You is kind. You is smart. You is important.

Those words, said by Abilene Clark to Mae Mobly in Kathryn Stockett's The Help, hit me today while I was walking Cookie this morning. It was probably in my head since I've finally gotten around to watching the movie, and have since watched it about half a dozen times, but they really resonated this morning. I think as women we tend to beat ourselves up too much. I know I do. I'm extremely critical of myself and that critical voice in my head tends to scream at me. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about where I want to go with my life. I'm 39 years old and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I feel like I don't have a direction. I don't feel I'm successful at anything, except maybe sitting on the couch, surfing the 'net and eating way too much food that isn't good for me. My kids start school soon. And this will be the first time that they are both gone for the whole day. I'm terrified about what I'm going to do with my time. I have some commitments, like PTA and being the bookkeeper at Riley & Jake's but I'm scared it's not enough. I want to be amazing at something. I want people to say that I am the go-to person for something but I'm not sure what. Hopefully I can figure that out and maybe I can actually begin to believe that I am kind, smart and important.

Chocolatey, yummy goodness...

So this week is Teacher Appreciation Week at my kids' school and I volunteered to provide some food items. Tuesday was a layered taco dip, today was a chocolate hazelnut tart and tomorrow is cookies. I decided to make the same cookies I made for my niece last week, Double Chocolate Espresso Cookies. I used this recipe from the Food Network. I'm so glad for my local Wegman's for some of the more "exotic" ingredients. Giant just doesn't carry dark chocolate covered espresso beans. Anyway, after a morning PTA meeting, a quick run to Target, lunch and getting Jacob on the bus for afternoon Kindergarten, I came home and whipped up a batch. My house is smelling really yummy right now.

 

The dry ingredients...

 

 Melting the chocolate and the butter...

  

Scooped onto the pan...(love my cookie scoops and Silpat liners)

 

The finished cookies...

I don't know how I'm going to not eat these. Good thing I'm out of the house tonight.

Have I got a deal for you...

If you own a Silhouette machine then I have a deal for you! Plum District is offering $30 worth of downloads from the Silhouette Store for only $18! And after you purchase, if you get 3 other people to purchase from your link, then your purchase is free! Can't pass that up! I've got a bunch of designs sitting on my wish list that I can now purchase. So here's my link if anyone is interested. Plum District Silhouette deal 

Happy Shopping!

Using up those scraps...

So after making the 3 layouts from the Scrapbook Generation March Super Saver layouts I had enough extra supplies to make 3 cards. I made a birthday card for my sweet friend Laura, my sister-in-law Kelley (yes, I know, same name and spelling) and a sympathy card for my neighbor. I love when I have extra supplies at the end of my layouts. I've been working harder to use them up right away to make some cards to have on hand. It really is easy to do. I got the ideas for my cards from the Sketch Support site.

Simple, right? My theory is that you can never have too many cards on hand. Who doesn't love receiving a handmade card? (If you don't, just lie and tell me you do.)

I think it should really be a federal holiday...

So it's National Scrapbooking Day today!! Yes, it's a real holiday. Did I do any scrapbooking today? No. We had t-ball this morning, then went to lunch at Panera. After that, I came home and took a nap on the couch. Priorities, right? Maybe tonight I'll get something done. I did do some scrappy stuff this week though. I put together my April Super Sketch kit from the fabulous Scrapbook Generation. That was fun. I also used the scraps from the March kit to make 4 cards. Now I have the April scraps to make more cards!! Yippee!!!