Baby Shower Fun

Last night I hosted a baby shower for a friend who is about to have her fifth child. It's been seven years since her last baby, so she was in need of everything a baby needs. She received so many cute outfits! I think she is going to have to change her baby's clothes at least three times a day to be sure she gets to wear all of the clothes. (I wish I had that problem!)

Here's a look at some of the yummy treats we enjoyed during the shower.Thankfully, I had several friends help with the food. I would have been a total crazy person if I had to make all of this!

Notice those cute PINK cherry yogurt covered pretzels in the photo? I saw them at Sprouts yesterday and couldn't resist picking some up for the party. I'm glad the baby is going to be a girl, so I could add the pink pretzels!

And check out the veggie tray. My friend broke a bunch of red cabbage into a bowl shape to hold the ranch dressing. How clever is that? I totally want to use that idea sometime.
I made these mini carrot cake cupcakes with my sister. I must admit that the thick cream cheese frosting is my favorite part. I could eat it by the spoonful!
I really didn't want to go crazy on decorating because I did't want to store things after the party and most premade baby decorations aren't the cutest style. So I decided to create this quick banner. I just cut a bunch of triangles and then stapled them to a piece of ribbon. The top banner had large triangles and the lower banner is smaller triangle. Super quick and I think it added a fun, festive feel to the room.

It's always fun to have a party!

College Grad

When I saw the Sketchy Thursdays sketch this week, I knew that I wanted to play along.
I decided to use photos I took last weekend while we were at my brother's graduation.I really liked playing around with this grid style layout. Love the clean design.

Supplies: Cardstock: Bazzill; Patterned Paper: Studio Calico, Stickers: Cosmco Cricket, Scenic Route and Studio Calio.

Happy Birthday To You Card

Hello everyone! Hope you've had a happy Monday.

Just wanted to stop in and share a birthday card I put together for my husband's dad (aka Gramps.)Here's my daughter and her Gramps celebrating his birthday tonight at Famous Dave's.Good times!

Card supplies: Scrapbook Circle May kit; Photo border: House of 3.

Graduation and Cupcakes

My husband and I returned last night from a quick trip up to Utah to attend my brother's graduation from BYU. We were lucky to have my husband's dad stay with our kids while we were away.

It was great spending time with my siblings (except for 1 sister - we missed you!) and my parents.If you are ever in Provo, I highly recommend stopping at Sweet Tooth Fairy Bakery. Wow! We bought a few cupcakes to share and brought them to the graduation to make the waiting time a little sweeter.The Vanilla frosting was like nothing I've ever tasted (in a good way!) It was amazing.We tried the Marble, Strawberry Shortcake, Raspberry Lemonade and Cookies 'n Cream. The marble (1/2 Va-NIE-lla Squared and 1/2 Double Chocolate) was my favorite.Looking forward to some creative time this week!

Taking a Hike

A few weeks ago we took a hike with our family and friends as a nearby mountain. It ended up being a little more of a short walk because people were tired and hungry, but we did at least get to enjoy some great views of Phoenix.
Hikes in the desert provide different scenery that the forest, but I still find it so beautiful. I love seeing huge saguaros with a big blue sky behind them.
The weather is now heating up, so I don't think we will venture out on another desert hike until November. We'll have to enjoy time in our pool until then!

Have a great weekend!

Supplies from the upcoming May Scrapbook Circle kit.

Exciting News!

I am so excited that I have been asked to be part of the design team for Glitz Designs!I'm going to be part of the layout design team. Can't wait to get started! Stop by the Glitz blog for a look at the new team.

Graduation Time!

My little brother is graduating from college today! Even though he is actually bigger than me, I still like to call him my little bro since he is ten years younger than me. :)

My husband and I are traveling up to Utah to attend his graduation at BYU. This is where I graduated 13 years ago. What? Where has the time gone? It's always fun to go back and see what has changed and reminisce about college days.

In honor of the graduation, I made a card for my brother.Way to go! We're proud of you!

All of the card supplies came from the upcoming May Scrapbook Circle kit.

Wish

If you have kids, you are probably like me and you wish (and hope) that they will be happy. Sometimes this is easier said then done. But I hope to instill optimism and hopeful thinking in my children.

I decided to create a layout for my almost 10 year old daughter that reminds her of a couple of my wishes for her.I am really loving the Comso Cricket Cordinations cardstock that I used for the background of this layout. Here I lightly rubbed distress ink over the paper to highlight the embossing.I'm also loving the new Crate Brook line. Here, I paired a few sheets of Crate with a vintage love polka paper from Glitz.

Wishing you a fabulous day!

Everything except the white rub-on (Basic Grey) came from the upcoming May Scrapbook Circle kit.

Happy Monday!

Happy Monday everyone! I hope your week is off to a great start.

I was able to squeeze in a little creative time this afternoon and I put this card together. I'm trying to use up every last bit of the SC April kit. Can't seem to get enough Dear Lizzy.
The pleated fabric is the adhesive back fabric from Dear Lizzy. I just pulled the paper backing and adhesive off so that only the fabric was left. I made a couple of pleats at a time and then held them in place with my Tim Holtz tiny attacher. All of the staples were covered use with the yellow felt ribbon.Hope you have a great week!

Time to Sort!

My husband and I are watching the Suns playoff game tonight and I wanted a little project to work on while watching the game.

I decided to sort this stack of layouts. Some of these are from 4 years ago. I'm not sure why they hadn't been put into an album yet. Yikes! Other more current layouts have been put away, but some older ones were tucked away in a drawer.

For now, I am putting them in four different albums: Relationships, Our Family, Things We Do, Places We Love. I'm thinking that I want to tweak it and have a Celebrations album (for birthdays and other milestones) in addition to a school days album.

This is always a work in progress. At least, for now, all of my layouts are happily organized. Now I need to order more page protectors!

Fav 5

Tonight there is a blog challenge up at Shimelle.com asking people to share their favorite 5 layouts.

For me, that is always changing. More often than not, my favorite layout is one of my most recent layouts.

Here's a look at at a few of my favorites right now.Thanks for the challenge, Shimelle! It was fun to look through the past few months of layouts.

You can see larger images of the layouts here, here, here, here and here.

A Book, More Jam and a Kit

This week, I read a fabulous book that I highly recommend >>> The Help. This was so well written and so interesting to read. So if you are looking for a new book, I suggest you put this one on your list.I made 14 more jars of freezer strawberry jam today. Now with 27 jars of jam finished, I'd say we should be set until strawberry season next year. It only took an hour and a half from start to clean up to do the 14 jars, so it really wasn't a big time commitment. With all of my reading and jam making this week, I haven't had time left for any scrapbooking. But now that I have the May Scrapbook Circle kit to play with, I am sure some creating is in my near future. May peeks are up at SC if you want to check them out.Any fun weekend plans?

We are trying out a new Mexican restaurant tonight (La Casa Blanca) and then we have baseball and soccer games in the morning. Looking forward to spending time with my family.

Strawberry Jam Time

We are just about to finish off our last jar of freezer strawberry jar from last year, so I decided today it was time to make more jam.

My kids said they really wanted to help, so I waited until they came home from school today. We finished up 12 jars in a couple of hours. It was great to have my three assistants cutting and stirring with me!Have you ever made jam before?

Hula Hoops!

My kids has so much fun at a luau for the Chandler Children's Choir. One of the activities was a hula hoop contest. It was so fun to watch all of the kids play!The paper was a pretty busy, but I wanted to create a feeling of a big, busy party, so I think the paper helps get that message across!Any AZ girls reading this? If so, Diana and I just signed up for a misting class with Heidi Swapp at Scrapbooks Etc. in Mesa on May 13 from 5:30 - 8:30. We'd love it if you joined us! It's going to be so fun.

Hello Baby

In a couple of weeks I'm hosting a baby shower for a friend. I thought I get a little ahead and make her card today.I just ordered her present from etsy last night. I'll have to share it with you once it arrives. I'm really excited about it!

Coloring Eggs

Did you (or your kids) color any Easter eggs?

We did! It is nice now that my kids are a little older and could handle the designing and decorating on their own. I got to set things up and then watch them make the magic happen.Supplies from the SC April kit.

Thanks for stopping by!

Egg Hunt!

We had such a fun egg hunt on Easter morning with our three kids and the three kids who were visiting us for spring break.

They found the eggs pretty quickly and it was fun to watch them run all over the yard. This year we did actually try to hide a few of the eggs so there was maybe a little challenge for the older kids.

I just printed off a few of my favorite photos from the egg hunt and put this layout together.
All of the photos are 2 x 3 inches. I've decided that making a grid of photos is a little too tedious for me. Getting out my ruler to measure out the photos is something that I don't usually do, but I do like how it turned out.
Can't seem to get enough of these Dear Lizzy crochet flowers!Did you do anything fun for Easter?

Beach Bungalow

Last March my husband and I had a wonderful opportunity to go to Costa Rica with friends for a week. We had so many great adventures together. You can check out a couple of other Costa Rica layouts here if you're interested.

I've had this photo of the beach bungalow where we stayed for half of our trip sitting on my scrap table for a long time. The photo seemed to be waiting for the right moment to be snatched up and used on a layout. Today was the day to use that photo.I LOVE the Dear Lizzy crochet flowers. They add such a nice texture and the colors are so happy.Now I have 3 layouts from our trip! While I was on the vacation, I put together a travel journal and then filled it with 2 x 2 inch photos when we came home. Looks like I haven't shared that yet, so I'll have to do that sometime soon.

Thanks to Sketchy Thursdays for this sketch that gave a start to this layout.Diana always make such easy to use sketches. Thanks Diana!

The supplies for the LO came from the Scrapbook Circle April Kit and April Add-on.

Happy Easter!

I hope you and your family had a wonderful Easter weekend.
We've been busy with egg dying, egg hunts, church, friends and family!

This and That

No time for playing with my scrapbook supplies today, but I wanted to stop by and share a few things with you today.

I recently bought some really cool canvas flowers from an etsy shop I stumbled across, Sweet Vintage. Looks like the shop is sold out right now, but new goods will be up on April 15. Here's a look at what I got.
Love the colors of these rosette canvas flowers! One set I bought had black, navy and burgundy flowers.

Everything was packaged in a vintage looking clothes pattern. Loved that! She also included a lovely bonus turquoise dollie. Extra touches like that really make a difference to me!I also bought some plain flowers. I'm thinking about using some mist on the to dye them a custom color. Now I just need to decide on a color!
I'm thinking that I will turn some of the flowers into hairclips and use the others on a home decor project.

Another thing I want to share is this fun recipe finder at RealSimple.com. It shares a bunch of recipes that only take 15 minutes to make. The fun thing about this recipe finder is that you get to choose the main ingredient and then the type of meal you want to make. My favorite option is the meal that is made is 5 ingredients or less.

Here's a look at a couple of recipes that I want to try soon.

Chicken and Dill SouvlakiToast with Ricotta and GrapesFinally, I just received and email from Shutterfly with a code for 101 free photos! Here's the code: PRINTS101. You just have to use it by April 7, 2010. Now I just need to decided which photos to order!

Hope you are having a great day!