The Banana Box Sale

We were excited to find out that one of the grocery stores in Greenville was having their banana box sale during our visit. The way this sale works is that shoppers can fill a cardboard banana box with as much food as they can fit, and the whole box of food (no matter what is in the box) costs $7.00. Dad, Nora, Jim, and I got up early on Saturday morning, and, armed with our banana boxes, we joined the crowd of waiting shoppers around the perimeter of the boxes and boxes of food.

At 9:00 AM, a whistle blew, and all the shoppers raced into the middle to start grabbing their items. Many of them had arrived early to strategically place themselves near items they wanted to grab.

The four of us were able to fill 2 boxes quite full, and we got a lot of good stuff! Dad and Nora arranged everything in the boxes so that we could fit as much as possible.

We loaded our boxes into the back of my dad's truck to take them home.

This was our portion of the food. We got lots of salad dressing, mayonnaise, mustard, and fruit roll-ups. We also got a bag of bread flour, some corn muffin mixes, soft taco shells, peanut butter, jelly, beef broth, crackers, and a few other odds and ends. We definitely got our money's worth and a little entertainment as well!

Some Scrapping

These pages are the last of the group that I made for the contest at Letsscrap. During the months of October and November, I made cards or pages using all of their sketches! It was a lot of scrapping, but I am glad that I did it. I had fun, and I was able to get caught up on my scrapping and use up some of my many scrapbook supplies.
This page is to document an almost nightly occurrence in our home - Drew and Jim on their "laptops." Jim likes to do the crossword puzzle on the computer each evening, and Drew likes to watch a Thomas DVD, so they sit together with their "computers" (Drew's is really a portable DVD player). These are some older pictures of Drew and our dog Pudge, who we had for the first year and a half of Drew's life.

I wanted to do this page to record Drew's love of his Thomas trains. He is collecting more and more trains and other Thomas stuff, and it keeps him SO busy!

This page is about the three homes I lived in as I was growing up. The first picture is of our house in Michigan, where we lived from the time that I was a baby until I was 5 years old. The second is the first house we lived in South Carolina. We lived there from the time that we first moved from Michigan until I was in eighth grade. The third was my home in high school and college. My parents lived there for several years after I graduated from college and moved to Michigan, and they have since bought a new home. I have wanted to do a page about my childhood homes for a while, and this sketch was perfect!

My scrapping will probably be slowing down a bit for the next month or two with Christmas and jury duties (Yes, I might be called for county duty soon too! I got the questionnaire in the mail last weekend.) I do have another page that I will share on Tuesday. :)

Crayon Roll-Up

I made this crayon roll-up for Drew this week, so that he can take his crayons with us when we go places. I followed this tutorial on the Fiskars website. We chose the Thomas fabric because Thomas is Drew's favorite!

This was a fairly easy project, and I think it is something that will come in handy.

And, of course, anything with Thomas is always popular with Drew!

A Whole Pile of Pages

I have a ton of scrapbook pages to share today. I am almost done with the challenge I've been working on, and I'm hoping to be officially done before Thanksgiving.
This first page is about our recent trip to the orchard. I asked for a sticker in the bakery, and I ended up using it as my title.
This layout is about my 30th birthday last fall. Nora was here, and she made me the beautiful and tasty cake.

This page was for a challenge about using one random picture. I reached into a big envelope of photos and pulled out this one. I had been wanting to scrap about my years as a teacher, and I have a ton of school scrap supplies left over from scrapping about my classes through the years, so it was perfect.

This layout is about Drew's Halloween party at the library.

I loved these pictures of Drew in the leaves, and I was excited to scrap them.

This is a layout about Drew playing at the park near my parents' house. These pictures are from our trip last Easter. Drew had had a very rough couple of days with a skinned up face and a burst eardrum, so it was so good to see him have a little fun at the park!

This layout is about Drew's trick-or-treating this Halloween at Zoo Boo and at Jim's Mom and sister's houses.

These pictures are some that Kristen took last Spring when she watched Drew for me one morning while I taught. I love the top one of Drew and Nathan!

This last page is one that I've been wanting to make for a while. Drew plays Peek-a-Boo in such a funny way (with his hands over his nose and mouth, instead of over his eyes), so I was glad to be able to get a few pictures to document this little quirk of his!

I hope this hasn't been scrapbook overload! I also have some pages from a mini album I'm making about our trip to Washington, DC, but I will wait and post the whole album when I get it done.

A Few Random Bits of Hawkins News

I wanted to share a few of the everyday happenings around our house recently. Drew has been very interested in trains for the past couple of months. He loves Thomas and enjoys playing with his growing collection of Thomas trains and watching his Thomas DVDs. The other day, I stepped out into the living room and found that Drew had taken all of his other little vehicles and stuck them together like he does with his trains. They made quite a long line across our living room! I've been scrapping a lot, and I will try to share some more layouts soon. I also subbed at our school yesterday and will be there again for three days this week, so that is keeping me busy. Jim is still working a lot since our November weather has been so nice. We are enjoying a Saturday with him today since he has the day off!
We also recently found a very good recipe for Cheeseburger Soup. Jim and I both really like it, and I've made it twice in the last few weeks!
We are looking at a busy next several weeks leading up to Christmas with my subbing, Thanksgiving, a trip to Greenville, Federal jury duty for me, and then the normal busy schedule of December and Christmas.
Hope you are all having a nice weekend!

Westview Orchard

Beth and I took the boys to Westview Orchard a few weeks ago. Due to our recent computer problems, I just found these pictures this weekend, so I am sharing the a little belatedly now.
Drew and Joseph had a great time climbing on the hay pyramid. We let them eat their doughnuts there.

Yum!

They also enjoyed riding the little metal tractors.

Drew couldn't reach the pedals while sitting on the seat, so he improvised.

There were several wooden vehicles to climb and ride.

These two Thomas fans gravitated to the big wooden train.

We rode out to the apple trees in a wagon. We didn't pick any.

We took advantage of the pumpkins and hay bales to take a few pictures. The boys were pretty tired by this point and weren't too interested in pictures.

The boys loved the animals. The goats were climbing everything!

A ponyDonkeys

We really enjoyed our afternoon at the orchard!

A Few More Scrapbook Pages

I've been scrapping and scrapping these last few weeks! I'm still trying to do as many pages as I can for the contest at Letsscrap
This first page is about the Tiger game we went to a few weeks ago.
I took these pictures last week when Mom was here. She brought Drew some puzzles, and when she gave him the first one, she asked if he was up for a challenge. He started calling his puzzles "challenges." In fact, we did a "challenge" together this morning!

I did this page with some of the pictures I took when we carved our pumpkin together a few weeks ago.

This is a page about our trip to the Toledo Zoo this past summer.

This page is about Drew's Easter Egg sidewalk chalks. He enjoyed drawing with them, but I think he liked organizing them in the carton even better!

This page is from our trip to St. Louis this past summer with my parents. We stopped to see the Arch on the way out of town.

You can click on these layouts to see them in better detail. I have about 20 more pages to finish this month to reach my goal, so I'll be back sharing more soon!

Fall Leaves

I took Drew to a little park near our house the other afternoon and was thrilled to see this little tree with beautiful bright yellow leaves. I took Drew over to it and took a few pictures of him as he played in the leaves.
Throwing leaves.

Rolling in the leaves.

Bending to pick up more leaves.

I'm glad we went there the day we did because now, just a week later, the trees are just about bare!