Happy Memorial Day!

Here marks the price of freedom.... Arlington National Cemetery, what a beautiful final resting place for our heroes. This view as we walked down the hill back to the metro after our visit last summer, was one I didn't want to forget, so I took this picture. I wanted to remember this sight, this reminder that freedom isn't free, and that I will always be so thankful to those who made the ultimate sacrifice and to those who serve today and served in years past to allow me and these 3 sweeties to live in freedom enjoying our holiday at the waterpark today, soaking up the sun, splashing and laughing and realizing the true beauty that comes with freedom. So thank you to our brave men and women, thank you for all you have done and continue to do!

Happy Memorial Day and God Bless the U.S.A.!!

The inanimate object challenge

Our next challenge at Scraptivations is up today! Not only was this a very challenging challenge (lol!) but a fun one as well. Carly's challenge for us was to scrap an inanimate object. I had been wanting to document my advancement into the 21st century world of technology in my mid 40's but hadn't done so yet, so this challenge was a perfect opportunity to do. I even went out and bought some fun pinkish papers to use specifically for this layout, something I don't usually do. I wanted to document my first smartphone, a Tmobile My Touch, cuz I know how much things will end up changing and in 10 years this phone will most likely be pretty lame, even though I find that hard to imagine! However, it was about 20 years ago I got my first cell phone which was HUGE, I had a bag much like a purse to carry it in and just thought it was SOOOOOOOO wonderfully advanced, in fact, I never could have imagined a smart phone and all I could do on it! Guess, I'm not very imaginative and I am thankful there are those that are so that they can develop wonderful technology for us to use! The papers I used for this layout are Echo Park Life is Good. Echo Park has the most yummy papers! Letters are Thickers and the journal box is from Making Memmories. Hope you can play along with us at Scraptivations, cuz the prize up for grabs is a gift card to your fav scrapp store! WOW! To participate just link your layout on your inanimate object up HERE! Can't wait to see what you create! Blessings,

Fun with Life of the Party!

Hi friends! I can't believe how much time has passed since my last post! Wow, time flies when you are having fun croppin' with friends! I spent a long weekend in Kansas City croppin' with some old and some new friends! Had a blast and wanted to give a shout out to my new friends at Archivers in North Kansas City, those girls are a lot of fun and know how to crop! Here is one of the pages I created while there. I love the new Basic Grey line Life of the Party! Fortunately for me Archivers had a lot of the line in stock so I could buy more (probably more then I needed) to supplement my May Personalscrapper kit. This line is now my fav line of the Spring! These are pics of my nephew playing in the tub, these bright colored toys matching the these Party papers perfectly! The flower is by Basic Grey (bloomers), the other two paper embellies are from My Minds Eye and were included in the May Personalscrapper kit. Letters are Thickers - love the faux stitching detail on them and the stars in the upper left corner are actually brads from my older stash, made by Making Memories. This layout was one I created for the Personalscrapper NSD crop challenge of : brads, buttons and ribbon (although I used ric rac which I hope counts as ribbon!) I can't wait to create some more layouts with this fun paper line, it is so much more versatile then just for birthdays! I have a lot more to share, but will do so later on, as I am off to work, but stay tuned tomorrow for my next Scraptivations challenge, it was a fun one and involved my cell phone....can you guess what it is? Well, you won't have to wait long, more tomorrow! Have a fun Friday friends!

Handmade sketchy fun!

It's time for another Scraptivatingly fun challenge! This week's challenge is brought to us by Amy who is challenging us to make our own handmade embellishments! What fun huh? There are so many techniques to try, but I decided to make my own flowers out of tissue paper. I didn't have any pink tissue paper, so I stamped my white tissue with the By Definition background stamp from Stampin' Up in Pretty in Pink ink to give my flowers just a hint of color, and I love how they turned out. For the larger flower I used my Stampin Up scallop circle punch to punch out the shape for the flower- just a hint: fold the tissue paper into several layers (I did 5) to make it thicker and easier to punch through. The smaller flower I just hand cut, using 5 layers for this one as well. Both are held together with a brad. For this layout I used the May sketch I created for our May sketch challenge over at Personalscrapper. I love how this sketch turned out and plan to use it again on a birthday layout with stars soon as well. The pictures for my flower girl layout are of my niece taken on a recent outing we had to Hobby Lobby, she had a great time trying on all the fun headpieces/bows etc! We ended up buying a big pink flower for her hair instead of this flower headband. The papers here are from Personalscrapper's February kit featuring We R Memory Keepers Be My Valentine papers (don't you just love that little cuckoo card I cut out from the papers!) The circle is handcut from pink felt as are the circles in the upper right hand corner. Letters are Thickers from American Crafts and the brads in the flower center are from American Crafts as well- LOVE these glittery brads! All of these things except the tissue paper and felt were in the February Personalscrapper kit! I hope you can play along with us at Scraptivations this month, the prize is AWESOME a $10 gift card to your fav scrappy store...now how can you beat that? I can't wait to see what fun embellishments you come up with, I just know I am gonna have to copy some of your ideas! Don't forget to check out the other DT's layouts HERE, they came up with some AWESOME ideas that you won't want to miss!