Snapchats ;)

Good Morning! Well, I always seem to say 'Good Morning' because that's when I post! I probably should say 'Good Day' because we all BlogHop during the time we can...enough of my carrying on already...no matter what time of day it is there for you I'm still so glad you dropped by for today's Scrapbook Challenges Sketch #345 !!!

It's been several weeks now that my DD, Marissa, has returned from her adventures in Thailand! She experienced some amazing things, some of which were captured in photos...but I had just the snapshots she sent me through Snapchat as my main source of communication for the two weeks she was away!

It was a bit scary for me to send her off on this trip as it was the first trip she's taken without her parents...travelling to Thailand meant many hours of little to no communication home, which was stressful for me!

Now I'm not sure if you are familiar with 'Snapchat' but it's an APP the kids use on their iPhones and Androids to send photos like they do text messages...they can add a little bit of journaling or do some drawing on their photos and then send them off like a text message...needless to say, I certainly did look forward to getting Snapchats as they were easier for Marissa to send to me than it was for her to phone me...for some reason her text feature wasn't working there and she isn't a regular Facebook user anymore.

Even though the picture quality isn't great, I LOVE these photos, they illustrate Marissa's silly personality very well and this sketch was perfect for these 3x4 photos...I even used my Basic Grey Marrakech papers! I've been holding onto those for years now ;)

This layout came together super fast, especially seeing as I used the sticker sheet and only a couple of pieces of patterned papers!

Make sure you pop over to the Scrapbook Challenges Blog to see some more inspiration from our Design Team with this week's sketch...thanks for stoppin' by!

Where have I been!!!?????

Hello my Lovlies! I am so sorry for being SO absent this past month :( If you read my previous post you would have seen that we have been dealing with a tragic death, well primarily my daughter and I...but because of this...my Mojo took a leave of absence too! I don't know about you but when I'm struggling with issues, I just don't seem to function at 100% so my Blog definitely took the brunt of it!

However, I do have loads of happenings and news to share from the past month... you might want to grab a coffee... just sayin'....

First off, I've decided to take a break on the Design Team over at Let's Scrap...I still love their sketches and challenges AND LOVE all the sweet ladies there, but after three terms in a row, I need a breather! So hopefully I will still get to posting some of their sketches and my takes on them here, just not weekly anymore!

Secondly, I had a wonderful FOUR days away at the Ultimate Scrapbook Retreat at Loon Lake...this is my all time favourite place to scrapbook and socialize with all my crafty peeps and this April's retreat was no exception!

Have I mentioned the food is devine !???

Here's the view from my room !!!

The third big event, I flew up to Prince George the day after I returned from the retreat to help pack up my DD, Olivia, from University...luckily she had most of it done already, but we loaded the U-Haul trailer and drove straight home!!! I was considering picking a spot to sleep along the way but we weren't tired and we were excited to sleep in our own beds :)

GoodBye UNBC...Olivia is going to miss you !!!

Now throw in there, unpacking ALL of Olivia's things from Uni, trying to find a place for it all and settling her into her room once again! If that wasn't enough...I finished off the remaining bit of yard work and went out to purchase annuals for the gardens, pots and hanging baskets...all that is planted so now I can head off for a couple days in Burnaby...

Why? you ask...well the wonderful ladies at Scrapbook and Cards Today magazine were hosting a fabulous event, Crop and Create, where peeps like you and me can scrapbook at the open crop AND take some AWESOME classes with some super talented chickies...just to drop a couple names...Vicki Boutin, Kelly Goree, Margie Aslett and Summer Fullerton...just sayin'

These chicks ROCK !
It was so much fun getting to know them this weekend !!!

Here's me being silly with the polaroid frame at the photo booth !!!

Oh and lastly, my DD Marissa has left her mark on my Tahoe...

NICE ! HUH ???!!!!! yes, that's the rear left side of my bumper !

Now that pretty much brings us up to date! I do have some layouts to share with all of you from the past month as I did get some done...the latest sketch from Scrapbook Challenges will be posted Monday morning...it's an easy peasy one you'll love to play with so come on back Monday...or you could subscribe to my Blog by email and have my post delivered directly to your Inbox...or you can join Bloglovin' to have all of your favourite blog posts come to your Inbox in one daily email (depending on how regularly your favourite Blogs' post) 

Thanks for taking the time to visit me today, I love having you!

April News and April Showers...

Hello and Happy April Showers...not sure where you are but in my neck of the woods we've been blessed with glorious warm sunshine, spring flowers blooming and of course April rain showers...while you have to be someone who loves or at least tolerates some rain to live on the WestCoast in British Columbia...I do love it! Strange I'm sure you're thinking but with rain comes the smell of wet pavement, green grass, brightened yard colours and packed down mulch! Yup! I've been busy cleaning my yard of leaves and trimming/edging the grass along the flower beds, lightly pruning old growth off my shrubs...AND spreading half a dump truck load of Organic Bark Mulch!!! Fun stuff...sore back, but the yard is starting to look great :)

Last week was also a terribly sad week. One of my daughter Marissa's close friends decided to end her own life...just tragic. My heart has been heavy for many days and Marissa was away on her school trip to Thailand when she found out, so I was also sad to not be able to be there with her when she found out...dealing with death is very hard...dealing with the death of a young person is very hard...dealing with teen suicide is terrible...as a parent, trying to talk to your own children about this is difficult and it's also hard not to be angry. I've been feeling it all over the past couple of weeks but last weekend was the memorial service for Marissa's friend and to say that was tough would be an understatement. I was very proud of Marissa though as she was able to go infront of everyone and read a speech she wrote about her friend.  I am glad she was able to share her special moments, I'm sure it is a way of coping and dealing with the loss of a precious friend.

Marissa giving her friend a ride! One of her favourite photos even though its blurry and taken with her phone.

Now...lets move on as we all need to...right?!

With the current April showers here I have been kicked out of the backyard and I'm into the house! Which for those of you that know me means Scrapbooking!!!

I've created a 'numbers' challenge over at Scrapbook Challenges for this month. April is all about 'everyday moments' at SBC and with the coming of the fourth month I thought I'd challenge all of you to work with the number FOUR :) Head on over to my Blog post there to see what's involved and hopefully you'll have a moment to play along with any one of the great challenges we'll be featuring this month!

This is my challenge layout featuring FOUR photos, FOUR patterned papers, at least FOUR embellies and a couple sheets of cardstock, easy peasy right?!! Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

a Royal Hawaiian Luau...

I took several photos of the Luau we went to at our hotel, The Royal Hawaiian, on Christmas Eve...it was a served meal, so different from other types of Luau...but the meal was delicious even still!

I really like this sketch for this event, I could have increased the number of photos, but in the evening, it was difficult to get great shots of the event so I decided to touch on the highlights of the evening instead!

Close To My Heart came out with a stamp set many many moons ago called 'Extreme Happiness'. It went with a paper pack called Moon Doggie...which was very tropical...now the paper is no longer available and the stamp set is not either unfortunately...but how smart am I to recognize that this stamp set is a keeper! I've used it many times over with different paper lines...and I love it here as well!!!

The musical notes paper is from Bazzill Basics and the other patterned papers are from Echo Park's collection called Paradise Beach.

All of the wooden bits are from Close To My Heart's new 'Trinkets Wooden Shapes'...there are 57 mini stampable, laser-cut wooden bits and I am loving using them! I'm actually going to need to re-order them as I am using them right up and I'm not ready for them to be all gone yet! :)

Here's the Lets Scrap sketch for this week: 

 

Thanks so much for stopping in today, if you have any questions about some of the products I've used, feel free to message me! Have a Fantastic Day!

Happy Monday and Happy Birthday to ME!!!

Yes, every year I get another year older and I get another notch on my belt, so to speak, no avoiding it so I might as well enjoy it!!!

I was able to get some scrapbooking done this past weekend and I also worked on my Project Life pages...fun to play with paper and glue for a while and get some scrappy Design Team business done too!

Today being Monday means another great sketch from Scrapbook Challenges!

This was from our trip to DisneyWorld in March 2010...the kids wanted solo pictures with each of the characters so I'll end up adding this photo to Olivia's personal album instead of the Disney Holiday album.

I've added some fantastic wide Burlab Ribbon from Close To My Heart, great embellishment and texture for your projects...I also decided to fussy cut some Hot Air balloons out of the patterned paper for some fun and dimension :)

I dug into some of my stash of punched flowers and bits and pieces to create this cluster of embellies, even found a CTMH journalling pocket for some hidden journalling :)

Here's the sketch! Enjoy!

Scrap Your Story sketch

Hello! Happy to have you here :)

Just wanted to share this fun new challenge site and sketch with you this afternoon...ScrapYour Story is a new place to find challenges and last week they had a sketch for us to play with!!! While I was a dollar short and a penny late for entering this challenge I still created a layout with the sketch and wanted to share it with all of you!

 Fun photos of my son tubing on Osoyoos Lake in BC a couple summer vacations ago! Using up some of my Bo Bunny papers and embellies to whip up this layout!!!

Once again, showing the convenience of purchasing those matching sticker sheets that have embellishments and letters on them! Make the title work fast and it all looks great together :)

The chipboard bits are from my leftover Footloose pack from Close To My Heart...colours worked well together and I'm a few embellishments less in my thousand plus STASH!!!

Why don't you grab a couple photos and some papers and do a quick page? This one will be done up in no time and you are guaranteed to feel great after completing it! 

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Hello Lovlies!

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Project Life integrated...

Hello! SO glad you've stopped in!!!

I have been sorting through my photos and I'm getting them into albums! I've decided that of all the plastic containers I have of certain events full of photos, I know that I have already scrapbooked my favourites. 

How do I know this? 

Well if I've printed these events out months and months ago, and I've already scrapbooked some of the photos from the event...then it stands to reason that while I might like the extra photos (because I chose them to print in the first place) I am done scrapbooking it in my mind already! So that being said...I've pulled out my Becky Higgins photo sleeves, trimmed my remaining photos and added bits of left over papers and stickers and now I have the whole event in an album! Yeah for me!!!

Want to see? ok...

Let me show you how these pages are going to sit in my 'Everyday Life' album for 2012...starting with page one of our trip to the Zoo. I took my nieces and my son and daughter and it was so much fun that I took waaaaay too many photos ;)

page 1&2 

page 3&4

page 5&6

page 7&8

and here's a few close ups:

Now after all that I still had a couple photos I wanted to created a page from! Imagine that! and I still had some scraps of paper from this great Echo Park 'Fall Fever' line to create this:

This layout will go into my 'All About Marissa' album...seeing as it's all about my daughter's relationship with her cousin, I thought it would be nice to add to her personal album.

It just so happens that this layout was created from today's sketch release from Scrapbook Challenges as well :) So after this really long post you are rewarded with a new sketch to play with!!! 

Pinterest Challenge

Good Morning! Are you up for a fun challenge???

It's my turn over at Scrapbook Challenges to host this month's Pinterest Challenge. 

In March we are focussing 'All About Me'...not me specifically, but me meaning each of us!

{Photo Credit}

Your job is to take any inspiration from this photo and create a layout with it! You can see that I was focussing on all the wood and used a barn board pattern for my base.

Of course the first thing that drew me to this photo was those gorgeous paper lanterns!

So I wanted to mimic the circles and add some depth by layering  the different sizes on top of each other.

I've used an older sketch from SBC and there was a hot air balloon in it...so that gave me the idea to dig out my Studio Calico stamp from way back when and voila!

This is a photo from many years ago. My family was on vacation and we stopped at Lake Louise...not sure any details other than that! So it goes to show that we need to document each of our stories...only you can tell your story best...I hope you create a layout this month just about YOU...something your kids can cherish in years to come :)

Thanks for stopping by and of course as usual, I'd love it if you played along with us over at Scrapbook Challenges!

the Mad Hatters...

This was so much fun! I go several times a year with my girls to different hat stores...this trip was when we were away in Hawaii this past Christmas with my husband's family...my adorable nieces are so photogenic anyway, but little Sadie was really enjoying this store AND Auntie Kristine taking so many photos of her too! It was nice to see my son Matthew getting into it too, seeing as he's usually not interested in joining me and the girls for our shopping trips throughout the year!

This week's sketch from Let's Scrap was a great fit for all these photos...and all the embellishments from my package of Pink Paislee 'Portfolio' collection worked great to jazz this page up!

I love to use my Sizzix to cut felt! and these bits are a perfect addition to add some more texture to this layout!

I added some more of those Close To My Heart wooden shapes from the 'garden collection' because I like these kinds of flowers...not the other kinds ;) and if you noticed, I had to 'make' a second letter 't' from a 'L'...pretty sneaky of me huh?!!!

Here's the sketch:

You might have also have noticed that I made this sketch work for me...make sure you use your sketches as starting off points and don't worry about every little detail...these sketches are here to help you get creative, not for you to worry about following perfectly! that is if you don't want too!!!

Thanks so much for stopping in today, I hope you have a crafty day!