A ScrapTiffany Challenge and More Layouts to Share

Happy March to you! In Arizona that means one thing…..Spring Training baseball.  Mike and I grew up Angels fans, and when we moved from California to Arizona one thing he didn’t like was that we couldn’t go to Angel’s games anymore.  But, we have the next best thing here, Spring Training.  Tempe Stadium is a great place to see a game, especially when you have little ones. The big grassy area is perfect for lounging and watching the games. 

And of course we are raising our boys right….Angels babies!

So what better way to meet today’s ScrapTiffany Sports Challenge than to celebrate our Angel’s and Spring Training Baseball…..

Head on over to ScrapTiffany and check out the other ladies take on the challenge. And if you take the challenge e-mail your work to Tiffany (tiffany(at)scrapbooktiffany(dot)com), we would love to see it.

I also have a few more layouts to share. I was looking through my layout pictures and I still have a lot more to share.  Here are a few….

New Shoes – using Studio Calico Candy Shoppe January 2011. Doing some shoe shopping.

Fall 2010 using October 2010 Back 40. Celebrating fall decorations around the house.

From a past Sunday Sketch at Studio Calico using Elementary. Nicholas Fall school picture.

And finally Happy Halloween using the Color Me Daisy October 2009 Halloween kit. My favorite Halloween picture from 2009.

Have a great week. It is quarter end for me at work and it will be a busy one for me.

Some Color Me Daisy Layouts

Here are the rest of the layouts from the Color Me Daisy Spring Fever kit. So far I have done 5 layouts, 3 cards and 3 altered projects from the kit and I still have a lot more to work with. I wasn't sure how much I could make the kit work since when I put the kit together I thought it might be a bit to girly for a mama of two boys. I found enough to use for the boy layouts but it also gave me a reason to scrap some pictures from my binders that I never got to before.

This one is probably tied for 1st in my favorite layouts from the kit. The colors make the lemons stand out and I just love the randomness of life in the story behind it.

When Life Gives You Lemons Make Lemonade...and Lemon Meringue Pie

The story was something I blogged about here. This LO was based on a sketch I had printed out a week or two ago, I believe from The Scrappiest. 

I just love this picture I took of Jackson recently. I wanted it to be the focus of my page. I like how the button tree adds a lot of color but I think the picture still takes center stage. And I cannot tell you how much I love the Pink Paislee Artisan Element Frames and Tapes. Both are used on this page, along with a feature of my misting and border punch obsession.

Our Lil J

Before the boys were born, the dogs were featured in a lot more layouts. Since they are girly girl dogs there was plenty to work with in this kit for a princess puppy page.  I love the Jillibean Alpha's, the white ones especially give you so many options in altering them.  And the fabric in this kit is probably my favorite "evah"! The fabric circle flower was part of a What to Do Fabric Idea Feature in the Color Me Daisy April Kit Idea Guide.

Marti

This layout was based on a sketch from Inspired Blueprints a sketch site I recently discovered with great sketches and a friendly community.  I have had these pictures in my binders for a few years now from a trip to Las Vegas in 2006, the colors in the kit were so perfect for the bright colorful flower gardens of the Bellagio Hotel. I made a fabric strip flower for this one, which was also included in our idea guide.

I still have tons of photos of the gardens from that trip, maybe I'll use up my kit scraps for a mini album.

Bellagio Las Vegas

Well that's it for tonight. I still have cards, altered projects and a from my scraps project to share over the next couple of days.

Hope you have a great Friday!

Weekend update and scrappy stuff...

How did it get to be Wednesday night already? I guess with the release of the now sold out Color Me Daisy April Spring Fever kit and putting the finishing touches on the Idea Guide for the kit together the past few nights, I've been a bit busy.  I know I haven't been sleeping much. 

We had a fun and busy Easter weekend. I spent almost all day Friday scrapping, it was delicious!  Then Saturday we were preparing eggs for dyeing, deviling eggs, whipping up strawberry vinaigrette for our Easter salad, baking hash brown casserole and decorating this scrumptious cake with a raspberry filling: 

I got the idea for the cake from some Easter basket cupcakes I had seen while surfing the internet a couple of weeks ago. But honestly I wasn't interested in decorating that many little cupcakes. So I made a 2 layer white cake and the most yummy raspberry filling ever. I colored the frosting and coconut green and decorated the cake top with a bunny, peeps, jelly beans and malted eggs.  But I still needed a basket. So I grabbed my favorite Martha Stewart Border Punch and the Fiskars Apron Lace Punch and whipped up this basket using the Spring Fever kit scraps. It took about 10 minutes and it was just plain fun!

Other highlights from the weekend...

Nicholas had a ball dyeing the Easter eggs. He did a great job and was only medium messy.

We left a note and some jelly beans for the Easter Bunny and he delivered well...

Nicholas really got the idea of baskets and goodies and egg hunting this year and loved his new sporty toys.

Jackson is still a bit overwhelmed by the holidays, but he did manage to eat some goldfish and M&M's from his basket before breakfast.

I have a lot of scrappy stuff to share with you, but since it is getting late I'll leave it to one for tonight.

This one has some of my favorite things from the April Color Me Daisy kit...fabric, Jillibean Soup Corrugated Alphas and Pink Paislee Artisan Frames. I misted the alphas and frame with Maya Mist and love the splattered look for my little artist.  I layered the fabric after fraying the edges over packaging from the Pink Paislee ribbon pleats in the kit. I used the Artisan tape to give an anchor to the title of my layout and I cut the Pink Paislee flip notes in half to border the tops of my photos.

I'll be back tomorrow night with some more scrappy stuff as well as some pictures from the Picture Spring class I am taking at Big Picture Scrapbooking.

I've been a bad girl.....but I am so happy about it...and a few Color Me Daisy peeks

Yesterday I left this message for Mike "oh good, you didn't answer so I don't have to tell you what I did at lunch".  He called back later and said "you bought a sewing machine, didn't you?".  Well I guess I wasn't getting away with anything, was I?

A couple of years ago I wanted to learn to sew just so I could stitch on my scrapbook pages, but I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a machine. So I got the bargain basement Singer from Target on a Black Friday sale.  It took me almost 2 years to actually learn to use it. I've sewed with it some, but it jams a lot and now that I have dabbled a bit in some fabric sewing I know it isn't going to cut it for long. I had known when I bought it that if I got the sewing bug I would go ahead and upgrade.

I have been including fabric in the Color Me Daisy kits for the past year and every time I go to pick out fabrics I am so intrigued (I think it's just like scrapbook papers in that respect). I look at it and touch it and see so many possibilities.

I also want to do a makeover on my kitchen and master bathroom, as well as finishing some window treatments around the house.  They are so expensive to have done I keep putting it off. So I thought maybe I could learn to sew them myself.

So after a lot of research I finally settled on a new machine:

Isn't she pretty? This machine does 173 stitches including some basic embroidery. But the coolest thing about it (for me) is the bobbin loading. I hated the one on my old machine, this one is so much simpler. I have a class next week on how to use it, but I plan to play with it this weekend. I even have an apron in mind to try to make.

Earlier this week I went to Michael's in search of some of the new EK Success Border Punches. They didn't have any yet, but I did find a star border punch in the American Girls section. I like flowers as much as the next girl, but with 2 boys a star border is a bit more useful. Of course I found what I was looking for at JoAnn's yesterday when I bought my machine, but I couldn't justify spending even more money after the sewing machine purchase.

I also picked up some yarn to try my hand at crocheting flowers. I haven't really crocheted in years, I started a blanket when Nicholas was born but never finished it, and fortunately I didn't have to because my "second" mom is a whiz at crocheting and she did a gorgeous one for him. But I still want to learn how to do flowers. So I brought a few fun colors on sale and have found some tutorials on a few blogs and plan to give that a whirl.

And last, but definitely not least, I have a few sneaks from one of my layouts I finished with the Color Me Daisy Spring Fever kit that will be released on April 5th.

I love the Jillibean Soup corrugated alpha's, they give you so many possibilities...

The kit has 5 fabric's included and the Idea Guide included with the kit will have no-sew fabric ideas.....

and Pink Paislee's new Artisan Elements are very fun to work with....

If you want to see additional sneak peeks for the Spring Fever kit visit the Color Me Daisy Blog or  Featured Designer, Becky Williams.

Monday Musings

Happy Spring! We are loving the spring weather here in Arizona. It won't be long before we are in the frying heat of summer. (I'll apologize now for the wonky text breaks, I have spent 15 minutes trying to fix them, and it isn't working out, so if it looks weird on your browser it just is what it is).

Today Mike and Nicholas went to a spring training game (Angels vs. Dodgers) and Jackson stayed home with Nana C. 


Nicholas had grown out of all his Angels shirts. Yesterday when we were cleaning out the boys closets to make room for their new summer clothes, Mike found the shirt Nicholas is wearing. It was a onesie type shirt (snaps between the legs).  Well at 3 that doesn't go over very good with the kiddo anymore. So I cut off the bottom and stitched a hem around it (not a great hem, but you can't really tell). And now Nicholas had an Angels shirt for the game today.


The shorts, well they were ones we thought he would grow out of when we cleaned out his closet last year. But as I was going through the hand me down bag for Jackson yesterday I came across these and Nicholas is so skinny he can still wear these 12 month shorts.


Mike and Nicholas had fun at the game but it was really hot. Nicholas was "all done baseball" in the 3rd inning, so they headed home. But they still had time for hot dogs and lemonade (and of course cheeze-its).

On Saturday we had a family day and did some shopping to stock up on warm weather clothes and stuff. We hit up Kohl's first and in addition to some tops and capri's I found these 2 fun spring purses. The patchwork one (1) is bright pink on the inside and the green one (2) is pink and green stripes (and is reversible). The 2 purses and the pink wallet were all 50-60% off. I also found a couple of necklace and earing sets. This one (3) is perfcet with one of the flower clips (4) I recently bought from my good friend Jen. She has recently started making and selling these cuties and other hair accessories and adorable tutu's. They are selling at local craft shows and on their site and will do custom orders as well. You can find them at 
Princessories.net.

We headed to the mall to have lunch and hit Children's Place and Baby Gap for the kids and American Eagle and the Gap for Mike. We ate at California Pizza kitchen 

and Nicholas took several pictures of Mike and Jackson, this is one of my favorites:

After shopping we stopped at Coldstone for some ice cream. Nicholas was in ice 

cream heaven with his chocolate and M&M's ice cream:

Sunday we hung out at home. I started a re-model on my blog and played around with some fabric flowers.  I also got to work on my Color Me Daisy April kit layouts. 

The sneak peak is up on the Color Me Daisy blog...Spring Fever....Catch it!

I finsihed one layout last night and will share a sneak tomorrow.

For now I will leave you with a bit of scrappy stuff I did this weekend with my 

Studio Calico March kit:

A really cool thing happened Friday morning when I got Jackson up. He was still a bit sleepy. I took him back to our bed for a little while and we just cuddled. While 

this may not seem like a big deal, for us it is.  For months now he has been all 

about Daddy, and I have been only good enough if Daddy wasn't around, but not 

really unless he wanted to eat or if he was upset. But something has changed in the past couple of weeks and we are bonding again. I knew it was a phase, but there 

were times I missed his snuggles. So I just enjoyed every bit of that  "Mama 

moment" Friday morning.

Cosmo Cricket Class & February Color Me Daisy Layouts

Today I had the pleasure of taking a class at one of my LSS, Paper Vineyard. This store opened up just as we were losing our Recollections store 2 years ago. To celebrate their 2 year anniversary they hosted Linsday Moore (co-owner and funny blog poster over at Cosmo Cricket), for 2 days of fun classes with lots of giveaways.

I would have loved to take them all, but I have been so busy with work and the February kit release that I just couldn't manage all 3. So I settled on the class that was going to feature my favorite new release from Cosmo Cricket, Material Girl. The class was an easy pace, lots of entertaining stories from Lindsay and a full house. The kits were all pre cut so, very easy to put together this cutie pie card and layout combo. Some wonderful soul did all the sewing for us on these, so we ended up with these great additions to our scrapbooks and card collections:

I am proud of myself for being able to tie the bow here, usually I just tie a knot and call it good. :)

Now this layout is a bit girlish but, their example was the exact same title with pictures of a little girl carrying around snacks. I immediately thought of a few similar pictures I have just like them of Nicholas. So I kept the title and we will be okay with pink in his scrapbook ;). I just love that tape measure paper. And we got a whole package of those cute new chipboard alpha's that Cosmo Cricket just came out with. When I got home I added some Glimmer Mist in Patina to the paper but it didn't show up in the photo.

They had a lot of giveaways in the class, everyone received a double stack paper pad, 2 packs of the new chipboard alphas and a pack of the mini alphas. I got the Earth Love and Boyfriend paper pack, but some lucky ladies got a Material Girl and Garden Variety pad.

After class, I needed to pick up some of that Cosmo Cricket. They were out of a few things already, but I did get this from the Material Girl line. (Sorry about the product photos, it was dark when I decided to take the pictures, so had to use the flash).

And this from the Garden Variety line (including those cute Ready Set Chip Alpha's). The backsides of several of these papers are super cute as well!

And anyone who knows me, knows I love my alphas. So between the giveaways in class and my purchases I am now the happy owner of every stinkin' one of the new Cosmo Cricket alphas. Heaven!

And since they were having an anniversary sale, I picked up these Prima flowers that I think will be awesome misted, And I couldn't resist the Martha Stewart Butterfly Border punch. I don't think I will tire of butterfly's.

And now on to my February layouts for Color Me Daisy's "Change of Heart" kit. We announced this month will be our last monthly kit. I am missing too much time with my boys and have decided to cut way back on the number and frequency of the kits. The announcement can be read here.

February's kit Change of Heart is so much fun with lots of Jenni Bowlin, My Mind's Eye, Maya Road and American Crafts. I love the red and black for Valentine's and love and everyday photos too. I have finished 2 layouts so far, first is this simple one. "This is Us":

For my 2nd layout I painted the Maya Road and flower chipboard first with red paint and then covered it with a rose glitter paint. I also used the Smooch Spritz from the February add on's to spray the library pocket and turn the white polka dots red. I also used Martha Stewart butterfly punches for the butterfly's only adhering the middles and lifting the wings off the page.

Well that's it for now. Mike has been making homemade Roasted Tomato Soup and Macaroni and Cheese and it smells delicious. Hopefully he will be feeding us soon. Happy Saturday!

Color Me Daisy January Kits Available

Color Me Daisy's January Kit "Homemade Treats" is now available.

Thanksgiving is over let the Christmas rush begin

My weekend was interrupted on Friday, by work. No fun, but a necessity, given that it is year end and at least some of us need to be there. But nonetheless I still enjoyed the rest of my three days off.

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house. We all shared the cooking duties, so it allowed some time to enjoy the company of our families. I did get out of work early on Wednesday which gave me plenty of time to make the pumpkin cheesecake, clean all the veggies and prep the turkey.

Mike's parent's brought a birthday gift for me on Thanksgiving day, which I promptly put to use. An ornament display stand that will be perfect year round for the different holidays and a Michael's gift card, which I used on Black Friday for the new Sizzix Texture Boutique.

The traditional annual picture of me and my mom.

After we had everything underway, we went out in the backyard to watch Nicholas play. He decided he liked to sit on the rocks and we even got a few poses.
We did get him to sit long enough for pictures with his Nana's, he loves his Nana's.

Nicholas and his Nana (Rettberg). My mom and Dion watched Nicholas and Jackson on Saturday for us and they all had a fun night.

Nicholas and his Nana (Carr).

Nicholas also hung out with his Grandpa's. Although he has decided he likes saying Dion so Grandpa Rettberg is called by his first name.

Jackson enjoyed eating Thanksgiving dinner, pretty much cleaning his plate.

And what would Thanksgiving be without a little rough housing.

After dinner, Nicholas wanted to go out and work off the dinner he did NOT eat.

Jackson of course needed a bottle shortly after dinner to wash down all that turkey and fixings.

After everyone was thoroughly stuffed, it was time for a catnap. Nicholas crashed in my arms and then was handed off to Nana, so I could pack up leftovers.

On Friday I got up early to hit some sales at Michael's, JoAnn's and Bed Bath & Beyond before heading into work and doing a bit of online shopping at Amazon in between my "way too busy day for a Friday after a holiday". While I was out, Mike got all the outside decorations done. He did the backyard too and it looks great. It's nice we get to enjoy his efforts and not just the neighbors. When Nicholas saw it Friday night, he just stood by the window for a while and smiled.

My birthday was Saturday and Mike and I enjoyed a rare date night. We had dinner out at Brio at San Tan Village and saw this:


I definitely still like Edward better.

Saturday and Sunday we had plenty of time for our hobbies while the boys napped and played. We also got the store updated for December. So all in all a fun and productive weekend.

I finished up an advent calendar using the Color Me Daisy December Kit and lots of Thickers. I have lots of fun surprises planned for Nicholas to put in the drawers. So I can't wait for Tuesday, he has already been pointing at the calendar and counting the numbers.