Spring Break 2013 ~ Swimming with the Stingray

Hello Hello!  It's FRIDAY... WOOHOO!  I hope your week has been awesome.  Mine has been busy and sadly, I haven't had time to get into my studio for a few weeks to make more pages.  I'm hoping to get in there in the next few days and enjoy a little scrappy time!

My pages today are once again from our stingray swimming adventure in Grand Cayman.  This was a fun day trip & I'm so glad to be able to capture the memories & stories in my pages.  This is why I scrapbook!

I used a variety of supplies on my pages ~ stamps from Ali Edwards (Surprise Story Set) and Technique Tuesday; dies from Taylored Expressions; and the Simple Stories (We Are Here Collection).  I love how both of these pages turned out.

Have a Wonderful Weekend!

Ali Edwards Story Kit ~ Stingray Surprise

Hello my friends & happy Thursday!  Once again, today's page of the day features some fun photos from our 2013 Spring Break vacation.  This time we were in Grand Cayman and we went on a great adventure to swim with the stingray.  To highlight these photos, I used the Ali Edwards Surprise Story Stamp Set, as well as a few other Ali Edwards stamp set that I have in my stash.  I've been collecting Ali's stamp sets for a very long time & have a bunch of her old Technique Tuesday sets.  I also added some cork elements from Studio Calico.

I {heart} this stingray smiley face!

Stamps from the Surprise Story Set ~ this is a month subscription; however, this set is available as a digital version in her shop.

I've been prepping my WITL album the last few days by printing all of my journaling and photos.  I think I'm finally ready to dive in and make it pretty!  I hope to be able to share it with you very soon... but in the mean time, I hope you enjoy these pages as I reminisce about this wonderful vacation.

Have a Great Day!

Spring Break 2013 ... Continued

Since I've been working on my Week in the Life project for the last week or so, I haven't really pulled out or worked on anything else.  I have finished all of my front and back cover pages, as well as all of the journaling pages.  Now I just need to pull everything together, which is proving to be somewhat time consuming. Therefore, I decided to pull out some pages from our 2013 Spring Break cruise that I finished earlier this year that I haven't shared yet.

For these pages, I used the Simple Stories kit called Posh.  I thought the colors in this kit were fun with Megan's dress and I made some full 12x12 layouts from this same evening ~ Here & Here.

Super fun memories of this trip :)

Have a Fabulous Day!!

Project 52 ~ Week #16

Well here we are... another week completed.  I can honestly say that I probably wouldn't be doing this Project 52  album if it wasn't for using the Project Life App ~ or it wouldn't be caught up.  I love scrapbooking with physical product, but I would have a very hard time staying caught up.   This page was made with the Dear Lizzy Daydreamer kit in the App.

This week is also the period of time that I'm doing Week in the Life ~ so you'll see lots more pages using the Ali Edwards WITL kit coming very soon.  I've already printed all of my 6x8 front and back daily covers & my daily summary journaling is complete and printed as well.  Now I just need to get started on the rest of the pages.

Have a Great Day!

Documenting Marching Band 2015

Today I am featuring more pages from my son's 2015 Marching Band Album.  These have been fun albums to put together over the years.  So far I've done 4 years for my daughter and this is the second year for my son.  I need to get this one finished so I can start his junior year since his senior year of band will begin this summer. Dang!  It's all happening way too fast.  As I'm getting his pages done, I'm trying to add more color and use different elements because after 6 albums (with 2 more to go), only using green, white and black is getting a bit boring.  😃

For this first page, I used kraft cardstock with bits and pieces of Doodlebug paper scraps and letter stickers from my stash. I added staples using the Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher and then stamped the date. Easy Peasy!

The chipboard letters on this title block are from American Crafts Thickers.  I continued with the little round letter stickers from my stash and some think black and white washi tape.  Pretty simple page once again.

These Pebbles Inc letter stickers are a personal favorite and I use them a lot on pages.  I added the zig zag border from a Taylored Expressions die and typed out the journaling on the typewriter.  The green arrows are from Doodlebug.

My final page today uses supplies from the Elle's Studio March kit.  This is a monthly subscription; however, you can purchase the kit for a few dollars more without subscribing.  I decided to buy one to see if I liked the quality.  I do like it, but decided not to subscribe right now because I have so many other supplies to use up & I'm a little bit behind.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Marching Band Pages ~ 2015

Good Morning Friends!  So happy that Friday is finally here.  I'll be honest, I haven't really done any layouts this week because I've been so focused on documenting my Week in the Life Project.  So I thought I'd share several project life style layouts from Matt's marching band book.

For these pages, I used a combination of products from my Hip Kits and Ali Edwards stamps & phrase stickers.

Have a fabulous weekend!

Project 52 ~ Week #15

I was horrible about taking pictures last week... there I said it!  It was a pretty quiet week and honestly, it didn't occur to me to pull out my camera.  Then on Thursday, it got super busy!  My daughter and her boyfriend came home for Easter break.  Since I didn't have a ton of pictures from earlier in the week, I decided that I would still journal the entire week, but use photos from Saturday when we had lots of family activities.  This is the first time I've done that in 15 weeks of this Project 52... so that's not so bad.  

For this page, I used the Playground kit in the Project Life App.  I love how colorful it is but leaves just enough white space so the photos stand out.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Hip Kit ~ Marching Band Camp

Several months ago, I attended a scrapbooking retreat.  While there, I was able to get tons of pages done for my son's 2015 Marching Band Album.  I kept putting off photographing the projects because it is such a time consuming process.  However, I haven't worked on anything new because my schedule has been pretty busy, so yesterday I finally pulled them out of the pockets and spent some time getting it done.

For all of these pages, I used bits and pieces of my Hip Kits ~ mostly December and maybe a few cards from the January PL kit.   I used my typewriter for the journaling & added some washi tape here and there.

A fun trip to Cedar Point with the band... a favorite trip each year!

I pulled out my Hero Arts alphabet stamps to add the names of the
roller coasters for the journaling card.

Have a Wonderful Day!!

AE Week In The Life ~ Here We Go!

Well it's Monday once again ~ darn those weekends go fast!  It was a great extended Easter weekend of fun with family since my daughter and her boyfriend came home from college Thursday - Saturday afternoon.  My son and his girlfriend were here as well on Saturday afternoon & we all celebrated together by dying Easter eggs and having dinner together.  It was great family time!  We had a quiet day yesterday on the actual holiday with just my husband, son and myself since Megan & her boyfriend joined his family for the rest of the weekend.  

Yesterday also started my Week in the Life project.  Each year, Ali Edwards does this cool project where she documents all the little details of daily life during a one-week period of time.  I decided to jump in this year & yesterday I started taking lots of photos and jotting down notes about my day. Many participants will start today with documenting the week; however, my normal Project 52 starts on Sunday, so I felt like yesterday was a good day to begin.

One of the photos I like to take each spring are the blossoms on our Cleveland Pear tree in backyard. These pretty trees are everywhere in our town and on this Easter Sunday, they are in full bloom.  I love the shades of pink, white and green that appear and all the details in the buds as I zoom in with my camera.  I actually took this photo with my Samsung 6s phone using the selective focus mode.  It was a little cloudy when I took the photo, so I brightened it up just a little bit in Photoshop Elements. I love the photo so I decided to use it as my cover page for the project so I added the WITL logo and the dates of this week.  I printed it out in a 6x8 format and it's already trimmed and in my album!

Notice the little friend that joined me in my photo... the little bug on the leaf?  Haha... I decided not to photoshop him out... real life stuff.  LOL

To help me keep track of details this week (and also a reminder for me to take lots of photos), I printed out the 8 1/2 x 11 daily record sheets that Ali Edwards provides on her blog.  I know I won't use every detail of every day when I scrapbook these pages, but it will be nice to have the details available for the pieces I want to include.  I also made a checklist of pictures I hope to take this week, some of them each day ~ like screenshots of the weather forecast and my fitness tracker.

If you're doing this project too, have fun and I can't wait to see what you come up with.  I'm hoping to share some of my completed pages with you as early as next week, but we'll see.

Have a wonderful day!

Dream On & Live Happy in Alaska

Good Morning and welcome back to my blog.  It's been a busy week with band so I haven't had much time to scrapbook, but I did get this page finished and I just love this photo of my kids in Alaska last summer.  

We had an amazing adventure on this trip & I'm pretty sure it's one we will never forget.  We chartered a small boat called The Darby for a 3-day private tour of Resurrection Bay.  It was just our family of four, the captain and his daughter, his first-mate & chef.  The boat was nothing fancy, no wi-fi, and no TV.  We saw some amazing sights, caught fresh salmon, watched dozens and dozens of whale, saw a glacier up close, hiked on an island, and then had a campfire on a stone beach... complete with s'mores.  The weather was perfect... especially when you consider we were in Alaska. This trip was AMAZING!

On the first afternoon of our trip, the captain found this very picturesque private cove and got down the kayaks so we could paddle around in a safe spot.  It was one of those moments where you can't quite believe you are there experiencing what you are doing.  There were many surreal moments on this trip that brought me to tears.   For this photo, Tim lined up the kids just right so he could show the amazing scenery behind them.

WOW ~ that was fun to remember.  OK - a few details about my page... I used items from the March and April Hip Kits for this page.  I also added some washi tape I had in my stash.  The pattern paper and "dream on" sentiment, enamel dots, and phrase stickers are from March main & PL kits.  The "our trip", letter stickers and flair are from the April kit.

{ETA: Once I posted my original page, I thought the photo got lost on it, so I added a few layers and updated my photo.}

Here are a few more photos from this amazing day!

Not a great photo below, but I kept it because it shows how close the whale was to our boat.

I encourage you... take that adventure, explore the world & experience what it has to offer!   How are you going to make the world a better place, if you never see it?  GO... SEE... DO!

Studio Calico ~ Our Day in Cozumel

Hi Crafty Friends!  Today I'm sharing a page I made from our New Year's Cruise that we took this year.  We usually stay home over Christmas Break, but having one in college and one in high school now, it's really the only break they have together.  So we were off to have some family fun!

For my page, I used supplies from Studio Calico ~ the Birds & Bees March Documenter Kit, the Spring Break Card Pack and the Explore Stamp set.  I also added some Ali Edwards phrase stickers and some wood veneer hearts for the embellishments.

Have a Great Day!

Project 52 ~ Week #14 Spring Break

Hey There... It's Wednesday & that means another new Project 52 page!  We're up to week 14 that this was Spring Break for us.  Since my son is a junior, this is a good time to do some college visits. He is in Marching Band, so there is zero time in the fall & since that is when he will need to start filling out applications, now is the time to get those visits done.

We drove from Northern Indiana all the way up to Duluth, MN to visit the UMD, then we drove across the UP of Michigan, across the Mackinac Bridge and then down to Western Michigan University & then finally Ball State University.  All have great music programs, but Western was his favorite (and ours).    

For this page, I used the Wander Kit in the Project Life App.  I pretty much had the page put together before we left and just added the photos and journaling... EASY PEASY!!

It wasn't the most relaxing "vacation" time every, but it was very productive and we were able to mix a little fun in with the busy visit days.   It feels good to have a total of 4 college visits completed and have some clear favorites.

Have a Lovely Day!

Hip Kit ~ Today Was...

Hello Friends!  A few weeks ago I pulled out one of our trip albums that I haven't done anything with & decided to do a few pages.  I shared a few of the 12x12 layouts already, but this page is one of the pocket pages.

Since I had been working with my Hip Kits, I decided to continue with them & put together a few pocket cards using past kits.  There are so many great pieces in these kits, but I'm not always in love with the Project Life cards so I wanted to dress them up a bit.  The colors in my daughter's top fit perfectly with the cards I ended up making.

Well I'm off to start a new project... just need to figure out what exactly I feel like working on today.  ;)

Have a Fab Day!

Hip Kit ~ One Last Look Around

Hello friends & welcome to a new week and back to reality after Spring Break.  I thought that I would post this pretty page today just to continue the fantasy of being in a nice warm amazing place.

My page features some photos from the trip my daughter and I took to Italy in 2015.  Lake Como was a gorgeous waterfront city that was quiet and rich with historical charm.  We loved it there & spent several hours walking round just taking in all the amazing views.

I used my March Hip Kits for this page.  I wanted to use multiple colors that were in Megan's cute top & this kit worked out perfectly.

Have a Wonderful Day!

Hip Kit ~ Shall We Read?

Over the last few weeks, I've been working on telling some heartfelt stories about my family.  Last week I shared my Party of 4 layout and this is another one that has special meaning to me.  It tells the story of when the kids were little and we would spending hours reading before bed.  I loved those times!   I saw a beautiful layout by Erika Lopez-Shearer using the March Hip Kit that she posted on the Hip Kit Facebook Page & I used much of it as inspiration for this page.  I can't find Erika's blog, but if I do I'll be sure to link it.)

All of the supplies on this page are from the March Hip Kit Main Kit ~ lots of pretty elements included in this kit!  I hope you enjoy the story!

Journaling from my page:

When the kids were little, we went to the Library all the time.  We would check out stacks & stacks of picture books ~ usually 20 to 30!  It was always fun finding a new favorite story or series.  Once we arrived home, I usually found them curled up on the couch devouring the new picture books.  On the weeks that daddy traveled, we usually had an early dinner, put our PJs on, and cuddled up in my bed.  Megan on my right side and Matt on my left.  We read for hours before bedtime.  The kids took turn picking out a book for me to read to them.  I loved those nights & I miss them.  Megan loved Madeline and Dorrie the Witch; Matt loved any book about cars, trucks or trains.  They both loved: Moo, Baa, La La La; Barn Yard Dance; But Not the Hippopotamus; Goodnight Moon; Chicka Chicka Boom Boom; Winnie the Pooh; Richard Scary books; and We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.  I’m so glad I spent so much time reading to my kids when they were little.

Have a great weekend!

Hip Kit ~ Happy Life

Last week I worked with a whole bunch of my Hip Kits from the last several months.  I've been wanting to pull the kits out and work with them, but I wasn't sure which photos I wanted to use.  So I decided to pull out one of our trip albums.  My daughter and I went to Italy for a few weeks after she graduated and the album has all of the photos printed and in pockets waiting to be scrapbooked.  This year, I've been bouncing around between lots of different albums, but I have to say, I've never enjoyed scrapbooking more than I have this year.  It's fun being able to work with whatever strikes my fancy rather than work on just one album or chronologically.

I started with this pretty aqua pattern paper as my background (December Main Kit) and then added some white Bazzill textured cardstock on top.  Next I added the pretty clouds & the 'happy life' title from a sticker sheet American Crafts ~ 1 Canoe 2 Hazelwood – Gold Foiled Icon Stickers (January PL Kit).   I also added Dear Lizzy Colorable Washi Tape (March Embellishment Kit) behind each photo and along the bottom and added a touch of color colored it with Copic Markers.  The flair button is also from the March Embellishment Kit.  

Have a Great Day!

Project 52 ~ Week #13

It's Wednesday and that means it's time to share another layout from my Project 52 Album.  It's week #13 already and the cards on this page are from the Happiness Is Edition from the Project Life App.

I start my pages with Sunday each week, so for this week, my daughter was still home for the weekend with her boyfriend and I had a funny story to share about how she gave him a black eye... by accident of course.   The rest of the week was kind of quiet with just my son and I at home ... along with our cute fur babies.  We even treated the dogs to a Pup Cup this week from our local ice cream place. :)

Have a Lovely Day!

Studio Calico ~ All About March

Each month when the new Studio Calico kit arrives, I start making plans for my monthly highlight page.   It all starts with the white rubber month title & one of the 4x6 cards... that drives the whole page.  

The next step is to pull coordinating cards & papers.  For this page, I decided to use all greys & pinks and that just happened to work out very well with the photos from this month.  The black/white alpha stickers were from Pebbles, Inc. but everything else is from Studio Calico.  The "twenty seventeen" is a stamp from the 2017 New Year Kick Off and the (remember this) is from the stamp set that came with the kit.  A few of the embellishments (round 'LOVE' seal & the 'Oh Yes') were from the Roman Holiday January kit.  So many great highlights in March and the bonus was that we got to see my daughter several times.

Thanks for stopping by today!