Wreath

I came across this tutorial on Pinterest (see previous post) of a beautiful floral wreath.  It looked easy enough, so I thought I’d give it a try.

What do you think?

Pretty, huh?  And EASY!  Even my sister could do it!    If you’d like me to direct you to the tutorial, leave a comment!

Pinterest

It is official.  I am addicted to Pinterest.

Paper obsession

If you’ve ever been in my scrap room, one thing you will notice is my paper hoarding collection.  I love patterned paper.  I can never seem to get enough of it.

Recently I came across this blog.  Nikki Sivils is an amazing designer.  She just came out with 5 new lines of paper.  The one shown below is my favorite.  It is called “School is Cool”  Isn’t it adorable?  With 3 kids in school, I can imagine many projects being made with this line.

Pot, meet Kettle!

Grace is a chatterbox.  Jabber Jaws.  Ms. Talks-A-Lot.  She seems to never stop talking.  Which takes a bit to get used to after having two boys who would prefer to grunt than actually form words. 

On Sunday at church, the kids did not have Sunday School, so they were having to behave themselves during the service – pure TORTURE, I know!  Grace was doing a pretty good job, coloring and paging through the bible.  Towards the end of the sermon she leaned over to me and whispered “He (the pastor) is a Chatterbox!”

Princess

It has been a little while since I’ve done a really girly-girl layout.  When I saw sketch #49 from Sketchabilities I knew exactly what I was going to do.  The sketch begs for flowers and flourishes.  I combined the sketch with a challenge from Frosted Designs, which was to do a layout out with black and white, and one other color, in this case, pink (of course).

The pictures were all taken when Grace was just a few months old. Aren't sleeping babies just the BEST! The paper is Basic Grey Two Scoops.  You can't tell from the picture, but I actually did some machine stitching on this.  I sewed the ribbon trim to the strip of patterned paper in the middle.

3,3,3,3, Let’s sing a song about Three!

Do you remember that song?? From Electric Company? Or was it Sesame Street? Anyway, Three is the subject of this layout…as in Jason’s first day of 3rd grade.  I combined a couple of challenges in one layout – 1) to use numbers in a layout and 2) to use a journaling card.
 

The cardstock is Kraft, and the patterned paper is from Basic Grey’s new line “Oxford”.  I made the journaling tag from MME Life Stories paper.
Thanks for looking!

Thankful

Play Ball!!!

Much to my dismay, Jason loves baseball.  And I love him, so I suffer through long games on uncomfortable bleachers to watch him play the game he loves.  This year is his first in the Little League Minors.  It is completely kid pitched (which is why the games are so long).  He has gotten a few good hits in this season. The most recent development is that he pitched an inning last week. (I didn’t get to watch, since Grace was having a melt down and I took her home).  Tonight is his last game and hopefully he will be able to pitch and I will be able to watch him.  Who knows, maybe I’ll end up enjoying baseball.

This layout is based on a sketch from Sketch Thursday.  Most of the paper is from the WeRMK MVP scrap pad.  The baseball was cut with SCAL on my cricut.  I found the letter brads in my stash.

What do a Mouse and a Crayfish have in common?

Not much.  Except they can both can create a snowball effect.  I based this layout on the book If You Give A Mouse a Cookie, by Laura Numeroff.  If you are not familiar with the book,  it is about the series of events that happen if you give a mouse a cookie; he will need a glass of milk, then a straw, etc.  This snowball effect in our house all started with a crayfish.

The journaling reads: “If you give your kid a crayfish, he will want to go to the pet store to buy it some anacharis to eat. When you are at the pet store, your other kid will beg for a hermit crab. So you buy him a hermit crab and habitat. You then find out the hermit crab needs to have friends. And the crayfish dies. So you go back to the pet store to get another hermit crab for the first kid whose crayfish died. And a bigger habitat.

Then you find out that hermit crabs need a heat source. So you go back to the pet store. And your third kid begs for her own hermit crab. So you get another one….”

I used a sketch from “Sketches for Scrapbooking, volume 5”. 

Berry Good

A few days ago I took the kids out to pick strawberries – which was ALMOST as bad as taking them shoe shopping.  But that is a different story. 
One of our favorite things to make with strawberries is Fruit Salsa.  It is a super yummy concoction of strawberries, apples, kiwi and fresh squeezed orange juice.  Served with Cinnamon Pita Chips, it is a refreshing snack.

Middle School

I have been working on this layout for 2 days.  I finally finished tonight, after some help from the gals at ClubCK.  They always have the best ideas. 

This is of my oldest on his first day of middle school.

I am having some issues with Blogger. For some reason, it is not letting me comment on other blogs and keeps telling me to sign in.  Hopefully I will figure it out soon.

Boys & Embellishments

Yesterday, I was working on making some paper flowers, having seen a tutorial over on CK.  They are super easy and oh, so pretty. (Pictured here - please ignore the colors - I was working with scraps) Anyway, I realized that I don't have much embellishments for boy pages.  My boys are getting older, so bug and frogs are really not their thing anymore.  They are both into sports, but not every page is sport related.  So do you have any go-to embellishment for boy pages?  I'd love to hear what it is.

Sometime last spring (it's taken me this long to figure out how to post a video), Jacob had a band solo competition.  He did really well.  He received a score of I+; I'm not sure if that is better than just I, or if it is between I and II.  Here is a video of it. Beware: even though I said he did really well, he is only in 6th grade, so you might want your volume turned down.  

I'm baaaaack! Maybe

So it's been 3 months or so since I last posted.  And 3 months since I did any scrapping.  It is now summer vacation, and I've figured that the only way I can stay sane with all 3 kids in the house is to hide myself away in my scrapbook room every now and then. 

Yesterday, I created this layout based on a sketch from the site Sketchy Thursdays.  This is the first time I have used one of their sketches.  I think it may become a favorite of mine.  The layout is of Jason crossing over from a Wolf cub to a Bear cub scout.  They had to drink "wolf's blood" (red colored juice).  Some of the boys were hesitant to try it, but he chugged it down with no fear!   

On a roll…

 

It’s official!

I have officially created more layouts in the first two weeks of 2011 than I did in all of 2010 – and maybe 2009 as well.  I am not sure what has spurred me into action, but I’ll take it!

Here is a layout of my parents that I finished yesterday.  I love these pictures of them.  My dad is actually smiling, and I adore the look my mom is giving him in the bottom picture.

Snow Day

I was planning an afternoon of scrapping this afternoon, but it was not meant to be.  It began snowing in the morning and hasn’t stopped. They released school 2 hours early, and cancelled pre-school.  So my afternoon was spent listening to the shrieking that comes when my kids play Wii and making cookies. 

I did do this layout this past weekend.  It is the first 2 pager I have done in several years. 

A New Year

I am trying to do a little bit less scrapbook shopping and a little more actual scrapping in this new year.  I’ve actually completed 3 layouts in the past couple of days.  That has got to be some kind of record.  I had been hearing a lot about the series of sketch books, “Sketches for Scrapbooking”.  I picked one up the other day, and I really like it. It has helped me with my indecisiveness. 

This first layout if 2010 at a glance.  Of course, we had to start out with Katy for January, since it is her birthday month.  She will be 8 tomorrow. 

So, I’m now closer to 41 than 40.  But better late than never, right?  I am wearing the infamous “39 forever” t-shirt in the picture on the right.  Grace took the picture of me on the left!  She got her own camera for Christmas, so maybe we will see some more pictures from the budding shutterbug.

Here are some pictures of Grace and her favorite cousin, Gigi. They are like two princess peas in a pod!