Gwen

Myrtle Beach - Scrapbook on the Road

Whew... last post for now! I realized about a week before leaving that I would like to do another SOTR for Myrtle Beach. I happened to pick up a Teresa Collins travel mini album kit with a coupon at Archivers - I thought I might use it for Peru, but it seemed a better fit for this trip since it's a 3-ring album and won't fit as much.

I had a lot of fun playing with the cover - I painted it with Claudine Helmuth paints and then inked the edges. I used Prima stencils with modeling paste for the swirls and then decorated them with Stickles and ink after they were dry. For the sand at the bottom, I had a grainy texture paste that's meant to be mixed with acrylics - it really worked perfectly!

The large chipboard letters are old ones from Making Memories. The Sept. 2011 are just letter stickers from Basic Grey, and the butterfly is Maya Road. I glued them all down before I started painting and then just painted over all of it and added some Prima jewels to the butterfly when it was dry. I really love how it came out.

I kept up the journaling and putting little Instax prints, postcards, business cards and other stuff into the album as I went, so when I got home it was pretty much done. I uploaded a bunch of my favorite photos and had them printed at Costco - I get lustre finish with the white border, glue them back to back and just punch holes and put them in. I did about 40 prints, so 20 pages. It filled the book just perfectly.

Here are most of the inside pages - you can see that most of the pictures in my blog posts are the same ones I got printed. I still need to go through the rest of them and delete the bad ones. I took a ton! But with little kids, it's the only way to get a good shot :)

The album came with 3 divider pages - some I left plain and one I covered with beach paper. Since I wanted to do a divider for each day, I cut off the tabs and then made three more divider pages with kraft cardstock and put KI Memories sticker tabs on all 6 of them. On 2 of the kraft pages I had a lot of fun stamping. That mendhi stamp from Papertrey Ink has to be my new favorite.

The map of the Grand Strand folds out - I tore it out of a tourist guide that we got free at the resort.

It was a pretty relaxing trip. We didn't do tons of stuff - mostly hung out, ate, swam and hung out some more. So there are a lot more pictures in this one than writing and memorabilia. But I love how it turned out.

Whew. That's it for now! I have a mostly-done scrapbook layout in my attic that's just waiting for finishing touches before I post it. Hopefully I'll get to that before another 2-3 weeks go by. But, I'm still trying to finish my class yearbook. I'm totally procrastinating. I only have 2 events left to do, but the one that's next on my list requires that I go through lots of photos, do lots of editing (which I loath) and create a LOT of pages. Sigh. It's going to be a sweet book when it's done, though... and I've collected a lot of digital awesomeness to use in future photo books. Anyway... off I go!

Scrapbook on the Road

I seriously can't believe I've been home for almost two weeks. Two very busy and crazy weeks! I came back and jumped right into work and school as if we'd never been gone, and it was overwhelming. Tons of homework as we finished up our last two classes and then catching up on stuff from work has been keeping me totally busy. But yes, classes are done... all that's left is our Capstone project (three weeks and a TON of work) and then our banquet and I'm finished with the program. I can't even believe it's so close. I have no idea what I'm going to do with myself... but I'm sure I'll find something. At this point I'm not going to miss all the projects, presentations, case studies and homework, but I'm going to miss seeing my friends all the time. I think we'll have to make some plans to do something about that :)

In the meantime, I wanted to post a few shots from my completed scrapbook on the road / travel journal. I'm SO glad that I did this. I'll admit that I was laughed at a little (my insistance on gathering all of my ticket stubs was laughingly accomodated), but everyone seemed to think it was actually pretty cool. I tried to keep up daily, but there were a few times when I just pasted in pictures, business cards, etc... and then waited to do the journaling in the airport and on plane rides. It worked really well, actually, and by the time we landed in Atlanta at the end of the trip, the whole thing was basically done. I just ended up printing up a bunch of 5x7s (the way Ali did in her example) and adding them later to completely finish it. I love it. I need bigger rings, but I'm definitely going to do this again for Peru this fall.

Here's the outside now that's it's packed full of memories and trip goodness :) A little worse for the wear, but it adds character, right?

And another view:

And a selection of the types of things I did on the inside. I gathered ticket stubs, pamphlets, business cards, maps and receipts everywhere. I took lots of Instax pictures and also bought postcards wherever I could for places where we couldn't take indoor pictures - that ended up working really well.

As you can see, I even threw in some pressed flowers in a few places. I also used hotel stationary from each of the four hotels we stayed in... it was a fun addition, and I definitely needed the extra writing space.

It's been so much fun for me to flip through this - and we did so much and were gone so long, I couldn't believe how even when I was still on the trip, looking back at the beginning seemed like so long ago. I don't know how I could have recapped everything if I hadn't done it as we went. This is going to be an awesome treasure and a great help as I document individual things more closely.

Finally, one more photo from Dubai - me riding a camel. So fun.

Now I just need to go through my pictures and start editing and pulling out the ones I need to share with the group. No small task since I took about 1500 or so. Sigh. I'll get there eventually :)

Counting the hours...

Okay, I'm going to admit something rather shocking. Up until today, I wasn't all that excited for my trip. I know, crazy, right? But I've known it was coming for two years, known which trip I was going to be on for about 8 months, and I've been planning, preparing, shopping, making lists and piling things for my suitcase for more than a month now. It really hasn't been real. I've known all along that it's going to be awesome and I'm going to have tons of fun and I've been greatly anticipating the whole thing, but that adrenaline just hadn't kicked in yet.

But now, it has. Oh yes. And if I had needed any help getting that going, waking up to snow this morning (seriously? April 26th?) would definitely have done the trick. But wow am I ready now. Tonight I picked up one last thing at the store that I wanted to take with me and I've started packing. The rest has to wait until I do laundry and can finish up the toiletries, but it's so close I can taste it. It's a good thing I've been prepping things at work for the last two weeks or I'd be in trouble because I'm about 85% checked out right now. lol. But as it is, everything is looking perfectly on track (and I knock on wood as I say that so that some huge catastrophe doesn't come up tomorrow.)

In the meantime, I've been trying to use up stuff in my fridge since I'll be gone long enough that I need to worry about that. So what could I make with spinach, tomatoes and chicken besides a rather boring salad? I browsed on Tastespotting and found this post and I had to make something similar. I actually made it on Sunday and I've been eating leftovers, but it's really delicious.

I present to you, the tomato crostata.

Aside from the fact that this picture reveals exactly where my egg wash ended, it looks pretty yummy, yes? I kept the recipe for the crust almost identical (I was out of corn meal so I used instant polenta instead. It's almost the same, right? Worked like a charm, in any case.) For the filling, I had about 1/4C of sundried tomato pesto and I used that with a whole bunch of fresh spinach, about 4 cloves of garlic (this baby was strong. awesome.) and as little olive oil as I could manage and whipped up a puree in my food processor. Then I threw in a small handful of blanched almonds and gave it another whiz. After that, I added in the chicken and the tomatoes and mixed it up (with a spoon, not a food processor. lol).I poured it into the center of the crust, put the grated Dubliner cheese on top, and then folded it over to make the crostata.

I will make this again. Oh yes. The filling might vary, but it was really yummy.

And, because I keep forgetting to do this, I wanted to post the birthday card I made for Melody (who's birthday was last month. doh. Happy belated birthday!) I wanted to wait until I knew she'd gotten her package and then forgot. Normally I don't post cards because I kind of suck at making them, but I really liked this one (probably because I totally nabbed the idea from Erin Lincon's blog from when this stamp set came out on Papertrey.)

K. That's it for now... back to finishing up stuff on my to-do list and counting the hours until I'm off on my exotic adventure.

Free time?

It totally freaked me out that I had free time this weekend. I kind of wandered around the house trying to figure out what to do with myself. No homework that needed to be done (I could have worked ahead, but where's the fun in that?) No big projects or major cooking plans. No shopping or classes (aside from kickboxing which ROCKED! We did jumping push kicks, learned to knee people in the stomach and kick them in the head. lol.) No errands... no one I was meeting or anything. I just slept in, watched all four sessions of Conference, exercised and ate. And slept some more (I was super exhausted - I really needed this and planned this as a free weekend just for that). And I still had free time! Finally watched The Social Network on Netflix - loved it. Made another batch of gnocchi (this time with brown butter, roquefort, walnuts, honey, black pepper and a hint of cinnamon - it was so incredibly delicious!) Bummed that Ann Burrell didn't win Chopped All Stars but c'est la vie, right? And... ta da! I did a layout.

Here's the whole thing (Sorry about the color - it's off, as usual):

So I think it was the week before last, we were talking about our upcoming school trip and I was trying to get Chad excited about going to Turkey - I was telling him about one of my favorite all-time travel memories. We were in Cappadocia standing at the edge of a cliff overlooking the valley where the city of Goreme is located. You could see the carved volcanic structures where the ancient Christians had carved out churches and monasteries. At the same time, more modern buildings and the minarets of all of the mosques wove their way around the landscape. It was just stunning. And as we stood there, the call to prayer rang out, echoing across the valley below us. It was amazing and so beautiful - one of those perfect moments that come along every once in a while. So this weekend, I decided to pull out the pictures we took while we were up there and do a layout. Now I'm even more excited to go back! (And I think Chad is actually a little excited to visit Turkey now as well. lol.)

Here are the individual pages:

I stamped along the top edge of the layout and embossed in black. And I absolutely LOVE that lattice / flower edge punch from EK Success. I used it a bunch in my travel scrapbook too. The journaling is probably too small to read, but it's pretty much the same story I told above with a few more details.

k. Off to get a good night's sleep before heading back to the grind tomorrow.

Long catch-up post

Okay, I promised I would post, so here it is :) Just a not so quick catch-up of what I've been working on.

So last week was crazy. We had the final project from our last 12-week class due last Tuesday (Strategic Implementation and the GM's Role). We had to do a 7S analysis for a company and it included a lot of research, compiling stuff, analysis and writing and the six of us spent many an hour on conference calls or working in tiny study rooms to finish this off. It was hard and a total pain but we finished it, that class ended last week, and it was the last assignment with our assigned core teams - kind of bittersweet, really. But we were so ready to be done! Anyway, we got our projects back in class last night and had a very pleasant surprise.

Mindy is showing off the grade sheet we got back. What's hard to see is that the circle at the top is around "A" and the arrow just goes all the way down. We ROCKED that sucker. I think there might have been only one other team that did as well so we were psyched.

So after that class ended last Tuesday, my group for Brand Management stayed late to *start* working on our final project / presentation. The presentation was due in class on Thursday. We got a decent start and then quit for the night. The next night, I cooked for the team and they came to my house for dinner and then we were there until 1am working on the project and deciding how to get it all finished before class the next day.

First up, food. I got to braise something! I was dying to do this... I made braised short ribs in my dutch oven. The recipe is way too complicated to post (sorry Melissa!) but it was from Dorie Greenspan's "Around My French Table" and it was delicious.

Because you can't have beef without a good starch, I whipped up a batch of potato gnocchi. I've been hit and miss with these - it's hard to get them perfect. But this time I tried the instructions from Cooks Illustrated and then made a brown butter gorgonzola sauce to go with them and they were pretty fabulous.

Basically, you bake 2 pounds of potatoes for about an hour and then peel them while they're still hot (a silicon holder helps a lot). Put them through a ricer into a bowl and let them sit about 15 minutes to cool down. Throw in a teaspoon of kosher salt and about 1 1/4C of flour and knead it together. You want to keep adding flour a little at a time until the dough isn't sticky. Then you just roll it out in about 3/4" ropes and chop them into pieces about 1" long (I just use a pastry scraper to chop mine.) Cook them in *near* boiling water until they float (a rolling boil can make them float before they're ready - good tip!) and then scoop them out with a slotted spoon and finish them in the sauce. The sauce... melt about 2 tbsp of butter in your pan and let it brown - make sure you don't burn it. Then crumble in about 5 oz of a good gorgonzola. I used an Oregonzola that had nice flavor. Stir until the cheese is melted and mixed with the butter. Then I just added enough milk to give it the right consistency. Yum.

I also did one of my favorite things - I usually do some variation of this a few times a week. Just slice up some veggies (parsnips, carrots and asparagus here) and line a baking sheet with foil. Spray it w/ 0 calorie olive oil spray and spread the veggies in a single layer (try to get them about the same thickness). Then spray again with the oil and add a very light sprinkling of kosher salt. Cook on 425 about 25 minutes or so.

And for dessert, I was in the mood for eclairs so I whipped up a batch. This time I used the recipe from the "Flour" bakery cookbook and they were yummy. Again - the recipe is too long to post, but it's a great book if you like baking.

Whew! So that was the food. Then later that night, Brent grabbed my camera off of the counter and caught this very lovely photo of me. I was talking and glanced up and he took the picture. Nice. I think it was around midnight and we were all about to crash. Chad is on the couch and you can see the back of Laura's head. lol.

We managed to get everything pulled together just before class on Thursday and gave a great presentation. The final paper was due yesterday and we finished it up in the morning and then turned it in after class last night. Whew! Two more classes down! We started Global Management last night (which is a tie-in class with our trip) and some of us are starting a Business Judgment elective tomorrow. Laura, Chad and I are all in that one together - should be fun! I'm looking forward to Global Management - last night we formed up teams with people going on our trips and signed up for a country to do a report both before and then after the trip. I'm on a great team with fun people - Chad and three other friends I haven't had a chance to work with yet - Jen, Scott, & Dave. We're doing Greece :)

And that leads me to...

I realized that I never mentioned what had happened with the scheduling on our trip. We were going to Morocco and Egypt before heading to the UAE, but obviously that's out. So instead, we're going to Spain and Greece. I know. Such poor substitutes. lol. I'm super excited! We'll be visiting Madrid and Athens. (And Mel - I promise to have as little fun in possible in Spain without you. I wish you could come!)

So as I mentioned the other day, I signed up for Ali Edwards' Scrapbook on the Road online class. I just finished up assembling the album I'll take with me along with a small tool kit. I'm also going to be taking my Fuji Instax camera and film to get some little instant photos to stick in the book (but my big camera is coming too, of course! I already ordered extra memory cards and another battery. I plan to take a LOT of photos.) So here's an overview of the album. I made mine a lot more colorful and it has a lot of pages in it. Because I'm going for more than 2 weeks and we're visiting 5 countries (and because I know myself... lol), I put in a lot of space for me to write and for photos and memorabilia. I figure I can always take out anything I don't use.

Some pictures of the outside of the book. I made the covers from book board and then painted them. I added the decorations and then sealed the outsides with gel medium for a little protection.

And the inside - part one. I made all of the country dividers from cut down tabbed manilla folders. There are some extra pages and elements between the sections. I can use those for travel details between countries or just move them where I need them. I also did quite a bit of stamping considering how much of this is going to be covered up. But hey. It was fun and I was excited to be doing it!

And part 2... lots and lots of journaling space. I cut down a bunch of plain notebook paper to fit in the book - I did this for my travel journal in China and filled every page and then some and I loved having it. I figure I can also grab hotel stationary on the road and mix it in if I need it. Or even if I don't!

You can see where I just added a bunch of blank pages at the back that I can intersperse or just remove depending on what I need. I also tried all of the different techniques from the class videos and had a blast with this - I'm really glad I decided to take it because I think it helped me make a better album and do it pretty quickly too.

For most of the elements that I stuck in, I adhered them lightly so I can pull them off or move them. I anticipate that this will look nothing like what I'm starting with by the time I come back. But that's the point, I guess! Plus, the trip is 6 credits and we have to do an individual report plus a trip journal for the entire group (we'll take turns writing it) so I figure I'll have a leg up by doing this :)

It was super fun to put this together... now I'm all ready to go! Too bad it's still a month away. Maybe I got working on this too soon? lol. I'm glad to have it done and ready, though. When I get ready I'll pull my little tool kit together and just stick it in my carry-on.  Plus, it just feels good to do some scrapbooking again. :)

Believe it or not...

I finished Steph's wedding album!  I know, it's a miracle.  I got a lot done this week so I'll actually be able to give it to her tonight.  Now how to figure out how to get it into the concert... lol.

Here are the rest of the layouts:

Whew!  I can't believe I made it.  I was feeling like I had my scrap mojo back this week, but we'll see if I burned myself out again.  lol.  Anyway, off to grab a snack and then get back to work so I can be ready to head off to the concert tonight.  I *heart* Linkin Park!  :D

Time is flying!

I can't believe it's already been another two weeks since my last post AND that February is almost over!  I've been busy as usual... crazy at work, trying to keep up and learn as much as I can at school and keeping it balanced at home as much as possible.   

First, the EMBA singles went back to Mazza on Friday and I drove up to meet them, but of course I totally spaced taking any pictures.  There were 5 of us and we met up with 4 more from the Salt Lake class of 2012 and it was great to meet new people and hang out and get to know each other.  The food was wonderful, as usual.  I ordered appetizers for the table and I have to say the tomatoes with bulgar, the labdeh and the little lamb pizza were amazing.  I also got a chick pea and fava bean dip that I really loved.  There was just enough for each of us to have a few bites of everything.  Then I had my lamb and rice which was drool-worthy; the rice was amazing.  And to top it all off, a date ma'mool.  I so can't wait for our trip to the Middle East.  I just hope our hotels have gyms to help me counteract all the awesome food.  lol.

Speaking of food, as usual, I've been cooking up a storm... three FABULOUS new recipes.  First, I made my very own homemade ravioli.  I made the pasta, filling and sauce all from scratch and I have to say, it was awesome.  The filling was fat free ricotta, fresh grated parmesan, salt and pepper, an egg, a few handfuls of rough chopped fresh organic baby spinach and some lean Italian chicken sausage (pre-cooked since ravioli don't cook for long).  I will definitely make this again... delish.

And the finished product...

Next, I made a beef and butternut squash tagine using a recipe from the latest issue of Cooking Light.  Wow was it yum.  Another recipe going into the "keep" pile!  I had leftovers tonight and it was just as fabulous.  Lots of fantastic flavor.  I just paired it with a light couscous salad that I got in a tub at Costco for $2.  You can't beat that!

And one more... this is from my Power Foods book (my health coach challenged me to cook a few recipes from it this month.  I also did roasted pears and brussel sprouts.  No picture, but also delicious).  This one is a paprika rubbed chicken with carrots, fennel, apricots and olives in a sauce made from chicken broth and fresh squeezed orange juice with cumin and more paprika.  Really excellent. I love fennel and the combination of flavors in the different ingredients was fantastic.

k.  That's it for the food portion of tonight's blog.  lol.  Next, a little peek at something else I picked up recently:

Yup.  I started kickboxing last month.  I LOVE it.  Right now I'm just going on Saturday mornings since that's about all I can fit into my schedule, but getting up after a long, frequently stressful week and going in to pound on a punching bag while sweating it out to great music is awesome.  It's at a nearby martial arts academy and it's definitely not a fluff class.  We do partner drills and bag drills with self-defense mixed in and it's a solid hour of hard work.  The first two weeks, I felt like I'd been hit by a truck the next day and I could barely move!  I'm really proud that I wasn't in any pain the next day after this last time... just a little stiffness in my shoulders from all the punching drills. 

And finally... ta da!  I did some layouts for Steph's wedding album.  My goal is to have it finished before I see her this weekend, but we'll see if I make it.  I still have 11 pages left and I have a feeling work and school might interfere with my plans.  But in the meantime...

And one more...

Whew!  That's it for now... off to get ready to get back into my regular schedule tomorrow.  Later!

Weird week.

I know, it's only Wednesday.  But this has been a really weird week so far and I'm kind of thinking it's only going to get weirder.  I'm totally exhausted from all the ups and downs and I'm definitely looking forward to the weekend.  Of course, the weekend is going to be just as crazy.  lol.  There've been some tough and stressful things and some unexpected and really great things happening.  I know.  Vague.  I'm so rude.  But I'm both excited and a little scared to see how things turn out... it will all be good.

In the meantime, I finally edited the photos for the Halloween mini album I did of Eraleigh to give to Erin for Christmas.  This was another fun project :)

The cover:

And the inside pages - I took pictures of spreads and individual pages for details (crappy lighting as usual.  Sorry about that.)

Whew.  That's it!  I'm caught up!  Now I'm sitting here staring at all my supplies thinking how nice it would be to sit down for a while and do a layout just for me :)  But... I've got homework to do, some website design updates to make for a start-up I'm working with and sleep would also be a very good thing at some point. Sigh. Maybe later. 

Oh... and believe it or not, I did manage to photos from my trip home over Halloween.  Lots of fun ones of Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh as well as plenty of photos of Aubrey in the hospital and on her first day home.  You can see them here.

Look Steph, wedding layouts!

I finally managed to get back to Steph and Mike's wedding album.  I really want to finish it so I can give it to them, so I did a few more layouts.

And another...

And as if I could let a post go by without posting a close-up (and I told you those handmade paper roses were going to start showing up everywhere.  lol).

Whew... two more down!  Just gotta keep going now.

And another bit of happiness, my herbs are starting to sprout!  I moved them to my kitchen table near the patio door so I could open the blinds a bit to get them more light.  Cilantro, parsley and sage don't want to play nice (yet), but the rest of them are sprouting little bits of greenness :)

And finally, I could NOT let the weekend go by without using my tagine.  I took a recipe from my new cookbook and changed it just a bit.  I took out the onions (because hello, gross!) and used chicken instead of lamb since it's a lot leaner and would still work well with the other flavors in the recipe.  I think lamb or beef would make a nicer sauce during cooking though, so I still might try that sometime.

I added a pound of cubed chicken breast to cinnamon, cumin, fresh minced garlic, fresh ginger and a bit of chili powder and water and cooked it on low for about 1 1/2 hours.  It made the chicken so moist and tender!  Then I added 1/2 pound of dried apricots and after another 20 minutes I added 7 ounces of chick peas and cooked another 10 minutes or so.  I absolutely love the smell of cumin and cinnamon cooking together.  It's so warm and tangy!

I served it up with some whole wheat Greek flatbread and a little tzaziki sauce.  It was a bit odd to have this kind of flavor profile as home cooking, but at the same time it was pretty delicious.  And now I have yummy leftovers to hold me over until my next culinary adventure!

Anyway, I've had a raging headache all day that no amount of medicine has been able to get rid of, so I'm heading off to bed to read for a while and see if I can make it go away.  TTFN!

Queen of Hearts

This is been kind of a nice, recharging kind of weekend.  Sleeping, reading, going to the movies... I saw "Letters to Juliet" which I really enjoyed.  Very fun and cute.  As a result I didn't spend any time in the craft attic yesterday, but today I decided to do a few projects.

First, I've seen some fabulous Alice in Wonderland inspired jewelry on Etsy and when I found this strand of glass playing card beads, I knew I had to get them and make my own.  So I did a Queen of Hearts theme - there are some glass hearts on one side and a kind of mask/crown pendant that represents the queen.  I love the colors and the lampwork beads on this one.

And a different view (as I now realize I should have taken one of the hearts on the other side.)

This one is weirding me out a bit because the main charm is off center, but I like it.  I have no idea what I'll wear it with... thank goodness for the black shirt!

Also, while I was working, I did some browsing on Etsy for inspiration since I was a bit stumped on this one.  I didn't find anything that I used to inspire this necklace, but I found a seller that makes the most AMAZING jewelry!  She's in Bangkok and there was one necklace that I just kept coming back to (okay, there were several... but the others were more than I wanted to spend right now).  Her prices are so good (for this type of thing, anyway) that I ended up buying it.  Since Mom wanted to see it, here's a picture:

It's so different from anything I've seen and so totally *me.*  Definitely not a piece you want to wear if you don't want to draw attention!  Here's her Etsy storefront... it's totally drool-worthy.

Finally, I also did a layout... this one about me!  This is from Steph's wedding.  I already scrapped these pictures for her album, but I made extra copies for myself.  I saw Prima's May Build-a-Page sketch on their blog and thought it would work great with the photos.

The stamps, red patterned paper, Say it in Pearls, chipboard accent and flowers are all Prima.  The background paper is the new Basic Grey "Basics" line which I love... some Thickers, Stickles and some ribbon from my stash.

Here's a side view - I did a fun loopy thing with the black ribbon and you can see it a tad better in this picture:

Okay, so you can't really see it.  Next time I'll try a different angle to see if I can capture it.  It looks pretty cool, though (if I do say so myself!)

So that's it!  Time to hit the sack and get ready for another week.  I'm about 2 weeks past burnout with school and counting every day of the last 6 weeks before the end of my first year.  I can't wait for a little break!

TTFN!

Happy Birthday Mom!

It's been quite an eventful day!  I have to admit however, that I'm deliberately posting this late at night so that my mom won't see it... she and Rick are on their way to SLC first thing in the morning so I'm betting that at this point, mom won't be checking my blog until after I give her her birthday present in person tomorrow :)  Although it definitely won't be the biggest surprise of the day, I still don't want to spoil it...

So, here's the card - I made a combined birthday / Mother's day card since I'm giving her both presents together.  She and Rick will be on the road driving his car back from Idaho on Sunday so we'll be celebrating a bit early.

 

I just love this Sweet Pea image from Papertrey :)

And, for her birthday present I made a necklace and earring set (which probably won't be a surprise at all... lol.)  My mom has always liked jade, so when I found this carved jade flower I knew I needed to build the necklace around it.  I found a little set of light green jade beads to go with it and added some vintage pearl beads from some old broken strands of pearls that I unstrung.

And a bit of a close-up:

Of course the biggest birthday surprise of the day was the present from Nicole and Brian... a card that had this in it:

 
I'm going to be an Auntie again!!!  And Nicole, the little stink, is already in her second trimester and just dropped the news today!  Another wee one to spoil :D  The baby is due in the fall and I'm super excited to go home for Christmas now... I'll have TWO little ones to enjoy while I'm home this year!  So exciting...

Congratulations Nicole and Brian and Happy Birthday Mom!

Happy Easter!

And of course, not to be forgotten, Happy Birthday Dad!  It was yesterday, but I was a non-posting slacker.  I did call home and I got to be on the phone to sing happy birthday with the family and listen while he opened presents.  They made me extremely jealous with all of the talk of the Baskin Robbins chocolate peanut butter ice cream cake.  Yum.  It sounds like it was a great birthday, and here's hoping for many more!  Here's a quick shot of the card I made to send with the present:

Not my best effort at stamping words, but it's the sentiment that counts, right?

And... for today, I took my basket of froofy Easter eggs and added some candy for this year's grown up Easter basket (this is for Mom who was worried that I didn't have an Easter basket for myself.  lol).

I had Lindt chocolate mini eggs, a few saran wrapped pieces of my favorite Sees candy and a Hershey's bunny, a Cadbury caramel egg and a Butterfinger egg. Yum!

I spent most of the weekend watching General Conference, which was wonderful as always... but I still got a few other things done.  First, a layout.  I printed these photos of Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh weeks ago and never made the layout.  Since I was officially a few holidays behind, I thought I should get to it.

I had some fun playing around with this one... I took the tags and cut out squares to make frames and then misted them and added fun trims and Japanese masking tape along with flowers and hearts cut from a sheet of Making Memories patterned paper.  Some fun vintage lace down the right side of the layout and Pink Paislee chipboard letters.

Finally, I decided that just because I was "finished" with a piece of jewelry didn't mean I couldn't go back and change it if I thought of something that would have made it look better.  I mean, duh.  It's not that hard.  So I made some changes to my seahorse necklace and updated my previous post with new pictures.  Nothing drastic - just subbed in some copper colored beads in place of blue ones to tie in the pendant better.  I like it even more now :)

I didn't complete any new pieces this weekend (that pesky house cleaning and laundry crap got in the way), but I started assembling a new pendant - I'm waiting for the E-6000 to dry so I can keep working.  Here's a quick look at where it's at:

The flower is a mother of pearl carved one that I got for like $2 on Etsy... the jeweled part on the front was a pendant from a bunch of vintage necklaces I picked up.  I cut off the bail and sanded it down and glued it to the flower - I'll save the chain and either use it here or later.  I glued a new bail to the back of the flower and added some brass findings and jewels.  I don't know why the small jewels look so blue in the photo - they're violet.  I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this one... I'm making it up as I go :)

Tomorrow night is the Muse show at the E-Center and I'm SUPER PSYCHED!!!  I'm meeting up with Rae at my place where we're going to fix dinner and then meet Steph and Mike for the show.  I'm still trying to figure out how to get a camera in now that I just have an SLR... I'll think of something.  I can't wait, though.  They're sooooo amazing live.  Of course, I didn't put two and two together until earlier today when I realized that Muse on Monday night meant that I couldn't call into my Monday conference call with my study group and that also meant that Monday night was out for working on Finance homework.  Doh.  So I spent several hours this evening working on that.  Fun, huh?  (Maybe if I'd gotten online yesterday instead of slacking and doing housework I'd have realized that and started yesterday.  Oops.) BUT!  While I did homework, I witnessed my own little Easter miracle - the Avs actually won a game! They're still in the playoff hunt! (jinx!)  Obviously it was a bit of a non-traditional Easter chez moi, but it was still fun, peaceful, relaxing and very uplifting.  Now it's time to get ready for another week!

A little birthday post

(Warning!  Long post!  For such a busy week I'm really surprised at how much I have to share... of course I've been working on bits and pieces for a while and I guess it's just all coming out at once.)

Happy (Belated) Birthday Melody!  I hope you got your package... otherwise, don't look!  Okay, I guess you can look, it's just the card :) 

And a peek at the inside before I wrote in it...

I also love throwing in little goodies for my favorite 9-year old, Angelina... I made her a little mini album kit to do her own scrapbooking.  I thought it would be fun to wrap it up cute, so I took a plain brown paper bag and stamped on it (I adore these Dear Lizzy stamps!)  Added her name and filled it with goodies.

And... another necklace with matching earrings.  I just couldn't wait to use this fun pendant that I scored for cheap on Etsy.  I found these awesome beads that don't really match and yet they go perfectly.

I don't know why it took me so long to start making my own jewelry... this is fun!  

And then my last project for today... I mentioned in my last post that I had been painting eggs while scrapbooking.  I decided to do a fancy little Easter basket for myself this year.  I got the papier mache eggs at Michael's for $2 and then found this super cute basket for cheap + 40% coupon (nice!)  All of the decorating was done with stuff I had on hand (granted, I have a LOT on hand.)  I only made 6, but maybe they'll grow each year or something.  Here's the basket of eggs:

I would be totally remiss here if I didn't give credit to my source of inspiration... I adore these fancy decorated ostrich eggs.  I would LOVE to get some this size!

Close-ups of the ones I did:

 

Okay, I'm done now.  Really... I had a busy day at work and then went to class and took my Managerial Accounting final so now I'm bushed!  So glad tomorrow is Friday!!! I'm ready for the weekend.

Quick layout...

I managed to squeeze in another layout today, while working on a completely separate project, of course.  I decided to start yet another new one... this time a holiday decor project for Easter.  I was going back and forth between the layout and painting my papier mache eggs... all on the same table.  I was probably really lucky that I didn't end up spilling paint or gel medium all over the layout... lol.  I think I need to start referring to myself as the ADD crafter :D

Here's the layout:

It drives me nuts when the scans come out slightly different colors - one side was lumpier than the other so it's a little off.  Oh well!

I also finished two eggs, but I'm going to wait to take pictures and post until I've finished them and found a little basket.  In the meantime, I'm done for the night.  I ended up getting a fairly nasty piece of malware on my computer today after visiting a music website I've been to many times in the past (never again!) and it took me forever to get the right software downloaded and setup so I could get rid of it.  At least I recognized it... it was one of those that masquerades as an anti-virus program.  Of course, the fact that I have a subscription to different program was a bit of a tip-off :)  Anyway, it's gone and no harm done other than a few hours of productivity lost. 

Crazy week coming up... here's hoping I manage to get some sleep!

Sweets for the sweet

I'm supposed to be reading my assignment for my accounting class that starts tomorrow, but today was a busy and somewhat stressful day at work, so I had to do something tonight to just relax for a while.  I wanted to scrap these pictures of Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh as soon as Erin posted them last week so I pulled them out to play.  My mom, Erin and Eraleigh made Valentine's cutout cookies while they were snowed in and the pictures were just too cute.

 

Okie dokie... time to try and get in a little reading before I crash.

It's December 15th!

And I hear a resounding chorus of "duh!"  But seriously.  The 15th means... tonight is my last final!  Our project / paper is done and we're going out for a "we made it through our first semester" treat after we finish.  It also means that a week from today I'll be home!  Yay!  And of course, the 15th means that today is the second of my two December guest appearances on the Banana Frog Blog.  I had so much fun working with their awesome stamps... so I just want to give them a big "thank you!" for the opportunity.  You can see the post with the projects for this round here.

If you look closely, you'll see a little bit more embossed cardboard... letterpress-esque, even!  So I put together a quick tutorial on how I did it in case anyone is interested. 

Don't forget to click on over to see the layout where I used these!

My new favorite thing

I've been sick again all weekend... I don't know why.  Possibly tons of stress, lack of sleep and going in and out of freezing cold weather?  Maybe.  But I don't exactly have time to be sick so I'm knocking back the Robitussin and trying to get everything done anyway.  Today I spent about 5-6 hours working on the write-up for my team's marketing project... still plenty left to do.  I also made good progress on Banana Frog projects, made a cough syrup run and even started my laundry!  I decided while I was at it to stay up a bit longer and do a few things just for fun.

So this is my new favorite thing... I can thank Marah for helping me see the beauty in die cutting cardboard, but tonight I really played with it.  When I opened the drawer to pull out the plates for my Cuttlebug, I glanced at my embossing folders and thought to myself, "self, what would happen if you tried to emboss cardboard?"  As it turns out, embossed cardboard is SWEET.  I diecut a bunch of circles and embossed them and then tried inking and painting them.  I ended up making a whole bunch of them to make a wreath in my Christmas journal inspired by this cool one on the Maya Road blog.  I inserted it before day 4... where you can see some bleed through from Careless Copic Use on Day 5.  Oh well, adds character, right?

 

And a close-up, though it's still a little hard to see the effect of the embossing in the photo (the smallest circles are chipboard - I painted them, stamped on them and heat embossed):

And now day 5... I did this earlier this week and just got around to taking pictures.  I was actually really glad to be so far behind when I did this one since I had just seen this awesome technique from Tim Holtz that seemed perfect for a page about advent calendars.

And the obligatory close-up... for my version I just used chipboard numbers and tin foil instead of grungeboard and metal tape.  I also used Copics instead of alcohol ink in those pens... pretty much the same thing, right?

 

That envelope in between the pages is from my company's holiday party - it has the schedule of events during the party so I added it in since that was also on the 5th.  Here's the view of the advent calendar I included... Nicole found this in the store and she and Brian mailed it to me - she thought it would be a fun way to remember when we had these as kids.  I love it!  I open my little door every day.

 

I decided to skip day 6 - that day's prompt just didn't resonate with me... I didn't really have anything for it and decided that since I was so far behind I'd just skip it rather than doing an alternate prompt.  So here's day 7:

So, um, yeah.  A lot of un-checked items.  lol.  I did die-cut the other 7 check marks since I absolutely intend to do everything on that list!  I also did some more diecut and embossed cardboard here.  For these, I brushed PanPastels over the raised areas for some subtle color.

And finally, as if there weren't already enough pictures in this post, one more fun thing I discovered with the cardboard tonight.  I decided that since I was embossing it, I should try letterpressing my cardboard with ink and an embossing folder.  It actually turned out kind of awesome!  It's like grunge letterpress... considering it's cardboard, that's probably appropriate... lol.  I can't wait to use this on something.

Kind of hard to see the debossing in a photo, but it's cool!  The one in back is the first one I tried with gold ink.  That doesn's show up too well on this color, but it's shimmery if you look close :)  Okay.  done now.  Time for cough syrup and sleep.

Happy December!

I can't believe it's December, but at the same time I'm really excited.  It means... I'm only two weeks from finishing my first semester of business school... I'm only three weeks from going home for the holidays and... it means that today is Banana Frog day! 

I was lucky enough to be chosen as a guest designer for Banana Frog and had the pleasure of playing with some of their fantastic stamps.  The first of my two guest design posts is up on their blog today... So hop on over (pun intended... couldn't resist!) and check it out :)

The cutest little duck

Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh was a duck for Halloween this year, and she was so adorable!  I still wanted to play a bit with the techniques I'm learning in Julie's class, so I decided to pick one that I really wanted to try and do it with a Halloween layout in mind.  I ended up doing a really fun technique that uses acrylic paints, stamps and Distress Inks.  Here's what I came up with initially:

Julie described the effect as faded or vintage wallpaper and that's exactly what it looked like!  (I'd love to try this with Crackle Paint sometime soon...)

So then I decided to make this the background for my layout:

 

I also used the same technique to do the chipboard letters in the title - they were originally white so I painted them and stamped them with a big spider web and then distressed the edges.  I also did a glitter strip and some paper flowers inspired by Marah's classes :)

Lots of homework this week (already!)... I spent several hours buried in my books tonight and I'll be back there again after class tomorrow.  Tonight was one of those times when I was tired and a bit overwhelmed and had to ask why I'm actually paying for this... lol.  (I think it's payback for spending the weekend playing ;)  I know it's all worth it, though.

12 hours of scrapping fun

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I had signed up to take some classes with Marah Johnson at a nearby scrapbook store.  Yesterday was class day and it was so much fun.  I signed up because her projects looked awesome and I'd heard that she's a great teacher for learning new techniques... I wasn't disappointed!  I loved my first class so much that I grabbed the last spot in her 3rd class so I could take all of them.  The first class (Bird mini-album) started at 9am and we were there finishing our third class until 9pm.  Here are a few photos from the day.

Marah, showing off her awesome bird book:

 

We worked at different technique stations set up at the next table and as we finished each one, we brought the pieces back to pile up and get ready for the album assembly.  We used glitter, glimmer mist with flocked paper, alchohol inks with Krylon pens, Lumin Art sprays and mica pigment powders mixed with Mod Podge.  It was awesome to learn so many new ways to use products I've got in my stash at home.  Here's the pile at my work spot as I finished the components:

And a shot of the technique stations as we worked on the Twilight album:

 

Here's a shot of my versions of the projects from the three classes, including the book paper flowers Marah taught us how to make.  We did the bird album, the Twilight album and this awesome box full of 3x3 chipboard mini books.

 

And the inside of the book box:

The insides of the chipboard books are still empty - I haven't figured out what I'm going to use this for yet.  I've got all of the backgrounds for the pages in the mini albums done, but most of them aren't assembled since they need photos first.  I'll have to figure out what to put in those too.  When I do, I'll post the finished insides. 

I'm so glad I signed up... I had a great time and learned a lot more than I had thought I would.  I also met some really fun ladies that I hope to see at more classes and crops in the future.  Now I'm hoping that I'll have some time this week to play with some of what I learned!

Water baby

I was so excited when Erin posted these pictures of Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh... I've been wanting to see them since they were taken this summer and all the cuteness was described over the phone.  I just can't get over the "fierce" look that she sometimes gets when she smiles.  The cute little pink polka dot bathing suit just ups the adorable factor.

 

I had fun playing a bit and stepping outside of my box, even if just a little.  Lately, anything that doesn't have a white or kraft background AND has tilted pictures AND stamping (let alone embossing!) is pretty crazy for me, and I did all of that tonight!  I dug into both the stash and the scrap bin, finding all kinds of things that seemed to work well for this.  You'll have to ignore the bottom of the scan, it popped up the tag and puffy letter and I was too lazy to re-scan... it's flat in real life.

And now once again, I've stayed up way later than I had intended (you know how it is when you get on a roll, right?) and I'm going to be a zombie tomorrow at work and in class.  Oh well, sleeping is what weekends are for :)

_______________

Thursday AM update... I jinxed myself when I said my dental issues had been concluded.  Guess who has the beginnings of an infection!  I know, the fun never ends.  At least I recognized the symptoms immediately and called about it... they called in more meds and I just picked them up and started on them and I have to go back to see the dentist tomorrow morning to check on some other weirdness.  I think there's going to need to be a layout to document all the crazy! 

Ouch!

Why is it always the smallest things that cause the most pain?  I guess it isn't always like that, it just feels like it right now.  A while ago I had a very old filling fall out of a tooth and shortly afterward, the back of the tooth just fell off too.  It didn't hurt at all so I let it go, planning to get to it after I put some money in my flex spending account (dental work is $$$!).  I should have known better, it never works out that way, right?  This last week  my previously quiescent tooth went into full flare-up.  It was like 0 to 1,000 in a half a second.  I didn't realize it was the tooth at first since I just had sinus headaches - normal for me even if these were worse than usual.  Then the additional pain kicked in and I knew I was in for it.  I'm going to the dentist first thing tomorrow and I have a feeling the words "root canal" will be spoken.  Ah well, it's time.  At least they called in a prescription for some Lortab to get me through the weekend.  It's not perfect, but it takes the edge off and has been helping me catch up on some much needed sleep :)

I did get a few things done, however.  A friend from work got married yesterday so I met up with another co-worker for dinner and then we met the larger group at the reception.  It was beautiful and we had a good time.  I made this card to go with my gift for the happy couple.

 

Today, in between drugged naps and light reading, I played a little bit more... first is a card to send off to Melody tomorrow (don't peek Mel!) in honor of the new baby that's due to make an appearance any day...

Finally, I've been meaning to add to the "Watch her grow" album I've been making of Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh for quite a while but hadn't gotten around to it.  So tonight, I added pages for the last four months.  I can't believe how much she's growing!  She's already walking and everything...

 

 

 

 

 

With that, it's time to hit the sack!  Here's hoping everything goes well at the dentist :)

 

Weekend projects

I'm not entirely sure where the weekend went, but it was nice while it lasted!  lol.  I did do a little playing in the scrap room.  First was a card - just playing around with some of my American Crafts stamps and embossing powder. Sorry for the crooked scan... the downside of always working at night is that I never have good light to take pictures!

I also did a layout today... this is another from Disney, while we were in the Wild Animal Park.  We had some time before Finding Nemo the Musical so we hung out in the dinosaur area for a while... I'm just bummed we didn't have quite enough time for rides.  Those flying dinosaurs looked fun!

And lest you wonder what happened to my typical verbose journaling, here's a shot with the hidden journaling pulled part-way out :)

And now, off to relax and feed my Food Network addiction before bed... tomorrow is going to be busy getting my checklist knocked out at work and home to get ready to head out to the SF office.  Busy is good, though!  It helps keep me occupied instead of stressing until I find out if my student loan came through.  It's not like they're cutting it close or anything... I mean, school doesn't start until August 3rd!

Eraleigh is One!

Yup, today is Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh's first birthday.  I can't believe it's been a year!  I'm looking forward to hearing about her big day and seeing lots of pictures.  In the meantime, here's the birthday card I made her.  I had to use these cute stamps from Our Craft Lounge (and my Copics) because they totally reminded me of her... when we were at the aquarium at Epcot, there was a giant sea turtle that swam right up to her and she was captivated.  I know she's too young to enjoy the card, but it was sure fun to make!

In other news, I've been on a waiting list for a new laptop at work for almost 2 months now and yesterday I finally got it!  Good timing... my old one had decided to start shutting down randomly for no reason.  Fun!  I hadn't realized how slow my old one was until I started using the new one.  It's like the speed of light!

And now just a few more hours until my weekend starts... our office gets the 3rd of July off and I'm psyched for a 3-day weekend! I'm ready to bar-b-que, relax and maybe even scrapbook!

Busy!

It's been a surprisingly busy weekend for me.  But fun busy, you know?  I ran a few errands (aka shopping), watched some good movies and did some crafting experimentation.  I've had the idea for a certain type of mixed media collage for months now and I've never done anything to see if I could create what's in my head.  I played with papier mache this weekend and it's looking good!  Nothing to share so far, but it was fun to get my hands dirty (literally!) with something new.

Yesterday, my LSS had a Make-and-Take / demonstration from Copic Markers and Our Craft Lounge stamps.  I love my Copics and I'm always looking for tips (and excuses to go to the LSS) so I headed out yesterday to participate.  It was lots of fun!  Here's the card we made.  Not my best coloring, but I was trying not to take too much time since there were people waiting for spots at the MITI table.

I was also able to sneak in a layout... here's a quick one from our Disney trip.  This is from the Safari ride in the Wild Animal Park.  We all loved that ride... it was a lot like a real safari!  And Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh was enthralled by the animals. 

And now I'm just in time to watch "The Next Food Network Star" before bed. :)

It's a small world!

I finally managed to get back in my scrapbook room... I've really been wanting to scrap these pictures since I found this cute little "It's a Small World" sticker set.  Just ignore the fact that I somehow managed to scan the layout slightly crooked... lol.

And now... it's time to fix dinner, relax and get ready for another busy week :)

Mother's Day Mini

I really love that my family enjoys getting little scrapbooks as gifts... it makes it so much fun for me to make personalized albums for birthdays and holidays.  Sometimes when I give a regular gift instead of a scrapbook, they're disappointed!  So for Mother's Day this year I decided to make a mini album of Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh for my mom as a Grandma's Brag Book that she could keep on her desk at work.  And, since Rick, Erin and Eraleigh are temporarily staying with my parents, I made a copy to send to Erin as well!  It was so fun to hear about their surprise... not surprise over the fact that my gift was an album (they guessed that before opening the shipping box!) but surprise that there were two of them!  It was almost as easy to make two as one, so it was fun for me to be able to do it :)

I love these 6x6 American Crafts mini albums.  I got them at Archivers in the $1.99 spot... that's a deal you can't pass up!  These are the completed albums with the cards I made to go with them.

Here are the album pages - lots of these were adapted from other layouts I'd already made for myself, so they'll probably look familiar:

So that's it!  I've already scrapbooked all these photos except the ones on the last page (but I have a half-finished layout on my desk using those) but Eraleigh is just so darling that I loved scrapping them all over again.

Watch her grow!

I can't believe it, but Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh was 10 months old yesterday!  Erin posted some darling pictures that will definitely find their way onto a layout, but in the meantime I grabbed one super cute close-up to put into the little mini-album I've been making.  I started this a few weeks ago and have been waiting for a "10 months" picture to post.  I've just been taking one photo each month so that as you flip through the pages, you can really see how much Eraleigh is changing!  I think this is going on my desk at work until it's time to add the next photo.

I love watching the development of her gorgeous smile.  She's just so cute!  Also, for anyone who's interested in how I made it, the album itself was super easy.  I used a template that I found here and made the cover from some fun American Crafts Moda Bella paper... the inside pages are plain white cardstock and I used the Papertrey Ink Guidelines 2 set for the backgrounds on all the pages.  The closure is done with a Basic Grey magnet set.

Now I'm off to try and work on another project I've been procrastinating on for Mother's Day.  Since I have to ship my package off this week, though, I decided I was cutting it close enough.  Hopefully I can make some good progress today.  I finally picked, edited and printed all the photos which is the part I hate, so now it should just roll right along!

Our little ray of sunshine

Well, I suppose that's only true if it suits her to be a ray of sunshine.  Isn't that the way of the diva?  And from what I've heard so far, Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh is definitely a little diva.  But she's just so cute!  These are a few shots taken at mom & dad's house in Virginia.  She's pretty irresistible in her little yellow outfit!

 
The "so" parts of the title (So cute, so happy) don't show up too well in the scan, but they're more apparent in real life.  Also, the cut-out butterflies are all popped off the page for a little dimension.  I feel like I'm moving from a color blocking phase to an embellishment grouping phase.  I'm using things I've had for years this way, though, and I'm really liking the results.  Maybe someday soon I'll COMBINE the styles!  There's a thought.  lol.

Anyway, it's Dutch Day today at Thanksgiving Point (part of the Tulip Festival) and I'm trying to decide if I should go.  Between overcast / rainy weather and the fact that I don't really want to go until my new camera comes, I'm kind of waffling.  I guess I'll wait and check the mail and see if the Amazon Fairy brought me a package :)  (And for those who are wondering... what kind of camera?!?  I finally got a Canon Rebel XT dSLR body to go with the lenses and filters from my old EOS 300 film camera.  It's not a super fancy or newer model, but I'm no pro so I'm starting cheap and basic in the dSLR world :)

Alaska Baby

I can't believe the weekend is almost over again!  It always flies by way too fast for me but the good part is that it means I'm that much closer to vacation time!  Just a few more weeks...

In the meantime, I haven't been feeling inspired to do any travel layouts but fortunately, I still have lots of cute pictures I haven't scrapped of Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh.  I thought these were too cute... from a few weeks ago when she was modeling her little coat with the faux fur trim that was just too perfect for our little Alaska baby.

There's a combination of flowers and snowflakes because she's wearing her little coat at the beginning of April... and because I really wanted to use the stamped flower images that I colored yesterday... lol.  I just love the little hand gesture in the big photo that seems to be saying, don't I look adorable in my fur hood?

The flower stamps are Papertrey Ink colored with Copics with a dash of Stickles for sparkle (that you can't really see.  oh well!).  The snowflakes are a QuicKutz Silhouette design and the page design is based on a sketch from Page Maps.

Easter Cuteness

Erin has posted lots of super cute pictures of Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh lately, but the ones from yesterday were so cute I had to scrap them right away.  She's sooooo adorable in her frilly little dress and sweater and her excitement over her first Easter basket is just too cute.

Sorry for the funky scan - the pearls I glued onto the chipboard butterflies made it a bit too thick for the lighting to work right.  It's actually a 2-page 8.5x11 layout and I LOVE the flower stamps on here - those and the little egg circle tag stamp are both recent Papertrey sets.  I'm a little annoyed by the title - the stamps I used for "Easter" are too soft to give a good impression with white ink so I had to play with it a bit to make it passable.

So that's it for today.  Time to hit the sack!

P.S. - the new tinted windows on my car are really sweet.  I almost didn't recognize it when I stopped at the dealership to pick it up after work!  Hopefully that will really help keep the heat down in the car but even if it doesn't, it sure looks good!