the girl who is a BAD GIRL!!!

Yup, ask anyone (especially my mom, lol!). But now it's official and comes with perks!

Yes, I successfully completed my semester at Bad Girls Academy and graduated Suma cum Laud. Translation: I WON TOP DESIGNER AT THE BAD GIRLS SITE!

Floored, shocked, amazed, how many other adjectives can I come up with? Astounded, excited, ecstatic....bring me a thesaurus, I could go on all day! This contest was so challenging and fun, and had some pretty tough competition too! Layouts like this, and this, and this just blew me away. (if you can't see these, that means you're not a bad girl! Sign up, this gallery is chocked full of eye candy and the kits are simply luscious.)

Wendy Rago--the owner and founder of Bad Girls--has such a talent for putting all of these goodies together (and is pretty sweet besides) so when she asked me to also join the Design Team I was over the moon! SO that means that not only do I get this prize package of goodies (try not to drool on your screens)


but I also will get a nice package every month to play with. There is always something super cool in the kits. October's kit has damask printed packing tape! Just imagine what you could do with that! If you want to see my entry in its entirety, go here.

My mother was super excited, my husband (who is amazingly supportive) was proud and da Jens are excited for me to because I promised to share my prize pack with them! (Ok, they're proud of me too!)

So all of this "Top Designer" stuff has me on a scrappy high--so much inspo everywhere. I found these sites today and could seriously spend all day just clicking link after link after link drooling over all the creativity. Unfortunately, my winning streak does not extend to the lottery. Nope, checked this morning and we still didn't win. A girl can dream, can't she?

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In other news:

My friends Holly Golightly and Jim Balent are in town this weekend for their annual Halloween Horror Nights trip. I love this couple! So sweet and approachable! I met them when I worked at the Hard Rock Hotel and have stayed in contact with them ever since. They are truly fun to hang out with and I have the biggest girl crush on Holly. She epitomizes my inner goth girl--the girl I would love to let out and play more often, but being Mommy gets in the way. So I'll live vicariously through her and enjoy it.

And a couple pics of Mr. Ian to liven your day. One of our favorite places to grab a quick dinner is Firehouse Subs. We get something that isn't deep fried and the boys get fireman hats! So everyone wins! My BIL is a firefighter, so my nephew has a multitude of firefighter themed apparel. I recently got a box of hand-me-downs for the boys and now we have more firefighter pj's than you can shake a stick at! (Although I don't know why you'd want to shake a stick at them, I'm just saying we have more than you could) So, of course, I had to take a pic of Mr. Shy being all cute and excited with his firefighter hat and pj's.

Ian is relishing his role as bigger brother (Matthew is the big brother, Ian the bigger, Zack the biggest). He has always been very caring and nurturing and loves to help out. He's adorable with Eli, but quite frankly, just plain bossy to Matthew and worships Zack. It's interesting to see the family dynamic change over the years. Two years ago, Matt and Ian were inseparable, now Matthew is the odd man out and has been usurped by the baby besides. I remind myself of this constantly as he is definitely acting out these days. I guess I've been lucky--I didn't have to deal with the "No!" phase coming from my kid with the older too.

This too will pass.

Next weekend is definitely our annual trip to the pumpkin patch. One of my favorite photo ops of the year! So be prepared to be inundated with pictures next week!

And lastly, my mind is currently racing with ribbon ideas. Why? Because that's the next challenge in Last Scrapper Standing. Yep, I made it through to round three and am super stoked!

I have an idea, but, of course, none of my expansive (and frequently unused) ribbon supply fits my vision. So I'm going to try to sneak over to Michaels this evening and get some cool trim. I'll let you know what I come up with!

Happy Scrappy!