I love Us

With all of the holiday activities this past month plus working on my December Daily and finishing up my 2013 Project Life album, I haven't had any time to just make a traditional scrapbook page. I've missed it! Today I had two hours and put I put two pages together. It was so much fun.

For this page, I pulled out my January This Life Scrapbook Circle kit. I've been so excited to use the "i love..." stamp and the woodcuts in the kit. It's always fun to see things I've sketched out become a real product that I can use on a layout.

This layout is about our 17th anniversary that we celebrated last month. We've make it a tradition to visit a fun novelty store (Smeeks) to collect a few stocking stuffers and then have our picture taken in their photo booth for the past several anniversaries. Sadly, Smeeks is closing this year and so our tradition is coming to an end. I'll have to scout out another fun photo booth place for our next anniversary.

Thanks for stopping by today!

New Glitz Design Products!

Are you as excited as I am about the new Glitz Design lines that are being released this week at CHA? I've been lucky to already get to create with the new lines I'm excited to share my layouts with you today.

I had fun incorporating some photo booth pictures my husband and I took last month on our anniversary. I loved the bold quote on one of the paper layers and instantly knew that it needed to be used on my page.

The paper banners were released last summer and I was so happy to see that they will be in the new lines too! I love that the banners are all pre-sewn and so easy to use. It's a perfect way to add some whimsy and color to the page.

Next up is a page with a favorite photo of my son. I LOVE the bright and happy colors of the new Color Me Happy line.

Did you see that Glitz Design is bringing back their roller stamps? I know that I have a bunch of their old roller stamps and was excited to see new stamp designs. On this page I used the big chevron stamp to add a bit of interest to the page.

I can't quite narrow down my favorite new Glitz item, but one of my favorites is their washi tape in some really fantastic designs. I used the woodgrain and the rainbow stripe tape on this page. I'm going to have to show restraint to not cover all of my projects in this beautiful tape!

What do you think? Are you ready to play with some new Glitz Design products? They will be shipping later this month, so you won't have to wait long!

Love You Layout Supplies
Glitz Designs Love You Madly Patterned Paper: Herringbone, Floral, Stripe
Glitz Designs Love You Madly Paper Layers
Glitz Designs Love You Madly Peek a Boos
Glitz Designs Love You Madly Paper Garland
Glitz Designs Love You Madly Title Stickers
Glitz Designs Love You Madly Hearts Washi Tape
Glitz Designs Love You Madly Giant Rhinestones

Sunshine Layout Supplies
Glitz Designs Color Me Happy Patterned Paper: Stripe, Chalkboard, Polka, Hearts
Glitz Designs Color Me Happy Paper Layers
Glitz Designs Color Me Happy Peek a Boos
Glitz Designs Color Me Happy Giant Rhinestones
Glitz Designs Color Me Happy Paper Garland
Glitz Designs Color Me Happy Chevron Giant Roller Doodle
Glitz Designs Color Me Happy Rainbow Stripe Washi
Glitz Designs Color Me Happy Woodgrain Washi

Party + Sand Dunes

A couple of months ago my siblings and I threw a surprise 40th anniversary party for our parents. We has so much fun planning the party and we were rewarded with completely surprising our parents at the party. I have tons of pictures from that night and I've finally printed off a few of the pictures for a layout.

These Glitz Design papers were perfect for my page. I love the bright, cheery and party feel from the Pretty in Pink line. It's perfect for documenting a celebration!

For a little added dimension on the page, I sewed some tulle to the page and then sewed the photos on top of the tulle.

For my second layout today, I have a page documenting a visit to Jockey's Ridge Sand Dunes while we were visiting my sister and North Carolina. I've been want to use the arm/heart picture for a while and I was happy to use it on this page.

I mixed several different Glitz Designs line on this page. I love how their different lines can coordinate so well. For now, I only have the Cashmere Dame 6 X 6 Paper Pad, but I really wanted to use this line on my page. I used smaller pieces of the paper in little groupings around the page since I didn't have any big pieces of paper.

The hexagons were leftover from a layout I did a few months ago, but I held onto the little hexagons because I knew they would eventually be put to good use.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Anniversary Party Supplies
Glitz Designs "Pretty in Pink" Patterned Paper: Stripe, Polka, Ledger
Glitz Designs "Pretty in Pink" 6X6 Paper Pad
Glitz Designs Pink Woodgrain Alpha
Glitz Designs "French Kiss" Layered Stickers
Glitz Designs "Pretty in Pink" Paper Layers
Glitz Designs "Pretty in Pink" Epoxy Stickers
Glitz Designs "Pretty in Pink" Peek a Boo Transparency
Glitz Designs "Dance in the Sunshine" Tulle

Jockey's Ridge Supplies
Glitz Designs "Happy Travels" Patterned Paper: Polka, Bicycle, Stripe
Glitz Designs "French Kiss" Patterned Paper: Floral
Glitz Designs "Cashmere Dame" 6X6 Paper Pad
Glitz Designs "Happy Travels" Giant Rhinestones
Glitz Designs "Happy Travels" Title Cardstock Stickers
Glitz Designs "Happy Travels" Layered Stickers

Surprise 40th Anniversary Party

Last weekend my siblings and I threw a surprise 40th anniversary party for our parents. One of my favorite things about planning the party was the almost daily phone calls with my siblings.  We even did a couple of video conferences since we live in three different states and couldn't get together to plan the party.

The night of the party, we had arranged for my parents and some of their friends to go out to dinner near our house. The plan was that they were then going to check out a house near ours and our kids were going to be waiting out front of our house and spot my parents and ask them to come see something in our backyard. Instead, my mom ended up calling me during their dinner to see if they could stop by and show our house to their friends. Perfect!

My parents were completely shocked when they arrived and saw all of their kids (one sister had traveled across the country to be there and another had traveled from Utah) and then they saw our yard full of 80 friends and family. So fun! I've never thrown a surprise party before, but I'll be on the lookout for another opportunity to do it.

We decorated the yard with hot pink and purple paper lanterns in the trees. Those were my parents wedding colors! We had tables with white tablecloths topped with candlelit mason jars with wedding and older family photos.

We had a few different food sections set up at the party. First, we had a cake, punch, mints and nuts table since these were the food items at our parents' wedding reception. My sister, Michelle made all of the cakes and they were each so delicious. We has a dark chocolate cake, coconut creme cake, fresh strawberry cake and a peanut butter cup cake. She really outdid herself on the cakes.  We made this punch recipe and it was perfectly refreshing and delicious.

Another one of our food tables was cookies and milk station.  We had skim milk, dark chocolate almond milk and regular chocolate milk along with an mix of homemade and store bought cookies. We also added a tray of homemade (by Michelle) brownies plus a canister of homemade vanilla ice cream. We also had some funfetti Chex mix made by my sister Kristen.

Our third food station was a popcorn mix station. We popped a bunch of fresh popcorn and filled a giant basket. We had several little containers that held a bunch of different candies (Whoppers, mini M&M's, Reeces Pieces, nuts, and Junior Mints) plus some flavors that could shake on the popcorn so everyone could do a custom popcorn mix. We bought the flavors from this online store. We decorated white paper bags that everyone could use to hold their popcorn.

My brother put together a video with wedding photos and older photos that we had running during the party.

We set up a photobooth where we asked the guests to pose as they arrived at the party. My sister Kristen ran the booth. Nice work, Kristen!

Once the sun went down, our paper lanterns light up perfectly. We used these battery operated lights in each lantern. The lights were perfect because we didn't have to rig up any electric lights. We also lined our pool fence with white lights.

Overall, I'd say that we threw a very successful party. It was such a fun night spent celebrating my amazing parents.

40th Anniversary Album

My parents celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary on Sunday. My siblings and I decided that it would be fun to put together an album filled with memories and photos for our parents. My siblings, spouses and the grand kids each wrote about my parents. I paired the written thoughts with photos taken throughout the past 40 years.

The design is pretty simple because I really wanted the focus to be on words + photos. The album base is 6 X 8 inch pieces of kraft cardstock. Then photos, words mounted on cardstock and washi tape were added to give a bit of color.

This is a just a little sampling of the pages. At first, I was going to do a "40 Things We Love About You" theme, but we ended up with more than 40 thoughts, so just kept the theme as a celebration of 40 years together. It was a pretty thick album and 2 inch binder clips were barely big enough to hold it altogether.

My parents loved the album!