Another challenge by Me!

I was lucky enough to get to host two challenges on the Personalscrapper board for our June LOAD (layout a day) contest. This is my second challenge and it was called HIDDEN JOURNALING. The challenge was to hide your journaling with or without extra photos in some way. Some ladies hid the journaling behind their pictures, one did a card with the photo on the front and it opened to reveal the journaling, some did pockets like me and some hid the journaling behind their titles...and I must say they were all outstanding! My layout uses the May Personalscrapper kit which featured Fancy Pants Delight and I will tell you if you don't have those papers, get them...cuz they are a "delight" to work with! I love the journaling blocks from Fancy Pants, so easy to dress up your journaling and/or add some extra smaller pics you couldn't fit on your page! I can't believe the month is almost over! Summer is flying by! I hope to celebrate the fourth with a bit of scrapping and some fireworks this weekend so check back soon!

Waterpark fun!

We spent half the day at the waterpark today! We had a great time. The water didn't even feel cold to me, no wonder it was over 100 in the shade! The boys of course, never slowed down, well, Jake did to eat a few snacks, but Ryan didn't even slow down for food..he's like the energizer bunny! The boys love the slides and I finally got a good one of them going down the Green Extreme this year. The Green Extreme is an UPHILL water coaster, it is really fun, but if your in the back you get sprayed in the face big time on the uphill parts and then your pants get a "wedgie" on the downhill parts! It's not for the weak of heart that's for sure...plus the 10 flights of steps to get up to it, make it a REAL work out! The last picture isn't obviously of the waterpark, but when we got home Katie was glad to see her cousin Jakie and I got a cute picture of her walking around in his flip flops! She was actually able to walk in them pretty good, she's all girl, she LOVES shoes! Isn't her shirt cute? She likes SpongeBob, so when we went to Universal and found this shirt, I just had to get it for her! I actually was able to complete a layout tonight too, its too dark to take a picture of it, but I will try and share it tomorrow.

Friday's Featured Blogger

Today's featured blog is another new blog I came across while blog hopping. I like to take a few moments every Thursday night to visit blogs that I have never been to before, and usually I find at least one or two that I really enjoy and gain a lot of inpsiration from. This week one such find was Ginger's blog KODAK MOMENTS. I really enjoyed her sketches and her layouts and cards are AMAZING. If you are looking for some inspiration visit her blog, it will keep you "oohing and aahing" for hours!
Now for one layout I managed to get done tonight while listening to some rock and roll played out on Guitar Hero by my son and his friend! This layout was for a really zany and fun challenge for June 23rd by Sheila over at the Personalscrapper board. The challenge was to create a layout using the colors in your toothbrush! My toothbrush is turquoise, orange and lime green, so I used the Fancy Pants Delight papers from my May kit to create this page. I'm just glad my toothbrush wasn't all white, what a boring layout that would make! These 3 pictures are my favs of my son, niece and nephew from 2009. Enjoy your weekend, we are heading out to the waterpark this weekend to get a break from the heat!

It's almost that time of year again!

Guess what I was reminded that today is? It is SIX months until Christmas! WOW! Is time flying or what? In honor of this fun day Jenn's challenge over at Personalscrapper for today was to create a Christmas layout! Fun huh? I love Christmas but have a hard time scrapping my Christmas photos for some reason, but I immediately thought of this picture you see here as it was my fav from last Christmas of my son and myself. It was taken in front of our tree on Christmas Eve after all our guests had left with the self timer on my camera and my camera on a bar stool, which as you can see really worked out nicely. This layout is based on sketch #25 (here's that number again! LOL!) from the 52 sketches site. Papers,snowflake and alphabet stickers are from Making Memories and the other stickers are from 7 Gypsies. So ladies, get your Christmas hat on, cuz its just around the corner....hmmmm......maybe I ought to start working on my Christmas cards! LOL!

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all you father's out there! We had a great time celebrating with my dad and brother in law, two special fathers in our family! Here are some pictures from our fun evening BBQ. Jakob surprised my dad with a fire wallet as you can see here it really does catch on fire! If you are lovers of magic tricks then you have to check out this site , it has some really AWESOME magic tricks including the fire wallet we gave my dad. The tricks are really easy to learn and the instructional DVD's with them are great. We saw a magic show at Universal Studios while visiting in ORlando on our vacation and we were hooked! Jakob got the magic lights and he is already a master at using them. He is now able to make light go in one ear and out the other, kind of like when I tell him to clean his room! LOL! These tricks make great gifts for kids between the ages of 7 on up. I am sadly way behind on my layout a day challenge for June but I am bent on making some catch up progress this week and weekend, so check back soon and I hope to have some more crafty goodness to share.

Friday's Featured Blogger

One of my favorite past times is blog hopping, something I wish I had more time for! I have been a long time follower of the October Afternoon blog and it is today's featured blog. I chose it because they are one of my favorite scrapbooking lines and they have great exmples of how to use their products on their blog. They are currently featuring one of their newest lines called Road Map and offering a give away of some of this newest line! Road Map is a delicious combo of bold and bright colors and iconic symbols that just make you want to jump in the car and take a road trip! I especially love the journaling blocks and the fun themed stickers! Until Road Map came along my fav October Afternoon line was Weather Vane. I love the earth tone colors in this line as well as this layout I created with it! I know I've posted it before but it truly is one of my fav layouts I have done! So hop right on over to the October Afternoon blog and get yourself registered for some blog candy, I did!

Homework is fun

I am pleased to share with you my completed "homework" assignment from Got Sketch 104. Now this is my type of homework,much more fun than my college homework or my high school homework. I used Scenic Route's Grafton and Providence lines for this layout. I love these colors, perfect for beachy photos, I think the Grafton line is my all time fav Scenic Route line. These pics are from our 2005 Disneyworld trip. We stayed on property at the Coronado Springs Resort which is a really neat hotel, I would highly recommend it if you are trying to decide on a property to stay at onsite. I am having a ball in class and am already at work on my second sketch. Check back tomorrow for Friday's Featured Blogger!

A sketchy challenge

I finished another daily challenge over at Personalscrapper last night. This challenge was from Mel and we were to use a Page Maps sketch from June. It was a fun sketch and a great one for getting lots of pictures on your page(s), and I will most definitely use it again! The papers featured here are from My Minds Eye and are part of the awesome and spectacular June kit from Personalscrapper! You won't want to miss this kit! These pictures are from a Spring outing with my nephew who loves the outdoors. We were looking for tadpoles, frogs and snakes after a heavy spring rain and he just couldn't resist playing in the water puddles! He had a blast! Well, off to finish my "homework" for Got Sketch 104, we've had our first assignment and I have it almost done! Can't wait to share it with you.

Parasailing fun

I almost forgot to post my pictures of our parasailing excursion we took while vacationing in Cocoa Beach. We went on our parasailing fun cruise with the great team from Cocoa Beach Parasail. They were an awesome crew, very friendly, knowledgable and we felt totally safe the entire trip. I would highly recommend them to anyone in the area looking for a fun and exciting time parasailing. We will most likely do it again the next time we are in the area. The day we went out it there was a storm brewing so it was a little overcast at times, in fact, when we were getting close to the dock it started raining, we made it in just in the nick of time. The rest of the afternoon it rained and we spent it in the hotel room watching movies. The amazing thing about being so far up in the sky is you can really see the sealife down in the ocean. We saw so many stingrays while we were up it was amazing! We saw dolphins while riding in the boat back from the excursion. Can't wait to do it again!

Got sketch 104 starts today!

I am so excited! Today is the first day of "class" over at the Got Sketch 104 classroom! Many of you have heard me talk about the other Got sketch classes I have taken and know that they are super fun and full of inpsiration and fun tips/techniques! Of course, the sketches by Valerie and Janna are top notch and you can't go wrong by signing up. The best thing about it is that while it starts today you can join at anytime and play along at your own pace. No deadlines, no pressure. So if you need a jump start on your creativity come join us! If you do join make sure and stop by and tell me "hi!". See you in class!

My Challenge!

It was my turn today over at Personalscrapper to post the challenge for the June layout a day contest. I decided to go with a the challenge called NO ALPHABETS. For this challenge participants were not to use any alphabets die cut, sticker, chipboard or otherwise on their layouts. Most people who participated used a premade chipboard word, rub on or die cut quote/title for their titles. One participant even used paper with a preprinted word on it for her title! I found that I was able to really get my layout done in record time by using a premade title. For my layout,I used a rub on by Stampin Up for my title that says "LIVE EVERY MOMENT/ADVENTURE". Easy peasy...and even more so as I used Sketch #21 from the 52 sketches website for my layout! The papers I used are from My Minds Eye that were featured in the August 2007Personalscrapper kit. I am now down to scraps for this kit...look for maybe one more layout or a few cards using those scraps coming soon! So are you brave enough to accept this challenge? If you are please post a link in the comments so we can all have a peek! Hope you decide to play along!

Vacation Fun!

Just a few pics to share to show you all how much fun we had on our vacation! First picture is odd I know, but there is a funny story behind it. We were eating outside at the diner at the Kennedy Space Center when out of nowhere a seagull swooped down and snatched up Jakob's basket full of fries! I was messing with my camera and just happened to look up to see what the commotion was and snapped this picture of him flying off! Notice he has only one french fry in the basket! It was full when he picked it up but they dumped out on his way up and then a BUNCH of seagulls swooped down and ate the rest of the fries! It was pretty funny really, but Jake had to go get himself some more $5 fries! HA! We also went to Universal, which was really fun. I loved the Jurassic Park ride, the Jaws ride and the Men in Black ride. Jake's favs were The Mummy ride, Simpson ride and the Spiderman ride. We got totally soaked on the white water rafting ride! Our hotel we stayed at in Cocoa Beach was right on the beach and was really nice! Here you see Jake with his boogie board, playing in the waves and then a view of the ocean from our hotel room balcony. Then we were lucky enough to find a nice lady to take our pic together on the beach. The Shuttle Endeavor will hopefully blast off tomorrow morning early and although we won't be there to see it, we were able to get some neat views of it on the launch pad when we visited the Kennedy Space Center. A very majestic site! I haven't edited our parasailing pics yet, but we did parasail and LOVED it. So check back later this weekend and I will try and get a few of those up to share! Enjoy your Friday everyone!

Card Creations

We made it home safe and sound and I wanted to pop in with a real quick share of two cards I made before leaving. One was for an upcoming birthday and the other a thanks for a nice friend who helped me out. On the thank you card I used the Cuttlebug embossing folder to emboss the kraft paper and then rubbed my white ink pad over it to make the embossing pop! I love those cuttlebug folders they are so awesome and really add texture to your projects. The birthday card is a lift from my all time favorite card maker Dawn. You can check out all her awesome goodness on her blog My Favorite Things. She has a weekly color challenge and it is very inspiring giving you some great ideas on color combos! I haven't participated yet but hope to do so before the summer is over! It's so nice to be back home, our trip was super fun and we had a great time but as they say, there's no place like home! Hope to get my trip pictures uploaded soon to share with you, so check back soon.

Friday's Featured Blogger

Hello everyone! I just love Friday's don't you? We are relaxing on a beautiful beach here in sunny Cocoa Beach Florida and since I have no way to post my lovely pictures I have taken so far I wanted to share with you one my fav blogs I stumbled across a few weeks ago. Melanie has some gorgeous and stunning layouts featured on her blog Random Ramblings, you have got to go check it out! She has so many awesome layouts but my favorite thing about her blog, is the newer lines that she uses. I love the layouts featuring Cosmo Cricket's Early Bird and Snorkel as well as Basic Grey's Lime Rickey! Of course, all this enabling isn't too easy on my pocketbook, but who can resist such yummy colors and beautiful prints? So enjoy this awesome eye candy until I get back. Not sure if I will check in again or not, but I will be back soon refreshed and ready for some serious scrapping to catch up with Personalscrapper's LOAD contest! TGIF!