Fun Photography study group Assignment

While visiting Barb's Blog she had a post about this photography group study she is participating in. I visited the links she had included and this one really looks like fun and such a great thing to encourage me to step out of my comfort zone and become more creative. This is the link to Barb's post:
http://scrappinbarb.typepad.com/funny_things/2010/01/photography-study-group.html

Soda Stream

http://www.sodastreamusa.com/Genesis-Machines-C30.aspx

Homeschooling for Preschool

I wanted to share this post for anyone looking for ideas on how to begin homeschooling there little ones. These are a few things that I found to be wonderful for homeschooling ages 2-4.

A great website for fun learning for ages 2 and up: http://www.starfall.com/

I highly recommend the entire Leapfrog Video series beginning with Letter Factory, then the Talking Words Factory. Megan knew the sound for every letter of the alphabet when she was 2 years old. Also the Talking Words Factory was excellent. These 2 videos together really paved the way for her reading success. The best $10 I've ever spent. If you have Netflix and would like to try them out before you buy they did carry them, I assume they still do. http://www.leapfrog.com/en/video/letter_factory.html

Another really great resource I found was Abeka's nursery curriculum. I did not buy the entire kit just the basic workbooks. When Megan was 2 I had her do the books for 2 year olds and when she was 3 she did the ones for 3 year olds. They were great! https://www.abeka.com/ABekaOnline/CatalogSearch.aspx

Also I read to her a lot. She loved the books from Before Five in a Row. Homeschool Share has the list of the books as well as some other Excellent resources. http://www.homeschoolshare.com/before_five_in_a_row_resources.php

Around 4:
Depending on the child, Bob Books are great for beginning to read. http://www.rainbowresource.com/search.php?sid=1264308319-1358196
For phonics the Explode the Code primers A, B,C and a must have: http://www.rainbowresource.com/prodlist.php?sid=1264308319-1358196&subject=5&category=823

For Megan I also began her in Saxon Math K at 4: http://www.rainbowresource.com/product/Math+K+Home+Study+Kit/018398/1264308319-1358196

Now please note none of this is written in stone. I believe all kids are ready at different ages for different things. If you try any of this and it's not working I say shelf it and try again later. Learning should be fun not a chore. I believe the goal is to spark there curiosity and encourage them to want to explore and learn more. I do understand some say to wait but in my personal experience with my 2 children I had greater success beginning earlier. Megan does not know any other way. She looks forward to learning and her school time each day. I wish I would have know all this when Tyler was a little guy.
If anyone would like to comment and leave other valuable resources, please feel free. Also if you have any questions feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer:)

Science Diet

In the past I have always fed my cats Science Diet, but then we got Hank and tried Purina and he preferred it over Iams so I thought the cats might also prefer Purina and gave it a try. Well they starved....Their bowl stayed empty and they begged the entire family for food so I discovered all food is not created equal. I think these guys are happy to have good food again.

On a side note: Pete chews into ALL bags. We have to hide his food and everything from him. He has chewed holes in his food bags, litter bags, treats, bacon bits, bags of candy, some scrapbook supplies I had. I've never had a cat like this but this is Pete's thing, his one and only fault. This time I caught him on camera!

Such a Beauty!

I found this on Ebay just now: http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-METAL-PORCH-GLIDER-LATTICE-SQUARES-NICE_W0QQitemZ150400525700QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item230491e584
And it's now placed on my wish list! I showed Todd and thought he would fall over dead. See he does not like Vintage unless of course it's an old hot rod. But as for me, there are things that the shear thought of them can bring tears and goosebumps to me. I am not a materialistic person in any way, for I know nothing lasts and we can not take it with us when we go. That being said these "Things" invoke such fond memories. Like this Old Metal Glider--it takes 25 years off of me in a flash. You see my Great-Grandma Truesdale lived across the street from us growing up and she had one and I Loved it. I can still feel the lumpy bumpy texture of it as my little brother and I would climb and play and glide on it. This is simply one of those happy THINGS. So to me this is beautiful! I wonder how high the bidding will go.....

I can really see this sitting out in my backyard with many beautiful colored flowers surrounding it, oh would that be simply lovely!

Our Christmas pictures 2009

Dry Erase Board Paint

Adding this to my wish list: http://www.ideapaint.com/site/ideapaint_home.html

Digi Scrap pages

I made this page using Creative Memories StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0. I LOVE this program after I discovered that it DOES work along with photoshop. I had been given some incorrect information from Creative Memories customer service--by the way I do not recommend calling CM's customer service. The wait time each time to speak with someone was between 20-50minutes and then receiving incorrect information. I actually discovered the right info from the 2 peas message board thank goodness because I almost tossed the program. This software makes Digital Scrapbooking so much Faster and easier even for those that know Photoshop!!!!

Positive story in the news-- "Help Portrait"

Well I NEVER get up early and turn on the TV but since I was awake coughing once again I came downstairs and turned on the TV; guess the Lord said April get up and get your tail down there:). Well Chanel 19 had a story about a man named Jeremy Cowart. Jeremy is a Nashville Photographer that began http://www.help-portrait.com/ This movement is to help the less fortunate during the holiday season. The idea is to get a group of photographers together to take portraits for those that Need them (single moms, families struggling to make ends meet, homeless, Cancer or sick patients, people in recovery, etc --you get the picture). The photographers get together at a set time during the holidays and the people come out and have there pictures taken for FREE including the printing that they get to take home with them. Listening to the Photographers and families speak just now really touched my heart, this is something I want to achieve in my personal photography--While I know I can not do this for 2009 I hope to be one of those photographers in the upcoming years. One guy on there this morning was in rehab for drugs and wanted a picture to give his mom for Christmas and to let her know he is turning his life around and means it. He said seeing the picture of himself Smiling helped him see himself in a more postitive light.Another families little boy was battling Cancer and she said the picture was so important to them because you never know when that could be the last picture you ever take (so very True)There were also homeless people on there and more. Oh and also people volunteered to do hair and makeup for them so this was the first time many of these people had ever seen themselves "beautiful"--they had tears. Is that not the sweetest thing!?!This is another link about it:http://donmilleris.com/2009/09/01/1260/And I am sure there are more.This is such a positivie thing that he has begun and I think it has the power to impact lives, and I do want to be a part of this and hope other photographers will join in as well. I checked their website and only a few photographers from the Columbia area are on there so far but I feel certain it will continue to grow.

Christmas book list

Jen shared the most wonderful list of Christmas books and I thought I would share the link here in case anyone was looking for some Christmas book ideas this season: Jen's Christmas book list

Great Air Show this weekend

Cool Cat

Life as a Scout

Megan's first Lost tooth

Megan's first lost tooth on 9/9/09-easy to remember! She was excited when she discovered it did not hurt. Now it is safely in a Ziplock where no one can have it, not even the tooth fairy. She said she's keeping it.

Tyler turns 9

The cutest puppy pics

While browsing around at 2 peas I ran across the cutest puppy scrapbook pages and had to share these: Too Cute

New Layout

((Okay no matter what it seems I just never can get good pictures of my layouts and the colors never look right. ))

I am now a Creative Memories Consultant

Like a lot of scrapbookers I really began scrapbooking with Creative Memories after my son was born. I had seen scrapbooking on the Carol Duvall show and looked forward to the days she would air scrapbooking but I didn't really begin until I attended a CM Class after that I was hooked but quickly discovered that did not offer many things I seeked. For example there pages, I could not just slip my page in and rearrange as I wanted--well that has changed they now offer real page protectors. Also some consultants were very much against you using anything expect there products; while I understand where they are coming from, it was my scrapbook to do what I wanted with so that just further turned me away from CM.
Well a few weeks back I attended a crop and was shocked over all the changes and how far the company has come. I was impressed. They have even gone digital, Yes I said that right. And they have an improvement to there software that will be releasing on Sept 1st. I can not wait to try it out. You can even pick which pictures you want to have in your album and it will then sort them by day and fill them in your digital album, then you just add your journaling and embellishments and print. Scrapbooking does not get any faster than that. I really hope to bring people to scrapbooking both old and new scrappers. I feel Scrapbooking is just such a an important thing to spend my extra time on. I will write more about this later. But for now I will guide you to my brand new website (you can even order right from you home if you would like):

My Website

Cool Blog I have got to share

(PLEASE NOTE NONE OF THESE PICTURES ARE MINE, ALL OF THESE I BORROWED FROM HER BLOG TO SHARE WITH YOU GUYS)


I have spent this evening on one of the coolest blogs: http://controllingmychaos.blogspot.com/search/label/crafts?updated-max=2008-09-20T00%3A01%3A00-06%3A00&max-results=20 . She is so talented and has so many wonderful ideas that I am dieing to try out. Just a little of what she has is cool covered clipboards:

Cool Backpack tags: A great idea for tracking your child's growth and you never have to worry about painting over it: The cool flower pens we always see everywhere and I even got one of these from Megan for Mother's day that she got from her Awana class: Plus there is way more!! I haven't even seen all of it yet. There's lots of great recipes, scrapbook pages and more. I am heading to Home Depot and Wal-mart tomorrow to get some supplies:)

Budget Homeschooling

While browsing forums there seems to be more and more discussions regarding homeschooling on a budget. I found this link and she has a great little ebook that she will email to you:
http://www.successful-homeschooling.com/homeschool-newsletter.html
http://www.successful-homeschooling.com/affordable-homeschooling.html Check it out!

My List of Things

While I am not a make plans kind of person I still love to think ahead. As soon as I get a new calendar I jot down ideas and events under that month. These are my list of things I jot down, except I have them separated under the months I hope to do them (I feel like writing them down helps to keep me on track so that the time does not pass so quickly that I miss things):

My List of Things:

• Mad Science Homeschool days
  
• Park Days with our homeschool friends
• Swan Lake
• Nature Walks
• Canoe trip at Congaree National Forest
• Visit State Parks
• Zoo Visits
  
• Backyard Camping
  
• Swan Lake
• Lowe's/Home Depot Workshops
• Micheal's Craft workshop for the kids
  
• State Museum
  
• Awana
• SC State Fair
• Boo at the Zoo
• Hayrides
• Pumpkin Carving
• Lights before Christmas
  

Saturday all day crop

Got to spend all day Saturday cropping with friends. I never would have imagined how very much I love crops. I always thought it just made more since to scrapbook at home with all my stuff. Why spend the time to pack up? Well after attending a few crops I have a new outlook. I love packing up and spending the day with other scrapbookers in our own little world.

These are a few layouts I did recently:

VERY LATE Easter shoot

Scrapbook Poll, Give away drawing

Debby over at Debby's Dare has a scrapbook poll with questions about page kits. Please take a few seconds to do this and when you leave a comment tell her April Kelley sent you. And then you send your friends over to take it also. Okay! She will be having a fun drawing!

This is the link:
http://debbysdares.blogspot.com/2009/07/christmas-in-july-and-big-dare.html

Where I've been and blog update coming soon.....

Okay I know I have been gone for so long, I know.....
I love reading blogs!
I get tons of inspiration from other bloggers!
Blogs are such a great resource for homeschoolers and more!

The past few months I have gone though debates in my mind. On here, even though I have a tracker, I do not know who is reading, watching, judging. Let's face it we live in a world with many different people with many different backgrounds and opinions. While I have mostly had great positive people visit me; I have been unsure about sharing things with the world. No, I do not want to go private.
I have had people emailing me asking where I went. I have also discovered that my blog has helped other people, I never realized it in the past. I had considered shutting down my blog. But I now see that this blog can be a great tool and resource for many people so I have decided that I am going to work to improve and update my blog. I am planning to update and removed any dead links and hope this will become a place were other people can come for hope, guidance and inspiration. It may take me some time but here I go....

As always feel free to share anything that may be a help to others and I will try to get it on here.

4th of July

Blog Update

Okay so even though I am still taking pictures for my Project 365 I have not been uploading them to my other blog. Some days I just take a computer break and other times I just do not transfer my pictures everyday and then there are other parts of my day that I do not know if I really want to share with the world. So I think I am going to come back to my blog here. I miss just being able to randomly post here and there as I have time.

So I am back. I really want to take the time to reorganize a lot of my blog and change some things and update the links and such. I'm not sure what I will do with my Project 365 blog, Trying to decide if it's worth the time to try to move it all to over here. I wonder if there is an easy way to do that...

Blog Forwarded

Since I am really wanting to keep up with the project 365 I really do not think I can keep up with this one and that one so I will be posting on it for now. So please come visit me here:

http://aprilkelleypotd.blogspot.com/

Picture by Tyler

Since I am just getting over the flu I let Tyler run out to the street with my camera and take house pictures with the snow(I wish we could have got 3 more inches). This is one of the pictures he took.

South Carolina Snow

Well having lived 2 winters in Michigan with Todd I know that I do not ever want to live in a snow state but I do wish we could get a really nice deep snow that would last a week or two just for the fun of it but that will never happen. Today was the first time Megan got to really see snow, they have been begging for this day for 2 years. They attempted to sled and have a snow ball fight and even build a "giant" snowball....Poor kids