Lucky To Have You

supplies used - cardstock - white daisy and topiary - CTMH, ink - topiary - CTMH, patterned paper - Bo Bunny, stamps - shamrock - Clear Dollar Stamps, sentiment - Studio G, gems - Studio G.

Here's a really quick and easy card today. I think it may have taken all of 5 minutes to make. I came across this sketch last week and knew that I would be using it soon. This week's card challenge over at Scrappin' N Chattin' was to make a St. Patrick's Day card and it had to have a shamrock on it. Now I don't have a lot of St. Patrick's Day goodies in my stash, it's just not a holiday that I buy a lot of stuff for, but when I was looking through my stash I came across this shamrock stamp. I thought it would work perfectly for this challenge. I used a sentiment stamp from a Studio G stamp set that I've had for ages, added some gems at the bottom of the banner pieces and it was done!
I love these quick and easy cards!

Snow Day!!!

We woke up to a few inches of the white stuff this morning - enough to call off school once again. Here we've gone all winter with no snow days and now we've missed 3 in the last week! Matthew took advantage of the time off and the nice wet snow and went out to build a fort. Every time he would get it about how he wanted it, Fawkes would come along and knock it down! It didn't take long for him to get tired of rebuilding. I guess we will wait and see if it's enough to call off school again tomorrow. (I wouldn't get my hopes up!)

My Scraps and More Sketch A Thon

I am really excited - My Scraps and More is having a sketch a thon starting this Friday, March 1st. They will be posting a new sketch each and every day of the month. For someone who loves to use sketches as a starting point - like me! - this is heaven!

Come on over and join the fun. I know I probably won't get every sketch done, but I plan on doing as many as I can!

Sending Warm Fuzzies

Just a quick post to share what I have been up to today. The boys had their first snow day today, thanks to some freezing rain and sleet, and I thought it was a good day to make a nice sunny card! I used this sketch from Artful Delight:

And this is what I came up with:

I used some old paper from a 6x6 pad from Sassafras Lass (yeah, that's been in the stash for a while!), the sun sticker is from Echo Park, the sentiment is from Hero Arts, and the gems are from Studio G. Wrapped some twine around the blue paper and called it good! 

I've got more to share, but Shane is wanting his time on the computer. Maybe I'll have a chance to post again later!

A New Challenge Blog

I recently came across a new challenge blog called Scrap Your Story Challenges. Their first challenge will go live on March 1st. Here is a little bit about them - from their blogpost.

A little about us: We will host weekly scrapbooking challenges starting each Friday. Each week will bring you a different kind of challenge, but the rule will be the same... create a layout that is new (no back linking) following the challenge and share it with us. You will have until the following Thursday night at 11:59pm (US central time) to complete the challenge, post it to your blog, and return to the blog and link up. That weekend we will post our top 3 and at the end of each month we will choose one winner at random to receive a prize. You will be entered into that drawing once for each of the challenges you enter...that's up to four chances each month!!!

I am excited to see the first challenge and I can't wait to play along each week!

This is where their story began

In January I signed up for the Press Your Luck challenge over at Colorful Creations. I used to love to watch that game show when I was a kid - hollering "No whammies! No whammies!" at the television.
 For the challenge they had a picture of a game board with the numbers 1 -20 on it and you had to be careful or you might pick a whammy. I picked the number 10 and boy did I hit the jackpot! My challenge was to use this beautiful sketch by Brenshevia.

And this is what I came up with:

Supplies used - Patterned Paper - My Minds Eye - Love Me Do collection, Cardstock - Close To My Heart - lagoon, Alphabet stamps - Close To My Heart - B1416 Keyboard Uppercase, Alphabet stickers - Close To My Heart - Houndstooth Irresistables, heart puch - Marvy Uchida

This photo is of Abby when she was in the 5th grade. She came home from school one day and showed me this picture of a rose. She told me that a boy at school had drawn it for her. Gotta love the fact that she really wasn't wanting me to take a picture of her with her first flower from a boy!  As it turns out that boy is now her husband! The journaling says:
He liked her in 4th grade.
He gave her this picture of a rose that he had drawn in 5th grade. (2001)
They "went out" for 2 days in 7th grade and they officially started "going out" in 9th grade and never looked back. - And the rest is history.
As with any relationship, they've had their ups and downs, but they have always found their way back to each other.
I guess I really should have added in that they got married on August 13, 2011!
What a fun, fitting story of true love for Valentines Day, right?!

Early morning visitors

One morning last week I heard Fawkes really barking at something outside. I mean really barking. Barking like you know someone or something is out there. When I looked out the window, he was sitting right in front of the door looking across the yard at our neighbor's orchard. I go running through the house to see if I can see whatever it is that he's seeing. As I go through the family room, I see a coyote running across our backyard right by our clothes line. I run to my scraproom to get my camera so I can get a picture of him and there is another one right outside my scraproom window. He just stands there looking back at me as I'm taking his picture, not scared at all. We've seen these two a time or two before, but they have always been down in our field by the tree line and away from our house. Then a couple of weeks before this, I saw them running at the edge of our yard, making their way to the woods. I guess they finally decided to come check out the yard and the house. Heck, they may do this a lot and we just haven't seen them.
We live in the country and seeing wildlife is nothing new. We have deer and turkey in our yard all the time, but I'm not too crazy about having these two guys coming so close!

So You Think You Can Scrap - week 6

Ugh! These challenges are really challenging me! First off let me apologize for the photo. I didn't realize I didn't have my pages lined up perfectly, so it looks a little wonky. This is the 6th week of So You Think You Can Scrap over at Colorful Creations and I really can't believe that I am still going! The past couple of challenges have been a little hard for me, scrappin' out of my comfort zone and all, but I'm glad that I keep pluggin' away at it. Here is the sketch we had to use this week. Along with this sketch we had to create a double page monochromatic layout and we had to use a diecut, a border punch, flowers (2 had to be handmade), bling, and butterflies.

Monochromatic. Flowers. Butterflies. None of these are my favorite things to work with when I'm scrappin'. But, I was willing to give it a try and this is what I came up with.

First off I've gotta say that I am about "pinked" out after this one. I rarely scrap with pink since Abby has never been much of a pink lover, girly girl. So I am on pink overload with this one and you probably won't see pink for a while either! I used up some old papers from My Mind's Eye (from 2005 - YIKES!).  Yeah, I'm sure I have some newer pink paper, but it felt good to use up some stash. I made my own diecut paper by cutting a circle and then punching out smaller circles to make the scalloped edge. I tried my hand at making some twisted ribbon roses - they're easy to make, but I'm not sure I like this first effort, and I also made some lollipop flowers. Luckily I had bought a Martha Stewart butterfly punch a while back, otherwise I'm not sure what I would have done for the butterflies. For my bling I used some sparkly gems for the centers of all the flowers and I know it's hard to see, but i also used them on the butterfly bodies. I used the loopy border punch by Martha Stewart and I think that about covers all of the requirements.

Do I love this layout?  No.
But it's done and another memory down on paper.
I'll find out Friday morning if I met all of the requirements and am able to move on. Hopefully I'll keep going and I can't wait to see what the next challenge is.

Hello?

As promised, the challenges for the So You Think You Can Scrap challenge over at Colorful Creations are getting harder each week - at least for me! This week we were to use this sketch, we had to have tearing, distressing, and a recycled item on our layout.

I struggled with what to use for my recycled item - that was definitely the hardest part for me this time. I found these old pictures of Shane in a pile on my desk and it finally clicked that I could use the page out of an old phone book for my recycled item. Once again these are old photos - I think from 2004 - I'll have to check and make sure. I can barely remember Shane being this little! To see him standing on that stool and to know that now he is almost 6 feet tall and towering over me...Wow!

supplies used: Patterned Paper - Echo Park, Jillibean Soup, Provo Craft, Cardstock - Bazzill, stamps - B1416 Keyboard Uppercase, grid stamp - Studio Calico, Alpha stickers - Doodlebug Simply Sweet, tab - Quickutz, Speech bubbles - Cricut George cartridge

The colors match a lot better in real life - not sure why they are looking so off in this photo!
I distressed the edges of my circle with my edge distresser, tore one side of the yellow paper (you can barely see it) and the light blue paper at the bottom, then used the page from the phone book on the circle underneath the title and on the speech bubbles. I was so excited to use my new alpha stamps from Close To My Heart on this page. I love those little square letters, and to know that I can make them whatever color I want is heaven!  I'm sure you'll be seeing them on more pages! I added a little potty person boy to the speech bubble at the top - just because I like him! This is one of my favorite layouts - mostly because of the photos and I am happy to say that it was a featured layout in the gallery at Colorful Creations!

Everyday is an adventure...

I signed up to host one of the challenges this month over at Inspired to Scrap . Since February is the month of love I want you to:
scrap about someone or something that you love
it needs to have 4 squares - these can be paper or photos or both
3 round embellishments
at least 2 mixed alphas
at least 1 heart somewhere on the layout, and
paper strips - these can be journaling strips or strips of paper.
Here is what I came up with:

supplies used: Love Note 6x6 paper pad - Fancy Pants, cardstock - CTMH, stamps - D1548 Whoo's Your Valentine, D1472 Simple Memories, D1495 You & Me, It's Your Day CC1020 - CTMH. scalloped border punch - EK Success, alpha stickers - October Afternoon

 

In January, Scott and I celebrated our 23rd anniversary. Gosh, I can't believe it's been that long! A lot of things have happened in those 23 years which makes the title oh so true - Every day is an adventure with you!
I found this sketch from Heather over at Scrappy Sketches. I used the Love Note 6x6 paper pad from Fancy Pants for the squares, stamped some hearts and that cute little owl on some circles for my round embellishments, my title is a mix of a stamp and some letter stickers, and my strips are my journaling strips.  If you have time and want to play along, come on over to Inspired to Scrap and check it out. There's always something fun going on!