Wordless Wednesday–Ginger Loves

love my two ginger boys.

linking up here, here, here, here, here, and here.

A little something, something for you.

I’m going to give you a chance to get these five templates from me… for free.



Scratch your head, go ahead, and wonder, “But Trish…. all your templates are always free…” Yes, this is true, BUT this is the only chance for you to get any of those five. I packaged them up as a prize for a summer game for the Digital Scrapbooking board over on Justmommies, and since the summer is ending, I thought I’d pass them on to all of you now as well.

Here are my pages that they are based on:



Since there are five templates, there can be FIVE winners, and five ways to enter.
1. Comment on this post once for one entry.
2. Like the blog’s Facebook page, and comment here again saying you did for another entry.
3. Create a wall post on the Facebook page and then refer friends to it and have them say in your wall post that you sent them. Comment back here with a link to your post.
4. Tweet, Facebook, or blog about this. Comment back here with a link.
5. Download August’s free template and link me up to the page you made with it.
I’ll pick five random winners out of the comments.
Entries are due in by September 21st, Noon CST.

*Note, I do not sell my templates, nor do I want to, but I would appreciate credit when one of my templates is used. Just simply credit “Template by Templates by Trish.” Please do not create another template based on my own to give away or sell. Also, this blog is not purely about scrapbooking or my templates, it is just a part of what I blog about. All of my pages were created with products by other designers. To find out what was used on each page just simply click on the image of the page. Thank you. - Trish

Easy Not-So-Bland Chicken & Gravy

This is actually my grandmother’s recipe – before you go and start thinking I came up with it.

Yummm.

This is a simple, yet very yummy and not bland, recipe for making chicken and gravy in the crockpot and it takes literally 5 minutes to prepare.

Ingredients:

• 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 1 can chicken gravy
• 1 can cream of chicken soup
• 1/2 cup of water
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon rosemary
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

Directions:

• Combine everything except chicken in a small bowl (or in a 4 cup measuring cup if you’re like me).
• Pour half of mixture in crockpot.
• Add chicken.
• Pour other half on top of crockpot.
• Cook until chicken is done (low 6 hours, high 3 hours)

See. So simple, and so much more flavorful than the usual chicken and gravy that uses canned stuff for the gravy. And it is so easy. I didn’t even completely thaw out my chicken for it. I just grabbed my whole bag of chicken out of the freezer and threw it in the fridge over night, so everything was still half frozen.

And…

Yesterday we got in a new package of diapers from a good longtime friend from JustMommies. We now have a very modest and respectable little diaper stash going.

After the Games

The week before last I blogged about stressing about some digital scrapbooking competition I was participating in. Well, this past Saturday it officially and completely wrapped up and the winners were announced. No, I did not win anything, but that’s OK.

Some people got upset when the finalists, and then winners, were announced. Some felt they should have been picked, some felt other people should have been picked. Some, bless them, even felt a little sad for me for not getting picked. ((I love you all my friends, and thank you for your belief in my abilities.))

I had no issues with not getting picked. As I posted on Facebook when I saw who the finalists were…

“One tiny part of me is sad that none of my pages made it to the polls, but the overwhelming majority of me is just relieved to not have that to stress on anymore.’

And that’s still true and still my feelings.

More than anything else, I am just so happy for all my friends who did win. I am so proud of them all for getting in the polls. I’m glad that I got to know my partner, and fellow Polly, Christine more as we chatted about our entries. I really like most of my pages, though I will admit there are two I’m honestly not too crazy about. But that’s OK also. One of the great things about digital scrapbooking is being able to easily re-scrap pictures/events.

Here were my entries.


(Click images for the credits + Click here to see mine and Christine’s final page together)

To wrap this up, overall, I am so glad to have participated in this. Once I moved past the stress I had fun and enjoyed being pushed. I’ll be the first accept that I don’t follow directions well when it comes to creating my pages, so six challenges that basically all required following a set recipe drove me crazy and pushed me. I loved seeing how so many people could take those directions and create so many wonderful and unique pages out of them. It was just a great experience, and I’m so glad to have been a part of it.

no sleep till…

Night four of my plans for world domination through the torture of sleep deprivation. I must say I do think my plan is going precisely how I had imagined it. The dictator is allowing all night access to the boob, the butt tingle cream, and her hair. We have also achieved the walk-rock-bounce state. It goes nicely with the tingling butt. The dictator has declined to such a state that in moments of frustration she speaks in my native dialog. We must make note of this in case she is coming close to decoding our secret transmissions.

I fear the dictator may be coming back soon to check on me. Keep me abreast of all of your local acts of resistance.

Vive la révolution bébé!

Wordless Wednesday

Kind of.
I do say words in my video.

See that slight crazed look in my eye? Pretty sure that’s permanent now.

But here’s a little peace.

Which ended about three hours later when he woke up in a chatty mood yet again.
(linking up here, here, here, and here)

Also, don’t forget to go and grab August’s free template!

Just another cloth diaper post.

It really is addictive to blog about cloth, isn’t it? I never got before why the bloggers I follow who used cloth blogged about diapers so often, but I now totally get it. It’s like, you see how awesome they are, and you just feel compelled to share the wonderful news with everyone.

(Mason saying “good morning!” after waking from his morning nap)

I have two reasons to share a cloth post today.

The first, is well, um, ewwww. If reading about poop or pee squees you out feel free to skip.

Last night Mason went to bed early, about 6:30 early. I had just thrown all his dirty diapers – including cover – in the wash a little before. They were still washing and he was in the rare at home disposable. We’ve gone to cloth 100% at home, even nights, since he started sleeping through the night. Nights in disposables were making mornings filled with pee and poop. We found one of his fitteds with with a prefold under a Thirsties cover worked wonders and kept everything where it should be. Anyway, it wasn’t until I was going to bed that I realized that a. he was in a disposable and b. I never took the diapers out of the wash. I grabbed 2 disposables for night time changing (in hopes that I could change him without waking him) and prayed they would do.

One, he didn’t sleep. And two, the disposable were an epic fail.

He talked – very loudly – almost all night long. He woke not long after I got in bed so I moved him to the bed with me and prepared to nurse him back to sleep. (I changed him first – pee bomb #1) He just didn’t want to go back to sleep. He talked and talked and talked. And if we didn’t respond he talked louder and louder and louder until he was yelling – in a happy way mind you – and flailing about. At about 3 we gave up. We changed him again (disposable pee bomb #2 – because John never started the dryer like he said he would…) and just stuck him in his bed where he happily switched his attentions to the frog on the wall over his bed, not that we ended up getting much sleep that way either. At 7 John came in to wake me up since him and the boys were leaving. He looked in at Mason and said “Oh ****….” which Mason and his blankets and his bed were covered in. Mason apparently had pee bomb #3 AND a poopy blow out. His bed was covered in murky yellow liquid. It was gross. And took  f o r e v e r  to clean.

Moral of story – never let all diaper covers be wet in the wash at once, and if so, remember you have those busted and shot gdiaper covers you can put him in instead. (Which is what he went straight into once he was all bathed and clean and he napped in while his diapers finally went in the dryer.)

REASON #2 – In case you skipped the poop and pee reason.

A comparison of 48 hours of cloth to disposables. I showed the exact amount comparison, but don’t forget to mentally add 2-4 more disposable diapers for night time changes.

That’s diapers I don’t have to re-buy. Just for TWO days.

Back to School 2012!

I’ll post about their first day back after they get a chance to get home and tell me about it.

August Free Template

the free template for August.

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