Sweet Taste of Serendipity Pages

I had a load of fun cropping away the weekend for the Sweet Taste of Serendipity Crop! The theme for the crop was food related and the challenges took a lot of forms including a challenge to be inspired by The Ace of Cakes, some recipe challenges, a "Semihomemade" challenge and more... I finished 27 projects over the course of the weekend which was a huge turnout and I had a lot of fun with it.

Here's a few pages from the crop to share :)

There's my youngest, much younger still! He's always been a sucker for a big balloon!

These are from last summer... he was really scared of that turkey! This pic of him sitting close to it is about as close as he got to it and it didn't last long! That little paper pieced chicken was from Susan, and all those buttons were part of the challenge! It called for 2 TBSP of buttons!

Here's my middle son, also last summer, He worked hard all afternoon doing the challenges in the Junior Ranger guidebook -- reading all the signs along the trail for clues to the Ranger book challenge. I've been to the Florissant Fossil beds many times before but this was a particularly good day!

When I found these photos, I thought 'where's [youngest]?' then I realized these pics were taken before he was born!! Just a couple of weeks before he was born. It seems so long ago and the big boys are so little in these pics. I had a lot of fun with this page and was really happy with the outcome.

Checking In...

I've been missing in action for a bit... my laptop has been toying with me. I think it is angry.

Additionally, it's been Spring Break and birthday parties and ... life. And the blog has been low priority.

So here's a peek at some of what we've been up to :)

Pumpkin Bread.

Birthdays.

Easter goodies -- thank you, Nana!

A view from our crazy adventure.

Playing at the park -- check those shorts!

A week later we went through the craziest snow storm I've ever seen in Colorado!

This weekend I participated in a fabulous online crop at Serendipity and I'll be posting some pages for my scrappy pals soon.... I did 27 projects in the course of the weekend - insanity!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

It's a day for green shirts, green beads, green hair and my oldest declining to model his funny leprechaun shirt (maybe I can snag a pic later!)

Oh well my youngest will ham it up at any opportunity :)

I was horrified this morning to discover that our grocery store had no green-sprinkled donuts. What is UP with that??? Yes, I could have run to the nearest donut shop and probably had my last-minute, 6 AM desire to arrive home with something festive appeased... but really, I am not that motivated! I just wanted to get home and have coffee!

The kids really don't care what kind of donuts they get if they're getting donuts, so I needn't have worried.

Checkin' In!

We had a really quiet weekend -- the high point was attending a 4 year old's birthday party. Yup, quiet.


I'm in the process of prepping for middle son's upcoming 9th birthday party. Favors, decorations and cake planning are in the works.


I snuck in a little scrapping today while DS3 watched Up!

Had some fun with a sketch from Susan including hand stitching:
And some fun pics from when we went to see a Christmas Carol in 3D. I am a sucker for pics of my kids in 3D glasses. I take a lot of those.

Product: Paper and alphas: American Crafts, Felt: Queen and Co, Buttons: misc. sewing notions

I got an adorable stack of ATD Superhero papers. I LOVE Them... I bought them primarily so I could use a specific metallic paper on a soon-to-be-seen Incredibles on Ice page.

And then I found this sparkly orange bit and decided to fussy cut it, knew exactly what pic I wanted to use... and then brought a bunch of misc. paper and ribbons together for the strip element. It was fun!

Now this is by far my favorite page today! I LOVE IT!

I busted into my totally beautiful, amazing, awesome Serendipity Scrapbooks March 2010 I Deserve It All kit... and wow does it rock!!! There's some amazing new exclusive-Serendipity-papers in there!

I had some fun pics of a trip to Heritage Square with my folks and my little brother and his finacee. I loved HS as a kid! Always one of my favorite places with amazing themeing... it used to be filled with fun, kitschy, little shoppes and have horseback riding.. Some of the other attractions came later. Over the years there are less of the cute little shops but the rides are still there and we still had a fun time.

Products: Papers/Large brown alphas, felt flowers: Basic Grey Origins, Additional Paper: Serendipity Scrapbooks, Additional Alphas K&Co BSA line....

That fussy cut flower? Yup the back of some packaging...

Project 12 - February

I did it! Now, I'm 'caught up' on Project 12 :)

Here's the sketch:

Isn't it beautiful?


And here's my Layout! I love the miscellaneous nature of these LOs with a little of this and a little of that! I really like this 'overview of the month' approach! FUN!

Products: Cardstock: DCWV; Patterns: Pink Paislee, My Minds Eye: Wild Asparagus/29^th St. Market; Trim – Recollections and Key Lime Pie; Pearl flowers: Jenni Bowlin, Rhinestones: Kaiser

Catching Up...

So, this year, at the suggestion of my pal Sus, I decided to participate in Project 12.




I have to admit -- I am intimidated by Project 365 -- taking a photo every day. Yes, I take a zillion photos, certainly more than 365 a year... but EVERY DAY... a little overwhleming. And even more overwhelming if I consider trying to scrap them!

There are other great projects with once a week commitments... still feeling a little overwhelming.

When I first read about Project 12, I knew it was the right project for me to try!
The Project 12 challenge is simple. The idea is to create a layout on a monthly basis which recaps what you’ve been doing. Whether you took 31 photos, no photos, or 100 photos, simply choose your favorites that best described what you were doing that month, and create a layout.

Plus... A monthly sketch from Becky Fleck? What's not to love about that??

So, I immediately decided to do this... then didn't do anything in January.

But I've decided to catch up. So, here's January!

Here's Becky's gorgeous sketch:
And here's my take on it:
I had a lot of fun with this!!
Products: Paper: DCWV and Basic Grey, Stamps: Close to My Heart, Embellishments K& Company -- ribbons? Not sure

Feb's pictures are printed, and cropped and ready to be put on a layout, hope to get it done tonight or tomorrow! Then I'll be caught up -- until, you know, March is over and I've procrastinated again!

What I've been up to...

Went to a couple of birthday parties, a scout event, etc... this weekend.

And I got some scrapping in, too!

I LOVE this page! I love these pics! I love my kids battling robots in the kitchen - Robo-Raptor vs. R/C Dragon! Love it!
Product: Paper Cogsmo by Cosmo Cricket, Alphas - AC Thickers not sure on the rest
I got this stack of totally cute Reminisce paper from Michael's the other day and just fell in love with it! HOW CUTE ARE THOSE MONKEYS!!! I knew the paper would be perfect for my little monkeys!
This 4th of July page came out really great! Love the paper, love the design -- so happy with it!

And this one is pics taken on a camping trip - we got to see the lake getting hand-stocked! So fun! The big paper-pieced silly fish was lots of fun!


And this last one is my oldest's percussion band. I just needed to get Animal on at least ONE percussion page!!!

I WON!!!

I participated in a totally fun Big Giant Blog Crawl over the weekend visiting the design teams and blogs of :
Bella Blvd
Nikki Sivils
and
Jillibean Soup


And I WON SOMETHING!!!!

I won some really beautiful cards from Ingrid Danvers!

So a huge thanks to Tanisha who invited me to crawl in the first place, all the amazing designers who were participating and sharing so much inspiration, and especially to Ingrid who is going to send me HAPPY MAIL!

Friday Five & House of Serendipity Challenge #3

Friday Five:

1) My kids love birthday parties. I don't despise birthday parties. Why do I so dread them?

2) I need to figure out a recipe binder for the Serendipity Recipe Swap / Test Kitchen Challenges!!! I haven't really done anything on that yet... OOPS

3) My almost-five year old just did 3 jigsaw puzzles, 25 pieces each, in under 30 minutes. Pretty cool, eh? He MUST be some sort of super-genius or something (~~snicker~~ I am totally kidding) He says he is the MASTER of Puzzles.

4) Dinner ideas are eluding me -- that's a bad place to be at 6:00 PM! DH and the older boys are out running an errand and there should probably be some sort of dinner before they get back, eh? Or maybe they can just pick something up and bring it back with them?

5) Need to send a birthday invitation for DS2's party to my nephew.... I already TOLD his mom all about it so he's coming and all... but still, for formality's sake, I should send one. Of course, the last party for her kids was evite only.... hmmmmmmmmmmmm


And on to the Challenge!
Our Week 3 challenge for the House of Serendipity was to use a special sketch designed for us by Liz Chidester -- I love Liz's sketches!!! Check her blog at the Scrappiest!

This was the sketch:


And here's my page :)

I love these pics from DS2's first day of third grade (excuse the crap pic of the page!) He was super excited (and very proud of his new 'SuperBall Shoes') The page came together pretty quickly and I'm making progress into the pile of way-too-much Scenic Route that I ordered in a panic when they announced they were closing!
Products: Paper and alphas: Scenic Route, Rub Ons: Basic Grey

I've gotten off to a good start this month :)

I tackled some scrapping the other day, which is good because I don't expect to get a lot more done this week!

I pulled out my DCWV Eco stack (man, I LOVE this stack) and Green stack and jumped right in on these!

Here's some pics of DH and my youngest at a local petting farm. My little guy was a little nervous about some of the animals. He is not a kid who chases puppies to pet them, he is a kid who cowers when he sees a small dog...so it was an interesting experience but he did warm up to them and have fun after a bit.

On the page -- used a really cute sketch from American Crafts for this one. The embellies on this were misc older items I had handy :)

Paper: DCWV Eco, Alpha: AC Thickers, Not sure on the embellies



For this one I fell back on one of my favorite techniques -- Fussy Cutting. I cut those big green swirlies and dragonflies out of a piece of patterned paper. I really like the final effect!

And of course, I love these pics of my middle son with his art work at the school district Art show!

Products: DCWV: Eco Stack



And this one was another lift of the Outgoing design team at Serendipity Scrapbooks -- this was inspired by the brilliant talents of Lisa Howard! I loved doing this border around the page!

The pics are my youngest picking berries last fall!

Products: DCWV: Eco Stack, Making Memories Alphas, CTMH Journal stamp
And this one was a lift of the talents of Brandi -- This one is a mix of the Eco and Green stacks.

That's my youngest, at the zoo, where a keeper asked him to help prep and deliver food for the tortoises!

My little baby boy!

Yesterday, I did the unthinkable... I registered my baby boy for Kindergarten! He's my littlest one, and he's still so little in so many ways :( I can hardly believe he's nearly five!






Just the other day I pulled out these old photos (From before he was a year old) of his sweet baby curls and decided to scrap them. I was going for a soft, baby look and pulled out these really old papers and classic pooh stickers... I've had those since he WAS a baby (but the ribbon/lace and alphas are newer :) and the sketch from the Scrappiest was new, too ) ....

I loved those little curls that were always present in some measure, but more curly when he was sweaty or his hair was damp. I loved them and was so sad when we finally cut his hair after his first birthday. He's very cute with a little boy haircut but it was sad, nonetheless. So I'm glad I kept the pics :)

Wrapping Up February

Here's a few more of my February pages... to wrap up the month

This one is a lift of the amazing talents of Kristin... she's been a fabulous inspiration as a member of the Serendipity Scrapbooks design team!
Product: Mostly Stampin' Up! with Basic Grey Rub Ons, and Making Memories Alphas


This is another lift, this one is inspired by Liz's beautiful work!
Product: Paper: DCWV Natural Stack and CTMH tags


And this one is just me having some fun with the new Boy Scout papers from K& Co!