Maya Road and Me

early mornings

So I must confess to being a late night owl. But with 2 babies that is when I can get a lot of stuff done. Deb and I work on products, chat with our production people. I find the middle of the night is when my best ideas come!  It has gotten a wee bit harder with another baby in the fold but we are adjusting.

I hung out with my family a lot this weekend- but how can I resist when I have this:

 

and this:

to look forward to? I also got to spend some time with DH, play a couple of soccer games and work on a set of stamps I am really excited about!

I have also been working on having our first every Maya Road Chat/Crop/Challenge. I prepared a couple of tutorials which I will share during the chat - it includes these cool tags I made:

And I found this resource which is pretty cool if you have school aged kiddos - you can print out handwriting worksheets to whatever words you want your kiddo to write! It is also pretty cool if you want to print some cute lettering for your scrapbooks.

Check out Noah learning to write his name here:

giving back

so i have talked about before my family's committment to the operation christmas child shoe box drive for samaritian's purse. it is very easy for us to take things for granted here in the US even during the hard times. there are moments when you look around and think, " how come that person has so much more than me? it isn't fair." but working on these boxes every year and also on other projects every year, i hope to remind myself and my family and teach noah that you know what life isn't fair but it is up to you to make it better for you and those around you.

we have been collecting things for these shoe boxes for the last 10 months now - school supplies, toothbrushes, stickers, pencils, stuffed animals. they have all been sitting in my closet til this week (also thanks to laura, for sending me some toys for the boxes!) we went out last weekend and bought 20 plastic shoe boxes to fill. and this morning noah decided he wanted to help me out with getting all the things organized for the shoe boxes.

noah worked tiredlessly beside me for about an hour. i talked to him and explained to him what the boxes were for. once in a while, i would see him eye a toy and say "noah's toy". and then i would ask him if he wanted to keep it  - some of these toys he had not seen before and i was ok if he wanted to keep one; i would just get another one for the box later. noah would say "no" and then put the toy back in the box.

but then the real test of sharing came when i broke out the bag of 300 lollipops (or "suckers" as noah likes to call them). my sweet son can easily be bribed for a sucker. we had kept these suckers hidden from view for a long time because i knew he would be after them. i explained to him that we would be putting at least 10 suckers each in a baggie and putting them in each box. i told him that some kiddos out there do not even get 1 sweet a year and that is why we wanted to put a little treat in there for them.

this would be the real test - would he hoard all the suckers? noah looked at the bag and then started counting out suckers " one, two, three, four..." and then he put them in a baggie. noah continued to count out suckers for each baggie. i didn't hear any whining about him needing one himself. after about 10 baggies though, he did pull a sucker out of the big bag and took a well deserved break. i swelled with pride at my son. he is learning what it is to share and i hope this follows him throughout his lifetime.

when we were done packing the 20 boxes, we found that we still had enough for 3 more shoe boxes. i dug out some of my running shoes' boxes from the closet and we filled those too. then noah dutifully stacked each of the totes up in 5 neat piles in our living room. we still need to label each box for a boy or girl and we are going to include a short letter from my family for each child who receives the box.

if you want to read about how these shoe boxes have touched different lives, check out the stories of the shoeboxes here.

testing 1.2.3.

so i wanted to share with you this video of noah doing some dance dance revolution - he is working on his moves!

well i am happy to report noah and i had a fabulous lunch today of wonton noodles (fresh) with some napa cabbage and some squid balls (think meat balls but made of squid).  he loved it all. in fact he had 2 bowls of it. i am really proud of noah for trying foods. he doesn't love everything but he will try everything once or twice or three times - he just might spit it out each time - LOL.

we are working hard on the rest of the warehouse sale orders and CHA-S stuff. there is still a lot to do but i think in about 2 weeks we might be able to share a peek. what do ya'll say about me sharing a peek here? if we hear enough consensus i might be able to convince the other MR partners to allow me to share a peek before the official peeks start...

also before i forget, have you checked out the scrapbook and cards today magazine blog? we love this magazine and the whole concept behind it. but they just started a new blog so check it out - we are giving away a MR prize pkg there too!

i don't think i will get to make dinner tonight but i already have dinner planned tomorrow!

today was the big day

so we celebrated noah's birthday today - a couple of weeks late due to my traveling but it was nice because we got to hang out with friends and babies we haven't seen in a while.

here is noah hard at play with dance dance revolution; i actually got some video of him doing a couple of dance steps on this machine. it was so cute but then again i am biased - LOL.

but it was so much fun as he got to climb, jump, run, dash and play play play for almost 2 hours.

and for those of you wondering about my cupcakes, i decided to go even simplier than the ones i had before.

the reason is that we had our virtual maya road warehouse sale announced this past thursday and the number of orders we received in 36 hours pretty much wiped us out of all the kits! we are going to be shipping kits all week this week to catch up (thank you all by the way for that). so it has been a couple of late late nights for us.

also the fact that CHA is around the corner doesn't help either (yikes). in the end, these are the cupcakes noah ended up with:

these were costco mega cupcakes that i decorated with some dinosaurs. seriously these are some of the most heavy weight (and yummy cupcakes) i have had in a long time - each cup cake was at least 4" across!

but in the end, i don't think noah seemed to mind at all. one of my commenters was right; i will save the complicated cakes for another year when noah will be old enough to remember. but for now, it seems he is really happy with these cupcakes

time does fly as my little boy is 2 now. i am so excited to see how much he is learning each day.

i hope everyone is having a great weekend!

yes it is 5 am and i cannot sleep

but guess what i got to do with noah yesterday?

yes, i am not embarassed to say i have the original big red machine.  i know a lot of people have upgraded to a electronic cutter of sorts but i still have this big red and some dies that go with it. so we are going to celebrate noah's birthday next week and i wanted to decorate his goodie bags with some dinosaurs to go with the dino theme. noah decided that he wanted to see what was going on and help so he kept saying "please, help" (well it was more like "peeeas halp").  i told him that he could help mommy only if he could sit really still on the chair and also if he only worked the machine with mommy's help.

and noah was thrilled with the dino cutting! he would have cut hundreds of them if i would have let him. we cut all the dinos out of self adhesive papers which made it easier to stick onto all the goodie bags. i still need to decide how ambitious i am going to be making a volcano cake for noah or if i will go for some more subtle dino cupcakes. depends how the week is going and how much time i have.

hope everyone is having an awesome weekend!

feels good to be home

you know it is sometimes the little things you miss about home. driving your own car. sleeping on your own pillow that you know is the right height for your neck. being able to do laundry rather than strategically figuring out what clothing you have left to wear rather than if that sweater you wore to a steak dinner will still smell like steak the next day and if you can wear it again. all the little things.

i have been spending a lot of TLC time with noah the last 48 hours. still getting work done but still chilling with my baby. it is hard to get a fine balance and often times people will ask how deb and i do it - one thing is that deb and i are very efficient people in terms of multi-tasking. i can be having an IM conversation, running an analysis in excel and still be able to review products. that is most of the time. and when i turn in for a long night's sleep, i sleep well. i am not a light sleeper. that is part of the trick of getting it all done.

i wanted to share with you this little heart i made - it is made from one of our heart coasters along with some of our wings stamps and rubons. really simple to do just stamp the wings, glitter them. find the perfect photo to cut out (i used a 2" x 3" one i have) and then add to the paper and attach rubons.

you are done!

i hope you are having a creative weekend. i am off to play some soccer tonight to get my energies out.

family

one of the best parts of our trip to NYC was the chance for noah to meet his cousins. there were a few of them who live in NY and they are the kiddos of my cousins.

the kiddos all range in age from like 8 - 14 and let me tell you noah put them through the paces! but all of them were so sweet with noah. noah definitely has started his terrible twos. he doesn't want to sit in a high chair anymore but he isn't calm enough yet to sit in a big boy chair alone. and the 3 hour chinese dinners are definitely NOT for him at this age.

noah is a kiddo who is not afraid to tell you what he is thinking/feeling even if it is in his toddler babble but he did great with his cousins! they played with him. they made sure he didn't walk up the stairs. they shared toys with him so he wouldn't be antsy in the car. they pushed him around in his stroller. they fed him. they held his had as we walked around the toy store. and he loved it.

there is a lot going on here at MR. oh yeah - make sure you sign up for our next consumer newsletter from our website. we have a giveaway that we will announce in our next newsletter so you don't want to miss out on! the newsletter will be going out during the first couple of days in june!

i am starting working on some CHA-S projects - perhaps i will share a small PEEK when i get back from australia! i am so looking forward to the classes i will be teaching there. i will also get a chance to catch up with some family i have there (cousins) and i can't wait!

hello dino world

a shot of the invites for noah's birthday - i have big big dreams of making him a fan-ta-bulous dino party complete with a dino pinata but i will settle for a day out with a couple of close friends with their kiddos that noah loves at a place they can run around and be crazy.

but i did manage these dino heads complete with chomping jaws - the party details will be on the tongues when you open them.

and i have plans for a fabulous dino volcano complete with dry ice "smoke" if i can arrange it. i can see the cake in my head already and i just need the time to do it.

did you notice that the "join us" are some maya road rubons? yup, can't escape an invite without at least a smidge of maya road.

this is what chillaxing is

so my son has TOTALLY become a little man - check this photo of him out from earlier this week:

when did my little baby get to be so big? he just tugs at my heart so much!he has really taken to this nick jr tv show called ni-hao kai-lan - it is a show which is similar in concept to dora but stars this little cartoon girl named "kai-lan" who teaches some chinese words.  i am really surprised because noah has picked up some chinse words from the show. even david has picked up some chinese.

so yesterday, lisa and i were down at the crafty scrapper teaching a class. i had so much fun. carolyn (the owner of the crafty scrapper) started showing me all these cool tools and things you could do with 10 seconds studio metal and i walked out of there having bought 2 bags of stuff. i bought metal, tools, molds and more. carolyn had told me it was perfect with our chipboard and once i got a chance to do a demo in person, oh boy was she right.

here is what i made this morning before church (seriously , i had this puppy done in like 20 mins)

seriously this is very cool stuff. i am thinking i will have to do some metal work on some maya road albums.

i also got a chance to play with a bit of luxe's new simply luxe line. and can i say WOW. i love it for a number of reasons:

1. the colors match all their old lines.

2. the papers have the office feel which i can't get enough of.

here is a small card i made for my mom using a leftover photo i had of her and noah. the paper, black stickers are all luxe.and the sweet thing is that we made a set of chipboard letters which the luxe letter stickers fit on perfectly (but i couldn't find them at 11 pm last night - my one sample set of those)

the sheer is one i had left over from deb's album. think again of the possibilities when you are creating. think about what an album can be and not what its name intended it for. that is what creativity is about.

remember, you still have 48 hours to get in on the kit giveaway below! so enjoy!

where are your peeps?

so we decided that noah this year would probably enjoy an egg hunt and there was one organized in our neighborhood. it was so exciting to see that noah "got it" when it came to the eggs!

here are some highlights from the egg hunt! noah wasn't really thrilled with the easter bunny but he loved all the other aspects of the hunt!

i also wanted to share this photo. noah found one of my inking tools in my chest of drawers. he is about 80% of the time good about staying out of my stuff. it is the other 20% of the time that make me watch him like a hawk. on this particular day, he was really thrilled with the tool and took it all around the house with him.

i have also been working on some of my australia classes - check out this cool sheer album i put together:

some cute papers from piggy tales along with some equally cool chipboard, sheers, felts and ribbons from maya road. i had lots of fun with this album!

tomorrow i will post the winner of last week's RAK! i want my two boys to pick the winner and one of them is already asleep for the night).

one last thing, i love that we go to a church here in DFW that is very creative in its delivery of its ministry. they inspire me every week with the message and how it is delivered. noah absolutely loves childrens' church. he doesn't even turn around to see us leave - he would rather be in the room with all the other kiddos. check out what they did with peeps to spread the word about our Easter services next week.