Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Monster Truck Tour Layout

Hello everyone !!

I wanted to pop in today and share a layout that I finished. We as a family have a fun thing that we like to do. Either me or Patrick will take one of the kids out by themselves for a date night/afternoon, whatever it happens to be. We have been doing this consistently since January and it seems to happen once a month or so. January just so happened to be Noah's turn.

I overheard a commercial for the Monster Truck tour that was coming in to town that weekend. I was so excited that me and Noah headed down to the ticket box that afternoon and bought 2 tickets.

Patrick and Noah headed out on Saturday night and had a wonderful time together. Noah was sooooo excited !!

Here is a look at both pages together.


Here is the first page. They just happened to take a lot of vertical photos. So I made 2 of them 6x8 and cut them up to fit into the pockets.


The title card. I wanted to stay with a neon green and orange, with a little blue thrown in, color scheme. So I chose to go with a green title. I used one of the fun doodle lines that I mentioned back in my favorite brush post. You can find them here at the lily pad.


This was a fun photo. This was were the big monster trucks would jump and crush the cars on the other side. Noah is sitting on the ground underneath.


The journaling cards for this side.

I started by stamping on the top of the first card. Adding some enamel dots and half of the arrow saying on the bottom.

The other card is from the SC kit. It was rather fitting for this layout don't you think !


Here is the other side of the layout.


This card was fun to put together. While it is rather simple,  I love the look of it with the vellum truck. I needed something that wouldn't get in the way of the tickets sticking up. As far as the truck goes, I found a free clipart truck online and printed on the vellum.


I added the tickets into an empty pocket and put a cute clip on the top to hold them in place.


The bottom photo is a panoramic shot of the "PIT" before the show began. I added some of the photo to half of the journaling card. I had Patrick send me an email with the journaling from that night that I spread around the 2 pages.



This one was really fun to do. Lots of different colors and boyish things.

Until next time.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Q & A



Howdy folks !!

How is your weekend so far ?

I get asked a lot about how I print on my journaling cards. And other little things too. A few years back I put together a couple tutorials. If you haven't checked them out click here.

I want to put together another tutorial for you all. With this one I also want to include a walk through of how I put my week together from start to finish.

I promise that I'm getting to point of this post. Here goes.

I wanted to take this opportunity to ask you all out there if you have specific questions for me before I get started. I am getting ready to start my week 7 and thought that this is a good time as any to do another tutorial.

Now is your chance. Ask away if you have any. Leave a comment if you have a question and I will answer it/and or address it in the upcoming tutorial.

I hope to get started real soon.

Thank you all !! 

Friday, March 21, 2014

Flashback Friday

I got caught up last night looking through my older albums. (I was still doing PL at the time as well)

It is always so fun to look back at my life, how little the kids looked, the memories that were made.

I wanted to do a little Flashback today. Seems fitting that it is Friday after all.

I snapped some photos with my iphone last night of some of my older layouts. Some of my favorites.

These ones are truly treasured. Feelings came back. Memories came flooding back.

The albums that I flipped through were from the year 2009. The year Noah was born.

Every now and again I want to do some traditional layouts. Maybe just a few here and there.

I will have to plan for that. Do some online shopping.

Here are some of my favorites from 2009. A long time ago. We are talking 5 years ago !!

This one was all about us going to the Rascal Flatts concert last minute. Long story short, I went back and forth about spending the money to go or not. Found some tickets someone was selling the day of the concert. Bought them, dropped the kids off at my moms and met Patrick downtown at the arena. Another long story short, seating was messed up so we ended up sitting front row from the side stage and very close to the main stage !! It was a dream come true !!  I can literally reach up and touch them !!


This is one from my pregnancy photo shoot.


This one is from the Air Show. It was so fun, hot, and exhausting all at the same time. I was very, very pregnant.  Maddie, shown on the right was not impressed as the rest of us.


This is one of my favorites. We were trying to pass the time will Noah arrived so we took Grandma to the farm with us. He was born 5 days later.


Noah makes his arrival. Hospital pics.


Newborn photo shoot.


This one is from Noah's book. Supplies are from the Becky Higgins Baby kit. LOVED IT !!


Annual fall family photos.


Leaves.  Patrick took the blower and made a HUGE pile of leaves in the backyard. It is big enough to hide both girls in it !! Fun times.


Well thanks for looking. I sure did have fun looking through my past albums. Will definitely do this again in the future. Also make some new layouts. I see all this wonderful inspiration out there all the time.


Thursday, March 20, 2014

Happy Spring !!


 It's here ! It's here ! Spring is here !

It's official, spring is now upon us. Today is the first day of spring.

I am sooooo excited.

Spring flowers, warmer weather, nice evenings, pulling out the short sleeves, and even the shorts can now come out of the closet. Oh, can't forget about the first pair of new sandals. That is on the to do list for sure. Oh, here is to more BBQing !! Yummm.

Here, in our neck of the woods, it has been feeling like spring for a little while now. The past few days we have been making the switch. Slowly mind you. Switching out clothes, ect.

The first thing we (me and the kids) did was to plant some new spring flowers in the front yard. See the photo below.  There are more flowers that are not pictured as well. And I might have some plans to put some more on the other side of the front yard.


I added some lavender flowers. Always wanted some, and now I do. The first photo in this blog post is of my new lavender flowers, the bee snuck in at the last second. Can you spot him ?

I also added this gorgeous yellow bush. This just screams spring !!


Another thing that is currently happening around here is that we are working on getting the garden going. The first step is to flatten out the garden spot and then to put the garden boxes in the ground.
P is tilling up the ground, it is going to be a big job. 


The weather has been really nice lately. The other day the kids talked me into putting on the sprinkler for them. It took some convincing but I finally gave in. After all, it was 84 degrees. For the record, Noah has been begging to set up the pool ! I know, now that is just crazy. It's March for crying out loud !! Maybe if it hits 90. Then we will see.


Now, go out there and enjoy the first day of Spring !! Wherever you are. Whether it's still 35 degrees or 75. It's a day to celebrate.

We might do a picnic at the park tonight for dinner.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Project Life Week 6

Welcome to week 6.

This week I wanted to shake things up a little.

I started out with a design J page protector. It holds 3x4's and 4x4's. I included a clear tab to mark the week.


Since I didn't have a 4x6 to use as a title card I made my own. This one was once a 4x6 title card. I simply cut it down to a 3x4 size. But before I cut it down to the size I wanted, I printed the week brush and date on the card.

This photo is how I caught Noah doing his dishes chore Monday morning.


This photo was one that I shared on Instagram. I also wanted to include the journaling from my Instagram update.

For this journaling card I started out with one of the Color guide cards from the Studio Calico kit. I knew that I was not going to need them for anything else but to add them to my PL album. The color and the date was perfect. I added the FEB on there and then outlined around it. Lastly, adding my Instagram journaling to the bottom. 


Once I saw this card (from the SC kit) I knew exactly what I was going to do with it. It took me a little bit to figure out how to get it just right, but I love the end result. I knew I needed to fit the & symbol on there and the word Zumba below SPIN. The double arrow is from the DIY collection from Simple Stories. I knew I needed to cut the bottom off the card so that I could put my journaling underneath. I also outlined some of the circles with a black pen.


The other side of the Design J was used for the daddy daughter dance.

I made the journaling card that was in the middle. It is from the Jade kit. I used a banner from the SC kit and added the word Dance onto it. I also stamped the little hearts onto the card, they are also from the SC kit.

The other 2 journaling cards I had each girl pick one out and fill out. Both of them were so funny. They did it in a list style. A few funny entries were ate 10 cupcakes, danced with daddy, ate 3 more cupcakes, loved all songs, stayed so long. And they both drew pictures to go along with their lists. I am sure these will be treasured for years to come. 


Here is what the 2 pages look like together. The smaller one and then the last page.


 This is the last page, a full page Design A again. Yeah. Love it.



This photo is of Katelyn writing her essay. More on that below.


My mom sent us happy mail !! Each of us got a wonderful package. The kids were overjoyed.

I used the Happy Mail stamp from a SC kit and stamped it onto a label. 


After school Maddie wore the cat costume all day and pretended to be a pet kitty.

I added the box brush from this wonderful brush set. You can find it here. After it was printed I added half of the yellow circle, some washi tape, and the badge. 



About a month before this week took place I gave a shout out to my local facebook friends. To see if anyone wanted to come scrapbook with me, find out what PL was all about. Friday night we got together for the first time. We had a good turn out, and I was busy showing the ladies how the product worked and then they got to add in their photos. It was soooo fun that I forgot to take a photo of us in action. I snapped this photo after everyone had left for the evening.

The brush can be found here. I added the clear heart and the blue letters onto the photo.


This journaling card is from the SC kit. It talks about Katelyn wanting to write an essay about the grasslands, because that was what they were studying in school, instead of going and riding bikes with the neighbor kids. It is so typical of Katelyn right now. She loves to do research, write things down, make lists, ect.


This week had 1 to many photos that I wanted to fit in so I decided to put this one in 2 of the journaling card slots. Simply added the lunch brush and my journaling and then cut it down the middle.


This one is talking about my scrapbooking night with the ladies. To begin this one I added the label to my journaling card before I printed the word project. Again - using the digital life cards are so much fun to make my journaling cards. I used the digital card to figure out where I needed to place the word project and then printed it onto the card, where the label was. I had this wonderful "life" rub on that was perfect. Added my journaling to the bottom and I was done.


That's it for week 6. Have a great rest of your week everybody. I hope to be back before too long.

Thanks for coming !!

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Beach Day part 2

Good morning everyone !

I wanted to pop in and share the rest of my Beach trip layout with you all.

Here is the whole page. Just a reminder, this page is the second page to the one I shared in the previous post.

I used a fun pocket page protector from the Simple Stories Variety pack. All other products are from Simple Stories.


For this one I started out with a 4x6 chevron card and added my 3x4 picture to it. I used the angle in the chevron pattern to make a fun journaling/embellishment cluster around the cute sandbox.


I simply love to use bigger photos whenever I can fit them in. This page protector was the perfect solution ! I love them ! I printed out my 6x8 photo and went from there. I thought it would be fun to make a clear frame around Noah using the new clear photo overlays. To make the frame I used my slick writer and made a thin frame all the way around the clear part. Then I added the fun "Summertime" and the flower to finish it off.


Here is a close up.


 Added a fun photo of these 3 playing in the waves. Chose to leave it plain with a white border.


This cute 4x6 card was a perfect spot for my journaling. Plus it was already mostly embellished for me. I just added the black border around the sun, the flowers, and the flip flop stickers.


The last photo is of Katelyn and her "treasure."


I hope you have enjoyed this post today.

While I was working on these photos it was making me craving a beach day !! I need to plan a beach trip PRONTO !!

Friday, March 7, 2014

Pagemaps and Simple Stories Team Up

Hello everyone ! 

I am real sorry I have been MIA lately. To make up for that I have a few fun blog posts to share in the next week.

I wanted to pop in today and share another Simple Stories assignment.

I was honored to participate in a team up with Pagemaps and Simple Stories for March. I have always been a BIG fan of sketches, and Pagemaps are AWESOME. From the beginning of my scrapbooking life/journey. It is always easier to have a starting point for me, then I can go from there.

Here is the sketch that I was given to work with.

You can find all the March 2014 Sketches and the wonderful work all of the Pagemaps and Simple Stories Design Teams have done RIGHT HERE.



And here is what I did with it.  I chose to use these photos from our beach day last year. The photos and the Summer line were simple made for each other. It was great to work with.



The title card was so fun to do. I started out with the yellow doilie from the Homespun line and cut out the inside. Then I added some patterned paper to the bottom and cut some of the fun honeycomb patterned paper to the top.  Both were used from the Simple Stories Summer Sn@p set.


To this photo I added one of the 2x2 squares and then on top of that added one of the new words from the DIY line.


I added the 2 smaller photo just like the sketch and embellished with stickers from the Summer line. The today stamp is from the DIY stamp set. On the bottom I added more of that fun honeycomb paper.


This journaling space was sooooo fun to do. I started with a plain journaling card, simply cutting it smaller. Then I wanted to add something to the bottom. The fun wave paper (again from the Summer Sn@p card set) was perfect. I cut out the paper to mimic the waves and added to my journaling card.

The Sn@p Squares and Pieces set is awesome ! The clothes line piece was perfect to add to my journaling card. I added flowers and enamel dots to finish it off.


One last photo to share. This one is of the 4 of them playing games with the waves. They have so much fun, and of course, so do I !

I chose to leave some of the photos plain because I had so much else going on. I wanted the photos to stand out. I did leave the white borders on them though. 


That is it for this post. Stay tuned next week as I will add to this page. I did the other half to finish off our beach day. I have to save it for my Simple Stories blog post.

Also finishing up Week 6 in my 2014 album. Once it's done I will share that as well.

Have a great weekend everybody.