Birthday Bunny

OK, so I lied. I told you I wouldn't be posting for the rest of the weekend. This nasty virus/cold/whatever it is has grabbed on in this house and I am now nursing two sick kids, John and myself! John is feeling better than the rest of us and went to the beach alone today to do a little fishing and just called with a report....36" 14lb Striped Bass...yippeee...Striper Cakes for dinner!

I feel like I have not been outside in WEEKS and am going stir crazy but Susie has asthma and when she gets sick I worry about her having a full blown attack so I don't want to go anywhere without her and don't want to push her. So home I am on a gorgeous, sunny day. I could just cry...really. Soooo, since I am stuck in the house I decided to check out some challenges online and instantly loved the new sketch up at Creative Scrappers this morning!

I have been meaning to scrap this photo of Susie and Johnny for a long time and keep moving it around on my desk. When I decided this was the photo I would use and went to look for papers to coordinate, I remembered that I just got an order that had some yummy Bella Blvd. papers. I LOVE this paper company. I'm slowly, but surely collecting each line she has and so far, have not found a piece that I don't like! The blue stripe, flower and green flowered papers are all from the Flirty line. I added the hot pink cardstock that I embossed with a Sizzix floral embossing folder. The flowers are Dazzlers by Petaloo, the journaling spot is Jillibean Soup, the chip letters are Basic Grey and the number stickers are ProvoCraft. Once I pulled the papers out, this layout FLEW together. I LOVE when this happens!

I'm going to get out of my scraproom for now.....maybe even just sit on the front porch for a little bit. I am feeling a Vitamin D deficiency...I miss my friend, the sunshine!!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Today starts the official influx of what we call "Shoe-Bees" to the Jersey Shore.  10 months out of the year I love living at the shore....but the summer months.....well let's just say it can be a little frustrating.  Twice as much traffic, longer lines at the grocery store, idiot drivers who don't pay attention to traffic signals, signs, etc.and no longer do we have the boardwalks to ourselves....its now teeming with out-of-towners looking for that perfect souvenir.  Don't get me wrong, I realize that the tourists are a huge part of the economy in this area and shudder to think what would happen should they STOP coming "to the shore" but as I am sure you would hear from 99% of the year round residents, nothing looks better than a traffic jam heading North on the Garden State Parkway or West on the Atlantic City Expressway on a Sunday afternoon!! 

But alas, its Memorial Day weekend....they are coming.....by the thousands.  I have a mere couple of hours to stock up on necessities for the weekend without having to deal with tourists and long lines!!  So I'm doing this last post for the month of May.  I am fairly certain that I will have nothing to blog until this weekend is over.  We have baseball and softball games and tournaments, at least one bbq to attend, Memorial Day Parades and of course, the beach is calling us!  Its been a LONG winter!  Hopefully it will warm up....its down right chilly in South Jersey today!  I think the temperature dropped 25 degrees in 2 hours last night!

This week is also my week for hosting the Design Team Challenge at Let's Scrap.  The challenge is to create a layout using Red, White and Blue!  See how creative I am!  Hey, cut me a break, I'm still sick!!  There is a twist...there must be a flag or banner of some type on the layout and it must be based on a sketch at Let's Scrap.  Here is my example....the photo is of my two cousins (brothers) in their uniforms.  One is in the Army currently stationed in Iraq and the other is a paid Firefighter in North Carolina.  They are truly heroes in my book!

 Signing off until June.....stay safe and have a wonderful Memorial Day!!  Remember to thank a veteran!

Roses Always Make Me Feel Better!

I'm still fighting this dang cold or whatever it is (and my honey came home from work yesterday not feeling well either) and as has been the case the past 3 nights, I could not sleep. I finally gave in at 3am and got out of bed so that John could at least have some peaceful rest. Not wanting to watch TV (nothing on at 3am anyway) and not really feeling up to working on a layout, I decided that I would relax on the couch and make some paper roses.

I checked over at The Color Room to see what the color palette was this week and worked with those colors in mind.  I may as well try to get at least one challenge in and I haven't done the last 3 palettes over there. By 6:30am when John left for work, I had already completed a dozen roses in two sizes. My hands were cramping and my fingers are sore from rolling the petals so I dropped the roses on my desk and got the kids up and ready for school. Once back home I brewed a fresh pot of coffee and sat at my scrap desk admiring the pretty roses. I decided to add some shimmer to them with Diamond Stickles. Here are a couple close ups of some of the roses that I made:

As I was sitting here wondering what pictures I had that would go well with pastel roses, I remembered this photo I took of Susie just the other morning. It was perfect....her shirt matched the orange roses almost exactly!! So I was off and running. I have a favorite sketch over at Let's Scrap and pulled it down from my bulletin board and used it as a jumping off point. Generally with this sketch, I use it for the base and then once my creativity starts flowing, it rarely resembles the sketch. But I figure that sketches are meant to INSPIRE us, not take all our creativity away by insisting that we exactly duplicate the sketch, right? Here is the end result...I really love this page and more than for just the roses and the pretty pictures. I took some time to really reflect on my feelings about my daughter and put it on the page. I'm not one for a lot of jornaling usually so this felt good and now she will know exactly how her mom was feeling when this picture was taken.

The striped paper is from Little Yellow Bicycle Free Spirit collection.  Not sure who made the orange paper that I used for the bottom border as it was in my stash and has no markings on it.  The pearl bling is by ZVA, I used Harvest Orange and Vintage Pink Glimmer Mist on the white cardstock to soften it up and sprayed the doilies with Sugar Cookie Glimmer Mist.  Its hard to tell from the photo but the whole layout has a pretty sheen to it. Add a piece of soft green cardstock to tie up the Color Palette requirements, Thickers letters and few Dew Drops on the doilies and it was complete!!  It really came together fast once I had the picture chosen!

That's all I have for now. I am about to start on a Baby Boy first year album, now that I have all the supplies finally!! JoAnn.com took FOREVER to ship! I don't know if I will post all those pages or not.....maybe I will do it in batches. Its for a shower gift and I'm really not going to go super crazy fancy with it.

Hope you all have a wonderful day!!

Sniffles, Coughs and Scrapping!

I'm home from work today because this "cold" really grabbed hold of me. I slept no more than 3 hours last night, fighting with my nose. One side wants to be stuffy, the other side running like a faucet! I got the kids off to school, loaded my self up with some cold medicine and antibiotics and sat down to scrap a little. I've had this idea bouncing around in my head for a while now and with all the yuckiness from my cold in there now, I had to get it out!! LOL!! This is my son and his best friends (sans a couple) who are all on the same Prep Baseball team. There are others on the team but this group has been friends for years and they do everything together! Of course MY SON is the one being goofy in the front!! I cut the balls, gloves and bat out on my Cricut. The balls were a part of an entire baseball title that was a free download at The Quilling Patch. Using my SCAL program, I broke it apart and used only the balls. The gloves and bat were vector images that I traced in SCAL and cut. I'm happy with how this turned out. With two boys who have played baseball since age 4, I have done a TON of baseball layouts and they all start to look the same. I like the change on this one, except that when I was cropping the picture to upload I noticed that one of the baseball gloves is backwards! Oh well! I never claimed to be perfect! The other thing that is different for me on this page is that I did not use a single bit of patterened paper! GASP!!!

That's all I have for now. I'm going to see if I can catch up on some of that missed sleep from last night but I am sure I will be back with more later on today or tomorrow!! Oh, and tomorrow is the first day of the "Bakers Dozen" class I am taking at Big Picture Scrapbooking so I am really looking forward to that. Stay tuned...I will post what I create in class here too!

Sunshine Award

I'm at work right now boo hoo'ing because since 2am when I woke up coughing and had a killer sore throat, I have not felt good.  As the day goes on, I feel worse and I cannot wait for 4:00 to get here so I can go lay down on the couch and watch tv.  I feel AWFUL.  Since I'm having a hard time concentrating on work right now I decided to go see what was new over at Let's Scrap.  I was surprised to see that Betty Anne Orr had made a post about my blog (and the others on the Design Team) and that she felt we deserved the Sunshine Award.  It was the first time I smiled all day long!!  Thanks, Betty Anne, for all the "sunshine" you have brought into MY life!  Please stop by and check out Betty Anne's blog Let's Get Scrap Happy.  So without further ado...here is my very first blog award:

As part of the award, I am to give it to 12 other bloggers who have brought Sunshine to my life!  I spend a lot of time going to the blogs of my fellow Design Team members but since they already have the award, the below list are other blogs that I follow most often and they definately do bring me sunshine, even though I'm sure many of them have no idea I even look at their blogs!!

1.  Love Life's Little Pleasures - This is Debbie's blog and you will be blown away when you see the works of art she creates!  I don't know her personally but by following each others blogs, we frequently email back and forth and have become quite friendly!  I LOVE her blog....its the first one I check every day!

2.  Been There, Done That, Have the Layout - This blog belongs to Christina.  She participates in many of the same challenge sites that I do and I always love her layouts!

3.   Creatings from the Heart

4.   Bits of Me

5.   Reality Crafting

6.   Kerri's Creations

7.   The Occasional Creation

8.   Capadia Designs

9.   Everyday Cricut

10. A Scrap Happy Southern Belle

11. What the Scrap Is That?

12. Scrap Happy 

There are so many more blogs I visit occasionally but since the rules say 12, that's all I'm listing!!  Its now 3:10pm.  50 minutes of work, 10 minutes to drive home, 5 minutes to get some medicine and water in me, and I'm hitting the couch!

50th Anniversary Favors!

Back in February I made a bunch of those $1 Target Mailboxes for Valentine's Day and showed my coworkers.  A few of them asked me to make them some which I did.  Fortunately I had bought all the mailboxes I could find (ya never know when they will have them) so still had a bunch left over.  My coworker Maddie is throwing a 50th Anniversary party and asked if I could do up some mailboxes in a 50th Anniversary theme for table decorations at the party.  So that's what I have been doing for the past two days.  Made 6 of them and I think they really came out cute!!

 Other than those, I haven't done anything else crafty.  I have two more big projects to do in the next couple weeks....one is a baby boy first year album for my friend Lisa who is quite pregnant with baby Ryan!  I would like to have it complete for her shower (and since I haven't heard anything about it yet, I'm still ok on time!!) and so far all I have done is collected the papers, album and most embellishments for it.  The other project I want to finish is to make a paper flower arrangement for my friend Andrea who has been driving my son home from school every day since September.  Since I know she will not take money from me, I had an idea.  I want to make a paper flower arrangement and then put in a stake with what will look like a card (you know those little cards you get in a flower arrangement?) but instead of it being a card, it will be a gift card!!  So it will be like two gifts in one.  I have the flower pot, wooden skewer, floral foam and spanish moss, but still have no idea what kind of flowers I want to make.  I will try to get some work done on those two projects over the weekend.  Hoping for some scrappy time tomorrow...but who knows....I think I am also on the verge of getting sick.  About 2pm I started coughing and can feel my chest getting tighter by the hour.  Cross your fingers for me...I hate being sick and especially with Memorial Day Weekend coming up!

Let's Scrap Blog Hop Winners!

Are you a winner??  The National Scrapbooking Day celebration continues at Let's Scrap!  The Design Team blog hop came to a close on Friday and the winners have been posted here.  The winner for my stop with this beautiful layout is WENDY CROWE.  Wendy, if you see this message, please email me your address so I can send your goodies out.

 And the randomly chosen GRAND PRIZE winner of a $50 Gift Certificate to A Cherry On Top.com, having completed EVERY stop on the Blog Hop is:

BETTY ANNE ORR!

Congrats girl!!  What a great job you and all the participants did!  We look forward to doing it again.  Don't forget, there are still more challenges for NSD going on!  And of course the weekly sketch (a new one is just HOURS away) and Design Team challenges too!  (Pssst....this week its ME!!  I have the Question of the Week and the Design Team Challenge!  Any suggestions on what you would like for a challenge??) 

Just say OHM!

LAYOUT PHOTO WILL BE BACK ON JULY 20, 2010

I forgot to post this layout I did of my daughter and nephew.  They decided out of the blue one day to do Yoga. They did this almost all summer long!! They would sit Indian style on the floor, pinch their fingers together and chant OHM! LOL!! It was too funny! The OHM sign I found on the internet and traced it and cut it out on my Cricut. Papers are old from my stash, not even sure who by.  I used the weekly sketch at Sketch Inspirations and also entered the weekly challenge which is "patterned paper" over at Practical Scrappers.  The pleated ribbon was flat but I pleated it and stitched it down the middle with my sewing machine.  The date stamp is 7Gypsies.

Busy Little Bee!

Don't ya just hate when you look forward to the weekend coming ALL WORK WEEK LONG and then when it finally gets here, you have so much to do that all the things you were looking forward to (like scrapping, enjoying the sunshine, etc.) get pushed aside!  That's what's happening today!  Its the day of my 25th High School Reunion.  Since I now live almost 2 hours away from where I grew up, we will have to leave here around 4:30pm.  Between now and then I have to drop off son at baseball practice, go to the Post Office and bank, stop somewhere to get a new pair of sunglasses since I seem to have lost mine yesterday (no biggie, they were 4 years old and really scratched up anyway), pick son up from baseball practice, drop daughter off at softball practice, go to Motor Vehicle, iron clothes for tonight for both me and John, go to daughters softball game, come home, shower dress and go.  Phew....I'm exhausted already!  That leaves exactly zero minutes for scrapping today!  Oh, and somewhere in this mix I have to pick the winner of Let's Scrap Blog Hop Stop #1! 

I was able to get a little scrapping in yesterday.  This first one was for a challenge at Let's Scrap.  The photos are of me and some work friends who went to a Bee Gee's tribute concert at the OCean City Music Pier!  We were able to go backstage and have a photo taken with the "Brothers Gibb".  They really were good and I wish that they would do it again....I'd so totally go again...I still like the Bee Gee's even if its not cool as my kids say!

And this one is another in my Antigua vacation book.  Its of a place called Shirley Heights which boasts the best views of the Antigua sunset!!  Its soooo hard working on these pages because we had such an amazing time that I want to be back there!! 

And finally I just have two pictures that I wanted to post.  I've been playing around with my new camera and these two are my favorites!!  My son and some of his friends on his baseball team (my son would be the clown in the front!!) after a great win on Thursday night, and my daughter....still sleepy eyed!!  I love my crazy, unorganized but full of love, life!

Let's Scrap Blog Hop!

THIS POST IS PINNED TO THE TOP....SCROLL DOWN TO SEE NEW POSTS!

Hey there!!!  Thanks for hopping over to my blog.  This is the first stop on the Let's Scrap Design Team Blog Hop!    Below you will find a challenge based on one of the great Let's Scrap sketches.  All you have to do is complete this challenge, upload it to the Let's Scrap gallery with the tag "bloghop1", become a follower of my blog and leave me a comment letting me know you are participating.  At the end of the Blog Hop on May 21, 2010, I will randomly select one person to receive a small prize package.  But that's not IT!!  Keep hopping through the blogs....there are 10 of us playing along.  Complete the challenges at EVERY stop on the blog within the next two weeks and you're name will be entered into a random drawing for a $50 GIFT CERTIFICATE to A Cherry On Top Scrapbook Store.    And the best part....you have TWO FULL WEEKS to complete your challenges and when all is said and done you will have 10 projects completed and a chance at some great prizes!! 

Below you will find a list of those DT's who are joining us in the blog hop.  

1.   Susan

2.   Cori

3.   Deb

4.   Jean

5.   Sally

6.   Rosalie

7.   Scarlett

8.   Carolina

9.   Nana 

10. Kristie

And now for my challenge to you -- I love shoes, I love purses, I love shopping.  And today as I was contemplating what to do for my part of the challenge I received an email from a nationally known shoe store.  The minute I saw this advertisement  I knew two things.....1. I have to go get those purple sandals AND the bag, and 2.  this would be the inspiration for my challenge.  Sooo, having said that your challenge is a two-parter:  Create a layout based on this Let's Scrap sketch....

and using this advertisement for color inspiration.  (Aren't those purple shoes too cute?  HAHA!)

Remember, in order to be in the drawing for a prize, please become a follower of my blog so I can see what neat things you are doing as well, upload your layout to Let's Scrap using the tag bloghop1, and return here to leave me a comment that you have uploaded a layout.  I can't wait to see what you all come up with for this great summer color combination!!  And finally, before you hop off to Cori's blog, this is the small prize I will be giving for participation in my challenge:

Three sets of Studio G Clear Stamps, a gold metallic Ink It Up pad and a 5x7 Making Memories mini album all never been opened or used.  Good luck....see ya on the other end of the hop!  Next stop.....Cori!!

Coming Down To The Wire!!

I have to say that being on the design team at Let's Scrap, and as such, being a part of the Let's Scrap Blog Hop has been so much FUN!!  I have been amazed at the talent and creativity on all the layouts that were uploaded over at Let's Scrap!  And SHOCKED at how many of you were able to complete ALL TEN projects in the hop for a chance at the $50 Grand Prize!!  How cool is THAT!!! 

We are nearing the finish line and all projects must be uploaded and properly tagged at the Let's Scrap website no later than 11:59pm CENTRAL time TONIGHT!!  And now for the part you are all waiting for...the WINNERS!!

Winners for each individual challenge will be chosen randomly Saturday morning.  Because the design team members live in several different time zones and countries, it is not possible to give you an exact time.  Just keep checking!!!  Sunday afternoon a complete list of winners from ALL stops on the blog hop will be posted on Let's Scrap and our individual blogs.   If you see your name, be sure to contact the Design Team member of the blog stop that you won and send her your contact information so your prize can start winging its way to you!  For the BIG mama prize....the $50 gift certificate to A Cherry On Top, you will have to be a little more patient while we determine how many of you participated in each stop of the blog hop!  The winner of the Grand Prize will be announced on TUESDAY MORNING,

On behalf of each of my fellow design team members, I want to thank you so much for making this such a fun Blog Hop!  We hope that you really enjoyed it and are so proud of yourselves for all the hard work you did in getting all those challenges done in just a two week period!  Your albums should be busting at the seams by now!! 

So, should we do this again sometime??  Let us know what you think!!!

I'm being published!!!

I have never have any of my scrapbook layouts published before. Honestly, never really tried. But recently I feel like the quality of my scrapping has improved (much in part to the awesome forums like Let's Scrap and A Cherry On Top that belong to) so I have submitted a couple to some online magazines. The two that I submitted were both picked up!! One will be published in Scrapbook News and Review and the other at Scrapbooking.com Magazine! This is pretty exciting for me and has given me a little more confidence to maybe try submitting to the paper magazines too!!

This news came a the end of a great weekend!! It was sooooo nice out this weekend and I really didn't get any scrapping time in so I have nothing new for you to look at....but we sure did a lot of shopping, getting some incredible deals!! John got a 30% coupon with his Kohl's catalog so we decided it was time for new bedding. I haven't bought anything new for our room for at least 4 years. This is the set we picked out, except I didn't get the curtains and my room does not look NEARLY as elegant as this one, but its pretty nonetheless:

We also picked up two of these Anti-gravity lounge chairs which we have been wanting for the past couple years.  They are SOOOOO comfortable!!  I had one set up in the living room just to test it out and we ended up leaving it there (just for now...it doesn't quite match my living room decor) because it was so comfy to recline and watch TV!! 

And then finally I stopped at Michael's and picked up a new American Crafts D-ring album for my Antigua trip and lots of divided page protectors as I've been inspired by some of the things Ali Edwards has been doing with them.  See her blogpost here. 

Today I can't wait to get home, though. I have been tracking the shipment of my new camera and its been delivered!! I can't wait to get home and play with it! I have been saving and window shopping for almost 2 years waiting for a deal on a new camera. Well not only did I get a great deal on the camera, but I got a wide format printer in the deal which I finally hooked up yesterday and played with a little bit. By combining a decent sale with an amazing rebate, I got a Canon EOS Rebel T1i 15.1 MP CMOS Digital SLR Camera with 3-Inch LCD and EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens, a Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4.0-5.6 IS Telephoto Zoom Lens and a Canon Pixma PRO9000MkII Inkjet Photo Printer for just about $800. The regular price for these three items is around $1600 so I saved A TON and am so excited!!

What a Beeee-utiful Day!!

It was almost 85 here today and I am a happy camper!!  I spent the morning doing laundry, cleaning up and running a few errands.  Then came home and sat outside and soaked up some rays while listening to the end of an audio book on my iPod.  After the kids got home from school I sat down and worked on a few layouts.  One of them (the Wildwood one) I did last night but had to wait for the Glossy Accents to dry before I could photograph it.  Here's my works for today...I doubt I will be back tonight as Matt has a baseball game and Susie has a Dance:

Double layout of our annual trip to Wildwood.  This was last August.  The beachballs were cut using the Lifes A Beach Cricut Cartridge then coated with glossy accents.

Next up is Mother's Day 2010.  I was a very spoiled Mommy!!!  I got a yummy basket of stuff from Bath & Body Works, a new bag for my new (but not yet arrived!) Canon Rebel EOS Ti DSLR Camera, a huge hanging basket of petunias and brunch at Goodfellows:

And finally its back to the vacation album!  This is a double layout I did for Carolina's stop on the Lets Scrap blog hop.  See the post pinned to the top if you would like to play along...there is still plenty of time!  These photos are of Betty's Hope Sugar Plantation in Antigua.

Blog Candy

I'm only able to pop on for a minute as I am at work (and of course, working VERY hard) but I was checking out some neat blogs last night and following links from blog to blog and came across this yummy blog candy at Me and the Little Rascals blog.  If you would like a chance to win this simply comment on the blog and become a follower!  I have and honestly, am glad I am regardless if I win the booty!!  She has some REALLY neat stuff and an ETSY store with some TO DIE FOR buttons!!!  That's all I have for today....except to say that I am so excited with the layouts that are being posted in response to the Let's Scrap Blog Hop!!!  Its been a great time so far and we still have lots of time left!!

Saturday Special!!

OK, so there wasn't really anything special! Went to Susie's softball game where we were treated to high winds swirling dirt at us from all directions. Came home and John took the kids out Mother's Day Shopping!! Yay for me! I scrapped on and off today but did manage to get a few challenges done for the blog hop and one item (an altered egg carton!) for a class I am taking at Big Picture Scrapbooking.

This layout is for Rosalies Challenge at Blog Hop #6. Its my son, who is now 13 and informed me that I dressed him like a dork when he was a baby, watching the gameshow "Supermarket Sweep" and talking and talking like he knew the answer. The challenge was to get inspiration from a layout that was posted on Let's Scrap quite some time ago. I used Core'dinations cardstock for the blue, the title was cut on my Cricut, the letter papers are by Best Creations, and the star felt trim I just picked up for $1 at AC Moore! An American Crafts arrow and 7Gypsies Proof stamp, red Bazzil cardstock and Fiskars Threading Water punch and its done. :)

This layout is another from our Antigua trip. The food wasn't that great there but 3 times during the 14 days we were there we were able to get reservations at the Pineapple Grill. I meant to take pictures before we started eating. The picture on th left WAS crabcakes. We laughed so hard because the presentation was beautiful but being from the east coast we are used to "Maryland" style crabcakes. There were TWO crabcakes on this HUGE plate and both were about the size of John's thumb. Basically bite sized! The pineapple in the middle is a paper piecing I made. Its been years since I did one by hand since I got a cutting machine but sometimes you just can't find exactly what you are looking for!

And last for today is a pre-class project for a class I am taking at Big Picture Scrapbooking,  I'm not entirely sure why...or what we will be doing with it...but the first assignment was to have a decorated egg carton ready for the start of class!  Stay tuned...I'll let you know more as I find out! 

And that, my friends, is my day.  It kills me but I MUST go to bed as I have to work in the morning.  Thankfully its only two days a year I have to get up and go to work on a Sunday!  Have a great Mother's Day to all the moms out there!

Friday Night Scrappin'

I had off all day on Friday (I work for the state and due to the economy we are required to take a certain amount of furlough days...this was my last one) and was out running around ALL day. By the time I finished all my errands it was time to pick the kids up from school and John was home from work. My original plan was to spend a peaceful day scrapping! As usual, my life had other plans for me! I did come home with those purple sandals and the bag from my inspiration photo in my Let's Scrap Blog Hop challenge!! LOVE THEM!

Matt had a game last night and they creamed the other team which was really good. It got to the point where we really started to feel bad for the other boys and their coach was screaming and being so obnoxious to them AND the umpires that he was actually told to leave the ballpark. Geez, its Little League Mister! Chill out. It drives me nuts when parents/coaches treat this like its the major leagues. If there ever comes a day when my kids stop having FUN when they are playing their sports, they will no longer play. That coach is lucky he was on the other team because we have a whole bunch of strong willed women sitting on our bleachers!! We were ready to take him on even on behalf of the parents on the other team! But back home we were by 9pm! Woo hoo!! So I decided to play along for fun with some of the blog hop challenges. I made a two page spread but was able to use it for both Cori and Jean's challenges and then a birthday card for Deb's challenge that Susie can use tonight as she has a party to attend!! I will see if I can get any scrapping in today. Its sorta nice out AND I have lots of laundry to do. Sometimes I have to prioritize and NOT putt scrapping first!

For Cori's Challenge - use " " on your page and a metal embellishment.  I used the quotes in my title and the metal is the snaps (by WRMK) at the bottom and the eyelet on the tag.  Used all Fancy Pants Rusted Sun line.  More photos from our February trip to Antigua.  About 500 more to go.

Using the same papers I made a second page to the first layout using Jean's challege which was to have a quote on your page.  The quote reads "It's no sin to get sauce on your chin" which is PERFECT as John LOVES his BBQ and its very evident when you see his face when he's eating it!

For the 2nd stop on the hop, I made this Birthday card for Deb's challenge.  We used a 12x12 sketch, an ad for color inspiration, had to use at LEAST 4 patterned papers and brads and a stamped image.  Since I'm just playing for fun, I fudged it and used buttons instead of brads and an embossed image instead of stamped.  I'm just not a good stamper!

 

Can't wait to see what everyone else comes up with for all these great challenges!  Have a wonderful weekend everyone!  Oh wait....and here's a little sneak peek at what I made for the May 19th sketch of the week at Let's Scrap!

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Sunday Ramblings

Sundays usually stress me out. Its silly, I know, but I spend Sunday's thinking about all the things I wanted to accomplish over the weekend and inevitably, not all of those things get done. Sometimes even the smallest of to-do lists don't get accomplished. This Sunday has been no different. I woke up early and just putzed around doing really nothing until I had to go pick Susie up from her sleepover. We took the long way home and looked at some neighborhoods (we are moving in the next 15 months). Since we've been home all I've managed to accomplish was to spray the couch and loveseat with Resolve and scrub them nice and good. They are still wet so nobody can sit in the living room! That worked out well as I did clean up in there and now nobody is in there to mess it up. BUT, I stll have laundry to do, laundry from last week still sitting folded in baskets, my room is a mess and I didn't even finish putting away the groceries from yesterday....its only a few bottles of soda left on the table...but still! Anyway, I decided to check out the challenges at ACOT that I missed last night and decided to do this one. The challenge was to scrap a memory you have of the 80's. Well, my friends, the 80's were MY DECADE! I graduated high school in 1985. Got married in 1987. So many FIRSTS in the 80's!! I still like 80's music, not so much into the big hair anymore but I certainly helped fuel the economy with all the giant cans of AquaNet hairspray I bought! This layout represents the things I remember most from the 80's. I journaled in white ink along the edges with some of the fads that I remembered most. The photos I got off the internet of the things I MOST remember....roller skates, jelly shoes, banana hair clips and my first car....a 1976 Ford Granada! Wow...what a blast this one was. Back to reality now....time to empty the dishwasher!  Might be back later with more if I can get more scrapping in!

ETA:  I'm back...this one will do two challenges.  One for using the title of a Madonna song and the other for the weekly sketch at Sketch Inspirations.  The photo isn't the best, but it was printed and I just can't let a printed photo go to waste!!  I used more OLD papers...trying to use up as much stash as I can although I donated a 2 foot pile the other day of HORRIBLY OLD and HORRIBLE papers.  For some reason I used to like Keeping Memories Alive plaids!  LMAO!  I don't think I EVER used them on a page either but man did I have a ton of it! 

PS - I have 80s music playing on my computer and its driving my daughter NUTS!  She thinks its horrible!

Happy National Scrapbooking Day!

I'll be in and out today....its 85 degrees here in NJ and it was in the 40's last week...I CANNOT and WILL NOT stay inside all day!  I'm participating a little in a couple different NSD crops on the internet and will post my layouts to this thread and update it as I do more.

I followed along in a "homemade paper flower" class and this was my rose....I LOVE it and it was SOOO simple to do!  First time I used my hot glue gun for scrapping!!

I just finished another challenge at ACOT.  I'm not real happy with this layout.  I have a hard time with this sort of paper....I always want to cut it but there's no real way to do that.

And probably the last for today...or at least for this post since its ALMOST tomorrow :) is this one which was for a challenge to scrap a page using the title of an '80s song!  I knew just what picture to use!!  This will also do double duty for Challenge 48 at Lets Scrap, where the challenge was to use three patterned papers, a solid somewhere on the layout and an altered embellishment (I smooched the rims of the sunglasses to make them pink...didn't come out as pink as I wanted but oh well):