Hopefully the craziness is over...

June has been a lot of fun so far --insert heavy sarcasm here--

Bronchitis, maybe pneumonia, Dr.'s visits, an emergency room visit, summer school for Ty and summer school teaching for Marc, nasty tasting antibiotics, a kidney stone, major pain killers, scout camp near Dallas, car repairs, a teacher's conference in San Antonio...etc. etc. Yes, yes, fun, fun, fun...

I think our family is quite ready for summer to really begin and be the fun relaxing time we were expecting. I'm ready for Marc to be home for awhile too. I really miss him when he is away, and all the fun we have had while he has been gone on these two trips has only made me miss him more. Of course he has had his share of fun over the past 2 weeks too--the emergency room visit was his--so I'm sure he is ready to do some relaxing when he gets home today. Hopefully all of that craziness is over now and we can get on with the fun plans we have made. Big thanks to my parents who were a huge help during the past few weeks and have put up with us delaying a birthday celebration trip to the Houston Space Center for my Dad 3 times in a row now. 4th times the charm right? Hopefully that will make it back on the calender soon too!

I should add that not all of June was bad. The end of the school year was fun as always. Blake graduated from his first year of Joy school, and we had a little party to celebrate. He really loved Joy school this year, it is such a great program--so well thought out and so much fun to do with him. I've really enjoyed having this special time that belongs just to Blake and me! I love the special bond we have created through doing Joy school together and wish we had done it with Ty too. It is a really fabulous program. The other Moms and kids we did it with were great too and I know Blake is missing it this summer. Thankfully we have another great group ready to go again in the fall and we are both excited to see what year 2 will bring!

The happy graduate:

This is Ty on his last day of first grade. A little bit of a bittersweet day I think. Ty was very excited for summer, however, he had a wonderful, amazing, phenomenal, first grade teacher that we both will be missing. I can only hope his second grade teacher is half as good! He is holding my customary end of the school year gift for his teacher. The flowers are pens topped with foam flowers. I saw this similar idea for a mother's day gift on the Queen and Company blog last year, and I knew I'd be doing my own adaptation of it as a teacher gift from then on. I usually tuck a gift card into the card which I tie on the handle. The foam flowers are from Hobby Lobby, and the pot is from the Target Dollar spot.

This is last year's version for Ty's kindergarten teacher. These flowers were from the Target dollar spot as well and the pot.

Fun and easy to do. I just layer the foam flowers, then hot glue the flowers to the ends of the pens. Then stick them all in a little metal bucket with a few beans at the bottom. Add my card and gift card and then beg Ty not to spill them everywhere as he takes them into the school :) I usually make a few other pens to tie to thank you notes for the other teachers who help Ty at school. He has some wonderful special education teachers who have been great at giving him the little bit of extra help he needs. Hopefully everyone likes them. If my boys ever get male teachers I guess I'll have to think up something new--but for now this is the plan.

Lastly for today here is a layout and card I did manage to get done during the crazy start of June. First is a brief tutorial someone asked me to post on how I made my own journaling card for the layout.

First I took some lined paper--this happens to be made by Scenic Route Paper Company, but any kind of paper would work--and punched a circle.

Then I cut a slightly smaller circle with my circle cutter and added temporary adhesive to the back.

I stuck the smaller circle on the larger one to mask off the area I didn't want black.

Then I took a black felt tipped marker and went around the exposed edge a few times. After removing the mask you have a perfect journaling tag.

If you like your handwriting more than I do you can write directly on the tag.

I prefer the easy way out :) I run mine through my printer and then add it to my layout.

Unfortunately for me I didn't notice the typo until after I took these photos. On the flip side all I had to do was punch and edge a new tag, so it was easy to fix the layout. You will have to take my word for it that I fixed the typo. I'm feeling to lazy just now to take a new photo :)

But you get the idea--really easy and fast!

A few close ups of other stuff.

The little Monsters/Aliens were originally refrigerator magnets I picked up from the Target dollar spot--gotta love Target! They are stapled to the layout as I have never found a good adhesive for these types of softies. They melt glue dots after a few months so I figured staples would be best--and fast. And I'm all about trying to speed up my scrapbooking.

And here is the card I managed to finish. It was inspired by this layout in a lift the pea above you challenge on Twopeasinabucket.com

Anyhow, thanks for stopping by. And thanks to everyone who is being so patient about the photos and emails I owe everyone. I am catching up quickly and hope to be back on track with my normal 2-3 week turn around on photo shoots next week.