Ragu, You Gu, We all Gu!!

I know, what the heck is she talking about!!??!?? Here comes another Elena comercial. So you may or may not know that I do not really cook. I have a wonderful husband that does that. I do clean though :)

One of the things I do know how to make is make lasagna. I know it sounds hard but it totally is not!

I do lots of short cuts:

1. recipe off the back of the pasta box so I dont have to find a cook book
2. Use the no boil pasta! Yes, I am not a cook. but it always comes out tasty and this last time, Jean-Claude said it was my best so far!
3. Use Ragu Pasta Sauce. I love all of the flavors especially garlicy mushroomy ones! They just came out with two new flavors of Ragú Old World Style® pasta sauce - Sweet Tomato Basil and Margherita. and I got to try them both courtesy of Mom Central . The sauces are all-natural red sauces and they contain more than a full serving of vegetables in every half-cup of sauce! Yummy and good for you! can't beat that!

I have learned alot of lessons making not so tasty lasagna. did you know you are supposed to cut up spinach before you put in it the dish? otherwise you end up with really long stringy hard to eat pieces in your pasta and hilarious yes, yummy, no.

And on and on goes the adventure I like to call my life :)

Who's busy?

ME ME ME ME ME ME!!


Busy lovin' life and being a happy people!!


Friday I went to the Prom :) Friends of Scott Prom that is, a wonderful charity event to give kids battleing cancer a venue to let loose and be kids! Here are me and my dates with the 200 goodie bags we decorated for these amazing kids. You can see more photos and read a little more on the SBR blog

Saturday I was at the Lucky 13 crop that Candice organized. There were a few last minute cancellations but we really enjoyed the 5 of us that could come. and then Donna was able to come for a bit and we had an impromptu photo session!

Go green class! Roses and Rosettes

More lovely roses from our backyard. I seriously love getting these. They just scream special :)

Anyway, tonight is the Friends of Scott Prom. Jennifer T and I going to help assemble the goodie bags and add our little decorated stars and hand them out. I am really looking forward to it. Here's a picture of the 200 rosettes that Dawn, Jessica P, and Jennifer T helped me sew, glitter and assemble. That was crazy but we are all experts now!

Jennifer's Go Green class was last night at Pink Pineapple and it was tons of fun! When I got there the little adorable pork chop, Matthew, came running up to me and gave me this adorable little gift! Its a head band made from a neck tie that Xaver, Jennifer's husband made! So seriously cute! And it matched my outfit perfectly. It had cute flowers and bling on it so you know it was custom made for me. The little pork chop also had one for Gloria, hers also custom made in orange. so so cute. Here we are with Jennifer showing off our cute hair accessories.

Let's just say real men know how to sew! And he can cook! he is starting his own BBQ catering company so keep an eye out for more info on that.

Here is a lovely picture of the bubbling blobs of paint that Jennifer squirted out for Gloria to use. You can add your own sound effects here.

And here is my caravan buddy Jessica and Krystie's daughter Aspen who was all tuckered out from being a kid I guess. Life must be hard when you are so little and so cute!

'Tis the Season!

I came home and these beautiful ginormous roses were on my desk. They are lovely and they smell amazing! A few years ago, Jean-Claude asked me what kind of flowers I wanted planted around the house. I told him I love honeysuckle and big super fragrant roses. So by the front door are the honeysuckle that welcome friends and when the season is right, I get surprise roses every few days. It makes me feel really special and reminds me how thoughtful my husband can be.

Today was Art Meet up at Jackie's newly remodeled home. I picked up Kat

and we were off for some female bonding!



Jackie's creative space is what used to be the master bedroom and it is awesome! We altered these really cute light switches. here is the one I did.

Everyone scavenged around Jackie's room and through her amazing "JUNQUE" to pick out pieces that spoke to them.

It's a testament to Jackies amazing collecting abilities that everyone's came out so supremely different!























check out this amazing old manequin with all the fun bling!
Yep, That's a horse in the bathtub!!

Thank you Jackie for a very fun meet up!

Ladies who lunch...

WHAT A PARTY!!

It was a really really great day today. I had a very awesome group of ladies over to my house for a class that included lunch prepared by moi and a handmade goody. I was worried becuase I am not a cook and i knew no one would tell me if the food was not good but then Jean-Claude came home and had some of the food and said it was really good so whew! I know he would tell me if it was yucky! :)

It was so nice to have this group that came with no strings attached, no itimidations, no judegments, and the only one putting pressure on me to do things well was me! I felt like I could

really be me AND IT WAS FABULOUS!! Sheila and Liz came and since they are both just as passionate about charity as I am, it was fun to talk about the events with them. And Danette, Dawn and Linda are all super supportive of SBR so they were able to jump right on board and Yuko actually brought a completed Volunteer Information Form and really wants to help! It was seriously so cool! My neighbor Rachel came by for a bit! It was a total surprise to find out I had a scrapbooker for a neighbor!

And award for farthest traveled goes to Anita and Yuko! They came down from Orange County to play with us! And they brought me the first 2 bags of food for the food drive! So cool! thanks so much ladies!

Oh how I love cute little piggies!!

Want one of these cute little baskets??

I just finished my little goodies for my class this Sunday. Each participant is getting this little basket that I altered. I may try to bake cookies to put inside but then again, I may just buy them :) I still have 3 seats if you can join! Scroll down a few posts for details.

Jennifer T knows how much I love cute little piggies!! Look at this adorable crocheted piggie she made for me. Complete with purple tutu. I absolutely love it!

I love it so much I took it to Cupcake Love in Solana Beach for a cupcake. This little cupcake store is pretty new and yum-a-licious! The owner Ilene was really nice and she said she wanted to donated a gift certificate to our next event! It was a nice little sweet treat to see Patty, Sandy, Kat and Dawn. I got to give Patty her very belated bday present which she said she loved :)

and look at this new technique I just discovered! I am going to claim it as my own invention but I am sure it was already invented :)

Diamond Dust, Alcohol ink - mix and voila! colored glass glitter. add a little or alot. create your own shade! It looks a lot more purple than in the picture. Oh what a happy people I am today!

Oh how I love cute little piggies!!

And my friend Jennifer T knows it!! Look at this adorable crocheted piggie she made for me. Complete with purple tutu. I absolutely love it!

2 things

First of all, I am ready to get my Royalty on the Road Tour going. Jennifer has been doing this with the Crown Book and Owl Book and has raised money for some great causes. Its been a huge success so I need to get my but in gear and get my tour started!

so I am happy to present "Mommy and Me Princess Tea Party" on the road with the Traveling Princess!

Join myself, a real princess, and other Scrapbook Royalty for a fun craft, storybook reading, and Royal Tea! I will post a photo of the craft project asap. I already have sign ups so I wanted to get the dates posted...

The project will be a crown variation of this cute wall hanging that Jennifer designed.




Cost $35 for a mother daughter duo and $20 for an additional child.


Scheduled Stops:

• May 17th 1pm-4pm at my house in Sorrento Valley
• June 27th 1pm-4pm at Pink Pineapple Scrapbooks in Vista

More info and dates on the way!

And as you may know I am on the Charity Fiskamittee for Fiskars and last month we collected blank handmade Mother's Day and Father's Day cards for the troops overseas to send home to their loved ones. We collected 696 cards! It was awesome. So many boxes were arriving it was hard to keep up! There are photo so on the SBR blog.

Our next efforts is a food drive. Here is a little logo I designed. Birgitte is working on getting the info on the SBR website but for now, mark your calendars, I am going to be at the San Diego Food Bank in Mira Mar to collect food on June 13th. The first 25 people that bring me a bag of food will get a really really awesome fairy fly by!


There is just so much going on all the time with the charity and it seems like i am getting at least a couple of calls or emails every week from major sponsors that want to support us. I just can't let SBR go. So I am going to do my best to keep it up and with your support I can do that! Thank you to all of my wonderful generous friends!
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Easter Anniversary.

It was weird to have our anniversary fall on Easter. That hasn't happened before :) So since we go to Bakersfield for Easter to celebrate with Jean-Claude's family, we went to Disneyland on Friday to do a pre-celebration. Most of you know I love Disney and when we got married I bought a tile to commemorate it. So each year, we "visit" it. Jean-Claude surprised me and booked us a room at the Grand Californian so we splurged and celebrated and had breakfast with Minnie and Friends in the park the next day!

I love to try the crafts in my Family Fun Magazine. I get two copies since Jean-Claude and I both have annual passes :) This month, I tried to make this cute chick in an egg diorama. It was easy but took forever to dry. I actually ended up doing my own less time consuming version as the book club make and take and then I spiced mine up a bit to put in Melanie's Basket. The other one I added a crystal chandelier and gave to my mother in law for easter. she loves my little handmade goodies!

Melanie and I thought it would be fun to do easter baskets for eachother. Since we dont have kids we get to be big kids together! We met yesterday to exchange baskets and boy was I surprised! The basket Melanie made me was so cute! wrapped in tulle and filled with candy and piggy surprises. She got me these little piggy bandaids from the Koren Market and I immediately had to put one on over my "fake boo boo" just because they super made me smile!

Sally's playground

I got to spend some time today with Sally, Georgia and Kathi. It was uplifiting and creatively inspiring. I am so glad to have friends like this. I only spent a couple of hours but it was so worth it. I got to see Sally's creative space which was awsome and meeting Kathi was a treat. What an amazing artist! AND I got to teach Sally and Georgia how to use the timer setting on their cameras :)

I did actually do a little creating. I worked on my ATCs for the Lucky 13 swap. I am so happy I found something to do with all these damn slide mounts I just had to have 5 years ago! I wraped them with chenille stems. Those are cupcake wrappers I layered with silk flowers and these awesome flat back pearls to make flowers. Then I painted and glittered some chipboard flourishes and crowns. Now to assemble...