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 "I love You" Crate Paper: Paper Hearts

"Ahoy!" October Afternoon: Boarding Pass

Eric took the kids to meet Papa at Wisconsin Dells yesterday- so I had the day to myself! Oh, the quiet alone was amazing. I first ran errands for 2 hours and just looked around stores like TJ Maxx and Hobby Lobby. I stopped in to the scrapbook store and chatted, even though I worked 7 hours there on Friday (hard to stay away from such a fun place with great people!) I got a coffee and stopped and got bagels and went to Walgreens to get a long list of things I've been putting off. These short run-in, run-out errands are sometimes the hardest to accomplish with the kids in tow. And when I got home, I just took my time and played around in my scrap room. I completed 4 pages and started the cover for my book I'm going to use for the "Happy Little Moments" class I'm taking on-line through Studio Calico starting March first.

The top page, "I love you" was done a few days ago. It's not my usual style- but I love love love how it turned out. It probably looked 6 different ways before I finally was happy with this. And of course the cutting and glueing of the chevrons was pretty tedious. Marcy Penner has been using a lot of chevrons on her pages....and I took the idea to the extreme! It's an older picture from 2010 that was on my desk- that wasn't even the intended picture for this L/O.

We're having family pictures taken today- outside, so I'm crossing my fingers that the sun will be shining. It's supposed to be a "winter wonderland" themed mini-shoot, but we are lacking the winter part, and therefore the wonderland part is absent as well. So, just a little sunshine, please!!

Sunday morning crosswords and comics

Cohen loves to look through the paper with me at breakfast. Such a little sweetie.

Crate Paper color challenge

I always hold my breath when I'm checking the winners of a contest I entered- and two days ago I was a bit disappointed when my page didn't make it onto the Crate Paper blog. But, as I looked at the winners, I knew why they were picked....beautiful, inspiring work! Then, this morning, I had a surprise. I was one of the winners afterall, in a "part two post." Yay, so fun! Here's the link (it's the "keys to my heart" page, below). http://crate.typepad.com/cratepaper/

my beatiful valentines

My favorite releases are always the Valentine-themed collections, and Crate Paper never disappoints. The top layout is one of my design team l/o's for VIP. The second two, I made as part of Crate Paper's monthly color challenge. For "Keys to my Heart" I used Tim Holtz's new "movers and shapers" small cupid and lock and key (a previous release). For "Love Letter" I made an envelope and cut the lined patterened paper to look like note paper and stamped/ hand wrote a "roses are red" poem. I stepped out of my comfort zone and used dark gray CS as my background. I like my white pages best, but the envelope and letter idea is pretty unique, so I'm happy with it! And, the pictures of my babies are just priceless.

falling leaves

"There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling leaves and remember it is enough to be taken care of by my self."

I saw this quote on Pinterest and just loved it. After Ella's doctor's appointment last week, I just needed to make something. It's an 11X14 canvas covered with a sewing pattern. I hand-cut the leaves from my old french-english dictionary and then used water colors to paint them. At this point, I wasn't sure where I was going with piece. Then I thought about the falling leaves which led me to think about Willow trees, which have always had a peaceful feel to me. I painted the trunk with acrylics and used mod-podge to adhere everything. I outlined everything with black marker first, then went back and outlined again with a white paint pen. The whole process was the exact therapy I needed!

Completed December Daily Pages

Here are some pictures of the completed pages in my 2011 December Daily Album. I used www.poladroid.net to change my photos to look like polaroids and printed them in black and white in sizes 3X4 and 3 1/2 X 5 inches. Pretty easy to finish up since I had pre-fabbed the entire album back in October!

Summer Pages

These pictures are from our wise- family trip to Wisconsin Dells this past summer. They aren't the best quality pics- we were using an underwater camera....but that just makes them more fun. I used the Simple Stories summer line. I love taking the "simple" out of their line and making it my own.