Mom, Mom, MOM! COME SEEEEE ME!!

 

There is no happier sound to a mom than a child crying out “Mom come see me! Watch what I can do!” And that is just the sound that I heard through the kitchen window last April. I looked up from washing dishes and saw Anthony riding his bike in the back lot with no training wheels and daddy trying to keep up with him The sight melted my heart completely! So by the time I got myself pulled back together, hands dried and camera located, they had moved to the front yard. Anthony was unstoppable…although he had a minor “oops” while trying to turn to sharply so he went into the garage and found his helmet and his soccer socks Too stinking cute!!

This LO is based on another fabulous sketch by Heather Landry and is also Challenge #4 for the Scraptastic Club.

Enjoy all of life’s moments.

Stacey

Getting Crafty…and a few challenges!

Hello my scrappy friends! The month of October is always a busy month for us. Lots of school activities, parties, birthdays, family reunions…oy! So when October rolls around and I actually am able to find time to craft (other than scrapbook pages) I get really excited!

I was inspired by a picture that I saw in a magazine (maybe Cricut???) and decided to pull out an oldie but goodie cartridge and make a Halloween house! I used the Winter Woodland cart and the 3D house turned out super cute The boys LOVE it and now each of them wants one of their own!!!

Here is the final project. Seriously love how it turned out!

 

So I have also found the time to “pre-make” a couple scrapbook pages and they just happen to also go with the October challenges at Scraptastic Club 

The first challenge is to use a die-cut word or shape with 3 or more strips of  pattern paper. I had fun with this one. I used my Gypsy to weld together a circle shape to make the background for my page. The LO is based on a sketch by PageMaps.

 

The picture is purposefully missing from this page as it is a picture of my oldest son and his best friend (and does not want his picture on the web!)…in the back of our van after school, chirping like birds trying to catch up on their day at school…in separate classrooms!

 

This is a close-up of the welded background the I made using my gypsy:

I really like how it turned out. And I love being able to make these types of backgrounds with the gypsy!!

 

The second challenge is to use 3+ pictures and /or a 2 page LO. This of course was right up my alley!!! This is the type of LO’s I do the most of The more pictures you can fit on a LO the better!

Here are a couple close-ups:

I LOVE this kit!!! SO the kraft spaces will be where the pictures go….as soon as we have Halloween!!!

Challenge #3 was Tags, Banners and Journaling cards. This was a challenge for me and I took this page apart numerous times before I finally said enough! And now that I have walked away from it for a couple of days, I actually do like how it turned out Funny how that happens!

 

I am hoping that this year I remember to take the family Thanksgiving picture BEFORE we eat lunch! HAHA. Every year you can tell by the picture what we had for lunch…because it is all over our boys’ shirts! And family is falling asleep by then as well. Ahhh the memories!

 

 

Thanks for stopping by! And remember to slow down and enjoy all life’s moments.

Stacey

In a Thankful Mood…

The previous week and this weekend have been so wonderful…. although I did not think so while the week was passing by! Like yesterday (Friday), my DH had to leave early for a business trip and so it was just me getting the boys ready for school, which usually is not a big challenge at all. For the most part the boys know what they need to do and with a little prompting they get everything done with plenty of time to spare before we have to leave for school. WELL let me tell ya that yesterday was NOT a day that a LITTLE prompting would do. OH NO. It took momma almost reaching the breaking point for them to even get dressed, let a lone brush teeth, do their ONE CHORE EACH, or even eat breakfast. SO as I am standing at the kitchen sink filling their juice cups and counting/lecturing myself to calm down for the umpteenth time and trying not to freak out at how late we are running, I look out the window and see THE MOST AMAZING sunrise. God’s way of telling me to slow down, enjoy the moments, see the beauty, cherish your children. So I have been trying to really SLOW DOWN and to CHERISH all the wonderful (and not so wonderful) moments with our precious gifts.

So this evening as I am puttering around in my craft room I begin to get ideas for cards, LO’s and wall hangings that are inspired by the sunset that I saw yesterday morning. And the Just Noted kit from Scraptastic is absolutely perfect! It has so many of the same colors as the sunrise AND it is just perfect for the pages that I am seeing in my ever spinning mind

One of the pages that I created tonight is based on this sketch by Heather Landry that is also the 4th September Challenge for the Scraptastic Club.

The colors of the paper and the sketch really clicked for me. I am going to use this LO along with several others that I have already created to document my mom and our family’s  journey through breast cancer. She is an amazing woman who inspires all of us to achieve our dreams, especially when that dream is as simple as wanting to just be able to find the energy to hang out one load of laundry. Mom is a force that cannot be stopped!

 

I also made this card for the 1st Scraptastic September challenge. I used a PageMaps CardMaps sketch and the new Bo Bunny paper. I so LOVE this paper…and I am very much ready for the fall colors to start showing in nature!

 

 

 

 

I hope each and everyone of you can stop and see the beauty and enjoy all the moments. Life is precious and passes to quickly.

Stacey

CROPPED Challenge #5

I can’t believe that the CROPPED Event is coming to a close! It has been such a fun weekend Although I am starting to really miss my little guys and big guy… which is only intensified by the sounds of them goofing off upstairs and/or outside. So I do have to admit that while I have stayed logged into the Ustream the whole time Megan has been On Air, I have not actually been sitting here in front of my laptop…or even in the basement for that matter. I just am not able to stay sitting that long! I blame my mother for that as she is not one to let the moss gather under her feet and has passed that on to me

So this last challenge was to use ONLY PAPER and ADHESIVE. I cannot tell you how super excited I was when it was announced! That is totally how I scrap!!! WHOOHOOO! Until I realized that that is how I USED to scrap. You know, before I started getting all these super fantastically awesome kits that have all these super fantastic embellishments that, looking back at my most recent LO’s, I apparently can’t scrap without! Hmmm…is it panic time? Can I go back to scrapping the “old way”? Yes, yes I can! And this is what I came up with:

I used the Simple Stories 100 days of Summer kit. I absolutely adore Simple Stories.  They truly make preserving memories simple!

I did some fussy cutting with my exacto knife to make the paper act as embellishment and to give the LO some POW/POP factor.

                    

I really like how the cut-outs pull your eyes to the photos.

 

 

The pictures that I used are from throughout our summer of fun and adventure. And since there can be no journaling (because you cannot use anything except paper and adhesive) I will add the journaling later After all the whole reason for scrapbooking (to me) is to preserve not only the memories caught on photos but also the story that is behind all those photos!

Enjoy!

Stacey

CROPPED Event Challenge #4

The challenge is “use at least 7 circle and the color teal”.

I had the perfect piece of background paper for this from a Sraptastic kit along with all the embellies and washi tape. I used stamps from My Creative Time and inks from Megan Elizabeth.

This LO is all about my beautiful mom. She is fighting breast cancer and it has been a HUGE learning experience for all of us. We are not dwelling on the **scary** we are celebrating the miracles. And there have been many!

 

So these pictures are of my mom, dad, and baby brother and sis-in-law. The pictures tell the story but I do plan to add more journaling…after this post! I will share the pictures but the story is ours. Hope you understand

 

 

The super uber cute hat that mom is wearing was given to her by my Grandmother and I LOVE it! I would totally wear it…in fact I am trying to find my own just so I can

This experience has taught all of us to slow down, look around, and really see all the wonder that this world has to offer, and enjoy all the moments!

Stacey

Cropped Event 3rd challenge

this is the subway art that I came up with!

This was a fun challenge to do and I got it done in just ONE HOUR!!! Megan announced the challenge….and then it was supper time and anyone with boys knows that YOU DO NOT MAKE BOYS WAIT FOR FOOD!!! Soooo Daddy to the rescue with Gambino’s pizza! I love that man!

So IF you saw this post before I edited it, you know that it was just a title, pic and the short blurb under the pic. Let me tell ya, uploading this pic was NOT easy! I got the challenge done in plenty of time, so I ran upstairs to refill my cup of coffee, came back down to take the pic with my phone and get it uploaded. BUT my phone was D.E.A.D. I ran back upstairs to get the charger…and I knew right where it was (yeah me!), came back down plugged the phone in, waited…waited…waited some more for it to FINALLY boot up (dang android) then took the pic. Uploaded it to facebook (because I thought that would be easier than posting a blog), copied the URL and added it to the linky. Wheew done with 10 minutes to spare….ummm where did the ustream go? ummm why is this pic to actually loading….UMMM, OH CRUD, it kicked me out and now I can’t find my password to get back in. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? Tore the craft room apart trying to find that dang password on a really HUGE sheet of paper, looked at the clock, 1 minute before dead line. Forget the password, gotta get this pic uploaded NOW and I don’t need to password so Title, pic, short blurb…copy URL, paste, type in name, and send. ***big sigh*** made it. And there, sticking out of the notebook that sits right beside my laptop is that dang sheet of paper with my password on it. REALLY??!!?

Okay so even with all the “drama” (all on my end) tonight was fun. Participating in a Cyper-Crop is way better for me. No one will comment on how much coffee I drink (well, okay maybe my DH as I trudge up the stairs to make a 3rd pot of coffee), I have ALL of my tools with me, I can have crazy hair and no make-up on, and best of all no one can SEE how crazy I really get when crafting…and I loose a password…and have too much caffeine in my blood stream…or too little blood in my caffeine stream Ah Well. Tonight was fun. And I will be joining CROPPED 2012 again tomorrow…with a little less caffeine (and drama??).

Stacey

Take me out to the Ballgame….

Yep. We took the boys to their first “real” baseball game! Aunt Tamara and Uncle Joe joined us, as did my Auntie Jean and Uncle Doug! It was fantastic And we were SO close to the field that everyone could really see what was going on! Ok, so the heat was a bit of a downer…103 with no breeze at all, but we were in the shade…and the boys got a teeny bit overheated before the first inning was even over, which they actually figured out how to use to their advantage by asking for more juice every 20 minutes which meant a trip back up the stairs to walk around all the vendors so they could pick out a different juice to try. YEP, they got spoiled! Jon also to JT to the “Meat Locker” (which is the gift shop) to pick out a hat. HOWEVER, once inside JT took his sweet little time looking at everything! And even picked out a hat to buy for Brady! Guess he really liked being in the A/C  

Brady, JT, Tamara and I left during the 5th inning as the little boys had had enough and were actually asking to “go home to take a bath and go to bed”. It was so cute. Everyone else stayed for the rest of the game and the KC T-Bones won the game 8-3.

The only picture that I took with a family member in it was of Brady styling his new hat! Not sure how I “forgot” to take a group pic of us all there….think I can blame it on the heat??!!

Here is the LO that I created to document our Baseball outing. It is loosely based on a Pagemaps sketch.The paper that I used is from the Scraptastic Summer Picnic Kit. If you have not checked out Scraptastic & the fantastic kits Jessica puts together, you really should. Go. Now!

I always keep the tags and receipts from all of our trips/outings just in case! And they really came in handy with this LO. I had some blank spaces that I just was not liking so I picked through what I had saved and used them on the LO. I really like how it adds to the page.

    Again there was a “white” space that was just not doing it for me so I smushed up 2 bottle caps with my Cuttlebug, circle punched some of the printed paper from the kit that says “happy” and “memory”, then fussy cut out leaves and made the caps look like flowers. I covered the bottle caps and paper with Ranger Glossy Accents to give them a finished look. I also used a black gel pen around the outside edges of some of the banners on the paper to make them pop. I really LOVE the way this turned out!!

Enjoy!

Stacey

a “GREAT” day

Do any of you have a photo or a memory of a photo that was taken that really stands out in your mind or has a special place of honor in your home? I have several but the ones that really stand out in my mind (as I have yet to “steal” a pic from my mom) are the pictures taken on my Grandparents couch. All of us cousins would pile onto the couch… which I remember as being a fun wrestling match for the best position and couldn’t have taken more than a couple minutes, at least a couple of “kid” minutes … and our Grandparents would find a place to sit after we kids were settled and the parents would snap a pic or two or three hoping that one of them shows all 9 of us smiling and looking at the camera.  These memories and pictures are very dear to me as we did not get to see/visit our Eastern Kansas family very often. It was a 6+ hour drive that would usually start after my Dad got done working on a Friday night (8pm or later) and end in the wee morning hours of Saturday, with 4 very grouchy kids and 2 not so un-grumpy parents. We would re-wakeup on Saturday morning, play with our cousins as everyone in the county (or so it seemed to me) would show up to see my Dad and his family from “way out west”. There would be lots of laughing, eating, drinking, a couple scuffles…not all of them between us kids… and of course picture taking. We would load back up in the truck for the torturous (to us kids’ way of thinking) 6+ hour ride back home after Sunday Lunch.

Now that I am a parent of 3 little darlings I know all the “fun” of making one of those trips... and why a normal 3 hour drive turns into a 3+ hour drive. Seriously?! How can kiddos need to stop and use EVERY REST AREA on the interstate when we have not given them anything to drink?!  So while the speed limit has changed from 55 on all roads to 70 and my family lives closer to our “Eastern Kansas” Family, we still don’t make it back to visit as often as I would like. But when we do, there is always a welcome “committee” to great us, laughing, eating and picture taking. Grandmother is now in a cute little apartment with a different couch, and my GrandDaddyBob has passed away but still I am able to get THAT picture of my kids with their Great-Grandmother. And it is still the same process of the kids wrestling for the best position (which by the way takes way longer than a minute in “adult” time!) and Grandmother sitting after they are settled and me snapping away hoping that at least one of the pictures will show all 3 boys smiling and looking at the camera.

I took one of those photos and featured it in a scrapbook layout. The paper from Scraptastic Nostalgic Summer kit was perfect for this picture! The pattern paper that I used reminds me of the many quilts that Grandmother has created over the years. And while the picture is not the most “perfect”, it perfectly displays the personalities of our boys! I am using this LO for the first July Challenge at Scraptastic.

The challenge is: #1 you can only use 1 sheet of patterned paper!
#2 you have to use word stickers for your journaling!
(no hand written paragraphs here!)

 

I did cheat just a bit on the journaling              I made a pocket with the center square of pattern paper and tucked a tag behind it that has this story written on it. It was just too precious of a story not to put with the picture! BUT you cannot see any hand written paragraphs so hopefully it will count !

 

I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse into my family!

Enjoy the moments!

Stacey

Scraptastic June Challenges

Here are my entries for the June challenges for Scraptastic Club.

Challenge #1 was to use a cluster of 6 or more embellishments.  I have photos of my late Grandma and I together that I am going to put on here. Along with the story of our closeness!

 

Challenge #2 was a sketch challenge by the very talented Heather. Here is her sketch:

And this is my creation:

I have pictures of my youngest niece posing…actually she was trying to ignore me …that I am going to use on this LO. All the bling and color is SO her!!

 

Challenge #3 was to scrap about something that I like. I don’t usually scrap about myself so this was a challenge. I am okay with how it turned out…I think

 

Challenge #4 was to get messy using paints, sprays, mists… anything messy!! I am still having fun with this one! It is not a LO, but the first couple of pages of an album that I am making for our oldest son to keep all his treasures and memories in when we go to Portland in August (just he and I) for my cousin’s wedding! It will be his first time flying! This album is made out of “6 pack” sized paper bags! LOVE IT!!!!

This is the front cover                                                                                                 

and when you open it there is a “pocket” for tickets, notes, whatever!

Here is what a few of the other pages look like:

 

This album has been fun to make…and my hands have been very messy and stained after working on it! I think that is another reason I am loving it so much…I get to be as “messy as a kid” working on it!

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you all have a fun and very safe Fourth of July!

Stacey