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(warning: long post with lots of pictures)
This morning, I woke up feeling like I had just ran a marathon. No joke either; I’m totally sore from the weekend. These past couple of days have been incredibly tiring, but definitely worth it.
With the short amount of time that we had to tidy up the place, Gloria and I did a fabulous job (well, at least I think so). 
We built a mantle from scratch all by ourselves, and we got tons of compliments on it over the weekend. We also finished putting in all of the baseboards and painting the rest of the house. Phew! Talk about hard work! On top of all of the handy work, there was a lot of tidying up to do. I’d say that in the time we had to get everything ready for the housewarming, we did an excellent job.
So… this past year, our house looked something like this (with a lot more stuff cluttered all over the house):
This is why I've been so busy.
The walls used to be covered with RED wood panels. Yes, we tore these off ourselves.
Check out this mess! ...and you wondered why we were always busy?!
Here's the dining room when we moved in (minus the wood paneling, of course).
…and taken about a month or so ago:
We are still looking for something to put on our walls. Any ideas? ...and yes, we installed the lights ourselves. It was such a pain in the *$&*@#!$#.
This was before we built our much loved mantle. I can't wait until Christmastime now!
Below are some pictures from our “Home Sweet Home” themed housewarming. Definitely different from when we first moved, don’t you think?! It was tons of HARD work to remodel our “fixer upper” home, but it’s even more reason to LOVE our place.
These are the cute favors I made for our guests. Do you like the Nikki Sivils paper?!
A "home SWEET home" will always have sweet goodies for their wonderful guests!
Flowers made a great addition to our newly made mantle.
Aren't these two adorable?! I love their "cheeeeese" faces.
I'm glad that my sewn up seat covers were a hit; Anna and Sean seemed to have enjoyed them.
These are my amazing and beautiful parents; aren't they cute together?!
Hilo kept trying to "kiss" Monica. The dogs loved them.
Scott and Dad enjoying the Sunday weather.
After a filling lunch, Ryan and Erica wanted to go into a food coma! 
Playing a round of Partini was fun. ("I don't...")
I think this might have been before BOUNCERS, lol!
On top of a housewarming party, we also wanted to celebrate Ryan's birthday! SURPRISE birthday cake time!
SURPRISE! "Happy birthdaa...." Yeah, so we all tried to sing.
After a game of Partini, we brought out Cranium. Don't ask what they are doing!?
Boys vs. Girls -- Obviously, the girls won because we're creative and know how to spell backwards!
All in all, with good food, a couple glasses of wine and mojitos, and GREAT company, I’d say the party was a success. I am so glad that people enjoyed coming over and hanging out in our FINALLY finished home sweet home.
Now, time for the scrappity scrap stuff!
TAAFOMFT‘s new challenge is up. This time you get to scrap about your favorite food. No twists or turns involved. You just have to scrap about your favorite food! Yummy stuff, right?! The fellow DT girls are so amazingly talented; make sure to check out what they created for this challenge. If you get hungry reading about our favorite foods, don’t blame me because I totally warned you. Here’s my layout about cupcakes:
Pink Sketches has a new sketch up for the week. Head on over to check it out! …and if you’re feeling inspired, create a layout using the sketch and share it with us. I had a ton of fun working on the following layout because Sophia was over when I scrapped this one.
The September kit from Kraft Girl Kits is one of those “gotta haves”! Isn’t it flippin’ cute?! I love the back to school colors in this one, but you can definitely use it to scrap almost anything. I don’t have any children, but I was able to crank out a good handful of layouts using this awesome compilation of products! Check out what I created with this kit:
Fun stuff, right?! I’m pretty sure that this one is gonna be a hit, so make sure you grab one before its too late. Lastly, tune in for more projects created using the September Kraft Girl Kit later this week!
Okay folks, I’m off to get some sleep. I’m overly exhausted.
Hugs,
sarah.
Thank you to all who came to spend the day with us over the weekend. Thank you to all who chipped in. Lastly, thank you to everyone who has helped us get to where we are today. We really, really appreciate all of the help.
There is now a sneak peek of the September Kraft Girl Kit! You guys are really going to love it. Check out some of the goodies in this one:
…and here’s some sneak peeks of some of my layouts with this kit:
Looks like such a fun kit, right?! I can’t wait to share all of the layouts I’ve created with this one!
Earlier this week, Sophia came to hang out with us over at our place, and we had a blast. She came along to run errands with me, and I even managed to take her to one of my local scrapbook stores! Boy, did she have fun in there, hehe! She stayed the night, and well, we scrapped. We actually got a ton of scrapping done! …and get this, she even made me a layout?! Seriously, isn’t that so sweet of her?!
Check out the mess we made! It actually looks pretty clean in this picture.
…and here’s the layout she kindly made for me:
How sweet of Sophia to make this for me!
I finally got my hands on the new Sassafras Lass lines, and I had to just use it up! Aren’t they cute?!
…and here’s a sneak of my Pink Sketches layout for the week. Let’s just say it has a lot of Sassafras Lass in it!
Okay, that’s all I have for now.
Hugs to all,
Sarah.
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Maui and Hilo, here. We just wanted to whine about how Gloria groomed us, and how Mommy decided to put us in the tub! ARGH! We hate when we look like this:
GRRRRRRR...!
Can you please tell them to lay off because we like being shaggy?! Woof! …and while you’re at it, can you tell them to buy us more rubber Chuck-it balls! Woof!
High paws,
Maui and Hilo.
Good grief! I’ve had such an exhausting, but fun weekend. …and although it’s only Monday, I still have to get TONS done in the next few days.
On Saturday, I had the opportunity to finally meet one of the fellow Pink Sketches‘ gals. Sophia and her husband Dave are visiting San Francisco for the week, so we decided to meet up! I promised her that I would show her around some parts of the city. We had a long, but fun and exciting day exploring the city and its surrounding areas!
She told me that she always sees cupcake pictures on my blog, so I promised her that I would take her to eat some cupcakes. How can that not be fun, right?!
Sophia surely loved those cupcakes!
…and what better place to take another fellow scrapper?! Well, duh… a scrapbook store, of course! She went scrapbook happy in Scrapbook Territory — so happy that adding her tab to my account at that store bumped me up to a “Frequent Buyer”. Thanks, Sophia, for the 5% of all purchases!
After that, we just roamed around the city, and I tried showing her the beauty of San Francisco on a foggy day.
First stop for the day was Ocean Beach. This was Hilo’s first time playing in sand, and he LOVED it! He was going crazy running around like a little hooligan. …and of course, Maui enjoyed playing with him!
"Check me out, Mommy! I'm Super Dog!"
Maui: "Want to play tag?" Hilo: "Obviously I'm going to out run you!"
She got the complete NorCal beach experience -- FREEZING cold!
Next, we stopped by the Legion of Honor, which showcases ancient and European art. It’s definitely a site to see. I especially love the Rodin sculpture remake; it’s absolutely beautiful.
Both of us are trying to stay warm!
I hope to see Rodin's real art one day!
We drove to Golden Gate to check it out, but it was such a foggy day. You could not see the bridge in its entirety, so we headed to Coit Tower. This is one of my favorite places in the city because I love the view. While hanging out for a short visit to Coit Tower, Maui and Hilo were being “pup-lebrities”. Tourists were shooting photos of them left and right, and I needed them to sit and “pose”. They loved all of the free scratches!
"Cheeeeeeeeeese!!! Now for the treats?!"
Here's Coit Tower on a semi-foggy day.
The Palace of Fine Arts was definitely a place I had to show her. I love the architecture of this building; it’s absolutely magnificent. Maui and Hilo loved this stop because they wanted to chase the ducks and swans in the water.
I love this photo!! We're both going to have scrap this one!
Next stop was the beautiful Victorian houses of San Francisco, “The Painted Ladies”.
Weeeee! More pictures for us to scrap!
This reminds me of a parent trying to get their kids to look at the camera! haha.
Obviously, the pose better with me!
Lastly, we drove up and down the steep hills of San Francisco, and we made sure to drive them down the famous “Crooked Street”, Lombard.
It was definitely a tiring day, but it was a lot of fun showing friends around the city. Hopefully, they thought it was just as fun.
I can’t wait until tomorrow because we’re going to get our scrap on. Yeehaw!
Oh, and before I forget… I wanted to share my latest layout. This is the second layout I created for Lydia. I hope she likes it. I used the latest sketch over at Pink Sketches. I thought this was a unique sketch, but it was definitely fun to play around with. Head on over, and scrap a layout or two using this week’s sketch!
Hope you all have a wonderful week ahead of you.
Hugs,
PS: “When you’re hot, you’re hot”.
Have you ever fallen asleep and someone played a prank on you? Well, it’s happened to me a bunch of times. Today, however, Gloria decided to have some fun when I took a nap. I took her prank with a grain of salt, and I busted up laughing when I checked my email and found these pictures:
"Let's go! We've got to conquer the summit!"
"Quickly, troops! Shell awake at any moment!"
Can you believe this?! Gloria really got me this time!
"The summit is ours!"
Okay, so seriously… isn’t that funny?! I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw this in my email. I thought it was a pretty creative prank; I think hanging out with me makes her more and more creative everyday. Just kidding! LOL!
I finished some layouts today. Wahoo, go me! My good bloggin’ friend, Lydia, asked if I wanted to exchange photos to scrap, and I was so delighted. Here’s one of the layouts I made for her (the other layout is my upcoming Pink Sketches layout, so I’ll have to share that once it is posted):
Hope you like it, Lydia, because I loved the layouts you made for me.
I decided to play around with my Glimmer Mist collection today; my bottles were starting to get dusty. I definitely made a mess on my table, but I had a lot of fun doing it! …and I also decided to doodle on this one because I saw Bryn’s (Deana‘s daughter) beautiful layout with doodling. Thanks for the inspiration, Bryn!
…and here’s a layout that I made just for fun.
Oh, and this is just a reminder for everyone to head on over to These Are a Few of My Favorite Things! Scrap a layout about your favorite movie or movie quote, and make sure to share it with us; a $20 gift certificate to scrapbook.com is up for grabs! You have until Saturday, August 29th.
Last but not least…
We got so much done in the past few days!
This past Friday was my older brother’s birthday, so we drove up to spend some time with the family. We didn’t do anything too extravagant because he was working that day, so we had a small little birthday dinner for him. Let’s just say that a little drink here and there can definitely go a long away.
It was a 45 minute wait to be seated, so we kept ourselves busy...
...by taking random pictures!
To kill time waiting for a table, we all went to Borders. They caught me reading this, haha!
Here's their first drink of the night!
Scott's birthday cake had 28 candles!
Sean jumped into the picture.
All in all, it was a fun night. I was seriously amused at making Dwight’s head bobble around, haha. Gloria and I picked this up for Scott in NYC when we were out there visiting (we thought it would be one of his birthday gifts since he’s an avid Office watcher):
The Dwight Bobblehead - Doesn't just looking at it make you want to laugh?!
Now, for the good stuff — scrapping updates! I finally visited all of the stores participating in the Sizzlin’ Summer Paperchase! Phew! We drove here and there, and it seems like EVERYWHERE in Northern California. …and let me just tell you that some of these stores are seriously in the middle of NOWHEREVILLE!
I’ve decided that my favorite participating scrapping stores were Scrapper’s Depot in Napa and Scrapbook Territory in Berkeley. No, I don’t just like the Napa store because of all of the wine tasting in the area; that’s just an extra incentive. The Berkeley store is a favorite because they are totally dog friendly!
Maui and Hilo don't seem to be too interested in Glimmer Mist! LOL! They wanted to sniff all of the racks filled with supplies!
"Do we get treats in this store just like in the boutiques?!"
They met a new friend - one of the employee's dogs! Cute, huh?!
Yesterday, the girls over at These Are a Few of My Favorite Things notified me that I was picked to be on the Catwalk over at Scrap in Style TV. How flippin’ cool is that?! She is definitely so sweet to pick my layout!
Wahoooo!!! Pretty cool, huh?!
I promised awhile back that I was going to share the super simple invitation I created for the housewarming. I used some of Nikki Sivils’ papers. With a busy schedule, I wanted to keep it simple and minimal, so this is what I came up with:
I love this line of paper! Isn't it cute?!
…and for those of you who love to read up on the updates of the pooches, I just wanted to share that they are both doing very well. However, today Hilo just went through surgery. The poor puppy has been resting (and crying) all day.
He is now stuck with the "cone of shame". Poor, boy. 
At least he's comfortable with the blanket Mommy made for him.
Lastly, the randomly chosen winner to the one year anniversary RAK is… Calia!
Sarah – I love your work and I’m so glad I was introduced to your blog/etsy items! I’m usually a stalker! LOL I love reading your blog and what’s going on with ya and maui! eheheh ^_^
Comment by Calia August 15, 2009 @ 8:40 am
That’s it for now!
Hugs,
sarah.
PS: My, oh my! You crack me up!
