and says "Yeah, you are right, "better" sounds "gooder". Then she laughed. :)

Summer, Glorious Summer

I do love summer. I kind of think of it like the "weekend" of the whole year.

We've been busy, but good. We go the kids passes to the local amusement park (Lagoon for you Utah readers). It's been fun to drop in a lot this year. We like to go in the evenings when it isn't so warm and a little less busy. Lagoon has this new ride called "Wicked"... you can see some photos of it here. The hill on it goes STRAIGHT UP and then STRAIGHT DOWN. It's an awesome ride! Anyway, we've all been on it and we loved it, but Rees is way to short to meet the height requirement. But he really really wants to go. He's one brave three year old (well brave with roller coasters and not so brave with swim lessons)! So we told him he has to eat lots of "healthy food" to grow bigger and then he'll be able to go on Wicked someday. So now whenever he goes to eat he says "Is this healthy food?". It cracks me up!

We went to a family reunion up in Idaho at a hot springs resort called "Nat Soo Pah" (kind of by Twin Falls). It was fun - we were there for like 3 days camping, and we had a good time!

Sharing really quick these photos I took of the kids at my grandmas 80th birthday party.





We went waterskiing last weekend and my kids got stuck out on the resevoir with my uncle and my cousin in the boat when the battery died. This wouldn't have been a big deal, but a lovely storm decided to come up right then, and there were white caps on the water, and lightning . It made for quite the interesting 45 minutes until another boat rescued them and got them safely back to shore. Didn't phase either of them one bit though... that was good!

I've read some good books lately. I just finished "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" and now I'm reading "Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons". I would recommend either of them! Oh, looking forward to Harry Potter coming out next week as well! :)

Speaking of Harry Potter - we saw the new movie last weekend and I thought it was pretty good. It's always so fun to see the special effects and the people they cast for some of these roles.

OK, if I keep up with my current "update the blog schedule", I'll be talking to you again sometime around the middle of August... lol! :)

Later!

Sweet Summertime!

Just popping in to do a super quick update (yes, I am still out here!). We've been having a great summer. So busy and fun, but great!

In the last couple of weeks we went to Yellowstone Park. We've started taking Swimming Lessons (I ambitiously signed Rees up for LEVEL 1, which didn't go so great... lol! He pretty much got demoted to the "mom and tots" class and so now every morning Mom, Arissa and Rees all have swimming lessons... lol!) But we are enjoying it!

Arissa had a dance recital (I think that was since I last updated), we've been to several "summer kids movies", a story time event at the Fire Station (Rees loved that!), a fun "Free Fishing Event" last weekend, an arts festival (where we bought two hanging hammocks which I love!). It's been so fun! I love Summer time!

This weekend we have my grandma's 80th Birthday part that we are going to, and we'll be doing some celebrating for Fathers Day as well! Should be fun, fun!

If you can't tell... summer seems to be the time I spend more away from the computer, and away from the house. So, it may be a big longer between updates, but I'm still here, and just playing!

Leaving with a few photos that I found on Arissa's camera. Totally made me laugh!

I have no explanation for this one. He'll just "love this one" when he's older!



Here's a picture Arissa took of all the Webkinz pets in the house. (She loves her Webkinz - but I have to admit that only two of them are hers!). Oh, and if your kids are way into Webkinz, I wouldn't recommend buying them the new Webkinz Trading Cards. They are 3.00 a pack , and all that is in them are like 5 or 6 cards that are for a game. The problem is you have to collect at least 50 cards to be able to play the game... lol! So we have like 1/10th of the game with one pack of trading cards. I'm so not buying them ten more packs at 3.00 a piece to be able to "play the webkinz trading cards game". lol! And they do get "virtual trading cards" for their pets, but honestly... they are pretty lame too! Arissa got a virtual "webkinz trading cards desk" when she put in her code online, but really, for 3.00 I was hoping for something a little funner than 1/10th of a game. Oh well!




And finally a picture of Rees' Webkinz, "Froggy" wearing Arissa's sparkling high heels. I guess Froggy likes to cross dress on occassion... lol!

*** This ipost is 90% a new product announcment... lol!

Which really, I try not to do all that much... but every once in a while, it's just gotta be done! :)

Here's the scoop on my new fun "In the Lines" product! :)

You know when you go to recolor an element in photoshop and your entire element becomes monochromatic - like the entire thing is now "blue or shades of blue". Well "In the lines" takes elements and separates them into predetermined selections. So when you want to recolor the element... all you have to do is load up the selection, recolor that just that part!

It makes recoloring items super simple and precise when you want more than one color. Now you can recolor items to match kits, and take two different colors from that kit to work with!




The "In the Lines" ONLY works in Photoshop (not Photoshop Elements - sorry!) but if you like these buttons and ribbons and want them without the predone selections you can buy the companion product "Just the pngs". Which is the 9 elements you see below!




Hey I wanted to let you all know that as always if you have any issues with these files or need some questions answered - I'm here for you... but I'll be out of town for a few days this week... so if it takes a day or two for me to email you back... I will get to you! My email is ange (dot) barton (at) gmail (dot) com!


Oh and Mary Ann... if you are reading this... I don't have your email... lol! But super cool that your son took French from my SIL... lol! Small world! :)

And now two tags from Ginger and Eva... the same tag too! Lol! :)

First, my 5 favorite things:

It's hard to say these are my actual FAVORITES... but lets just say they are things I enjoy.

1 - The internet. (What would we ever do without it!)
2 - Mizithra cheese spaghetti at The Old Spaghetti factory!
3 - Vacations - love to travel
4 - Good music
5 - Geocaching... lol! :)

Later!

Why I haven't updated this blog for a few days!

Let me just explain this in pictures. We've been busy. Good but busy! :)

I gave my Mother in Law a princess purse for her birthday and I like the way the inserts turned out.. so I'm posting them... lol! :)


Rees and I went on a field trip with Arissa's class. Needless to say I will NEVER be taking him along on a field trip again - it was a nightmare... lol! (That so could be it's own separate post - but I'll refrain!) But we did lots of fun things, including learning about "Old Ephraim" the bear (I threw this picture in for all my fellow Cache Valley girls!)



Rees graduated from Preschool. Arissa finishes up school this week too... we are so excited!


My mother in law retired from her job as the school secretary at Wasatch Elementary School and we went to a retirement open house for her.


This is a picture of her (on the right) and my Sister in Law Janiece (on the left) at the party.



I snapped a good picture of Rees while we were there... yeah! :)



Here are some photos from a hike we went on (yes, to find a geocache... lol!) This photo was actually taken at the END of the hike (I look so lovely... lol!). It was a great hike, along some beatuiful cliffs!



Here's a picture of the log book of the geocache we found. We were the FIRST people to find it (which in goecaching is really really cool... lol!) We were super happy!



A cool tree we saw on the hike that had a hole right through the middle of it!



See, the cliffs... the trail went up the canyon, along some beautiful cliffs and then back down the canyon... so pretty!



One day we went to the park and I snapped a few photos that I like! :)




Here's how Arissa's teachers door turned out (for teacher appreciation week). It was fun for me to help with this (lol!) We had each of the kids write things in the petals (like their favorite book they read that year, etc.). I was happy with how it turned out.



We cooked up some ribs... lol! :)




Rees and I went to a story time at the train depot. It's really hard to get a good shot of your child watching the huge train go by when you are this close and there's the fence factor going on... but anyway...



Oh, I have more pictures too that aren't even downloaded from my camera yet... lol! Specifically "Day out with Thomas" pictures from last weekend... that was fun fun! :)

I'll share those later, but for now I just wanted to post this quick pictoral update and wish you all a happy "Short week"! :) Oh, and a happy beginning of summer!

Never thought I'd say this...

but I kept Arissa home from school yesterday because of ... seasonal allergies. Really, I mean, isn't that just CRAZY!

Here's the story... lol! We ended up going geocaching over the weekend and on Sunday night we found ourselves in a field of tall grass. We should have known better than to let her go there, but none of us were thinking. After about two minutes the itchy eyes started up, etc. and we got her out of there quick, but before we could drive back to grandmas house (we were nearby grandmas), her right eye had swollen a lot. She wanted to rub it so bad, and she was trying so hard not to. So, we get her back to my Mother in Law's house... get her in the bathtub to wash her hair, etc. Got her on some pajamas and got some Benadryl in her - and that helped. She fell asleep on the way home, but Sunday night she had an awful night. Just restless and sneezing. It was crazy! She woke up on Monday and said "I can't go to school like this". Her eye was still red and itchy so we went to the doctor. Ugh. I really just never thought her allergies would be THIS bad! The doctor gave us some samples and wrote her a prescription for an eye drop that I found out at the pharmacy cost 76.00. Needless to say, I thought we'd wait on the eye drops. Crazy!! But today she is back and school and doing "better" although still kind of battling the whole allergy attack. We're going to have to watch her close this summer.

Mothers Day was nice. One of my favorite parts was Rees giving everyone hugs goodbye at his Grandmas house. He gave his grandma a hug and said "Happy Mothers Day". Then Grandpa got a hug and a "Happy Mothers Day". All the aunts, uncles, cousins... everyone was wished a "Happy Mothers Day". Cracked me up!

Oh, on Saturday we went to a geocaching event with some other geocachers. It was interesting. A wide range and variety of people there. Younger families, older retired people, etc. It was fun to meet some other people who like to cache too! And it cracked me up that many of them had their GPS units like hooked to their belts kind of like you would a cell phone... lol! You can only laugh about things like that if it's so totally something you would do yourself! :)

National Scrapbook Day... my recap

National Scrapbook Day weekend... ah, the shopping, the freebies. It's a glorious time to be a scrapbooker! :) lol!

I spent more money than I have in a while picking up some goodies from Funky Playground, Blue Flombingo, the Lily Pad, NDISB, some Michelle Pearson actions, and I think that' s all... lol! :) That's what Bryan gets for leaving me home all day alone by myself... in the midst of many sales... lol! :) Of course I snagged the Sweet Shoppe collab kit (which was so "scumdildilyumptious" just as it was named... lol!) too!

Oh, remember the kit for Miles a few weeks ago ... I finally made my "Pay it Forward". I used that exact kit and made a teacher appreciation scrapbook for Arissa's teacher. I'm giving it to her on Friday. I had photos of all the kids, and I used them to make a quick book for her. I hope she likes it. I have the page of Arissa I can post.. um, next time... lol!

Speaking of "teacher appreciation" week... we had to decorate the door for the week, and that was pretty fun. I was happy to help out with that. I used some of my new "Illustrator skills" to draw some door accents this year, and they turned out pretty cute! I have photos, but they are gonna have to wait until the next blog post because they are still in my camera. (This is becoming a theme I think!)

Oh, and I wanted to just say that I got my PRINTED issue of Scrapbook Dimensions (Hybrid Scrapbook magazine) and let met tell you... it is AWESOME! :) If you haven't subscribed, do so now! :) I loved it... even the weight of the paper it's printed on is like "so nice". It feels more "book like" than magazine like. Love love loved it! :)