Really?!

Ugh! I can't stand it one more minute! Looking at my last entry about Valentine's Day stuff (from well over a month ago) each day I click on my blog to direct me to my favorite daily reads (posted on left side). I am so sick of looking at those heart felt wreaths and balls! So now is as good as time as any to just get something else up here. I am very excited that this weekend I will be going away to another scrapbook weekend. If you or your friends are in the SoCal area and are looking for a place to spend a weekend, I highly recommend Scrapbook Inn. We are going to be staying at their newly aquired 2nd location. Their original one is wonderful and this new place is supposedly even better. I can't wait. I am aiming to get lots of layouts done. It's going to be the weekend of my Hannah. In packing I came across a TON of Hannah photos from years past that obviously were supposed to be documented but never were. Shocker I know! So rather than print out new photos, I am just going to take this huge pile with me and hopefully get somewhat caught up. I just went to Scrappin In the Hills and purchased quite a collection of cardstock so I have no excuses for not getting pages done.

So in case you were wondering what all has been going on in the 1 month plus I have been absent:

Niece #2 was born. Welcome Payton!


I worked on my photography skills.


We went to Disneyland with Joel's parents.

Experienced the first loose tooth. Yes she's only 4!

Experienced the first LOST tooth! The Tooth Fairy brought 8 quarters and a special note.

Planted a garden. (Red bell, Green bell, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, Big Boy tomatoes?, and Green beans)

Decorated Easter eggs.





Helped the Easter Bunny make these baskets.


Enjoyed the girls having a blast on Easter.

I am currently trying to work on Makaela's Ariel/Under the Sea 2nd Birthday party. Sigh! If only there were enough time and energy to make all my ideas come true.

OK I am off to get some sleep so I can be well rested for my scrapbook weekend. I am beyond excited.

Have a great weekend ... if you haven't stopped following me due to lack of frequent posts. :)

Heart Felt Wreaths

I also made these and these for Valentine's Day decorations. I got the idea from here.


These guys followed the above tutorial but used 2.5" styrofoam balls for the center. They end up being about 5" in diameter.

I don't care if it's too late to post this! :)

I made these to help decorate my home for Valentine's Day. I think I got the idea from Better Homes & Gardens' website. I don't really have a close up of any of them. I used Making Memories and Pink Paislee's Valentine papers. Bought several bunches of the fake white flowers from Dollar Tree. As you can see, I am in desperate need of some sort of furniture piece to go on this wall.

She lives!

Yes, yes, I am still alive. And keeping busy. Just not feeling very motivated to sit in my cold scraproom late at night editing pictures, uploading them, and other whatnots. Sorry.

Here's a project I just finished up last night. This has been in the works for oh ... 7 months! It's terrible. Our good friends who live out of state had a beautiful baby girl back in July 2009. I rushed to make an album and got it to about 85% complete before having to set it aside. I didn't pick it up again until a few days ago when we confirmed that my husband was going out to visit them. I am really pleased with how it turned out. Now I only have 5 more baby albums to make.

The paper for this was all American Crafts, BoBunny, and Bazzill. All of the shapes were cut with my Silhouette. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this machine.

The cover:

Pages 1 and 2 (sorry about the censoring but you just can't be too careful these days):

The reverse side of the tag:

Pages 3 & 4:

Pages 5 & 6:

Better shot of the tag:

Pages 7 & 8:

Pages 9 & 10:

Pages 11 & 12:

Close up of the tag:

Pages 13 & 14:

Close up of the tag:

Overall shot:

Uh, Happy Valentine's Day?

Before anymore time passes and it becomes inappropriate to post Valentine's Day things ...

I used the Making Memories line of Valentine's Day papers for this layout. Then I busted out my handy dandy Silhouette and cut the heart border, the XOXO, and the Love You quote bubble.

Each year it's a tradition for me to make a layout for both girls honoring their dad. He's so good to them and I want to document where they are and how much they love at this time of year.

Yum!

I promise I am working on some posts to finally get up here ... including my CHA loves. In the meantime, these look delicious!

Woo hoo CHA!!!!

I am so excited to be leaving for CHA in just a few minutes. It looks like there's lots of great product being debuted today. I am so thankful to my husband for taking the kids again so I can go and drool over all the new stuff. I'll be back with pictures in the next couple of days. Have a great rest of the weekend!

*** updated *** -- saw lots of great things at the show! Fortunately I was able to see all that was on my list. My feet and lower back are a bit sore, but the experience was well worth it. I wish I could go back for the 3 remaining days, but I'll live. I'm hoping to post some pictures in the next day or two.

Scrapbook Weekend Results

So this past weekend I went to a home in Escondido with friends for a scrapbook weekend. I've done this once before at a different loacation and find that I don't ever know what to bring and don't want to pack up ALL of my stuff. So I decided to bring with me two kits that I had purchased last year from Christine Middlecamp. I paid a pretty penny for each of these kits and they've been sitting in their shipping box for months. The time had come to get them complete.

Can I just say I am so so so happy that I purchased these kits! Christine is an amazing scrapbooker and clearly an amazing kit designer. She doesn't do very many kits in a year so I feel fortunate to have gotten my hands on these when I did. She sells out very quickly.

The first kit I did was for my youngest daughter Makaela. The kit was normally designed to be a garden themed one, but that didn't quite fit me, so I changed the title to my daughter's name and altered a few small things in the album. The foundation for the album is Melissa Frances's Bingo Card Chipboard Album. I learned so many things by working on this album. How to layer, how to make use of small pieces of paper, how to look past the obvious use for a scrapbook supply. I also got a refresher in how to follow written directions. She gives VERY detailed instructions on how to put this puppy together.

The cover:

Page 1:

Page 2:

Page 3:

Page 4 -- I designed this page with extra materials because she didn't use all the pages from the album:

Page 5:

Page 6 (you can tell the light changed right here) -- I designed this page with some of the extra materials because there were some extra pages she didn't use from the album:

Page 7:

Page 8:

The next kit I did of hers was this one. This is the first one I bought. It's foundation uses the Jenni Bowlin Set of 2009 Die Cut Calendar Cards. I love this album. I love the colors! I love the techniques! I love the mixes of papers! And I learned that I really do love Jenni Bowlin!

The Cover:
Page 1:

Page 2:

Page 3:

Page 4:

Page 5:

Page 6:

Page 7:

Page 8:

The greatest part was all of the materials left over from the kits. She really packs them up with product. It's well worth the money. I made two more layouts, with it. I think I might submit them to a contest so you'll have to wait to see those. But here's one I can share with you that I used the Ever After line by Cosmo Cricket. I had made these fabric flowers and really wanted to use them. But I didn't have any paper with me that matched this color pink. My friend suggested using them with colors that didn't have any pink. Great idea!

I learned how to make these flowers from this tutorial. There are hundreds of tutorials out there on how to make fabric flowers. Just Google "how to make fabric flowers".