The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It truly is, you know! I feel so blessed as I sit and write this little post. Christmas was very good to us. Loads of gifts. Tons of family time. Even a little FaceTime (newly discovered cool tool for us!)

Techie gadgets certainly did play a big role around here. Hubby got a new Kindle Fire to read and play on. Miss A got herself a lovely new DSi (even in pink,). As for me, this post is being brought to you via my gorgeous new iPad :). Yep, a happy, techie group here. I will need to figure out the whole piece of transferring and/ or uploading pictures, (and I do need to get a fancy bluetooth keyboard) but its pretty cool to just got on and go. Hoping this will help me make my way to this poor little blog every once in awhile...

I hope each of your holiday seasons was a blessed one!

It's That Time of Year :)

Yes, it is definitely C-R-A-Z-Y busy, but, strangely, it's the time of year that allows our little family to settle in together and truly enjoy some "us" time. Even though I'm working a second job at my LSS, I can consider myself officially on vacation for 2 entire weeks! Happy dancing here:) We are nowhere near ready for the holiday season, but I really do just feel at ease. I didn't even bring home a drop of school work with me (not to say I won't regret that come the New Year and school's return) but for now, I can sit back and enjoy my gorgeous family.

I have a little project up on the Punky Sprouts blog today. I made some of these as gifts for some of my teaching colleagues. I couldn't believe how easy they were to put together.

There's a bit of a tutorial as well. Hope you'll go over there and take a peek!

Tomorrow morning is J's friend party. I need to remember to bring my camera and get some good pics. It took quite awhile to decide, but finally, he chose to go to the movies and then pizza. Arthur Christmas and Pizza Hut with a dozen 7 and 8 year olds should be a blast, don't you think? :)

Thanks for stopping by,
<3 C

Punky and Pink Paislee

School's been pretty crazy this year. So many changes and so many things to keep up on. So my poor little blog here has taken a back seat. Sometimes you just need to let something go. I can't beat myself up about it. I know in the grand scheme of things it's the least of my concerns. I just hate seeing so many new DT calls out there and seeing one of the top items listed as having an "active" blog. I know, I need to get out into cyberspace more, but you know, I work outside the home. There's only so much I can do... Anyhow, thanks for letting me get that of my chest.

OK, how about a scrappy project? I know there is snow in many parts of my half of the globe, but I do have a great Halloween project Lynn just posted of mine on the Punky Sprouts blog. I got SO much stuff with this fabulous product swap with Pink Paislee! Seriously, it was so easy to put the album together once I had a chance to sit down with it. I was even able to pick out some cute pics of my little cuties from a couple of Halloweens ago :).

Punky Sprouts Teenie Beanie Sprout album

 featuring Pink Paislee Phantom

I don't really ever think of myself as much of a shabby or vintage scrapper, but this collection was so much fun. I'm totally going to do some layouts with it. Sorry for the glare in some of the photos. I only had glossy paper left at home and just couldn't find an angle that didn't catch some glare.
I just realized that this is my first blog post on my new computer. Hopefully this will help with finding time to post. With our desktop (piece of junk), it would literally take me more than an hour to upload a post that had any pictures in it. That doesn't even count the time it took if I had to upload and then edit the pics first! Yikes! No wonder I haven't been around here much! Well, with that and winter break coming in a week (YIPEE!) I will have a bit of extra time on my hands :) Happy dance here! Now all I need is to know there are some followers out there that haven't forgotten about me!

Thanks for hanging around!
C

Punky Sprouts and Paper Trunk

What do you get when you cross two talented, Pacific Northwest creative geniuses? A gorgeous product swap, of course!

I was so excited to find out that the Punky girls were going to get to use Carrie's beautiful Paper Trunk creations! Besides the fact that Carrie is an UBER-talented designer, she is one of the funniest and sweetest people I've ever met!

We were sent a few lines to play with, but I decided to use the Rockabilly line. Since my style tends to be pretty clean-lined, I wanted the challenge of using some bold prints and colors for this.

Materials: Paper Trunk- Rockabilly paper, flair, and chipboard, and Carson alphas; Punky Sprouts- Punky Playground (stars), Lil' Stems, and Lil' Blooms; Maya Road- wood bingo motif; other- button

 
I love to give my pages loads of dimension, and that was so easy and fun to do with the Paper Trunk and Punky Sprouts combination! Once I had decided where my pieces would be placed, I began tacking everything down. I avoided using adhesive down the center of the strips on the right so I could easily stitch the gathered Punky Stem down. I used burgundy thread on this to give it just a bit more pop in color too. After I used 3-D adhesive to give some dimension to other elements, I added some Glossy Accents to both my Carson alphas and the chipboard guitar (covered in more Rockabilly paper). This also gave the layout a fun mix of textures with the canvas, flair, and Punky Playground stars (simply punched from a sheet of Playground).

This layout was also from a sketch for Sketchy Thursdays. I love their sketches!

If you didn't come here by way of the Paper Trunk or Punky Sprouts blogs, be sure to get over there and collect your words from the last few days! There's a give-away :D  Also, since I want to spread the Paper Trunk love, I have a few Rockabilly goodies to give away here! Just make sure you are a follower of my blog and leave me a comment! I'll pick a winner next weekend!



Bella Blvd. Fun

Well, no official love for me from Bella Blvd. No worries though. I loved all the creations I made for them and will plan to give it a go next time. It's been crazy busy with school and whatnot, so I'll just share my layouts I created for the call :)

Like I said, next time, right?! Just gives me more opportunity to use gorgeous product I guess :)

Be sure to stop by later this week...

Way exciting stuff and goodies to be won!



Til next time,

~ C <3

No, Really... I'm Still Here!

Dang... I didn't realize that I hadn't blogged in nearly two weeks! I guess in looking back at the time, it makes complete sense. Between finishing the patio (seriously, we did finish! Pics coming soon!), Paul's family being here and celebrating the big 4-0 with them all, topped off with the official back to work official mark of summer's end, yeah, I guess I had other things going on. :)  I promise to get some pics of all of it up soon. Just stick it on the list of things that still need to be finished!

I actually did check off some stuff from my list today. Last month I remembered to submit some work to Scrapbook News and Review (and was fortunate enough to have them pick up both layouts I sent in!). But I had also been meaning to get back into submitting to the paper mags as well. So, today I finally sent in submissions for about a half dozen layouts to Scrapbook Trends. Now I remember why I don't do that more often. It takes a LOT of time. No, really. If someone out there in ScrappyLand had a better strategy on how on earth I can not spend the better part of my afternoon doing all of that, I seriously need to hear it! Anyhow,  we'll see how it goes. I think it's usually a couple of months until you hear. Ugh. I hate waiting. Patience is definitely something God gives me many opportunities to practice with.

In between all that's been going on outside of my craft room, I have been able to work on a few things. The projects are going into a few new DT calls though. Bella Blvd. is the big one I'm working on. All items must be "never-before-seen," hence the lack of reveal here! Once I hear, I'll share them with you all. Besides that, there are a couple of others I'm gonna give a shot to. Wish me luck (and patience!) I'm working on that whole "glass is half full" idea. I'm tired of the cup getting empty, so I guess it's my job to start filling it up if I want anyone else to fill it :)

Thanks for stopping by- til next time,
~ <3

Monday?? Hmmm... Yeah, Monday

I'm pretty sure it's Monday :) That's one of the funny things about having the summers off. You often aren't quite sure of what day it is. I haven't completely decided if that's a good or bad thing! It must be Moday though, since yesterday was church and our first meeting for our mini book club on the book Grace Based Parenting. It was a great day yesterday, filled with friends and conversation. We didn't get too far into the book, but it was so nice to talk about our own upbringings and how those affect how we are/did raise our own children. I'm truly looking forward to where this all heads. I know it won't give me all the answers to millions upon millions of questions I have, but having something to force me to slow down and think about what and why I do what I do will totally help.

The patio work continues... I don't know if it looks like much work has been done, but it certainly feels like we've been working non-stop on it.

This is where we began- cutting about 20 square feet of sod, relocating some, and bringing some to the dump.

Then the retaining wall started going up. LOTS of leveling going on here. Blechh... so time consuming! And talk about feeling like you're getting nothing done!

Then all the walls were up and packing gravel started going in. (This is where we are currently- we didn't get enough gravel ordered, so working has stopped for now since the local landscape material place is closed today.)

Since the patio plan included a firepit, the kids had been asking for days when they'd get to make some s'mores. So who would we be to deny them of that treat when the pit itself was finished?? We simply put the camp chairs on the dirt and roasted away :)

Wish us luck that we can finish it all up by the big party Thursday! I'm off to do some more party shopping. Patio or not, I should probably feed and water these people who must love my dear hubby!

Thanks for stopping by and leaving me some love- it makes my day to read your sweet comments!
<3  C

Some Randomness for Wednesday

Not a ton going on around here... P has already headed back to work for the school year. And me... Well, I'm just in complete denial that we are now less than 1 little bitty month away from the first day of school. Wow. It always goes SO fast. Camping trips have been put on hold the last several weeks, and it appears as if it may stay that way until Labor Day. We've started a rather large yard project that's sucking up a good amount of time and a HUGE part of our cash flow. (Do you even know how much $$ it costs to take sod to the dump?? More than we thought!) In hopefully under a week, we'll be the proud owners of a beautiful brick patio, complete with firepit. We're having a big "40" birthday extravaganza next week for the old guy, er... my beautiful husband, and we hope to have it all done by then. We'll see how it all goes. Some of our family may have to be sucked coerced bribed into helping a bit to make it happen.

There's a ton of cleaning to be done today. I think we're going to have someone out soon to clean the carpets, so I figure I need to get a few rounds of vacuuming in before the appointment :) Once P gets home, it'll be back to the patio work. The temps are a little cooler today and tomorrow, (low 80s) so that will bring huge relief and make the work loads easier. Once the first round of vacuuming is done, I'm hoping to get a lil' scrappy again. I'm still waiting on my latest Punky Sprouts box to come, but in the meantime, I figure I'll play around a little with some Jillibean Soup and Bella Blvd.

Speaking of Jilllibean... Here are a couple of layouts I did recently.

This one is extra special, as it was one for my PageMaps assignment for July. I love Becky's maps, and it is such an honor to design for her. Once again, I was especially honored as one of her top picks for the newsletter! The background is Punky Playground (currogated cardboard) that I exposed and then painted. The rest of the papers are Jillibean Soup Watermelon Gazpacho from my PersonalScrapper kit for June.

I love this one too! Something about those papers just makes me swoon and think of everything summer. I'm going to have to buy some more of this paper soon, cuz I'm not sure how much more of my PS kit is left :(.  This was based on a Sketchy Thursdays sketch. Since we'd been on vacation, I missed the deadline to qualify for the week, but I'm planning on spending some more time over there soon!

Well, the vacuum is not magically turning itself on (anyone got one of those cool Roombas?) so I suppose I should go take care of that. I just need to remind myself that I can play, er-um. work, in my craft room when I'm done :)

Thanks for stopping by! Make sure to say hello! (I'll go surfing some of your blogs tomorrow, I promise!)

<3  C

Some Fun with Best Creation

So I have to admit that I'd never really noticed the glittery company that is Best Creation until Punky Sprouts got to do a product swap with them last month. So imagine my surprise when I saw a design team call come up on ScrapCalls a few weeks back! The bad news was that it was right in the middle of all of our camping adventures. And the extra bad news was that I didn't have any other lines than the Back 2 School line I'd used for my Punky album. So... I decided I would double-duty my usual visits to LSSs while on vacation as a search for the latest and greatest in Best Creation goodness. Fortunately, I had some luck at an LSS I'd been to before in Warrenton, OR called Scrapbook Connection. Once I had some papers picked (so sad that they didn't carry any embellies), I could start planning out in my head some picture possibilties to scrap. Here's what I ended up creating...

From the gorgeous line, Travel Forever

Yeah, I totally staged those photos... Wouldn't you?? :) I think this might be my favorite line of theirs so far. But then again, I'm pretty partial to aqua and brown :) I even snuck in a little Punky with the canvas flower made from a Punky Stem!

photos by Jeff Tibeau

This one was one I acutally realized I had paper for. I can even find it listed on their site as a paper line, but it's theirs! This one is from Mr. & Mrs. I feel terrible, because I'd actually purchased this a couple years ago to scrap photos of my brother's wedding. Well... technically, these are from the wedding, just not of the bride and groom... *blush*  Guess now I'll have to go back and do some more! It's also using another amazing sketch from my favorite sketch artist, Ms. Becky Fleck! Love her stuff <3

Thanks for stopping by!

<3 Carly

*note- I've been working on this silly stinkin' post for quite some time... Either Blogger is having issues, or something's up with my laptop. It's time to LET IT GO and just push "publish"!

Home Again...

And it feels so nice! We realized once we made our way home, that we've never been away from home (vacation or otherwise) for this amount of time before as a family. We had an amazing time in the beautiful state of Oregon, so much that we said we could easily imagine ourselves living there. I don't think the rest of our family would be very encouraging, but it's still a gorgeous place...

My scrappy endeavors are going to need to wait for a few days, so I thought I'd post a few of my favorite pics from our trip instead...

I've still got a ton of editing to do, but I wanted to share a few anyhow. One of those pretty blondes doesn't belong to me, but the expression on her face when I took the pic of her and the sea star was just too cute! (She belongs to the family we always camp with!)

It was an awesome trip, but it really does feel great to be home. Now it's back to the normal grind... Sometimes normal is good :)

Thanks for stopping by!
C

Oh My! Summer is Here!

And boy did it come on fast! It's been wild and crazy- it always is these first few weeks! Between getting school wrapped up (two kids and two adults worth this year), Miss A's birthday party, and the 4th of July festivities, it's a bit chaotic... I always want to blog more than I do, but when I finally get home and the computer is near, it just doesn't seem to happen.

Fortunately, I have been able to get a bit scrappy lately (for this slow-poke, anyhow!) During the month of June, the Punky Sprouts girls got to do a product exchange with the girls over at Best Creation. Like so often happens, I start out having nearly no idea of what to do. That smart chic Shelly sent me the Back 2 School line from BC, but unfortunately, since I work, I literally have first day photos only for J, and the same for A. That didn't quite scream mini album. So finally the idea hit me. While I was looking at the cute little chipboard embellies, stressing, because I don't HAVE pics for all these cute things, I realized it... Just have J journal his OWN stuff! What a concept! a book without pictures?? I am a genius! (ok, maybe I just finally let some of those other blogs soak into my rather thick skull...) I'm still working on getting him to finish up the journaling, but here's what I have for now.

For anyone not familiar with Punky Sprouts albums, the are multi-media. The pages included in this Trunk Punky album are chipboard, currogated cardboard, canvas and acrylic. There is just so much you can do with them! I am learning so much about misting and painting, and loving every bit of it!

Now, I do have every intention of blogging more often this summer, but I need to find a good iPhone app that works with Blogger and lets me upload my pics too. If you happen to know of something, leave the info here for me please!

I hope you're all enjoying your summer (or winter for my southern hemi friends!)
Much love~ <3