This is SO COOL!

I stumbled across this website last night -- Magic Splash. You can change your photos from color to B&W with COLOR! I realize that my pictures aren't perfect, as I got a little sloppy with the mouse, and I don't know if I can erase my mistakes (takes practice!). It is SO COOL! It cost me only $14.95 to alter unlimited photos! The regular price is $19.95 -- don't know how long the $5 coupon is for. In the picture of Owen and the blue sock, -- Owen has one white sock on and one blue sock on. It was cute enough in color, but this makes the blue sock stand out even more!! Did I mention this is SO COOL?!



I have always wished I could do this, but the photo editing program I have is very limited. Now I won't need to spend a large amount of money on expensive PE programs! WOO-HOO!

blessings, joie

I found my song!

I have looked and looked on the internet to find the audio (or video) for this song! It is one of my absolute FAVORITE SONGS OF ALL, and it happens to be called Favorite Song of All! This should bring you directly to the audio of it.

A few scenes from life the last couple days...Jared on the chin-up bar they got for Christmas

Owen put on his underwear! Oops!

my little guy helping put dinner away

Larry the Cucumber (Veggie Tales) with Play-Doh hair
--kinda looks creepy!

I have to keep this post short (hah!), as I have not gotten the things done that I planned on doing today. My intentions are always noble and admirable, but then I end up checking on a blog or two and end up finding new blogs and the next thing you know, I'm calling myself a BLOG-AHOLIC! Yes, you read that right! "Oh, I'll just take a minute to check on so & so's blog"... then they have a link to another blog, and so it goes on and on! 99% of these people are scrapbookers, and I love to get inspiration and ideas from them.... It just takes up a lot of time! AND I never do anything with my inspiration. :o(

We've been house-bound so much lately. Either it's been cold, snowy, or ICY! Can't wait for SPRING!!

I have to start dinner. Aghh! Who needs dinner?!

blessings, joie

GLOBAL WARMING?

Good morning! It's beautiful outside but VERY cold! Now that we have a little snow for the boys to play in, it's too cold! But now my older two tell me they're going to brave the cold temps! (While Owen is napping, of course)

Got an order back from Winkflash, and again, I'm very happy! I ordered 8 x 10's for the first time, and the quality was great! They're only 1.99 each! I also ordered 5 x 7's for .29 each. I think shipping ended up being $1.88 or just a little over $2.00, I can't remember. That was with 90+ photos including 4 8 X 10's and 6 5 x 7's AND no tax. And I didn't have to go to a store to pick them up. It took a little longer than last time. I placed the order late Monday morning and got the order in Thursday's mail. It only took 1 day to get here, as I looked yesterday morning on the Winkflash website and it said "printing" and in the afternoon it said "shipped". I think last time, it was the next day or 2 days later from the day I ordered. NOT typical!

Thought I'd post a couple scrapbook pages for your viewing pleasure. On the first one, I love the Steelfish [stamps] font so much that I was willing to cut out my stamped image! Might not be worth all the work for more letters, however!

Owen DeFayette, Super Sleuth

new "big boy" underwear. It's been a long process!

Off to get Owen upstairs for naptime and then help Jared with his Social Studies before they go outside.

blessings, joie

p.s. comments are welcome!

POSITIVE AND ENCOURAGING MUSIC!

I prefer Southern Gospel, but the boys have been listening to a radio station for several months now that has FINALLY grown on me -- for the most part. It's called "Positive and Encouraging K-Love". K-Love is nationwide and has a place on their website where you can look up your local frequency. The frequency in this area is 94.5. Check out your area! If you are in need of prayer (and who isn't?), they also have a great feature on their website where you can ask for prayer. You fill out a form, PRIVATELY, and it goes to the pastors that are on staff. Another neat thing is they're COMMERCIAL FREE! You can listen on-line if you'd like to check it out! Many songs have blessed me and the boys. My favorite group is Phillips, Craig & Dean. I just love their harmony and their song writing! Check 'em out here!

blessings, joie

MOM'S BEST

I've been meaning to mention this cereal that we've discovered. It's from a small company in the Midwest called Mom's Best, and we get it at Walmart. It's tasty, ALL NATURAL, and super cheap! It's not listed as "organic", but there are many companies that don't want to deal with the red tape of "organic" or think that "organic" has lost credibility. I don't know how this company sees it. We get it pretty much all the time. We get Honey Nut Toasty O's (like Honey Nut Cheerios TM), a cereal like Lucky Charms TM, and a cereal like Frosted Mini Wheats TM -- only bigger. I was just reading on their website that they were in an oatmeal competition and won. It was in an Everyday with Rachel Ray magazine. We love their cold cereals! We haven't tried their oatmeal yet. If you click on the front of the box in this photo here , you'll see a list of additives that they DON'T use.

I did this scrapbook page a while ago, and just stumbled across the page tonight. I really enjoyed doing this. Check out Jared with the tape recorder and microphone!
Until next time...

blessings, joie

OVER THE RIVER & THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS...

...to grandmother's house we went! We're back from Jim's mom's house (150 mi. north). We surprised her for her birthday (which is tomorrow). Jim's brother and his wife had a lovely dinner in her honor last night. It was nice to be able to do that. I'm going to make this short, but I wanted to include a couple pictures.


blessings, joie

Great way to help our military men & women!

So many of us wonder how we can help our military men and women overseas. Here is a way that I learned about today from Campus Crusade for Christ's Military Ministry. It's the Rapid Deployment Kit. Including shipping and distribution costs, it takes just $3.25 to get each RDK into the hands of a service member. This includes a camouflage New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs, a 90-day devotional, and a Would You Like to Know God Personally? booklet that clearly and simply shares the Gospel. All the materials are packaged in a waterproof bag small enough to fit into a soldier's pocket.

"Despite talk of troop reductions, Campus Crusade for Christ's Military Ministry continues to receive requests for an average of 15,000 to 20,000 RDKs each month—many for young men and women straight out of basic training and heading into deployment."

What a great ministry for homeschool families and even schools!

Go to their website here to find out more information and how to give a gift to help pay for the shipping and distribution of this material!

God bless you as you seek to know God's will.

blessings, joie

Older Layouts

Here are some layouts that I did a couple years ago that I found in my photo file. I think my style has changed since then, BUT it doesn't really matter. The idea is getting pictures and their stories on a page (in a creative way or not!) All of these were taken with my old digital camera (pre-last May) so the colors aren't so great. We used to play Go Fish alot, so I thought I'd capture that on a page! Since I don't really like being in pictures, I thought that my hands shuffling the cards (which is part of the tradition of playing card games!) would be a fun addition to the page!

This is a fun idea -- documenting places that you go, so that you can look back in 20+ years and see what's changed. KMart -- now I remember that as a child. We used to go alot with my mother and grandmother. I remember Blue Light Specials!

I love this 2-page layout! It was from the summer before Owen was born. Jared was 5.5 and Nathan was 7.5 There were so many colors in the photos that I didn't need to use anything but white for a background! It was fun working with all these colors! The words "balloon" and "fest" were cut from leftover photos of balloons!


I have more, but I'll add them another time. Back to working on taxes! Ugghh! Until next time...

blessings, joie

FOUND THEM!

I found some more of the pictures that I was telling you about in my last post PLUS more! My friend sent me an email with some of these pictures. I just found them on a different website -- a health website, believe it or not!! This isn't the first time, there have been nature photos or links on this site. The Dr. loves incredible photography. Now this website has taken me to other nature websites. Check out these incredible pictures of snowflakes! And then here's another website called Liquid Sculpture. (What you see on his site are high-resolution images of liquids colliding with one another, captured with high-speed flash photography. The artist creates his range of shapes by varying the speed, position and size of the drops and controlling they fall along with the flash. Their simplicity and beauty are truly amazing.)

Today is Jared's birthday! I can't believe he's 9 already!!

Here's my next digital camera! It is said to be the best digital camera on the market. It's the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III with 21.1 megapixels! (here it is on Canon's website with a "suggested retail price" of $7,999 - yes, that's almost EIGHT thousand dollars! )

Hope you enjoy checking out these incredible photos! And now for some of my inferior photography, but priceless photos! First let me say that I took the photos of these pages quite a while ago -- before I realized that the cropping in my photo editing program didn't matter when I bring the photo into my blog. Perhaps there's a way, but right now I don't know how. SO you get more than the scrapbook page in the photo (background tablecloth or next layout). Sorry about that. If you don't already know, you can click on the photo and it will blow it up really BIG -- if you want to read any journaling or see any details.
Before you read the journaling on this page to the left, think PARTRIDGE FAMILY!

The page below is a different style for me, but I love the way it turned out. I love the photos!


Until next time...

blessings, joie

WILDLIFE PHOTOS

I was just looking at an email from a friend, and there were some incredible pictures of animals and rare shots. Here is the website that at least two were taken from: Focus Wildlife. I wish you could see the rest of the great photos from the email -- fun photos of animals. But at this point, I'm not sure how to get these to you... enjoy the website, however! There are also other photographic categories on the Focus Wildlife website -- night skies, landscapes, birds, wildlife, etc.

UPDATE: I found another website from another nature photographer, Miguel Lasa. These photos are beautiful!

blessings, joie

HAPPY WEDNESDAY!

The other day, Nathan made a bread recipe from Emeril's (kids' series) cookbook. He made the dough initially in the bread machine, and then finished it in regular bread pans. It was yummy! It's fun taking pictures and scrapbooking things like this!

I LOVE this scrapbook page. I might have posted it before; I don't remember. It was the first time I {deliberately} used a blurry photo. I've seen it done before, and here, it worked really well. So many times, if you see a scrapbook page with a picture of a kid or little one playing (or holding) a guitar, the caption or journaling always refers to being a rockstar! I see this as my son learning to play guitar -- for the Lord! NOT a rockstar wannabe! An electric guitar isn't only used for ROCK music. Watch a country band -- or even a {non rock} Contemporary Christian band!

Love these SIMPLE pages! This didn't require a lot of creativity, but I just love it! Maybe because it didn't wear me out, and I was still pleased with it! I love the dotted circle stamp from Inque Boutique. Speaking of Inque Boutique, their stamps are inexpensive, and they're great! I purchased a bunch of Inque Boutique stamps for $1.00 each. from ScrapSupply a while back.


Another simple page I love! I used metal letters for the first letters from Making Memories. See how the diamond pattern in the paper copies the pattern in the cone? I wouldn't generally use pink, but I thought that was clever!

This page is loud and obnoxious JUST like the faces! What more can I say?! It was fun to make.






Until next time...

blessings, joie

IT IS WELL...

...And then there's It is Well With My Soul sung by Guy Penrod and David Phelps. The video isn't great, but the audio is fine. It's from one of my favorite Gaither Homecomings -- in Israel.

My kids, like most kids, want everything -- every toy, every gadget. But then I find this, and it makes me smile: a makeshift tent made with a sheet, a kitchen chair, and push pins in the WALL! And this is what makes them happy! They've been playing under there for 4 days now! In this tent there's music (a cd player and cds); books (cookbooks and adventure stories); games (Checkers); and a business (an old fax machine that they use to "make phone calls"!)

Until next time...

blessings, joie

YOUR SWORD FIRST

I receive daily devotional emails from a ministry called Love Worth Finding, and sometimes the message strikes me more than others...

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:
After a splendid victory at sea, Lord Nelson confronted the French admiral who was surrendering. The admiral, dressed in all of his regalia, approached Nelson to surrender. With his sword swinging by his side, the admiral put out his hand to the British commander. Lord Nelson stepped back and said, “Your sword first.” There are a lot of people who think they can walk up and glad hand the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, “Your sword first.” Surrender first! Jesus is not an appeaser, and He will never make a truce with sin. Never! We have to abdicate the throne. We have to surrender.

I feel moved to share more songs that mean a lot to me in desperate times. They also mean a lot to me in quiet times of reflection. I will add them as they come up in my heart and memory. Here's one called The Voice of Truth by Casting Crowns. And here's another one that's long but incredibly moving. After Gloria Gaither speaks, Guy Penrod sings Then Came the Morning.

And now, on a lighter note, here are some pictures from last summer that hopefully will make

you smile. My boys are/were not the kind to get very muddy, so I got a kick out of this. (I'm sure some of you think it's nothing!) I'm not sure if I should use the title "Got Mud?" or maybe "Got Water (& soap)"!

Until next time...blessings, joie

~ENCOURAGING SONGS~

Today I'm reflecting on songs that have kept me afloat during difficult or sad times in my life. The first song that comes to mind is It Won't Rain Always. It helped me get through an 18-week miscarriage.

There's also a wonderful song that I recently posted called The God on the Mountain . It's a reminder that God is there for us in the good times AND the bad times.

There are so many more out there, but not all have videos or audio so that you can hear them.

Until next time...

blessings, joie

GOOD GUY

JOURNALING: Sometime last year Owen told me -- out of the blue -- "Uncle Tim's a good guy". I always remembered that. So when I asked him the other day why he had said it, he told me matter-of-factly "He loves me!"

I took this photo of my sister's family with Owen at Owen's birthday party last September. I like to experiment cropping photos down to only include 2 people or even one person. All I did was cropped everyone else out of the picture and got this great shot of Tim holding Owen!! Then I had it printed into a 4x6 print by winkflash. I LOVE digital photography!

I've been doing it -- cropping -- for a while, but I also read it on a scrapbooking website called Paper Clipping where the host suggests the same idea -- to crop out other people if you're looking for a nice picture of two family members who you might not have gotten so nice a picture of otherwise. (On Paper Clipping's website, if you clink on the above link, you'll have to scroll a little more than halfway down the page. She has an article about "Which Relationships are Missing from Your Scrapbooks?" from Nov. 21, 2007-you'll have to scroll down about 1/4 of the page.)

Until next time...

blessings, joie

VIRTUAL TOURS

This is pretty cool! I forgot how I found this -- oh yeah, it was the homeschool website a to z home's cool (see in column at right or click here). Here's a video from the Discovery Channel on How Bubble Gum is Made". It's so cool when you can take your family on a virtual tour to find out things like this! Okay, so bubble gum isn't so important, but it IS cool to see it and other candy being made! I remember Mr. Rogers used to do that! I always thought it was so neat to watch ANYTHING being made -- a stand-up bass, carousel horses, yo-yos, pencils, or toilets! Martha Stewart has done that in the past as well. I remember seeing a candy store make ribbon candy! That was a long time ago, and I don't know if she does that anymore. In doing a Google search, I also found this virtual tour of bubble gum being made. It's the same factory as the above link, but they'll show you how to make gum balls too! The screen that you look at is much smaller. Have fun with it anyway! Who knows, maybe I'll bring you more virtual tours! Until next time...

blessing, joie

HAPPY FRIDAY! (and first day of February)

This morning, as I was turning his calendar in his room from Jan. to Feb., I told Owen, who has been waiting patiently for his next birthday (in September), that in February we have 2 birthdays -- Jared's and Nana's. He asked if he could "sella-rate" them too! Pretty sure that includes getting presents! It's so hard not to giggle! (photo is from just after Christmas, when he was "counting" down the time to his birthday!)

Doing scrapbook pages is pretty slow going right now, so I thought I'd show you a few that I did a while ago.

Jared LOVES the rope swing, and I love to watch him! Loved working with the circles -- never did anything like this before. Yes, I know my ring is not even! I traced 2 plates, but one was off center! Oops! I like the look anyway! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the look of craft foam -- especially with letters. The letters are the Sizzlits Wet Paint font. It adds dimension, but it's not bulky!


The Almanzo Wilder farm -- he was Laura Ingalls Wilder's husband. His childhood home is in northern New York.


This past year wasn't easy for Nathan. Too in a hurry to grow up! I love serious-looking photos. In this photo, he was just watching something, and I loved the way he looked. I had no idea at the time how I'd use it if ever, but it turned out to be the perfect look for my journaling! MY TIP: Don't limit yourself to taking pictures of your kids smiling and posing. There are so many looks to capture! I scraplifted this page from Donna Downey in an issue of Simple Scrapbooks Magazine. Hers said, "TRUST in yourself". I made mine "TRUST in God" and used a Scripture verse! It's one of my all-time favorite pages.


Check out the doodly 'frame'! I saw this look on a digital scrapbook website and thought "how easy is that!" It was a little time consuming to cut around the bumps, but it was worth. I love the way it turned out!


Love this page! Super simple page, great photo, great friends!

That's all for now. I have more to share, but I'll wait until the next time I have nothing to post!

blessings, joie