a Leap Year giveaway and a new layout

Good morning!

Happy February 29th to you! The kids will have some fun leap year activities at school today to celebrate so it should be a fun day. ☺

I mentioned the other day that I'd do a giveaway this week so here goes: leave me a comment telling me about your favorite color scheme and I will put together a scrappy kit for one random winner using those colors. If you tell a friend about it leave me another comment telling me about that and you'll get another chance in the drawing. I will choose a winner next Monday and post it here and try to get your kit put together and shipped out before the end of next week.

Now for a new layout, created for Bella Blvd:

This little girl, my oldest, is home sick with pneumonia. Yes, they were finally able to figure it out after the negative strep and flu tests she'd had before. I had to take baby Lily to a check up yesterday and took Hailey with me and our great pediatrician could tell that Hailey wasn't feeling well so she looked her over and then sent us for a chest x-ray and that confirmed the pneumonia. We've started her on antibiotics and even today she is feeling a bit better. The poor girl had watched "The Secret of Nymh" recently and when she started getting sick she said that she hoped it wasn't pneumonia because people can die from that. I was a little hesitant yesterday to tell her about the diagnosis and we had a talk about her uncle and nephew who just got over pneumonia and they are fine. I believe strongly in the power of prayer and know that a Father above is watching out for my little girl. It may take a few more days for her to be back to herself but this morning she's up instead of laying in bed, her temperature is down and she was laughing...small miracles considering how she's been feeling lately. 

I recently saw the movie, "The Help" and loved that the woman would teach the little girl that she cared for to say that she was smart, kind and important. What a special thing for her to do, and I liked it so much that I added it here in the journaling. 

You can see more great layouts on the Bella blog today:

http://bellablvd.typepad.com/bella_blvd/2012/02/layouts-on-wednesday.html#comments

Have a wonderful day and don't forget to enter the drawing by leaving a comment on THIS post before next Monday. 

poor lonely blog

I know...it's been a while.

I haven't been scrapping as much lately because life, taking care of kids and their needs/activities has caused me to have to put scrapping on the back burner a bit. I have gotten assignments done, which I'll be able to share here as soon as they go up on the company blogs and I got a few things done for fun this weekend, so I'll have something for this week.

My kids have been sick off and on during the last week; one with a stomach bug and now the other ones have a cough and my oldest has been running high fevers and has lots of chest congestion. I took her to see the doctor yesterday and for now, unless her symptoms get worse, we just have to wait it out. I worry because she isn't eating much and doesn't sound good...I think that sometimes doctors don't give moms enough credit. We know our kids well enough to know when they really aren't feeling well even if the lab tests/exam doesn't show anything remarkable enough for them to treat the problem. So, my oldest might be home today because I can tell she just doesn't feel well at all. We have the humidifier going, checking her temp now and then and trying to keep fluids going and whatever we can get her to eat. Poor girl is thin enough already because of her build and she's just not eating.

Anyway, I wanted you to know that I'm not ignoring you...

There's a DT call going on at My Little Shoebox- check it out if you think it's for you. It's been a fun company to design for and the new releases are really cute. http://mylittleshoebox.typepad.com/

I'll do a little giveaway later this week; I was doing some clean-up/organizing in my scrap room and I have WAY too much stuff. So, one lucky reader will get to help me clear out some of that stuff. What would you like to see in a giveaway? I'll try to fit those things in when I pack the box.

Have a great day!

patterned paper embellishments with Bella Blvd

In case you hadn't seen it yet, all week long Bella Blvd is showcasing the work of Shannon Tidwell through lots of scrapbooking challenges. The challenge today is to create embellishments using patterned paper.

Here is the layout that I created for the challenge:

I created these simple flowers with strips of paper, twine and some of the new Bella Button Market buttons.

You can see the rest of the challenges so far this week and other designers' work here:

http://bellablvd.typepad.com/

My Little Shoebox Design Team Call

I have had so much fun being on the design team at My Little Shoebox this last year.

The ladies on the team are so kind and supportive and the newest release is just SO cute!

If you are a My Little Shoebox fan you will be excited to hear that their new design team call was posted this morning and you can find all of the details here: http://mylittleshoebox.typepad.com/my-little-shoebox/

I have been working on some projects with the brand new release, Keepsake, and am loving it!

Good luck to any of you who try for the team!

Happy Birthday to Kimber!

Thank you for joining us on this special 40th birthday blog hop for the ever-so-talented Kimber McGray.

The blog started off at the Jillibean Soup blog this morning and all of the links for those participating in this hop can be found there.

You should have arrived here from the amazing Laura Vegas' blog.

Along with everyone else in this hop and many, many more people I am sure, I would love to wish Kimber a very happy birthday! You are quite the talented lady and I count myself lucky to be able to know you. I hope that today is wonderful!

From here you will go to the last stop on our hop, the blog of the lovely Sherry Wright.

Have a wonderful day and thanks so much for stopping by!

and a Bella Winter Wonder card

It looks like it's card week around here but a lot of my layouts have been shared or I'm still waiting for them to be revealed on company blogs before I can post them here so you get another card today, one that I created for the Bella Blvd booth at CHA using the Winter Wonder collection:

Have a wonderful day and thanks so much for stopping by. 

Happy ♥ Day to you!

Happy Valentine's Day!

The kids have parties at school today and are going to come home on a sugar high for sure!

I'm sure we'll be eating our share of chocolate in honor of the day and I am okay with that ☺

Here's a little card using some more Hearty Barley from Jillibean Soup:

I used my favorite woodgrain paper, some corrugated hearts and a frame, a cute little sugar pick, some Hearty Barley stickers, new light pink and gray baker's twine and one of the new glassine envelopes. 

Have a wonderful day!

sharing some more Hearty Barley

Good morning!

How was your weekend?

I hope that it was great- my 4 year old said that yesterday was the best day besides Christmas because we got snow! Snow is a rare treat around these parts so we were all excited to look outside yesterday morning to watch the snow fall.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day so I thought I'd share a card that I created for Jillibean Soup for this past CHA trade show:

Well, we just got the call that it's a snow day so I am back to bed! 

I am sure that my kindergartener will be so excited that there's no school.

My second-grader is already up and dressed and it's only 6:30.

I guess you can see who LOVES school and who doesn't, huh?

so I got an award

I was visiting my very talented friend Pam's blog today and saw that she'd received an award and OF COURSE she did because her photography is stellar and her scrappy style is so fun and is something I aspire to do- and then I looked through the post and saw that she'd passed the award on to 5 others including little ol' me.


THANKS, PAM!!!!!!


That was such a fun surprise!


So, I also received this cute award, coveted by little bloggers like us:

And now I will pass it on to 5 others. 

Before I reveal the other honorees I must tell you the rules: 

The idea of Liebster award is to bring attention to blogs with fewer than 200 followers.

One of the conditions in accepting the award is to pass it along to five more blogs. For those interested, the rules are:

1. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.

2. Reveal your five picks for the award and let them know.

3. Post the award on your blog.

4. Bask in the love from the most supportive people on the blogshare-other bloggers.

5. Finally and the best rule of all..........have fun and spread the love! 

And the 5 people that I am going to pass this award on to are: 

Scrappy friend Melanie Blackburn

another scrappy friend Nicole Martel

and another Zoe Nemburt

and my I'm-still-sad-you-moved-away- scrappy friend Janelle Guymon

and my cute sister-in-law Ginger Williams

Aren't they fabulous? 

Have a great weekend, everyone!

baby Lily and some more Jillibean Soup

Lily is our sweet 9 month old, the mildest baby of our 4, I think.

She was born 6 weeks early and because of this she's a little bit behind with her gross motor skills; she's almost mastered sitting up on her own and will surely catch up with other things quickly. I am not worried, in fact, since she is our last baby I am okay with her taking her time to do things. I am enjoying this baby stage and am not in any hurry for her to be crawling or walking. I figure that she'll learn those things in her own time and for now I just get to hold her more. The time will come when she will want to be running around instead of sitting snuggled on my lap.

Here she is with some more Jillibean Soup Hearty Barley:

I made this for Jillibean's booth at the big trade show using the Hearty Barley collection, some of the new light pink and gray twine and alphas and one of those cute little heart sugar picks. 

I am making some quick cinnamon rolls for the kids to eat for breakfast before they head off to school, I need to get some more apples in the crockpot for applesauce or apple butter and today I am scrapping!! I may need to get some laundry done but that's at the bottom of my list today. Oh, and I get to go do some Valentine's Day shopping for the kids for their V-day parties next week. Should be a fun jaunt to Target! It always is, right? 

Have a great day!

Lalaloopsy Love and some Jillibean Soup

One of the things that my girls are really into right now is Lalaloopsies.

They're little plastic rag dolls that come with the tiniest little pieces and my girls love them. We have a Lalaloopsy carousel, treehouse, bus and lots of other little pieces.

For Christmas my 4 year old got a Lalaloopsy pillow doll that is almost as big as she is and she affectionately calls it "Snowy" though her real name is Mittens Fluff n' Stuff. Aimee takes the doll everywhere and has her sleeping right next to her every night. This is a cute stage of her little life so I decided to make it the topic of this page using Jillibean Soup's Hearty Barley Soup collection.

Tonight I need to get to work on some scrappy assignments; it seems that thing after thing has taken precedence over scrapping lately and I've been too tired late at night to get anything done. 

I hope that you have a great day!

a new layout

Good morning!

How was your weekend? I hope that it was a nice break and that you're all rejuvenated to start a new week.

Some people think it's funny when others talk about "scrapping for themselves" versus doing team assignments. It's fun to do work for manufacturers and other teams, to get to try out their new products and I have loved the teams that I've been able to be a part of; I always scrap for myself but it's liberating to use any supplies you want without any kind of restrictions. Because I am a mom with 4 busy kids, a house and husband to take care of, I don't often get to do much more than my assignments so there isn't much time to "scrap for myself" but one day, after all of my CHA work was done, I sat down with an old kit from My Scrapbook Nook (featuring Crate Paper's Random collection) and made this page.

I love my girls but the two in this layout tend to butt heads a lot, and I mean A LOT. They used to get along so well, used to play together and have fun and laugh but now it seems that they are engaged in a screaming match more often than not. Sarah is tough but Aimee is as well and I just know that Aimee is going to outgrow Sarah before too long and Sarah is not going to like it at all.

I have to smile when I see them playing together the way they used to, having fun and not arguing over every little thing. I hope that they will be good friends again soon. 

What to you do when your kids just won't get along? 

I would love some suggestions!

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a great day!

and a couple more things for American Crafts

Here is the last of my projects for my guest spot with American Crafts:

The foundation for this mini is an album from Maya Road that I got in my Scrapbook Trends goodie box:

I kept the pages pretty simple using the same few patterned papers, ready-made embellishments and some strips of patterned paper. I wrote down a little bit about what each member of our family is working toward right now. 

Thanks so much for stopping by! 

sharing more American Crafts projects

Hello again!

Here are a couple other projects that I created for my guest spot with American Crafts:

and some detail shots: 

And one more layout:

Have a wonderful day!

guest designer for American Crafts

This was such a fun guest spot for me!

Here are a couple of my projects and I will share some more tomorrow. I received the Amy Tangerine, Daydreams, Chap and Garden Cafe lines to play with.

Thanks so much for stopping by today!

More projects using the Baby Girl Collection from Bella Blvd

Good morning! This week on the Bella blog we are sharing LOTS and LOTS of projects using the brand new Bella Blvd releases from this CHA and today it's time for more of the Baby Girl collection so I thought I'd share a few more projects with you!

First up, a layout with pictures of brand-new Lily. Time sure flies way too quickly.

And a card- the fun thing about this collection is that a lot of the patterns are versatile enough to use for everyday kinds of projects and not just "baby" ones. 

I thought these little onesies were so cute that I cut some from the border strip paper to use on this card. 

And lastly, a mini album with pics of each month of baby Lily's life so far. 

I cut some strips of cardstock 6 inches x 12 inches and scored at every 4 inches, then adhered a few strips together, covered with patterned paper, added some of the new Designer Tapes on the edges and then added the pictures and a few stickers and other embellishments. 

Thanks so much for stopping by today!

p.s. Here's another fun little thing: 

http://americancrafts.typepad.com/studio/2012/02/guest-designer-becky-williams.html

I had the fun opportunity to be on the design team at American Crafts last year and when I got the email from Page a few months back about guest designing OF COURSE I said yes! Check the blog later for a look at my projects and I will post them here as well with lots of detail shots.