Last Week's Layouts

Well, it is now dark when I leave for work and dark when I get home. So, when is a girl supposed to get good pictures of her layouts?! I admit that I got impatient and these first two were taking inside with some bad lighting but since the others weren't done until yesterday morning, they got all the good sunshine yesterday too. 

These next layouts I completed yesterday when a friend and I scrapped all morning at her house. I think that scrapping is kind of like homework because I always get more done when I'm with someone else who is doing the same thing! If I'm at home or by myself, I get distracted but with a friend, I can crank out great pages really fast!

That's the layout fix for this week! I hope to create some more this week and from now on, I'll just be taking pictures on the weekend. I'll be back sometime this week with some Christmas decorations pictures and crafts!

Featured at Imaginisce!

Hi everyone! Wow, it's been a long and busy week/weekend! Today we are finally relaxing and taking a breather before going back to work tomorrow. I spent this morning over at a friends house scrapping, so I will be back later to show you all the pages I've made this last week. In the mean time, check out Imaginisce's blog where my i-rock apron is featured today!!!
 

Last Day of Work and a Blog Award

It's my last day of work this week!!! Ahhh, can't wait to stuff my face, take a nap and watch football all weekend. Today I'm going to share a blog award that I received from not 1 but 2 bloggers! Thank you Sharla and Michele!!!

Now, my blogger duties for receiving this awesome award. I will share with you 8 things about me and then share the award with 8 other bloggers!
1. I hate when my feet get tucked into a blanket too tight...it's like they get claustrophobia! yuck!
2. My favorite food is cheese! I could eat it plain but any food that has cheese in or on it is probably going to be gone if put in front of me.
3. I wish I could digi scrap more but I love playing with all my paper and I can't stand sitting at the computer after being at my desk all day.
4. I miss wearing dress clothes to work... I work at an agricultural company now and I usually wear jeans and a polo to work. I really liked my dress pants and cute tops!
5. I wake up at 6:30 and go to bed at 9:30 almost every day...I think I've become an old lady at 23 years old...
6. I used to hate pink! *GASP* my bedroom was all pink until I was about 16 and I think that had something to do with it (a little bit tomboy) But now I love pink...it's one of our wedding colors!
7. I love reading...everything... I can get completely lost in a book for hours at a time. I'm currently reading the Left Behind series and have gone through the first 5 books in about 3 weeks.
8. Snow is my friend! I love it! It's gorgeous and magical and brings with it my birthday and favorite holiday. And it always gives me a good reason to cuddle up inside with some warm treats and a good movie!


Ok, now that you know a little bit about me, I'm going to share this award with some other amazing bloggers!
Keshet http://www.keshetstarr.com/
Shannon http://sdombkowski.blogspot.com/
Tracy http://tracystreasures-tracy.blogspot.com/
Liz http://invitesbyliz.blogspot.com/
Monica http://monicalifeasme.blogspot.com/
Mary http://maryberryboutique.blogspot.com/
Patty http://scrapbookpatty.blogspot.com/
Marlene http://disguisedasagrownup.blogspot.com/

Have a happy Thanksgiving!!!

*i-rock apron a-la-Christy!*

Good morning! Is everyone ready for food, family and football this week!? I know I am! 
We'll be going to Chad's grandparents' on Thursday and then my parents on Friday and Saturday. I have 4 pies in the freezer ready to be baked and enjoyed. It has definitely cooled off here and now feels more like winter than fall, which has provided me with a lot more time indoors to do crafty things. 
Remember that i-rock and apron that I showed you? I won Imaginisce's little package of goodies so that I could bling out one of their aprons and then show all of you! So without further chit chat, here is my i-rock apron, a-la-Christy!!

 I loved the pink that was already on the apron but I also love teal, so I added that bright teal flower and some teal jewels to make a swirl on the pocket! I also wanted my apron to be a little bit shorter so I chopped off the bottom, rounded the corners and sewed on this adorable pleated ribbon.

Here's a close up of the details. The black and white flowers are handmade tweed flowers (made by me!). I just added some of the clear jewels to the middle with the i-rock! I had some white Imaginisce flowers in my flower jar, so I made this little white flower by folding and layering a few petals!

There you have it, my blinged out apron! I had so much fun playing with the i-rock tool that I have a few more projects that I will be sharing soon! Have a great Tuesday!

Check out this Castle!!

Wow! I can't believe this creativity! Check out Melinda's castle!

It's actually a jewelry box! Can you believe that? I wish I had one of these when I was a little girl because it it so beautiful! Speaking of jewelry, Imaginisce is giving away an i-top, i-top rings and snap daddies on their blog. So go over there, check out the rest of this project and enter to win!

Cousins and a little sneak of some goodies!

Well, it's officially cold and dark. I don't expect the temperature to get about 60 again until spring. We haven't had any snow yet though, but I love snow! It's also been getting dark at around 5:00pm so by the time I get home there isn't much I can do outside. Instead, I've been inside working on my box of pictures. Here's a page I finished last night with some pictures of Chad's cousins who visit Nebraska every 4th of July. I used up lots of leftover pieces of Cosmo Cricket paper on this layout. There is also some Studio Calico rub-ons mixed in there with a Maya Road kraft envelope and miscellaneous clear buttons.

I also wanted to share with everybody my Imaginisce goodies that I got in the mail last week. I recently won their i-rock and i-rock apron to bling out and then share with you! It is in progress as I speak but I need to make a trip to get a few more things to add! In the mean time, I thought I would show you how awesome and generous Imaginisce is when they send out their giveaway packages!

I'll be back tomorrow to share a fabric flower tutorial and I can't wait to show you my completed apron! 

*Imaginisce!*

The other weekend when I was scrapping with a friend all afternoon, I decided to pull out all my Imaginisce product and just play! I had some Lucy Bird paper left and I wanted to try to make something cute for my flowergirl next July. I found this cute die cut gift bag on the Plantin cricut cartridge and made this cute circle bag for her gifts that I will get her!

I had some Splash Dance paper leftover too but mostly it was just scraps from other projects and a few pieces here and there of the chipboard, stickers and rub-ons. I made this cute little Birthday card with the chipboard octopus and blue fish ribbon!

Finally, I had just bits and pieces of patterned paper left from the Splash Dance collection and some bubble rub-ons that I knew would go great with the pictures I had of Mya playing with bubbles in the front yard. I put a few jewels on the bubble rub-ons and then used some other rub-ons I had to make my hand journaling a little more fun. Even though the papers were ocean themed, they worked great for this page!

Thanks so much for checking out my Imaginisce filled weekend of projects!!!

*Playful Puppy*

Good morning! Well it's going to be a beautiful day here but there is talk of some snowflakes tonight! I LOVE snow!!! Last night I sat down and created this layout while Chad was watching football and Pawn Stars. 

I had so much fun machine stitching on my Christmas cards that I knew I wanted to do it on a layout! I have seen so many of these grid layouts with titles in the middle and I knew it would be a great way to use a lot of pictures about the same thing. So, this is my layout using the grid and stitching, about Chad and Mya playing in the yard when she was just a little puppy! These pictures were from this spring (probably April) when we brought our little girl home. She was so feisty and playful and so adorable attacking Chad. 

I also played a little bit with making handmade flowers for this page. The first is a paper accordion folded flower. I folded a long strip of paper and then glued the ends together to make the circle shape. Then, I tied a piece of twine to a giant white button and glued it down. The second flower is one of my favorite flowers to make. I used some Jillibean Soup twill ribbon with little chicks on it. I folded it in half and just started twisting it in a circle until I had the size of flower I wanted. Then, I glued it down to a piece of chipboard and glued it to my layout. 


Stay tuned because I'm going to share with you how I made a similar flower with some black and white tweed!

MIYM - Christmas Cards

I'm a little late with this weeks MIYM but we were gone visiting friends all weekend. However, before we left home on Saturday, I started creating my Christmas cards for 2010. Here are the 4 that I have done so far. Most all of the cards will be exactly like these. 

 For these cards, I used leftover patterned paper from my December Daily and cut it into squares. The top left and bottom right squares are popped off the card with foam adhesive squares. I tied a ribbon around just one square, used a rub-on sentiment and then stitched around the whole face of the card. Very simple and fast and yet this is probably my favorite Christmas card I've made! 
I would love to see your Christmas cards for this year!

Is It Cheating???

    Have you ever heard the term "scrap lift"? It basically means that you take a layout that you like and copy it. Remember in high school or junior high when you got a new pair of shoes or a new shirt and you just wanted to wear it everyday because you loved it so much?! Then a week or two later, after everyone had complimented you, another girl showed up in the same outfit?! I won't lie...it has happened to me. One year (8th grade?), another girl and I showed up on picture day with the same shirt on! Gasp! I almost wanted to have my pictures re-taken so that we didn't match. However, my mom always told me that it was a compliment to have others like my style so much that they would copy it... still not sure about that mom...haha.
    So, when scrappers "scrap lift" each other, is it cheating? Well, in the scrapbooking world, we really do believe what my mom told me. It is exciting and reassuring when others like what we create and then use it to inspire their own creations! It's one of the greatest compliments that we can get from our peers! 
    Today, I'm going to show you two layouts that I "scrap lifted" and show you that it's not always just about "copying". I have 26 pages of layouts that I have bookmarked on Two Peas in a Bucket and I have a box of pictures that need to get into albums. So, I decided that I would start using some of those layouts as inspiration and "scrap lift" them. The first layout is from lipo on 2Peas.

    I've had these papers and chipboard pieces for probably 6 months or better. They are papers that I like so much that I couldn't decide which pictures I wanted to use them with and I didn't want to cut into them until I knew for sure. I love lipo's layout because it has layering yet it's very symmetrical with the pictures and the papers. For this first example, I literally copied the layout directly to my own with just a few omissions. 

    This second layout also appealed to me because so many of the elements look hand drawn and doodled. This is not something I would typically do but it just looked fun! With this example of scrap lifting, I took pieces of the layout that I liked and used them to inspire my own layout using what I had on hand. This layout is from Megan Klauer on 2Peas.

For my layout, I used the strips of paper at the top and the bottom, the title and the doodling around the letters, the clouds and the stars. My pictures in the bottom right corner are rounded like the numbered paper in the original layout. I also used a grid patterned chipboard to cut out my clouds, that represents the lined/grid background paper. My layout isn't exactly like the original, but it uses many of the same elements. 

From these two examples, you can see that "scrap lifting" isn't always just copying a layout directly and that there are many ways to interpret a layout for inspiration. I hope that you'll take the time to check out these two talented ladies' work on 2Peas and maybe you'll find a layout or two that you'd like to try to "scrap lift"! And don't forget that it isn't cheating to just copy a layout either. It really is a compliment to have others want to do what you can do!
Have a great weekend!

THANK YOU!

Thank you to all the men and women that 
have served and are still serving our country! 

Home of the free, BECAUSE of the brave!

And thank you to my many family members who have and are serving!

My fiance who served in the Air Force for 4 years (who is smoking hot if I can say so) ;) and also his brother who recently got an awesome job with the Air Guard!

THANK YOU VETERANS!!!

Make It Yourself Monday - Old Dresser Part 1

I'm here with another Make It Yourself Monday! Today I'm going to show you the old dresser I've been working on. When we started emptying and demoing our house in April 2009, this dresser was on the porch and in pretty poor shape. It was very dirty and roughed up but I wanted to keep it. Who can resist a piece of furniture that you already own and would be great storage?! We moved it to the barn but forgot to cover it. I pulled it out late this summer and started cleaning it up. I decided to strip the old lacquer and stain/varnish and whatever else was on it and refinish it. 

You can see that I've stripped the left side but not the right. It's not going to look brand new by any means because the top and the curved legs have wood laminate on them and were already in pretty rough shape when I started. I plan on replacing the wood drawer/door pulls with some new antique looking pulls. 

One tip for old furniture with old finishes (and for any furniture that has vertical surfaces) make sure that you use a semi-paste stripper. It will cling to your surface better. As soon as the stripping process is done, I give the whole piece a good sanding and I'll stain with a medium-dark stain with a bit of a reddish tint probably. 

Thanks for checking out this weeks MIYM! If you have any furniture refinishing tips, please fee free to share them here! I'd love to see any pieces that you have finished!

A Creative Weekend

It is WINDY!!! wow! I might venture out this afternoon but first I wanted to share with you what I've been working on this weekend. This is a layout for the Two Peas crops with the requirement to use 4 or more pictures. I used Imaginisce Lucy Bird and lots of cute pictures of Mya playing when she was a puppy.

 Unfortunately, I ran out of adhesive so until I'm in town tomorrow, I won't be able to scrap anymore this weekend! Hope everyone is having a relaxing and creative weekend!

Make It Yourself Monday *Postponed*

...until next week! We were gone over the weekend and I just didn't "make" anything. I was working on layouts however which you can check out below. Instead, I'm going to share my meal plan this week...
Monday - Italian Chicken Bake
Tuesday - Hamburger Green Bean Casserole
Wednesday - Brats
Thursday - leftovers 
Friday - ??? 
Saturday - Spaghetti with Cheesy Bread
Sunday - Chicken Noodle Soup


I have a huge stack of printed out recipes or recipes torn out of magazines. I'm going to attempt to try one new thing every week. If I like it, it will stay and if we don't I'll throw it out! I've found that if I just tweak a recipe a little bit for our tastes, that many more recipes get to stay in our collection. 
I also need to make a major effort in beginning my get in shape, lose weight, move more, eat less, get ready for the wedding program. I'll be designing my work out tracker soon and hopefully be able to stay away from too much yummy food this holiday season....it's all in moderation right??? 


Have a wonderful Monday!