Win some great prizes at Scrapbooks.com on National Scrapbook Day!

This is just a heads up that scrapbooks.com will be hosting a National Scrapbook Day Crop starting tomorrow at 9am Eastern time. The designer girls will be chatting and issuing challenges that will be announced hourly til 2pm in the forums. Including yours truly with--what else?--a sketch challenge :) You then have the weekend (til Monday morning actually) to complete as many challenges as possible to win 1 of 4 prizes, plus a prize picked at random from the check in thread. The more challenges you do the more likely you are to win! And they are great prizes too! Grand prize is a product box worth over $100, and the 3 runner up prizes are $50 gift certificates to the scrapbooks.com superstore. Soooooo, start printing photos and gathering your supplies--it's going to be a very fun weekend! I hope to see you over there! :)

And, since I always like to leave you with a project of some sort here is just a little gift idea that I put together for the ladies I visit teach. It is very simple, but I like how it turned out. The papers here are by My Mind's Eye. The Flower Punches are by EK Success, Frame from the Dollar Store, and the Pearls are by Queen and Company.

This is one of many of my favorite quotes:

Anyhow, have a great (hopefully scrapbooking filled) weekend!

A Battle Reenactment and 2 More Layouts

I hope you all had a great weekend! I know we did! We spent Saturday down at the festival/reenactment of the battle of San Jacinto, where Texas won its independence. It was a fabulously fun day with perfect weather. We spent the morning enjoying all the family friendly activities including shows--the boys thought the flea circus was pretty fun--, kids crafts, the museum, eating giant Turkey legs, and enjoying the petting zoo.

At the craft table the boys were able to make these fun hats and color bandannas so they could look like the Texas Army. They also made bluebonnet pictures with their fingerprints and stamp pads--they turned out very cute!

The petting zoo was also a big hit with the boys, even though the animals were pretty aggressive about getting the food we had for them. Here my mom stares down a Lama that was following her around :)

That afternoon we toured the camps of the Mexican and Texan armies, and settled in for the battle reenactment, which was really fun to watch. The boys were most excited by the cannons--which were loud and smokey!

Afterwards we wandered over to take a look at the Battleship Texas. We skipped the tour, as we were already pretty tired from a big day--but we will have to come back and take the tour sometime soon. It looked like fun!

Overall it was a perfect outing for these 3 boys! We all had a great time, only got a little bit sunburned, and look forward to next year!

And finally, as promised, here are my last 2 layouts for scrapbooks.com this month. This first one is about how Spencer falls asleep in some very random ways. It is always interesting to see what he was in the mist of before he nodded off:

This layout uses mostly Sasafrass Lass papers, Basic Grey and Pink Paisley letters, Queen and Company Brads, and those super cute monsters are by American Crafts. Click here to read the journaling and see a larger image.

And lastly for this month is a layout featuring those pop gun photos from a few posts down.

This layouts uses Pink Paisley papers, Making memories brads, Jillibean Soup and Cosmo Cricket letters, and October Afternoon Tags. Click Here to read the journaling and see a larger image.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Where have I been?

Nowhere in particular, just busy :) I've been working on several assignments for Creative Memories which I can't share at the moment, but had fun doing. I did however, just finish up my assignments for Scrapbooks.com, so I have 2 of those layouts to share today.

The first is about Ty's Second Grade Moosical he performed in last week. He did such a great job--and we were very proud to watch him sing and do the actions to all the songs he had worked so long and hard to master--It was really fun!

And if you can believe it, there are 10 photos on this layout--a first in a very long time for me to have a layout with that many photos! The papers you see in these two layouts are mostly by Pink Paisley from their 365 degrees line. It's a great line for boys!

As you can see I also jumped on the banner bandwagon. I've loved seeing these as a trend for the past few months and this is my take on that trend :) You can also see some Cosmo Cricket chipboard chickens and Cosmo Cricket tiny letters.

The Journaling Reads: You practiced so hard for your second grade musical Ty! You knew all the songs and actions and despite telling us you were a little bit shy about performing you did awesome! We loved watching you sing, wear your chicken hat, and have a great time on stage with your classmates and friends! --April 15th 2010

This next ones uses some of the photos we took in the Bluebonnets last week--however I wanted to focus on my boys and not the flowers on this layout so I converted the photos to Black and White. It is based on a sketch I saw on the Imagenisce blog.

Journaling reads: Despite the nearly three-year age gap between you two, you really are best friends. You love to play together, you look out for each other, and you get so excited to share your day’s adventures with each other the moment you are reunited after school. I love to see the closeness you two share! 4/10/10

There are some Queen and Company Jewels on here as well as some Cosmo Cricket Buttons and the letters are by JillyBean Soup.

Two more layouts to come soon! Thanks for stopping by!

The Texas Bluebonnet Festival

Warning! Photo heavy post!


So yesterday we headed out to the Texas Bluebonnet festival in Chapell Hill TX. Now for those of you unfamiliar with bluebonnets, let me just say that these pretty blue flowers are to Texas what clovers are to Ireland. They are a part of the culture around here and each spring hoards of Texans head out to see the amazing fields of wildflowers and take photos. My family is no exception to this pilgrimage and yesterday was our day to go pay homage to the little state flower.

Our first stop was in Chapell Hill, where they hold a fun festival full of venders, fried food, and a little children's area with a petting zoo/small rides. There was lots to see there and plenty of homemade handicrafts to buy. We mostly just looked and browsed, but finally gave in at a cute booth stocked with handmade wooden children's toys. The boys had spotted some pop guns which much to their delight and our chagrin make a perfect "pop" when released.

They certainly had a good time with them, but we did have to ban popping them in the car on the way home :)

After a yummy fried dinner we left the festival and headed out to Brenham to take a look at our favorite field of bluebonnets--which sadly, wasn't as beautiful as in past years but still looked quite nice. My favorite moment came as I opened the car door near this field and the smell of all the flowers just about took my breath away--it was amazing!

We took a lot of photos, played and walked around the field and just over all had a good time!

Spencer just had to try on Grandma's new hat!

He decided pink was not his color and gave it back :)

Spencer wouldn't sit down, but I got a few good phots of him playing as he ran down the hill we were exploring.

The other two boys will succumb to my begging--so we got a few sitting photos of them.

We topped the evening off with ice cream on the drive home and overall just had a really nice day! I'm so glad we went!

As a side note, here are a couple of projects I fit in over the past few days as well. Again I'm off season with this card, but it fits the flower theme of my post, right? :)

The papers here are all Cosmo Cricket, as are the chipboard letters and the letter stickers. I had a lot of fun making those sunflowers--which always remind me of fall.

And this last one comes as a result of my prize pkg from My Mind's Eye, mentioned in some posts below. They were so generous as to send me not only their Little Boy Blue line, but the entire Quite Contrary collection. I was so excited that I dove right in and did this layout using the Jack and Jill line.  It is about the day I found Spencer asleep atop this mountain of blankets. He had stacked up every blanket he could find on his toddler bed and then perched himself at the top for his afternoon nap. Finding him there totally made me smile. You just never know what this little boy is going to think up!

This layout is based on a sketch by Becky Fleck which can be found here.

Anyhow, that's the end of today's mega post! As always, thanks for stopping by!

This is totally the wrong season for this but...

I've been working on a few Christmas calls and I thought I'd share just a little look at one of my projects. I've been planning this guy for a few months now and finally sat down and made him over the weekend. He is about 2 feet tall and will hang on my wall this coming holiday season.

His edges are blanket stitched and he is stuffed with just a hint of plastic grocery bags for added dimension.

He is made from flocked Chatterbox papers and the patterned paper/large buttons are Basic Grey. The smallest buttons are by Dress It Up.

Anyhow, just a quick post again today. Have a great day!

I Love Page Maps!!

Whew--busy week! My brother and his family were in town visiting and we had a splendid time enjoying their company and exploring some of the great activities Texas has to offer! We had a great time, but boy am I tired now!

My favorite day was spent at the beach, swimming, surfing, building sand castles, flying, kites, collecting shells, chasing birds, and enjoying the nice weather!

Yes, sometimes the waves get big enough to ride here in Texas :)

We had a great time and despite the very slight sun burns are very glad we had the opportunity to get a little beach time in this spring and play with family! I did this a lot growing up in California, so it is always nice to relive a few childhood memories while we make new ones. :)

Now, back to the title of my post...yes, I love page maps and have been a fan for many years now! This month I had the opportunity to contribute to the newsletter and I've been waiting to share it for a few weeks now. Here is my layout made mostly with October Afternoon Papers, but with some Cosmo Cricket, Making Memories, and Basic Grey stuff tossed in:

This is my Blake from about 2 1/2 years ago. It is my favorite photo of him and a big enlargement of it hangs in my staircase. I smile every time I walk past it.  You can check out the sketch this layout was based on and all the other April sketches/layouts by clicking here.

Have a great day, and Happy Easter!