Mojo Monday sketch Challenge

My friend Lisa made this card for the Mojo Monday sketch challenge this week.  Isn't it adorable!  I love all of the layers and the watermelon seeds!  Totally makes me wish it was a nice sunny day instead of the rainy day we have had today.  She doesn't have a blog (yet), so I am posting on her behalf.  Yay Lisa! Congratulations on participating in your first challenge!

Florentine Cards

It always amazes me how much you can do with just one little stamp set and 3 - 4 ink colors.  I have a tendency to get overwhelmed with options.  To counteract this, I like to pull out 1 stamp set, 1 set of papers and 3-4 coordinating ink colors and see what I come up with.  If I feel like the project needs a little extra umph, then I turn to the Cricut or Cuttlebug for some embossing or die cut pieces.

 

I really like the Florentine papers for cards.  This is the first I had played with this paper line and am quite pleased with the results. 

Other supplies used - A garden stamp set, Twilight, Cocoa, Olive, and Creme Brulee ink.  Various copics, Pearl Opaques, Flutter Paper Shapes, Misc. Ribbon and Floss.  Cuttlebug / Embossing Folders / Border die, Circle Punch.

Mixing the old with the new

This layout showcases one of my favorite pictures of  "the bestie crew".   I used sketch #198 from the Creative Scrappers blog. If you can't read the text on the picture it says "You have been blinded by Brenden's what he calls abs... and we call ribs :)".  This is a little tidbit of Emily's photo editing.  I nearly spit my coffee out when I seen her little journaling added while browsing pictures on the computers.  These 4! What a hoot!

I combined some new Footloose papers with some old Miracle, then threw in a little Typeset.

A quick update on Tyler's wisdom teeth extraction.  He did well and was able to return to school after 2 days.  He was quite entertaining while his "conscious sedation" wore off.  He kept saying "Hey" then follow up with something like "you know what's funny, Emily had to go to school today" or "Hey, is it ok if I swallow".  Then there was the yell from the kitchen that he missed his mouth.  I go to check and he was covered in Gatorade.  Yup, totally , missed it!  He asked me the same things over and over, and was quite confused how he got from one place to another.  He couldn't figure out how to buckle his seatbelt or eat applesauce.  Of course, he remembers none of this.  I should have recorded him, kind of like this person did.



Have a good night and happy crafting!

MoJo Monday Entry

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter with your family and friends.  We over indulged on dinner at Zane's parents.  Tyler had extra in preparation for the dreaded wisdom teeth extraction tomorrow.  Said he was storing up since he will be limited on what he can eat for a few days. 

I managed to put together this card for my entry into the MoJo monday challenge this week. You can find the sketch and challenges here .

I used more papers from the Dotty For You special coming up.  Have I said yet how much I like them?

Supplies Used (all CTMH unless stated otherwise)
Paper : Dotty For You
Cardstock: Colonial White
Ink : Black, Lagoon
Stamp Sets: Stella WOTG set, April SOTM
Other : Black Sharpie , Cricut AP cartridge and Neutral Bakers Twine

Thank you for stopping by!

Dotty For You

I was finally able to play with the Dotty For You papers that will be available to you on April 17th.  You can find all the details under the specials tab.

For my page I used a sketch from sketcheswithatwist.blogspot.com.   I recently stumbled upon this blog, and since I am all into banners lately, it was perfect!

I used one of the sunbursts from the March SOTM set to stamp a border around the page.  There are 5 different sunbursts in the set and can see using them a lot for this.

The butterflies and the 3 labels were cut out of a couple of the Dotty For You papers.  The Journaling block is from a retired Mayberry Stickease set.  Am always happy to use up a little retired stash :).

Products used, all CTMH unless stated otherwise. 
Paper: Dotty For You  B & T , Sweet Leaf and Smoothie Cardstock
Ink: Black
Border: Cut from the AP Cartridge
Embellishments: Colonial White Designer Brads, Neutral Bakers Twine, vintage lace (unknown brand)
Stamp Sets: Bohemian Alphabet (E1019) , and April SOTM


This picture sums up our day today.

My nephew Daniel is in Afghanistan right now on his second deployment to serve our country.  Before he left, he drew Zane a map to his mushroom spot.  We drove nearly 2 hours to find it, then strolled around the woods seeing what we could find.  We only found 5 mushrooms, NOT GOOD!  I took several pictures, but this one is one of my fav's.

We did learn a couple things.
1. I should not lead us out of the woods.  Tyler, Emily, and I started heading back to the car.  A few minutes later we heard Zane yelling that we were going in the wrong direction!  It's a good thing he noticed before we were out of ear shot. 
2. Tyler really needs to work on his braking and accelerating while driving.  He tends to be a little heavy on the pedals.

That's all for today, have a Happy Easter!!!

The Bestie Crew

If you are familiar with my blog,  then you have seen pictures of this crew before.  Of course our kiddos, then there is our "other" kids.  These 4 have been friends for 11 years now.  They met at daycare when Kylee and Emily were just a year old, and over the years have formed such a strong wonderful friendship.  They love one another like siblings and also disagree like siblings.  They debate one another, support one another, and tattle on one another. 

Oh how I love them!  The pictures are from a weekend shopping excursion we went on before school started.  I used papers from the CTMH Cruisin' line and a sketch from the My Little Sketch Book blog.  Liz has such great sketches to play around with.

For the banner I used a section from the new mini banner in the spring / summer idea book and covered it with pattern paper.  The title is Cricut cut from the Black Letter cartridge. Then of course, had to had a little stitching detail to pull it all together.  I used a stamp from the simple stitches set to stamp a frame around the edges. 

So, what a day today was.  Today was the first Baseball game of the year for Tyler.  Tyler plays starter Left outfield and bats 3rd or 5th.  He did very well today, made contact with the ball 2 out of 3 times up to bat and made good plays in the field.  No runs, but we are just getting started.  Can you believe I forgot my camera!  It was so cold, I don't think my fingers could have operated it anyways.  I was sure my fingers and toes would break if I moved them.  Silly me, went straight from work and only had a sweater over my scrubs.  Good thing my wonderful hubby gave up his warm coat for me to wear.  Reminded me of high school football games, wearing his "varsity" jacket.  Made me feel all "cool" again!  HaHa!

A note that there are still parents that are raising perfect little gentlemen out there!  This kid in Emily's class is so polite, I have to call his mom and tell her.  You know, in case she doesn't already know.  Today his mom gave Emily a ride home from Track practice, I watched him get out of the car and open Emily's door to let her out.  Mind you, when I took Emily, him and 2 other kids to the movies, he did the same thing.  He held the doors for me, then tried to give me money for popcorn since "I paid for gas".  How cute is that!  A 12 year old actually offering to give me money!  I really need to send Tyler to his house for some of that training, because he is not nearly that much of a gentlemen.  Note to self.... "Work on that".

 Tyler has to have all 4 of his wisdom teeth removed by the oral surgeon on Monday.  That should be an interesting day.  Is it wrong to be a little excited about the scrapbook page from the ordeal?  I suppose it is, but I was taught to always look at the positives in a situation. Tyler likely won't appreciate it if I take a camera with me,  I may have to sneak a picture with my phone.

A portion of the day was spent going broke.  That is what happens when you have teenagers. Here is how the day went financially....

Me:  "Honey, we have to have $750 cash down when we go to the surgeon Monday"
Emily: "Mom, don't forget I need money for track pictures and $35 for the field trip tomorrow"
Tyler: "Mom, my baseball cleats are to tight, I am going to need a new pair"
Zane: " Honey, I took the lawn mower to the shop today, not sure what's wrong with it"
Zane: " I signed us up to bring food for 3 of the baseball games"
Tyler: "Mom, you forgot to get body wash when you bought groceries yesterday, oh and I need money for class dues"
Emily: "Oh yeah, I need money for a track shirt too. I don't remember when that is due though"

Point of story, if your kids are toddlers, start saving now!  Today, I am really wishing I would have won the millions. LOL!

Ok, I have rambled enough today.  Sorry, I start typing and can't stop.  I hope you enjoyed my page today.  I best get to work at the crafting table, my "to post" pile is getting a little low.

Winning the Lottery?

The work week started with a whirlwind of hustle and bustle today.  Since I have a 40 minute commute to and from work, much of the drive is spent pondering layout ideas.  It seems that the car and shower are the two places my best ideas are thought of.  Weird, I know.

This morning, I was thinking "gosh, sure would have been nice to be one of the lottery winners, so I didn't have to do this today".  That's when it hit me, my next layout!!!

We rarely buy lottery tickets, in fact I can count on one hand how many I have bought.  But, like millions of others I bought one this past Friday.  $640 million!  Who wouldn't want to win that!   We spent Friday evening pondering what we would do with all that money!  Our many thoughts of course included paying off  debt, buying a new house, new cars, etc.  Then we had the lavish thoughts of traveling the world,  buying an airplane, me opening a scrapbook store and Zane opening a bait shop, all just for fun!  We talked about how we would randomly pay strangers utility bills, give our house to someone in need of one,  get my nephew the surgery he desperately needs and other random acts of kindness we could do to brighten someones day.

After all this thinking, we started thinking about how winning the lottery would effect our lives as we know it.  Since we live in a small town of 2000 people, we would need to relocate.  We would be afraid to have our kids walk to school because what if someone tried to steel them for ransom money.  Not that someone in our town would do such a thing, but you never know.   Money brings out the best and worst in people.  Living life with millions would not go unnoticed in our small town.  Suddenly, we would have all the snobby people wanting to be our friends.  The family we haven't had a connection with in years would suddenly want to be part of our lives, and it would be very hard for our kids to acquire "real" friends like they have now.   It would be difficult to maintain our content little life that we have worked so hard to achieve. 

So after all the debating, thinking and talking, I am relieved we didn't have the winning number.  We are thankful for what we have.  We have healthy kids, food, shelter, good friends and family.  We don't need millions, this would only create more headaches than we care to have. 

This sums up a future layout.  I wanted to put it on the blog, so I don't forget.

 To me scrapbooking is about journaling all these little things in life.  The things that make us who we are and the thoughts behind the pictures.  When someone looks at one of my pages, I want them to understand the story behind the pictures by the journaling without me having to sit next to them and explain the events on the page. Some pages hit this target, some do not. 

Lately, my journaling has been slacking, this post was a good reminder to get back to into telling the complete story.

Tomorrow when I go to work, I will be thankful I have a job and didn't win millions.