Our weekend trip to Tombstone, AZ

Last weekend, we took a trip to Tombstone, AZ. Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and the shootout at the OK Corral all happened here. It was fun to just look around and take pictures. I was blown away by the craftsmanship inside some of these buildings, you just don't see that everyday.
After we left Tombstone, Aaron took B&P (I stayed behind with H) to the Kartchner Caverns that are about 30 miles away. They all said how cool it was, we'll have to go back when Heston gets bigger. It was nice to get away and just spend some time together as a family. Before we know it, our kids will be teenagers and they'll want nothing to do with us! :)

Elvis' birthday bash

My grandma and Uncle TR were in the Vernal Express a few weeks ago. The care center celebrated Elvis' birthday with dancing, music and peanut butter and banana sandwiches (I guess they were Elvis' favorite). There are 2 things Grandma lives for: dancing and music. I know she had a blast, even in her wheelchair.

She's been through so much since August. I was really worried about her being at the care center and not at her house. When I saw her over Thanksgiving, I felt so much better. The staff there are taking such good care of her. I can honestly say she has always been one of my closest friends. I spent my entire childhood following her around and watching baseball games together.

This picture was taken on my 5th birthday. It's not the best quality (it's a scanned Polaroid) but it's priceless to me. Ma, Grandma, Mom and me. Grandma has always had this killer blonde afro. Back in my dancing days when I would perform, I could always see her out in the audience :)

Monday

Wow, it has been awesome weather here the past couple of days! It got up to 80 today, it was a perfect day to spend some time at the park. The kids go back to school tomorrow and I've got to get some stuff done. We're taking a little trip this weekend down to Tombstone and Tucson. I'm looking forward to it.
I'm sorry I'm so boring today!
The kids wore me out :)

Thursday

It's been a pretty good week so far. I've been able to catch up on some much needed housework and projects. I needed to do a little touch up paint in the living room. I had to dig the paint can out of the garage (not the easiest thing) and I got out my brush and went to town. I've been putting it off for a while, it felt good to get it done. I left to run errands and when I came back, I saw that the paint does not match! I don't know if being out in the hot garage has changed the color or what but, dang! So now I've created another project for myself...yipee.

On a positive note, I found a really cool thing that's helped me get a little more organized. It's a set of household planner templates. There's 60 different lists that you can print out or customize. I didn't want to pay $10 for them but they were on sale for $4 over the holidays. I'm sure they'll go on sale again. Here's a link:
Andrea's Household Planner Templates

digital scrapbooking

You are all too good to me! :) Thank you for the compliments.
I wish there was a way I could sit down at the computer with you (like Karin did with me, thanks again! You helped me so much) and go over just a few things step by step. I’ll do my best to share some things with you to get you started and share with you what works for me. You can always call me, too. I'll talk your ear off!

There’s so much to learn with digital scrapbooking and the possibilities are endless. It's easy to become overwhelmed, just take it one step at a time. Once you get a few of the basics down, you’ll be good to go.

The program I use is Adobe Photoshop Elements 6. You can do all kinds of stuff with this program. I’m still trying to find my way around but that’s the one I use.
There are some good tutorials on digital scrapbooking out there. The ones that have helped me the most have been by Sande Krieger on 2Peas in a bucket. She starts with the basics and then teaches different techniques from there. Here’s a link to Lesson 1: Getting started

I have all of my favorite digital scrapbooking sites bookmarked to the right. Almost all of these sites have sales on certain days and quarterly sales that offer 30-40% off. The great thing about digital is once you buy something, you can use it as many times as you want. If you need to get pages done quickly, templates are awesome! This is one of the first templates that I bought. I got it on sale for around $1.50 and I’ve used it several times. I didn’t change the template at all, I just put the pictures in and called it a day. This template is by Katie P. at Designer Digitals.I hope this is somewhat helpful. I’m no expert but it’s fun to find a new way to scrapbook and to preserve memories. I love the no mess factor and also the fact that you don’t have find places to store your stuff. It’s all there on the computer and if you have a laptop, you can do it anywhere! And the glorious Undo button…it's life changing I tell ya!
Let me know how it works out!

being Present

Aaron took B&P over to our friends house last night to watch the BCS championship game. Heston didn't get a nap and I knew he wouldn't last so he and I stayed home. He went to bed early and I got to sit down and do some digital scrapbooking. These are a couple I did last night and some I've been working on for the last little while. I cannot get enough of the vintage frames. I know I use them on every every page I do but I just love them! My goal for 2009 is to learn how to take better pictures. There's so much to learn but I'm looking forward to it.

Each year I chose a word to focus on.

My word for 2009 is PRESENT.

Being present in every moment and just soaking it all in.

TGIF, have a good weekend!

our New Years trip

After Christmas, we decided to take a little trip with the kids. We headed up north and stayed in Cottonwood and rode the Verde Canyon Railroad. The weather was nice and the kids thought the train was fun.
We spent New Years in Sedona and on our way home, we stopped in a little town outside of Cottonwood called Jerome. I loved the old buildings and houses, they have so much character.
The kids went back to school today and now I’ve got to get everyone back on a schedule.

our new Christmas tradition

I've been meaning to post this idea for a while now and I just didn't get around to it. I love Christmas advent calendars. I wanted to create one that would be meaningful, inexpensive and wouldn't take a lot of time. (I love to sew but I didn't want to get into a project right before Christmas)

So I searched online for some ideas and came across this idea from Martha Stewart. I changed some things here and there and I'm happy with the way it turned out.

I bought 12 pairs of baby Christmas socks, put numbers on them and hung them on a ribbon, that's it!

Aaron and I wrote things that we love about each of our kids. It worked out great because they each got 8 turns each so we had no fights there. We put all the little cards in a Christmas tin under our tree and I will put them in our Christmas journal to keep. You could put scriptures, stories, candy, activities for each day in December to do as a family...lots of ideas. You can do something different each year if you wanted to. I'm looking forward to this new Christmas tradition!

Materials I used:

-the numbers are digital brushes from Ali Edwards that you can find at designerdigitals.com.

-the ribbon is red and green polka dot May Arts ribbon

-I used those Contact hanger things from 3M so I wouldn't have nail holes

-I got the socks from Old Navy. They range in sizes from 6 months to 3-6 years. You could do a mix of kid and adult socks as well. Now that Christmas is over, you could score some good deals right now for next year.

-I thought about using mini clothespins to hang the socks but I just used some mini bulldog clips I already had. These are Tim Holtz ones I got at the scrapbook store but you can get these at Staples.

-I downloaded the "What I love about you" cards for free from Oprah.com. You could make your own in Photoshop as well, that would be really cute! I just stamped the B, P and H on there.

Merry Christmas!

Just want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!
(this picture is from last year)

Tuesday

So how’s everyone doing? It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. December gets a little crazy every year. Aaron has been in China on business and got home Sunday, I’m so happy to have him home. He brought us all back some goodies...the DVDs and knock-off designer purses are always a favorite!
The kids finished their soccer season and team parties up last week. I’m always happy when soccer season starts and I’m equally happy when the season ends. I found this gingerbread kit at Costco last week. The kids had a lot of fun decorating it (even though in the picture it looks like they're being tortured)We're looking forward to spending some time together as a family.

teacher gift idea

I was browsing all my favorite digital scrapbooking websites last night and came across a really cute Christmas gift idea for teachers. The great thing about it is you can personalize it with whatever you want and it doesn't cost a lot of money. (and come on, who doesn't love chocolate?! After dealing with our children 5 days a week, these nice people deserve a treat and then some)

You can download this for FREE here

One of B&P's favorite things to do at Christmas is to make their own handmade cards and letters for their teachers so we'll include those with the chocolate. I wonder if their teachers enjoy Diet Coke as much as I do...I need to look into that...

our Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving and I hope all of you did too! I did the same thing that I do every year, I ate way too much. We spent Thanksgiving at my brother’s house again this year. It wasn’t quite the same without Mike, Linda and Company (Linda is my mom’s older sister) but it was still good. My cousins and I could tell you stories about my relatives and our past Thanksgivings that would have you laughing and then asking, "Is that really true?"
When Jeff Foxworthy does his ‘You might be a redneck’ stand-up routine, everyone laughs because it’s funny. I laugh because I have relatives that are exactly like the people he talks about. Good times…

I posted some pictures this summer of the kids on my Dad’s tractor. He put the backhoe attachment on it and let B&P give it a try out in the garden. Braden LOVED it! He would dig the hole and then put the dirt back in and pack it down. That’s one of the things that I love about going home to Vernal. My kids get to experience and do things they don’t normally do. Paige and Heston found leaves in the back yard and enjoyed raking them up and jumping in them.

I know it's totally cheesy but I love the shape of this tree.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

stubborn..uh, I mean strong-willed...

You can ask any of my in-laws and they will tell you that the Hammond kids (all 8 of them) are very strong-willed individuals.
Heston is truly a Hammond in this respect. He has started talking a lot more in the last few months. However, he has refused to say his own name. We have tried to get him to say Heston, but then the strong-willed Hammond gene kicks in and he gives us this look like, ‘You ain’t gettin’ nothin’!’
Today, at 2 years and 3 months old, he finally broke down and said his name for the first time.

Today, I have hope for my stubborn, uh I mean, strong-willed Hammond child.

a fun Thanksgiving craft

Thanksgiving is right around the corner! I'm so ready for my favorite Thanksgiving dish, Frog Eye Salad. (It always tastes better when my Mom makes it :)

I wanted to share a fun craft that I’m working on for the big day. I got this idea from the November issue of Parents magazine.

Instructions:
-Cut a 1-inch sliver off the bottom of a 9-inch polystyrene ball. (I found an 8 inch one in the craft section at Walmart for around $8.)

-Wrap sphere neatly in thick dark-brown yarn, covering surface completely; knot on bottom.
-Make a 4-inch ball from light-brown yarn and attach to body with a wooden craft stick.
-Create simple facial features using felt: white circles (approximately the size of a quarter, with 1/8-inch pom-poms for pupils) for eyes, yellow triangles for the beak, and long red felt teardrops as the wattle. (I'm just using googly eyes and scraps that I have on hand)
-Cut feather shapes from colored craft paper (or old scrapbook paper you’re not using anymore)and bend in half lengthwise to create seam.
-Have the kids write or draw things that they are thankful for
-Glue wooden craft stick to the bottom third of the feather and insert in a fan shape on turkey body.

stepping out of my comfort zone

This last weekend, we attended our ward campout at the Peralta Trails just outside of Apache Junction. One of our bishopric members does team building stuff for a living. We camped at this place where he does his trainings.

When we woke up refreshed and ready to go on Saturday (can you sense the sarcasm? I don't enjoy sleeping in a tent but I was a good sport) we did a couple of the high rope activities. One of them involved a set of partners where each person walks into the middle of this rope and then they help each other to get to the other side, while being suspended 15 feet in the air. Aaron and I made it through that challenge. (The whole time I kept saying to the church folk, 'I'm trying really hard not to vocalize any profanities right now'...if they only knew how hard that is for me when I'm freaked out)

The other challenge involved us climbing to the top of a 25 foot pole and standing on top. Braden was fearless!

These are the Superstition Mountains. Living here, I have a greater appreciation for how beautiful the desert is.

I love this cactus. It was so tall and the way it leaned to one side like that...I've never seen that before. A tall cactus with bad posture...it's built like me :)

Veterans Day

This is the day each year that we have to reflect on the millions of Americans who have served our country. Usually on Veterans Day, the kids write papers about what this day means to them and they send drawings and essays to my Grandpa. This will be our 1st Veterans Day without him. I'm missing him, especially today.
I have so many favorite pictures however these two are very special to me.