My 15 Minutes!

I am so excited to say that I am a guest designer over at Twisted Sketches this week! Most of the goodies I used in my layout, "Bathing Beauty", are from the April kit from Magpie Club (Tara is brilliant and comes up with THE best kits!). Please go check me out!

Just Fine!

This week at "Scrapping the Music", the song they are using is "Just Fine" by Mary J. Blige. It's fun getting exposed to different types of music than I typically listen to! This is one of my favorite recent pics of the kids and me. Like many scrapbookers, it's rare to find pics that I am actually in! :)

I Heart Vintage Photos!

My mom loves the fact that I call photos from when she was younger "vintage"! Don't feel too bad, Mom--etsy.com considers anything 20 years or older vintage! That means my highschool photos are vintage too! I came across a stack of photos last night that had this great photo of my mom and her BFF, JoEllen, from their college days, and thought it would be perfect for this challenge from Twisted Sketches where we had to somehow incorporate "Touch" into the layout. Mom and JoEllen have kept in touch since 1968--through thick and thin, children, moves to different cities, states, countries and few actual visits over the years. I hope I am fortunate enough to have a friendship that truly stands the test of time like theirs!

Next week I will be the guest designer on Twisted Sketches! I am so excited!

Proud Mom Moment!

Yesterday afternoon my son and two of his classmates competed in a "Mathletics" competition with students from three local elementary schools. They had to answer 15 math questions with a time limit on each question...and I am proud to say that his team won 2nd place out of 17 3rd grade teams! I am so very proud of them!

It's Magpie Sketch time again!

Loved this sketch because it gave me the opportunity to use 4 pictures! I have so many pics from Kendall's birthday that I have been dying to use. I was also happy to be able to use the Spring Junque banner from House of 3 (shrunk down just a bit)! I apologize for the poor photo quality--yikes!

Dear Lizzy!

I am just loving the whimsical spirit of AC's Dear Lizzy line! It is so perfect for spring and just looking at it all makes me happy. Still need to get ahold of some of that fabulous adhesive-backed fabric paper--I keep seeing all these great projects online using it. American Crafts is having a challenge this week to use two or more Dear Lizzy elements in a layout or card, so I put this little card together:

Very simple and allows the sweetness of the Dear Lizzy line to "shine"! Hope everyone is having a great start to their week!

Spring Chick!

I recently completed this layout for a Pencil Lines challenge. Elizabeth Kartchner was the guest designer for this sketch so I just couldn't resist. Even though these pics of Kendall are over a year old, they are still some of my favorites! I love the little outfit my sister bought her with the bright flowers and just adore the piggies in her hair. She was bald until she was about 20 mos old so I was thrilled that she finally had hair I could play with! I am sad she is growing up so fast!

(Most of the papers and goodies on this layout came from Freehand Scraps this month!)

Mini-Album Gift

I am just mad about mini-albums these days! I finally finished this canvas mini-album I have been working on as a surprise for my mom to thank her for making Kendall's quilt! She should receive it via UPS tomorrow morning--I hope she likes it!

This was my first time playing around with a canvas album, but overall I am pretty happy with how it turned out. I used a butterfly mask with glimmer mist to create the cover (thanks, Heidi Swapp, for teaching me how to do that!), and then added a little 7 Gypsies knob to dress it up a bit.

The pocket in the front of the album contains one of those flat little recording things (what the heck are they called?) where you can record up to 30 seconds of someone talking. I got Kendall to say "Oh my goodness!", which is exactly what she said when we first received the quilt and pulled it out of the box. I think my mom will really get a kick out of hearing Kendall's little voice on there!

I added an excerpt from the Basic Grey newsletter my mom was published in this month! We were so excited about that you would have thought we'd won an Oscar! There's one more pocket in the back of the album that contains some little swatches of the fabric she used in the quilt, along with a little note letting her know how much the quilt means to me.

Thank you so much for looking! Hope it feels like spring where you are!

Footloose!

Gotta love the 80's and Kenny Loggins! So fun that "Footloose" is the song of the week over at "Scrapping the Music"! The lyrics to this song were perfect to scrap some of Cale's sports photos. That great star embellie is from a past "Freehand Scraps" kit--finally found the perfect layout to use it!

Happy Wednesday!

I'm back with another Twisted Sketch! This one was a bit hard for me...I worked on it Monday night and then had to put it aside for a bit. I came back to it Tuesday night and I think I'm happy with the way it turned out. I love the photos of Kendall from her birthday party. I got all the girls flower headbands from the dollar bin at Target and it was such a hoot! The twist this week was "pattern", so I used patterned paper as my background (which I almost never do!) and also used some patterened papers in my flowers. Thank you for looking!

Congrats to Tara!

I just want to say congratulations to Tara at Magpie Club for selling out of her April kits during the first weekend they were on sale! I just love it when fabulous people are successful! I am certainly not surprised at all--check out all the goodies she put together for the Wimbledon kit--sheer brilliance:

And la piece de resistance:

I am in love and can't wait until my package arrives! Although "Wimbledon" is sold out, Tara still has some of her amazingly affordable "Credit Crunch" kits left. Just $12.50 plus shipping, this is a little slice of heaven you don't have to feel guilty about!

                               

Keep up the great work, Tara!

Home Again!

Whew! Just got back about an hour ago from western KS, visiting Kent's parents. Very long 5 hour drive, but the kids did remakably well--thank goodness for the invention of the portable DVD player! They had a great time with their grandparents! We realized once we were there that it had been over 2 years since we had made the trek--yikes! While it was nice to relax for a few days, I am happy to be back in the city and the world of technology!

Looking forward to a great week! Spring is here!

Scrapping the Music!

I'm loving the challenge blog, "Scrapping the Music" these days! Really, how can you go wrong with music and scrapping? Two of my favorite things! Every week they choose a song and challenge you to create a layout based on any part of the lyrics to the song. It's so much fun to see how the songs speak differently to different people, and then how they interpret the lyrics on their layouts. This week is "Fireflies" by Owl City--great song! Here's my take:

Thanks for looking!