More with the new lens and WINNER!

Ok, first things first (cause I know this part is more exciting to you!), the WINNER of my Mother's Day give away was #56 - which means SHER, it's YOU!

Sher said...

Happy Mothers Day !
Looking forward to seeing lots of great pics taken with your new lens. Enjoy!

5/10/2009 7:32 PM

Email me at kelly.goree@gmail.com to claim your prize!

I had tons of fun getting to know my new lens yesterday. I have to say, it's a bit different working with a fixed focus and getting to know it's focal distance, but oh, wow - the clarity and depth of field this lens produces? I can see me falling in love soon! Tell me what you think. These photos of my Turner and his army men were my first practice. To tell you how great the depth of field is, let me say that T's face was DIRECTLY behind those men - no more than a few inches. Unreal, I think!




See what I mean? Falling in love!

Before I head out for the day, I had to tell you about one my favorite gifts from my children. I want to make sure to get it down here so I don't let this memory get away from me. While I was opening the sweet handmade gifts from my boys, my oldest tucked in one of his hard-earned dollars with the card he had made for me (complete with a picture of the entire family he drew!). I looked at him in shock asking why he had given me a $1 when had had already made me such a beautiful present. He looked at me and smiled and told me it was for a McDonald's diet coke! I about died. Does my kid know me or what? Hee! I am truly one blessed mama!

Happy Monday, all!
xoxo,
k.

HAPPY MAMA'S DAY!

******CONTEST NOW CLOSED! THANK YOU! WINNER ANNOUNCED ABOVE!*********


Happy Mother's Day to all my friends and special mothers out there! It's quite a sisterhood and honor we share and I hope your day is as beautiful and blessed as you all are!

This mother's day has been a wonderful one. My boys woke me with hugs and kisses (the best part as far as I'm concerned) and homemade powered donuts. They were each so proud to present me with their gifts...a flower from Turner, a place mat and coupons for kisses from Carson and a beautiful little dish towel from Ethan. It was so sweet to see their shining excited faces all full of love for me. My husband spoiled me, too. I received a beautiful silver and turquoise bracelet which I was not expecting (he was over the moon he could finally surprise me!) and a portrait lens (Canon 50mm f1.8) that was recommended to me by Doris Sander (thanks Doris!). I absolutely love them both (the first pic with the lens is shown on my peonies above! Not the best photo, but AMAZING depth of field!!) and feel so completely blessed and spoiled.

And because of that, I'm feeling the need to do a little giveaway and spoil one of you. I've got a collection of fun scrappy stuff here that is in need of a good home. Just leave me a comment sometime today meaning by 11:59pm eastern - (it's going to be a quick one, folks!) - and I'll get a package out to you tomorrow!

Have a fantastic day!
xoxo,
k.

WINNER!!!

Good morning, all!!

Sorry I'm late with posting the winner of the stamp giveaway, but please, let me do it now!

The Random Generator picked number:

Which means that APRIL - you're the LUCKY WINNER!!! YAY! Please email me at kelly.goree@gmail.com to claim your prize! :)


And while we're on the subject of winners, I am still waiting to hear from DANICA, my winner of the Petals kit from Coodinates Collections! I have tried to email you, but it's not attached to your profile. I want to make sure you get your prize! I'll forward your info on to Jamie as soon as I get it!

Happy Friday, all!

xoxo,
k.

It was a great night!

Last night was a great night! I just love nights like that! It started with a yummy (if I do say so myself!) dinner of spicy sausage quesadillas (my tribute to Cinco de Mayo!) and then we went outside for a few minutes to enjoy our first rain-free evening in close to a week.

Our neighbor, Joe, and his son had their go-cart out and they were kind enough to give each of my boys a ride around the block. Do you think they enjoyed it?! ha! I'm going to go out on a limb and say "yes!"
After that, Ethan and his dad played a little Nerf football while T rode his bike all in their way and my wee man (who is NOT so wee anymore!) played with his new Hot Wheels car. OH...and I took pictures of it all just in case anyone had any doubt as to what I was doing! ;))

We were just about to head inside for the night to finish homework and hit the showers when THIS happened.

And who could go inside then?!


A perfect ending to a great evening! Thank you, Mr. Good Humor Man!

And don't forget to enter to win the awesome BasicGrey Lime Rickey stamps I'm giving away in the post below! You must leave a comment ON THAT POST! to be entered to win!

Happy Hump Day, all!
xoxo,
k.

Happy Cinco de Mayo! (and FREE STUFF!)

***********CONTEST NOW CLOSED! THANK YOU!***********
She lives, she lives! I feel like I've been buried under so many things going on that I've hardly come up for air...or the Derby or National Scrapbooking Day (NSD)! What is wrong with me? Well I tell you, I was crazy busy teaching classes with my friend Becky Fleck at the Scrapbook Expo in Santa Clara! For all of you who came out to join us, thank you so much! We really enjoyed having you and hope you loved your projects!

But since I missed NSD and it's already Cinco de Mayo, I thought I'd do a little giveaway to celebrate BOTH in one crazy post! I am giving away all three sets of BasicGrey stamps from the Lime Rickey line (including those stinkin' cute birds!) to one lucky winner! All you have to do is leave me a little note telling me what you did for NSD or how you're planning on celebrating Cinco de Mayo and you'll be entered to win! I'll leave this up just until tomorrow, May 6th at 11:59 pm eastern so hurry, hurry!

And in celebration of a little scrapping (and trying to be AHEAD for Mother's Day!), our BasicGrey newsletter will hit your in box today and here are a couple of my pages featured within. The first is for the intro section on Mother's Day and features Wisteria. As crazy as my boys can make me, their hugs are by far some of the best parts of being the mama!


Supplies: BasicGrey Wisteria Collection Pack, chip sticker shapes, element stickers, and Piper milk chocolate Micro Chip Sticker ABC's
Other: cardstock, chalk ink, brown journaling pen

And one more...this one is based on the monthly sketch by the incredible Becky Fleck and features Lime Rickey. Lime Rickey is the newest release for us at BasicGrey and is hitting your stores NOW! Be sure to get yourself some of it - it's so fun, bright and colorful - perfect for pages like this! (And I have to tell you, my son wasn't thrilled with me at this title! ha! But I tell him all about truth in scrapbooking ;)) This is my Ethan giving me a few jumping shots at our last photo shoot! Jumping ability set aside, he's a cutie anyway!


Supplies: BasicGrey Lime Rickey Collection Pack, brads
Other: cardstock, chalk ink, black journaling pen, circle punch, anywhere punch
(The anywhere punch is what I used to do the jumping path. It was a lot of fun!)

I also wanted to say a huge THANK YOU to my friend Lisa Dickinson for contributing to the sketch portion of our newletter this month. She rocked her sketch and I loved having her be a part!

So that's it from me today! More to come soon (I think! :)) Have a wonderful Cinco de Mayo and don't forget to comment to win!

***********CONTEST NOW CLOSED! THANK YOU!***********

xoxo,
k.

Roooooooaaaaaar!

Happy End of the Weekend, all!

It's been a crazy busy one here for me and my crew - from soccer games, to Balloon Race attempts, to the Zoo to playing in the park - which is why I haven't been around much. I have tons (and tons) of photos to share of everything, but I couldn't wait to put these out there...

ROOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRR!


I love love loveeeeee these photos! For the first time ever, my boys (the littles, at least) agreed to have their faces painted. Turner decided on a tiger and because he did, well, Carson did, too. They only had 1/2 their faces done but we did opposite sides so when you put them together, we had an entire tiger! Ha!


It was so much fun and as you can tell, they loved it! I'll be back tomorrow with more!

Hope your weekend was just as fantastic!

xoxo,
k.

What my life has been consumed with lately...

Oh yes, it's soccer season!
Soccer practice, soccer games and then, more soccer! Wheee!
I have to admit I do so love being a soccer mom. It was one of the things I was most excited about when I finally figured out I was going to be a mom to only boys. Sadly, my older two don't have much interest in soccer, so it's all on my baby. He, though, loves soccer. Loves. And while he's really not the greatest at it, his enthusiasm just kills me!

I love that they end every practice with a "hands in" and a "go team". Too stinking cute and I think Carson's favorite part beyond snack. (C is the one in the white holding his blue ball.)

The Team:

Unfortunately the weather has been ugly on game days so we've only managed to get one in so far, but it was a riot. It's not soccer, it's herd ball at this age. Everyone rushes to get the ball at once, fighting each other for it even when you're on the same team. Makes for many a hilarious moment I tell you. C is learning to be agressive while out there (last season he always ran about 5 yards behind) so sometimes you get something that looks like this...

And then at others...something more like this....(hee)

And then when he plays goalie, this...

(He looks so excited, doesn't he?!) He hasn't quite figured out that at goalie you can use your hands and that often it's preferable so well, he gets scored on as much as he doesn't. So um, he doesn't play goalie often, but he's darn cute when he does.
Just a few more...
And that tongue? Yep, it's out every time he's concentrating on something really hard - from soccer, to homework, to anything he's serious about! Too cute. I'll miss it when it's gone!

Ok, I'm off to get some work done before all the after school activities and then more soccer tonight (a make-up game for one of the yucky days we'd had last week). It's Derby Time here in Kentucky so that always makes things extra exciting and extra busy. Stay tuned in the next few days for Balloon Race pictures! (My all time favorite Derby event ever!)

Have a great Grey Thursday!
xoxo,
k.

Balloon Entertaining

As always I'm a day late and a dollar short, but I had to share a few pictures with you all from this weekend. Beyond the usual soccer craziness (which I will share a bit later), we also attended a birthday party for Turner's Cub Scout friend, Jacob. Because Jacob has a couple of siblings, all siblings were invited and it ended up being this large, crazy party of all ages. I truly think it was one of the most fun children's parties I've ever been to. And yes, *I* went too...and so did my husband. Because once you see these pictures, you'll know why we couldn't tear ourselves away!

Not only did Jacob's mom have two huge inflatables for bouncing, a ginormous cake, pinata and huge goodie bags, but she also hired a balloon twister. Or as he likes to describe himself... a balloon ENTERTAINER! And truly that's a much more appropriate title.

Turner actually found him first and asked if he could have a balloon. So Gilbert (the entertainer) asks him if he wants to be surprised or if he knows what he might want. Turner is far from decisive so he asks to be surprised. And this is what he got....
ROOOOOOOOOOARRRRRR!!

Um, wait...do alligators actually roar? Anyhow, it was an alligator and sooooo stinkin' cool! Turner loved it.

Next up were a couple of other kids from Cub Scouts - the ball with a bat thing Jackson is wearing turned out to be the hit of the party, but I thought the Japanese bug thing-y was pretty darn cool, too! Gilbert managed to get a balloon made for each of the kids at the party in the just-over-an-hour he was there which was unreal to me! He was a blowing and twisting crazy man. (You can see him working in the background of the bug picture!)

The last two to get their balloons were Ethan and Carson. While Ethan asked to be surprised, Carson had a definite idea of what he wanted (I think anyone who knows him could guess that that was!). Gilbert suprised Ethan with this gigantic octopus (soooo cool!) and then Carson got this....HOLY BANANAS! It was huge! SO huge it was hard to get a picture of it so you could get some perspective! I made Carson take it off so I could show the monkey, but it was actually a hat...and hysterical when on. Check this out! ha!

Gilbert earned every penny he made, but he was worth every penny too, especially when I found out he uses his balloon and magic show money to fund mission trips. How incredible. If anyone in our area is interested in having Gilbert at a party or event of yours, just let me know and I can pass along his info. He comes with fantastic references - and is amazingly talented as you can see! :)
Off to get some work done on this gorgeous Wednesday! Happy Hump Day, all! I hope it's a beautiful one!

xoxo,
k.

ready, set....GO!

Ok, I had the best of intentions, really I did.

I totally was going to start out the week by telling you guys all about my weekend full of soccer games, birthday parties and play dates, but...well...it's Monday. And it's raining. Hard. So Mondays and I just aren't friends today and I haven't found the energy to get myself together. So I'm going to take the easy way out until at least tomorrow and instead post what is probably my "favorite mini album of all time."

I did this project for CHA Winter and it features BasicGrey's step album and the newest release, Lime Rickey! I adore how all these bright colors worked so well with the photos without being too overwhelming, even given the bold patterns.

Here is the cover:
I used just a regular punch to get that circle notch on the upper right - it made it a bit rough, but I just sanded it down and it worked beautifully.

This is the intro page telling about Carson's first bike ride:


And so it begins...with Daddy's help:

It didn't take long for him to get the hang of it all. He's one determined little man!


And check it out - he already has it. I swear it was just the space of 15 or 20 minutes total! Unreal!

So very proud of himself! (We were too!)

Supplies:
BasicGrey Lime Rickey collection, Lime Rickey chip sticker shapes, Blush alpha stickers, Lime Rickey Olio Rub-ons, Lime Rickey brads, Euphoria Chipboard alphas (Other: Chalk inks, black journaling pen, white cardstock)

I hope you all have a wonderful...and relaxed...Monday!

xoxo,
k.

Got Sketch?

Happy Tax Day, all!

Ok, so that's a huge oxymoron for a lot of us - me included! - but after today, it's all over, right? So it's time to have fun and move on to something a little more exciting!!

This month I had the honor of creating a layout based on this sketch by the awesomely talented Valerie Salmon for Got Sketch? - her fantastic sketch blog.

It's no secret that I adore sketches and Valerie is amazing at them! If you need proof at how fantastic she is, it's Got Sketch?'s 2nd Birthday and I am so honored to have been asked to be a part of the celebration along with these other incredible designers!

I hope you'll visit the site HERE to see the beautiful layouts everyone did with this sketch. (Mine, along with the supply list, is below.) The prize sponsor for this week's contest is The Scarlet Lime, Christy Tomlinson's wonderful kit club, so you know you want to be a part of that! And if that's not enough, Valerie is giving a lucky winner a LAYOUT PAGE designed by her just for them! I love that idea so much that I'm tempted to ask Valerie if I can be in the running just to get a page by her for myself! ;)

Have a fantastic hump day!
xoxo,
k.

Supplies: My Mind's Eye PP, Bazzill Cardstock, Heidi Swapp Acrylic Paint & Chipboard Heart, Uniball Signo Pen (White), Pentel Pen (black), Colorbox (Clearsnap) Chalk inks, WeRMemory Keepers 3-D sticker, Fiskars Punch (Threading Water), Scenic Route Chipboard Shapes, BasicGrey chipboard alphas, EK Success Alpha stickers, American Crafts chipboard word bubble

Realizing a Dream

As a parent I feel I have an awesome responsibility to encourage my children and build up their dreams in them as much as I possibly can. To this end, my husband and I are always finding motivational and inspirational things to show the boys so they can see that anything is possible if you never give up and keep on believing in your dream. Right now, Ethan's dream is to play NFL football...with the Green Bay Packers (don't gag on your coffee this morning, Becks!) and, well, while it might not be the most realistic of dreams, if it's something he wants I am 110% behind him. But he is also learning just how hard you have to for work it. (Just ask him about his first practice as quarterback and he'll tell you!)

So when I came across this clip from Britain's Got Talent (another Simon Cowell program) on Kirsty Wiseman's blog yesterday, I immediately called Ethan and my husband in my office to watch it. I was moved to tears because THIS was someone who never gave up and because of that was finally seeing her dream realized....after she had it in her heart to do since she was 12. She's now 47. Please click the link below to see this amazing story (YouTube removed the embedding priviledge).

Britain's Got Talent - Susan Boyle

Susan Boyle, you inspire me! The world is your stage now! :)

Have a wonderful Tuesday!
xoxo,
k.

Back to Life, Back to Reality

It's back to normal around here as the kiddos have returned to school after Spring Break. With just a yucky start to the week - weather-wise - it ended up being a spectacular Easter. It was sunny and in the low to mid 60's and truly beautiful.

The Easter Bunny was good to the boys (he even included a new Wii game in their baskets) and the grandparents were even better! We spent a wonderful afternoon at my parents' house eating dinner and hunting eggs. The boys were master hunters this year, especially Turner - he was on a mission and even found the coveted "golden egg", a prize worth a nice $5 bill! He was so very proud!





This year was the first year we were joined by these two little beauties.

Recently adopted into our family, the girls are just two and one and ohhhhh so cute! It was a ball having such wee ones around, and girl wee ones at that! Loved it! And the littlest, Miss Lynda, was ever so slightly infatuated with Ethan. I love these shots showing her as she managed to work her way in front of him on the stairs then proceeded to flirt as only a one-year-old can! The look on her face when she finally got E to look her way was priceless!


I hope your Easter (or Passover) was just as wonderful.

xoxo,
k.