Westside BBQ

The Challenge:
A Frosted Design challenge; make a layout about a BBQ, picnic or games

I chose to use photos from our church BBQ a couple of years ago.  It was such a fun afternoon.  There were fun games as well as good food!  John manned the BBQ, I manned the food tables and everyone had a great time.  It was so cool to see the adults get into the fun yet messy games.  Well, almost everyone got into the messy fun ;)  This is one thing I love about our church; people gathering together and being family.  It is a safe place to let your guard down!

Celebrate Marriage

The Challenge:
Scrap a layout about a celebration.  As a bonus, use a cupcake.

I didn't have any birthday photos, but I did have photos from a marriage retreat and I think that celebrating marriage is a great thing!  It doesn't really lend itself to the use of a cupcake though ;)

These are from a marriage retreat we did at Sunriver a couple of years ago.  It was a lot of fun and the facilities were very nice and posh.  For our free time, we took a walk on some of the miles of bike trails on the compound and took silly photos.  It was a blast!  Our room had a fireplace and was very nice; after we were moved out of the room with the gas leak!

Kick This

The Challenge:
Make a layout using blue, green and orange

Normally, I think this would have been a hard thing to do, but these photos were just begging to be used for this color challenge!  They are from last year's summer soccer season.  Kayla, Kyle and Bryon all played on the same team.  It was pretty fun to watch!

The Oregon Coast

I did this layout for a double purge swap.  The idea is to be paired with another scrapper.  You each make two kits, one for you and one to mail out to the other person.  You then make a layout with your kit and the other person's kit.  This was my kit.  It's funny, two people that have the exact same supplies can make two very different layouts!



I chose to scrap the day at the coast with my family.  It had been quite a while since we went and did anything with just the four of us.  We had a great day!

You & Me

Well, I am jumping on board and linking a layout to Sketchy Thursdays.  I have not done this before.  We shall see if I can figure it out, lol.  I also used this one as my entry in the Issue Challenge this week too to do a layout in 15 minutes; so it is very simple.

King of the Mountain

The Challenge:
In honor of the Royal wedding, use a royal title and the royal jewels

I thought this was perfect for the photos of John's climb to the top of Mt Shasta.  It took them two days (they camped about halfway up the mountain) and was the hardest thing either he or his friend had done.  They left camp about 5am to summit.  The ranger had told them it would be like 8-9 hours to get there.  They got there in 4.  He said it was so steep!  The view was amazing even through some forest fire smoke.  He even called me from the top!  They are already planning their next trip :)

Play Games!

Yesterday I posted a layout I did during our double purge swap using my kit.  Today I am posting the layout I did using my partner's kit.  Boy, she sure did send me some fun stuff!  I loved the papers!  This is one of my favorite layouts.

I chose to scrap the fun and games from our Church in the Park day from last summer.  I had a blast this day!  We gathered together after service to share in a picnic and some games!  It was so fun to watch all the kids (young and old....er) join in.  I had a blast shooting photos.  It was the first time I used a banner too :)  We had a great time until the Stormtroopers showed up and shut us down ;)


















Here is Stacia's with the same kit

The Oregon Coast

I did this layout for a double purge swap.  The idea is to be paired with another scrapper.  You each make two kits, one for you and one to mail out to the other person.  You then make a layout with your kit and the other person's kit.  This was my kit.  It's funny, two people that have the exact same supplies can make two very different layouts!

I chose to scrap the day at the coast with my family.  It had been quite a while since we went and did anything with just the four of us.  We had a great day!


















And here is Stacia's with the same kit.  It is so interesting to see the differences!

Splash! Defense of the Castle

The Challenge:
Use brown, green and blue for colors.  Use the embellishments hand stitching and stamps.  Must use "splash" in the title.

I admit, I had a hard time thinking of what to do with this challenge because of having to use "splash" in the title.  I decided that this works since the waves come splashing in and destroy the castle the fam made.  This was from our family trip to the coast last summer.  It was such a nice day and we had not been somewhere, just the four of us for a while.

I used Stickles to outline the splash and the Sew Easy tool to make the holes for the hand stitching.  The stamps are from Stampin' Up!

Wicked Good Time

Wicked came to town recently and my hubby bought tickets for us to go!  I was so excited.  I whipped out my new cell phone with the retro camera apps and took a couple of photos of us in the lobby waiting to go in and then one of the curtain before the show started.

It was a great show!  The set was amazing.  There were these gears all over the place and they even moved and did stuff.  The dragon lit up and blew out smoke at the opening of the show.  Clocks were kind of important too so I found some of these elements to use to scrap this event.  This is my first ever vintage look layout.  It was kind of fun :)

We made it to three of the Broadway shows this year.  I hope to make more next year.  Beauty and the Beast is coming :)  My Fair Lady too.

Wedding Invitation Marathon Palooza!

Saturday we spent 12 hours working on wedding invitations!  Oiy, my back was killing me!  We busted out a lot of work though and will only need one more, shorter session.  We are getting there!

Here is a peek at what we worked on

We are making about 120 of these.  This is the top 2/3.  The bottom 1/3 will be an area with a pocket for the RSVP and other info.  It is embossed with the little flowers that are on the thank you card.

We made 90 of these babies.  That is 630 pearls that I glued down!  Crazy!

Mother's Day

I had a great Mother's Day!  It was pretty laid back and low key, but sometimes those are the best kinds.

To start the day off, my son spoke at church and gave his testimony to the whole congregation.  He was well spoken, funny and had good insight.  I hope he was able to help people out there.  The children passed out roses to all the moms.  It is so cute to see them.  They look hard for their moms, but all moms get flowers.  Even the girlfriend of B's best friend got one (not a mom, but a girl, so she gets one, right?)  A cute little boy gave it to her.

We got home and the family took me to lunch at a fantastic Mexican restaurant.  My step-mom joined us too and I had yummy fajitas and there are enough for lunch again tomorrow!

The rest of the afternoon was just laid back and relaxing.  I finished a layout, updated the blog, at dinner prepared for me and soaked in the bath.  I couldn't ask for a better day, really!  My kids are the best!

Happy Mother's Day!

A very happy Mother's Day to all of you!  I think this was one of my favorite Mother's Days.  My kids are so funny!  The picture with my son behind the leaves always makes me smile!

I am excited to see what today will bring.  My son is speaking at church; I am so proud of him!  Can't wait to hear what he has to say.

New Phone

The Challenge:
Use design aspects from Alice in Wonderland

I finally got a new phone!  A smart phone :D  There are so many cool camera apps out there.  I was playing around with one (Vintage Photo) and taking photos of some of the Spring flowers in the yard.  I thought the photos had a sort of Alice look.  I included butterflies and cool ragged looking flowers to complete the look.  I made this layout when I had a really bad cold, probably on my worst day.  It just wasn't working for me and I didn't like it.  I am not sure I would have liked anything that day.  I decided to add the pearls, and I think they made the layout!  It was as good as it was going to get.  Now that I am feeling better, I like it a whole lot more :) I will be using my various camera apps a lot in the future!

Wedding Prep

Let the Royal Wedding prep begin!  No, not those Royals.... Kayla and Kyle!  The dress has been purchased (sadly, I can not show the dress since a certain someone is trying very hard to take a peek!), the cake design picked out, the initial flower meeting took place and the invitations are in high gear.  I did a little layout of the cake taste test.  There certainly are some perks to being the bride and groom to be :)  There was some good cake in this box!

Meet the Mooneys

The Challenge:
Use a monogram in a layout

We had some family photos taken earlier this year.  They were the perfect ones to use for a monogram challenge!  The Mooneys, being The Mooneys took some, well, rather interesting photos as well as some very nice ones.  Sometimes, you see the "real" people when you look at the goofy or outtake photos.  I hope you are able to gain a little insight into what we are really like as a family.

I loved how these butterflies turned out!  They are made with a navy, stamped image on silver paper and then punched out.